FREE BLOG HOSTING with Domain Registration

I’m including this page in case people missed the pricing in my other posts.

The pricing is very simple:

The Professional Storefront Plan is:
$49.95 per month
$150 one time licensing fee

Those are our only charges. Everything is included. We just charge month to month, so there are no long term commitments.

 The plan includes:

• Free domain (and renewal each year)
• We Build Your Site for you! FREE WEBDESIGN. The initial site setup and up to 5 hours a month of web design time is included in your monthly price.
• Professional website layout and shopping cart features (like the ones you see on big sites like Amazon)
• We can teach you how to make your own product updates (easy)
• Free support (by phone, online chat, or email)
• Pinnaclecart license for the shopping cart software
• Unlimited space, number of products, and bandwidth. Most plans charge extra for this. It’s all included in the $49.95 per month.
• Marketing Pro features to help you increase your website traffic. Includes weekly autosubmissions to 1000+ search engines and directories, personal site reviews by our staff, and more.
• 30 Day money back guarantee on the initial $49.95, so no risk on signing up
• Use Paypal, credit card, or online check to order today.
• The licensing fee won’t be charged today. We will confirm your order with a welcome call first and get some additional info about your site.

To order, you start by selecting your free domain or typing in a domain you already have registered by clicking below:

CLICK HERE TO START

Interested in other plans? You can visit our main website at http://www.siterightnow.com
and check out our classic do it yourself plans and our We Build It Free plan.

 The good news is that there is hope to get your site noticed on the Internet. But I would be lying if I would say there aren’t challenges. The biggest change I have seen over the years is the cost of advertising.  In other posts I said that I started SiteRightNow.com about 10 years ago in August of 2000. The Internet world was very different back then. Many of the advertising avenues were still affordable.  Some of you may be familiar with Google Adwords.  I am sure all of you are familiar with Google! Google Adwords is a system where you can bid on search engine phrases. What does that mean? Well, let’s say you sell diamond jewelry.  If you can bid higher than your competitors for the phrase “diamond jewelry”, you can instantly show up at the top of Google’s sponsored listings. Those are the very top 2 or 3 listings and the ads down the right hand side. Those sponsored listings also show up at the top of AOL Search and many many other places. Let’s say you bid 10 cents for the phrase. When someone clicks your ad, you have to pay Google 10 cents.  If you get 1000 visitors that day from your ad, you would owe Google $100.  For some companies, that might be affordable, but the problem is that over the years, bids got higher. It is no longer 10 cents to appear at the top of Google. For a phrase like “diamond jewelry”, you may have to pay 4 dollars a click!  So for your 1000 visitors, you might owe Google $4000 for one day of business!    For my business and many others, the Google Adwords strategy became less and less cost effective. It’s still a good tool to get some instant feedback on what you are offering. You can get some instant short term results and see if what you are offering will sell.  There are strategies to try to make Google Adwords more affordable. For example, you don’t necessarily have to be on the first page to get clicks. You can still get clicks on Google’s “content” sites and lower down on the search engines. But you won’t get as many with the lower placed ads. So the strategy can be to bid on hundreds or thousands of less popular ads (lower down) and all of those will add up to give a bunch of cheap traffic.  In theory, that seems like it might work, but often you get clicks mainly from “content” sites where the visitors didn’t really type in the phrase on Google to find you. They end up on someone else’s website who happens to run Google Adsense ads.  They might see your ad and find it interesting and click on you. But, they weren’t actively searching for you, so often those clicks are less likely to turn into sales, but Google still charges the same amount for them anyway.

The major difference over the years is that the large companies got into the bidding and started bidding ridiculous amounts (in my opinion) to get top positions. For those looking at the numbers, it just is too expensive to make sense to bid that high anymore.

One of the other strategies that used to work was to run ads on sites that were already high up in the search engines for the phrases you needed. Many of these sites were happy to accept offers to run ads. In the old days, I would contact these sites and make them an offer to run my ad, and this strategy worked very well. The problem now is that almost everyone puts Google Adsense on their site as their ads.  This is a service that Google provides that generates income for website owners if you place their ads on your site.  If a site already has Google Adsense, it’s very difficult to offer them something to run your ad, since normally they don’t have room and they already have an income generating strategy for ads that is working for them.

So what I am saying is Google use to love us at SiteRightNow. We used to get big gifts every year… I think one year we got a mini fridge….now I think we’re down to a maybe a pen… It just doesn’t make sense for us anymore to pay that much for traffic.

So what’s next? Well, at SiteRightNow.com, we got back to basics with our Marketing Pro plan. We started working on natural search engine listings (the free ones). You have alot less control, since you just can’t buy your way to the top. I won’t lie to you and say you can instantly show up at the top of Google for free for any phrase!  But in the long run, you can work your way higher for free. We provide a strategy of optimizing your page by giving you advice with our free site reviews. Our staff can review your site once a month upon request and make suggestions on changes. Our auto submission system resubmits your site to 1000+ search engines weekly to help get your changes picked up as quickly as possible. With some effort and feedback, you can work your way higher and higher without paying Google for your position.  In the long run, we find this an excellent strategy for success.

Blogs like this one also can help with your search engine presence.  Blog articles can be picked up by Google and other search engines very quickly, especially if you subsribe to services such as Feedburner which is now owned by Google too! If you would like to start a blog on your SiteRightNow website, we can install Wordpress software for you. Wordpress is free, and we can set it up for you so you can start your own blog for no extra charge to help with your search engine positioning. Remember though that if you have a blog, you really do need to like to write content!!!!  Blogs aren’t for everyone. If you don’t enjoy writing, don’t expect that you will be able to keep up your blog for very long, and your search engine position may drop if you don’t keep fresh content. 

Affiliate marketing is also a great strategy to build up a sales team who will spread the word about your website. If you offer affiliates a piece of the action, in return they will be promoting your website to everyone possible.

I will stop here for now and add more posts at a later time. I will not be one that says business on the Internet is easy. It takes work to build up traffic and a following. I will talk more about social networking and other strategies.  Our Success is Your Success.  I truly do believe in that. Watch for customer stories on this blog coming soon. You can learn alot from strategies followed by successful customers, and I plan on sharing some of these stories on here soon.

By the way, I was just reading through this post, and it made me think of how silly those offers you see for $50 off Google Adwords.  That barely covers one morning for most customers, so don’t be fooled by that type of offer. To be successful with Google Adwords nowadays, I would say you need to have a budget of $500+ a day, and that actually might not be enough. Many out there might not agree with me, but even at $500 a day, you may not generate enough traffic for your business, so definitely don’t worry about the $50 off coupon and concentrate on other strategies that are more cost effective and that are less frustrating. Producing Youtube videos is also a great strategy if you enjoy it and are creative. I may be making one for my new “Computer Impossible” consulting venture. But again it’s not for everyone, but if it’s something that you enjoy and you have some creative energy, go for it and send me a link to your clip! Feel free to include one in comments to this post too.

This page is for everyone who just found us on the Internet and wonders about my company.

SiteRightNow.com has been around the Internet a long time. I launched our site almost 10 years ago in August of 2000.  I wrote one of the first web builders (sometimes called a CMS system) and made it available to the public through the SiteRightNow.com service.

My company grew out of my computer consulting business I started over 20 years ago back in 1988 called Support Central. I was a freelance computer troubleshooter and consultant helping out local companies with difficult problems and offering onsite tech support.

As the Internet grew, the business moved into the online arena offering web design to local clients. Our name changed to Support Central Online, Inc and we became a privately held corporation.

We now have thousands of SiteRightNow users around the world, with customers in each of the 50 states, all of the provinces of Canada, Great Britian, Australia, and many many countries around the world.

We are a member of the Better Business Bureau with an A+ rating.  (you can click the icon below)

To help you feel more secure, we went through the process of procuring a special EV SSL green bar secure certificate that you will see when you checkout indicated by a green shading in the address bar. To get this green bar, we went through an extensive process of verification where our company was certified.

We are based out of Blue Ash, Ohio (a little city inside a bigger city:  Cincinnati..home of the Cincinnati Reds, Bengals, Bearcats, and close to Columbus for all you Ohio State fans)

Our tech center is down the street from Time Warner Cable and has a direct fiber connection to Time Warner’s NOC giving us an amazingly clean line with tons of bandwidth. We are able to provide virtually 100% up-time with a powerful UPS system and backups that keeps everything running in an emergency.

We also are regularly scanned to assure we are secure by Security Metrics (see their logo below)

The Story of “Music Machine”, Mitch’s first business venture
For those interested, I’m going to indulge with a story of my first major business venture back in the 70’s. There may be a point to be learned from the story, but I also enjoy remembering the early days of computers, when I didn’t have any bills and Windows wasn’t invented yet.

Back in high school in the late 70’s, I sold a computer program I wrote, called “Music Machine” for the Atari 800. Back then, my girlfriend (now my wife) convinced me to spend my life savings on a mail order computer, so we could play computer games. Of course, I did. I ordered my Atari 800, which by the way, I still have, and it still works! Back in the olden days, not many programs were available in stores. For the Atari, most people typed in program code that was printed in Compute magazine. You typed in a few pages of code and as your reward, you typed “RUN” to see what would happen. It was a great way to learn programming. After typing in pages and pages of code, you would start to pick up how it all worked.

Most business ideas start with solving a problem:
I was heavily into music at the time (I still am). Living with my parents back in the 70’s, I had a problem of being able to play piano after they went to bed. I didn’t have an electronic keyboard, but my computer used headphones! I thought it would be a great idea to be able to play music on the computer and listen on the headphones. I was able to write a program on the Atari that turned the computer keyboard into a musical keyboard complete with a rhythm section, chords, melody keys, and more. It worked great. I was able to play music at night and never disturbed my parents. The “Music Machine” was born.

The stores didn’t have much:
I remember visiting my favorite computer stores, Gadgetronics and Microwave Magic (Microwave Magic was an Atari computer store that also sold Microwaves! An interesting combination). Back in the 70’s, there wasn’t much software available on the shelves (especially music software). I decided it might be a good idea to offer my “Music Machine” program to the stores. I talked to a few of the store managers, and they agreed to take my program! They needed more titles. People were hungry for more software. So, I found myself learning very quickly. I had a few dollars from my summer jobs that I would have spent on more computer games. I had to figure out how to quickly package my program. I was able to buy some plastic bags for my package at a good price. I created a simple manual, and I was able to figure out how to get the cassette tape copied for a reasonable price at a local duplicating house (computers didn’t use disks or CD’s back then. They used cassette tape!). With package in hand, I went door to door to the area computer stores. They were more than happy to put my product on the shelves.

(Here’s one point to my story: Timing can be everything. When you see a need, get your product out as fast as you can before it’s too late! The stores were hungry for software titles, and Atari users were ready to try anything new they could find on the shelves. Of course, I think my product was pretty cool too.)

I also remember making a deal with a midwest distributor to sell my product to other stores. They agreed to take it, and I was on my way.

Now, I didn’t make a fortune from my first venture, but I did make a nice profit that paid for plenty of computer games and upgrades to my Atari! I made back the money I spent on the computer, and I was able to buy a brand new single floppy disk drive, when it was invented to replace the old cassette tape!

Looking back, would I have done anything differently?
There were plenty of things I could have done to be even more successful. But, I think I did pretty well, because there was a tremendous need for software titles at the time, and mine was unique. I also wasn’t afraid to go directly to the stores and get my product out there quickly. I think getting your product or service out there when there still is a need for it is the most important lesson I have learned over the years.

I wish everyone much success with your online business! I hope that using our SiteRightNow.com service will help you get your idea out on the Internet. With a little work promoting your website, you can start generating the income you desire.

Mitch Cohen – Webmaster

I will add a bit to my first business venture story.  Since that time, I….

1978-1979    I was Mr. Red for the Cincinnati Reds (Reds mascot character…not sure why I admit that, but an interesting thing about me! My wife was my guard who walked with me to make sure no one unzipped my costume. It was during the last years of the Big Red Machine..  Tom Seaver, George Foster, Johnny Bench and others were still there and does anyone remember Frank Pastore?  He was a pitcher with a nice Porsche, but he was a really good guy and I remember we would visit Children’s Hospital together often to see the kids)
1979 – 1982   I went to college and graduated in Pyschology in 3 years to catch up to my wife (not my wife yet though) who was a year ahead of me. I remember dropping my only computer class.. an IBM mainframe programming class. Man was that awful stuff! At the time, nothing was offered on personal computers, since there really weren’t many yet! In high school, our computer lab was a fortran punch card machine and a basic terminal with greenbar paper we used to play a text star trek game. I do remember playing Star Trek with those X and Y coordinates… fun stuff!
1982     I sold book club memberships Door To Door for American Circle and was very successful.  Great experience, and lots of material for future posts from the people you met everyday. I just graduated college and answered an ad I thought was to write for a magazine company… Well, the team manager said we would be going out in the field today…and it was door to door sales!  Somehow I stayed anyway, and never quit. They actually closed their US operations and bought Doubleday Bookclub and asked me to sell books in England. My wife and I decided not to go, and I thought I would find something less stressful than door to door sales… I thought working at a computer store could be fun getting to play computer games all day. I still loved my Atari. I did find a job, but didn’t get to play many games. I actually had to sell something… see below
1984     I worked at Abacus computer store in Cincinnati, Ohio selling the first Macintoshes, IBM PC’s, (Apple Lisa!  bet not many remember the Lisa). I was their desktop publishing expert on the Mac and also was the account executive for Federation Department Stores who were an all IBM shop. I also was their database programmer for dbase projects.  I had the weird idea at the time that it would be cool to make a map system on a disk that people could plug in their cars… I was trying to figure out how to program it and distribute it…. well, GPS was a better idea, but I did think of it back then.
1988    I started Support Central as a freelance troubleshooter and have worked for myself ever since. I would visit businesses fixing problems no one else wanted to handle.  I used to hand out “dealer wallet reference cards” to sales people at computer stores, and they would refer me to their most troublesome clients who needed support. Later on, the customers led me back into programming projects and web design.  I plan on starting to do some troubleshooting work again soon. I really loved it and was successful solving all types of problems.  If you are in Cincinnati and surrounding areas, look for my Computer Impossible ads with a Mission Impossible/ James Bond theme that should be hitting the airwaves sometime this summer. I am excited to get back out there and see people. That is honestly one of the hardest things about programming and working alot on your own is that you don’t get to see customers as much in person.
1992-1994 (ish)  I developed a prototype for a computer movie game called “Door to Door the Search for Terinna”.  I may have to post the promo on youtube one day! I almost sold the concept to publishers in California, but was turned down.  We used live actors, scouted locations, and produced a mini computer movie first person adventure game.  I used to love to play adventure games like Ultimate, Zork and others on the Atari and Apple II computers way back… Hacker was another fun one I would play. Hacker was a good luck game, because for some reason if business was slow, I could start playing Hacker and would get calls!  Not sure how that worked….but some superstition isn’t a bad thing, and the game kept my mind sharp too.
My computer game team only asked publishers for $800,000 to produce the game. Our cab driver told us we didn’t ask for enough. “In California, if you don’t ask for more than a million they don’t take you seriously,”  our cab driver said. I think we should have asked the cab driver for his advice before we went in for the presentation!  But still a great experience and got me into the world of multimedia that you see flourishing now with Youtube and in so many other ways. It also gave me a chance to write music soundtracks. Music is my passion and takes up my volunteer life at Adath Israel Congregation where I currently serve as their volunteer music director, where I direct our choir and our Friday Night Live rock band!
2000   I launched SiteRightNow.com.   With the popularity of SiteRightNow, I decided I had to stop my consulting practice that I started back in 1988.  I am excited that this year I will get to start consulting again for some selected customers through my “Computer Impossible” promotion this summer that I mentioned above, and I also get to use a theme song I wrote! Click the link below to listen. Look for a new website, computerimpossible.biz  later this summer.

15-Computer Impossible Theme

I didn’t mention my wife Sherry is actually the President of our company and you may talk to her at our billing office!  I am CEO and Chairman of the Board, so we have a good powerful relationship.  She is great, because she has the practical common sense to balance my dreamer mentality. We have three kids. My oldest just graduated Purdue in Aerospace Engineering and is looking for work, if anyone out there needs a bright engineer who likes to work on navigation satellite systems and can speak Japanese!  My daughter just graduated high school this year and will be going into Telecommunications using all the cool multimedia stuff we never had when I was younger. And I have a younger son who still has a few years of high school left, but got an award for straight A’s for the entire school year, so we’re very proud, and got to go the Reds game with his straight A tickets!

Support Central On-line Launches SiteRightNow! Instant Websites
August 1, 2000
A Welcome Message by Webmaster, Mitch Cohen
We’re open! After two years of development, I am excited to announce the opening of SiteRightNow! This is where you can build a great Website without programming. Create your site as fast as you can think of what you want to say, and get it at a price that almost anyone can afford.
My wife Sherry and I own Support Central , which is a company that has provided computer services in the Midwest since 1988. In recent years, we have focused on Website and database development for area businesses and government.
As we started working on larger and more complex sites, it became obvious that it was going to be difficult for us to service the $2,000 and under Website market. There were a growing number of companies who wanted to get their businesses on-line quickly and easily at a price they could afford. Many of these companies weren’t sure if a Website could really help their business, but they felt that they needed an on-line presence to stay competitive. These sites were just too labor intensive for us to offer at a price that these companies could justify. We still wanted to serve this market, so we decided to begin work on an automated tool that would allow us to develop a Website for these customers very quickly.

As a programmer, I needed to create a tool that would do the programming for me. I wanted a tool that was simple enough for anyone to use and that could change an entire Website with the touch of one button. We came up with SiteRightNow, and I am extremely excited about its power and flexibility. At the heart of SiteRightNow is the SiteRightNow Control Panel shown on the right. We packed our Website Design knowledge into the tool, so that we’re actually there helping you with your selections along the way. Using your control panel, you make your selections, and we instantly program your pages! No more waiting weeks or months for your project to be completed. All you have to do is organize your thoughts, come up with what you want to say, and the rest is done for you. On your control panel, we will present you with design choices for backgrounds, button styles, divider lines, and more. You can upload your own graphics, input your text, or reorganize all of your pages with a few keystrokes.
What does a SiteRightNow site look like? Well, you’re looking at one Right Now! Use our site as an example of what you can do with your Control Panel. Take a look through our pages and think about how you could have an affordable Website RIGHT NOW! I’m so excited about opening our site, I could go on talking forever, but you might be in a hurry to get started. To get started, just click START HERE. You can search for a domain name or use one you already have.

Thanks for visiting SiteRightNow. I encourage you to e-mail me with comments, questions, or suggestions on how we can make SiteRightNow even better.

Sincerely,

Mitch Cohen