I”ll share with you three jobs I’ve tried my self. And two others I firmly stand behind. They require little to no money to start. But please take note, they do require skills and training. I’m not into easy escapes, but I am into low capital startups.

If you decide to try any of these, expect to put in at least one month of training. That’s not too much to ask, is it? Otherwise, you might want to help a friend or family member start a home based business.

Also, try to have a few dollars to pay for essentials like paper, pen and a phone. And a printer won’t hurt either. If you’re reading this you probably have access to a computer. So you most likely don’t need to get one.

Lets get into it.

Debt Collection Service

The first plan on this list goes right for the cash. Debt Collections as a business is time tested and probably won’t die anytime soon. This is about soliciting payments for past due accounts. Not much cash is needed to get started. And a license from your local Department of Consumer Affairs is required for any State in the US.

Although software is normally recommended, it’s not required in the beginning. As you grow, eventually software can be acquired to help with management of the accounts.

You will be using letters and phone calls to get in touch with the person who owes.  Spend a few weeks training on your phone pitch. Research collections best practices online for more training. Also, get familiar with the FDCPA and FCRA. It’s important you don’t violate other peoples right with abusive practices. You can obey the law can’t you?

When you’re ready to take on clients, first create a proposal. Just a few pages explaining how your business operates and what the client can expect is needed. Find collection agency proposals online and take notes. Use these notes to draft your own proposal.

When you have a proposal prepared, make a few copies  and start prospecting local business in your area. Some examples are dentists and physical therapists. Retail stores that offer credit. Any business that has customers that owes them. You will be surprised who offers credit. If you are not sure, try them anyway. Offer to send them the proposal. Wait for the callbacks.

Later you can get a website and use Pay Per Click advertising to generate leads. This is something I tried and it worked very well.

When a new client comes on board (on contract of course), start small to prove your self. Scale up as you gain experience. This type of business should be relatively easy for most people. I started an agency several years ago and did make a few thousand dollars. Although I bought the delinquent accounts, I did do some prospecting, ran PPC and generated leads.

Web Coder

The reason I didn’t say programmer, is because I’m focusing on the less technical aspect of web development. Creating web pages using HTML and CSS is really not that difficult. It would take 1 to 3 months to learn most skills in this field for basic web page coding.

To start, visit sites like W3Schools. Their tutorials are very easy to understand. There are also tons of resources online to help you start writing HTML pages. When you are trained, it’s practically as easy as writing an essay.

Once you have attained the skills, create one or two portfolio examples to demonstrate your abilities. This is all you need to start getting work. You can setup a website to showcase these examples. They don’t have to be on their own domain. A sub folder will work fine.

To get work in this area, start with the classifieds like CraigsList.com. Place an ad detailing your expertise, or answer ads asking for someone with your abilities. Show pictures of your example sites. Link back to your website. Prospects will contact you for quotes. Listen to their needs and if it fits your skill level, take the job.

The benefit is you get to set a price, work remotely (at home) and get repeat business from clients. The more projects you do, the better your skills will become.

Sales/ Customer Service

Many business need to generate sales for products and services. Often customer service representative are needed to handle client questions and support.

This is a highly in demand skill. If you are already trained as a sales or service rep, entering into this field will be very easy. Training can be done online or with affordable classes at local colleges.

Often you will need just a computer and phone to begin work. Leads can be supplied by the client. Incoming customer calls or emails again will be forwarded by the client. They will also provide pitches and training materials. These materials will be specific to their business.

Types of business that will need this work done will vary. They include contractors, wholesalers and online companies to name a few.

To find work you can use classified ads, or websites like oDesk. The work is usually ongoing and often pay hourly or/and commissions based.

Online Marketing

This is a popular field that exploded in the past 5 years. Often blogging or writing for companies is the main work involved.

You can work for another company or run your own. To run a marketing business you will need products or services to promote. Use sites like ClickBank or Commission Junction to find great products to write about. This can all be done at home.

Your primary focus is to drive leads and sales. Here you will make a percentage of the sale. With enough sales you can make a good living.

Like almost anything, training will be needed. Learn to write great reviews that make folks interested in buying based on your recommendations is the key.

You can also write generally about a topic, product or service without directly selling. And use advertising as a means to generate income. You can get paid per click through, impressions or sales. The challenge here is to drive traffic to your website. So you need a little SEO knowledge and social marketing skills.

Forex Trading

This might not be right for many people. Forex Trading is very sophisticated and requires extensive training. As an alternative, Stock Trading may work better.

To start trading online, you will need some cash. I would recommend you have risk capital set aside for any investment. Many Forex Brokers provide up to $50000 demo accounts (not real money, just for training).

Once you get the hang of it and see an increase in gains you can scale up. But discipline is very important. Don’t take it for granted, this can be like gambling if you are emotionally involved.

You will lose money. The point is to make more winning trades than losing trades. In the end you can come out with a small percentage gain. With enough money this can make you a few hundred or thousands of dollars per month.

Take the time to research Forex Brokers. Some may be scams, but most are not. Overall the money you make is completely legitimate. This type of business probably will never go out of style.

These are just a few guaranteed ways of making money at home. Some may not be for you. And all require training. If you can master any of these fields you will probably never have to worry about working at home again.

If you have done any of these or you completely disagree with me, please tell me about it in the comments.

Article Image Credit

5 truly legitimate home based business ideas is a post from: WebDevStar.com | © WebDevStar.com

You might think I’m crazy.

But I’ll show you how anyone with the passion and desire to make money online or even run a none-for-profit can have the foundation of their business established in ONE DAY.

Now I’m not about to give you some vague bs. I will give precise instructions and even files and scripts to download and use. I will tell you where to go and what to buy.

I must warn you that this is not a how to make money guide. Rather, this is a production blueprint to get your site built and published. I will not discuss things like taxes, or how to incorporate. Those are formalities that can be dealt with before or after production is done.

What is the bare bones of websites.

Websites can seem like complex things. And to most people they are . But, you should not be concerned about a website’s deeper technical specifications. Because what you will have to deal with is absolutely easy as a child’s toy to understand.

There are millions of plug and play software available that can handle most types of website models. Limit your quest for knowledge only to the most important things that drive foot, phone or click traffic. That means leads. This will cut your setup work down to just a day.

What technology to use and how will this affect the deadline.

You will need the usual things…like hosting, domain and the actual software that runs the site. Because acquiring these things is relatively easy and usually takes only a few minuets to install, this makes it dramatically faster than setting up a brick and mortar business. It’s also much faster than the conventional way of setting up a website.

It’s important that a software package is used for your site because it’s free to get and more advanced than 90% of websites.

What I’m talking about is free and Open Source Content Management Systems. These are Drupal, Joomla, WordPress and hundreds more.

For this guide I will use WordPress and recommend you do also. Although other CMS software are relatively easy to setup and have similar features, I feel WP is the most versatile, has a very large community of developers and users and have thousands of plugins and themes available for free.

The actual work…step by step

Setting up the server.

Go to Godaddy.com, check for that domain you’ve had your eye on and register it. They might be offering a first year discount on the domain if you take hosting. Go ahead and do that, take the plan costing around 6 bucks and add nothing else to the order.

When you check out the total cost should not be more than 11 dollars. Only notable option during this process is choosing your server type and configuration. I would pick Linux with PHP5+ and MySQL 5+.

Accessing server.

Check the email you used at checkout, grab your username and password info and login to the hosting control panel. In case you have to create new login info, login directly to Godaddy, click on the hosting link on the left menu.

Then click manage account to the right of the domain name. Once inside the hosting panel, click the big button close to the top that says Your Applications. This will take you to the Godaddy Hosting Connection.

Installing WordPress.

On the left menu of the hosting connection, click the link that says Blog. Then click on WordPress. Now go ahead and install WordPress here. Document any username or passwords you choose for future reference.

This will take a few hours. Only notable option here is choosing to install the software in a sub folder instead of the main root folder. Select the main root folder.

Setting up File Access.

You will need to access the raw files of the website. You will need to upload some files and the most efficient way is to use an FTP Client. Download a free and popular one called FileZilla. When it’s installed and opened, click the File option at the top left and select Site Manager. In the site manager click New Site, give it a name, and make the host www.yoursite.com. Select logontype as normal and enter the username and password you just created for your hosting account.

Then hit connect. You should be logged in to the root of the site if all goes fine. If authentication fails, then go back to the hosting panel, click Settings and then Manage Ftp Users. There you can create a new user. Assign rights to the user for the root folder.

Configuring WordPress.

Go to the login page by typing into the address bar www.yoursite.com/wp-login.php. If the page shows a login form, then enter the login details you created during installation. And you should be taken to the Administration area of your website. If the form is not there or you get an error, then installation is not complete.

The first thing you want to do here is go to the Settings menu on the bottom left. Select General from the drop down options. Give your site a Title, and a Tagline which usually appears below the logo. You might want to also adjust your time zone and date settings. Save Changes at the bottom of the page.

Next you will go back to Settings menu and select Permalinks. Change the setting to Month and Name or just select custom and enter /%postname%/. Save Changes at bottom.

And that’s it…your website is now configured on a basic level and ready for content and advance configuration. Up to this point all of this should have taken you less than 3 hours.

With other hosting companies, it should take no more than 5 hours. And that’s stretching it. Now you can visit your website at www.yoursite.com and see your new site in action.

Advanced Configuration of WordPress.

I could leave you high and dry here with your new website, but it would be cruel. So I will tell you how to do some upper level configuration to bring your website up to professional standards.

The first thing you will notice after the initial setup is that your site is an ugly standard looking thing. You have to bring it alive. One way of doing this is by selecting a different Theme. You can build one your self or hire a professional, but that’s not the point here. We want it quick and cheap.

So you can Google “free wordpress themes” and there will be thousands to choose from. Find something you like and download it. Unzip and upload the entire theme folder.

To do this use the FTP Program mentioned above and simply drag the theme folder to sub folder wp-content/themes. After the theme is uploaded, login to the admin system where you did the basic configuration. Here you will go to Appearance menu on the left side, and select Themes. Select the theme you just uploaded and activate it.

Now go to the site and see the new theme in effect. Don’t worry if it might be used by others, after your site matures a little, the theme will take on a look of its own. Also a little bit of styling down the line will completely set it apart from other sites.

You will also need a few plugins to enhance the system. These are commonly used and can make a big difference to the optimization of your site. Get the plugins here. Unzip and upload them individually (in their respective folders) to wp-content/plugins using FileZilla.

Configuring Plugins.

To configure the plugins, the first thing to do is activate them. Do this by going back to the admin page, go to Plugins menu and select Installed. This will give you a list of plugins in the system, Activate the plugins you installed. You can leave Hello Dolly and Askemit disabled for now.

Once activated you will get a warning for the All In One SEO Pack. Click the link it gives and this will take you to the configuration page. Enable the plugin, fill in Title, Description, and Keywords then save changes.

Now go to Settings menu on left and select Google XML Sitemap and check if the sitemap was built. This will be displayed right at the top of the page.

If all seems well, go back to Settings and select Privacy Policy, this will build your privacy page and allows you to make edits as needed.

There are lots of plugins besides these you can install. Feel free to add whatever you need as your site grows. You can find additional plugins by selecting add new from the Plugins menu on the left.

Running tests and basic SEO.

Try to test the system by creating pages and posts and checking the site itself to make sure updates are working. Also test the comment forms and move through the system to verify there are no unusual errors.

If you do encounter an error, not to worry, there are plenty of free resources available online to help. WordPress it self has a wiki called codex, that provides solutions to most questions.

Each page you edit will have the SEO fields at the bottom of the edit page. Just enter title, description and keywords as needed. This will go a long way towards optimizing the site for search engines. You will want to enter a max of 120 characters for title, 160 for description and at least 3 keywords.

Recap.
Setting up a website is no longer a highly technical issue. Most hosts offer one click install of many Content Management Systems, and other useful software. Setting up the domain, hosting and CMS is a very quick process. Adding plugins and themes is also a very easy and quick process.

If you follow this guide, the only problem you might run into is the ftp access. In which case you can bypass this and use the internal FTP client offered by Godaddy. To access this, simply go to the hosting control panel, select Content and then FTP Client. Other hosting companies probably have a similar feature.

Now go ahead and spend the next 5-10 hours creating content. Please note: Newly registered sites will take a few days to display in the web browser. To view your site use the ip address provided by the hosting company in substitution for www.yoursite.com. This is usually in the welcome emails or it can be accessed from the hosting control panel.

Also, if the Google XML plugin failed to build the sitemap, there are plenty of sites that will build one for you. Simply upload it to the root of the site.

Rapid Website Setup in Only a Few Hours is a post from: WebDevStar.com | © WebDevStar.com

1. Number of Objects

The objects on a site are images, JavaScript files, CSS files, video and audio files. Even Flash files are objects. Count them. You don’t need any special software for this. To check the number of JS and CSS files, just press CTRL+U and the source will give you the details.

Then trash or combine some of them. Try to bring it to under 20 objects. The key is to improve latency and increase speed.

2. Quality of Headlines

The titles for your pages and articles are weak. Use AMI’s Headline Analyzer and get those titles right. It’s all about the quality. Look at this articles title, got you to click right? Here’s the key, emotional impact.

3. Page Inter-linking

Getting links from other sites might be difficult. But how you link to your own articles is not only easy, but completely under your control. You get to choose what page and anchor text to use. This will increase ranking and page views. Do it as often as possible.

4. Logo Colors

5 colors in a logo might look great to you, but this is not recommended. Logos are best with one or two colors. It’s all about contrast. Look at the top 5 websites on the internet. Google is among the few that can get away with over 3 colors. To further stress this point, think about printing. It’s becomes more costly as the amount of colors increases.

5. Email List (Newsletter) Promotion

“Subscribe” is a weak and overused word. Try giving a name to the Newsletter or Feed. Also bribery is insulting and not very affective.  Trying giving something away for free and just offer that. Make the user enter their name and email as a built in requirement. Not a bribe.

So something like “sign up for my newsletter and get a free ____”, just won’t work as effectively as “Get a Free ______”.  And put the sign form right bellow. This is not a bribe, it’s a requirement. And it’s not saying what you want. It’s obvious to the trained marketer. But not to your visitor. He’s just being offered a freebie.

6. Privacy Policy

If you collect any information from users, depending on where your website is based, you may need a Privacy Policy. This is a page where you disclose how Users information is collected and used. And for what reasons you are collecting it. This is certainly not a substitute for legal advice, so consult an attorney about this please.

7. Paragraph Size

It’s best to have paragraphs less than 5 sentences long. I make this mistake often. It’s usually corrected during editing. Not something to over-obsess about. Some paragraphs demand more than 4 or 5 sentences. But people usually skim information and may skip a very long paragraph. Try to keep it short.

8. MySQL Queries

It’s a known fact that CMS systems like WordPress makes many MySQL queries. That’s because alot of the content is stored in the database. Sometimes a custom site that’s dynamic may make too many calls to the database. Tell your developer to try and avoid this by making some info hard coded or flat file based. With WordPress, using plugins like WP Super Cache will help reduce the need to dip into the db for each request of a page.

9. Sidebar Placement

I’m referring to the User Interface. Not the HTML code placement. Some say a left sidebar on a web page is annoying to Users. And a right sidebar is professional. Some say a left side bar with ads increases revenue, while a right sidebar may reduce this. This all as to do with how our brain works. And how our eyes move from one location to next.

If you want Users to read more of the meaty content, then a right side bar may work. But if the sites design places the navigation on the sidebar, a left bar may be more suitable. If you want to increase revenue, a left sidebar with ads may be more beneficial. Split testing will be important in determining the best option here.

10. HTML Size

How much lines of code does the page have? How many bytes is the page? How many comments (HTML comments, not human comments) does the page have? Is there too much space between lines? These questions are important if you have slow loading pages. Try to get pages under 100k of bytes for best performance across various modem speeds.

I’m actually guilty of not following some of these guidelines. There is just so much specifics that it can be hard to get to for even a seasoned developer as I. So don’t be hard on your self if some of these take some time to get right.

If you think I missed anything or was wrong about anything, let us know in the comments.

10 Absolutely Necessary Areas to Improve on your Website is a post from: WebDevStar.com | © WebDevStar.com

To create a WordPress template (theme) in 5 minuets you will not start from scratch. There is no need for that when you want to quickly develop themes. The purpose of this article is to outline the fast track to theme creation (Not theme design, that is a different thing).

The benefit is a new theme ready for styling within minuets. It’s a jump start for designers and folks with low tech skills or interests. In other words, if you don’t want to deal with complex code. And you just want to spend time designing or making minor changes.

In many cases you are the developer for someone else, and a client wants something original. Or you want to sell templates to make some cash. This should be all you need.

Don’t worry about copyright issues, this is Open Source Software under the GNU General Public License . Read more about what this means. Simply put, you can sell your custom themes. But this is not a substitute for legal advice. Review the license with an Attorney please.

The simplest way to create themes.

Start with the default theme provided by WordPress. Use an FTP program and grab the style.css file. This file can be found in the themes folder under default. The themes folder is in the wp-content folder.

Next, open the file in your favorite IDE or plain Notepad. Edit the line that says “Theme Name” to the new theme name you want. This is usually the second line from the top in this file. When you’re done, save your changes and upload the file back to the default folder.

Updating the other info in this file is highly recommended. Changing the name of the default folder is probably a good idea also. That’s it, you’ve just created a new theme. If you go to Appearance->Themes in the WP Admin, you should see the default theme with the new name you gave it. If you edited the other info in the CSS file and renamed the default folder, you will see the new Author’s name, and folder name as well.

Pretty simple wasn’t it. But it wouldn’t be fair to leave you with just that. Some additional edits might be necessary for complete branding of your new theme.

Some additional edits on the new theme

Open Appearance->Editor in WP Admin. On the fourth line from the top in every PHP file, you will see this: * @subpackage Default_Theme. You can change the words Default_Theme to the name of your new template. Do this for every PHP file if you want, but lines 2 to 5 can be deleted with no consequences.

Also open the RTL stylesheet (CSS file). Go ahead and edit the first three lines to reflect the normal stylesheet. Now you can spend all the time you want editing style.css and theme files to suit your needs.

In a future post I will outline some advance theme editing methods that will greatly change the look and function of a theme.

How to Create a WordPress Template in 5 Minuets is a post from: WebDevStar.com | © WebDevStar.com

I’ve used it for a number of edits on my own and client projects and find it very effective in providing the features now considered standard for Graphic Software. If you don’t want to pay an outside person or company to do your logo, you will find this software very useful for creating professional looking artwork.

What kind of logo can I create

In this guide I will show you how to create simple text logos using Gimp. You’ll learn how to use the text feature, change font type and size, change color and save your image in the file type you want (gif, jpg, png etc).

After practicing these techniques for a few projects, you should be able to create logos and other artwork very easily and rapidly. This will save you thousands of dollars, time and headache when it comes to graphic design.

What you will not learn is how to create custom (non-text) art from scratch. In other words; I can’t teach you how to draw in this software. But if you are good at the creating custom logos, eventually you might be able to create unique artwork without using any pre-designed elements.

How to create a logo

First grab Gimp and install it on your computer. Open the program and drag the two floating toolbars to the right and left. This will provide an organized layout to work with.

Click the file option at the top left and select “new”. Then click on the Template dropdown and select 640×480. A new window will open within the program with a blank white box. This is where you will be doing most of the designing.

On the left toolbar click on the big “A”. Move your mouse to the white box and click. A small box will appear called Text Editor. Use this to enter the text of your logo. After entering your text, go ahead and hit close.

Your text will be outlined with a border and four little boxes on each end. Hover over the bottom right one, click and drag the box open to the bottom right of the bigger white box. This will give you some room to enlarge the text.

Now go to the left toolbar and on the bottom portion ( it will be divided in two parts) there will some text editing features. You can change the font type and size from this area. Clicking on the black rectangular box will pop open an new window. Here you can choose the color of your logo.

At this point if you like what you have created, go ahead and export it. To do this, go back to the File option (top left) and select “Save As”. A window will pop up. Here you can name your image and select a folder to place it in.

The last option on this box is “Select File Type”. Click the little plus sign and slide down to gif, jpg or png and hit save. Another box will popup asking you if you would like to “Merge Visible Layers”. Just hit export and if any other boxes appear, ignore it because you are still learning the program. So go ahead and hit save.

You should now have a new image appear in the folder (or desktop) where you saved it. At this point you might want to just save the Gimp file for future editing. Save it again like above. You don’t need to select file type this time.

In future guides I will show you how to had gradient, effects, use layers, import images, and manipulate dimensions.

If you find this guide useful, please tell how this has helped you create professional text logos in the comments.

How to use Gimp for Creating Logos is a post from: WebDevStar.com | © WebDevStar.com

I’ll discuss some features with the intention of helping someone else in their development work. If you’re not sure weather to get this plugin or not,  then let me first give you some reasons why it should be in your arsenal. For one it’s completely free. It’s very light weight and non obtrusive. There’s really is no reason to not get this toolbar if you write HTML and CSS code.

When you write or edit website code, often you will want to check changes using a browser like FireFox. But, if your browser caches web pages, then there’s a problem. You can’t see the updates because an older version of the page is given. This version might be a few minuets, day, weeks, or months old, depending on when you last viewed the site before making changes.

This is useful for the casual surfer. But developers must get the latest version of pages in order to see edits in effect. There’s a feature of the Web Dev Toolbar I always keep activated to  see a fresh page. It’s the “Disable Cache” option. This is accessed by clicking the Disable button on the far left of the bar. It will be the first option on the drop down menu. When it is checked, caching is disabled.

Another need I have is seeing a list of images the page uses. This is helpful in cases where an image cannot be accessed using a right mouse click, and I don’t have a copy on my computer. This usually happens when an element loads on top of another.

To solve this problem, I click on the Images button on the toolbar. Slide 8 options down and click “View Image Information”. It will display a list of all images used on that page. I find the image I want, save it to my desktop for editing. And it also gives the full image path, so I can dump the updated version back in the same location without touching code in many cases.

The most powerful feature on this toolbar is one I use constantly. It’s the 6th option under the Information button, “Display Element Information”. What this does is it allows you to slide around on the page and outline almost any element. This means div, span, p, a, li, and many other tags.

When you find an element to inspect, left click and a box will appear usually on the left side with some vital information.

Here is what it might look like:

The first row gives the element. In this case it’s td. That’s a sub element of Table. Next to it is .htext which is the class name. That’s useful when CSS changes are needed. You can use the Find Function in almost any IDE to jump to the location of this class in the CSS or HTML file. That’s sure to speed up edits.

There’s also other very useful information in this box. If you build websites, I’m sure you can see a few that’s useful. Like the height and width. Font info and Ancestors are also very important. Ancestors by the way are elements that enclose the current highlighted element.

One thing I find useful with this feature is finding nofollow/dofollow attributes on the a tag. Very helpful when trying to find sites to get backlinks from.

Finally (for this article), there is some validation options under the Tools button. This allows you to check the site for CSS or HTML errors among other inspections.

If you build websites and don’t use the Web Dev Toolbar for Firefox, I suggest you get it now. It has helped me in so many ways. This is often a secret weapon I use to do rapid development/editing on a website. Often to the surprise and delight of my clients.

If you use this toolbar and can share some insight, please let us know in the comments.

Web Dev Toolbar Review is a post from: WebDevStar.com | © WebDevStar.com

Even if a site is established and generating income, there may be money left on the table if these issues are not addressed. If you want to maximize performance, and do it in an area that you control, a website tuneup will surely help.

Commonly ignored HTML issues

There are many issues that need addressing with the HTML code of a website. Here is a short list:

• Meta Tag usage
• Navigation placement
• Headings and Paragraph tag usage
• Sitemap usage
• Sidebar and Footer placement

How to improve in these areas

With meta tags, make sure there’s a title, description and keyword tag. Although many will say the keyword tag is worthless to search engines like Google, it will not hurt to include it. There are many search engines that still use them.

How these tags are used is also critical. It’s important that your keyword/s are included in all three tags mentioned above. But avoid duplication of tags in the title or keywords. In the description, try to have it at the beginning and at the end.

Other tags to inspect is the robots tag. Make sure it says “index,follow”. This insures search engines are not restricted to indexing the page/site. I’ve also noticed some sites using the DC.title meta tag. This may help with accessibility and improving indexing. Here is some background about the DC.title tag

Few people know the importance of coding and placing  the navigation correctly. Main nav or menu items must be placed in list tags ol or ul. And li tags placed within those two main tags.  Also these tags must be place directly below the body tag for optimum semantics. These two fixes are critical for proper indexing. If the nav item must be displayed from left to right, I wrote an article on how to display a list inline using CSS.

Something I was ignorant of until recently is how to use and place Heading tags. These are H1 to H6 elements. H1 should be used once. I am aware that some search engines ignore it if you use this multiple times, but this is incorrect.

Headings below the h1 should be placed appropriately below the tags just above. In other words, H2 tags should be place in the code/text below the h1. Never above. H3 must be placed below h2. Lower tags are sub headings of higher tags, therefore they offer support to the point outlined in the higher heading.

Content, regardless of text, audio or video, must be enclosed by Paragraph tags. This is another essential ingredient to proper semantics. This increases and improves indexing and readability by multiple technologies. In other words; a wireless gadget can now parse the information correctly.

I once frowned on sites that placed sitemap links on the site. I didn’t understand it. I thought the nav takes care of this. Forgive my ignorance, because I quickly realized that this helps search engine index your site better and gives you control over what they can index.

Just like the navigation, placement of the sidebar and footer is also a common issue. You want to help the search engines as much as possible. That means your main content must be read sooner than any other site wide content (except navigation).

Therefore the content you hope to rank for, like an article cannot be set with a priority below these. So the Sidebar and Footer must be placed below the main content. And styling can be used to adjust these to display nicely to the user.

Closing

With these HTML tuneup tips, you should be able to see an improvement in your websites search engine visibility. In some cases, Google will add your Navigation to the SERPs. It will also improve your accessibility across various types of devices and technology.

HTML Tuneup Tips to Improve Search Visibility is a post from: WebDevStar.com | © WebDevStar.com

The plain Audio Tag looks like this: <audio src=”" controls=”controls”></audio>

The value of src can be an OGG file. The content between the audio tags can be a message for those who use browsers that lack HTML5 Audio Tag support.

That’s it, nothing fancy. The tag can be styled with CSS3. I won’t do any styling examples here because I haven’t started testing CSS3. But I’ve been experimenting with the tag for months now.

How to create an OGG file

There are audio recording software that can output in the OGG format. I have extensive audio recording and editing experience but I have not tested any software that supports OGG. I will be doing this soon and report my findings in an update to this article.

I did the simplest thing when testing the audio tag. I used a free software called MP3 2 Ogg Lab and converted an MP3 file to OGG.

Implementing HTML5 Audio Tag

With an OGG file ready, I created a quick test HTML  file on my computer and added the tag.

Example: <audio src=”mytest.ogg” controls=”controls”>Browser lacks support for Audio Tag</audio>

When I loaded the file from my desktop, it played fine in FireFox, Chrome, and Opera. But not in Safari (this is on a PC).

When loaded from my web server it played in Chrome and Opera. It did not play in FireFox or Safari.

Of course IE does not support HTML5 Audio tag, and my tests confirmed this.

I’m not sure why FireFox plays the file from the desktop but not my server. It could be a Codec issue. Same with Safari. I will have to test other conversion tools, and OGGs created from different sources to pinpoint the cause of this issue.

Some Live Audio Tag Demos

There are a few demos currently available for the audio tag along with other tags. Here they are:

• http://www.apple.com/html5/
• http://static.etianen.com/html5media/
• http://moztw.org/demo/audioplayer/

Let me know if you find this useful. If you have tested the HTML5 Audio Tag and would like to share your experience please tell us about it in the comments.

HTML5 Audio Tag Tutorial is a post from: WebDevStar.com | © WebDevStar.com

With a bad economy, it became harder to generate the same amount of leads. My income basically took a hit.

This is the point where conversion optimization becomes important. I knew the leads were still coming from classified ads. But I needed a way to determine how competitive my ad’s title was compared to others. Because this is what people saw before they decided to click through to see the full ad.

With this information I could tweak my titles. And even tweak my ad copy to achieve a higher conversion rate.

Craigs List does not allow tracking of ads in most of its sections. In fact I’ve only tracked ads in the services section. So if you try the method I’m about to give you in other sections, be prepared to have it pulled. The method I use have not caused any red flags to go up (yet).

To do this, go to StatCounter.com and sign up for a free account.

Then create a new project. When you view the project details, there will be a Rench icon, click on that. Then click install code. Select invisible counter. At this point it’s important to check off “HTML Only Counter”. This is important because CL does not allow JavaScript in their ads.

Go ahead and complete the tracker creation process. You will get a piece of code that is an image enclosed by a link tag. You can extract just the img part of this snippet because that’s all you need.

It will look like this : <img src=”http://c.statcounter.com/4697119/0/f93695e2/1/” alt=”vBulletin counter” border=”0″>

Please do not use the code above…it probably won’t work for you.

Now go ahead and paste this on the bottom of your ad.

Please note; Because this will now report that your ad has an image, if you do not add your own image, then it will be seen as deceptive when some one views the ad and see no image. Add an image to make it legit.

Within minuets of posting, you should start seeing total views and unique hits on your ad. If it works fine, you will see 1 hit. This is you, because you should have previewed the ad before submitting.

Let me know if this was helpful. I’ve been using this for a few months now and it has working fine for me.

How to Track Views on Craigs List Ads is a post from: WebDevStar.com | © WebDevStar.com

There is on the other hand a method to the city life madness. Outsiders might find it overwhelming. But once you’ve established a footing, it seems we’re able to soar to new heights never before realized when living in a small town.

The pace is fast for sure. But the City also provides inspiration simply from observing it’s people. Some are the uber successful, while others are top of their field talents.

It makes me want to perform at the highest level of my abilities. Also acquiring new skills and tricks becomes a mission, because the competition is either on your back or just ahead.

Freelancing in the City

To be independent in a Big City is not really difficult. Tobe honest, there is so much demand here that unless you are completely incompetent, you’re  sure to find work. It doesn’t help sharpen your marketing skills too much though. A small town Freelancer will have to work twice as hard to attract the same amount of interest in his service (IMO).

So go ahead and start Freelancing if you live in a City. Put out simple ads. Even if you have 1 thing on your portfolio, there’s a strong chance someone will be interested.

But that’s where the easy part ends. In the Big City the quality threshold is much higher. It becomes now your primary focus to provide a service that rivals the competition. Because once you deliver, the critique starts. Your work will be compared to the countless others. Because your clients will seek the advice of their family, friends, coworkers or staff. That’s a wide network for them to tap into to gain the insight they need to determine your true level of competency.

Future of Freelancing

At the beginning of the decade I remember there being a lot of talk about a work force shift. And to a large effect, that did happen. More people work at home now than back in those days. Obviously this is because computers are now owned by most Americans. (And people across the world).

As long as we have these tools and keep on acquiring the newest, we will strive to be independent or out of the corporate environment. In many cases, Freelancing is a stepping stone to true Entrepreneurship where your business is incorporated and hiring.

My Freelance Experience in the Big City is a post from: WebDevStar.com | © WebDevStar.com

There’s more details about this issue. I will just list some resources because it has been covered thoroughly by others. I don’t want to just repeat what they said…so here goes:

• SEOmoz – Flash and Search Engines don’t mix
• ConversationMarketing – Google Indexing Flash – Don’t Party Yet
• Seo.com – Merging Flash with SEO

Simple techniques for improving Flash SEO

What I want to cover is the simplest way to do SEO for Flash; Provide alternate HTML content for the search engines and other non flash users, and flip to Flash if the user can view it.

To do this you will need to add some JavaScript to the head of your HTML page that checks for Flash. If it’s a search bot, it will not be able to view flash, so it will see the regular text content.

To do this simply enclose the main area, where either the Flash or text content will appear, in a Div. Give the div an id so we can identify it with the JS.

Program the page like any other HTML page. Making sure the semantic structure is correct. The content must match what appears in the Flash. Otherwise this may be seen as masking.

Add the JS to the head of the document and do a check for Flash. If the user has it, push the Flash object to the Div. If not, don’t push anything. The text content should be presented.

Here is a detailed explanation and example of this method.

The future of Flash

Many people are praying for Flash’s downfall. Companies like Apple are determined to stifle the technology. And as much as I dislike working with Flash (partly because it offers no SEO benefit), I feel this is extremely unfair.

Standards or not, Adobe deserves to be supported and not discriminated against. That’s why Google is making an effort at developing methods to properly crawl Flash content.

The future of Flash is bright. The interactive multimedia benefit it offers cannot be mirrored by anything currently available. I’m skeptical HTML5  can be that beautiful or graceful. So for the people who love the brilliance of Flash…soon enough there will be ways to properly index it’s content. Until then, try an alternative method like I outline above.

If it turns out I’m wrong, and Flash dies, I will be testing the replacement.

Solutions to Improve Flash SEO is a post from: WebDevStar.com | © WebDevStar.com

Nevertheless, traffic and conversion may be suffering because of persistent problems with your website. I will highlight 5 critical issues you may be blind to, and how to quickly correct them.

1. HTML SEO.

Where is the H1 tag? How often is it used and is it enclosing the correct text? Are the lower level tags placed correctly?

Your logo should not be a heading when there is juicy text content that can be used to improve on page SEO.

You see, this tag is one of the most important to search engines. If you can put 5 to 20 words in that tag, you stand to gain a little more search relevance. Which leads to an increase in traffic.

And also, lower headings tags should layout semantically correct. Meaning, H2 tags are sub headings of H1. They are meant to support the higher tag. The same for H3 to H6. Note that H1 tags should be used once.

There is so much more to HTML SEO, but I have other areas to cover, so I will expand on this  in a future post.

2. Site Load Speed

Recently added to the Google algorithm, site load speed is not just a ranking factor but a usability factor. Visitors who bump up against a white screen or partially loaded screen will leave.

You have 8 seconds on average to show them a page. And that applies to 56k modems and up.

So to improve the speed problem with your website. Try these fixes.

The HTML and JavaScript code must contain no comments. Keep documented files backed up. But pages served to users don’t need comments taking up precious bytes.

This comment removal also applies to chunks of code disabled for whatever reason. If they are not in use, remove them.

Another speed factor to consider is image sizes. I’m talking about two measurements; the weight of the image and the actual dimensions. Try to use a small amount of pictures. Try to make their actual dimensions small. And finally, get a graphic expert to render it to GIF or an optimized weight.

One final thing to ask your self; Where are you placing your JavaScript files? You want to place JS files below all other content. This improves something called network latency. Simply put, text and other content will always load faster than JS. So if you have a chance to push this to the user faster, then they will not see a slow loading site. They will see the content. Special effects that JS adds to the site can be loaded a few seconds later.

Again there is so much more to discuss here, but I will break this down separately.

3. Email Capture

Thousands visit your site, but most of them leave. You don’t know who they are, or if they will come back. Worst of all you can’t sell to them, or entice them to come back. This is a serious problem with websites.

The solution: Capture their emails. Some creativity will be needed to convince them to give up their emails. But if you do, you can market to them for as long as they stay on your mailing list.

4. Deep Linking

If you are a blogger or there is a lot of content on your site, great. But don’t rely on your menus to drive traffic to older, deeper pages. You should practice deep linking. This means link constantly to your other content in your articles.

This allows you to use whatever anchor text you want and drive traffic to areas that might have been otherwise overlooked by a user.

There may be pages that get a lot of organic hits, or hits from other sources. Take advantage of this. Also, if the site’s content is syndicated, this will generate traffic from many different sources directly to your deeper articles.

5. Call to Action

Finally, my favorite. A call to action. Tell your users to do something. Let them know you need them to take action. Their is no shame in this. This is not blatant self promotion. This is taking control of the sale and directing the user to an outcome that hopefully benefits both of you.

A call to action is one of the biggest conversion problem with a website that affect sales. And your content is their to advertise whatever you are offering. Some examples would be: “call now for more details”, “sign up now for free”, “don’t miss this deal, enter your email now”.

I’m sure you can be a little more creative.

Like I stated above, there is so much more to these areas. I will try to break them down further in future posts. If you think I missed any website issues on this list please make a suggestion in the comments.

5 Critical Problems To Take On With Your Website is a post from: WebDevStar.com | © WebDevStar.com

Before I realized it was there, a few clients have asked me to integrate these lists so they can better manage items for their website.

This is a relatively new dynamic web application feature that some sites may be using. I will show you how to implement one of these using simple techniques and tools.

First you will need a Javascript Library called Scriptaculous. Download it and add to a directory where your main PHP files for this app will be.

You will need access to a database. I use MySQL, but if you are experienced with others, you may be able to adjust the codes accordingly.

The first PHP file you will create is a class file. In it you will add a database connection function and a main query function. You will also need to create 6 other core functions to run the application.

Here is an example class file you can use. This can be changed accordingly to match your db settings. You will also need to create a database table with 4 fields. These are id, title, link and sort order.

Here’s a pic for reference.

Now that you have the basic core files setup, it’s time to do some interface scripting.

The next set of files you will create will be what the admin will see. These will be 5 files, one to display the main list, one to add new items, another to delete items, one to edit an item and finally a file to sort the items. Now I can’t just say go create…I have to give you some kind of reference.

Grab the files here.

Implement and start testing. You should be able to sort, reload and see your changes in effect. Because whatever you see in the admin, that’s the order it will be displayed on the front.

You will also have an ability to add, edit or delete a record. You can sort up or down. But beware, I’ve had problems when I displayed the list inline. The sort function still works but in an awkward way and not as smoothly.

Once you are satisfied that the application does what it needs to on the backend. You can now go ahead and display the list on the front. Style however you want. Changes are seen when you load the page and not live while looking at the page. So it won’t freak your visitors out, because they don’t see anything moving around while browsing. Here is an example file.

Let me know if you enjoyed this tutorial. And if and how you use this sweet little app.

Note: by the way you have to change the extension of the example files to php.

How to Create a Draggable Sort List is a post from: WebDevStar.com | © WebDevStar.com

The first thing you need to consider is demand. What kind of demand is there for what your website will be offering. This is called the market. Rarely does a new company create a market for their product or services. Most enter an already established market where others have proven success. You will want to spend some time researching and tweaking your offerings to match.

The next thing to take into account is promotion. How will you promote the site. Do you have an advertising budget? If you don’t, do you have the time or man power to do free promotions? Think seriously about this, because it will make a any top notch site fail miserably or achieve great success. You have to promote it. You will often not get free love from search engines. If you do, then the market you chose above is seriously under served.

Another thing to consider is site features. Please do not think that all the fancy buttons and slick sliders is what has to be on a site. Think practically about what your visitors will need to do to convert for you. Adding filler features may do more harm than good. Often it’s the users that will request certain features added to a site. Only then will you truly know what they want. Weigh that against what you want and come to some kind of balance that benefits both parties.

Now this is not nearly the complete list of things to consider before website development starts. But they are the core of the pre plan faze and spending some time on this will only help you towards your ultimate goal of having a successful online business.

How to Pre Plan a Website Before Development is a post from: WebDevStar.com | © WebDevStar.com

Now I’m not going to call anyone out, because that’s not my job. But it got me thinking about syndication and how this contributes to article piracy on the internet.

A content reuse study recently released by the Fair Syndication Consortium, highlights the amount of abuse leveled at newspapers. In it they claim over one hundred thousand copies were found to duplicate about 80% of the content from original articles.

This made me pause, because as they state, these sites often had an advertising based model. And there is no revenue sharing with the copyright owners. Something FSC strongly advocates for in their Content Syndication and Management Guidelines.

It’s also fair to mention, that regardless of the lack of revenue sharing, there is some benefit to the reuse of content. For one, most pirates don’t remove links and if you practice deep linking in your articles, this will boost readership to other pages on your site.

Another benefit as a results of deep linking (if the pirate site is reputable), is this provides a backlink with your chosen anchor text originally weaved into the article. This represents significant multiplication of links to a site without further effort on the original authors part.

If the links in the article are affiliate links, this will automatically monetize traffic from any source. A very sneaky reverse piracy technique, but, it can harm your relationship with the advertisers linked to in those articles if the quality of traffic sucks.

I would suggest that until a program like what the FSC is offering becomes popular, our best defense or counter offense, is to include links to other posts, maybe links to our sponsors and an author resource box directly below the main content of the article.

That way, there is always some link benefit to article piracy. Lets hope the pirates don’t get wild about removing links and we should be fine.

Do you have an article being outright stolen? Tell us what your best defense was to protect your rights.

When Syndication Becomes Article Piracy is a post from: WebDevStar.com | © WebDevStar.com

But first a quick overview. Lists are everywhere. And for two good reasons. One, humans love them. Secondly, they are part of the semantic web. I’m speaking technically of HTML tags ol, ul and li.

Now usually I would shy away from doing a post about such a specific technical issue that only a few would be interested in. But because I’ve struggled with them, I will dedicate this post to providing some solutions.

By the way, if you are doing lists on your web page and not using these tags, you could be hurting your SE rankings. So their very important.

OK here we go.

A simple unordered list:

A simple ordered list:

The difference between these two is, the first is bulleted and the second is numbered. You can change the type of bullets for <ul>, or even remove it. You can also remove the numbers for <ol>.

Let’s get to the core issue, displaying the list inline…that means on the same line from left to write. It of course wraps at the end of the line if more list items are present. I will show you how to get this baby working like a charm.

First create your list using ul or ol. Give the ul tag a class or id and give the same class to li tags (this is common, but not required. You can add unique classes or id’s to the li tags, but this  makes it harder to style). Do not give the li tags the same class or id as the ul tags. These must be different.

Add the li items and then head over to the css file to make some minor adjustments.

In the CSS file add the id and class styling like this:

That should make the list display inline. If this doesn’t happen then their might be a conflict. To resolve, try moving the codes above to the bottom of the file bellow all other style info. If that still doesn’t work, it could be another style sheet loaded after the one your editing that might be negating your changes.

In that case you might need to find a quick fix and add the styling directly to the elements. Here is an example:

Obviously this is not the best way to do it, but if this is causing a problem and you are pressed for time, then it should work. Please be aware that styling in the HTML page itself may not work in HTML strict.

You can do styling for ul and ol tags the same way.

You will still have bullets and numbers showing. To remove these, simply add “list-style-type:none” to the ul/ol styling: Here is an example:

You might also need to adjust margins for the items. To do this, add margin-left, margin-right, or simply margin to the li styling:

Example:

These instructions apply to ul, ol and li tags. If all goes well it should work just fine.

If you are still struggling with this issue, then contact me and I will try to offer some assistance.

Using CSS to Display a List Inline is a post from: WebDevStar.com | © WebDevStar.com

Best of all there is no sign up required to use any of these tools. Their features do vary. Some provide details of the scan, others allow over 500 urls to be included.

Sitemap Tools

1. www.sitemapdoc.com/
2. www.xml-sitemaps.com
3. www.resourceseo.com/sitemaps.php
4. www.sitemapspal.com/
5. www.scriptsocket.com/sitemaps.php

It’s important that your Sitemap is linked from your homepage. You will also need to create a Webmaster account with Google and any other search engine that provides this service. Then submit it from within the control panel.

This will allow better indexing and the inclusion of more urls in the search index. Which of course leads to more organic hits.

If you need help setting up a Sitemap or Webmaster tools account, contact me and I will provide some assistance.

5 Tested XML Sitemap Creation Tools is a post from: WebDevStar.com | © WebDevStar.com

Also, I will be recalibrating the focus of the blog. Of course it will always be a lead generation tool for my web dev services. I cannot afford to separate from that at the moment.

Freelancing is my bread and butter. It has helped me make tens of thousands of dollars since December of 07. What I want to do now is hopefully help others to establish their own startup web business. My exact focus I have not decided on.  I may focus on helping people become independent workers (freelancers) or entrepreneurs (non-coders) launch a website successfully.

I have years of experience in starting businesses and working for my self. Hopefully the information I share here can help someone traverse the difficult issues involved in running an online business in today’s digital world.

If you would like to know how I got started in internet business, how I get my clients, and most of all, how I manage the entire process, then stay tuned to this blog because I will share all the good and nitty gritty details of running an online business.

Now I know there is alot of information available about freelancing and startup web businesses. But never the less, the techniques and specifics I employ to establish my current situation I’ve hardly found properly communicated online.

I will try to provide mostly practical guidance. I am by nature a person who likes to learn by actually doing, rather than theory.

Want to get all the good stuff by email or rss? Please subscribe on the top right.

I am doing a redesign of WDS is a post from: WebDevStar.com | © WebDevStar.com

These applications add very useful features that enhance your blog. They can help provide a far better experience for your websites community.

Implementing any of these will offer great benefits to your sites visibility, functionality and credibility.

All in One SEO Pack. Incredibly useful for SEO. It allows you to had a custom title, description and keywords to your posts and pages. I use this and it helps me fine tune my content for the search engines. It also gives character count for the title and description.

Contact Form 7. There might be many form creation plugins, but I personally find many too complex for simple forms. When you want to add a simple contact or feedback form, this plugin is very helpful. I use this and like it very much. It also offers captcha.

WP Super Cache. This plugin is useful for busy sites or sites with limited bandwidth. It allows the saving of previously delivered pages as HTML. This will improve the load speed of your site and prevent downtime with traffic spikes.

WordPress Related Posts. This plugin help boost readership to other posts that readers might have missed. Helps increase page views and lower bounce rates.

Subscribe to Comments. This plugin will help improve the dialog between your commentators. Commentators will want to follow the hot topics and heated debates.

Top Commentators Widget. This plugin is great for boosting comments. It provides a do follow link on the home page (or wherever you choose to place it). This is a big incentive for visitors to leave comments if they know you give do follow opportunities to commentators.

Akismet. This was created by WordPress’s original developer. Very useful in the fight against spam. Many use this when their blogs start getting a lot of traffic because it’s almost impossible to screen every comment manually.

This is certainly not an exhaustive list. And these are some of the best but there are plenty of plugins available. Some may be more complex or offer more features than these. But these are very popular and I think they deserve to be on a best of class list like this one.

I will be adding to this list over time…until it reaches a good 25 or so plugins you can use on your blog.

Why are You Not Using the Best WordPress Plugins? is a post from: WebDevStar.com | © WebDevStar.com

So I tried this with eBay and the results were very good. I made a few thousand dollars before losing my eBay account. I must admit, I didn’t manage the account very well. There is more details to this, but I will spare you my failure because it is 100% my fault. This system used correctly can potentially make you a lot of money, and without spending any thing more than $25 to start.

The parts of the income machine

To start drop shipping, you need a few tools and services. One being a supplier/manufacturer. I used MegaGoods.com primarily for this. There are others, probably better. You can also contact wholesalers directly and ask them to drop ship. Some may agree.

The next thing you need is a PayPal Debit Card. The reason this is needed is because most payments will be instantly available on the card. There might be other merchant accounts that will allow a debit card for the account. This piece of the puzzle is critical for optimum cash flow.

You also will need a store. You can leverage eBays marketplace, but be warned, their fees can eat up your profits. Your own website launched on platforms such as WordPress can help you retain more money.

The final part to this income machine is you. You have to fill each order that comes in manually. Some Dropshippers might have a bulk upload system. Eventually you can hire someone to handle this aspect of the business.

So that’s it. The closed loop refers to the fact that most orders are paid for and the cash is available for you to purchase the item from the Dropshipper. What’s left over in the account after the transaction should be all yours.

Tips and best practices for better results

It’s very important that you calculate shipping prices correctly based on the buyers location. You don’t want to get an order, only to realize the shipping puts you in the negative. Your store should allow a shipping calculator based on weight and location. It should also be a shipping company/method that the Dropshipper uses. There might also be drop shippers who will offer a flat delivery fee. This can help you avoid any unexpected costs.

Another calculator is needed to help you with pricing. This can be done in excel. Some factors in this equation is price of product, merchant processing fee, delivery handling fee and your additional overhead. Each product you sell must be priced correctly so you can come away with a profit.

Closing

I absolutely don’t guarantee success with this system. This is not a get rich quick scheme, or a lazy man’s ticket to prosperity. This will be hard work to setup. The ease of burden is with cash flow and the absence of inventory. Basically you get what you put in.

The Closed Loop Dropship Income Machine is a post from: WebDevStar.com | © WebDevStar.com