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Currently we are available for the following independent contract positions in support, service, and website design:
WAH, Customer Service, QA Informational Website Design - View Example Layouts or Contact me for more information
A note on domain names - domain pricing for North America is controlled by a single company called Network Solutions. There is absolutely no other company that you buy domains from, all companies that 'sell' domains go through them. If you want your own domain name then all roads lead to Network Solutions. Domain pricing is fairly standardized, but remember, the internet is a big place and people had a tendency not to research too much so there are companies out there that charge double the price. A typical .com or .net domain will run about $15 dollars a year. You have to repurchase it each year or you can purchase them for multiple years. Think of it as renting ... you never permanently own a domain name. Hosting - what is hosting? In an nut shell after you buy a domain name you must put it on the internet. You can use a geek's basement computer or you pay a large company to do it. The hosting company that I recommend to my clients charges about $30 dollars a month, depending on the plan type, to host your domain. Email only hosting is usually a little cheaper. When selecting a hosting plan or a company to host your site you need to think about what type of system they are using, Windows or Linux hosting -- these two systems offer different advantages and disadvantages. Windows Server uses .asp scripting, and Linux uses .php scripting. If you are a non-programmer this means nothing to you, but you should ask your web-designer or have them select which type to use because they may utilize certain aspects of programming or designing that depends on one of those scripting types. If you purchase the wrong hosting plan then you will get to experience the pain of trying to get it changed over to the correct one. Some things You should Know about Websites The search engine industry is big-business and many of the smaller search engines are owned by very large companies such as Overture, Iktomi, Google, MSN, and Yahoo. Search engine companies make their money primarily by advertising and selling search engine campaigns - pay per click services in which you pay to have your site listed with special keywords. In pay-per-click campaigns your ranking and position on the search results page depends on how much you bid for a certain keyword. You may opt to pay 5 cents for the word 'corvette', and another company may opt to pay 6 cents for the same word, which pushes your ranking down a notch. You are charged your bid amount every time someone clicks on the link leading to your page. Studies show that most people do not look past the first page of search results, and generally not past the first few lines -- so the idea is to out bid all the other companies that are using the same keyword and phrasing as you do on your website. What is Organic ranking - These are the results that appear that are not associated with companies or people that have pay per click campaigns. In this modern age ranking or position is often determined by how many other sites link to your site, because the search engine will think that your site is popular by the the number of people that link to you. Ranking is also dependant upon the density of your keywords and phases. Search engines love text content, not flashy graphics. The more times you can repeat your keyword and phrases in meaningful ways the greater your chances are that you will appear in the search engines results. Search engines do not like exact duplicate pages or keyword phrases on multiple pages, companies such as Google will actually block out those pages, suspecting that it is copied from another site. So your page descriptions, titles, keyword order, and key phrases should not be the same on each page of your site. There is no way to promise or guarantee organic rankings and positions. Even if your site is designed well, sometimes it can take months for you to receive a live visitor. Putting your site on the internet does not mean people instantly become aware of it or want to visit it. Search engine robots may index your site and various news feeds may find your site and place them in their feed lists, but this doesn't mean that the your site ranking or appearance in search results will be in the first pages or even the tenth page. Remember there are literally thousands of sites out there competing for attention, many of them paying for positioning at the top of the list. And once you place your website on the internet you are in a global market, not just your local town or city -- so the competition is much more broader and more numerous. Small companies cannot just sit back and smile and wait for the profit to roll in from their website. Only major companies such as Walmart, Home Depot, and businesses that participate in large global scale marketing can do that. Guys like me and you have to work our butts off. Simple informational pages are nice for small town businesses that are not interested in expanding. This gives your local customer base some information they can see on the web, such as location, contact number, product and services available -- like an ad in the yellow pages. Design Tips There is a psychological aspect in designing websites. Remember, it's really just marketing using the internet as a media. Here are some things that are note worthy - The typical American's eye tracks from upper-left to bottom-right, like this \. So important ads should be placed in the upper left corner of the screen. Most people do not look below the page line or bottom of the screen on a website (page fold). This means that all the important information to convince them to buy an item should be in the upper half of the page. People are typically visual buyers. They pay for what they see. This means that your snapshots and product pictures must be excellent quality. As a standard rule items appear 'darker' on the web than they do in real life. For you to see an image on your computer from a website it 1. is dependant on the the quality of the camera 2. dependant on the quality of the photo editing software 3. dependant upon the editor's graphic card and monitor and 4. dependant upon your graphic card and monitor. It has to go through a lot of stages to get to your eye.
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