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Newbie
Webmaster Starter Kit
Sites
and Templates - Down to the Nitty Gritty
Ok
now we come to the nitty gritty of site design and page layout. This is
where you start to take real steps towards making money and this is where
many of you should leave all your preconceived ideas behind. Do not be
discouraged because you have no design skills, don't be put off if you
have never done any marketing before. Some of the people who have the
hardest time making it in this industry are those who have come from a
marketing or design background.
So
let's have a look at some of the things that you should consider when
you are building your site.
1.
Remember is that it is not our role to entertain the surfer. Our role
is to successfully market our sponsor in such a way that will attract
the surfer and make him want to sign up with your sponsor.
2.
To achieve the goal of marketing your sponsor you should not give away
one pixel more than you have to. If your major sources of traffic demand
that your site have 20 pics don't even think of giving the surfer 21 pics.
Why give him anything you don't have to give him? You are under no obligation
to the surfer to give him anything but some very good reasons why he sign
up with your sponsor so don't waste your money and your bandwidth.
3.
Think of the surfers who will be viewing your site. What screen size do
they use? Are they experienced surfers? Will they recognise your sponsor
links as links or will they miss them? Don't be fooled into thinking that
every surfer out there is exactly like you.
4.
The vast majority of surfers who hit your site are on dial-up connections
with a speed of less than 56k. Will your site load quickly or is it slower
than a wet week?
5.
Ugly sites sell better than pretty sites. Flash, animation, loads of fancy
graphics etc. won't improve sales at all. Instead they will slow the loading
time and surfers don't like to be kept waiting. If your site doesn't load
quickly then the surfer won't hang around to see your advertising.
6.
The top selling spots on any adult site are the top of the page and the
bottom of the page.
7.
No matter where the surfer looks on your page he should be able to see
some advertising.
8.
Banners have lost their appeal. Surfers are exposed to so many banners
these days that they just don't see them. On top of that banners increase
the loading time for your page.
9.
Text links load quickly and can be in the surfer's face before they have
had a chance to move on. Human beings are conditioned to react in certain
ways to certain words. Think of the words that attract your attention
and use them in your text links.
10.
The first thing that a surfer should see is your advertising. Content
and thumbnails should not be more obvious than your sponsor links.
11.
Optimise each site for search engines and submit each site or gallery
to the major search engines. In six months time when traffic from most
other sources has faded you will still get a small amount of traffic from
the search engines and those surfers are highly targeted and more likely
to get out their credit card and use it on your sponsor.
Now
let's look at the details of each type of site. You will find a link on
each page to a zip file that contains the template for that type of site.
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