Resolution

After our blog "Above the Fold," we received some very intelligent questions.

"Wouldn't 'the fold' be different depending on what type of computer you're using? Can't it be different for different people?"

The answer? Yes, absolutely it can. But it's not based on your type of computer. It's based on your resolution settings. Resolution is a little bit tricky to explain without starting to speak "tech talk," but we'll give it a shot nonetheless.

Every picture, program, website, etc., that you have on your computer, has a size. Now, while in real life we measure size in inches (or centimeters, for you crazy metric addicts out there), on the internet, and with computers in general, we measure things in "pixels."

So, let's say we have an image. Let's say, in fact, that we have this image:



This specific image is 600 pixels wide and 315 pixels tall. Now, don't go trying to measure this in inches, because pixels and inches aren't really mutually compatible.

The reason for this is your resolution settings. When you choose your screen resolution, you're choosing how many pixels to show on your screen. This setting might be anywhere from 640 x 480 up to 1680 x 1050, or even more. If you change your resolution, images will seem to be different sizes. In reality, they're the exact same size as they were (in pixels), but since you're showing more pixels at once, they're comparitively smaller.

The higher your resolution (meaning the bigger the numbers -- like the 1680 x 1050 number), the higher the quality and smaller t he size of items on your screen (whether that's websites, images, or whatever else).

So, hopefully that give you a general idea of what resolution is, and what resolution means. But what does resolution mean for your website? How will it impact your online business?

Well, with different people viewing your site at different sizes, it's going to look different to people who are using different resolutions. People with higher resolution are going to see more of your site. Your "fold" will change depending on your customer's resolution.

So when you're trying to decide where to put things on your website, what resolution should you be using? What should you be basing these decisions on.

Here's a basic chart that gives an idea of the most common resolutions:

Date	Higher	1024x768	800x600	640x480	Unknown
January 2008	38%	48%	8%	0%	6%

In brief, 1024 wide by 768 high is what you should be judging on. Many of the "higher resolution" settings are actually 1280 wide by 768 high. Since the "fold" is determined by the height of the website, you should make sure your resolution is set to 768 high when you make decisions about placement. This is what we can call the most common "fold" for your website.

I know, I know! It's incredibly technical sounding, and a little difficult to explain. But here are a couple general hints about how the different resolution settings should affect your work.

• Never make your banner (the top section of your website, which contains your logo, etc.) more than 800 pixels wide. If you do, 8%-14% of your visitors will have to scroll left and right to be able to see your entire website, which we want to avoid.
• When making decisions on placement, make sure you're using either a 1024 x 768 or a 1280 x 768 resolution.
• Don't freak out about exactly how your text looks on your site. Some people spend a lot of time changing their wording, just so certain words stay on the same line together. This isn't going to be very effective, though, since the different resolutions are going to make the text look different anyway.

And the end point, of course, is that understanding this will help you make smart decisions about where to place content. Smarter placement means more sales. More sales means having a successful online business.

To learn more about how a quality coaching company can help you in gaining the knowledge you need to run an online business, simply visit www.thriveli.com.

How frequently should I update my site?

Whether you have a blog or a website, you will want to update it semi-frequently. The main reasons for this are that Google and other search engines will declare a website "dead" once it has been unchanged for too long.

There are different schools of thought on exactly how often you should update your site, but research has shown that updating your site once per week in some way helps to increase your search engine ranking.

However, they have also found that updating your website once every three weeks is almost as effective in helping your search engine optimization.

So, what is the best thing to do? Well, opinions differ, but generally speaking, as long as you're making some minor updates about once every three weeks, you should be fine. This can mean adding or removing an image, changing text slightly, or anything similar. Don't change your site too drastically! Remember, you want to be able to keep track of your successes and failures, and know how you're progressing. We'll discuss that more in a future entry.

To learn more about how a quality coaching company can help your business succeed, simply visit www.thriveli.com.

Domain Brokering: Internet Real Estate

The value of physical real estate has seen a downward slide in the United States, but there is one type of "real estate" that has a value which is growing at an astounding rate. Better yet, this type of real estate can be invested in for only a few dollars. What type of real estate? Why, Internet Real Estate, of course.

When looking for ways to make money online, one of the most often overlooked industries is that of domain brokering. Here is the most simple possible breakdown of what domain brokering is:

• Step One: Buy domain names. This will cost you from $6 to $20 per domain name. By domain name, I mean website addresses -- like http://www.google.com, for instance. You can even buy these domain names in bulk for a 10% to 30% discount.
  
  
• Step Two: Make it clear that the domain name is for sale. There are certain domain name sales companies (like GoDaddy.com) who will help you sell your domain for a "cut of the action." This can be highly beneficial, since companies like GoDaddy will be able to place the domain name in their "premium domain name" section, and they often have pre-made websites you can put up to indicate that the site is for sale.
  
  If you're not using a service like this, you'll want to put up a web page at the domain you bought stating "This domain name is for sale. Call us at 555-555-5555 for more details!" Obviously, you'll want to use your phone number.
  
  
• Step Three: Wait. Let internet entrepreneurs find your domain name. This can take quite some time -- anywhere from a few weeks to a few years.
  
  
• Step Four: Sell the site. Your site, purchased for $8, is worth whatever these internet entrepeneurs are willing to pay. Oftentimes, these domain names sell at costs ranging from just under a hundred dollars to several thousand dollars.
  

This is about as simple as it gets online, but obviously, it's not the fastest money! While the profit margins are huge, you will have to sit and wait for long periods of time. You may invest hundreds, and not see any return for several years! It's also possible that the domain name simply won't sell, simply because there's little or no demand for it.

So what do you need to succeed as a domain broker?

1. Investment. You need to put money into domains up front. To be successful, and start on the path to making a living as a domain broker, you will need to invest at least a few hundred dollars into domains.
2. Creativity. You need to be able to think of popular industries and brainstorm domain names that are going to be sellable.
3. Research. You need to be sure that the industry you're thinking of is popular enough that it would be worth the investment of your potential clients.
   
4. Patience. You will need to wait, often for long periods of times, with no return. It takes quite some time for people to come to your site, and when they do, they may simply turn away, uninterested in paying you an inflated amount of money for the domain. It will take time to find an investor with the confidence and the assets to pay what you're asking, and it can be frustrating to wait for this to happen.

If you have all of these qualities, than this often overlooked work from home industry may be perfect for you.

For more information on how an experienced coaching company can help you make a living from your home office, simply visit www.thriveli.com.

Sitemaps: What, why, when, and how?

For a website to be seen, it must be visible. That's about as simplistically as we can put it. In order to make sure people get to your website, it has have a good search engine ranking. If no one has any way of knowing that your website exists, how can you expect your site to succeed?

Now there are a lot of tips, tricks, and tools that you can use to make sure your website and web pages are visible. One of these tools is the Sitemap. So, what is a Sitemap, why does it help, and when is it useful?

What is a Sitemap?
Let me speak a foreign language here for a few seconds: A Sitemap is an HTML or XML file submitted to the search engines that includes the URL links for every single page and sub-page or your website and store. This allows web crawlers to find these sub-pages more easily.

In English: A Sitemap is essentially a list of all of the pages of your website. This will include your main pages (like your home page, about us page, contact us page, or anything else you have) as well as your store pages (and the individual products inside of your store). It has to be created in a certain "web code" format -- either XML or HTML.

This means, that in addition to everything else a Sitemap is, it is also pretty difficult to make.

Why use a Sitemap?
So, if a Sitemap is a complicated piece of website code (which you probably don't know how to make off of the top of your head), then why bother using one? What are the benefits of having a Sitemap?

Well, there are several reasons, but it all boils down to one thing: It helps Google find and read pages that it wouldn't normally find or read.

So, what are those pages? To a list a few types of pages that are hard to read:

• A page made in Flash or Javascript. Pages made in Flash or Javascript usually have some sort of "moving pictures" in them. As a result, though, the pages become "hard for Google to understand."
• A database. If you have a large database -- let's say a list of all of the professional football players that have played in the last thirty years, their statistics, and their teams -- it will make your website, and specifically your sub-pages, very difficult for Google to find and understand.
• A very large website. If you are running a multi-national corporation, your web-page may have 3000 pages. Google's crawler will "give up" before it reads all of them.
• If your site doesn't have very good "internal links" (in other words, if you have a page that you want people to find, but you don't have a link to it in your website), Google may never find that page.
• Your website is brand new and doesn't have links from any other websites. Google may not even realize your site exists, at least not for a while.
  

So, if your website falls into one of those categories, a Sitemap can be useful.

When should I use a Sitemap?

Since most of you who are reading this probably don't have a 3000 page website, a complex database, or a flash website, we'll focus on the last two "problems" that a Sitemap helps resolve.

First, if you don't have very good internal links, should you use a Sitemap? If this is a case, a Sitemap can help resolve this problem and help Google like you more. However, the far simpler solution is simply to put in good internal links.

Second, if you don't have links from other websites and are brand new, should you use a Sitemap? If this is the case, of course a Sitemap will let Google know you exist. Again, though, the simpler solution is to submit your website to the search engines, to directories, and/or to social bookmarking sites. Since this takes a lot less effort, it's usually the better solution.

With that being said, let me clarify: a Sitemap will never hurt your search engine ranking. Its benefits are relatively insignificant in the instances mentioned above, and may well not be worth your time. However, if you have the time for it, it certainly won't hurt either.

How do I make my sitemap?

So, you've decided your site deserves a Sitemap. Now we're to the complicated part. Making your Sitemap.

I won't go over the full directions in this blog, but generally speaking, you have two options.

Option #1: Use a Generator.
There are a lot of free XML generators on the web (http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/ for instance). However, many of these will not actually find all of your website pages. Most of them are restricted in many of the same ways Google's crawler is restricted. Also, don't give your e-mail address to any generator site. I promise, they will sell it.
This option is fast, easy, and much less effective.

Option #2: Build a Full Version
Click HERE for Google's tool. They provide step-by-step directions on how to download their software, create your Sitemap, and submit it to them. This is quite complicated and very time consuming, and to those of you who have never used website code, it will also be pretty confusing.
This option is difficult, confusing, and far more thorough.


In Conclusion:
Is a Sitemap a good thing? Absolutely.
Is it easy to make a Sitemap? Absolutely not.
Is it worth it to make a Sitemap? Not Always.

For our clients, the only case where we recommend a Sitemap, is when your site is an e-commerce site that has a few hundred products or more. In this case the benefit is usually worth the investment, but in many other cases it simply isn't.


For more information on ways a quality coaching company can help your online business achieve its goals, simply visit www.thriveli.com.