Website Design

Affiliate marketing got its start on the Internet back in the 1990s. As with any new technology companies were quick to realize an opportunity to market their products and services using the World Wide Web. Aggressive companies looking to expand their sales platform were quick to realize that the Internet had the potential to reach people around the globe like never before. Today affiliate marketing allows for products and services to be present to consumers via millions of sites and blogs that are visited daily.

Once the search engine’s arrive during the mid-1990s the Internet grew exponentially and became a massive e-commerce. Website created valuable content provided tremendous benefits to Internet server and the same website owners wanted compensation for their hard work. The earliest forms of online advertising like the placement affiliate marketing or CPM evolved, and more accountable forms of affiliate marketing came to be. Affiliate marketing is at the very core of a relationship between three partie: the consumer, the affiliate, and the company’s product is being sold.

How Does Affiliate Marketing Work?

Technology can be pretty daunting, and that includes the Internet. There’s a lot to grasp and understand online, the people who came up with e-commerce and the advertising format that came to be affiliate marketing really led the way in what we can do today online. The same people had to rely on technology that we know as ‘the cookie.’

Cookie technology works with your web browser to store information about the visitor, his or her preferences, their registration information, their login information, and their shopping cart contents. If you have ever opted to have a site remember your username and password that’s a cookie. Have you ever noticed when you’re searching the Internet for deals, and you suddenly start to see banners and ads related to what your search was appear on other websites? A cookie makes that possible.

With affiliate marketing the cookie has another task that is to remember the link the visitor clicked to arrive at the site. The cookie can even store the date and time that it took place and it can be used to remember the type of website or the content on that site. There are different types of cookies and each has their own use, but when it comes to affiliate marketing first party cookies are what is used. When a visitor visits the website of the publisher and clicks the ad of an advertiser, the visitor’s browser receives a tracking cookie that identifies the advertiser the publisher the ad and the amount of commission. This data is then stored within the link, in what is called parameters. In order for you to be paid your commission for a sale as an affiliate a tracking cookie must be in place. If you forget to include your special linking information in your links, this cookie cannot be created, and you will not be paid for the sale.

Many people today are now considering starting their own business. You have to consider that you don’t have to slave for a company you don’t even own just to earn some money. There are lots of people today who work in companies to earn enough capital to start their own business. With your own business, you will be the boss and have much more freedom instead of working at specific hours. By having your own business, you can go in and out of your office as often as you like without anyone telling you that you are arrived at work late and you are leaving early.

The first thing that most people think about when starting your own business is to think of a business name and the trademark symbol usually associated with it. The business name should be unique and should meet all the necessary requirements that the registration office will allow. However, the trademark is another story. You have to register your business trademark with the United States Patent and Trademark Office.

Like the business name, the trademark should be unique and should meet the criteria for qualifications to get it approved. However, you have to consider that the business name itself can also be your trademark symbol, just make sure that the lettering and also the business name is unique.

You have to realize the fact that registering your business name as well as the trademark symbol is very important. This is the logo that separates one company manufacturer from the other. It prevents confusion among consumers on which products to buy. For example, if you are looking for a pair of Nike tennis shoes, you look for the Nike logo which is the “check” sign usually associated in the tags and even put in the products. You identify that the shoes are authentic by the trademark symbol.

By registering your trademark with the Patent and Trademark Office, you can be sure that no other companies will try to use your trademark symbol as it makes it illegal for them to use without your permission. You should consider the fact that it is included in the intellectual property rights. Even the design of the product cannot be copies if you copyright the design with the Patent and Trademark Office.

If you register your business name and trademark, you will have exclusive use for it and will not allow other companies to put in your trademark and business name in their products just to make it sell. Since no one will be able to use the business name and the trademark of your company, you can be sure that your company’s reputation is protected.

It is also recommended that you should register your trademark as soon as possible in order to claim it first and avoid others from claiming your trademark as their own by registering it at the Patent and Trademark Office. However, you can temporarily copyright your trademark symbol via the poor man’s copyright. To protect your trademark symbol through a poor man’s copyright, all you need to do is enclose a copy of the design in an envelope and mail it to yourself. When the mail arrives, you will notice that there are stamps in it as well as the date received and delivered in it. Leave the envelope unopened and when someone claims it in the Patent and Trademark Office, you can present the unopened envelope.

Undoubtedly, the internet can make the difference between a successful small business and one ignored by customers. Due to the global nature of the Internet surpassing physical frontiers between nations, and even making it unnecessary to use printed business cards when they can easily be hosted online.

Web presence can make small businesses more competitive from any angle, allowing you to understand new trends, as well as discover opportunities and problems without wasting time. A small business with Internet presence improves your opportunity to connect with a number of suppliers and customers that otherwise might not be possible in your local area.

Furthermore, traditional printed business cards including an Internet address, not only opens a new range of possibilities to succeed, but also is a way to increase your communications, showing an appealing professional appearance, no matter how big or small your business or company is actually. Magnetic business cards often create a long-lasting marketing image.

In fact, you will be surprised to see prospective clients seeking what they want through search engines. Others might check for URLs in business cards instead of browsing the printed yellow pages, because a web presence translates is synonym to having a shop or booth in every corner of the world, where every individual or small business can have the same presence as the big enterprises.

Of course, budget, skills, knowledge and other Internet resources determine the performance of every small business online. However, it will always be beneficial to develop your business web presence if you want to get customers from every location around the world or, as a practical alternative, you can create online business cards for you, your partners and employees.

On the Internet, you will find a number of websites offering both services, development of your web presence and creating your online business cards, ranging from low-mid prices to those un-affordable for people who are just starting a new business venture. However, you do not need a big budget to start.

There are a number of free Web hosting services that will gladly give you web space to develop your presence. If you have no idea how to create a website, they usually have facilities called online tools or web site builders, allowing you to create a nice looking page with just a small amount of information regarding your small business, products and services.

If you do not feel comfortable with those tools, there are other options for you. If you want to create only a business card that looks like real printed business cards, you can always get free or cheap web templates, coming in a variety of designs and only requiring your information to be uploaded, which will create your web presence instantly.

Branding a small business is a must if you want to succeed in a competitive world. The importance of branding a business disregarding its size is based on not only real benefits, products and services that your business possesses, but also an image concept that all businesses should keep in mind.

From color business cards to global business identity, depending on how effectively you brand your business, the more or the less opportunities of success will knock at your door. The reason why large companies brand their businesses is because they know this is the best way to differentiate their products and services from their competitors while creating a corporate image.

Many small business owners believe it is not necessary to development a corporate image, particularly those whose business integrate just a few individuals as staff, or even when they own a one-man business, using the internet for selling or promoting their professional services. However, even a small business should utilize the same principles as the large enterprises to brand their business.

Furthermore, if your business has business cards, stationary and other branded elements along with a matching website, you will not only create a corporate image, but also loyal relationships with your customers and prospective customers, who will find more reliability with a small business with these characteristics, than others without a professional look and feel.

Because you only have the opportunity to impress new customers once, you should make sure that this impression is a positive and lasting introduction and handshake, only possible if you brand your business conveniently and professionally. There is no need to spend thousand of dollar to achieve it, but do not go to the other extreme using uneven elements.

Small businesses should be aware of the elements that will make their brand unique and recognizable, including consistency between online and printed elements, such as your logo, signage, business cards and even a slogan that helps people understand at a glance your business’s mission statement.

Effective branding must achieve these goals; be consistent and never differing, carrying the same logo, colors, slogans and statements through to every element of your business, all of them always visible and unique, hence the need to avoid elements that anyone can find anywhere such as free or cheap clipart.

Creating your brand, whatever your budget requires a business plan to have a solid appreciation on whom your customers will be and what can you do to serve them. This is not only a matter of elegant stationary or catchy business cards; it is the most important deployment of a small business for an eventual growth in future terms.

Many people new to websites and/or ecommerce are confused at the in and outs of ecommerce. Even many people who are fairly adept at scripting can set up a store using some popular package such as OSCommerce and then are left stumped by the idea of making it work with a payment gateway to actually collect money and put it into their account.

The Basics – How Funds are Collected

Ecommerce simply refers to the practice of shopping online. From the site owner’s perspective, it entails collecting funds from sales transactions on their website and depositing that money into the bank. In order to collect funds, you need to have a merchant account and a payment gateway (discussed below). Basically, when a person enters their credit card number on a website, the card number and buyer information is sent to a payment gateway. This is done securely. The payment gateway will interface with a payment processor to check availability of funds as well as any other criteria set for accepting transactions. If the funds are available, the payment processor will then deduct the funds.

Merchant Accounts

A Merchant Account is a special type of account specifically for online retailers. They are designed to allow non-POS (point of sale) transactions using credit cards, or transactions where you don’t have the person’s credit card in hand. In other words, you don’t have a card swiper. A merchant account is not the same as a bank account. It acts as a go-between between your payment gateway and your bank account, accepting funds from credit cards which are then deposited into your bank.

A merchant account is a relationship based on trust between you and the issuing bank. The bank takes funds from the buyer’s account and deposits into your account. A payment processor takes care of checking for availability of funds and debiting from the credit card account. The bank issuing the merchant account is trusting that you will fulfill your end of the transaction by providing the product or service that the buyer purchased.

Payment Gateways

A payment gateway serves as the front end to your merchant account, allowing you to manage funds, transactions, and the like. It also serves as a connection between your website and your merchant account. It takes data submitted via your secure order forms and presents it to your processing bank. The processing bank then approves or declines the transaction and sends its response back to the payment gateway. The payment gateway then turns around and provides this data back to the merchant for appropriate handling of the transaction. A payment gateway, then, does not offer services such as merchant accounts or shopping carts, although some of the larger-known gateways do provide such options as value-added services.

Fraud prevention is a big one because, as stated above, too many fraudulent transactions will result in chargebacks which could end up putting you on the Match List and your merchant account closed. Some of the common fraud detection mechanisms are Address Verification (AVS) which compares the customer’s address with that on file with the issuing bank, CVV2 which makes use of the 3-digit security code on the credit card (4-digit on American Express cards).

Most gateways will provide instructions on how to interface with their servers from your web store. Many gateway providers can get you set up with a merchant account at the same time as the gateway. So, in most cases, you do not need to sign up for them separately.

Many people today are building their own websites for some reasons. Many build websites for a simple online brochure and some are for online stores. That is not bad though. Your website is one of the important factors in your business. So whether you are building it as a simple online brochure or an online store, naming it is somewhat like as important as naming your own child. So it is just a nice move to invest in naming it and to make it as a brand, and you will later on find out that it stays with you for a long long time.

When you decide for your website domain name, you should then note some of the necessary considerations for you to pick up a great website domain name. It is just important to know that a website domain name speaks a lot on the internet. So for your website domain name to be easily remembered by the visitors, you must then do something to make it happen.

In choosing a website domain name, it is interesting to know that a certain consideration for your company’s name is one of the best tips for getting a great website domain name. It is often considered that if you have a company, try to look for a website domain name that involves the name of your company. Aside from that, it is important that you think for some website topic keywords that you can include in your website domain name even for at least one keyword.

Furthermore, you should then be aware if the website domain name that you choose describes the content of your website. It is somewhat awkward to find some website domain names that do not fit to the website content, right? Other experts also put some emphasis on the awareness if your website content can be categorized in an internet directory like the DMOZ.org based upon the domain name. And you should then ask if your website domain name involves some words that spelled variously in different parts of the world, like the word color and colour. So for you to not put some level of confusion to the part of the visitors, you must then register both versions of such website domain name.

Since there are so many new websites today and the number of new website domain name registration increase every month, finding the right website domain name might be tough. Thus you must then keep a few website domain names in mind or even just a combination of words when you are still searching for a domain name. In fact, purchasing a domain name today may be expensive in case that you do not find any that is available.

The domain name extension is also that necessary in choosing the right website domain name. You should then be aware of the types of the domain name extensions or top level domain names and also its uses for you to pick up the right one.

With such given facts, maybe one of the wise moves in choosing a website domain name is to choose those website domain names that are not applied by any other company with another extension. It is in fact a common notion that no one will be able to register the other domain name extension with your website domain name when it becomes well-known.