Personal Web Pages

So you signed up with an ISP such as AOL or Prodigy, you got your feet wet in designing a web page, and now you're ready to sit back and let the money roll in. Right! - Well, not quite right.

 A personal web page is just that. It is not really a place to do business. But I see it being done all the time, you might say.

If you are using a personal web site, three things happen, and two are bad.

The good thing is that you are getting the web space free, but unless your ISP (Internet Service Provider) is fully HTML compliant (some major ISP's are not) you are dealing with lessened capability.

The bad things are two fold.

First, a web site URL supplied free by your ISP doesn't add the necessary degree of professionalism needed to your web page. Many people look at these as "fly by nighters" who have put up a web site in the hope of doing business. But, the odds are, they may feel you are not in this for the long term, and will hesitate before doing business with you. I'm not saying it can't be done, it is just more difficult.

Second - many of the search engines will not accept a listing from a personal web page such as AOL, Prodigy, Free Yellow, etc.

How can this problem be solved?

Well there are basically three ways.

 The first is to register with the Internic ($70 for two years - up front) and get your own Domain Name. The name however does you no good unless you have a web hosting service. This is not normally your ISP. You may have to retain your ISP in addition to the web hosting service. Hosting services usually range $25 to $50 per month, depending on the supplier selected.

The second way is to contract with an existing domain and rent a sub-domain name from them such as http://www.adv- marketing.com/busines - adv-marketing.com is the main domain and business is the sub-domain. This usually runs about half of what a full domain would cost. Many times this is a pain however, as you may not have full FTP access to upload and download data to your web site.

The third way is the easiest and most inexpensive method. Get a sub-domain page with an address such as http://www.adv-marketing.com/yourname - yourname is the sub- domain and can be basically anything you wish assuming the name is not being used by someone else.

You can still use your free web pages. What is done is you are provided with an automatic link from your sub-domain to the Home Page of your Web Site.

So someone would enter your sub-domain address such as http://www.adv-marketing.com/yourname but would immediately be connected to your personal page. And, if you do change your ISP, you don't have to change your URL - you can link this to any page from any ISP.

The cost of this is usually about $3 per month. If someone does it with us, there is a minimum of a six month contract. Maximum contract is one year. Anyone who signs up for a year will also get an E-mail address with the same name as their URL sub-domain. Any mail sent to this address will automatically be redirected to your address at your current ISP.

Next issue will discuss the selection of keywords for search engine use.

Bob - bob@adv-marketing.com