Then how do I keep up with all the blogs I like?

No the way I do it is through RSS. RSS stands for really simple syndication and is a way to easily keep up with all your favourite blogs in one easy reader. I have written an article explaining RSS and RSS readers so you may want to have a look at that if you are unfamiliar with RSS and the convenience of it.

Most publishers / bloggers will enable RSS on their blogs and will make it easy for new readers to subscribe. This is important, because if you or I stumble on a blog we like we want an easy way to quickly subscribe and not forget about that particular blog.

How to subscribe to a feed?

Most bloggers will have a clear RSS button in their sidebar, like I have here at Escala Web Strategy, or have a link with “subscribe to RSS”.

Now, the next time I open my favourite RSS reader (which in my case is reeder for ipad and iphone) the most recent posts of this website will appear alongside all the other blogs that I follow. I go though all the blog posts each night and will read the whole articles of the headings that interest me.

Whole article versus excerpt in a feed

However, here is when an issue can occur. Although most publishers will have their whole articles in their RSS feed, some only allow the excerpts to be uploaded to the feed. This means that if I wanted to read the whole article I would need to click through to their website.

I am actually VERY unlikely do do this. It means that my reader will have to load the website in the browser which also means that I would have to need a good internet connection. It basically intereferes with the speed that I can normally read my articles. Also, I sometimes load my feeds when I’m online and then read them later when I’m offline. In that case I’m not even able to click through to the website.

Why would a publisher only upload the excerpts to their feed?

The main reason for publishers to only allowing excerpts in their feed is that most publishers want you to read the article on their website instead:

• It means that their website traffic is higher, so they can command higher fees for advertising,
• When people visit the website they may click on advertising which leads to profit for the publisher
• A website visitor may click on affiliate link which can lead to a commission for the publisher

So as you can see there are many benefits to people actually visiting your website.

So why do many publishers allow their whole article to be uploaded to the feed?

There are some major benefits to allowing whole articles in your feed:

• People are more likely to read your article
• People will not delete your feed in their reader (due to annoyance over excerpt only)
• People are reminded of your blog on a constant basis and may clickthrough when you have something special to offer.
• You will build a relationship with your readers as your readers will value the conveience of reading your posts through their RSS readers.

So what should you do?

If your main objective of your articles is to get people on your site than you can consider excerpts only, but if your interest is that as many as people as possible READ your articles, then whole articles are definitely the way to go.

I personally delete feeds that only give me excerpts of their articles. That means that I will probably forget about your blog and will never visit your site again.

So even though many RSS subscribers will read your articles without you knowing about it (you will see the amount of RSS subscribers you have if you use a service like feedburner, but cannot see how many actually actively read your blogs), they will remembered about your blog and website constantly. This means that they will still read your aricles, possibly link to them in their own blogs and every now and then visit the website. In my opnion this building of a long-term relationship with a reader is so much more important than a constant website visit. In the end allowing full article feeds will pay off big time.

Can you really make money with a website?

Yes, you can. Many are doing it every day. However, it will take work and dedication and it may take you a long time to see results. Online marketing is NOT a get rich quick scheme. Please don’t believe any of the ads and websites promising you that you can make thousands in 30 days. It just doesn’t happen. They may show you cheques as ‘proof’, but all too often ‘make money online websites’ just make money ripping off people believing in the dream of getting rich quickly online.

However, if you are willing to put in the work, do proper research before you begin and come up with a good web strategy, you could create an income stream for yourself that could turn into passive income. That is one of the reasons I am now concentrating more on my own websites, rather than creating websites for others. I prefer to earn money with a passive income stream, so that I get paid even when I’m not working!

How can you make money with a website?

There are various money making models:

1. You can earn money through advertising. You can sign up for an ad network like Admax or sign up for Google Adsense. Every time someone clicks on one of the ads you get a small commission. If your site becomes more successful you can also attract advertisers by selling your own banner ads or sell in text links.
2. Another way is through affiliate marketing. You can see that in action in this post. Basically when I recommend a product or service in this post, I can provide an affliate link. This is a special link given to me and whenever someone clicks on that link and continues to buy something, I get a small commission. As a customer you don’t pay anything extra, only the supplier will have to pay me a part of their profits. Sounds really easy and it is, but you will need sufficient traffic to your website to make it profitable. You will be amazed at how many established brands operate an affiliate program and it’s usually very easy to join. 2 popular affiliate networks that I use are Commission Junction and ShareASale. You could even add a complete affiliate shop to your site. A plugin like Datafeedr for WordPress makes that easy to do. If you want to have a complete guide on how to do affiliate marketing then I can recommend The Super Affiliate Handbook by Rosalind Gardner, which is an ebook from a successful affiliate marketer than you can download instantly.
3. Create a membership site. If you can create a lot of value on your site, you can add sections for members only. Only members that have paid a certain amount per month will be able to see that content.
4. You can sell your own physical products! It has never been easier to setup a shop online. As I explain later you could use WordPress with the Ecommerce plugin or use a very quick shop setup like Shopify.
5. You can sell your own downloadable products like ebbooks. These are becoming increasingly popular through the use of e-readers and kindle. You could sell your ebooks through Clickbank or Ejunkie
6. You can build an optin email subscription list. Many online marketers use their list to market their products and do very little selling online. In order to get people to subscribe to the list, they offer something for free. Very often this is free information, like I do here on Escala Web Strategy (new email subscribers receive a free report on how to start getting successful with blogging). Tools to create your list include Aweber, IContact and Mailchimp (the tool I’m currently using; it’s free!). The email marketing tools make it easy to manage your list, create emails and insert subscribe boxes to your website.

Find a niche

A niche is a particular topic or market for which you could write. For example, if you are really interested in Argentine Tango you could choose to start a website on that topic. It is usually best to choose a niche (topic) that you find interesting. Building a succesful website will take a lot of time and effort so you will need to make sure that you have enough to write about. Start by making a list of all the topics that you find interesting. Then narrow it down to those topics that you could write about and start doing some keyword research.

Keyword research is very important as it will determine how much traffic you get to your website. In order to get traffic to your website you will need to target a particular keyword for your niche, so your website gets found in search engines. Of course there are other ways to promote your website (like ads, social media, and article writing) but you would really want to get a high amount of free search engine traffic. The majority of the traffic of my sites comes from free search engine traffic, especially through Google.

Keyword research

This is an essential step before starting a niche site. You will need to make sure that you find a relevant keyword to your niche but also one that gets sufficient amount of traffic and that has an ability to rank high in Google. There are various ways to do your keyword research. You could start with the free adwords suggestion tool or buy a keyword research tool like Market Samurai (free trial). I like to use Market Samurai as it gives almost instant information on how much potential a certain keyword has.

To determine the potential of a keyword, there are a few points to take into consideration:

1. You need to find a relevant keyword that matches the content of your website. If you want to make sales from your website you need to make sure that you get targeted traffic. As an example for our Argentinian tango website I chose the keywords “argentine tango”. For more info on this step please read my tutorial on how to do keyword research with market samurai.
2. You need to know if people are actually searching for that keyword. If noone does, then you will not get sufficient traffic to your website and your site will not be successful. I ran the keyword argentine tango through market Samurai and as you can see it gets 559 visits a day. That is very decent traffic. For a more in depth explanation please read my tutorial on how to find the right keywords in market samurai. 
3. Another very important factor is how competitive that keyword is. As you can imagine there are now millions of websites on the net. Many people are now trying to make a living from websites, so a particular keyword may already have too many established sites targeting it. A quick analysis shows that the SEO competition (SEOC) for this keyword is 1.180.000, which is very high. For more info on this step please see my tutorial on how do to research the competition in market samurai.
4. The last point to check is to see how commercial your keyword is. This point should not be overlooked. You may get a lot of traffic for argentine tango but if everyone is just looking for info and noone is buying anything, it may not be worth your while. Market Samurai shows that the SEO value (SEOV) for the keyword Argentine tango is AU$279.62 which is ok but not great. For more in depth info on this check How commercial is your keyword?

So should we pursue with this keyword? I would say no. The competition is very large and if you look at the strength of your competitors already ranking for this keyword, it will take a lot of effort to rank for this keyword. This does not mean that you cannot create a website about argentine tango though. However, you may want to go through this process again and look for more specific keywords that may have less competition, like argentine tango shoes or argentine tango classes.

This is an essential step in starting your online business. It can make a huge difference as to how succesful you can be.

I found my niche and my keyword, now what?

Once you have a niche and a good keyword that you would be able to rank for, you will need to find a domain name. You could get a website at WordPress.com or Google or any of the other websites where you can get a free website setup, but the problem with those websites is that you do not have your own domain name and you are not fully in control of your website.

You will get more authority (and also a lot more control over your site) if you get your own domain name. It helps if you can get your keywords in your domain name for ranking purposes. An exact match of your domain name would be perfect. Of course you can also get any other domain you like but it may take a little longer for you to get a ranking for your keyword. Instead of a keyword match domain, you may also choose to get a domain name that is brandable. In that case it should be short and memorable.

In general when choosing a domain name:

• Keep it relevant
• Only use a .com extension (you could also do .net but I would stay away from anything else)
• Keep it as short as possible
• Make it memorable
• Avoid hyphens
• Avoid strange letter combinations

GoDaddy is a good register to get your domains very cheaply.

How to get your website?

Once you have registered your domain name it is time to create your online business. There are several ways to create a website but a very easy way to get a good website is to use WordPress. Not the WordPress hosted websites that you can get at WordPress.com, but a self hosted WordPress website. It really is not as difficult as you think. With many hosts you can install WordPress with a few clicks! Here are some of the steps to take:

1. Select a hosting company. If you are going to use WordPress, make sure it is a WordPress friendly web host with one click installation (they need to have a service called Fantastico de Luxe). I use Hostgator and can recommend that to everyone who wants to have a reliable website host. They offer good support and WordPress installation is a breeze.
2. Once you have chosen your host, install WordPress. If you need help installing WordPress you could consider my visual WordPress Setup Guide. It gives you easy to follow instructions on how to install WordPress and getting started using it.
3. After you have installed WordPress you need to get a nice theme. You could of course keep the standard theme that is automatically installed for you, but I would recommend you get a new one so your site is easily distinguishable from others. There are lots of free themes available at WordPress.org. Some of them good, while others leave a lot to be desired. I actually prefer to work with premium themes. They usually are better designed and in many cases come with excellent support. If you are just starting out with WordPress, that support will really benefit you. Here is a list of my favourite premium wordpress theme sellers. All of them offer excellent support and great theme designs.
4. Now it’s time to start adding in the content. If you have done your keyword research, then apart from your main keywords, you have probably come up with a list of related keywords. Have a look at your keyword research again and create the structure of your website. Create categories for your posts that incorporate some of the other keywords that came up in your research.
5. Once you have a good structure, start planning your content and publish it. If you like to know more about how to blog successfully then just subscribe to my newsletter and I will give lots of blogging tips absolutely free!

How to promote your website?

Now that your website is up and running, you want to get more traffic to your website. So how do you do that?

1. SEO

My favorite method of traffic creation is SEO or Search Engine Optimisation. This is basically a collective name of techniques to get your website ranking higher in Google. Traffic through searches in the search engines are free and once you started posting on a regular basis, people will find you for a multitude of keywords. However, you will get the most traffic if your website gets ranked at number 1 for a popular keyword. If you have read my instructions on keyword research above, you will already understand how important it is to choose a keyword, that is relevant, gets decent search traffic and is not too competitive.

If you have found a good keyword combination, you will now need to make sure that you get a good ranking for your keyword. To do that you need to make sure you do the following:

• Ensure that your keyword features in the page title. The page title is what people see in the top of your browser. Search engines usually also diplay this title when people find you in search engines. You will need to make sure you enter a keyword rich but also enticing title. In order to make sure that you can enter unique titles (and later also descriptions and keywords) for each post and page of your website, you will need to insert special metatags. If you are using WordPress there are several plugins that you can install like the All in One SEO plugin. However, my current favorite is WordPress SEO by Yoast, a free plugin that actually helps you create your titles.
• Ensure you enter a unique meta description for each page. Make sure it includes your main keyword but also make it enticing to click on your website. Even when people find your website in Google, you will still need to given them a reason to actually visit your website.
• Enter keywords. Although not that important it is still a good practise to enter the target keywords for that post.
• If you include images in your post, give them a name that includes your main keyword. Also ensure that they have a good alt tag.
• When you start to write more articles, make sure that you link to other articles by linking keywords in the text. Never link text like ‘click here’, but always use informative links like: for more information visit our page of  argentine tango. (with the words argentine tango linked to your other page on that topic).
• All the above techniques are what is called Online SEO, but a very important part of SEO these days is offline SEO. The main component of that is link building. In order to get ‘authority’ or as Google also calls PageRank you will need to get a lot of links to your website. Google and other search engines will see your site as more important if you have more links. So how do you get more links to your website? That really is a topic in itself as there are many ways to get links, but some of my favorites are: guest posts at other blogs (very effective as you get a link + more readers), article submission, directory submission, writing link bait posts (posts that a lot of people will find very useful and will therefore link to), creating a quiz or application that goes viral etc. You can also look at which links your competitors have and try to get them as well. A good tool that you can use for  this is Raven Tools. Not only is this an effective tool for link building but it also helps with keyword research and tracking your search engine positions for your keywords. So much more to write on SEO  and link building, but that will have to wait for another time. In the meantime you can check an excellent link building strategy post that goes into great detail on how to build links fast. You can also check other posts I have written on the topic of internet marketing or sign up for my newsletter to get my ‘successful blogging‘ report (which goes into some more techniques for link building) for free.

2. Social Media

The social media are getting increasingly important as a promotion tool for your website. Not only can it generate a lot of extra traffic to your website directly, it can also create higher rankings in search engines as it can increase your authority. Make sure to register your website name or main keyword (argentinetango) at all social media and bookmarking sites, like facebook, Stumbleupon, Twitter,  Reddit, Blogger etc. Not only will these profiles an extra link for you, you can also use them to promote your blog.

Make sure you create your own Facebook Page, especially for your website and get likes.

Setup a Twitter account and start connecting with people that may be interested in your website.

3. Advertise

Not free of course, but it can still be a good way to get initial exposure. You can measure how much money the advertising earns you. If you have a positive return on Investments, adverting can be well worth your while.

Google Adwords makes it very easy to advertise in search engines, and on just about any website. You will only need to pay for each click you get and how much you pay depends on the popularity of your keyword. Targeting the right keywords, writing a good ad and constant monitoring and measuring is very important for this strategy. If you want help with this you can visit my page on Google adwords advertising.

4. Offline marketing

Of course you don’t need to limit your marketing efforts to the online world. Write press reports, add your website to each email you send, try to get media coverage, go to the fairs. All these can help boost your website traffic.

Measuring your success

So how do you know what works for you and what doesn’t? Here is where Analytics can help. Google has a fabulous free analtyics tool that can tell you A LOT about

• your visitors behavior
• Which sites are giving you traffic
• Which keywords are giving you traffic
• Which keywords lead to actual sales (you will need to setup goals or events to measure this)
• How much time to visitors spend on your site
• How do they navigate your site
• Which are your most popular pages etc.

Now you may wonder why you need all this information, but it can really help you fine tune your content. Perhaps the sales copy you have written for the site does not convert so well? With Google Analytics you could actually do an A/B test and test 2 different versions of your sales pages and test which one converts best.

You will also get clear information on which keywords actually lead to sales. This is valuable information as you may want to target those keywords more in your SEO efforts.

In conclusion

Well there you have it. My very long post on how you can get started earning money with your website. Of course this information is just the tip of the iceberg of all the information that is out there on building a succesful website and doing SEO. Believe me, I have been in this business for more than 10 years and I’m still learning. It never stops really and I’m constantly trying out new things. Google keeps changing their ranking algorithm (factors that determine which page ranks higher), social media is continually eveolving and the internet space is getting increasingly competititve.

One great example

Bottom line is though that if you do proper keyword research and build a good solid website, add value online, entertain people and apply some solid commercial principals you can succeeed online. Try to find your own special niche, preferably in an area that is not so competitive yet. Here is a great example of someone  who thought outside the box and did their keyword research thoroughly. Mary Morris of Front-Porch-Ideas-and-More.com,  managed to turn her love of front porches into a very profitable website that gets more than 300.000 page views a month and earns her a steady income through advertising. In this blog post you can find out how she did it.

Find out where your passion is and find a niche that is not too competitive, do very thorough keyword research, build a good site structure based on that, create great content and consistently promote your website and you too could earn passive income online.

Let me know if you need more information or which parts are unclear. For further updates, tips and my free successful blogging report you can subscribe to the newsletter.

Wishing you a lot of success with your online endeavours and let me know if you have any questions! If you like this article then I hope you can share it with others using the share buttons.

All the best,

Sylvia

Why do you have a website?

Most businesses will have a website to promote their business online. For many business owners the aim is to provide new leads and generaly generate more business.

So they have a website designer come in and describe to them what they want this site to look like. The designer creates a beautiful image, you like it and it gets turned into a website. The site looks great.

Except… hardly anybody visits it. Sure, you will have the people that go to the site directly because they got your business card or saw your offline advertisement in a magazine somewhere.. But the site cannot be found by anybody else and you are getting very few new leads from your own website.  You may buy advertising in directories or traditional media, as you will feel that the internet does not work in providing leads. Perhaps you will turn to Google adwords and spend lots of money in getting leads but even that (in the wrong heads) gives you a low return on investment.

Don’t blame the internet though..

However, a lot of the time many businesses do not realise that the reason their website presence is not working for them is because they have a poorly created website. Sure, it may look great, but search engines may not like your site at all. What causes that?

• Your site is created in such a way that search engines like Google cannot ‘read’ it. For example the text is not really text but is created as an image or a flash movie.
• The search engines cannot follow any of the links on your site because they were poorly coded. If the search engines cannot even find your pages, how are they supposed to index and rank them?
• Google can read your site and sees all your pages but they have been so poorly labeled that none of these pages gets even a top 50 ranking in their index. Basically, if your site is not on the top page for your keyword phrase you will get very few traffic.
• Google can read your site, see the pages, and has ranked some of your pages but you are not getting top listings because Google considers your site to be of low authority. No-one links to your site and therefore your page has no pagerank.
• Your site does get a few top rankings for a few keyword phrases but since no-one actually searches for that keyword phrase your site still does not get any traffic.
• Your business does not engage with any of the social media on the internet and does not create any online connections or get any linkjuice.

A search engine optimised website and a web strategy can make all the difference!

The Internet can be enormously powerful in providing you with new business and new leads if you use it and interact with it to your advantage. So here is what you can do.

• Learn SEO or search engine optimisation and understand how Google and other search engines rank websites.
• Know what your target customers are looking for. What keywords would they type in the search engines to find you? Make sure you do some thorough keyword research and find those phrases that get some good traffic but are still not that competitive so you can achieve a top ranking.
• Make sure that you make your website search engine friendly.
• If you can’t or don’t want to make changes to your website then start building links or create an alternative (free) search engine friendly website at one of the blogging or networking sites. You can then use that website to drive traffic to your beautiful looking but SEO unfriendly website.
• Create a video or write an article and submit to directories and You Tube. Videos can get a top 10 ranking pretty quickly for your keywords on Google and you can use them as little ads for your business to drive traffic and new customers to your website.
• If you really don’t want to get too much involved with all of this hire an SEO or web strategy consultant and let them take care of it.

When used correctly the Internet can be a very powerful tool to get high quality qualified leads to your business. As the internet becomes more important every day (have you seen the new Apple IPad making it even easier to browse the Internet at any time!) you cannot afford to ignore it.

So how can businesses use Twitter in an effective way?

Twitter is an excellent way to deliver customer service. Even if you don’t use Twitter on a regular basis you can still set up an alert that notifies you whenever someone mentions your brand name or service.

For example: a few months ago I reviewed and tweeted about a software product (Dim Dim) I liked. Almost immediately I received a thank you from someone at Dim Dim, thanking me for the review. It is always be appreciated if someone mentions your product or service in a favourable way and you acknowledge that. It creates a lot of good will.

On the other hand when someone complains about your product or service on Twitter or needs support you could supply that straight away. It could help with avoiding customer dissatisfaction and you can keep updated on what’s happening with anything related to your product or service.

Twitter allows for direct communication between consumer and producer and can really help you with monitoring your company’s reputation. It may be risky for any business to ignore Twitter altogether.

What about facebook?

Facebook is now used in a similar way. Although you can’t setup alerts, you can have your own facebook page. It is quite easy to accumulate some fans through good posts or (inexpensive) advertising. Once you have a reasonable amount of fans interaction takes place on your ‘wall’.

It is very beneficial way to announce new product launches, specials, or interesting facts. Many customers now enter their concerns or enquiries directly on that fan page, as a direct response to your post or just because they were reminded of you while spending time on Facebook. These are customers that you may have otherwise missed if you did not have a presence on Facebook.

Even if you post just 1 new short message every 2 days, you can develop a very active community on Facebook. If you link your posts to your Twitter account, these posts will go out as tweets at the same time.

The bottom line

Setting up a profile on Twitter and Facebook takes fewer effort than you may think and apart from the benefits mentioned above it can also increase your search engine ranking for your business and increase your visibility on the web. So if your business targets consumers Twitter and Facebook are definitely worth considering as part of your web strategy.

But how do you get listed in those search engines?

The search engines will need to find you. And the easiest way for that is to add a link to a site that Google spiders regularly.

Some sites that Google spiders a lot (because the content changes all the time) are social bookmark sites.  Examples are:

• Delicious
• Stumble Upon
• Digg

Bookmark your site at one of these sites and Google will most likely pick it up. However, you will also want to list your site in one of the other search engines. Yahoo and now Bing are getting increasingly popular and it’s also very important to get listed in these.

Webmaster tools

All 3 search engines have what they call Webmaster Tools where you can register your site and your sitemap if you have one. It’s a very good idea to register for this, as not only do you notify the search engines of your site, you can also monitor any errors (broken links, page not found errors) that they pick up. You will need to have access to your website to authenticate that you are the owner of the website and if you want me to do this for you then please contact me.

Here is where you find the webmaster tools for each search engine:

Google

Yahoo

Bing

Google Analytics

In order to monitor if you have been successful and are getting traffic from all search engines be sure to add Google Analytics to your website. It’s free and it’s one of the best website analytics around. You will find out where your visitors are coming from, which sites referred them, which keywords they used to find you and which search engine they used. You can even track how many conversions (for example product purchases) you got.

If you want to get help getting your website indexed,  setting up analytics, or if you need help with search engine optimisation of your site then feel free to contact me.

Today I received an announcement of a new website and blog. When I went to check them out, I was surprised that the website and blog were actually 2 separate websites and were not integrated into one. This really is a missed opportunity as an integrated blog can do wonders for your website’s traffic and popularity.

Not surprisingly, this wasn’t the only thing that was wrong with the website.

What could have been better:

• The website was written with outdated code using lots of tables
• The website was newly designed but is using frames
• No attention had been paid to search engine optimisation, making it very unlikely that this site will be found in search engines
• Conversion seemed to be a low priority as there were no sign-up boxes for email newsletters and hardly any links that went directly to the contact page
• There is not even a mention (or it is very hidden) of the blog
• The blog was wordpress.com hosted blog which means that it doesn’t have its own domain name
• The blog looked completely different from the main website and it was difficult to find any connection between the 2

Why is it so important to include your blog into your main site?

Including your blog into your website can dramatically increase the number of visitors to your website but it also helps with search engine optimisation, which is the process of improving the likelihood that your website gets a prominent position in search engines for your chosen keywords.

Benefits of integrating your blog into your main website:

• It tells Google (and other search engines) that your site is active and frequently updated. This will cause Google to come back to your website more often to rank your pages
• Your blog posts will get picked up by online alerts and spiders and will direct traffic directly to your main website
• If someone links to your blog posts this will increase the link popularity of your main website which will improve your search engine ranking and your page rank
• An integrated blog will look a lot more professional
• You will only need to maintain one website rather than 2

So how can you you get an integrated blog?

Both systems that I now mainly use to create my websites come with automatic integration of the blog.

WordPress.org

WordPress.org is wordpress.com’s big sister, which allows you to run WordPress on your own server. WordPress was setup as a blogging application but it is increasingly growing into a full fledged business CMS. You can create a website that seamlessly integrates the blog into your main pages. Check it out at WordPress.org. If you need our help setting this up for you then contact us.

ProntaCMS

ProntaCMS is content management system that includes a blog into your main website. You can seamless integrate the feeds into your design. You can try this easy CMS for free.

I wish you good luck with your new website and if you need any help then please let me know. If you find these posts interesting then don’t forget to subscribe to the article updates by email or RSS.

There are many ways to create a website these days. I have done extensive research and I currently use only 2 software applications for all my websites: ProntaCMS and WordPress. Both have their pros and cons. I thought it would be helpful to highlight the similarities, pros and cons of the 2 options and who should be using what.

What is the main difference?

ProntaCMS is easier to use and comes with more inbuilt features and functionality. ProntaCMS is specifically built for business websites and a blog can be integrated into the website. It also gives a bit more flexibility when it comes to sidebars; on a prontaCMS website these can be different on each page. As it is a business owned solution it comes with a higher security level and dedicated support.

WordPress started as a bloggers application. Although it is increasingly used for business websites as a CMS it still focussed on the blogger. WordPress is therefore the best choice for a blogger or topic based website. If you don’t like the idea of hosted solution and would like to be in control of your own hosting, then WordPress is also the way to go. WordPress is an open source solution that can be easily extended and is supported by the larger number of online users. System security is the responsibility of the site owner.

Pronta CMS

ProntaCMS is an easy to use content management system that lets you easily create and edit websites. ProntaCMS can work with any design and has lots of incorporated features. Features like forms, image galleries, evites, and calendars are easy to use and integrate into the site.

Recommend for

I recommend ProntaCMS for small businesses that want to have an effective web presence and like to maintain their website themselves. ProntaCMS allows small businesses to have a high quality website at a low budget. When the business grows then your ProntaCMS website can grow with you. ProntaCMS is easy to use and you can edit your website directly in your page.

Pros

• Easy and quick setup (if you choose one of our templates as the base)
• Low setup cost
• Many features included like: slideshows, online forms, evites, calendars and others
• Integrated image editor where you can edit and manage images
• Flexibility with individual pages (side bar can be different on each page)
• In house hosting which makes your website very secure
• Full dedicated support

Cons

• ProntaCMS is a hosted solution so you can’t move the website to another host
• Although it has a lot of functionality built in it is harder to extend beyond that
• Higher ongoing hosting costs for a large site (although hourly maintenance costs will be lower as there will automatic updates and no security maintenance)

WordPress

WordPress is a publishing platform that is focussed on blogging. However, it is increasingly used as a content management system for businesses and organisations. WordPress comes in 2 flavours: .com and .org. The .com version allows you to setup a blog quickly online. You cannot use it with your own domain and customisation is limited. .org is the self-hosted WordPress version which allows you to customise your website as you please and install plugins that add extra functionality to WordPress.

Recommended for

I recommend WordPress for businesses that want to make their blog an important feature in their site and who don’t mind a bit of a learning curve. WordPress is also good for large sites that have lots of pages and categories and want to continuously extend their site.

Pros

• Free software that can be downloaded from the Internet
• Very popular so lots of help available on the Internet
• Nice interface that allow for easy website management
• Highly customisable
• Many free and premium themes available
• No extra costs when more pages are added

Cons

• Higher learning curve than Pronta
• Many features will have to be installed separately
• Higher maintenance costs as you will need to make sure that your WordPress installation is secure and runs on the latest software version
• Still more focussed on blogging

If you thinking about setting up a new website I will be happy to consult you on what is best for your business. Contact us to setup a web consultation.

However, now that I am offering my Pronta CMS website creation system to a worldwide audience I have been looking for ways to start my web training sessions again. And I believe I have found the perfect tool to conduct them.

Introducing Dim Dim. Dim Dim is video conferencing software that is free to install and use. It is an easy to use browser based tool that will allow you to show your presentations, chat, talk and provide computer training!

Let’s look at some of the features:

No need to install anything

You don’t have to install any software. Everything is done online and you can even recodrd your meetings (very useful for repeating your lesson if you stuck).

Dim Dim makes it easy to share documents

Upload any PPT, PDF, or PPTX file on your hard drive and it is quickly converted to a Flash file. You then present your document using the built in laser pointer, annotation and zoom tools. Files are deleted after the meeting to prevent files getting lost.

Screen sharing

A feature essential for computer web training is that I can share whatever I am doing on my screen with you. You can even zoom in on what I’m doing. In the near future trainees will also be able to request control of your mouse and keyboard.

Share a whiteboard

With one click, you start sharing a collaborative, multi-page whiteboard. Everyone can add to it enabling you to easily share and record ideas.

Share Audio (Microphones)

You will be albe to share yoour computer microphones or alternatively your phone.

Share Video (Webcams)

With personal computer web training it is important to see eachother and DimDim also allows you to share your webcam.

Record Your Events

A very important feature is that you can record your sessions. When used for training it will be ideal to go over your lesson more than once to make sure that you understood everything. And if you have used DimDim for you seminar you can use your recording to spread the message to oter interested parties.

Send Public & Private Messages

Public and private message can be sent throughout the conversation.

Webinar Widgets & Reports

Simple widgets are created that you can use to promote your web seminar. You can share the webinar widget on any website or via FaceBook or Twitter and anyone can register for your event just by entering their email address.

Use it to get your online web training or as part of your web strategy

I think that this tool can be really useful for customers of my content management system Pronta CMS. This system has proven to be popular and people from all over the world have signed up for it. Although this system is very easy to use you may still like someone to show you how things are done. With Dim Dim you can actually follow me as I edit your wbsite on my computer screen and you can ask questions at any time.

For businesses it can be part of your web strategy. Use DimDim to conduct meetings, conduct seminars for interest groups or interact with your customers. If you make a recording of your seminar or presentation you will then be able to publish it on the net which can promote your products and services to wider worldwide audience.

Have a go with it and let me know what you think by leaving your comments below. Of course if you are interested in some personal web training then drop me a note!

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