Freelancers Coaching | Turning Life Long Experiences into Income

A nameserver is a set of letters and numbers that help your web browser find your website. When a visitor to your website types in yourdomain.com into their browser, the name server points your browser to your host, and then your website.

An example of a nameserver would be: “NS335.YourHost.com”.

Even if you purchased your domain from a company that also offers hosting, you do not have to use them. There are many hosting companies out there, and you can shop around and find one that offers you the best deal for your needs.

You will need to go to the company where you purchased your domains from and change your nameservers to the ones that were provided to you by the hosting company.

To do this:

Go to the website where you purchased your domain and enter your log-in information. There should be some navigation that you can click on to access your domains.

Once you are at a screen that contains a list of your domains, click on the one that you are updating the information for.

After you have selected the correct domain, you should be able to click on nameservers”. This should bring up a screen that allows you to change your nameservers.

Note: Your hosting company will give you your name server information in their welcome email.

It can take up to 48 hours for this change to take effect. During this time, your site may fluctuate between being online and offline.

The next thing to do is find a web host. Any business needs a place to call home. If you run a conventional business, you have to rent space in an office or shopping complex. In the case of setting up an Internet Business, you need to set up a virtual space. You do so by creating a website and finding a host for your site. A web host company that makes your site available 24/7 (24 hours a day, 7 days a week) by maintaining it on a Web server.

The host of your website is the server. Your website sits on the hard disk of a big computer called a server that is connected to the Internet 24 hours a day. The server can also host other websites simultaneously.

Selecting a Web Host: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly

With thousands of web hosting companies to choose from, you have plenty of opportunity to select the one that’s right for your business. It is always a good idea to research web host companies before signing on with one, especially one that requires a certain term of service.

Though there are a large number of free web hosting services, there are many reasons to select a paid hosting company. In order to be a professional and successful online business, you need your own domain name. If you use a free service, your domain name will be something like

“www.AnotherCompany.com/YourCompany”

This is difficult to remember, and it’s a big-time hint to savvy internet users that you’re running a small-time company. Also, free web hosts don’t provide you with your own e-mail addresses. An e-mail address of flowersforever@yahoo.com is another tip-off that you’re the sole employee of your business.

Fortunately, you can find a good web host for a low price. Here’s a site for a quality, dependable web host with packages starting at $5.00 a month for one site, $10.00 a month for multiple sites. The site provides great technical support. Click this http://snipurl.com/1fcou

When sourcing for a good web host, you want to make sure that your host has a fast connection to the Internet and can handle large numbers of simultaneous visits (also known as hits) that your website is sure to get eventually. You also want to make sure that your web host offers a variety of related services, including some or all of the following:

E-mail addresses. You’re like to be able to get several e-mail addresses for your own. Many web hosts also give you special e-mail addresses called autoresponders.

Domain name. You and I have just covered this subject above.* Web page software. Some web hosting services include web page authoring / editing software.

* Multimedia / CGI scripts. Some web hosting services have the ability to serve complex and memory-intensive content such as RealAudio sound files or RealVideo video clips. They also let you process web page forms that you include on your site by executing computer programs called CGI scripts.

* Shopping Cart software. Most organizations prove you with Web page forms that you can fill out to create sale items and offer them in an online shopping cart.

* Site statistics. Site statistics give you an idea of how many visitors you have received.

* Shopping and electronic commerce features and more.

What is an FTP program?FTP stands for File Transfer Protocol. An FTP Program enables you to deliver digital files to your website’s host directly from your own computer through the Internet so that your website can be ready to be viewed by your visitors. This program is also enables you to edit and delete existing web pages and images. A web host will provide the FTP program for you. 

(TIP: be careful using a domain hosting site to do your domain research.  If you like a domain, purchase it before checking out of a site.  If you don’t, some sites have spiders that search for good names that have been entered into the search tool. These systems purchase great names and you lose your opportunity to purchase it unless you want to try to buy it back — at a higher price).

Once you find an available domain that you like, it’s time to buy it. You can enter a public or private registration. Public registrations will be visible in the whois.com directory. The whois directory allows people to type in a website and view the owner’s personal identity. If you do not want your personal information shown, choose private registration (this will cost a little bit extra).

It doesn’t really matter what the domain name is but you need to have one (at least one!) to start making good money online.

Domains don’t cost too much. A popular site is Go Daddy .com.  A yearly domain is usually less than $9.00 a year and sometimes less when they have a sale.  Check other areas too as the prices at godaddy seem to be slowly creeping up.  http://www.godaddy.com.

After you have selected the term of your registration (such as 1, 2 or more years) and decided if you want public or private registration, you only need to enter your billing info and complete your purchase.

Basically, your domain name is the internet address of your website. Your domain name will be the first thing people discover about your online business, whether through advertising, word-of-mouth, or search engine results. The domain name is whatever comes between the www and the .com (or other entity) in your web address: for example, in www.google.com the domain name is Google; and in www.creative-executive..com the domain name is creative-executive.

A domain name is located in the address bar of a web browser, and may be different from the title of your web page, which is the text that appears at the top of your window in the left-hand corner of the uppermost bar—appropriately called the title bar. It looks something like this:

www.yourname.com

Your domain name is your website address. It can ALSO be your Internet Business name.
When brainstorming on a good domain name, be sure to come up with at least a few names in case the domain name you wish to use is already taken. Remember me telling you that there can never be two houses bearing the same address?Another thing you have to consider is the various kinds of domain names on the Internet. So you will have to choose carefully.

Below are some of the common ones:

* .com - stands for commercial / community. The most overused domain entity on the Internet. Recommended for your Internet Business.

* .net - stands for network.

* .org - stands for organization. A lot of online communities use this domain entity.

* .gov - stands for government. All government web sites use this domain entity.

* .biz - stands for business. Recommended for your Internet Business.

*.edu – stands for education. Most educational sites use this domain entity.

Consider your domain name carefully before you register it with a web host. A domain name should be easy to remember, easy to spell, and use as few characters such as dashes and underscores as possible. If customers can remember your domain name and type it into their address bar without having to go through a search engine, they will be more likely to visit your site right away. Search engines produce multiple results, and if potential customers have to search for your site every time, they may find another web site instead of yours; or they may never find you. .

If you can use the name of your company as your domain name, that’s great. When you’re choosing a domain name, list several of your top choices and include breaking characters (yes, you should still avoid them as much as possible, but if your company’s name is Flowers Forever and you have to choose between flowers-forever and something entirely irrelevant to your business, by all means use dashes!).

You can then go to www.godaddy.com or another domain search site to find out if your choice of domain names is available. If the .com name you want is taken, don’t forget to check for availability in other web extensions like .biz, .net, .cc, .org and .info.

You will want to take out another new piece of paper again to write down ALL the keywords related to your Internet Business. You see, you want your domain name to:* be short and easy to remember (and catchy, too!),

* be relevant to the product or service you’re selling,

* include keywords of your product or service to improve search engine rankings.

For example, if you want to sell a product teaching people how to break-dance, then you will want to start writing down all the keywords related to break-dance. 

Are you finally ready to talk about setting up your web present?  In looking at setting up a web business, one of the most difficult parts is understanding how to get a presence online. It took me a long time to figure out how to set up a website. I almost gave up the idea until I looked into various types of web design sites that don’t require a lot of HTML language of other technical things. I also learned about professional web designers and virtual assistants and lots of other ways to get help with an online business. The tips in this section could save you a lot of headache, time, money, effort and frustration.

Have you done a Google search for “freelance jobs” lately?  If not, give it a try and you’ll find that you get a listing of literally thousands of possibilities.  While this may make your heart beat a bit faster with joy, you also have to be careful about approaching some of these jobs.

One of the best rules of thumb about job searching is to go to sites you can be sure are legitimate. For instance, is this a new job listing site or one that’s been around for a while?  New sites pop up all of the time and while I support new business opportunities that offer job connections, you have to be sure that the site is legitimate and that the leads you’re given are real, even before you simply list your name.

Here’s a example of what I mean. I’m listed on several freelance Internet sites.  Recently, I received a personal email from a person who said she found me on one of these sites.  She liked my background and wanted to invite me to bid on a very lucrative job.  I’ve learned not to get too excited about things like this but I was curious.  Sure enough, when I clicked through to learn more, it was a scam job.

At least I knew enough to understand what was going on and reported the scam. So be careful is the big warning here.

Some legitimate sites include

• Elance.com                           General Freelance, All Specialities
• Guru.com                              General Freelance, All Speicalities
• oDesk.com                            Global professionals pool
• Dice.com                               Tech jobs
• Affordableprogrammers.com     Affordable Programmers

The good thing about freelancing is that its’ a well needed occupation.  No matter what your area of specialty, you can be effective as a freelancer. As the economy gets worse the opportunities for freelancers gets better. 

The reason?  Layoffs. Unfortunately, when the economy is bad the first thing to start going are jobs.  Salaries are the largest expense item on any business budget. So to save money, the people who do the jobs necessary to run a business are cut.  This means the business needs to look for freelances to do the jobs without having the burden of a full-time employee. 

So where are all of these job opportunities hiding? Finding freelance opportunities can be done online or off.  Using the Internet means having easy access to quality freelance opportunities, but this method could also lead to scams. It can also put freelancers in an awkward position of facing potential clients who want a lot of great work out of you without paying you proper feels. 

This means needing to know how to protect yourself.  The next series of blog posts will give some important tips for you to consider when seeking a freelance opportunity online.

Social bookmarking is a system of sharing Internet bookmarks with other Internet users.  There are many websites that allow you to share your favorite web pages and network with other users.

These sites are all varied and, while they share in social bookmarking, they are all geared towards different audiences.  To get the most out of these sites you may want to combine the use of several of them.  For instance, you can list your blogs on technorati.com and ping the site when you update your blogs.

Then join a site such as stumbleupon.com and set up five web pages about various topics found on your own website.  For instance, if your website featured information on photography, one of your stumbleupon.com sites could feature information on digital photos and another page could feature information on the best time of day to take an outdoor shot and so forth.

Meanwhile, keep your bookmarks in del.icio.us to share with other users and visit a site such as tailrank.com to keep track of what other people are blogging about.  This can inspire new blog posts for your own blog, which would then mean you’d have more pings for technorati.com and the cycle would just start over.

All of these elements would work together to create more buzz for your website and introduce you to people with similar interests.  This could lead to more web traffic and even some future joint venture partners, which, in turn would lead to even more traffic (but that is a whole new topic for another article).

A writing Freelancer Friend is starting a site for Modern Myth Makers.  I was thinking about that when writing this article on Social Sites.  These are really new modern markeitng techniques.  Getting to know the sites is the first step. Use this list to find some you might not have even heard about yet. 

We’ll look into some in more detail in future articles.  Also, those in the FreelancersCoaching.com ubscription program will get a whole report on these sites and how to use them to market freelance services.

technorati.com – This site allows users to share their blogs, photos, videos and more and boasts almost a million and a half visitors each month.

del.icio.us – This site is a very popular and was one of the first social bookmarking sites to really take off.

digg.com – This site receives 8.7 million visitors each month.  Visitors can look up any topic and receive instant information and statistics.

stumbleupon.com – This is a relatively new site and it combines myspace with social bookmarking.  Users can make up 5 of their own pages on any topic they want.

reddit.com -This site allows users to view what’s new, what’s hot at the moment and what the weekly stats are.

fark.com – This site’s main page has categories displayed that allows the user to go directly to topics such as sports, business, politics, music and more.

mybloglog.com – This site combines social bookmarking, blogging and social networking.

blinklist.com – This website is still in beta testing and it’s mission statement is more about how people can use the service for keeping track of their own research.

ma.gnolia.com – This site isn’t quite as big as some of the others but it is very easy to use and has a ot of information to make the process of social bookmarking understandable.  This is a great site to get started with.

tailrank.com – This site keeps track of the conversations between blogs to help find what is hot on the web. The user can search on any topic they like or view randomly through categories such as politics, video, technology and entertainment. 

Discount codes give cost savings to customers while providing valuable data and inventory control to the seller.  Here are a few reasons that creating discount codes can benefit an freelancer’s business:

*Bring in new customers.  When a consumer is ready to buy and knows of multiple sources for the product, price is often the deciding factor.  This is particularly true when you are new or unknown.

*All consumers are attracted to a good deal and the current economy makes this particularly important. While I don’t advocate discounting prices on your regular services, a periodic discount or “special” for new customers could provide an added incentive to give your services a try. 

* Encourages repeat business as satisfied customers will be more likely to shop again when they are reminded to do so, and given a compelling reason to return.  A special discount code can be sent via email at specific intervals as a thank-you for past purchases and to encourage repeat business.

*Increases order size when offered for a time-limit. These offers create a sense of urgency and give customers a reason to buy more than they originally intended. 

*Discount codes can be offered for a percentage off the purchase price of a second item, for example, or for free shipping on orders totaling a specific amount.

Freelancers can determine the effectiveness of their marketing strategies by tracking the use of discount codes. The information can help businesses achieve the highest possible Return on Investment (ROI) and sales at the best available rates.