Free Website, Web Hosting and Domain name

If you are thinking of having your own website but don't want to spend anything to start off with, then read on.

There are many free web hosts, who will give you unlimited bandwidth, pages, free domain name, and unlimited pages. So if you think you are ready to launch your own site, why not test it with one of these free web hosts. It doesn't cost you anything, other than your hard work to put it together.

The only downside to this is that, the domain name you will get will not be a simple
www. yourname.com, it will be something like www. clevergenius.yourname.com. The only disadvantage of this is, it will be difficult for users to memorize your site address. However, if advertised and promoted properly, and you can get your site ranked high with the search engines, then this will not be an issue. As your users will find you with their search queries. For more information about how to get more traffic to your site read my blog on increasing the number of visitors to your site without spending anything.

Don't worry, let me not put you off by this. If you wish you can buy a domain name of your choice and redirect your free domain name. Domain names are not that expensive to buy, depending on what you choose to go for ( .com/.gov/.net etc). You can buy domain names from $1.99.

The two of the most popular web hosts and most user friendly are:

http://smallbusiness.officelive.com/en-GB/ (This is owned by Microsoft)
https://www.google.com/accounts/NewAccount?hl=&service=jotspot&continue=http://sites.google.com/site/ ( This is owned by Google)

You will need a valid email address to open an account. Once you open your account, it is then a matter of you putting your contents in and designing it to your liking. Once this is done, you are ready to launch your site.

When desigining your site, keep in mind your customers. Kepp asking one question to yourself, "will my customers like the design of my site?". Try not to make it to personal to you, but don't forget to try and view it from your customers point of view.

With these hosts, there a forums where you can ask questions and find answers for a question that may have already been answered. So don't be afraid to ask others who are already using it and can give you helpful tips. Normally they are all really friendly.

You can use paypal on your free site to collect payments if you are going to be selling a service or products, and it is really simple to install. Although Google can provide you with a Google check out if you decide to use Google, the choice is yours.

Now that you know where to start, don't let me hold you back. Click on the links above and get started in minutes.

If you need any help with anything to with building the site, then please do email me or leave a message in the comments section below, and I will try and help you.

When you are ready to launch your site, read my blog on how to promote your site for free and how to submit your site to search engine. It is very easy or can be nightmare to increase the traffic flow to your site, so be sure to start of good.

One of the sites I use often is called 4jokerz. The site lists the most popular sites in different categories. You will need the page which allows you to submit to the most popular search engines. It saves you time as its links take you directly to the search engines submit URL page. The link to the site is http://4jokerz.com/default.aspx

Don't forget to read my How to increase traffic to my site blog.

Good luck!

How to increase traffic to your website or blog.

Start from the basics, think of it this way, if you were to build a building can you put up the 10th floor without building the other 9 first? No, this is exactly how you have to look at it when it comes to promoting your website or a blog.

There are millions of ways to promote your website and blogs, and surly you may have already come across them. But you are here obviously for a reason, and my guess is you either found them too hard to implement or too expensive. I have listed some of the things you should do before getting into all the other technical and costly ways of advertising. Before you start to promote your site, make sure you offer free, original, and quality content on your site. This is the most effective means for increasing traffic to a website. It doesn't matter if you sell a product or a service, giving away free stuff will always attract users. Also make sure your site is complete and ready to be promoted. Incomplete sites or blogs will turn away potential users from returning. Just remember this; it takes a lot to get one user, but a second to lose a million.

1. Tell all your friends and family members about your site and ask them to visit your site and pass the word around.

Ask them for feedback, everyone wants to feel important, so when you ask them to give you tips and ideas and what they think you should have on your site or how it can be improved, it will make them feel important. This will make them come back to visit your site to see if you have made changes or how it has been improved. Don't just ignore their tips and ideas; they could be very useful, as these people could have been your potential users.

With all sites, at the beginning it is a bit difficult to get loyal and returning customers. So say please and thanks to your friends and family. If it feels like your begging, then be it, just remember who will be the winner at the end? You.

Just remember this little tree example - You tell 10 people (friends and family), these 10 people, each tell 10 others meaning 100, and those 100 tell another 10 each... I will let you carry on with the calculation as we all need a bit of mathematics practice every now and then. Jokes aside, but can you see how it will have people coming to visit a friend of a friend of a friends site. Someone you never met or know about will visit your site, not because they wanted to, but were asked to.

Some search engines rank your sites according to the number of visitors, which following the above will give you a good start, and others use Meta tags and descriptions. To be at the top, you need both.

2. Make sure your Meta tags and descriptions are relevant and describe what you actually do or sell on your site. Be creative, sometimes competing with the popular words or phrases can mean you get nowhere, so why not try words that are not too popular and work your way up. Take over the smaller market first and then aim for the bigger one. Niche markets isn't always bad, infact sometimes can be very beneficial.

3. Email all your contacts from your mailing account. We all have real friends that we meet up with and go for a drink or a coffee, but we also have unknown people in our contacts on Hotmail, Yahoo or Googlemail or whatever it is that you use. You don't believe me? Have a look, I bet you will find at least one that you don't recognise. Make sure the email is eye catching and interesting. It doesn't just have to be a link to your blog or site; just make sure it will lead them to it somehow.

4. If you are still working, then tell all your work colleagues, don't be shy about it. Remember, you will be the one who will benefit at the end.

5. Have some simple games and puzzles page to get people to engage with your site. You don't have to have millions of flash games, it could be simple games such as sudoku, word games and so on. Just in case you have a user who accidentally comes to your site, but isn't interested in what you have to offer, they may stay on to try and find the answer to a silly question you may have put on your home page, which may even have them come back. All the top and popular sites do, to name a few, Facebook, Yahoo, Google, MSN etc, so why not you.

6. Submit your sites to search engines and directories for free. Make sure they are the markets leading sites and the most popular ones. Don't waste your time, money and effort in submitting to sites which only end up using a major search engine. These sites act as the middlemen, who use the popular sites to get their results. I have come across a site which lists the most popular and major search engines and has direct links search engines submit URL page. Avoid submitting your sites too often, as this may have your site rejected.
http://4jokerz.com/submittingwebsites.aspx

7. Try and link to other sites, but make sure it is relevant to what you have to offer. It is no use you linking to a health related site when you could be selling smoking related products, such as pipes, cigarettes etc. It will have a negative impact.

8. Use your social networking sites to advertise what you have on your site. With sites like Facebook, Myspace and Twitter, you can have your site on your profile. People who look into your profile may sometimes be interested in having a look at what you do or have on your site.

9. Become a member of Twitter. If you are popular amongst your friends, and they like to know what you get up to, then have them follow you on Twitter. Always remember to update by saying what the latest is on your site as well as yourself.

Some may laugh and make jokes, but at the same time go in there to see what it is that you’re talking about. Imagine this, a friend of yours goes into you Twitter account to see what you are up to, while they are out with people you don't know. They think your silly to be doing what you’re doing, so laugh, to which his/her friends will ask why? You friend will then probably show them your site, which may interest at least one person. If not, you have nothing to lose, but if yes, then you just got 1 more user.

10. Finally, if you are advertising on your pages, make sure the adverts displayed are relevant to your contents. If you use googleAdsense, Bidvertiser or alike, then you don't have to worry about doing it yourself, as they have systems in place to advertise links relevant to your contents. It is only when you join affiliate programmes yourself and you get to choose what you advertise and where.

Having the right adverts on your pages will mean visitors have a better experience, and are likely to come back to your site to re-visit a site they may have used linking from yours. You will be surprised how many people out there sometimes actually think that, a site that links from a site is part of that site or company. Which also gives you the advantage of them not bookmarking it, and may force them to come back to your site as they may have forgotten the name of the site and web address they visited.

Regardless of the above, links from your site will leave an impression of you or your company with the user. If you link them to useful sites, they will remember you as they would have enjoyed their experience on your site and sites visited through yours. But if they have a bad experience, they will never forget that, and in the future may not click on any links from your site. This is bad news for you if your earning will be depending on your adverts. So don't just go for the advertisers that pay the highest commission, but for the ones that can benefit you in the long run by giving your users a better experience and quality products and services.

Lastly don't advertise your direct competitors on your site, as this can drive away users from your site.

The above simple tips will give you a great start, and may even make you succeed. You may eventually need to spend a bit of money, but what I have listed is what money can't buy. Take your time but be accurate, as there are no room for errors. Your failure will mean someone else’s success.

Recommended site:

Link to list of search engines where you can submit your site with one click, free service.
http://4jokerz.com/submittingwebsites.aspx

Is it the parents responsibilty or the Governments for underage teenagers having sex?

Who is it to blame for underage teenagers having sex? The parents or the Government?

I find it amazing when parents blame the Government for anything their kids do wrong.

If their children fail in school, drink, take drugs, have sex, get pregnant, get into trouble with the law, miss school and so many other things, it is somehow the Governments fault.

Are we living in a society where all we care about and do is have children and leave the rest for the world to take care of?

I was shocked to find out what kids in school do these days. A very close friend of mine who is a teacher in a school told me how she has caught kids young as 10 and 13 having sex in the school playing fields. She caught two boys and a girl having sex in the bushes, and was so disturbed that, she didnt know what to do or say. As for the kids, they didn't care or look worried at all.
She eventually told the kids parents on a parents evening. But I wonder how these kids came to know about threesome or group sex?

But my question is, what did the parents of those kids do to make sure their kids would not do something like this again, if they did anything at all?

We hear so many stories about young teenage girls getting pregnant or having abortions. But that is just half the story. There are so many incidents like this that, we never hear about.

The same friend of mine also told me about a mother of a girl coming to see her on a parents evening and just crying to her. She was crying because she had to assist her daughter to have an abortion. The girl was only 12, and the girls mother wasn't too sure about telling the father. Why not?

So who is it to blame? Is it the Government and the schools to blame because they are teaching sex education too early in school? In my opinion, teaching children about sex or safe sex at such a young age is telling them to have sex, and that it is ok to do that as long as they use contraceptives.

We shouldn't forget as we have all been there, teenagers try to act like an adult and want be like an adult. They want to do what we do, and will go to any extreme to achieve that.

There are so many things that we do wrong or the Government that is harming our children. To list a few, below are some of the things I believe the Government of our countries are doing wrong:

• Movies showing sex scenes, drug abuse, killing, crime are now rated 12 and 15.
• Computer games that involve a lot of violance, or are like real life crimes availabe freely.
• TV programmes, posters, tv commercials all advertising sex, nudity, cigarettes.
• Porn sites easily accessible, chat rooms and my favourite cell/mobile phone internet.

I will leave you to decide how you think some of the above things can damage our childrens future or the way they think.

I have to say, kids nowadays are under a lot of pressure to keep up with the demands of their friends and find themselves competing all the time. It is suppose to be cool to have a girlfriend or boyfriend or to smoke and take drugs. It is because their favourite actor or singer is doing it. To these kids, this is the only way to fame.

But does this mean it is the Government and the teachers in the schools of our children to blame? I don't think so, and I strongly believe that it is us, the parents of every child who end up doing these things to blame. We are so busy in life that we do not have time to see what our children are getting up to. We don't check to see if our kids have gone where they said they would and what they are actually doing.

Where I live I often see groups of teenagers hanging around parks and on the streets with alcholic drinks, smoking and causing trouble. It always made me wonder, how and why the parents of those kids never seem to smell the smoke or the alcohol on their kids when they go home? And if they do, why do they not do anything about it? It always seems to be the same group of kids I see and maybe new members. Why is it that the parents are not out searching for their kids when it hits midnight? Are they not worried about their kids safety or do they just not care. It is so funny, but I can gurantee you, the parents of these kids expect the police to keep an eye on their kids and would blame the supermarkets and shops for selling their kids alcohol. Do they not think to themselves for once that, maybe these kids are using someone the legal age to buy drinks for them?

The drinking and drugs lead to sex, then pregnancy, leading to abortions or a teenager with a child.

So how can they control their kids from buying alcohol? Maybe by limiting their pocket money, or at least keeping an account of what their kids are spending their money on. Which would then probably stop them from trying to show off and do things they shouldn't be. Maybe we all need to control to a ceratin age what we allow them to do or watch. Maybe by limiting them as to how long they can be out with their friends and asking them questions when they arrive home if something is suspicious.

I believe if we get a bit more involved in our childrens lives and force the Government to take appropriate actions for what they are doing wrong, we can prevent and improve the lives of our children.

I believe if something is yours, then it is your responsibilty, and people around you can only help and be blamed for so much. Ultimatley it is our responsibility.

I would be very interested to hear what your opinions are, so please leave your comments below.