With the increase in business that our online division has been experiencing, it is time that we upgrade our shopping cart software to something a little more robust and that can handle the traffic.

Our old ecommerce software solution that we had been using is old and it wasn’t the easiest to work with.  I am not sad to see it go, but at least it has given us an idea of what we are looking for in an ecommerce shopping cart.

So with our requirements in hand, we went to take a look online to see if we could find a solution to our problem.  As it turns out, Aspdotnet had the exact type of software that we were looking for.

I decided to read some reviews of their product and everyone I read said that they were very happy with their software solution.

So, we are going to give it a try, but from what I read, I think that we will be very happy with the software.

I grew up in a small town and I have always wanted to live in the big city.  It could be my childlike fascination with the big lights and sounds that a city offers or it could just be that I want to be part of something larger than myself.  Whatever my inner motivation is, I knew that I wanted to to live the big city life and I just wasn’t sure how I was going to do it.

After completing my college degree in computer science with a minor in graphic arts I found myself with a job in web design.  After getting some experience in my small town I decided to see if I could make my dream of living in a city a reality.

After submitting a number of applications, I was accepted to work at a New York website design studio as a junior designer.  It wasn’t until I stepped foot in my apartment and went to my first day at work that I realized that my dreams of working in a big city finally came true.

While reading one of the daily articles on a blog today, I came across a reference to a well named site focusing on the financial market.  What really got me, was it was one of the most cleverly named sites at ever seen.

Now before you jump to conclusions, it is not some sort of goofy name or one that is inappropriate for the services it offers.  In fact, I would almost say that the name of the site empathizes with the investor who thinks that their advisor only caters to rich clients.

Can you guess what it is?

The name of the site is "Your Money Matters", the result of a great idea by Michael Dinich.  Not only do they provide free advice and information regarding financial and estate planning, but their advice can apply to you no matter what financial situation you find yourself in.

Definitely a smart name for a smart site.

I never realized that my web host provided me with the way to check on the number of visitors that come to my website.  I guess I must’ve missed the fact that they offer website statistics software to help their customers measure and analyze the website traffic their website receives.

So today, I decided that I would take a look at the statistics from the visitors that my website collected to see what I could do to increase my search engine rankings.

Looking through the statistics I found that my website was a little more popular than I had thought, and a lot of my traffic was coming directly from the search engines.  Looking down the page, I noticed that many people were finding me under the search terms that I expected them to, but there are also other phrases that I had not thought of that were driving people to my website.

From now on I think that I will be paying more attention to the statistics in an effort to increase the visitors are coming to my website.

I have been building and selling websites on and off for some time now.  Usually, I can make some pretty easy money when I make these sites, and really it doesn’t take me much time.  I have gotten it to an art of sorts, and my markup is pretty good.

Now, it took me some time to get all the pieces that I needed together to offer this service.  I had to find a place that would let me register cheap domains at a price that was well below the market prices.  This took me some time, and a number of emails to get the price that I was looking for.

Next, I had to find somewhere that offered cheap web hosting.  Now, you might make a comment about cheap hosting, but I was looking for something more: they had to be reliable.  This took a lot more testing before I did find a company to go with, but in the end, I feel that I found an awesome deal.

Last but not least, it took me awhile to find a tool that would help me choose which cheap domain names to register.  I found an invaluable keyword research tool that helps me with my decision on which domain to register for my clients.

Speaking of clients, I should get back to work.  I have a number of orders to fill tonight before I can go to bed.

While I was looking for some good kids websites for my five-year old son the other day, I realized just how many websites there are out there that are filled with just stupid stuff. And it floors me as to how many of these are geared towards little kids.

I made it my mission to find some educational sites for him that would also be fun. I looked up the sites that had the best reviews for his age group. There were many of them and I had to now narrow it down as to what best suited him.

I did find some sites that were full of just cool stuff and I knew that he would be both fascinated and entertained by them. They also had at least a small level of educational material, which is what I was looking for.

I decided on five of them and sat him at the computer to try them out. He thought they were all very cool websites, and definitely picked his favorites very quickly. We bookmarked the ones he really liked and now, visiting the sites is one of his favorite things to do.

Before I started making websites, I found someone that could be my website advisor.  You could think of my advisor as my mentor.  He has a large number of sites and has experience doing what I am trying to accomplish which is an excellent resource for me.

Lately I have been getting advice and paying for SEO services from a search marketing firm.  Now, I won’t name names here, but the results have been less than stellar.  When I mentioned this to Mike (my advisor) he told me that there were more effective methods to promote my sites besides paying someone to do it – and it wasn’t going to be hard at all.

He suggested that I do some keyword research specific to my niche, write some articles, and then submit them to the many article sites that are on the web.  This way, I would get traffic to my sites and I would be building up my reputation as an expert in the field.

Do you know what my first reaction to this was?  It was that it sounded smart – really smart.  That is why I have a mentor – he is the best.

It seems that the more I visit blogs, the more I notice that they are using images or other digital media (such as video and sound) in their posts.  Now, if you notice, you don’t see anything like that here, and I seem to be falling behind – so I thought I would learn how to do it.

So, what I did was go to my favorite free search engine and look up how I could add images and video to my posts.  What I was really looking for was a free tutorial – I wanted to find a site that had nothing for sale, or some other motive to get me to use their site.  I was sure that there was at least one site out there that could show me how to do it.

And I was right.  In fact, I found quite a few sites that had the information that I was looking for for free.  After a quick read and a test, I think I have it figured out. 

I have decided that I won’t go back into the archives and edit any of the old posts, rather I will make the effort in the new ones.  Hopefully sometime in the near future you will all get to see the results of my little endeavor.

Have you ever been to one of those really fun websites, where you are quickly addicted and have to go there everyday? I have just found one for myself and I absolutely love it. I know in a month or two, I will move on and my little online world will revolve around something different, but for now, this is me.

When I first got into the whole Internet buzz, many years ago, I wasn’t aware of what all the hype was about, but now I am becoming somewhat of a little guru, just like the rest of planet earth.

If you look at the bookmarks on my computer and my laptop, you will find that I go through phases on what interests me. I seldom clean up my computer, and there are probably things saved to my bookmarks that I have not opened in over two years. That could be scary.

Looking at some of the website ratings, I am sure that some of my past favorites do not even exist on the online world anymore. It is a fast, ever-changing existence and one might even go with Darwin and say that, on the Internet, only the fittest survive.

I have a site or two that have been doing exceptionally well these past couple of months.  They have both been ranking well for the search terms that I have been marketing them for, which in turn has increased the income from these sites.

What is my secret?

Well, my secret isn’t that secret at all.  You see, a year or so ago, I read a blog article about easy ways to promote your site.  Now most of the marketing methods presented there I was already doing, but there was one that I somehow missed.

I wasn’t doing any free directory submissions.

Now, I know some of you out there are laughing at me because I missed one of the most basic marketing methods for websites, but it is the truth.  When I found out that it was easy to submit your site to free directories, I had to try it out.  But what I found is that it took too much of my time to do it properly.

So, now that my sites are making more money, I have turned around and used the income from my sites to pay for a directory submission service company to submit my sites to web directories – which has resulted in my sites leaping up in the search engine rankings.