In our previous articles we have talked a bit about some video examples that really don’t help the consultant, expert or specialist on the other side convert people to pay them to teach or do things.

This video below is a little bit better.  The audio quality for the first half is better (not great, but better).

The presenter keeps things nice and simple by capturing a PowerPoint presentation in this web video and it seems fairly professional.

Unfortunately the video (and this does date back to 2007, so you have to take age into consideration) loses all the ground it created when it goes into its ‘demo’ as it offers up very bad electronic 80’s music, but worse yet shows how to edit a rather extra basic looking landing page.

This video is definitely due to be removed or archived, and if you are reading this article and there is no video here any more, then hopefully the owner of the video has done themselves the favor of removing the video. 

It certainly isn’t going to help people learn how to convert sales for adware or spyware products and couldn’t touch more mainstream topics like pushing people to an electronics blog, converting people on a political poll, or enticing people to leave lead information.

The main thing about this video is that it is really mis-named.  It should not be called the Landing Page Secret Video.  A better title might actually help to set the expectations at a more appropriate level.

As we continue down the rabbit hole of exploring conversion on a website, I wanted to share with you a video that is rather . . . um . . exceptional.  I mean that in a nice way.  The actual copy of the video that is being spoken all makes perfect sense.  It is not incorrect.

However, the demonstration or example provided by the video serves to prove that the site sponsoring the video is less than credible.  They are trying to convince people that putting video on a landing page can help convert people. 

On the surface that is true.

They are also trying to convince people that you need not have to pay an exorbitant amount for video and audio production to convert people on a website.

Again, on the surface that is true.

Unfortunately, the video example is not likely to convert anyone to do anything and in so failing as a video itself, it actually serves to convince people not to trust the website it is pitching!

In fact, I challenge you to watch the entire video and still feel inclined to even go check out the website at the other end.

This video does not perform well and is likely harming the site on the other end more than it is helping.  It certainly isn’t going to help a person learn how to develop higher performing affiliate pages regardless of what they are trying no matter if it is genko extract, hydra-anything, or even discount PS3’s.  The video just doesn’t work.  It proves that if you are going to be in the business of teaching people how to convert, you better no how to execute the strategy yourself. 

I just wanted to say a quick Merry Christmas to my favorite Hosting Company.  They have made me biased towards their services by providing very good service and especially customer support.

Many people across the web have rapidly become something of an ‘automated expert’ when it comes to search engine optimization.  There are many many web design solutions that can help a person, even a novice create a website designed to pull people into their site from a search engine search.

SEO is not the only answer.

What are you going to do with those people once you land them on your site?

Its at this point where things like landing page optimization comes in to play, but even that is not the ‘BIG’ picture.  The video above gives kind of an amateur or novice perspective on what the big picture is, but the video itself also serves to demonstrate that there is more to conversion rate optimization.  If you want to achieve website optimization, then you have to execute on all of these levels: landing page, PPC campaigns, SEO, E-commerce, but also on internet presence, PR and buzz.

The video below gives a quick but slightly dated example of just how easy it is to publish a basic web page to the internet or to an account on a hosting plan.   A hosting plan is essentially the collection of files on the internet where you can upload web pages or files for other people to see through a browser.

This particular video is slightly dated.  Mozilla no longer supports the program referred to in the video called Composer.  This has pretty much been replaced by a new program that includes and html editor known collectively as The SeaMonkey® Project. 

Filezilla is also referenced and this program is still available and widely used by many web designers.

Whether you want to build complex websites or something simple for your mother, or maybe something that will earn you a few bucks offering information on diet pills.  These are some of the first tools of the trade that you will need to become familiar with.  Keep in mind there are many different tools that will help you achieve the same result.  These are just two free and very common tools to help get you started before you consider possibly spending some money for a more complex tool, which may or may not really be necessary depending on what you intend to do with it.

Here is another video in a developing collection of youtube videos that features tutorials and useful explanations of web site hosting.  In this video, TheInternetEducator talks about how website hosting works, how much it costs, and some of the issues that can come up (and have to be dealt with).

Now, if you grew up in an era before the internet, you might be predisposed to hit a book store or even Amazon books and attempt to learn about website hosting from a book or a text book.

On this topic, that is actually not a good idea.  Many bookstores will often feature books that are several years out of date (especially discounted books).  If you try and learn the fundamentals of website hosting from a book, you are very likely going to learn some outdated information that may not be very useful today at all.

At a very minimum, I recommend that you do your initial research on the internet, and once you have learned some of the basics, if you still must walk through a book to learn more, you will hopefully at least be able to recognize an old outdated book from an up to date book. 

Here’s a very informative 4 minute video from AskMisterWizard that walks through the fundamentals of hosting servers on the internet yourself.  If you are looking for information to walk you through the basics of setting up your own server whether it is to host web pages, or host a printing server or email server etc, this video and the discussion it covers will help get you started in the right direction.

The video does cover the following three principals

1. Assign a static (unchanging) local IP address to each server host
2. Use “Port Forwarding” to prepare your router for incoming traffic
3. Advertise the public IP address of your router

Again this is just a fundamental over view,but the graphics and the dialogue can help you determine if you are barking up the right tree whether you are trying to configure a hosting server at home or for your school website or even if you are trying to run a site advertising fat burner or other commercial products available at a micro level.

Last spring I started chronicling the change in policy at IPower that resulted in thousands of customers getting slammed into domain name renewals at a total cost that was more than twice what they originally signed up for.

They did this by taking a previously free service and charging as much for it as they did for the core service of domain name renewal.

Today, I ran into an incident with my own preferred domain hosting company, InMotion Hosting.

I recently ordered a new domain at something-about-harry.com.  About 3 days after ordering, I received a bill and automatic debit from my credit card from InMotion for Domain Privacy protection, for a charge of $5 ($4 less than IPower).

Unlike IPower, which made this a policy and a more expensive policy at that.  InMotion had simply made a billing mistake.

They not only removed the service at my request (something IPOWER will not do after the fact if you are right or wong), but they credited my card for $5 for the service I did not buy (again something IPower will not do under any circumstance after the charge).  Plus, InMotion even offered to give me a free month on my plan (which I declined as it was not really needed for a domain name registration).

The point is that all of these things that IPower makes part of their policy where the customer is penalized, even when the customer is right, InMotion does not make it policy and fixes their mistakes such that the customer is made whole or better!

Now, given the fact that we are heading into a recession and possibly a depression, you have to wonder if a business that is running on unsound policies and practices, can actually survive.  Its not like they are bloated with useless fat and services, looking to cut the extra expenses like a chronic dieter picking up Anoretix from Oprah, but they actually have self destructive policies and marketing strategies that is sabotaging their core customers from go.

Something ultimately has to give, and it is probably going to be weaker companies that fail to execute like IPower….

It was less than a year ago that I was walking the floors of the AOL booth at the Consumer Electronics Show.  I felt almost embarrassed to be impressed by some of the cool options and features that AOL had created back then.  They were doing a number of things very well on the innovation front, and I speculated that AOL just might become a real player on the internet again.

maybe

Apparently, cool and cutting edge does not fit the AOL business model.  They announced this month that they are exiting the user generated video market.  They say that they will still offer professionally generated video, in the wake of advances from YouTube that will not only offer TV shows, but full feature movies.

Somehow, I suspect that going back to generic for AOL may not work out too well.  You can only harvest an old business model for so long before there is nothing left to harvest.  I suspect that the only viewers they might be picking up with this new shell of a service will be the rare person that is bird watching with Nikon binoculars and just happens to scan across a computer screen playing an AOL video by mistake.

What does it take to reduce the world’s spam by two thirds?

Apparently, it takes some socially active research geeks, some corporate embarrassment, and well, that’s all it takes!

A few researchers proved this out this week, when they exposed Global Crossing and Hurricane Electric Internet Services for renting servers to a company called McColo Corp.

He and other analysts circulated a dense report Wednesday that blamed some companies for allowing spam to proliferate. Two big providers of Internet connections named in it — Hurricane Electric Internet Services and Global Crossing Ltd. — acted quickly to cut ties to the core subject of the document, a little-known Silicon Valley company called McColo Corp. that rents out servers to clients.
The researchers didn’t say whether McColo knowingly aided criminals, but they described some of the nefarious activities conducted on some websites the company hosted. Among other things, McColo reportedly enabled its customers to control vast networks of hijacked computers to send spam and take payments for fake anti-virus software.
"We got the report, and it looked pretty damning," said Benny Ng, director of infrastructure at Hurricane Electric, of Fremont, Calif. "They were a client of ours, and we turned them off."
Global Crossing did the same thing, security researchers said, though it didn’t respond to interview requests.
McColo didn’t answer messages seeking comment, and its website was off-line late Thursday. The company is now under FBI scrutiny, people familiar with the case said. An agency spokesman said the FBI wouldn’t confirm or deny an active investigation.

Spam traffic plunges after report blames server hosting company

That wasn’t so hard after all, assuming the bad guys don’t pick up some downloadable audio books from Neal Stephenson outlining how to avoid this type of exposure. 

What’s next for the world’s new heroes?

Curing Cancer and Aids next week and finding a new habitable solar system starting in 2009.

OneWebHosting has some pretty interesting hosting options for anyone looking for beefed up features at a fairly low rate. Personally, I think that the $9.95 per month price is a bit hefty, but there are some pretty decent services offered for the price. Whether you’re interested in free domain name and transfer, multiple email accounts, varying webtools and some beefy storage and bandwidth I suspect there may be many folks moving over to OneWebHosting. 

In my eyes, OneWebHosting is a great service, but it is the equivalent of getting gastric bypass surgery when all you probably need is a diet pill or two. Although OneWebHosting is designed for small businesses, there is an increasing number of individuals always looking for more than what they need in regards to electronics and even hosting applications. Either way, the choice is yours and this service is pretty cool and worth taking a closer look at.

There are a lot of great hosting options out their for individuals and businesses alike and HostPapa is a great hosting company worth checking out. Currently, HostPapa is offering 100% Green Energy Web Hosting that offers unlimited web hosting, data transfer, domains and free setup and a domain for life for only $4.95 per month. 

Not only is HostPapa less expensive than their competitors, but is one of the only hosting services that offers 100% Green Energy Web Hosting services. Is it just me or does this seem almost as gimmicky as ball lock pins on a screen door? Well, whether you think it is gimmicky or not, HostPapa offers a pretty cool alternative to some of the current packages out there. Being a fan of living “Green”, I like it.