Kristie T’s Home Business Blog Fun, mom-geared work-at-home tips and advice on making money on the net.

If you need to put a popup window on your website, I just came across this javascript tool that makes it REALLY easy. (And you don’t have to be a technie to do it! *grin*) I had my new popup page up and running in about 5 minutes flat - no coding. Now that’s my kind of popup window!

Get the free popup tool here

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One of the things that amazes me most is when I read someone’s web page, get the the bottom of the page and find they don’t ask for the business. Every page of your website should have a call to action. What action would you like someone to take as a result of reading your web page: buy, call, email, signup, read more….

My favorite thing to do at the bottom of the page is say:

What would you like to do next? Then I offer 3 calls to action at the bottom of the page based on different levels of buying readiness. Buy Now, Find Out More, Sign up for free tips.

What are some of your favorite examples you have seen of people calling you to action on a website? What make you stand up, take notice, and do something?

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If you are looking for photos to add interest to your blog or website, here’s a couple of great stock photo resources for you. They have low resolution photos for website use for $1 each!

- istockphoto
- fotolia.com

Do you know of any other great stock photo sites?

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For those of you who use Skype for chats and web based phone service, there’s a really simple way to add a Skype button onto your blog, contact page , or email signature .

Take a look at the Skype button I added to my Kristie T contact page.

To get a free Skype button, just go to here. With a couple of clicks, you’ll get the code to paste onto your website. It’s easy and adds another way for people to get ahold of you.

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If you have ever accidentally let your domain expire, you know it can be a horrifying experience. You think, what will happen to my website? What will I do?

This happened a few days ago to my web design clients last week at www.watermgm.com. Lorne Haveruk is one of the world’s top water irrigation management experts. He was getting ready to attend a major conference for his industy and horrified to see he had let his domain expire.

You basically have 2 options when this happens:

1) Pay a huge fee to get it renewed. Usually this is anywhere from $150-$300 depending on the registrar where you purchased the domain name.

2) Purchase a NEW domain name and setup a new hosting account. Upload your files to the new IP address. Then, when your old domain name is “released” back into the queue where it can be purchased again at regular price, you can buy back your old domain name and forward it to your new domain name and hosting account you setup.

We purchased www.DHWaterMgmt.com for Lorne and uploaded his files there. And today he is flying off to his conference.
I will keep an eye out when his old domain is available for repurchase keeping a close watch. You don’t want to “lose” your domain name due to someone else buying it before you get a chance.

Has this ever happened to you?

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Free website graphics? You’ve got to be kidding right?

These days, to get anything decent for free is a rare thing. That’s why I thought this site was so amazing. they have free website templates. If you are looking to do a decent looking website on a budget, this site could help. They have 1694 different website templates designs to choose from.

It’s an open source web design place. Graphic designers can donate their design. Or alternatively you can pick one up to use.
Grab your free website template here.

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Excuse me Steve, but your personality is showing….

This morning in my morning “blog walk” I was checking out the blog of personal development guru Steve Pavlina (definately worth bookmarking!). He has the all time funniest message on Steve Pavlina’s contact page that you really should see!

Here it is….

“Please use the form below to send me a loving, joy-filled, high vibration message. My spam filters will trash messages that would serve to lower my vibration, so if you feel the urge to vent negative emotions, to host a private pity party, or to otherwise put more energy into manifesting what you don’t want, I recommend you keep reading this site until you start feeling better. Either that, or request a private reading from my wife; she’ll help you get your life back on course.

Take note that I’m a male Aries (I know — God help us!), so please make your overall point at the beginning of your message as opposed to writing your life story first. Due to the volume of email I receive, most likely you’ll only get a telepathic response. If you happen to receive an auto-reply from my sixth chakra that says I’m away on an OBE, I’ll follow up as soon as my astral body returns. “

Now how’s that for a great sense of humor! Great branding Steve! I love it when people let it all hang out like that! Kudos to you Steve! We call all take a lesson from you on being ourselves in our business.

What are some of the funniest things you have seen people do on their websites?

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So there I am at the breakfast table enjoying my GoLean Instant Hot Cereal (vanilla flavor - yummy!). And to pass the time, I was reading the back box. I smiled when I saw that they had a super call to action right there on the back panel! You see, one of the things I preach about is that every page on your website should have be designed with a call to action. In my product, “Websites that SELL”, I share the the most effective calls to action for your website. It’s part of the Motherload Success Bundle I will be launching next week.

And sure enough, right on the bak of my Kashi cereal box after it shared the benefits of this ultra healthy cereal, it said, “For recipes and special offers, visit us at www.kashi.com.”

Now that’s smart marketing! How many cereal companies do you know that do that? And it offered 2 free gifts (the receipes and special offers) as incentives to entice people to visit their website.

Do you have calls to action on every page of your website? Do you offer people an incentive whent they take action? Take a cue from my cereal box and get more sales. *grin*

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If you are creating your own web site, here are some quick tips for keeping your web site files organized. Create a separate folder to keep your web files in on your computer. For instance, I keep my web site files in My Documents/Webmomz/. Within that main web folder, create another folder called “images” or “graphics” to store your web graphics in. If you are creating graphic buttons, use consistent naming conventions such as b-about.gif and b-home.gif to keep your files grouped together and easily identifiable by name when they are displayed in a list. Also, when naming your HTML pages, use keywords in your file names such as craft-products.htm rather than cstuff.htm. It will help you to rank better in the search engines and make it very easy to identify what each page contains.

Have any other web site organization tips to share?

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Are you drowning in a sea of emails? I was! So much so that I have made some major changes that are really cutting down on the spam I am receiving. Here are 9 ways to stop the spam dead in it’s tracks.

1) Never list your email address on your website as a clickable email link or as text. Spiders search the web for emails listed on websites and harvest them into lists they sell. If your email address isn’t listed, it can’t be harvested.

2) Periodically switch your email address on your website. Like if your email is sally@mysite.com, you could switch next to sally1@mysite.com. Put when you post it, post it as a graphic or an encoded email address. (see below)

3) Encode your email address. Here is a nifty email address encoding tool that turns your email address into its equivalent decimal entity so that spiders can’t read it.

4) Switch your email setting on your server so that you only accept email at your given address rather than accepting email at your default catch all email address. For instance, instead of accepting email at mysite@mysite.com, switch it to only accept email at sally1@mysite.com. Call your tech support at your hosting place and they’ll talk you thru switching the settings.

5) You can also list your email address as a graphic, rather than text. Using a graphic program like Paint shop Pro or Adobe Illustrator, you can make a graphic of your email and use that instead of actual text to list your address on your site.

6) Never sign up for newsletters, free reports, when you post on forums, etc with your regular business email address. Instead, use a throw away email address like a hotmail or yahoo email account.

7) Get a VIP client email address that you only give out to people once they become your client. It’s like the red phone idea of clients being able to phone you can get right through. I always check my VIP email first.
I started using Gmail and love it! Here is more info on Google’s email program Gmail.

Use a spam blocker program. Here are links to the most popular spam blocker programs.

9) Get a throw away email address: You can subscribe to some neat services online that will provide you with disposable email addresses. Sneakemail offers disposable email addresses.

I hope these 9 tips for reducing the spam in your inbox will help cut down on the spam you are receiving. Do you have any spam busting tips to share? Share your tips for cutting down on spam here.

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