The art of PR (public relations)

Public relations (pr) should be built into your website business plan from the start.
Public relation is both an art (persuasion) and science (social, linguistic and economic) which builds bridges between an organization/company and its key publics.  

A PR professional has to be able to understand its clients goals, the skills to handle the media relations, the capacity to charm the audience, gain its understanding and acceptance, the ability to practice “a craft that calls for the deft mix of human behavioral skills and communication techniques.” Some of the PR professionals functions can be: to analyze problems and opportunities, to define goals, to identify the audience, to plan activities, to cultivate useful relationships (with the media, with financial organization, legislatives etc), to writes news releases, brochures, speeches, reports, to organize special events, deliver public speeches.   

Usually public relation didn’t have a positive imagine in a person’s mind for various reasons: there was not an ethic standard for this profession, no special requirements to entry into the field,  was believed that everybody can do the job. But according to The Fall of Advertising and the Rise of PR (HarperBusiness) its importance is growing rapidly. People seem to finally understand that public relations means more than advertising a company’s products or services; it means influencing people’s decisions, building reputation and creating brands (the Body Shop or Harry Potter cases for example).   

Public relation is an important part of the marketing (it brings the company messages, products, services to the targeted audience) but it is also well connected to the management (because the techniques used to get public attention and acceptance).  

What actually does a public relation do? It helps the management of a company know what to do regarding policies, relationships and communications, determines the attitude and the behavior of the public regarding a product/service and finds the way to favorable change it, informs and motivates the employees or retirees of an organization and their families, helps company to adapt to public expectations (it is also called “public affair”), communicates with different  regulatory agencies or legislatures to sustain an organization interest (also called “lobbing”); develops relation with the financial community on behalf of an organization (also called investor or shareholder relations).  

Today public relation is a must to any company/organization that seeks for success.

Add comment August 7th, 2007

Godaddy .info and .com renewal codes

There is no .info renewal code at this point in time but you can use this code ‘OYH1′ 10% off anything.  UPDATE aug 2007 on the .info you can renew with ‘lol73′ code for $5.99 a year for .infos at this current moment.

www.GoDaddy.com .  For .com you can use ‘OYH3′ for 6.95$ .Com domains.

Add comment August 4th, 2007

Roboform coupon code

Roboform rembers your passwords for various sites and automatically takes you to the sites login page and logs you in when you click a button for that site. It saves loads of time and only costs $30.   You can reduce the cost by $10 by entering ‘SNC’  into the roboform coupon discount code box and clicking update.  

Add comment July 10th, 2007

Best domain registrars

I have quite a few domains and have been using many registrars over the years.

For .co.uk I recommend http://www.ukreg.com. They are one of the cheapest (123-reg has a poor interface and don’t take paypal).

For .com ($8.88 http://www.namecheap.com ($8.88 you can get $1 off with a coupon or http://www.godaddy.com  (about the same or $6.95 +22cent ican fee with a coupon).  Renewals can be a pain in the ass as godaddy or namecheap don’t tend to give discounts. One trick I have used is to transfer domains between the two at a discounted rate and register the domain for a long period of time at the discounted rate. For example I transfereed a domain from namecheap (8.88 renewal fee) to godaddy (6.95 transfer fee) and registered the domain for 5 years saving me about $5.

For .info I use godaddy but there $10.22 renewal fee is a rip off. I am looking for a cheap renewal fee for .infos if anyone has any suggestions, please comment.

For .net www.moniker.com $5.49 an average interface but the 5.49 renewal and registration fee is the best about and they have a good reputation.

Go to domainnamecoupons.com or dncoupons.com to get discount vouchers for domains.

2 comments July 1st, 2007

Diversifying my website income

Like a lot of web entrepreneurs I only really use google adsense on my sites.
I like adsense but I think I am just too dependant on it. What I have promised myself I would do is to try to diversify my income. So I have started making money from directory submissions (www.bizbookmarks.com, themetree.com, bizsocial.com), parking my unused domains (I should have done this a long time ago) at auctionads which basically allows you to put ebay ads on your site, its quite similar to adsense in the way it works .

I have also got another advertiser from text link ads (see $100 in FREE Links) on this blog see, Technology public relations at the footer of this blog in the red box..

Update on the bank card fraud: I have submitted a disputes form to my bank.

Add comment June 11th, 2007

The importance of having a robots.txt file

I didn’t really place much importance on having a robots.txt file hence some of my sites had one and some others didn’t.  Now the problem with not having one is that if Google cannot find your robots.txt file and doesn’t get a 404 page not found error, Google won’t spider (crawl/index) your site. 

This created the problem of my homepages not being indexed but the rest of the site was. I found this problem by logging into sitemaps and verifying my site.

Add comment June 3rd, 2007

Running a website business

Since we are living in the century of speed and technology, more and more people prefer to run businesses from home, and especially website business. I personally run a website business, so I will share with you some of my experience and give you some tips on how you should run such a business.

First of all, do not look at this matter as to a complex and complicated deal. A website business is not much different from any ordinary business. Just think at it as if you would run a gift shop, a book store, a restaurant or any other business. You wouldn’t do one of these businesses without growing and promoting it, would you? Put in this perspective, your website should be run exactly the same way you would treat one of these brick-and-mortars. Every business requires an inventory, proper management, advertising, and several other operations. All these are done for a growing prosper business.

What you need to know is that the world of websites has suffered important changes. Competition at this level is an important aspect. Therefore, perseveration and a lot of work are required. A proper site management is the key of success. As in any other business, the key of success can be resumed to three aspects: proper planning, timing and naturally a little bit of luck. So, before you start a website business, you must know exactly what is selling best on the on-line market. So, you must carefully study the market, the trends, the competitors, and only after that make the final decision related to what you will be selling.

Then you will have to worry about the number of visitors on your site. As a tip for you, know that most of the online users need to have a reason to visit your website. So, the easiest and meanwhile the best way to generate interest from the internet users is to offer them soothing to do on your website. So, forums, games, downloads, entertainment, blogs and so on can be of great help. Also, do not forget to design your website properly and to make it as attractive as possible. This aspect can be improved simply by asking the visitors in a special forum.

Search engines and search directories are highly important in the world of website businesses so this aspect must never be disconsidered. If you do that, some visitors will never even know that your site exists. A website with good search engine listing placement will see a dramatic increase in traffic. This means one important thing: lots of online viewers are coming to your website. Zero traffic equates to zero sales. And this normally leads to capital loss.

Add comment May 28th, 2007

Online Bank Card Fraud

I checked my business bank account the other day to find that there has been three transactions that I didn’t make on there (about £200 or $400). I immediately cancelled my card. I only ever use my business account to make purchases online and all of these are made from reputable companies (with registerfly as the exception). I have never replied to any dodgy phising emails or anything like that. So the details of the card must have been got by an employee of one of these companies or via hacking or something.

I have decided that from now on I won’t use my card online I will use a payment service such as paypal or google checkout.

I don’t know if I will get my money back or not I have emailed all the companies that purchases were made from and I will ring my banks disputes hotline tomorrow. I will keep you updated.

Add comment May 20th, 2007

Making money with a website

One of the most important advantages of web business is that you are free or nearly free to do anything. When it comes to making money with a website, creativity is the key. I will start this article with some of Karl Taylor Compton, former president of MIT words. Back in 1938 he said: “In recent times, modern science has developed to give mankind, for the first time in the history of the human race, a way of securing a more abundant life which does not simply consist in taking away from someone else.”

He spoke the truth, since nowadays more and more people make money using a website. In fact, you can’t even see a company nowadays that does not use computers. But let’s say more about how you can really get profit using a website. When you build a site you must choose the type of site you will have. You can choose a “magazine-like Web Publishing” or a “Web-based Application”. I have divided the site categories that can lead to profit into four. The first type would be the sites which provide collaboratively created information. Using forums and e-mails you can collect information from the public and then publish them each year. This can be done in other ways, but with the internet it is less expensive, it is not so time-consuming, and with a just a little bit of work, you can have everything done. To understand better such categories of websites think at eBay.

Another category would be sites that provide traditional information. What is most intriguing at this type of site is that, even it requires less imagination and creativity, the investment capital would be more important. You can search for pieces of information that were unavailable to the consumers on-line (such as old magazines, newspapers, weather reports, movies, television, videos, stock market information, and so on) and sell them now. Ad banners, links to your sites and all types of revenues can get you a lot of visitors.

The third category is represented by sites that provide on-line services. What kind of services? Well imagine a website that provides wedding planning online. The users will tell you what kind of wedding they want, how much they want to spend, and when the wedding will take place. Your program will figure a detailed budget, make the invitation list, and all other activities you can do online. After that you can find a famous hotel, restaurant and ask them to give visit cards to their guests. And imagine all other ways to make your business famous.

Now that you know all these important types of site, you can continue your work and expand your business or even imagine new ways of making money with a website.

Add comment May 13th, 2007

Site size (Volume) vs Site niche

This is something that I am still unsure about. Is it best to build a big general site or is it best to build lots of small niche ones. I have built a few sites and in general the bigger sites that are general tend to have averaged out earnings. Whereas the niche sites get spikes (if it where a graph) where the money comes in.  I have tried looking at the stats etc… I have come to this conclusion: It’s good to have a mixture of general sites and niche ones.

The general sites will provide a consistent income stream whereas the niche ones will provide  spikes in your income.

1 comment May 6th, 2007