I spent my last ten years with five websites and I learned this. A WEBSITE will give you some business, but only establishing a WEB PRESENCE will give you a LOT OF BUSINESS.
WEB PRESENCE is when someone googles your name or your profession and unique features of it, your website shows up, your article, your phone/address and location also and suddenly, you can be found, along with 800 articles you wrote, your biography, your latest inventions. ALL OF IT.
WEB PRESENCE proves that you exist. It is the breath of life. WHAT HAPPENS if you DO NOT HAVE IT? Recently, I saw two men on TV who captured my eye. BRANSON of VIRGIN AIRLINES and KHOSLA, his new partner in a venture to give away billions of dollars to inventors of new, ALTERNATIVE TECHNOLOGIES for ENERGY.
Now, I HAVE a friend JC, of TOPANGA CANYON, who builds, installs ALTERNATIVE ENERGY TECH in homes, solar, wind, whatever. He does homes in Beverly Hills, Bel-Air, so I wasn't worried about finding him. I went looking for my friend's work on alternative fuel, ecology and being OFF-GRID and found my genius hippie pal had no web presence whatsoever.
I googled and Zabasearched 'til I was blind. There was no mention of my successful friend anywhere. I realized his work in SOLAR and sustaining agriculture and building was not chronicled on the web. Of course I suspected WHY. He didn't know how to type or work a PC, although he could build the best solar home and off-grid tech available.
Being Aquarius, I wanted to touch his life with a magic wand, find him for Branson who's searching to give MILLIONS away to innovators, which I knew TOPANGA CANYON JC was. So I dialed a pal, said Where is JC these days? Pal said "dancing at DANCE HOME on Weekends, but so-and-so works for him, call the worker on the phone." And he gave me the phone number... PRIMITIVE but I did it. Worker never called me back, Now I have to find the piece of paper, keep on dialing. (sigh.) And then seek JC's pals so I can email this article to him and he can go to their house and be shown how to read it on screen! HOW MUCH EASIER if the freakin' genius had a web presence!
When you have NO WEB PRESENCE, putting in your name or your interests with a + plus sign next to the name summons up nothing. When you have a web presence, putting J.C. and Alt Solar Tech and TOPANGA CANYON ....bang! you should have the guy!
OK, SO now I go after KHOSLA who was easy to find. KHOSLA VENTURES has kept a finger (nay, his whole hand,) in the Internet since he began which is probably how BRANSON FOUND HIM. (!) While I could have written KHOSLA, go find JC inTOPANGA, I still didn't know where JC was!
I heated a tv dinner and thought about what I'd learned. And I knew I had to google myself, ANITA SANDS and see if I HAD PRESENCE. Well, sort of. I found 833 mentions. googled ANITA SANDS HERNANDEZ found 471 google mentions. Admittedly, some are CRAIGS LIST ADS for NEW HEROES group, although I only put my name in l0% of my ads. And admittedly a few are an Irish lady economist who seeing my success, has clearly borrowed my name.
NOW I realized that I probably had five hundred actual articles written by me online, posted. I was frustrated. I asked myself, why weren't they all coming up? DUHHHHH. Because my name was not on any of them, nor was my email addie.
I HIT THE SIDE OF MY HEAD with a FIST! DUMMIE had been on the internet 11 years and was so self-effacing she didn't put her name on anything she wrote! Cuz I think it ungentlemanly to feature yourself. I loved the "here's the info, use it, it's free" aspect of my offerings (Holism, Psychology, Raising babies, Cooking, Earning a living with GUERILLA CAPITALISM.) But now I'm on this WEB PRESENCE KICK so I'm going to start leaving pidgeon tracks on everything!
Then I thought, wait a minute, I INVENTED STUFF. I WENT to GOOGLE and put in the words "GUERILLA CAPITALISM" in quotes .... an invention of mine, and googled. Sure enough, I was there. WITHOUT A NAME written on top but the article was. Cuz I used that phrase in it.
So I saw the problem and was glad cuz THAT ERROR I COULD REMEDY by changing my 'signature' behavior! I could even go back to every article in my own hardrive, and add signature, re-post them, re- FTP them all over again.
I decided that might knock up my stats. So I thought about it and I realized a few other THINGS I COULD DO TO knock up my webstats: (and I already have a website, but that would be numero uno, of course. so read up on "WEBSITE DESIGN FOR DUMMIES", which I wrote). HOW TO GET WEB PRESENCE!
1) Go to lists of stuff you like, (Snooping into the SNOOPERS (the CIA?) and their sins in the 3rd world, I LOVE that so I'd go to those lists. I'd go to BUSH BOOBOOS lists. But I also am studying RAISING DATES as GLOBAL WARMING will make that the only crop we can grow in Alaska soon. Then, goat raising, vegie growing, orchards, cookery, cottage industries) & contribute to blogs and lists, always leaving my full pidgeon tracks, i.e. name /email. Those things end up being saved by the AKASHIC RECORD of the INTERNET, the HALL OF PERPETUAL RECORDS.
2.) CONTRIBUTE more articles to more websites THAT ARE UP with similar interests and for the google search spiders to always capture my name, probably it should be in the top area.
3.) BECOME A WEB
ACTIVIST AND USE YOUR OWN WEBSITE for that.
4.) DO A BLOG, but do it RIGHT.
If you've ever looked at a blog page, rarely is it inviting to read. NO
TITLE ON TOP, SUMMARIZING What we're talking about. Just a hodgepodge
of entries, yours and theirs. And often, you get a lot of Flat short, multiple
paragraphs lying there, OUT OF CONTEXT. NOBODY SENSES the context. THAT
IS A DANGEROUS THING. YOU NEED BULLETS. HEADLINES OR BANNERS, NO
BULLETs, there's no sense of who wrote them. Were these contributed
by readers or is there an AUTHOR. NO PICTURE Of him, no sense of who this
voice in the wilderness is. WORSE is AN ARTICLE length blog with
long paragraphs NO TITLE ON TOP, NO BULLETS/headlines.
The most inviting-to-read kind of piece has certain features:
A.) TITLE which is going to be the theme of the article
B.) Graphics, JPGS or GIFS, PICTURES! It doesn't have to be of you, it can be a picture related to the THEME, web presence NAPOLEON. That works.. We all are kids who love comic books so lots of PICTURES! Then your NAME. YOU ARE THE AUTHOR & You are building yourself as a product. You think CORNFLAKES doesn't have that word on the box? Or KELLOGS? and put your EMAIL addie RIGHT AT TOP.
C.) THEN THE SUBJECT of each paragraph as a bullet. Short paragraphs, Paragraphs are a little wider than the average narrow blog, more like a conventional book It is on colored paper. There are bullets or headlines at every paragraph too, THESE satisfy the NEED TO KNOW WHY ONE SHOULD READ on. People ask me not to use CAPS to so violently and loudly emphacize stuff. (sigh.) I don't always listen. Wanna vote on the subject?
D.) DO NOT UNDERLINE any word in your article. You can EMPHACIZE with ITALICS. Underlines look like an URL. URLS are live links. They are underlined. Once folks see you know enough to create live links, they'll click on them all for a fast digression.
E.) FORMAT THE PAPER into a light color and USE SOME DARKER COLOR on WORDS. But don't go wild.
F.) Soon as you are able to free up 36$ a year, 3$ a month, get a domain name. Create your website then call up WebHosting Corp, DRAK.NET, all girl biz in Texas, really recommended by pals who've used them for years. First ask them if they'll get your domain name free. Meanwhile, before you BUY the domain name, no visiting the domain names you think up to see if they are available and if you are, STOP! If the web site does not exist because nobody owns the name, the info gets saved somewhere. It then is given or sold to people who look through the lists. If they like any of the names, they'll register them and you'll be out of luck. This is common knowledge in "domainer" circles. My pal lost a couple of domain names that way.
G.) Write your files. A live link on your main page leads to each
file. And use bullets at top of each paragraph, which summerize. Read the
NEXT PARAGRAPH and note the SUMMARIZING BULLETS which lend it PEP, but
also make it easy for dullards to get the gist of every word.
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SPIES IN YOUR PC? YES. WHY?
CORPORATIONS WANT TO GET INSIDE YOUR PC. They want to know your surfing habits. WHY? blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah now lots of small print.
ANOTHER BULLET: So WHAT CAN I DO?blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
ANSWER:(as many bolded bullets as you can wreak!) HOW TO FOIL THEIR SPYWARE WITH YOUR OWN! That's the answer. blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
HOW DO I LOAD SPYWARE? Free online, download some. blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah blah
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FOR MORE ON WEBTECH, WEBSITE DESIGN FOR DUMMIES,
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