You want to get a presence online. You want to tell the world about yourself and your family, start an online business, promote your offline business or just for the fun of it! You don’t want to spend a vast fortune on your online presence but you want to create a good looking website. The good news is that it is possible to create web pages with a real wow factor using just a free website builder. Find out how…
You can start with just your computer!
You can get your website started using just your computer. To create a website in this way you will have to write your pages using HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language – but don’t worry about that!). HTML is the standard way that web pages are coded for transmission to any computer in the world. Your web browser takes an HTML file and turns it into the image you see on the screen.
Learning and using HTML may sound pretty daunting at first – and there is a large learning curve to get started. But it’s not impossible. Try this:
Open a text editor on your computer (e.g. Notepad or Wordpad if you’re on a PC) and type in Hello – that’s all you’ll need. The trick is to save this file using “save as”, select “all files” in the “save as type” box and save it as test.html. When you look at the folder where you’ve saved the file, you should see your file showing up as an HTML document. When you double click on this document, it will open in your web browser and display the word Hello on a white background – you’re first webpage!
…Of course things get a bit more difficult when you want to create a good looking page with an attractive layout and lots of graphics!
Luckily there’s a load of free resources on the internet – including several excellent HTML primers – that can help you to learn to do everything you want to do. Just set aside a good chunk of time for learning.
The benefits of learning HTML are:
* You will get a good understanding of how web pages really work
* There are time when being able to tweak a page directly is by far the fastest way to get the result you want!
Use A WYSWIG editor
Just like the word processor you use on your computer, there are What You See is What You Get (WYSWIG) editors for HTML documents. You may have been put off in the past by the high price tag of industrial strength products. The good news is that there are some excellent new products around that you can download for free from the internet.
While these free products don’t have all the features of the expensive commercial products, I have test driven one or two of them and I have found that they are perfectly ok to create good quality websites. The benefits of a WSYWIG editor are
* You don’t have to learn HTML if you don’t want to.
* You can create good looking web pages quickly – I’ve put together pages literally in minutes!
* Some of the editors come with very helpful video tutorials that cover all the important stuff you need to know to create professional looking websites
* Good editors have facilities to help you manage an entire website
* If you do decide to familiarise yourself with HTML, good editors will include a facility that lets you look at the HTML you’ve created
Perhaps the only disadvantage of using a WYSWYG editor from day one of your online career is that you may never find out how to tweak a web page by editing the HTML – but that’s a small price to pay for the overall convenience of using an editor!
Summary
You can create a good looking, professional website without having to spend a penny on expensive software to help you. It’s possible to start with just your computer and a bit of determination, teach yourself HTML and build a website from the ground up.
If you don’t relish the learning curve you’ll need to get familiar with HTML, you can download a free WYSWIG editor and get started within minutes! I’ve tried both and I would recommend you start with a good WYSWIG editor such as My Free Website Builder. You can use it to create your own high quality, professional looking website.
By Kevin J. John
Credit card fraud is a problem. We all know this fact. But what are the appropriate steps to combat this crime. Hexa has listed some protection strategies of their own.
Credit card fraud has become pervasive on the Internet. According to MasterCard International, account takeover fraud has increased by 369% since 1995. It has become one of the fastest growing types of fraud, and one of the more difficult to combat. More than $700 million in online sales were lost to fraud in 2001, representing 1.14 percent of total annual online sales of $61.8 billion, according to GartnerG2.
Even if the credit card company has given the authorization as to the validity of the card, there are several ways fraudulent cards can be used on your site. The card may have been lost or stolen, but the card owner is yet to report its loss. Or the number on the card (and not the card itself) may have been lifted without the knowledge of the owner. There is also a scam called identity theft, where the card has been issued under false pretenses using someone else’s identity and data.
As an online merchant, you need to have a system to check the authenticity of orders placed to safeguard your business. While the effort may require additional time and money, it can save you the cost and stress caused by charge-backs for fraudulent orders. You lost your physical products; you lose the sale price; you lose another business opportunity; and you will be fined an additional $15-$50 charge-back fee.
If you have a high percentage of charge-backs, your card services company can even blacklist you and cancel your merchant account. You will also spend time looking up the order and provide the requested information to your card services company. All of these hassles are things you can surely do without.
How can you protect your business from credit card frauds? Here are a few steps that can be taken to ensure that the transaction is being requested by the real cardholder.
* Suspect shipping address. According to ClearCommerce Corporation, a provider of payment processing and fraud protection software for e-commerce, orders from Ukraine, Indonesia, Yugoslavia, Lithuania, Egypt, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey, Russia and Pakistan have a very high incidence of fraud, and often have unverifiable addresses.
* Untraceable email address. In many fraudulent orders, the customer’s email address is often at one of the free email services, like hotmail.com and yahoo.com, which are relatively untraceable.
* Expensive items. Be wary of expensive orders, especially for expensive brand-name items.
* Multiple items. It can be a bad sign, for example, if someone orders three X-Box or three DVD players at once, especially where the items have a high resale value.
* Express shipping. Most fraudulent orders specify overnight or 1-day shipping without hesitation.
* Shipping address differs from billing address. Receiving point and billing address are different in fraud orders. If you are selling valuable items, it can be a good policy only to ship to the billing address of the card’s holder.
* Suspicious billing address. The address looks too simple or invalid. If the billing address is 123 Main St, New York, the order is probably fraud. You can use or online location tool to see if the address can be verified.
* Leave at door or post office box. If the courier service cannot guarantee delivery of goods, the risk of fraud is very high.
The advancement of geo-targeting in the Internet allows us to pinpoint the geographical region for an order. The information can be used to reduce the fraud by verifying it with the billing address and delivery address. This method can identify the scenario where someone from country X has stolen the credit card data from country Y. The IP address lookup service will reveal the real country instead of relying on the country filled in the order form.
IP2Location™ provides technology to translate IP address to country origin. The lookup table is available in several formats such as database and COM. It is the perfect solution to automate the fraud detection using client side programming languages like C++ & Visual Basic; or service side programming languages like ASP, PHP, JSP and CFML.
For example, company XYZ received a credit-card order from IP address 161.139.12.3. The order details are as following:
Name: John Ma
Address: 123 Main St
City: New York
ZIP Code: 1111
Country: United States
Tel: (503) 111-1111
Credit Card No: 1234 5678 9012 3456
Expired Date: December 2010
Credit card merchant processor will authorize this order if the billing address matches the order details. Unluckily, the credit card data has been stolen earlier by Mr. ABC from another country through the Internet. Later, he made a purchase of digital products from company XYZ using the information. His order approved by the merchant because all the details matched John’s record in the bank’s database. IP2Location™ technology can filter the difference between order’s country and record’s country upfront to protect your business. You can classify this kind of order for manual inspection before delivering the goods. You will be surprise how much this method will help in identifying fraud orders.
For the implementation, we use a fully functional IP2Location™ ActiveX component available at http://www.ip2location.com/ip2location-country.zip to query country by visitor’s IP address. The unregistered version has a 5-second delay in each query.
First, install the ActiveX component in IIS web server. It could be as simple as running a command in DOS prompt.
C:\> regsvr32 ip2location.dll
We create a script to compare the lookup country and data given in the order authorization flow. It serves as a filter to reduce fraud. All rejected orders will be manual verify by merchants.
verify.asp
<% ‘ Country info filled in the form (US is only an example) BillingCountry = “US” ‘ Create server-side object Set ipObj = Server.CreateObject(”IP2Location.Country”) ‘ Initialize IP2Location object If ipObj.Initialize(”demo”) <> “OK” Then
response.write “IP2Location Initialization Failed.
End If
‘ Get visitor’s IP address
IPaddr = Request.ServerVariables(”REMOTE_ADDR”)
‘ Detect visitor’s country of origin by IP address
CountryName = ipObj.LookUpShortName(IPaddr)
‘ Free IP2Location object
Set ipObj = nothing
If CountryName = BillingCountry Then
‘ IP address originates from country in billing address
‘ Low Fraud Risk
Else
‘ IP address different from country in billing address
‘ High Fraud Risk
End If
%>
This article is courtesy of:
Hexa Software Development Team
sales@ip2location.com
http://www.devarticles.com
The best and successful marketers have a special care writing a sales letter Describing the benefits of a product or service and it have to be a long sales Sales letter to build a nice income online. There are two good reasons.
A long sales letter take the reader’s attention on your offer if you have an option To click to a new page it will cause 40 to 80% lost of them ,it works because Doesn’t distract readers ,visitors of unnecessary clicks or choices. A long sales letter guide ,walk,readers ,visitors, through the critical stages of the Sales process create excitement establish credibility,build value,remove the Risk,and ask for the order ,all need to happen following the precise order Allowing you to guide your readers towards important buying decision with The expertise of an experienced sales person.
Step 1.-write your headline and subheadline .- the both are most important part Of your sales letter,you have to grab the reader’s attention, it is the first thing They will see get them excited then write them into your sales letter. A good headline must to communicate a compelling benefit for a create problem That let visitors what they NEED, your letter sales to find the solution and solve The problem,give “power” in your words like: free,sale,easy,quick, guaranteed bargain,proven,results,save you. There are powerful headlines that promise an end result like “ know to” or headlines that makes take action for example “how to learn” ,”discover how” ,”increase your” ”how to become”,”reduce” “stop wasting” “learn the secrets” “arise your income” “stop wasting money marketing your own website learn successful and proven techniques and get unstoppable traffic. It creates a serious problem for the reader-stop wasting money marketing your Own website- It promotes a great benefit as part of the solution to this problem -learn successful and proven techniques and get unstoppable traffic”.This Attract the right audience it makes exciting to keep reading as heck! Step 1.- Establish your credibility.-post the statements of your satisfied clients
Step 2.-Creating the problem.-You need write a headline or subheadline to grab Your reader’s attention ,they will interest and will lead to first paragraph and Have a discussion of the problem to your reader making you that they need your Product or service give you a reason to continue reading to solve the problem.
Step 3.-Establishing credibility You need to figure out that your readers would Feel confortable enough to buy your product or servive when the testimonials Coming of grab one the best and post at the top of the sales letter.
Step 4.- Telling the story.-make your sales letter friendly and fun tell your Readers you have create your product or service why you developed a new Service how did you start.
Step 5.- Put yourself in the reader’s case .- before you want to convince your Audience that you offer a solution for the problem then you have to put clear That you understand the problem then you have created a website for that Identifying with the readers problems.
Step6.-Give an overview of your solution.- Here is where you can expand on On the resolution of the problem you don’t have to explain how your Product or service works,you just need to provide your offer benefits of Your product or service.A list of points which they are easy to read. *How to increase the traffic site in 400% *two things you have to do to Get a free traffic* discover the secrets that gurus are using to get traffic.
Teofilo Calle
