The web design industry is growing and so is the income, so being a web designer now can’t be a bad thing.

The Growing Industry

Numerous online businesses have, understandably, risen, seeing as how they don’t need expensive inventory, overhead, and sometimes the product itself.

What certain online businesses do is they act as an interface between a wholesaler and the customer. The customer will place an order online on the website and the online business will simply transfer these orders to the wholesaler, making a margin off of the profit in the process.

Places like Wal-Mart have items that are available only online. And to accommodate this, web designers are needed to create, maintain, and optimize the website.

Web Design Salary Increases

Keep in mind that salaries from all areas vary with experience, education, and even location. And even though web designers can work remotely, most businesses prefer to have them nearby to avoid miscommunication issues.

Coroflot Web Design Salary Survey

Coroflot, an employment agency catering to creative workers, published a survey comparing the salaries of web designers to the salaries of other creative designers, which include interior, graphic, and industrial designers.

All fields had similar results. On the lower end, web designers earned about $15,000/yr and on average earned about $56,700/yr. On average, interior designers earned $15,000/yr less.

Graphic designers made $13,000 less and industrial designers earned $3,500 less than the web designers.

At the upper end of the spectrum, industrial designers earned the most, with an annual income of $210,000. Web designers were second with $200,000. Graphic designers followed at $185,000, and interior designers at $100,000.

Also according to the survey, nearly 70% of web designers held a Bachelors degree, 20% a Masters, and the rest a high school diploma.

A web host allows you to put your websites on their servers so that people can access it. There are lots of web hosting companies around. Some have their own servers while others are resellers. Each web host provides you with different plans or packages. You should be very careful, while selecting your host or a particular plan. Most people pay high attention to content and website design and overlook the selection of a proper web host. Many times, they end up selecting a plan that costs more than their needs. Here are seven features that you should look at, while selecting your host or a plan.

1) Disk Space: Each hosting plan offers different amount of disk space. The price is directly proportional to disk space offered. So select a plan that provides you with enough disk space to host your web site. Also, make sure how much you should pay for each additional MB of space in case you need extra.

2) Scripting Languages: You should make sure that your hosting plan supports all the scripting languages that are used in your web application. For example, if your site is created using PHP and Perl, than you must make sure that your host supports both, PHP as well as Perl. Another example is that you cannot use Linux host for websites created in ASP.NET. Also, make sure to look at the version of scripting languages supported by your host. This is extremely important, as some scripts written in PHP 5, do not work in PHP 4.

3) Database: If your web application has a database backend, than you must make sure that your hosting plan provides you with required number of databases. Apart from number of databases provided, it should also provide you with the same database management system that’s used in your web application. You might end up struggling to get your web application running, if your script uses PostgreSQL and you are provided with MySQL database.

4) Uptime: Go for a host that guarantees at least 99% uptime. To provide you with the guarantee of such uptime, your web host should have power generators (Diesel generators), backup systems and connectivity to multiple Internet backbones.

5) 24/7 Support: Make sure that your host provides you with 24/7 support by phone, email or live chat. This is most important if your business totally relies on your website. Your host must give you immediate support in case of emergencies; else you could lose your customers.

6) FTP Support and Online File Manager: FTP helps you in uploading your site quickly and setting permissions to your files and folders. Some hosts provide online file manager, which you can access directly from your account control panel (CPanel). Make sure that your host allows more than one FTP account. This will help you if you need to hire someone to maintain your website. Having more than one FTP account allows you to create a separate account for him rather than sharing your login details.

7) SSL Support: If you are going to host an e-commerce application, than make sure that your host provides you with SSL support. SSL certificate guarantees your users that their credit card information is not accessible to packet sniffers. Your host should have 24/7 monitoring facility of all incoming requests to prevent security breach. Before selecting your web host, take some time and go through all the features that are provided by your candidate hosts. Compare their prices. Call them up or email and clarify all your doubts. This will also show you how quick they are in responding to your requests. Stay away from hosts that claim to provide unlimited bandwidth. Do not select a host just because of their cheap hosting plan. If you have no choice but to go for a cheap web hosting than make sure that they provide you with guaranteed uptime and proper support.

Our services at leaders excel include any where from a personal website to an elite Premium business package website. Our premium package features include creating a personal header with your company’s logo that communicates your product and/or services. Check out Leaders Excel Solutions at www.leaderexcelsolutions today for all of your website needs.

Building your opt-in list starts with having a website that will persuade visitors to spend some time there. By doing that they will be more apt to sign up to your newsletter or offer.

Here are 7 steps that will help accomplish this.

1. Use original material. If they see that you are displaying the same content as similar sites. They aren’t going to stay around for very long.

2. Start out with a headline and introduction that captures their attention. Let them know what is going to be found on your website. It doesn’t take long for today’s surfers to decide if this page is going to be worth further attention.

3. Make sure your visitors know just what they will find on your website. They are looking for information on a certain subject and they need to know that you have their possible answers. Therefore be sure to use the keywords that best fit your web page because when your visitor clicks on a keyword with his browser he wants to find the corresponding content.

4. Be sure you have numerous cross links to various pages on your site so the visitor can browse through it. If he finds it helpful and pertinent he will be more inclined to bookmark your site and come back again. Be sure your links are well designed to catch the reader’s eye.

5. Design your site so your pages can load quickly. Don’t load it up with too many pictures and long blocks of text. Leave enough “white space” so one’s eyes can be drawn down the page. Articles should be broken up into short paragraphs and adjust your text so it is easy to read–not too small nor too light. Difficult in reading the content will discourage a visitor from continuing.

6. Proofread your pages so you don’t make grammatical and spelling mistakes. You need to appear a professional. If you are not sure of the effect the page is presenting let someone else take a look. Forums are a good area to ask members to view your site or particular page. (You will probably receive all kinds of opinions!) But you should definitely get some valuable help.

7. Offer your visitors freebies–ebooks, software, articles etc. that they can download from your site. Ask them if they would fill out a survey which could help you find out for what type of information they are looking, or ask if they would like to sign up for your newsletter. If a visitor does nothing else than to become one of your subscribers and be put on your opt-in email list you have won the first battle.

Now that you have a means to add to your opt-in list by way of your website, you also need to build your list in other ways, especially if you don’t yet have too many hits on your site. That takes time but by building your list you will increase them.

1. Advertise a free ebook. You can have it downloaded from your site as mentioned before or you could have the visitor send you an email and you could attach the ebook to an answering one. This ebook doesn’t have to be more than 7-10 pages.

Advertise your newsletter and send responders to your list via your autoresponder, which will take care of the opting in, and startup of your emails. Be sure any email, whether yours or your autoresponders has an opt-out feature.

Use email signatures, which you can add to the bottom of your emails. In 3-6 lines you put your name, short description and appropriate link to your site or offer.

4. Send an email to an individual email address and ask the recipient if they would like to sign-up for your mailing list or offer the option to decline from any future mailings. Be careful here because anyone receiving your email could consider it to be spam. To me this is the least desirable method.

5. If you have a newsletter in which you have just about exhausted your material and want to start another newsletter on a different area you could send a broadcast and invite anyone nearing the end of your letters to change to the new newsletter. You may be able to keep some of those who are ready to make a change. You won’t gain any new subscribers really but you may be able to keep some of those you might otherwise lose. Let them know that you are proficient in different areas.

As you can see building your opt-in list need not be difficult. Use your imagination and I am sure that you can find many other means to get results.

Our services at leader excel include any where from a personal website to an elite Premium business package website. Our premium package features include creating a personal header with your company’s logo that communicates your product and/or services. Check out Leaders Excel Solutions at www.leaderexcelsolutions today for all of your website needs.

There are many factors that make blogs much better than normal WebPages including the speed at which blogs are indexed, ability to submit to blog directories & normal directories, pings and track backs. All these little things can help drive more traffic to blogs. Here are 15 popular techniques you can use:

1.) Create at least four keyword posts per day. Most of the top blogs such as Boing Boing, Daily Kos, and Instapundit (with literally tens of thousands of visitors per day) publish an average of 30 small 100-150 word posts per day according to “Secrets of the A-list Bloggers: Lots of Short Posts” by TNL.net

2.) Submit to My Yahoo! When you submit your own RSS to My Yahoo it is indexed by Yahoo.

3.) Submit to Google’s Reader. When you submit your own blog RSS to Google’s Reader the Google Blog Search will index your site.

4.) Add a relevant link directory to your blog and trade links like a demon possessed! Although it may take more time than simply submitting to a search engine one time, this method is perhaps the best way to drive traffic to your site. Use software such as Zeus to speed up the link trading process.

5.) Use ping sites like ping-o-matic. Ping your site every time you add a new post.

6.) Submit your blog to traditional search engines such as AltaVista, and MSN.

7.) Submit your blog to traditional directories such as DMOZ. Directories (particularly DMOZ) increase relevance with Google. DMOZ is very picky, but what do you have to lose by trying?

8.) Submit to as many RSS Directories and Search Engines as possible. This is a simple but repetitive process that can be done with software such as RSS SUBMIT.

9.) Comment on other blogs. Do not just leave short, lazy comments like “I agree.” Leave well thought out replies that will force readers to wonder “who wrote this?”

10.) Use track backs. If there is a blog that you refer to or quote and it is highly relevant to your subject, leave a track back. It increases your link popularity and may even score a few interested readers from the linked site.

11.) Go offline. Use newspaper ads, public bulletin boards, business cards, even stickers to let as many people as possible know your blog exists.

12.) Ad a link to your blog in your e-mail signature block.

13.) Use Groups (Usenet). Find a relevant group on Google groups, Yahoo groups, MSN groups or any of the thousands of other FREE group services and find like minded people and talk with them. Make sure your use your blog URL like it is your name.

14.) Use Forums. Forums are one of the best places to go for advice. Go to forums and find problems to solve. Make sure you leave your blog name, but be tactful about it; some forums get annoyed with those who selfishly drop a few links to their own site and leave.

15.) Tag your website. Tagging is a new idea that has erupted across the web. Sites like Del.icio.us, Technorati and many others have a social feature that allows you to place your article under keywords or “tags” that everyone interested in that tag can see.

Although these are some of the most popular ways to drive traffic to your blog, do not limit your self to tips and lists. Use your imagination and you will come up with thousands of ways to drive traffic to your blog!

Our services at leaders excel include any where from a personal website to an elite Premium business package website. Our premium package features include creating a personal header with your company’s logo that communicates your product and/or services.

Check out Leaders Excel Solutions at www.leaderexcelsolutions today for all of your website needs.

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