Building eCommerce

By greg smyth

Have you ever heard of a server problem through anyone you know? Or maybe some ones website going down for no fault of their own. If you conduct a business or businesses on the internet it is important, i mean vital, that you backup your website in case of disasters. They could be caused because of theft, fire, lightning, power blackouts, natural disasters like floods, hurricanes, volcanoes and even earthquakes. There is probably more, but are you prepared?

I am willing to bet most website owners trust their hosting companies to cover all problems, but they cannot! You must take care of your own business/es and back up your files. In a past life one of my job titles was Disaster Recovery and Security Co-Ordinator. My job was with a large Australian company who thought ahead and got in place a plan in case of a disaster. We tested on weekends our plan of being able to restore our complete Mainframe Computer System in a day.

Big companies realise that their data and clients are vital to their business and plan ahead, so must you. What they did as part of their normal operations was to back up every disk daily, weekly and monthly. Then these back ups were stored in a safe place both onsite and offsite.

What i suggest is to do the same and backup your website files on a regular basis. I backup the folder with all my website files(which i upload to the website server) onto a small hard disk that plugs into my USB slot on my computer. That then means that i have 3 copies of my website files, one on the website server, one on my laptop hard disk and one on this removable USB hard disk. Even a 4gb USB drive is enough(depending on the size of your site), and they are very cheap to buy. It is also a wise move to store this USB disk offsite, that is not at your house or place of business. If you go see your parents every week, make sure you backup before you go, and ask them to take care of your USB disk.

How often you ask should i backup? That is completely up to you and how often you change pages on your website. If you only change things once a fortnight, then once a fortnight should be enough. I personally do it once a week, but that is my choice.

Do not rely on other people to protect your vital website files, do it yourself and have peace of mind. A disaster could be just around the corner. What happens if your hosting company suddenly goes out of business or has a disaster? Simply load your website files onto another hosting companies server and your in business again.

It can take some people months to build up a website, do not put all that hard work at risk. Think of it like car insurance, you must have it. Protect yourself and your online business at all costs!

About The Author

Gregory Smyth is an Internet and Affiliate Marketer who has a Membership site at www.mysitemembers.com
Members have the chance of winning Prizes of $1000 and $5000 EVERY month, including Resell Rights downloads. Only $10 per month! www.mysitemembers.com

By Jane Dawson

Marketing Sherpa, the marketing research group, has recently completed an excellent analysis of the return experienced versus the work required for a number of email strategies.

Marketing Sherpa looked at three indicators:

- Level of usage
- Level of effort
- Level of effectiveness

for the following email tactics:

- Ads in third party newsletters
- Sharing email on social networks
- Email to rented lists
- Event triggered autoresponder emails
- Email to house lists
- Delivering content to relevant segments

And related the two factors to level of usage.

The results show make some clear distinctions between what is worth doing and what may not be worth doing.

Ads in third party newsletters

This tactic is listed as requiring very little effort but being less than ten percent effective.

Accordingly, most marketers do not waste much time on this tactic. This result seems to suggest that when you target someone by email, you need to be providing worthwhile content in order for that contact to be useful. Ads would not necessarily be seen as useful, particularly since the receiver opted into getting info from the newsletter producer, not the ad producer.

Sharing email on social networks

Sharing email on social networks takes a bit more effort to perform, probably because most companies have not organized their social marketing tasks using an application that allows them to do simultaneous updates. This tactic also scores quite poorly in terms of effectiveness and is not frequently used for that reason. Marketers accordingly use this tactic least frequently.

It is probably predictable that sending to a list of people who have not specifically opted in for information is not effective. One of the keys to effective email campaigns seems to be the necessity of the receiver having an already established interest in receiving the material.

Email to rented lists

This tactic has an extremely poor effectiveness showing and actually takes a bit more effort than either ads in third party newsletters or sharing emails on social networks.

Event triggered autoresponder email

This tactic includes emails sent after a purchase or in response to a site visit. This method requires some setup time but much less ongoing effort to implement than the tactic of delivering relevant content. It is also about half as effective.

It is interesting that this tactic is seen as only about thirty percent effective given that it is triggered as a response to a consumer action. The message may be that customers act in their own time, not in response to the sellers strategy.

Email to house list

Email to a house list takes the same amount of time as creating and sending autoresponders but it is twice as effective, underscoring the finding that email works best when people agree to receive it.

Delivering content to relevant segments

This tactic is the most sophisticated marketing technique. Customized content is created for your opt in list based on specific interests or demographic categories or purchasing history. Naturally, this technique is the most labor intensive, requiring fifty percent of marketers efforts but ranks as most effective at seventy percent.

Marketers report that they focus over eighty percent of their email strategy effort to generic and customized emails to in house lists. The messages to take from this survey are:

- People respond to emails that they have chosen to receive

- The more customized to recipient interests, the more effective.

Use this information to prioritize your company’s email efforts.

About The Author

Source wholesale drop shippers & wholesalers, dropshippers, dropshipping & dropship suppliers. Browse wholesale uk dropshippers by country: French dropshippers, wholesalers & distributors, wholesale forum & discussion and US wholesalers.