How To Start A Website

To start any website you need a name or URL, you need to host your website somewhere, you need the ability to design and edit web pages with software, and you need a shopping cart and merchant account.

You also need to know how to program your website, along with marketing and advertising it

Now for the expenses. Your website name or URL can cost around $10 a year, the software to make your web pages can cost a few hundred of dollars, hosting a website can cost hundred or more, and finally, a merchant account with a shopping cart can cost hundreds more.

So, you are looking at anywhere from $500 and up, and that is still not figuring in advertising and marketing, graphics, etc You need to be able to market your website or no one will know you are there. As you can see a traditional website could run you into the $1000s.

So what are the intangibles that you will need?

First, if you want to make money online, you need a laser tight niche. A specific market where you solve a problem or find a need and fill it.

Then second, you need to be able to edit and update the content on a simple website.

The third thing you need is to build relationships with a list of subscribers. Research shows that most sales online are made from the 5th to 10th contact. So build an email list.

Fourth, you need to know how to monetize your site. Money is really only made two ways online, one is through advertising and the other is through selling products. Either you develop a content site that sells advertising, or you develop a content site that sells products, or both. Just remember that Content is King! People arent looking to be sold, they are looking for INFORMATION.

Fifth, no matter what you do online you need content or niche information. People are not going online to buy things, they go online looking to solve problems and/or find information. Let me say that again… People surfing the web are looking for INFORMATION!

Lastly, you need traffic. If people don’t come you cannot build a relationship, so get them there.

When starting a website, there is always unforeseen challenges. That is ok.

Most days you are going to come up against obstacles, the key is that you do not give up, just figure it out and make those course corrections. That is just business… the road is not always easy, but that is what makes it exciting, right?

Like Cortez in history, burn your ships and just keep going forward. Success comes to those who don’t quit. Eventually you will figure out how to overcome those unforeseen obstacles, just keep trying.

The Affordable Touch Screen Phone

In a world of increasingly popular smartphones people who cant afford a top of the line phone might have trouble finding a suitable cellular device. Many consumers just need a phone for simple messaging and phone call usage. The LG Neon is such a phone. It is a bare bones cell phone with a neat touch screen and a camera that actually takes decent looking pictures.

The LG Neon is a very nice looking cell phone. The phone doesnt have any harsh lines. The phone is smooth with rounded edges. The LG Neon is very small and doesnt weigh much, but it still feels good when held in ones hand. The sliding mechanism works well and doesnt feel shaky at all. Despite the small screen images and text will appear great on it. There are also many different options for customizing the font and appearance of the commands on the phone. The LG Neon does feature a touch screen, but strangely enough it only works for dialing numbers. To activate the touch screen dialer you must first hit a button on the navigator array. Then the buttons are displayed on the screen. The touch screen works well but being able to use it for other reasons is surely missed. Inside the slide compartment is a full QWERTY keyboard. The keys are spaced apart very generously and each button is raised above the surface. Typing on this keyboard is very easy and isnt uncomfortable. There are a number of instant messaging and e-mail linking options, such as AOL, AIM, Windows Live Messenger, and Yahoo Messenger. Unfortunately Gmail is not supported by the phone because the LG Neon doesnt support POP or IMAP.

The LG Neon is also a camera phone as well. It offers many image capturing and photo controls. Despite featuring five white balance presets, three quality settings, a 4x zoom, self timer, and five color effects the phone is absent a flash. Be wary of taking photos in dark areas. The quality of the video recorded by the Neon is decent. It can appear grainy and the colors will be slightly muted. The LG Neon doesnt allow the videos to be very long, but anyone with a MicroSD card will be able to record longer videos.

The phone lacks any 3G or Wi-Fi support meaning downloading songs and content will take quite a while. It was so slow it took 12 minutes to download a 1MB song. The web browsing also suffers it can be very slow as well; websites take quite a while to load.

The call quality presented by the LG Neon is above average. The microphone on the Neon does an amazing job at isolating ones voice and not picking up any background noise, even in loud noise traffic areas. The speakerphone does not work as well though. Callers and even music played over it will sound very low.

The LG Neon is a satisfactory phone for anyone looking for something that isnt so expansive. It exceeds at providing consumers with a great phone service as well as text messaging, camera/video recorder, and basic web browsing functions.

Parental Anxieties Of The Internet

The parental anxiety of the internet, its vast applications and information, are in equal measures a bane and a boon. From the positive angle and especially in today’s context, parents would want their child to be able to manage a computer. While most children may have no interest in the various computer languages or be overly concerned with the vast applications, they would certainly know how to create their email id and access the internet.

This too is good as it gives the child the power of connectivity and a link that can provide a huge data of information to help them with their assignments. In fact, the internet has ’shrunk’ the world to a level that they can even learn about other countries and cultures seated at their desk, something that the earlier generation used to glean from the National Geographic magazine, not even the television. Unfortunately, this free information and net connectivity is not minus the misuse, which are the main cause of parental anxiety of the internet.

Any parent knows that full access of the internet will open the windows platform, but also opens doors of concern. For instance, the pornographic sites leave a lasting impression on the impressionable minds, and this cannot be erased overnight. The urge then is to know more, and a contrary cycle is set into motion. But for this, it just would not be fair to deprive the child of the internet entirely, and parents would be wiser in trying to counseling rather than in exercising a ban. Tell them about the rules they violate unknowingly, and tell them the truth about why they should avoid.

While we understand that parents would like to protect the purity of thought and the innocence of childhood, this is the best recourse left to the parents to defer their anxiety level. This is necessary too as some unscrupulous sites actually lure children towards porno-sites in the guise of URLs titled with the information that they would normally seek. The larger anxiety of parents is of their children falling pray to cyber stalkers, paedophiles, sex maniacs, who can entice and lure children on chat lines.

For restraining part of the parental anxiety of internet, it is well said that arming the children is equivalent to teaching them. Therefore, instead of relying on a gadget that only blocks certain sites, open their mind with a vast array of your talks, aligning and spelling out all your fears for them. Place it on the children as a ’shared parent child responsibility’ instead of relying on cyber laws that are applicable only after the damage is done.

Parents should understand that even counter-technology is just a tool, and not some magic wand. However, their anxiety today of the internet can be at ease knowing that the tech-savvy children no longer consider it a new world, but just an alternate environment that ties them to the real world. So real in fact, that the parents should also be prepared to accept that their children have already read this article.

Guitar Lessons for Beginners Online: Private Lessons At Home

After you decide the path you want to take to learn (online, self-taught ect..) there’s nothing wrong with dabbling in other paths too just to broaden your knowledge and learn a new tip or trick here and there. There are also guitar lessons for beginners online to consider that will usually start you out for free and are a great way to get started. These are great because they’re build by well educated instructors and your lesson is there waiting for you each time you log onto your course.

First of all, there are some smaller sites online today through which you might be able to find some individualized attention when it comes to learning the basics of the guitar, including finger picking. In some instances, you can access the guitar lesson opportunities that are available at this smaller venues for a most reasonable fee. Through these sites you many times can garner some one on one attention from an instructor that has an established track record with playing guitar.

It’s natural to lose your initial enthusiasm, but it would be a shame to stop using such a valuable tool with so much potential for making you a really good guitar player. Backing tracks need to be used in conjunction with your planned guitar practice sessions. If you are learning a solo or some licks from a CD or guitar tabs, play them with your backing as soon as you have the material in your memory.

However, I love my guitar, and nothing could ever separate me from it. My guitar is my best friend, and thats how you should treat yours. Look after it, clean it daily, change the strings regularly, even if they still sound ok to you.

With these you can learn picking patterns that you can apply to any songs you learn. You will also be able to pick up tabs for bluegrass fiddle tunes you can learn to play on the guitar. Try any bluegrass forums you find, as well as tab archives.

Practice doing alternate up and down strokes slowly and smoothly using a metronome to keep time. For bluegrass picking use a heavy gauge pick but as with everything, you should try different ones out till you find what’s right for you. You will see and hear that a lot of bluegrass guitar playing consists of the guitarist playing bass notes and strumming in between.

When you are choosing your repertoire, you can spread your net wide. No need to stick to the Top Forty, go for the Top One Hundred of whatever decade you feel comfortable with. An easy way out that does not need too much research is to just jot down a bunch of Beatles titles.

Just take a listen to the CDs and watch the videos featuring flatpickers like Norman Blake, Tony Rice, Dan Crary, Clarence White and Doc Watson. If you are new to the guitar as well as bluegrass music, you will find that you need to work on the use of your plectrum using up as well as down strokes.