Well...things have been moving right along lately. You can tell when you have a real business: every one starts to call you to sell all of there B2B products and services. I received such a call yesterday from a company that is going to help me tighten up my site for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). They were referred to my by Discover Card: glad my information isn't being sold. One good thing about this relationship, is that they will bill my Discover account directly (my merchant account), so I don't have any out of pocket expenses. Now I just need to get enought customers through my site to user their Discover Cards, so I can pay for this service. The cost of what they do is almost $50.00/month.
On another note: I have been busy updating my site over the past few days. If you visit the site now, you will notice first that the home page looks somewhat different. All I have done there is take out some pictures: but I will be working to revamp the look and feel of the entire site; starting with the index.html. I have also been applying for acceptance with many companies with their affiliate programs. The main reason for this (outside of getting paid), is to offer my customers and visitors the ability to find what they are looking for: even if it didn't come from me (directly or indirectly). That concept was learned by me when I was much younger: after seeing the movie "Miricle On 31st Street": when the main charictor, Chris Kringle, who was working as the "Store Santa" for a major department store; would refer customers away from "his" store to another store, if they had what the customer wanted.
It is my personal belief that there is enough money to be made out here, that we can all share. I am not a greedy person, and all I want to do is make my own little bit. Additionally, I think that it is very important to put the customers needs before your own personal needs. If I provide you with the service that you want and need, you are more likely to use my service in ther future. Additionally, you will also be more likely to tell your family and friends: and THAT is the best kind of advertising that any one could ask for.
Although I have now been accepted by many companies in their affiliate programs, I will limit the number of ads on my pages, so as not to over-whelm you, our valuable customer. If I get over excited, and things start to look too crowded, please let us know. We want your experience with us to be a positive one.
One last thing concerning the pages. I have been going through all of the pages and adding "bread crumbs" at the top and bottom of each page. Bread crumbs are those text links that take you back to the previous pages in the chain. Generally, they would look something like this:
HOME >>
CATALOGS >>
COMPUTERS
In the above example, the links in blue (or purple if you had already used it), are links to the previous page(s). The web site starts at HOME (index.html), and progresses to the The CATALOGS page (where all of the catalogs are listed, and then ends on the COMPUTERS page, where all the products under that catagory are listed. As COMPUTERS is the current page, it is not a link. You can click on eithor of the other links (in any order), or of course, you can always use the tabs to the left. Eventually, we may be adding text links to all the tabbed sections that will be located on the bottom of the page in the following format:
[
HOME] [
PRODUCT OF THE WEEK] [
CATALOGS] and etc. Of course, the type size will most likely be much smaller, to conserve on space, and make it less distracting from the rest of the page.
