March Blog Post - Number 1

 

Hi, and welcome to the first of the March issues of the “BLOG” from the desk, (small table in the conservatory actually) of Derrick Wilcox.

I don’t possess a desk, or an office for that matter but I do possess a lot of knowledge about internet marketing that I am willing to share with you FREE OF CHARGE, no you won’t be getting a website to visit at the end of the page and there won’t be a  “buy now”  button either!

 

Just in case you’ve never heard of me, Derrick Wilcox is  my proper name, I don’t  need to hide behind a false name or company name. Everything you hear from me is what I honestly believe in. I will NEVER try to ram anything down your throat or try to convince you to buy any of the rubbish that is flying around out there. Anything I suggest you to take a look at will be something I believe in, have used myself and have found to be of value and, or interest, and you may find useful yourself.

Hang on a sec. Let me tell you as quickly as possible how I got into this business.

It all started seven years ago I was an engineering manager at one of the country’s largest aluminum ingot producing companies. At the age of 58 and working for the company for some 18 years I was pretty much set up for life, or so I thought.

One day at work my right knee gave way and I fell to the ground. Didn’t think too much of it and carried on. This happened a few more times, each time more frequent  than the last and each time more painful. Eventually my wife persuaded me to go to the doctors. Long story short, lots of x-rays, MRI scans and tests, result rheumatoid arthritis, one knee replaced immediately, the other looking like lasting another year. I went back to work for a while, two days after coming home from hospital to be exact, much to my wife’s disgust and disapproval, to sort out a problem with one of our large electric furnaces, managed to get aluminum dust in the eight inch cut on my knee and ended up with all sorts of problems.

My wife informed me very politely that she was not happy with the situation and if I was to remain happily married then it might be a good idea if I retired a few years earlier than planned. I, of course agreed with her, as you do for a nice peaceful married  life, and handed in my six months notice  not really thinking about what I was going to do with all my spare time. I had been used to working anything between sixty and eighty hours a week  and didn’t really have any time for hobbies, sport or any of the other activities normal people do in their spare time. During my time as engineering manager I had managed to save a considerable amount of money, I had bought and sold a few houses, (when you could do it and make money) saved quite a bit (my wife says we didn’t have time to spend any) and had a few decent pensions lined up.

The six months flew by and I retired, decorated the house, weeded the garden, cut the lawn, washed the car, my Landrover I bought myself as a retirement present and then looked around for something to do in the second week of my retirement. I was bored. I had always been interested in computers, I had one of the first, program it yourself, Atari’s, I had put all the maintenance programs at work onto computer and had a top of the range one at home I used for interacting with my work computer and anything else I wanted to do on a computer, write a letter ! or look something up on Google. Anyway, whilst playing around on the computer I started looking at programs and websites about making a million in two days and retiring to some Caribbean island you had just bought to entertain friends on, all from pressing a few buttons and a few clicks of a mouse. That was it! I was going to spend the rest of my life earning millions and living the high life. I bought countless get rich quick programs, endless tuition programs and even went on a three day seminar in Bournemouth, that cost me £9000 plus hotel expenses, ( I only got away with that because I told the wife I was taking her away for a few days). As for the £9000 I would have been better off sticking on a donkey at Cheltenham races. I don’t honestly how much I have spent on trying to  become an internet guru, if I did know I couldn’t write it here in case the wife ever got to read this, but I do know it’s quite a bit! Anyway that was in the past, I now know what I am doing and would like to stop you doing just some of the stupid things I have done.

Sorry it is not the usual, I was in the gutter, penniless when this man dropped a CD on the floor that was the blueprint to making easy money story, or my wife left me, the house was about to be repossessed and I met a man in a pub who told me the secrets of hidden wealth story, or even the two Russian programmers I hacked into and stole all their money making programs story, no, sorry my story is the boring truth.

Anyway, hopefully, on to why you are reading this

If you are new to internet marketing then it must look a very daunting place, you will be getting all sorts of weird phrases and words you have never heard of thrown at you from all directions. You’ll be hearing and seeing SEO, PPC, PPV, Adsence, Adwords, Keywords and a thousand other words which I am convinced were only invented to confuse you. Don’t panic !! Stay calm, no problem, you can and will get over all this gobbledigook.  Just you wait and see.

Step One.  You are probably going to need a website. That is if you want people to know what you are doing, what you are saying or what you are selling. A web site is a bit like a few bits of paper with writing and pictures on it, floating around the world for anyone who is interested to take a look at. Bet you’ve never heard it described like that before.

Right, you will need a name for your new website, actually you can call it anything you like, within reason, you know, you should try and  be reasonably sensible. If it’s about you, you might want to call it your name or something to do with you, if it’s a business website you might want to call it your business name or something to do with your business, anyway you need to decide on a name and providing no one else has that name, it’s yours. It’s going to cost you money, don’t worry a few quid for a year’s rent of the name will do. Your website name is called its domain name and will start with www. (this bit means world wide web) then you get your name bit in the middle and your site will end with .com or .co.uk, or . something else depending on which one you choose, the dot com one is probably the most common and is used all over the world, the dot co.uk is what it suggests and is used mainly in the UK although it also can be used all over the world.

I usually use a domain name provider called Namecheap, its quick, cheap and easy, I’m not on any sort of commission, I just find it easy to use and it doesn’t cost a lot, a typical .com domain costs about $10 or about £6.50 a year. Others I  have used are Hostgator, D9, Go Daddy and 123 reg.co.uk. They are all much the same and all about the same costs.

 

Understanding The Different Parts Of A Website Name

 

The first part of every web address is http://  This identifies the address to your computer as a web address. But what we’re interested in here is primarily the next portion, the bit that’s made up of words separated by dots and begins after the //, usually starting with www, and ending with something like .com or .co.uk. This part is known as a ’domain name’.

Anything after another forward slash (eg the “derrickwilcox” bit of www.derrickwilcox.com) is a path telling the remote computer exactly which page you’re looking for and where to find it.

Every single device that’s connected to the internet has what is known as an IP address, that is, a number of the form 11.22.33.44.etc. As most people could not remember strings of up to 12 numbers a simpler form of IP address was invented, it was called the domain name system. This happened in the late 80′s, all it consisted of was assigning names to the numbers, making it easier for us to remember.

In a typical web address, say, http://derrickwilcox.com/news/today, the domain name would be “derrickwilcox,com and then the following ” /news/today” identifies the directory first followed by the specific page in that directory.

The domain name part of the address reads from right to left in order of increasing specificity. So the .uk and .com are what’s known as top-level domains and cover large sections of the net (there is a single registry for each of these).

The actual part of the web address you are paying for (the domain name) is the “derrickwilcox.com”

There are different types of domains, top level or generic such as .com, .org and .net are not associated with a specific country or a specific meaning, .uk or .de are top level country domains which identify a country, (uk united kingdom and de Germany)

You don’t really need to know any more than that about domains, the main point is you definitely need one, a .com, .uk or .net will do fine.

 

Here’s something you might find interesting, an internet alphabet. I’ll give you a  bit each edition of the “BLOG”

The A – Z Of The Computer World

 

ActiveX

This is a Microsoft  technology that allows small programs to run inside your web browser.

Add-on

A supplement to a piece of software that gives an added layer of functionality: an example of this is, add-ons in Mozilla Firefox can allow you to take pictures of the screen.

Address book

Part of your email software where you can store details of your friend’s and contact’s  email addresses.

Adobe Flash

Used to create and play interactive videos, games and other multimedia items on the internet. You may have to install a plug-in to view flash content on your browser.

Adobe Photoshop

Software which can be used to view and edit images.

ADSL

Stands for “Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line” – a type of broadband technology used for connecting to the internet.

ADSL filter

Plugs in to your telephone line to stop broadband and telephone signals from interfering with each other or getting mixed up.

ADSL router

Also known as a DSL modem, this is used for connecting the computer to the internet.

 

Adware

A form of spyware which installs programs which then generate advertising on your computer usually in the form of a pop-up window.

Alt tag

The text which appears when you roll the mouse over a picture. This is the alt tag in HTML and is useful for people who view pages in text-only mode, or who are blind or visually impaired.

Animated GIF

Short for “Graphics Interchange Format”, A GIF is a type of image file. When it is animated it might blink, flash or have moving elements.

Animation

Pictures which are combined in a certain way so they appear to move. Cartoons are animations.

Anti-spyware

Anti-spyware software helps stop malicious programs stealing confidential information from your computer.

Anti-virus

Security software that helps protect your computer from viruses that are spread online.

Application

Another word for a computer program. For example, Microsoft Word (which is used for creating text documents) is a word processing application.

Archive

The place on a website where you find old news, articles, stories etc.

Archiving

To move old files which may not still be in use or relevant to a separate storage area.

 

ASCII

Computer code that represents letters as numbers. For example, the letter A is ASCII code 65.

Attachment

A file which has been attached (sent with) an email. This could be an image, a video or any other document. You can usually attach a file to an email by clicking an icon in the shape of a paperclip.

Auction site

A website (such as eBay) where people can bid money on different items for sale.

Audio clip

A sound file (for example, music or spoken word) which has been placed on the internet to either download or listen to online.

Auto connect

When your computer has been set to automatically connect to a service (for example, the internet) whenever it detects that it is available.

Avatar

A picture or cartoon of yourself or a favourite character that you use to represent yourself in games, on message boards or on social networking websites.

 

OK, thats about it for now, go take a look around domain name providers and buy the one of your choice and next time we can take a look at hosting your site, don’t worry, nothing complicated and then decide on  what to put on your nice new but rather empty website.

Take Care And See You Soon.

Derrick Wilcox