Business side of web design 40 steps

step 1 - figure out your business

• freelancer
• partnership
• small team
• big agency
• company

You figure out what you want to be and then work towards it

step 2 - limit your services
Every possible service but says you should really focus

step 3 - find a business role model

• their role model is starbucks

step 4 - don't be a flake

• make sure you appear correct to your business clients

step 5 - write a manual for the magic

step 6 - don't trust your brain

step 7 - don't let your clients followup with you

• you should contact them before they need to contact you

step 8 - don't let your colleagues follow up

• see step 7

step 9 - get addicted to strangers

• talk to people you don't know to help you grow

step 10 - always be teaching

• "tutorial marketing" helps to prove you know what you are talking about

step 11 - beware of perfection

step 12 - never trust a big butt and a smile

step 13 - cheap is sexy

• cashflow is critical to your business

step 14 - you didn't get ripped off

• we didn't get ripped off, we let ourselves get ripped off

step 15 - be firm with your clients

• they actually like this

step 16 - if we settle for nothing now...

• we will settle for nothing later - i.e. don't do spec work

step 17 - make it their idea

step 18 - don't bill hourly

step 19 - track your time

step 20 - honor your commitments

step 21 - be serious about scope

• shows the project cartoon

step 22 - study project physics

step 23 - never deliver crap

step 24 - never work anonymously

step 25 - use the right tools

step 26 - be different

step 27 - write your company constitution

step 28 - prioritize passion

step 29 - do a good job

step 30 - always do what's right

Step 31 - plan for the future

step 32 - plan your work and work your plan

step 33 - put employees first

step 34 - invest every dollar

step 35 - treat your clients like you love them

step 36 - use solid contracts

step 37 - embrace uncertainty

step 38 - play

step 39 - take vacations

step 40 - go that way, really fast

substr function for unicode cryllic content

PHP substr() function can't split text that includes unicode cryllic letters.
But here's a substring solution for UTF-8 Russian, Mongolian or other similar contents.

Why this function is necessary?

because unicode cryllic letters consist of two ASCII code. So if you try to get length of "бөы" word it replies 6 instead of 3. Because 3 cryllic letters equal to 3x2 = 6 characters.
If you try to get its first letter using substr function such as substr("бөы",0,1) it returns chr(208) or displays a unreadable character. So you need to do substr("бөы",0,2) to get first letter of the word.

But some contents can include numbers and latin letters. So you need to check it. This is solved by the function. So you need separate function same as substr() or to get length of cryllic unicode words.

code:
function mbm_substr( $txt='',$limit = 20){
$buf = '';
$k=0; //used to define letter position

for($i=0;$i207 && ord($txt{$i})<212){>=$limit){ //stops if it reaches limit
return $buf;
}
}
return $buf;
}

Usage:
echo mbm_substr('бөыангрхар',5);

Result:
бөыан

Google AdWords. Getting traffic

1.Don't use broad matching
At least not to start off with. What's broad matching? From the horse's mouth:
“If you include general keyword or keyword phrases-such as tennis shoes-in your keyword list, your ads will appear when users search for tennis and shoes, in any order, and possibly along with other terms.”
With expanded matching it becomes even harder to know when your keywords will show, because Google will pick them algorithmically.
Broad match is usually used by experienced advertisers looking to save time (usually with a long list of negative keywords) or by lazy advertisers, who may not have the time or the inclination to target their campaigns. Broad matching can also be the right way to go for parts of certain kinds of campaign, but wading straight into it can be dangerous.

2.Use dynamic titles
Dynamic titles are easy, they don't cost anything and they usually have a good effect on CTR and conversion rates. The phrase that the searcher uses in their search will come up as the the title of your AdWords. This saves you having to create an individual ad for each keyword and means that your ad will be more targeted. In the title field of your ad simply put {keyword:your backup title here}. The backup title is in case the search phrase is too long for the title field or if AdWords can't display the search for some other reason.

3.Use global negatives
If you're selling something, you don't want people finding your ad if they're searching for free stuff. This sounds obvious, but do some searches and you'll see it happening. Use the word 'free' in your campaign global negatives. You can also use this for other words you don't want to turn up for. Using negative keywords is especially important if you're using broad matching.

4.Turn off content targeting and search network
Do you know where to look at these ads? No. Leave them alone until you feel confident that you know where they'll be showing and that you can make them work – get comfortable with Google first. Conversion rates and CTR's change dramatically for each search property, not to mention content targeted ads. Get acquainted with Google before you move on to the others.

5.Test different creatives and positions
How much of a difference will being in the first position, as opposed to the second, third or sixth position make, for your net profit? The answer is that it depends on your creative, industry and who else is bidding on your keywords. The bottom line is that you should know. Test your creative in each position and work out where it will be most effective, from an ROI point of view. Remember also that the AdWords ranking algo works on a CPCxCTR basis (it's actually more complicated than that, but that gives an idea as to why out of two ads with similar CPC's, one will be higher because of a higher CTR)
You can also test your creatives. Write 5 or 6 different ads and set them to run evenly (Google will run the one which preforms best by default, but you can set them to run evenly in your campaign settings). The creative which gives you the highest ROI is the one you should go with. You should probably run this kind of test for more than just a day.

6.Optimise your landing page
The landing page is the page which the person who clicked on your ad will see when they come through to your site. Don't use your homepage as your landing page unless it deals only with selling the product you're advertising. For instance, if you're selling posters, have a landing page for 'flower' posters and a landing page for 'car'. You can even go one better and have a landing page for each poster – so you'll have a page for 'sunflower posters' and 'bmw 5 series posters'.

7. Optimise your creatives
Optimising creatives is another topic entirely – but there are some easy wins (depending on, again, the strategy being appropriate for your campaign): one, for example, is using a keyword specific url. If you're selling Nike AirWalk shoes you might want to set the URL on your creative to display as: www.example.com/nike/nike-airwalk. Keep in mind that this has no relation to the real click through URL – but it looks better than your domain name – and certainly better than a long line of numbers. Keep this relevant however, because otherwise you could cheese people off if they don't find what they're looking for.
Another easy win is to not include superlatives, like 'world's best' and 'most loved product' or ALL CAPITAL LETTERS. Google will just disapprove them. If you do mention a price or something else (like: the UK's best selling mobile phone) then you must back that up on the landing page for the ad.
One of the most important things to remember that the ad copy is one of the most crucial things for making people click through. This sounds obvious, but there are a lot of very bad creatives out there.

8. Track conversion and ROI (Return On Investment)
Track everything. Google will track impressions, clicks and click through rate. Just because an ad has a high CTR doesn't mean that it is making you money! You can use Google's own conversion tracking codes, or you can use your own software. If you don't know how each keyword is preforming – then you won't be able to optimise your campaigns, by turning off the keywords that aren't working and investing more in the keywords which are.

9. Work out your CPA (Cost Per Acquisition)
How much is each sale costing you? Are your Google AdWords listings preforming as well as your Overture listings? Your SiteMatch listings? Your offline marketing? You should know how much you're paying for each order/sale/download/enquiry/whatever on each channel – only then will you be able to set CPA targets to work towards and know which channel is best for you.

10. Don't enter into bidding wars
It is easy to get into bidding wars with your competitors. You want to be number one and so does your competitor. The best thing to do is to take a step back, ten deep breaths and consider how important it really is to be in the number one spot. If you can justify it, fine but otherwise: let your competitor be number one, slot into the number two slot and wait. If you have a better product, your clickthrough rate will get you to the top – and you'll still be paying the same as you were in the second position.
More and more people are using automated bidding software. This software will update at a set interval to keep the ad in the desired position. Doing battle with this kind of software is even more frustrating and less rewarding than trying to outbid a competitor.

11. Set a weekly budget and stick to it
When you're first starting out this is really important. AdWords is addictive, and like anything else addictive, it can quickly get out of hand. A keyword may convert like nobody's business one day and die the next. Make sure you know a keyword is working (more importantly, know why it is working) before you invest more.

12. Geotarget
Geotarget your ads to the relevant audience. It can be done when you set up a new campaign and in your campaign settings. If you want to show on .com that's fine, but remember that you can geotarget to individual countries and even cities (you can target regions in the US, UK, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Spain and the Netherlands). The more targeted users feels that your ad is, the more likely they are to click on it.

13. Organise your campaigns into adgroups
This will make it easier for you to know what is doing well and what isn't – especially a year later. If you're selling shoes have a campaign not just for running shoes, but for Nike, and then an adgroup for each Nike model.

14.Keep a close eye on your competitors
Is your competitor doing something better than you? What keywords do you share with your competitors? Can you discern their strategy? Do they use automated bidding software? Do their landing pages have some magic which you should be emulating? This is the sort of stuff you can find out and the kind of stuff that you need to know.

Spend your money profitable. :)

Web traffic

I have few websites related several channels. Most of them new and i'm having some more research about web traffic. The best way to get free traffic is posting on forums and locate links on some websites.
You can locate your web link on other site such as changing links. Also use yahoo answers and community websites.

Here's 101 tips to increase your web traffic.

1) Yahoo Answers.
2) Myspace.com
3) Yahoo Groups
4) Stumbleupon.com
5) Forums
6) Craigslist.org
7) Site maps
8. E-Book Giveaway
9) Website Design
10) Submit To Directories
11) Tell a Friend
12) Search Engine Optimization
13) Squidoo.com
14) Social bookmarking sites
15) Article Promotion
16) Site Explorer
17) Epinion.com
18. Alexa.com
19) Newsletter Box
20) Scribd
21) Get Links from Relevant Websites
22) Increase the Size of Your Site
22) Send out Press Releases
23) Advertise On Online classified Ad Sites
24) Use Firefox Plug-in
25) Add a Forum to Your Site
26) Add a Blog to Your Site
27) Optimize Your Blog for The Search Engines
28) Comment on Other Peoples Blogs
29) MySpace News
30) Digg
31) Banner Exchanges
32) Traffic Exchanges
33) Pop Unders
34) Technorati and ping it when your blog content changes
35) Use a ping service like pingomatic to ping RSS aggregators
36) Submit your blog to all of the RSS directories
37) Link to other blogs in your posts
38. Use Stumbleupon to stumble your posts.
39) Ask your readers to submit your posts to social bookmarking sites (Digg, Reddit, etc.)
40) Start a group blog.
41) Join SpicyPage and promote your blog
42) Join a webring.
43) Sign up for BlogWoods and promote your blog
44) Exchange Ads (not blogroll links) with complementary blogs.
45) Trade blog roll links with related blogs.
46) Use Twitter
47) Publish videos on YouTube
4 Search for Wikis related to your.
49) Join Hub pages and post links to your blog from articles you write.
50) Pray.
51) Create a MySpace Page. Put your blog on it, and get some friends.
52) Tell people you will link back to them if they review your blog
53) Most brands are not well established online, you review related content and it will rank well.
54) Review relevant products on Amazon.com.
55) Create product lists on Amazon.com
56) Review related sites on Alexa
57) Review products and services on shopping search engines.
58. Swap some links.
59) Try to get links from within the content of relevant content pages.
60) Sell items on eBay.
61) Target niche social news sites like DZone, Sphinn or Hugg
62) Whenever you send an email to someone, always add your website url as a signature.
63) Do email signature swaps
64) Tag blog posts at social bookmarking sites
65) Add photos to your blog with appropriate keywords - Google Images generates traffic too.
66) Tag blog photos at Flicker
67) Make a custom 404-error page for your website. You can provide a link back to your main website or even try to monetize it by offering a related affiliate program within your niche.
68) Outsource grunt work.
69) After someone orders from you offer a one-time offer that compliments your product.
70) Participate in Blog Carnivals
71) create a network of blogs in different niches, and then link them together
72) Give away stock images with a wee watermark of your URL
73) Find and discuss memes
74) Create a Yahoo Group in the niche your site sits.
75) Bookmark your site on Del.icio.us and if you’re really keen, add a Del.icio.us button to your homepage.
76) Place a free ad for your company on Gumtree.
77) Syndicate your site’s content by using an RSS feeds.
78) Submit your RSS feeds to aggregator sites.
79) Don’t worry about PageRank - worrying about PageRank is as effective as trying to solve an algebra equation by chewing bubblegum.*
80) Get a custom t-shirt made with your website URL on it, and wear it often.
81) Get a custom t-shirt made with your website URL on it, and wear it often.
82) Send out a newsletter!
83) Giving away an eBook is an excellent way to generate word-of-mouth about your site.
84) Ask bloggers and other Web site owners to review your site and/or products.
85) Add a “Tell a Friend” function to your site, so people can easily recommend you to their mates.
86) Share your banners on banner exchange sites.
87) Create a “lense” for your site on Squidoo
88) Do you have really hot content on your site that geeks would love? If so Slashdot will bring you a mass of traffic.
89) upload a favicon.gif file so that your users have a nice icon when they bookmark your site.
90) Set up a feed on MyYahoo.com so your site gets regularly spidered by the Yahoo search
91) Use Ping-0-matic to ping blog directories. Do this every time you publish.
92) Print your blog URL on your business cards, brochures and flyers.
93) Use Trackback links when you quote or refer to other blog posts.
94) Increase the list you ping
95) Use Facebook
96) Social Networking
97) Micro
98) Email Marketing
99) RSS Feeds
100) Get outside links to internal pages
101) Use free hosting and build sites and link them back to your main site.

They are very useful tips. So try to spend some time for it.

Adding google analytics to your blog

Grab Your Google Analytics Code Block

1. Login to Google Analytics at http://google.com/analytics/. The main Settings page loads.
2. Click on Add Website Profile. A form displays.
3. Select Add a Profile for a New Domain.
4. Enter the URL of your site or blog.
5. Select your country and time zone. Click Finish.
6. Analytics provides you with a code block - a swatch of HTML - to add to your site's pages.
7. Highlight the code block and then copy it by selecting Edit > Copy or Ctrl-C or Command-C.

Add the Google Analytics Code Block to Your Blogger Blog

1. Login to http://www.blogger.com/. The Dashboard loads.
2. Under the blog you want to add Analytics tracking to, click on Layout or Template.
3. Click on Edit HTML. An editing screen for your blog template's HTML displays. Don't freak out. Just scroll to the bottom.
4. Look for the end of the template. It'll look like:
   
   (Google Analytics Code Block is going to go here!!!)
   
5. Put your cursor right before that tag.
6. Paste the Google Analytics Code Block by selecting Edit > Paste, Ctrl -V or Command-V.
7. Click Save Changes.

You have now added the Google Analytics Code Block to Your Blogger Blog.
Check Your Work

1. To ensure that you have successfully added the Google Analytics Code Block to your Blogger blog, go back to http://google.com/analytics/.
2. Next to your blog's URL it will say either Receiving Data (you were successful) or Tracking Not Installed (something is amiss).
3. If it said Tracking Not Installed, click on Check Status. Google then checks your blog for the Analytics Code Block and reports back if it find it or not.
4. If not, try re-pasting the Code Block in.