Greeting Card Helper

Fiftieth Birthday - 50th Birthday Card	Funny Happy Birthday Card (Pack of 30)	Life Journey Birthday - 50th Birthday Card	50 Photo Birthday - 50th Birthday Card
$2.79 Cardstore.com	$1.99 $0.64 DollarDays	$2.79 Cardstore.com	$2.69 Cardstore.com

Years Young Birthday - 50th Birthday Card	Broadly Funny Humor Birthday Cards	Business Birthday - Funny Birthday Card	Familiar Birthday - Funny Birthday Card
$2.69 Cardstore.com	$4.99 $3.99 Current Catalog	$2.79 Cardstore.com	$2.79 Cardstore.com

How (and how not) Run your own website – promoting the site for beginners

Before reading this article that I am no expert – that a short (and hopefully amusing) account of my own experiences with the launch of a website! However, I will give you a few useful links to the real experts at the end of this article, but still NO GO TO END! I have a lot of information funny, insightful and useful for him: D

I was about 8 months ago a great idea! I'll make a website with FLASH postcards people can send to all your friends! No, I do not think I was the first person to have this idea. I'm not naive. But I was naive in many other forms of what it takes to build a website, but I'll get to that later.

Anywho, I thought it was a great idea to me I love to do little animations in Flash, I like to think of the stories, I love working for myself (instead of working for a boss – but you can read about it in my site!), I thought it would be great to have a website people around the world to visit and use. WOW Sort of my 15 minutes of fame, I guess. And if somewhere along line that could make money just as GREAT liiiiiiiittle! And I'm not a millionaire money, enough to cover my expenses. Okay, and maybe a little more than liiiiiiittle it:) Being able to give red wine in bottles instead of boxes would be good.

I started working on ideas (there were plenty of them) to postcards and then I started to make the first letter (which I have intended to send my parents on their 50th wedding anniversary as a "test" to see if other people do not think my letters have been as fun as I did). Then a funny thing happened last (no, not in the way of the Forum), my mother (who has absolutely no knowledge of Internet or e-card web sites or electronic nature and did not know anything about my idea to create my own e-card site) had cut a section of his paper to me. It was the success () of a story by British artist Jacquie Lawson, who at the age of 57 has created an interactive Flash Christmas e-card and sent it to friends and bla bla bla bla now a very profitable subscription e-card site. And we're talking about here MILLION DOLLARS, people!

I thought, 'My God! It's a sign! This must be what I put on this planet to do! This is my calling! You see, my mother did not give me newspaper clippings something before, so why now, why this? Must be a sign. I'm not a religious person or superstition, but it was a bit too much to be a coincidence, I decided! So I continued working my lower part-of-my-body (no, no, my legs!) Off. I just finished the first map in time for my parents 50th anniversary wedding and we will send by e-mail the morning of the big day. It was a great success:) It was a card with two bored cats picking their nose (I know! Really does not seem the type of card you send to her parents at their 50th wedding anniversary but – what I can say? It worked great!) – Check it out here: http://www.carlsencards.com/ecard-01-happy-birthday-bored-cats.htm. He then changed the message of happy birthday.

So, wanting to be serious about all this, I needed a domain name and I decided on the name carlsencards (. Com) and bought the domain. All keywords in URLs are taken by large stuffed course (always good to have most important keywords in your URL!). So I thought I might as well promote my name among others. If this was the right decision, I do not know yet – the jury is still out on that. And who would have thought that Yahoo "or" Google "were the big names of websites?! My case. But here's the first lesson, choose a market less competitive if you can! It goes something like … say; eCards! Search for "Maps Post" and you get 34,500,000 results in Google and good luck to enter the top the list, not to say the obvious, but I do … anyway, it is also a good idea to choose a product, service or topic that interests you, on your own Do you enjoy working with.

For the next 6 months I worked on my site. Every weekend, holiday and vacation I got up 6 am so that I can go to work on my IMPORTANT BIG project! I had decided that 20 cards would be enough to launch the site. Cards This site is about quality, not quantity, you see. I put a lot of work on each card, the story first and then the animation and drawing and writing and recording music and sound effects, and finally put the card on my site. A map has 2-4 days to go, so it took me about 6 months to complete the 20 cards I thought would be enough to start.

I have the intention to continue making the cards after the variety is so open, that the site continues to grow and my users (my users "- Oh, I mean that the IM user! I users!) Should send new cards whenever they have visited my site. And – for your information – I still make cards. Every minute not spent working on my ecard site. But I love it.

And here is another lesson to learn (but I already knew), people expect Web sites to change, update and develop all TIME. It's like children! You can not have a baby, then wait to grow up alone. Or what I heard. I do not I have my own children. It is the human race, anyway! Only skin four-legged kind with whiskers. But care must be careful, too!

Then the big day came, I was ready to launch my site. And there was I really naive. I thought all I had to do was send letters to all my friends and I love maps and I look very cute and funny and send cards to all friends who would like to renew my card and send cards … I think you get the picture.

Lesson learned: What happens, as once upon a moon blue. Or once in 10 blue moons. Well, step by Jacquie Lawson. Sometimes in real life. But certainly not the case in my real life. Only in my dreams!

Hmmmm, what to do, what to do … Of course, I was not willing to give away (another valuable lesson: Do not Give Up!). So I searched online and found a site that shows your order free of all kinds. Hey, I have free stuff on my site, maybe I can get them to link to my site. Wow, they were ahead of me on that one, had a button that says "Submit a Site." Great! "I submitted my site, but – oh – what's that?" Reciprocal Link – What is that? Oh, so I link to you, and you have a link to me. Hmmm, somehow, I'll show you mine if you show me yours. Oh but ruin my vision. There may be other ways.

Lesson … I lost count! Anyway, the lesson learned: Link exchange is difficult to avoid. I later learned that one way links are better, but take the initiative and the people the opportunity to visit your wonderful site is a good idea to find websites link to you and generate traffic. And even if you should put a couple of buttons and text links on your site. So I exchanged links with a site for free stuff, and – WOW – other people my 20 or more friends have visited my site!

We are not talking about several thousand a day. In fact, not even hundreds. But around 60-80 day is much better than 3-4. Now we're cooking. Yes, but the kitchen has started to decline after a week or two. Well, what now? I guess find a couple of sites to exchange links with.

Once again, I searched on the Internet. And now, there are many sites that list free stuff out there! To make the long boring story a little shorter and I have exchanged links with a dozen sites and got some free traffic. But there must be other ways ….

Directories! There are (probably) hundreds of thousands of directories where you can get the list and most do not require a reciprocal link. Or an annual fee to list your site. Again spent hours searching on Google and research (I know that google do not like using that word – "Google" but it is a good word) the words "Offer a free Web site directory. And if there was one thing I learned was that he still had much to learn about the promotion SITE!

SEO! What is the see-oh? Oh, is SEO! Search Engine Optimization – still have no idea what it is. If I do research – not the Internet a wonderful invention? Oh my, words key title HREF tags, alt tags, text content, file names, keyword density … I did everything I had to do in this department just place some keywords in meta tags of Nice (you know, title, description and keywords)! But noooooooooo, search engines do not care for that. Now we have to put all keywords in tags and content. And you must carefully choose your keywords (Google has some tools that can help to Nice research and find the good keywords – link at bottom of article). Aha wish I had known before starting to build my website. Another valuable lesson! I will not explain exactly how to do this, but I'll give you some links to great sites that explain much better than I could. I just want you to know that something you have to do.

Well, there it is! Now I'm ready to do anything to attract millions of visitors. Well, what is your pagerank, Martine? My what? My "pagerank"? Where I can get? "I can buy on eBay? Oh, no, it's something you earn pagerank somehow. But how? Get lots and lots quality of incoming links – preferably one way links (which means they will present their, but need not show yours! Well, actually everyone YOURS THAT show, but no … You know what I mean.) Google loves it! And you do what Google likes. Because most people find sites on Google. And rarely went on page 1 or 2, with results from Google. So how to reach the top of Google search results?

Good question. Good question. Very few people know much about that and many people (like me) know very little about it. But people like me (who know a few) have a good excuse, because is a secret! Only people who work Google – in fact some of these people really know what Google likes and thus will head the list. You know Why? Do not pay to try to know, because they change all the time!

Google uses something called algorithms to determine which sites to put on the top of the list (If you're interested you can find tons of information online). And they keep changing these algorithms. Yes, I think it really unhealthy, too. But it serves some purpose. Otherwise intelligent – even more insidious – webmasters who discover and take advantage of this knowledge and get their websites to the top of the list, even if their sites are most relevant. See the point? So I guess that's normal. But certainly not make my life easier. I have to guess and try other keywords and placements of keywords and keyword density until you have to and say "Enough small pig." Basta! "This is a quote of "Babe," and if you are not familiar with this film, rent, buy, come!

Another thing that Google loves, it is a good map, simple site. It makes the work Google is much easier. But this is no biggie, this site will do for you: http://www.xml-sitemaps.com – and we all do a great hand-sitemaps.com xml to help us with that.

So to summarize all this:
– Optimize your website (which is part SEO) – now this is much easier than it created after 167 pages! I know from experience. And that includes making a site map.
– The quality of inbound links to get a lot of (way) (which gives the classification PageRank and a higher position in search results on Google). Directories are good. But do not get them at once is too many links soon as spam Google, and you do not want this to happen!
– Get links to your website that can generate traffic (it's okay to have reciprocal links – I think!). And it will be good for self-esteem to see that your site receives visitors who are not closely related to you:)
– What do I do now, write funny / news / articles useful and forward to all the sites on the Internet. And do not forget to include your name and address:) This is actually intended to do so. Not that I did not write this article for fun. I did. Course I did!

And finally – and this could well be the best advice and most important of all, be as far away from the guaranteed "100,000 visitors $ 15! Dear Traffic Sites! 100,000 unique visitors – Yeah, right! not do that! is a scam, that a loss cash and Google does not like! You can even get your site banned from Google for doing this. I know it's tempting, but I rob a bank and get $ 2 million in 4 minutes. But it is not worth the long term.

So I guess it is. I hope you had the pleasure of reading about my experiences to promote my site. And I hope you learned a little too much. Good luck with your website!

And here is the list of useful sites with really useful information I've used (and still use) the promotion of my website:

Great tools:
http://www.iwebtool.com
http://www.selfseo.com
http://www.seobook.com
http://www.webuildpages.com
http://www.seocompany.ca
http://www.xml-sitemaps.com
http://developers.evrsoft.com

Keyword Tools key
http://www.google.com (search for "Google Trends")
http://www.google.com (Search for "KeywordToolExternal)

Directory Listings:
http://www.submithelper.com
http://info.vilesilencer.com
http://searchenginewatch.com
http://strongestlinks.com

… if my site has become a big hit with thousands of visitors every day? Well, my site is still very new, so it is too early to say. But I hope and I believe and keep working hard, especially in promoting my site and adding new cards every week! So who knows? Jacquie Lawson Attention there's a new kid in town!

About the Author

Martine Carlsen, that’s me, is the creator and owner of http://www.carlsencards.com – a free animated eCards website.
She – me again – works full-time as a web designer and began working on carlsencards.com due to an overwhelming need to work in a boss-free zone with total control of design, ideas and lunch hours.

Dan Aykroyd wishing Donna a Happy Birthday! pt 1

50th Birthday Humor Greeting Card – Turning 50 $3.79 Cover: Turning 50 is something we all must face sooner or later. Inside: You sooner, me later. Manufacturer: Sunrise Greetings Size: 4.75″x7″…

3′ x 4′ Giant Over the Hill Walker 50th Birthday Card, W/Envelope $40.95 Big, Funny Happy Birthday Card. Made from 4mm corrugated plastic, comes with it’s own ‘envelope’, made from heavy duty cardboard. Ships in the ‘envelope’, complete with a big, funny stamp. This card is sure to be a favorite and will definitely stand out from the crowd! The inside text reads:…”We thought you could use a little help in your old age. Happy 50th Birthday!” See our other card option…

50th (fifty) 50 Birthday Greeting Card The Age To Be $3.95 Cover: 50 happy happy birthday happy happy birthday happy happy birthday Inside: the age to be feisty fantastic fearless and fun Details: embossed Manufacturer: Sunrise Greetings Size: 4.75″x6.75″…