Joe Moody’s Web Adventures

Getting a website used to mean either hiring someone or studying like a madman all the code and software required to do the job. Those days are long gone.

Today, many website hosting companies provide web-based site builders that can enable you to create a website with no technical knowledge or extra software to install. Publish 24/7 has a great service called Website Tonight with over 1500 templates — from professional to fun — that allow you to choose a look and customize it in the time it might take you to find and consult with a web designer.

What’s nice about these services is you’re more likely to be happy with the finished product as you’re the one customizing the site.

Anyway check out Publish 24/7 Here and look for the Website Tonight graphic, it’s easier than you think to become a web designer than you think.

If you already offer a product, look at the parts that make up the product. Do you have a nice supply of it, and would others be interested? Here’s an example.

A cool gift site I use for little nieces and nephews entering the world is the TowelHoodies.com Hooded Towel website where you can customize a hooded bath towel for a baby boy or girl. It’s a unique gift used for years as baby becomes a toddler. There’s also child’s Hooded Towels.

Towelhoodies lets you select your own Jacquard Ribbon to match a certain style, and you can have the baby’s name embroidered on the hooded towel for a personalized bath and beach towel.

But enough about the hooded towels, what’s cool about this website — and a good example for other entrepreneurs looking to grow in any economy — is they know how to diversify. They already offer custom Jacquard Ribbon and niche baby ribbon for inclusion on their hooded towels, but now they’ve opened a new wing of their website where they are selling just the Jacquard ribbon by the yard, for others who work with ribbon to take advantage of their well-edited selection.

Check out their Jacquard ribbon Store, and their main hooded towels website.

Food for thought in tough times.

I occasionally have people people ask me if there’s a better way to share large files than sending them through email. The fact is email is usually the worst way to share large files as many providers don’t accept emails larger than certain size, and it can dramatically slow down email software when the files are downloading.

A much better method is using an FTP server from a reliable FTP Hosting company. FTP, or file transfer protocol, is what webmasters have used for years to publish websites online. Basically it’s a way of moving files from your computer to a server (or uploading) and then someone else can retrieve the file from the server to their computer (downloading).

The better FTP hosts allow you to create private FTP folders for multiple people, each with their own unique login (username and password).  This allows, for instance a graphics company, to allow their clients to send them images, the graphics designers can then edit the images and then the customer can retrieve the finished product, without tying up the email.

The best FTP Hosting company I know of out there is OLI — they not only offer everything I described above but also offer access to Web-FTP which allows you full access to FTP folders to upload and download etc. using just your web browser. It’s so easy soon you’ll be uploading in your sleep.

So I was trying to teach my nine-year-old son, Jack, how to set an alarm to wake up in the morning for school. Yeah I could set my own alarm and go wake him up, but I’m a DIY type of guy, like the whole “teach them how to grow corn, don’t just give them corn” philosophy.

Jack learned how to set the alarm easily, and everything seemed great. That was until our two-year-old son, Mack who has a passion for electronics, wasted no time making Jack’s alarm clock his the newest toy.

Placing the clock up high didn’t help either, as little Mack loves pulling the plugs on stuff.

Then I discovered iPing.com. It’s a service that lets you setup wake-up calls online for free. The phone is near Jack’s room so I figured this was perfect.

So until Mack figures out how to login to websites and adjust settings, I think we’re good.

Check out the site at http://www.iping.com

Ok so we’ve seen the promises that we too can “work from home” by setting up affiliate websites and then sit back and start raking in the money.

I’m putting this to the test in my latest online adventure…

By the way affiliate websites are sites where you create links to products from online retailers like Amazon.com, if anyone clicks a link on your site to get to the product and then makes a purchase, you get a commission, usually a percentage of the sale.

I happened to acquire a pet carriers website recently (hey, I’m a webmaster, these things happen — like a mechanic who acquires an old car the owner no longer wants or needs).

This site already receives a decent amount of traffic and is pretty well placed on Google under the search term pet carriers.

The site also used to sell a brand of dog carriers, cat carriers and even bird carriers.

Now that the owner isn’t selling his product and no longer needs the domain, I’m using it as a testing ground.

I first signed up with the mega-affiliate site Goldencan and they connected me to a pet supplier. I setup links to the pet supplier on the pet carriers website.

Stay tuned and I’ll post here how it goes. I have no bias and nothing to gain (I already make a living online) and just want to see if this affiliate stuff actually has any merit to it.

Stay tuned … or subscribe using the links in the upper right corner.