If you are looking for a great new hosting service provider, you probably came across BlueHost more than one time, but it is indeed very difficult to choose a great host without proper inside information, which means that you are in the perfect place right now.

If you want to know everything there is to know about BlueHost and what is has to offer for you, just keep reading and you will discover all the essential information you need to know in order to make the best possible choice for you.

The first and probably the most important aspect concerns features and pricing.

When it comes to features, BlueHost comes “equipped” with all the standards, which means you can’t expect super advanced technologies, but you can expect to find all the basics that you are going to require to set up and manage your website.

Features

The basics range from a good cPanel and multi-database support to FTP and email. This means that BlueHost offers pretty everything the average website owner needs, which makes it a very good choice so far. But it doesn’t stop here.

BlueHost offers a bunch of other really impressive features, such as unlimited bandwidth and diskspace, unlimited addon domains, subdomains and even parked domains and support for up to 100 different MySQL or Postgre databases. The number of FTP accounts and email accounts is limited, but it is more than you can ever need. BlueHost offers 1000 FTP accounts and 2500 email accounts.

The cPanel is pretty good and has everything you can possibly need. Everything is powered by BlueHost’s Fantastico, which is really good impressive system that doesn’t come up short in any way. Fantastico seems to have the latest version for each and every script. SSH or Shell access is not available straight away, but if you confirm your identity by fax, they will enable SSH and Shell access for your account.

The cPanel also has everything you need for CMS and script installation, so it is really easy and straightforward to install anything you can possibly want, as long as BlueHost supports it.

Pricing

The next matter and the most important matter for the majority of website owners is pricing. As far as pricing goes, BlueHost is cheap but a bit weird. This refers to the fact that regardless of how long of a contract you sign up for, you still have to pay $6.95 per month.

While the price is really good compared to other hosting service providers and compared to what they offer, almost all hosting service providers run a “the longer the contract the cheaper the price” policy. This can be good for you, because you can sign up for a three month contract (the shortest possible) and change your hosting provider if it turns out that you are not satisfied with BlueHost.

The Terms of Use page is really good and it is much different than any other hosting service provider. There is no complicated legal phrasing, just a few guidelines listed with bullet points.

Last, but not least, you probably want to know just how much support you get in case you have any queries related to using your hosting account or if you encounter any unsolvable issues.

The good thing here is that BlueHost’s Support team is highly recommended and it is known to be very good and fast.

The conclusion is that BlueHost is a very good host for the average website owner and it offers a lot of great features for a highly competitive price.

Probably the hardest aspect of owning a website, even for a business, is finding the time to constantly update it with fresh interesting content for both users and search engine spiders.

This is why each and every webmaster turns to some form of SEO.

Articleranks.com is an article submission directory which allows you to submit an article for $2 per article, providing you with anywhere between 20 and 200 backlinks for that article alone.

So far, this sounds really promising, but if you are experienced with SEO, you are probably detecting a few problems right from the very start.

The main question that needs an answer here is related to getting the best value for your money and achieving the desired effect.

So is it worth it paying $2 for one article submission?

Well the answer to this question is a bit more elaborate than a single sentence, so read on to learn everything you should know about articleranks.com.

First of all, lets discuss money. In what concerns costs and budget, Articleranks.com can be a really cheap alternative, if you decide to go for the 3$9 per month membership. This allows you to submit any number of articles. The monthly membership is without a doubt the best choice if you plan on submitting a large number of articles, because instead of having to pay $2 for each submission, you will only have to pay $39 a month.

There is also one other way to do it. If you publish their articles on your website, you will earn “submission credits”, which offer you the possibility to submit a certain number of articles for free.

If you are planning on syndicating your articles and letting Article Ranks post articles on your website, then you can also opt for the free membership, but remember that if you don’t have submission credits, you will have to pay $2 for each article submission.

From a SEO stand point, getting 20 to 200 backlinks for each article is a bit vague, as the variation is pretty big.

The reality is that the number of backlinks you will get for one article depends on how many websites in the Article Ranks network will accept your article and it also depends on the category of your article. But if you have a good well written original article, you can easily expect getting almost 200 backlinks, which is more than good.

A downside is that you don’t know exactly how many websites they have in their network, which means that you can never know how many backlinks to expect and you won’t ever know just how powerful those backlinks will be. As you probably know by now, a backlink has to rise to a certain standard in order to be effective.

A number of factors contribute to this, such as the age of the source domain, its page rank, how relevant it is to your article and its category of content, as well as other factors.

In Summary

To sum it all up in one sentence, Articleranks.com is a cheap solution to your SEO needs, but it might not be the best one. If you want concise results and if you want to know what to expect for your money, then Articleranks.com is probably not the best thing for you.

Still, if you just started out with a brand new domain, Articleranks.com is without a doubt a great and highly affordable solution for all your SEO needs.

As you are well aware of, Facebook is the largest social network on the planet, with close to 700 million users from across the world.

While the numbers sound impressive on their own, the benefits you can get out of using Facebook advertising for your business are even more impressive.

If you have never tried Facebook advertising before, then it is probably about time you start doing so, as it will quickly turn out to be out of the best advertising techniques for your business.

While SEO will help your business’ website rank high in search engines and email marketing will help you generate more customers, social media marketing techniques, such as Facebook advertising, is beyond any doubt the ideal technique for a small to medium business.

The average business nowadays can barely make any profit without an authoritative web presence and this is why it is very important that you start using different online advertising techniques. It will literally make your business grow exponentially.

Of all advertising tools, Facebook advertising is without a doubt one of the most powerful, and this is for a couple of reasons:

First and most important of all, Facebook allows you to target your specific market, including age group, geographical area and other characteristics.

This is without a doubt an amazing feature and if you use it wisely, you will be able to boost your business in no time. But if you really want to make the most out of Facebook advertising, you need to be aware of a few shortcomings that exist within the Facebook advertising system.

Low ad visibility is probably one of the most concerning problems and this is why you need to make sure that your ads stand out as much as possible without looking bad. Use a great ad that contrasts with the design of Facebook, but don’t overdo it! Something that looks great and that is easily noticeable. Nothing more and nothing less!

And follow the size guidelines because otherwise Facebook staff will not approve your ads, which basically means your efforts are a huge waste of time. And don’t forget that the ad approval process is very slow.

One other thing you have to do bear in mind is that advertising costs money. If you don’t want to waste money, always opt for a Pay-per-click campaign.

The problem with Facebook is the below average click-through-rate, which means that very few users actually click on the ads. With Pay-per-click, you will only have to pay for the actual clicks, and not for the impressions.

The easiest way to do this is to budget and only then opt for a certain type of Facebook ad campaign.

The key to a successful Facebook campaign is a superb Fan Page combined with great ads and a carefully thought through CPC/PPC ad campaign. Facebook advertising is the cheapest and fastest way to build a brand, so do not underestimate it.

Try Facebook advertising today and you will immediately see just how powerful it is!

If you want to know exactly how to commission a high end professional video for your business, then you are most definitely in the perfect spot.

All you have to do right now is to read on and you will find out just about everything you need to know to get you started with commissioning a high quality video for your business in no time.

Even if you have never done anything like this before and if you have no idea about video production, this guide is here to walk you through all the basic steps you must undergo in order to be able to wind up with a high quality and highly professional outcome.

Why You Need To Reach Out Via Videos

It is a very commonly known statistical fact that the average person will remember about 50% of what they hear and see, compared to only 30% see, 20% of what they hear and only 10% of what they read. What this means is that a video is the most powerful tool available for you and for your business and it is the easiest way to make an impression to the general public and to properly advertise your business.

While making a video is a bit more difficult than making the average brochure, a video is definitely worth going the extra mile in what concerns both time and budget.

Regardless of what type of video you are trying to get produce, you are a lot more likely to achieve the desired effect with a video than with any other form of media distribution. From promotional and advertising to training, marketing or prospectus a video will offer your business an unmatched effectiveness.

A Goal is Essential

If you have already decided to make a video, it is very important that you establish clear and straightforward objectives. Decide what you want your video to do for you and things will be a whole lot easier.

Choosing & Hiring a Video Production Company

Once you know what you want, you need someone to do it for you, but you will immediately realise that there are loads of companies which can offer you professional video production services.

Choosing one is fairly easy, as all you have to do is to look at their past work and you will most likely be able to make a decision quickly.

If you want to do things at an even higher level, you can contact more than one company, inform them about what you are looking for and then let the come up with all the ideas for you. After this, choosing a company will be straightforward.

Essential Tips

It is very important that you make the right choice and perhaps even meet the producer/producers themselves. This will help you rest assured that the final product will meet your high expectations. After all, you are paying for it.

When it comes to your budget you have to be very careful, as studios are usually hired at a day rate.

This is why you have to establish firm deadlines for every stage of the video production. This is the most efficient way to make sure that you won’t exceed your carefully planned budget.

Also, don’t try to save up too much by hiring the least expensive company, as the experience of the crew doing the job for you and the quality of the equipment are the most important factors in a highly successful video.

And that is about everything you need to know to get you started. Good luck with your video!

Here are all the main UK affiliate networks. If you’re getting started in affiliate marketing then you’re best off starting out by joining a couple of these networks:

Affiliate Window

Affiliate Window, established by Kevin Brown, is an internet marketing company which won three A4U Awards at 2011, giving webmasters the opportunity to become affiliates and advertise on their websites. Price and product comparison, as well as reporting tools and can be easily accessed using their ‘Darwin’ interface.

Services include Awin analytics for affiliate traffic reporting, the Awin index which uses four performance metrics to create a score out of a hundred, snoopy which is a real time brand monitoring web instrument, agent99 which is an adware and spyware policing solution, and Academy for affiliate marketer training services for clients.

Amazon Associates

Amazon Associates provides up to 10% earnings on advertisements and referrals from websites. They provide links and banners, widgets and the aStore. The links and banners include product links, which show price information about products. This lets the webmaster to build customised text or image links to the products.

Banners could also be used to promote advertisement and generate revenue through Amazon Associates, as well as site stripe, which provides short-cuts to Associates news and reports. Widgets are mini applications that are integrated within a website. AStore gives the site owner the opportunity to professionally create an online store without any significant programming knowledge.

Affili.net

Affili.net is one of Europe’s leading marketing networks which provides attractive commissions to publishers and provides clear and transparent reporting functionality as well as the capability to monitor real time clicks.

Affilinet gives the opportunity to monitor many publisher accounts from the iPhone or iTouch. Affilinet provides innovative creatives, such as page peels, video ads, as well as more than 21 million products in data feeds, advanced tracking for web analysis such as via SubID-Tracking, and detailed statistical reporting and overview.

Tradedoubler

Tradedoubler is a Stockholm based internet marketing company founded in 1999, one of the leading European advertisers, which provides affiliate marketing and search management. The expert teams can help in monetising websites and with inventory optimisation. Additional features include td Admatch, td Talk, and user path analysis. Competitive remuneration models, and consistent support for site owners are given.

Tradedoubler gives advanced tracking and reporting solutions and access to large brand advertisers, such as lastminute.com, with a very competitive management and support team. Tradedoubler technology can be used for cross-media marketing and can make a single interface layout for all the publisher’s online activity possible with their centralised tracking.

Commission Junction

Commission Junction, introduced in 1998, provides reliable banner, text links and search boxes. Payments are made through Commission Junction and not with the product supplier, in which options of payment include direct deposit or cheque in whichever currency is favoured by the recipient.

They also provide the capability to hide the tracking codes within links and publisher’s applications are accepted in a short time frame.

Collaborative agreements between businesses can take a number of forms and are becoming increasingly common as businesses aim to get the upper hand over their competitors. The main types of strategic alliances are listed below:

Joint Ventures

A joint venture is an agreement by two or more parties to form a single entity to undertake a certain project. Each of the businesses has an equity stake in the individual business and share revenues, expenses and profits.

“Joint Ventures are agreements between parties or firms for a particular purpose or venture. Their formation may be very informal, such as a handshake and an agreement for two firms to share a booth at a trade show. Other arrangements can be extremely complex, such as the consortium of major U.S. electronics firms to develop new microchips,” says Charles P. Lickson in A Legal Guide for Small Business.

Joint ventures between small firms are very rare, primarily because of the required commitment and costs involved.

Outsourcing

The 1980s was the decade where outsourcing really rose to prominence, and this trend continued throughout the 1990s to today, although to a slightly lesser extent.

The early forecasts, such as the one from American Journalist Larry Elder, have been shown to not always be true:

“Outsourcing and globalization of manufacturing allows companies to reduce costs, benefits consumers with lower cost goods and services, causes economic expansion that reduces unemployment, and increases productivity and job creation.”

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing has exploded over recent years, with the most successful online retailers using it to great effect. The nature of the internet means that referrals can be accurately tracked right through the order process.

Amazon was the pioneer of affiliate marketing, and now has tens of thousands of websites promoting its products on a performance-based basis.

Technology Licensing

This is a contractual arrangement whereby trade marks, intellectual property and trade secrets are licensed to an external firm. It’s used mainly as a low cost way to enter foreign markets. The main downside of licensing is the loss of control over the technology – as soon as it enters other hands the possibility of exploitation arises.

Product Licensing

This is similar to technology licensing except that the license provided is only to manufacture and sell a certain product. Usually each licensee will be given an exclusive geographic area to which they can sell to. It’s a lower-risk way of expanding the reach of your product compared to building your manufacturing base and distribution reach.

Franchising

Franchising is an excellent way of quickly rolling out a successful concept nationwide. Franchisees pay a set-up fee and agree to ongoing payments so the process is financially risk-free for the company. However, downsides do exist, particularly with the loss of control over how franchisees run their franchise.

R&D

Strategic alliances based around R&D tend to fall into the joint venture category, where two or more businesses decide to embark on a research venture through forming a new entity.

Distributors

If you have a product one of the best ways to market it is to recruit distributors, where each one has its own geographical area or type of product. This ensures that each distributor’s success can be easily measured against other distributors.

Distribution Relationships

This is perhaps the most common form of alliance. Strategic alliances are usually formed because the businesses involved want more customers.

The result is that cross-promotion agreements are established.

Consider the case of a bank. They send out bank statements every month. A home insurance company may approach the bank and offer to make an exclusive available to their customers if they can include it along with the next bank statement that is sent out.

It’s a win-win agreement – the bank gains through offering a great deal to their customers, the insurance company benefits through increased customer numbers, and customers gain through receiving an exclusive offer.

Any business partnership involves the exchange of resources. Every business lacks resources that they need, particularly startup businesses. At the same time almost every business has something that they can offer, whether that’s expertise, intellectual rights, or access to their customer base.

Follow our 5 step process on how to approach companies to propose a partnership:

- Identify the resources you don’t have but need – these could be anything from new customers, new products, more extensive distribution channels, expertise, capital, or increased production capacity.

- Identify who has what you need – build a list of businesses that can provide the resources that you need.

- Decide on what you can offer potential partners – there’s no point approaching businesses to propose a strategic alliance if you can’t offer them anything in return. In general, all businesses are responsive to offers which have the potential to increase their customer base.

- Select the companies that have what you need – narrow down your original list to those businesses that you can help in return for providing what you need.

- Target the decision maker – sending an initial email to companies outlining your proposition is fine but the chances are that it will be swallowed up along with the rest of the email clutter. To make progress you have to reach the decision maker, most likely the marketing director or manager if it’s a larger organisation. With a clear proposition already in place as to how the partnership can benefit them, once you have their attention you’re almost there.

One of the biggest problems of strategic partnerships is the lack of trust between the two parties – each business is always worried that they’re getting the raw end of the deal. To try to avoid this try to make the deal as transparent as possible.

A formal agreement should always be drawn up, with the agreement including details of the various goals, intermediary targets, and review dates to assess the success of the partnership.

Having approached a company, discussed the possibility of establishing a strategic partnership, and agreed in principle to proceed, the next step is to draw up the agreement.

A written agreement is essential to ensure that everything is clear from the start. It will help to prevent arguments arising from misunderstandings and also help both businesses get the most from the partnership.

A good strategic partnership agreement should cover the following:

Aims and Objectives

What are the primary and secondary aims of the strategic alliance, for both businesses? Clearly specify the aims, such as revenue generation, cost-reduction, or to increase your customer base.

Non-Financial Contributions

What will each business contribute to the partnership aside from financial commitment? For example, there is usually some form of cross-promotion, such as widespread prevalence on each others’ websites and visibility on new marketing material.

Financial Commitments

It may be the case that one business is making a financial commitment in return for certain things supplied by the other business. This financial commitment may help to even-up the partnership in instances where one business is gaining more than another. Always try to specify the amount of investment to prevent the business providing finance attempting to cut costs.

Ownership of Intellectual Property

If you’re starting a new venture together intellectual property, such as logos or even inventions may be created. Always specify who owns this in the agreement to prevent costly arguments arising when the partnership comes to an end.

Evaluation Dates

The reason for establishing a strategic alliance in the first place is to benefit both the businesses involved. Therefore specify certain dates on which the partnership will be evaluated. This ensures that if one business isn’t benefiting greatly the issue can be resolved at a specified date rather than allowing problems to foster.

For a straightforward strategic partnership between two businesses where the purpose is to be mutually beneficial a simple written agreement should be sufficient. The main problem that is likely to arise is one company feeling that they are getting the raw end of the deal, but this is nothing that cannot be resolved through negotiation.

However, joint ventures, where two or more businesses create a separate business entity to exploit a new opportunity, are far more complex. Legal advice should be sought when drawing up these contracts.

Strategic alliances are formal partnerships between businesses which help the businesses achieve a set of goals.

There are many types of strategic alliances, including joint ventures, affiliates and distribution agreements. They are particularly common in industries that are experiencing rapid change, the internet being one example, and are often the quickest way of rapidly expanding a business.

Fortune Magazine called the 1990s “the decade of the strategic alliance” and it has become one of the key tools in rapidly expanding and winning market share.

Benefits of Strategic Alliances

Many startups decide that the best way to rapidly expand their business is to enter into strategic alliances with established companies which serve a different but similar market. The many benefits of strategic alliances are listed below:

• Access to distribution channels
• Access to technology, expertise or intellectual property
• As a means to raise capital
• New products for your customers
• Lower R&D costs
• Economies of scale
• Raise brand awareness

For a new business looking to develop brand awareness there are few more cost-effective ways of raising widespread awareness than partnering with an established business within the same industry. There’s also no reason to stop there – you can continue to partner with other non-competing firms and benefit from multiple distribution channels.

When approaching a company to propose a strategic alliance remember that you must have something to offer them in exchange.

Disadvantages of Strategic Alliances

The problem with strategic alliances is that there are a number of problems which must be overcome for them to be a success, including:

• Incoherent goals, with one business not benefiting greatly from the agreement
• Insufficient trust, with each partner company trying to get the better deal
• Conflicts over how the partnership works
• Potential to reduce future opportunities through being unable to enter into agreements with your partner’s competitors
• Lack of commitment to the partnership
• Risk of sharing too much knowledge and the partner company becoming a competitor

The main problem with strategic alliances is being able to develop a partnership which is beneficial to both parties. Often a partnership is beneficial to the smaller business, perhaps due to the wide-scale distribution channels that are gained, but the benefits for the established business aren’t quite so clear.

Even when this problem has been overcome the problem of trust arises. Without a degree of trust partnerships become beset with administrative problems and suspicions.

The best way to overcome this is to be transparent and reassess the alliance at regular intervals to ensure that both parties are gaining from the agreement. If they aren’t then perhaps the terms of the agreement need to be changed.

Finally, be careful that a partnership doesn’t end up being more of a hindrance than a benefit. Partnering with a company within a certain field will make it harder, if not impossible, to partner or win contracts from other competing companies within the same industry.

Sometimes the risk can be even closer to home, where the partnering company gains sufficient knowledge for them to become a competitor rather than a partner.

There are several methods of leaflet distribution – the one that choose depends on your budget and the expected response rate.

Solus Distribution

This is when your leaflet is delivered on its own, without any other leaflets competing for the recipient’s attention. This type of distribution also allows you to carefully target the distribution.

Distribution companies predominantly deliver leaflets according to postcode sectors, although many offer additional targeting down to council boundaries or street-level.

Solus distribution is the most expensive form of leaflet distribution because of its targeted nature and the fact that leaflets are be delivered on their own. However, the increased effectiveness often makes this worthwhile.

Shared Distribution

This is when your leaflet is delivered together with up to 3 additional leaflets. Although the leaflets may be promoting companies in different industries you are still competing for the recipient’s attention. This makes this form of distribution less effective.

In addition, highly targeted distribution is not possible because the other companies are unlikely to want to target your exact target audience at the same time as you wish to. Therefore shared distribution is carried out over postcode sectors.

Shared distribution can often be 50% cheaper than solus distribution, so even with its lower effectiveness it is often a preferred option.

Inserted in Local Newspaper

The main advantage of having your leaflet inserted in the local newspaper is that deliveries of these newspapers tend to be very reliable. Therefore you can be relatively sure that your leaflets are reaching peoples’ homes rather than being thrown away.

This method is also cost-effective as the delivery is already being made. Therefore newspaper companies can charge less than solus or shared distribution methods.

This cost-effectiveness is often countered by the lower effectiveness of the leaflets. Many people don’t read local newspapers so they’ll never even see the leaflet buried inside of it.

Placed on Car Windscreens

In the UK there are no regulations preventing placing leaflets on car windscreens. However, be careful to ensure that you don’t accidentally damage the car in some way or trespass on private property.

To avoid damaging cars it’s advised not to place the leaflet under windscreen wipers. In addition, many people find this extremely annoying, particularly if the rain has destroyed the leaflet or they only see it after starting their car. Getting someone irate before they see the leaflet is not the best way to generate a receptive customer.

Also bear in mind that councils have been known to contact companies that have distributed leaflets in this way, requesting that they clear up any leaflets that have blown or been disposed of on the road.

With the above in mind the size of the leaflet is often the key here. Print thick A6 or A7 leaflets, even business card size leaflets, and place them between the rubber seal and the window glass of car drivers’ doors.

Handing out Leaflets

Again, similar to placing leaflets on cars, smaller leaflets tend to work better as people can then put the leaflet in their wallet instead of throwing them away.

Hand out the leaflets in a busy narrow area so that people can’t avoid you. When handing out the leaflet look proactive, make eye contact with the recipient and say what it’s about, such as “Half price smoothies.” That way people will be much more likely to take your leaflet, and those that don’t probably wouldn’t have been interested anyway.