Part of the reason people get into online businesses is the ability to “not be there” and still get the order complete.

• Sales letter up 24/7
• Order transaction up 24/7
• Order fulfillment up 24/7
• Automatic email confirmation up 24/7

Real contact with the customer

ZERO

(sounds like a MasterCard commercial, huh?)

Online digital businesses make people lazy.

No matter how you cut it, people want to do less and less and get more and more.

A common fallacy – mainly contributed by the successful – is that you have all this free time to sit on the beach and drink from a coconut. Lots of sales copy reads, “I send out a couple of emails a week and clear twenty-grand a month.”

It sounds so simple, but there’s much more to it.

Nobody tells you about the number of emails you get that start with:

“I can’t get the thing to download. You mentioned something about an acrobat. What does that have to do with anything?”

How you serve your customers determines if they will ever buy from you again.

And it determines if they will tell their friends.

Excuse me!

What they tell their friends?

They will tell them something, but what that something is, is up to you.

It’s how you follow up…

How you treat your customer…

Your Follow Up Cash Plan will guide you along that successful path

You want your customers to tell their friends that you are a great marketer, right?

Three Reminders…

It’s About Support, Not Just Selling

Today an eleven-year-old with a website can sell something online. Selling is not the issue. But how will that kid react with an angry, frustrated, or confused buyer? What happens when the tyke who drinks bytes for breakfast meets grandma who decides this will be the day she logs on to the internet for the first time?

The unsuccessful look at a sale as the completion of THE goal.

Get the sale.

Get the sale.

They sell one person then move to the next. Those making the most money realize the first sell is a stepping stone to a relationship through which more sales will come.

Any kid can make a sale; it takes a pro to supply support.

It’s About Friendship, Not Just Salesmanship

There’s enough arrogant copywriting high-fiving happening in business it’s a wonder that some people can type with their blistered hands. Few people write real sales copy, most of it is just hype.

Why?

To get the money.

Big deal.

How many friends have you made through your products and services?

How many of your customers can you call and they’re thrilled to hear from you?

Whose house could you stop by for a cookie and a glass of milk?

Crooks don’t stop by for a cookie – friends do.

Uh-oh, I hear some excuses…

”But I run an internet business…but I never see a customer…but I’m trying to remain anonymous and make $4,000 a day from my kitchen table in my underwear…”

Some of my best friendships (and most profitable ones) have come as a result my digital business. No, you don’t have to be everyone’s pal, and there will be some customers you’ll need to get rid of – especially the dreaded freebie seeker.

But a handful of solid clients that you laugh with, dream with, go to for advice, and go the extra mile for will only boost your business.

What kind of friend are you to your customers?

Your Follow Up Cash Plan will provide you with the ‘insider’ knowledge of how to create that relationship with your best customers. It will give you enough material that you can’t be lazy.

See you on the inside

Thanks for stopping by…I am interrupting my List Building series very briefly to give you a glimpse of the future of video marketing.

Easy Video Player

Just click the play button to watch the video below

Although it took me about 4 ‘takes’ to get the video the way I wanted it, to get it from my flip cam to the blog was a matter of doing a quick edit of the start and finish of the video in camtasia, taking the one file from there and uploading it to my dashboard and then ONE click to generate the code, clicked in the box to copy the code and then paste it here…

Easy Peasy.

Easy Video Player

Thanks for visiting and watching…

Ron

I hope you enjoyed the last post and have been practicing your cPanel skills.

Today I am going to go over the basics of pointing your domain to your webhost, which is necessary for your domain to be visible on the web.

If you spend any time on the Internet sending e-mail or browsing the Web, then you use domain name servers without even realizing it. Domain name servers, or DNS, are an incredibly important but completely hidden part of the Internet, and they are fascinating. The DNS system forms one of the largest and most active distributed databases on the planet. Without DNS, the Internet would shut down very quickly.

When you use the Internet or send an e-mail message, you use a domain name to do it. For example, the URL “http://www.ron-barrett.com” contains the domain name ron-barrett.com. So does the e-mail address “ron @ ron-barrett.com.”

Human-readable names like “ron-barrett.com” are easy for people to remember, but they don’t do machines any good. All of the machines use names called IP addresses to refer to one another and domains use DNS servers.

Here are the steps in order to point your domain to your web host.

Step 1) Log into your domain registrar.

Step 2) Select the domain you want to point to your web host.

Step 3) Look for a setting called “Nameserver” or “DNS Settings”. The following are nameservers for Dreamhost.com

Step 4) Enter in your two DNS addresses in the appropriate fields. If you don’t know your DNS addresses, contact your webhost. They should have provided this information when you registered.

Step 5) Save changes.

The DNS, or Domain Name System is a huge database that stores all information communications that exist on the Internet. In fact, it is the largest database in the world. One person browsing the web can complete hundreds of DNS entries per day, depending on how many times they click on something or how much information they transmit online. The DNS server is huge, and each DNS entry relates to an individual domain name, which is why domain name registration is so important.

Each computer or device that is connected to the internet has an identifying IP address. The IP address is important since this is how the DNS recognizes which location is collecting or transmitting information across the World Wide Web.

When someone types the full URL (http://www.blahblah. com) or web address (www.whatever. com) into the address bar of their browser, the domain name and host name is converted to an IP address, so that the browser knows to direct the user to that web page. The browser actually has a virtual conversation of sorts with the domain name’s server. On some computer and Internet systems, the DNS is transmitted to the machine’s memory once you connect to your Internet Service Provider (or ISP). Some machines are actually hard wired to read the DNS and know how to talk to the domain server via the operating system. What basically happens is that the browser contacts the server and asks it to convert the domain into an IP address. Once this happens, the browser converts it over to the website, allowing the user to see it on their PC.

Some servers search for an IP address by looking for the root name server. These root servers know about the IP address already, and know what servers it handles under the top level, or main domains. Once that happens the server asks the root director for the website. It is essential that you’ve already created a master domain, had it registered, and created the root directory so that the domain name knows to go directly to your web host’s server. Registering and creating a domain name is essential to ensuring that the host communication is performed properly.

Each web hosting server can have several physical PCs or computers that each have their own IP address, and this can make up the entire server infrastructure. There can be nicknames, or aliases for the hosts which all point to the actual, physical machine. There can also be a nickname or alias for different websites that point to the master domain. This can go on and on, depending on the root directory and how many name servers there are. In effect, they can all point back to the main domain name in some way or another. It’s important to remember that the DNS can handle millions of transactions every minute of every day. Knowing how the DNS operates is helpful when learning how to make sure your domain name points back to the host or server.

Be sure your website has a good root directory that knows where its origins are. This means that any information using the DNS will ultimately point the user or person visiting the website right back to the web host. In return, you are able to better track where your visitors are coming from, what they are looking at, and how information is being transmitted from your website to the web hosting server and then back again. The DNS is the world’s largest database and is constantly changing, but with a good root directory or name server, all URL hits will bring everything back to the origin of the site, which is the host.

I have one more post coming up and that will do it for the Webhosting for Newbies series.

See you then.

Ron