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| URL Registration | Web Hosting | Merchant Account | Affiliate Prog |
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URL Registration
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The following sites provide Universal Resource Locator (URL) registration and other services related to maintaining your own website address. In addition to simply registering and reserving your own website address, many of these vendors provide services such as URL and email forwarding.
URL forwarding allows you to park your website on a ISP or hosting service and have browsers find you by using your registered website address. For example, lets say you have registered MySite.com but your website is actually located in your AOL account space at the URL http://members.aol.com/your_account_name/. Rather than remember the long AOL URL address, you could use a redirect service to automatically connect people to your website when they type MySite.com. EMail forwarding works the same way, forwarding any mail sent to YourName@MySite.com to your AOL email (or other ISP) email address.
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NameSecure
http://www.namesecure.com
NameSecure provides several Internet services
including domain name registration and URL and email forwarding. The forwarding
services allow you to park your web site anywhere and when someone types your
URL with your registered domain name, NameSecure forwards them to the actual
location of the site or email.
Network Solutions
http://www.NetworkSolutions.com
This company was purchased by VeriSign. The site
provides domain name registration and other Internet services.
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| TOP | URL Registration | Web Hosting | Merchant Account | Affiliate Prog |
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Web Hosting
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Setting up and maintaining your own host site is very expensive and typically beyond the budget of most free agents. Fortunately, there are plenty of places to park your HTML website pages without having to invest in equipment and administrative staff. The following sites provide hosting services. Several sites provide free space to anyone who wants to set up a Website. Often called communities, these host sites provide many megabytes of free space and publishing tools free of charge. However, they force advertising over your site and they do have rules, so make sure you check their restrictions before uploading your web pages.
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Angelfire Communications
http://www.angelfire.com
Angelfire is part of the Lycos network. In
exchange for allowing advertising, this web hosting site offers several goodies
such as assistance creating a website, automated polls, and guest books.
GeoCities/Yahoo
http://geocities.yahoo.com
Yahoo purchased GeoCities.com and now offers
three levels of website hosting ranging from free (where your site gets forced outside
advertising) to paid site hosting without the advertising.
Tripod
http://www.tripod.com
Tripod is also a part of the Lycos network and offers
many of the same features as Angelfire.
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| TOP | URL Registration | Web Hosting | Merchant Account | Affiliate Prog |
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Merchant Account
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Getting a merchant account allows you to accept credit cards as payment from your clients and customers. These sites help you get a merchant account and/or set up an online storefront for your business.
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CardTech Merchant Systems
http://www.global-payment-services.com
Card tech merchant services offers credit card
machine and merchant services at low cost. Services include e-commerce credit
card processing, check guarantees, and gift cards. They also provide credit
card transaction machines at no additional charge.
Charge.com
http://www.charge.com
This site provides a way to sign up for a
merchant account so you can accept credit cards such as Visa and MasterCard for
your business. Charge.com claims to be the #1 credit card merchant account
provider on the Internet.
FreeMerchant.com
http://www.freemerchant.com
This site provides simple-to-follow wizards and
setup templates that help you to create a small business storefront on the
Internet.
PayPal
http://www.paypal.com
Anyone who regularly purchases items on eBay is
familiar with PayPal. They provide an efficient way to send money
electronically via the internet. When someone uses PayPal to pay you, PayPal
extracts a small transaction fee from the proceeds. They provide HTML code that
you can place on your website so you can accept credit cards via the web.
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| TOP | URL Registration | Web Hosting | Merchant Account | Affiliate Prog |
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Affiliate Programs
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Affiliate programs offer the potential to make some extra money by advertising or linking to a vendor site that pays a commision for referred customers. You can develop separate relationships directly with individual company programs or work with an affiliate broker. Affiliate brokers, such as Commision Junction, let you select from a list of participating companies and receive payment for sales commissions from one source.
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Affiliate Network
http://www.affiliatenetwork.com
The Affiliate Network is an International
Affiliate Network. The site doesn’t have as many merchants as Commission Junction,
but the advantages of centralized payment are the same. They also offer the
option of being paid via PayPal.
Affiliate Programs Guide
http://www.affiliate-programs-guide.com
This site provides links to hundreds of
affiliate programs that you can add to your website for some extra revenue. The
affiliate programs are organized by category
Commission Junction
http://www.cj.com
Earn additional income by hosting advertising
banners on your website. Although this is not a new idea, Commission Junction
adds a new spin by centralizing payment for affiliate programs offered by
companies like hotjobs.com and eBay. Rather than enter into affiliate programs
for each of these vendors individually, you can select from Commission
Junctions list of participating companies and receive payment for any sales
commissions from one source.
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