I want to be as helpful to my readers as I possibly can.  Helping my readers out a lot of times means referring you to other informative sites.  Yfs1.com is one of those sites that I feel will be very helpful for you, especially their tutorial series.  Check them out, I’m sure you will enjoy their blog.

I used to have an old boss that would make the statement, “You have to learn how to play with the cards you are dealt.”  That statement is a powerful one.  No matter what knocks you down in life or in business, get back up and figure another way of going about it.  This has happened with my business idea that I talked about earlier this month.  I’m working on a niche product comparison site, but the sites wouldn’t allow me to use their feed for price comparison.  I had to get the feeds to make my whole price comparison idea work, but I can’t get them.  There are other ways of getting the info that I need, but they all require a lot of time.  I was dealt a stinky card, but I didn’t stop there.  I stayed up really late one night thinking and then, bam!  I got an idea how to make it work.  It’s not going in the same exact direction as my last idea, but it will still work.  I’ll let you know when my project is done.  Some of you will be interested in it. 

Well, I’ve been officially on vacation since yesterday.  I’m visiting family in Southern Illinois (aka the middle of no where).  It’s harder to run a business when you are away from your computer and fax machine, but we are managing.  I’m staying at my grandparents’ house. They still have one of those “old” satellite dishes, so you can imagine they don’t have a computer.  Some of my other relatives have computers and internet, so I bum it when I get a chance.  We’re suppose to be relaxing anyhow.  I’ve actually been finding more time to type in my blog, which is cool.  It’s nice to finally spend time with my family.  You find a lot of time to be together driving from one place to another.  It took an hour and fifteen minutes to get to a decent mall.  It’s all good though.  It’s been relaxing.

When buying a domain name, there are a few things you need to consider before you buy your domain.  The first thing is to make sure your domain name isn’t too long.  My first domain name that I ever bought was as long as my business card.  People are generally too lazy to sit and type in long domain names.  I usaully try to keep my domain names two words or less.  I will go with three words in order to put keywords in my domain, but again keeping it as short as possible. 

When I purchase a domain, I have atleast one of two goals in mind.  Either the domain is meant to be an eye catcher domain or it is meant to have keywords in it to help in the SEO process.  If you can keep the SEO part in mind with the ”eye catcher” concept, then you will have the best of both worlds.   When I say “eye catcher”, I’m talking about a domain that can easily be remembered.  It is so unique that a person won’t forget it.  Like webpuffs.com for example, when I tell people about my blog the name sticks in their head because it is unique.  Other domains that I place keywords in usually aren’t as memorable, but they make SEO a bit easier.  Keep these few thought in mind as you buy a domain name, and you will be golden.

I’m a huge fan of templates since I’m graphicly declined. Templates are a great way for those with a small budget to get a nice looking site up and going at a really good price. But there are some downsides. The downsides of using a template for your sites are:

• Your site isn’t 100% unique. There are others out there using the same website template.
• You didn’t make it. You have to go through all the code to figure out where certain parts of the site begin and end.

I’m working with a template right now. It has one of those background images that is driving me up the wall. The above are a few frustrations that you have to deal with when you are trying to keep your budget down. With many decisions involving money you have to weigh out your budget and your time to see what direction you need to go in. I usually go the do-it-yourself route, until I come to the conclusion I have enough money and not enough time to get the job done. This even applies to yard work around my house.

The script that I might end up using for my new website is Price Tapestry. It’s a price comparison script. It’s probably not the best script out there for this, but I’m giving it a whirl. Maybe I can customize it, or find someone to customize it for me, like my brother-in-law. He is one of those coding gurus. Here is his website. It’s currently under construction. Jeff, if you end up reading this, I’ll make it worth your while.

The word affiliate doesn’t make me cringe like it used to. I’m really seeing the benefit of having an affiliate site. I guess I just hated seeing all these ugly sites out there that were affiliate sites. My big money maker right now is a product site. We are always dealing with customers sending out quotes and P.O.s. It’s cool, but we can’t have any more product sites on our hands because we don’t have the time to deal with any more customers. Going affiliate, will take time to build and market minus time spent with customers.