Getting From "A" to "Z" How to start from scratch and build your on-line business: The basic answer has to be do more work (just kidding). We are on the right track - just work smarter, not harder. If you're like so many others, work is no problem. What you need is more time and the right sources. You can find both of them right here. We'll save you the time by presenting some of the best programs and resources right here. In fact, everything you need to set up shop quickly. The best part of all is..... you guessed it, FREE or at minimal cost. To paraphrase a well-known celebrity, "It all depends on what "FREE is". Your New Web Site At least you can start here and start at no cost. How about a free Web Site? Check out these sources: www.angelfire.com. Not only can you get a FREE Web Site but Angelfire will also provide you with a free automatic web page building program so that you can build your own web page(s). If you have the content and the products to sell, you can open your on-line store and be in business today! Internet Service Next up! What do we need now? If this is step two, we are going in reverse. Step one, above, assumed you had Internet access or you would not be browsing and surfing on the web. However, maybe you're brand new to the web and you're surfing with the help of a friend's on-line connection. Would you like your own FREE Internet service so you can view your web site and surf the net on your own? Click Here for Freeweb This service has a set up fee, but they give you a free web browser and you don't have to pay monthly fees, $20.00 per month, or anything else, after that initial charge. Savings mount up quickly. You won't have to endure banner displays and advertisements that many of the companies providing free services insist upon. But don't complain. You don't often get something for nothing and everything in life comes with a price. For a provider to request banner service or hyperlinks to other web sites in exchange for that free service is a very small price to pay. More Free Web Pages If you need more web space you can easilly add some to your inventory. Here are several sources for free web pages. You can use these additional sites to advertise your products or service and promote them through search engines, directories and free-for-all web sites. If you also use an autoresponder with your free sites you can increase your coverage with automatic replies that contain your sales information messages More free web page sources: Angelfire FreeYellow HotYellow Hypermart Xoom MyFreeOffice.com More Free Internet Service You can check it out here. Expect an up-front service charge (another Clinton freebie) to become an affiliate. This was free thru 31 March 1999 but the date may have been extended. They are still in start up mode. After their deadline it will cost you $150.00 for the priviledge. Become an Ezze.net affiliateand earn $50.00 per sale and you are welcome to take advantage of all the Ezze.Net member benefits. Join now. Check out Ezze.net. Some of the many Benefits Free Internet Access by Net Zero Free Email by EzzeMail Free Web Sites by EzzeSite Free Storefronts. Free Dating Service. Free Chat Rooms Free Conference Service WinZip One of the most useful and most used programs on the Internet has to be Winzip. This program predates Windows and was one of the first successful compression and decompression software programs. If memory serves me correctly, the original DOS version was written by Phil Katz, an icon on the computer world's desktop. WinZip is the great facilitator for downloading files to your hard disk and making the programs operable on your computer. Its value in the distribution of software in all medias has been invaluable. A "must have program" for your tool box. Winzip winzip Banner Exchange Advertising Free banner exhanges are one of the best mediums available for advertising on the internet. Visibility is the name of the game. Initial cost in many cases is zero ($0.00). You can make a simple banner with your paint program, or one of many free programs available here, and then join a free banner exchange. That's it. Your banner will then run on the other members' web sites and their banners will run on yours. And, it's easy to sign up. "Click here" for your free simple test drive: Bug Zapper Banner Exchange Web Site Garage One of the best things you can do to improve your Web Site is to make sure that it is properly formatted. Not everyone is fluent in HTML coding and while many of us write ourn own pages, so too, many of us have mistakes. Well, the good news is that you don't have to live with them. The Web Site Garage runs a free service to validate your HTML pages. They will check your coding syntax, check your spelling, check your hypertext links and graphics and give you a full "Tune Up" report. The rest is up to you to make the recommended changes. Put your best foot forward and present the best Web Site you can to an anxiously waiting global community. Visit The Web Site Garage Net Mechanic NetMechanic provides one of the most powerful, integrated suites of free and low cost site maintenance services for detecting problems and repairing your Web Site. Last year alone they checked and tuned 17,000,000 Web pages. The free tools include: GIFBot Link Check HTML Check Browser Check Load Check Spell Check Server Check Find out if your server is up and running and if you can improve your connection to the service. NetMechanic: Power Tools for Your Web Site Search Engine If you would like to include a free search engine on your pages to help out your visitors, you should know that there are different varieties. One is a localized version that will index and create a personal database of all the information to be found on your own web site. This will allow your visitors to conduct restricted searches on your web pages only. One example is WhatUSeek Search Engine a powerful no-maintenance tool that will search just your pages. You can also pick up a second or third email account, a personal calendar, and an address book at WhatUSeek email. They advertise it as your free, private, secure space on the Web. With it you can access and share your information from anywhere, on any browser, anytime. The larger, well known search engines such as AltaVista, Excite, Infoseek and Lycos will also allow you to create a link to their sites if you feel you would rather have one of them. It's your web site and your choice. Are you wondering why I did not include Yahoo? Yahoo is classified as a directory, not a search engine. The results are pretty much the same as far as we are concerned at this level. Yes, you can also link to Yahoo if that's what you want. HotDog OK, you're on the Internet, you have your free access, your free web page, an extra email account, address book, calendar and bookmarks. You're all dressed up with no place to go! You will have to put some interesting content onto your web page to establish a real presence on the web. In my humble opinion, you can't do much better than HotDog as your HTML editor. By the way, in case you are unfamiliar with the term, HTML stands for Hot Metal Markup Language. At the time of this writing they are on version no. 4. But don't worry, learning basic HTML is not at all difficult. You can buy a book, take a course or learn from one of the many free tutorials available on the Internet. You can begin your studies right here and start building your web site right now. Try it, you'll like it. Paint Shop Pro This program is one of the most widely used "paint and graphic" programs in use throughout the internet. You can very easilly pay several times more for a full featured graphics program but I doubt if you will be able to get any more functionality. It's on a par with the best. Download your free trial copy of Paint Shop Pro today and paint your own Rembrant. Clickable Color Pallet Color Me ...? Do you really need 16,000,000 colors to make that icon? And, what color should you be using anyway? If you are confused about internet colors and don't have a clue about what any of those "color codes" (#ee3927, #db9680, etc) mean, you need a no-nonsense color guide. Try Victor Engel's fast loading Clickable Color Pallet. Click on any of the 216 colors and the corresponding font coloror="#FFFFFF" code is presented for copying to your web page. It will show you the percentages of red, green and blue that comprise the color and give you the hex and decimal codes, too. Try the Victor Engel Color Pallet. Generally speaking you should use complimentary colors and limit the number of colors on any web page to no more than six colors. The Animation Workshop The Animation WorkshopHow many graphics do you think you you will need? This Web Site has 11,000 FREE animated graphics;accents, alphabets, animals, bars, buttons, flags, music, sports, people and more. You name it, they have it. They also have some very good tools you can use to work with your own graphics. Check out their many features: web design resourses, fonts, java and cgi scripts, screensavers, and on and on and on.... WebPosition Software Once you are on the Internet and have created your Web Site you will have to advertise it so your customers will be able to find you. This can be a long and difficult journey. The first and most logical step is to get yourself registered on the search engines. If you have not been down this road before, you can waste a lot of time. There is a lot more to it than just submitting your URL (Uuniversal Resource Locator - your Web Site address). A whole industry has grown up around what has become a very narrow specialty. It makes you think you should have paid more attention to learning sort routines in your programing classes. But take heart, others did, and they wrote software programs to make the job a lot simpler. NEW! Learn how to bring FREE, targeted TRAFFIC to your Web site with WebPosition Analyzer(tm).Get your FREE trial here! Freeshop.com - Free and Trial Offers Freeshop.com - Make FreeShop your starting point for online shopping. This web site is an welcomed resource featuring thousands of free and trial offers. As an associate member you can receive $0.20 to $20.00 every time a visitor from your web site orders selected free or trial items. As a FreeShop Associate, you are eligible to earn a generous 30% to 50% for your referred orders. Link to FreeShop and earn free cash today! FreeShop Submit Your Web Page Click here to bring up the SavySearch Web Page; then click on the "Submit Button at the top of the left hand menu. This will allow you to submit your web site free, all at once, to 10 or more of the most popular search engines including AltaVista, Infoseek, Lycos, AOL Finder, WebCrawler and more. Freeware, Shareware and Internet Services When choosing any freeware or shareware program you should take full advantage of the usual 30 day trial period offered by the software's author. Download a similar software program and test the two programs against each other. Are they at your level of competence and expertise? Do they perform as expected. Which do you prefer? Also, evaluate the level of service provided by your Web site host. What resources do they offer? Bandwidth, access time, availability and of course total charges for the service are important considerations you should be aware of. You may be living with annoying problems that could be solved simply by changing your ISP. The Free HelpWare Site HELP! Need help on a project? Want to give back to the Internet Community? Sign up here and feel free to join in.The Honor System in action. Try it, you'll like it. Free Webmasters' Special Report Network Join the Special Report Network today and easily generate more traffic for you web site. You should provide a free report at your web site for the Report Network to link to. You can offer a specially prepared report on your area of expertise and interest or download one of general interest you can giver away free. Check here for details. 1000 Free Reports. Use this service with your autoresponder to spread your product's message. Download any posted report for your own use and information. Increase traffic to your web site This is one of the better web sites with information on how to increase your visitor traffic. Go to theTraffic Center. Spend an hour or so finding dozens of ways to increase your web site traffic now. How about a FREE PC? Saving the best for last. For the cash challenged pc enthusiast, this really is one of the best deals on the Internet. A company called idealab! out of Pasadena, CA is giving away 10,000 free PCs to a select list of applicants. You have to agree to watch their advertising but the price is certainly right. They are described as new Compaq PCs, 333 mhz, 32 meg of ram, 4 gig hard drive, 33.6 modem and Windows 98. Fill out an application here and apply for your FREE PC. You better hurry! Good Luck. More FREE PC's? WANT A NEW, FREE PC within the next 30 days? How about a Pentium-III for ½ price? No silly ad frames, either! Explosive (pre-IPO) e-commerce internet retailer is giving away FREE PC's to computer enthusiasts until July 31, 1999 or while supplies last. Send for complete details without hype, including computer specs to: Free PC Info Free Webmasters' Special Design Center To improve the design of your site, go to Design Services Center Remember, design is marketing. You want your site to capture email addresses and make sales. World Design Services Center helps you do just that. Look for the Free Reports section. Free Weekly Associate Programs Newsletter I highly recommend the FREE weekly Associate Programs Newsletter, which reviews the best and worst affiliate/commission programs, and tells you how web masters are marketing them successfully. Enter your e-mail address here to subscribe. The Spider's Apprentice: This is an excellent tutorial on searching the World Wide Web using the main search engines and directories. The Spider's Apprentice will teach you how to find what you need the first time from search engines like AltaVista, Infoseek, Excite, Webcrawler, Lycos, HotBot, and Yahoo. BigNoseBird.com: There is no better way to introduce this web site. It is a very funny name for a very interesting and informative web site that you will not soon forget. (How funny is that?) BigNoseBird.com features more than 190 pages of origina,l easy-to-read tutorials on almost every subject. Free scripts, free graphics, free midi files and much, much more. You can litterally spend all day at this web site and not get through it all. Pick out the good stuff and whatever else interests you. Have fun.      I found what I needed at Remotely Hosted CGI Service This is a particularly useful site if your Internet Service Provider (ISP) does not allow you to use cgi scripts on your web site. With Remotely Hosted you can use their scripts on your pages and with a link to them, have your cgi scripts running in no time. This is one of the best ideas for cgi challenged webmasters on the net. These scripts are available now: Forum, Take Me, List Me, Linkage, Logger, PageView, Guestbook, FormEmailer, SiteView, Voting Booth, and a Free Newsletter! A real gem. Take a look at Remotely Hosted	Download and Install Your Software! The first thing to do is to click on the hypertext link to the left that identifies the program you want to download. Save it to c:\temp or a similar convenient file. Selected Downloads: Site 1- Web Promote Site 2 - AngelFire Site 3 - Free Web Access Free PC How to Install: 1. Open your File Manager (3.1) or Explorer (Win 95, 98) to the c:\temp file where you downloaded the file. If the file has an '.exe' extension just click on its icon and it will load itself onto your drive. You must choose the new file name and directory in each instance. If the file has a '.zip' ending again, click on the file's icon. This will open the WinZip program. Select the file you want to expand and name the new file where you want the expanded version to reside. Click extract and the file will install itself onto your hard drive and into its new directory. Run your program. 2. Remember, most of these software programs are demonstration or shareware versions and their use is generally time limited to 30 days. It is important to view the 'Read Me' files to learn any special installation or operating instructions, peculiarities and bug reports and to read and comply with the licensing agreements. If you use the software beyond the trial period you are obligated and expected to pay for it. You are also free to choose other similar software for comparison purposes before deciding on any single product. Any Questions? 3. Questions? Your best source for any information is usually the FAQ (frequently asked questions) Section, either on the disk you downloaded or at the web site from which you got the program. One of the many benefits of the Internet is the tremendous amount of free expert advice that is made available to everyone just for the asking. Please, don't forget to say 'Thank You' whenever you have the opportunity. DMS Computers Selected Free Reports: Misleading advertisements The FREE Store - Jesica O'neal Free Web Access Free PC Y"0"K, What does it all mean?
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