New Media Dynamics… Reinventing the Press Release – White Paper for PR Pros

Great communicators have always had to adapt to change. They either adapted or they failed to communicate. While the essence of communication has remained unchanged for tens of thousands of years, the tools used have grown and evolved greatly. Still, no matter what technological advances have been added, essentially none of the methods have been discarded, they were simply refined.

This is true of press releases as well. Once, a relied upon media and customer outreach tool, the press release is long overdue for an overhaul. The rapidly changing media environment of today demands more creativity, flexibility, focus, and even novelty of communicators and their tools. Traditional media outreach went out the moment purely traditional media shifted to the Web. Companies that do not understand this are frankly doomed to extinction in the 21st Century.

For Pamil Visions, statements like this have always been part of our corporate dogma. The reason for this is that we grew up, or came into being as a company at the onset of this shift, in fact we even contributed to the shift significantly. We are, after all, an Internet communications company. The reasons for this shift to online social and other types of media are well documented and numerous, but the important thing here is not whether communications is going digital, but how we as business people adapt our tools to the shift. For this reason, Pamil Visions’ experts, in collaboration with others from around the social web, are endeavoring to document and foster these needed changed.

Apart from new forms of press releases, like social media variants, today’s optimized press release is more refined, contracted, simplified and in the end media friendly.

This first in a series of white papers; Press Releases Designed for Effect – Reinventing the press release for the new media dynamics, reveals what a this new tool looks like. Also, the paper will become an integral part of an ongoing information stream designed to foster not only more effective communication, but a greater understanding of the social Web as a whole. In short, this will be an in depth “how to” on engaging the digital world. So, “just when you needed it most”, Pamil Visions will introduce readers to the latest information possible – primers for going digital and staying there. We begin with the press release…

Post from: eWritings - Online Public Relations

New White Paper from Pamil Visions

Despite its low costs, online advertising is still “unpopular” (at least in Europe) – newspapers and television continue to lead the market. But if you judge from an advertiser’s point of view, it makes sense: not only that the immediate, visible ROI generated by online advertisements is lower, but the efficacy of an online advertising campaign is questioned, when the users seem to ignore banner ads, pop-ups and the like.

Advertising experts predict that advertisers will spend more online than in newspapers by the end of the year, but it is still difficult to predict how successful these advertisements will be, when online advertisers are poorly educated about how to use the various advertising channels available.

Now Google and WPP Group have joined forces to promote “science-based” researches on how traditional and online advertising affect consumer choices.

Until they come up with the “science” I can only tell you what I learned from seven years of online advertising experience, but first, let’s take a look at the numbers in the UK.
Advertising spend in newspapers declined 12% last year, but the newspapers still took 25% market share. Internet advertising followed after TV with 20%. UK experts believe that this year the Internet will occupy the top position in advertising spend.

I have my doubts, and I could be wrong, of course, but to “convert” business owners to accept the Web as advertising channel more efficient than Newspapers and TV is rather difficult. First the online advertising experts would have to educate their clients on what works and what doesn’t. They’ll have to answer to questions like: “why doesn’t Google show my AdWords ad in the top position?” The answers to this may vary, from “you set up your AdWords keyword placement wrong”, to “ you don’t pay enough” and “Google rotates the ads on the top positions, because there are many companies paying to be first.”

AdWords and the like are just a form of advertising – from a ROI point of view probably the most effective, but remember that there is a time and a place for everything. A good advertising campaign online should take into consideration demographics, interests, peoples’ preferences (likes and dislikes) and needs.

Banners are often generating the lowest ROI – because web users simply do not click on such ads – of course, unless the ads in question have a very enticing design and message. Creating the perfect design for a banner has always been a challenge. Many marketing experts already wrote enough about this, there is an article that might help at eWritings too.

The problem with online advertising is that the advertisers are blinded by click-through and often disregard the branding aspects and the long term benefits of banner advertising for example. Online or offline, the challenge for the advertising industry is to understand that the consumers might not have an immediate need to purchase a product and that banner advertising (when done right) can have a huge impact on branding. A banner can lead to a site visit independent of “click-through.” A web user may remember the name of a company months after being exposed to a banner – let’s not forget that images and symbols are what sticks with our memory best.

For banner advertising (and this often works at a subliminal level) there are a few tips that might help you:

• Use large logos (at least 15% of the banner space) to create brand awareness.
• Use human faces – they give the suggestion of friendship, confidence and familiarity. The presence of a human face increase customer interest, subconsciously.
• Do not clutter the design. Too many elements distract from the message, which reminds me:
• Use short sentences, clear calls to action that motivate, entice and persuade.
• Large banners (for example 468×60) perform better than small banners (125×125).
• Banners seen with high frequency have a greater impact on building brand awareness than banners with a lower rate of occurrence.
• Banners with dynamic images (Flash animation, video) have a greater impact than stating banners. This doesn’t include banners with flickering messages like “new”, “click here” etc – which are purely annoying.

Assuming that creating the “perfect” banner ad is simple, another challenge is placement. How do you know where to advertise? How do you know which site will drive to your business the most consumers ready to buy? You don’t, but then again, here are a few things that might help you pick the right channel:

• Advertise on niche related sites – only these are visited more often by people who may be interested in what you have to offer.
• Check the Alexa/ Compete stats of the site you want to advertise on – these give an approximate indication of how many people actually visit that site, but:
• Without “site usage” it’s hard to evaluate the quality of a site. See how many comments appear under each blog post. They are indicative of user involvement and site usage.
• See how many citations the site in question has on other sites: for example type into Yahoo! Search query bar: linkdomain:examplesite.com -site:examplesite.com

Join the discussion and share your tips, ask your questions and state your opinions. In your experience, what type of banners work best and why?

Post from: eWritings - Online Public Relations

Banner Advertising Benefits and Challenges

The weekly startup review initiated with PageTiki continues today with PerformancingAds. This, in my opinion, is an obscure advertising system that supposedly helps “great publishers get partnered up with great advertisers.”

For research purposes I will include in this article some affiliate links to PerformancingAds (to see how many clicks will appear in my affiliates control panel). Please note that this is a negative review of the service and I do not recommend PerformancingAds as a feasible monetizing option for your site/blog.

PerformancingAds released its service on July 24 with a biased list-type of announcement on their corporate blog. Behind the service there are names like Ryan Caldwell, Chris Garrett, Sean Hickey and Randa Clay – all web authorities, respected professionals in the blogosphere. These are the names that “baited” so many people into becoming PerformancingAds users.

I haven’t tested the service as an advertiser, but I can today express my opinion as a publisher and an affiliate.

Something Fishy in PerformancingAds Land…

Creating an account with PerformancingAds is easy. You submit some basic information, go through a basic confirmation process and you are in.

Then you submit your sites, set up your advertising fees, get a script code and paste it wherever you want to display PerformancingAds on your site. This sounds simple and clean, doesn’t it?

Next, you wait for advertisers to “book” advertising space on your sites. In the meanwhile Performancing will display its own banners, at its discretion or place miscellaneous banners on your sites – apparently based on a “traffic exchange” basis:

A publisher earns a set baseline of credits simply for displaying ads, and earns even more credits when ads are sold on his or her site. Credits are then converted into free traffic for the publisher.

I was not inspired to make screenshots of my sites in the first two days of displaying PerformancingAds because honestly… I haven’t expected the service to be so full of bugs. So “fishy.”

Let me explain.

PerformancingAds showed for two-three days ads from its network on my site. There where links to http://performancingads.com/ and a few other sites from the SplashPress Media network. I treated these as “exchange” ads and I ignored them.

If you have not sold all of your advertising spots, Performancing Ads will show exchange ads in their place. Exchange ads are ads from other sites in the network and count towards your exchange credits. Exchange ads always defer to paid-ads, so as soon as someone buys an ad on your site, the paid ad will replace an exchange ad.

At the beginning of September I noticed that the ads displayed by the PerformancingAds script on my sites changed. I logged into my account and I was happy to see 6 bookings in my reports for September. There were 2 bookings for each site I submitted. Today these bookings magically disappeared – although the ads still show on my sites.

PerformancingAds still displaying ads on Rounite as I write this article.

Naturally this raises questions about Performancing’s integrity. Do they charge the advertisers and do not pay the publishers? Frankly, this is exactly how it looks.

Advertisers book banner ads on a publisher’s site on weekly basis –at least according to Performancing.

Why do you use weeks instead of months?

We get asked this question a lot. The simple truth is that at the end of the day, it increases the level of entry for advertisers. By having more advertisers involved in our network, our publishers will make more money, more consistently. It’s a win-win for everyone.

So if advertisers book banner space for one week, how come that the bookings completely disappear after 2 days (!) from a publisher’s account and how come that these advertisers remain featured on the publishers’ sites? Do the ads convert to “exchange ads” over night? If so, why is http://umarsiddiqi.com/blog/ not displaying any Rounite ads?

The questions “how does the exchange system work?” receives from Performancing a nebulous answer:

Good question! The exchange system is a credit based system that is internal to Performancing Ads publishers. A publisher earns a set baseline of credits simply for displaying ads, and earns even more credits when ads are sold on his or her site. Credits are then converted into free traffic for the publisher.

The “exchange” is obviously random and incontrollable. In the PerformancingAds control panel there are no stats to show you where your “exchange ads” are being shown or how many referrals you get from the so called “traffic exchange.”

In this equation only PerformancingAds wins.

The affiliates program is even more nebulous. If you are logged into your account there is no way to access the information from this page: http://performancingads.com/affiliates

This is how the page reads when you are logged off:

And this is what the same url displays when you are logged in.

The question “how much I make per referral” was not included in the “help” FAQ for affiliates. There is also no way to tell whether the affiliate signed under your referral id is a publisher or an advertiser.

With mysterious disappearance of bookings from my account, I wouldn’t be surprised to see the number of affiliates reset to zero tomorrow. More mysterious is the number of clicks reported in my affiliate account.

I had days when TerraHermes had 8000 unique visitors. Please note that the PerformancingAds affiliate banner is on the header of the blog. Do you think that out of 8000 visitors no one clicked on that banner? Not even by accident? According to my tongue-in-cheek calculations, at least five users drank too much Finlandia and passed over the keyboard accidentally hitting the banner; two husbands (or wives) got slapped at the back of the head for being on the Web too long and clicked the banner; at least four users had mistakenly travelled to one of my sites trying to find performance cars (and clicked on the “performancing” ad) and finally… statistically… at least 8 users (or 0,01 percent of 8000) actually clicked on the banner as intended.

PerformancingAds is a mystery and I am not the only one to complain. See Ben Barden’s four week review – it’s more in-depth than mine. Not many web authorities are criticizing the system, and we do have some users experiencing “problems” with their PerformancingAds… I guess the others are too busy to notice or too busy advertising the system…

So far I am deeply disappointed with Performancing and I wouldn’t recommend it to any of my friends. I continue to run the script for a while, just for the sake of the argument. I am also very curious how many “clicks” will appear in my “affiliates” reports after this article and basically till the end of September 2008 – when I will publish my conclusions. I will discontinue using PerformancingAds at the end of the month and I will donate all winnings (if any) to a cause you recommend.

Post from: eWritings - Online Public Relations

Performancing Lacks Performance

Which ad services to use for high revenue?

Everything you do online needs a grain of dedication if you want it successful, so if you want to make money with your site you’ll need to dedicate all your efforts to finding the best ways to achieve your goals.

I discussed in a previous article the advantages and disadvantages of using graphic ads on blogs, and I focused more on the 125×125 pixels banner format which is the most popular among bloggers. You can see them even on the right sidebar here, at eWritings.

Depending on the ads’ target and the content of the blog they could or could not be successful, and I emphasize again that ads that are related to the topics of your site have more chances to convert than miscellaneous ads. Also remember that 125×125 pixel banner ads might work for some bloggers, while you wait endlessly for a click. If that’s the case, maybe you should try using other ad formats that blend better with your design.

Another important trick is to choose the ad service that gives the higher conversions per click. I’ve been testing many such services for eWritings and client blogs, so that today I can easily make a list based on what I learned so far.

LinkWorth – By Far the Best Paying Ads Service

LinkWorth doesn’t have the best user dashboard in the industry, but once you get used to it you’ll find that the service has excellent features for both partners and advertisers. The customer support is excellent and the payments come in time.

Once your site is approved – which generally happens very fast – if you have decent traffic and good linking scores you’ll start receiving requests from the advertisers almost immediately. I recommend that you check each site before you approve new ads, to avoid linking to sites that might be detrimental for your brand. You can sell all types of ad space on your site with LinkWorth – and what’s even better you set your own price.

The PayPerPost Phenomena

This took the blogosphere by surprise and generated enough pros and cons to make it clear to everyone that the system was not doomed to fail. PayPerPost was the first “sponsored reviews” type of service that really worked. Even nowadays a PayPerPost campaign can be successful if conducted wisely. Advertisers should understand that sponsored reviews should not be focused on gambling the Google algorithms by generating new links.

I successfully tested PayPerPost to monetize some blogger blogs (never at eWritings) and to generate buzz for clients. I no longer use PayPerPost as a monetization system (I still use the affiliate feature), but I still use it as a great advertising channel.

Google AdSense

It always worked for me, but I had times when I protested against Google by removing their ads from my sites. Now their system is better and fairer, made for adsense sites stopped invading the search results, the ads displayed are no longer irrelevant to the content of the site, so I have no reason to protest. Google Ads are also the safest way to go when you want to monetize your site. As you know, Google has the strange habit of penalizing sites for selling links and text link ads, but it will not penalize sites that display ads by Google. Of course, if your text link ads are generated with a script that makes them no- indexable by the search engines, you are out of the danger zone.

Also, you should know that Google has all types of ads in the book: from banner ads in different sizes, to video ads, RSS ads, mobile ads, text ads and referrals. The AdSense program is complex and it leaves room for experimenting.

The ad networks mentioned above worked best for me, but there are many other services you could test:

• Adgenta
• AdKnowledge
• AVN Ads
• Bidvertiser
• Blog Ads
• BlogHer Ads
• BrightAds from Kanoodle
• Casale Media
• Chitika’s eMiniMalls
• Clicksor
• CrispAds
• DoubleClick
• Fastclick
• Industry Brains
• IntelliTXT
• Kontera
• OneMonkey
• Peak Click
• Pheedo
• RevenuePilot
• SearchFeed
• Text Link Ads
• Text Link Brokers
• Tribal Fusion
• Value Click
• YesAdvertising

Post from: eWritings - Online Public Relations

Higher Blog Monetization through Blog Ads

Many bloggers complain that their 125×125 pixels blog ads don’t bring as much revenue as they expect, the click-through rate is too low to even matter and the only thing they ever hear from their readers is how annoying those ads are.

The reasons vary: the 125×125 format is not the best for all blogs, the space doesn’t allow complex designs and, unless the ad is an animated gif, there is not enough space to insert relevant information either. On top of that, the 125×125 ads tend to be repetitive. Text Link Ads has the same banner everywhere and so do many other similar companies, the designs are generally poor and the topics of the ads often don’t even come close to the topics covered by the bloggers.

Advertisers and bloggers should understand that displaying a banner on a site will not bring revenue, unless the ad is topical, timely, edgy and fun.

Generally speaking there are a few setbacks (cons) when we talk about ads on blogs:

• The ads spoil the design of the blog – the colors and design don’t match the overall layout;
• The ads distract the readers from the blogger’s content – particularly when the ads are animated;
• The ads lower the sites’ loading times – yes, if the images are not properly optimized and particularly if the ads are script generated;
• The ads prevent the sites from being accessible – yes, but this is a matter of image and code (HTML, script) optimization again;
• The ads send visitors away – true, when your site is so cluttered with ads that the readers can hardly see the content.

Ad-cluttered blogs like John Cow, John Chow and many other “make money online” blogs are not rare, and sure, the ads work on such sites because the very purpose of the sites is to sell advertising space. Readers already know what to expect when they visit such sites. Unfortunately even niche specific, serious blogs appear to be cluttered nowadays: Techcrunch, Read Write Web, Search Engine Journal and so on.

Despite the cons, blog ads still work for popular blogs – they will generate the necessary revenue (if affiliate ads) to justify their presence, and enough impressions for the advertisers. Although some users keep complaining about dealing with ads on various sites, the percentage is now too low to determine the web masters and the advertisers change their ways. Besides, for users who turn images off on their browsers and for users who use ad blockers when they browse the Web, the ads don’t even present a problem.

There is one obvious “pro” we cannot ignore:

• Ads generate revenue – obviously this is why we see so many, almost on every site we visit each day. Aside the financial gain there is no other reason for you to place an ad on your blog, unless you owe someone a favor.

This being said, if you want to generate revenue from your blog by selling ads, feel free to do so, but keep in mind that, as with any other monetization technique, selling ads might be detrimental for your site. To prevent any search engine penalties (and by “search engine” I mean Google), respect a few simple principles:

• Disclose your sponsors;
• Add “nofollow” attributes to text link ads (not many advertisers will buy links on your site if you do that, but better safe than sorry);
• Don’t publish sponsored reviews too often, and when you do remember the “nofollow” attributes for the links and the disclosure (again, not many advertisers will buy, but a review shouldn’t be about the links, but about the actual service/product you have to review);
• Choose the ads that work best on your site (see below).

As I mentioned above, the 125×125 pixel banners are probably not the best choice for all sites. They are somehow too obvious and the visitors tend to ignore them, especially when the products and services advertised are already presenting market saturation (Text Link Ads, Bidvertiser).

Different ad formats might work better, and the only way to know what works best for you is to test different placements and different formats. There is no real standard to serve as guidance. There are however some trends (right menu bar double-column 125×125 pixel ads for example) followed by many. It’s up to you if you want to join the crowd or find better, innovative ways to display the money making ads.

One last tip: Google has almost all ad formats in the book. So if you are afraid that Google might penalize you for selling ads, make an AdSense account. Google will not ban you out of the search results for selling their own ads. After all, Google wants to make money as much as you do.

Post from: eWritings - Online Public Relations

Ads on Blogs- The Good, the Bad, the Ugly

There must be a reason for text link ads to work better than image ads – statistically speaking. However, there are image ads that work, particularly on blogs, and the art of creating them… well that’s what this entry is all about.

In our daily browsing habits I am sure all of us encounter both ads that suck and ads that trigger the emotion that makes us move the cursor over the banner and click. This is the type of ads that generate ROI. When a visitor clicks on an ad the sale is half done. The rest is up to the landing page and its power to persuade.

So the main purpose of an ad is to make the visitors click on it. If the ad pretty but doesn’t generate any response from the viewers it is pointless. ROI is what the advertisers should be looking after and not just a shiny display of something no one really wants to see.

How do you make people click on your ads?

Whether you ask a designer to create banners for your campaign or you choose the DIY road, remember that the role of an ad is not necessarily to tell a story, but to say “Follow me! I have something really awesome to show you!”

An ad needs to be intriguing, sticky, interesting and fun. It needs to make people wonder “what’s that?” or say “I need that!”

A good ad will increase traffic to a site and boost up ROI. But when the ad is there for the sole purpose of telling us how great a company is, its purpose might fail. Remember that people don’t care about your glory. What they need to know is what you can do for them.

What happens in the visitors’ minds when they see an ad?

• Who cares?! (absolutely no click)
• Common, don’t waste my time! (no click)
• Oh! This looks kinda cool! (maybe a click)
• WTF is this? (click)
• Wow! I need this! (click click)

It is not really easy to trigger a “wow” type of response. Even the most skilled designers fail if they don’t understand the market, and the blogosphere is a rather complex place. Bloggers are a very interesting group, but when you look at the social media sites like StumbleUpon and digg it is easy to figure that what people want to see has to be sensational, new, entertaining and fun. Try to create an ad with the same attributes. You will get a response.

Understand your market, understand the people and their needs.

This kind of advice is given in any industry. PR deals often with situations when advertising campaigns fail because the advertiser underestimates what I call “the marketing intelligence” of the groups they are targeting. If you want people to be interested in your products you have to awaken their interest. Be creative, show sense of humor and be clever.

Last but not least: believe in your product. Don’t try to sell something you wouldn’t use. If you don’t like your own product no one will.

Don’t cut your chances by advertising for low quality products and services. It is the Internet, yes, but there’s nothing stronger than the word of mouth, and online this is spreading at unimaginable speeds. Smart ads are created by smart people for smart people.

Your client is your equal. Never forget that!

Post from: eWritings - Online Public Relations

The Quest for the Perfect Ad

If this will catch – and it’s got my heart – Google is busted. Microsoft is giving a new meaning to the idea of social interaction pushing it over its limits as we know them, proving once again that what it takes to be really brilliant and to change the world is just an idea.

Besides, in the end, it doesn’t matter who wins as long as Google loses. If there is one thing I really hate, that’s hypocrisy.

Microsoft is not a company I like. As a matter of fact it does represent a lot of what we all call „corporate evil.“ But there is one thing about Microsoft that actually makes me vote in its favor if I were to choose between it and Google: Microsoft doesn’t pretend to be something it is not.

Heck, we all know that this company wants our money, that it created the most complicated operating system to make us buy even more of its products. But Microsoft doesn’t pretend to give us free things to get to our souls. Microsoft has close to no advocates and it still manages to survive. I guess one of the reasons is called „innovative thinking.“

Microsoft And the Most Amazing Innovation of All Times

I have never seen something more amazing than Photosynt. I am not a techie but I do know my way with the Web, the search, useful tools, the social media and stuff that really matters to make an online business successful.And even if this particular innovation is not really „business related“ the value is still there. The „wow“ is there, and I don’t need too long to understand the implications of such a tool.

„Photosynth itself is a vastly powerful piece of software capable of taking a wide variety of images, analysing them for similarities, and grafting them together into an interactive three-dimensional space.“

Hold that thought: „interactive three-dimensional space?“ Can you even imagine how this works?

You see, words are poor sometimes. So I invite you to watch Blaise Aguera y Arcas’ demo.

Basically what this software tells me is that one day we will be able to create a 3-D representation of any space, building or object we might choose, by combining various images we find on the web: random pictures, no matter their quality, resolution or size, no matter the format.But Photosynth goes even further:

1. Walk or fly through a scene to see photos from any angle
2. Zoom in or out of a photo
3. See where pictures were taken in relation to one another
4. Find similar photos to the one you’re currently viewing
5. Send pictures

The Wikipedia capabilities listing expresses in rather simple terms the very idea of social interactivity and this is the feature that will eventually put Microsoft on a higher position than Google – or back on its pedestal if you want. The moment Photosynth is live and ready for the users Google can kiss its popularity good bye. It’s probably a matter of public relations, branding and advertising for Photosynth to gain territory, but I actually count on the old and faithful word of mouth in this particular case. The ability to search for similar photos and to send them to friends is nothing else but sharing. The Web 2.0 is all about sharing, networking, creating webs of information. And Microsoft has finally got it.

Microsoft Vs. Google

From all Google apps I’d call Google Maps the most powerful application. But Photosynth will even beat that. If you watched the demo you already know the mapping capabilities of the software.

I know that it will still take a while till someone beats Google at search too, but never say never. It’s just a matter of time, and after you see Photosynth you can safely say: there’s room for more.

Post from: eWritings - Online Public Relations

How and Why Microsoft Will Beat Google at Its Own Game

Now, there is no secret, for any of you, that I endorse Top Hosting Center – Canadian based web hosting company. And there are many reasons why, one of them being that they host two of my domains: www.mihaela-lica.com being one of them.

But the most important reasons, which is also not so easy to explain, is that Top Hosting Center has a Web 2.0 model of doing business:

1. engaging users in actual conversations – through the corporate blog;
2. periodically providing user-centric opportunities – like the blog contest that finished today;
3. announcing the most “outrageous” deals to benefit both the company and the users;

Top Hosting Center does have a strong commitment to customer satisfaction and this is proven even by the fact that the company will match ANY offer (with the same or similar features like what they offer) that has a lower price – and even give significant discounts.

The Right Season for Top Hosting Center

If you were contemplating buying hosting for your business, or cutting costs on your actual hosting plans, this is the right time to turn to Top Hosting Center.

The company released today the most affordable web hosting plan I’ve ever heard off. A marketing strategy to raise awareness for the company, indeed, but most importantly an opportunity.

This concludes your search for the perfect web host. The hosting plan with a lifetime of value is brought to you by Rudolf: a funny little red-nosed reindeer. The plan is 250 GB disk space, 3000 GB bandwidth, 1 FREE domain registration, unlimited MySQL, PHP4, 24/7 dedicated support and much more. Rudolf is a very generous host too: you can transfer all your domains to this plan, even buy and park new domains here. Actually, if you read the FAQ you will get a pretty good idea about all you can do with Rudolf.

I am not a very pragmatic creature, but it is not hard to do the math. Rudolf basically takes one Top Hosting Special plan and it transforms it into an Xmas Special plan: for a one-time $ 95 USD you get a plan that includes professional hosting for life and a domain you’ll never have to pay for again. Ever.

In other situation, with other web hosting companies you know that you essentially have to pay each year around 10 dollars for a domain. If we only think about that, it is not such a big deal. But when you add that domain to a professional hosting plan, one that allows for maximum flexibility and enables you to run any application on your server, to build multiple databases, to host multiple domains and subdomains, you rich about 60 USD per year. So each year, for the rest of your life, you will have to pay 60 USD, if you are lucky and your web hosting company doesn’t come with upgrades you have to pay or else…

THC’s Rudolf plan is here to change this! And it is not too good to be true. It’s simply there. For a while, till 1000 users know it, buy it and then they start talking about THC: about the quality of the services, about the quality of the hosting.

For THC Rudolf will bring PR (public relations) benefits. For the users: savings, quality, professionalism, world-class web hosting. This is one of the few genuine win-win situations I’ve ever seen.

Personally I prefer paying 95 USD one time and then stop worrying about monthly fees, budgeting and taxes… Honestly, why should you spend on hosting each year when you have the chance to get a professional package for a one time flat fee? Those 60 dollars you save each year could be put to a better use: what about a Xmas gift for your child?

Rudolf is selling, as you read this article. The good part about the offer is that, although an “Xmas Special” it will not end unless 1000 plans are sold – so time is not the real issues. It could sell before Xmas, or after… But we are at the verge of a very committed marketing campaign and I expect to run out of plans in a very short time.

Instead of Conclusion:

Some special offers sound too good to be true, in a web world dominated by scams. But there are also a few genuine offers that are waiting for you, and Rudolf is one of them.

There is nothing wrong with a company that sells its products or services at introductory prices. There are times when all you can do is take advantage of the offer and times when… we simply don’t need that special offer and we just choose to skip it. However, if you don’t need Rudolf for yourself, buy it for a friend (take care to ask your friend for permission because buying webhosting or a domain requires private data, and Rudolf is not transferable). Also, considering that this is a “for life” package – buy it now and use it later!

Post from: eWritings - Online Public Relations

Taking Advantage of PR Opportunities: Web Hosting for Life

Today Top Hosting Center announced a contest for bloggers: write about the importance of owning a domain and win one of the three prices in the game.

The Top Hosting Special plan comes with

250 GB disk space and 3000 GB bandwidth, free site builder, non-stop support, instant updates with no hidden costs, and much more. The plan also comes with 100 MySQL databases and PHP 4 so you can build as many blogs as you want, social networks and other powerful web applications

It is valued at $4.95 (USD) per month and it also includes a free domain.

The other two prizes do not include free domains, but do offer quality web hosting for existing domains. Let’s say you parked your domain free on GoDaddy. These two prizes give you professional hosting for free: no ads to clutter your pages, full control over your content through a simple control panel and much more.

If you ask me, this is one of the contests that are really worth your time and effort.

And you don’t need to worry about timing. You have more than a month to be ready with your entry. The contest ends on November the 15th.

Visit the original announcement on the THC blog to learn more about the contest, its rules or simply to ask questions if there is something you want to know.

Post from: eWritings - Online Public Relations

Win the Top Hosting Special Plan Free for a Year

The most affordable web hosting firm I’ve ever seen. It is a great pleasure to publish their press release and act as their PR representative. And if your host is too expensive, take a look at what THC has to offer. I can already confirm that there is quality in their service (I have the Top Hosting Special plan and 2 domains – 1 was free)

Top Hosting Center starts its online business with attractive hosting plans and a price challenge: “THC will match any competitor’s pricing on any web hosting plan or dedicated server package!” A bold business approach and a commitment to customer satisfaction.

The most interesting plan, although not the cheapest, is the Top Host Special plan which provides for only $ 4.95 (USD) per month, 250 GB disk space and 3000 GB bandwidth, free site builder, non-stop support, instant updates with no hidden costs, and much more. With its 100 MySQL databases included, this is an ideal plan for home-businesses and bloggers too.

“This is The Web 2.0 plan,” says CEO Eric Vanier. “It was specially created for social networking and community hosting, but it fits in the exigencies of the online e-commerce owners too: 1 free domain registration and 30-day money back warranty, in addition to all the features any professional hosting plan should include.”

Affiliate programs invite bloggers and website owners to monetize their online business and make up to $ 150 (USD) per sale or unlimited monthly earnings, depending on the plan they choose to promote.

All THC hosting plans are available as Linux or Windows.

Top Hosting Center is a Canadian hosting firm based in Montreal. They can be reached online at http://www.tophostingcenter.com/ or blog: http://web-hosting.tophostingcenter.com/

Post from: eWritings - Online Public Relations

Web Hosting Company THC Enters the Market With a Price Challenge and Web 2.0 Plan