This is the first of my video snapshots, where I talk about getting scam type letters about your domain name renewal notices.
Post a comment and let me know what you think.
Enjoy. Aaron
My warm wishes to you my valued members of Netrospect for this holiday season and the 2008 new year.
Hi all
Now don’t be freaked out by our name change, everything else remains the same.Â
Finally after about 6 months of wanting to trade with a new name, we finally made the switch over.
Web Smart Central Pty Ltd, is now the parent company of Netrospect - nothing else has changed, just the name. So the only place you will see Web Smart Central will be somewhere on your invoices in small print.
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Netrospect - which is a play on words between the internet and retrospect
I’m sure you’re the same, but I know I always find myself saying, if only I knew what I know now, back then… 
And hearing people say “In retrospect we should always have hosted our website and emails with you guys”
There are still some minor name changes to the stationary to go, but it’s business as usual.
Aaron
Well I’ve just upgraded to IE7 on my new development laptop and it’s very refreshingly different. Microsoft apparently took one and a half years to develope it and it shows in it’s maturity as a browser.The down side is that there is still a shovel load full of web users that still have IE6 and IE5, so what to do if you make a website and want to see if it works in the major browsers, not just the browser that you happen to have installed on your development system.
You can run side by side installations of Firefox and Opera, but IE has always dragged the chain on this, due to IE being so heavily integrated into the operating system.
When I upgraded to IE7 I definately at least wanted to be able to have IE6 on the same machine. Well the dodgey hacks and workarounds that you will find if you do a web search on the topic, just didn’t work for me. Mostly they didn’t address that once you upgrade to IE7 the underlying DLLs that drive the browser are not backward compatible. So a cutdown version of IE6 just isn’t good enough for a true result.
Microsoft have finally acknowledged this and now have released a special IE6 virtual machine image to handle just this. Seems like massive overkill, but it works so I can’t complain.
Check out the Microsoft MSDN blog about IE6 and IE7 running together, and go and sort out your IE6 and IE7 on the same machine problem once and for all.
Of course the other alternative is if you have multiple PCs lying around you can have a separate machine setup with each IE. Which I have also done.
Aaron
82% of small businesses will have Internet access by 2011, of which 88% will have broadband connections, according to a JupiterResearch Report “Market Profile: Understanding Online Small Businesses”.78% of small businesses currently use the Internet on a regular basis, according to JupiterResearch.
Sonal Gandhi, JupiterResearch Analyst, said: “Small businesses spent over $43 billion in 2005 in business purchases online, their online influenced off-line spending is likely to be considerably higher”. [source]
David Schatsky, President, JupiterKagan, said: “The growth of the overall online small business market and decision makers’ increased comfort with doing business online will impact their total online spending,
Companies that target small businesses should take advantage of the size and openness of this market online”. [source]
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Now isn’t that an interesting statistic. I should think that those businesses are online already and getting setup to trade online or increase their marketing through online efforts will be ahead of their offline only competitors.
Aaron
After 3 months of developement I have released some awesome software that is targeted directly to internet marketers.
If you do direct online sales copy then you’ll want to check this software out.
I’ve set it up with a complete free 7 day trial so you can really use it anger and make sure it’s right for you before investing in it.
I say investing because it’s goal to produce profit pulling web scripts to spice up your online sales copy.
If you’re in the internet marketing game, check it out, you won’t regret it.
Cheers
Aaron
It’s a birthday celebration for Web Smart Central’s 1st business birthday.
I wanted to go all out and give a worthwhile gift away. So 17 holiday packages are up for grabs.
You get to choose where you wish to stay at over 250 premium location around Australia.
You get 7 vouchers for 2 nights each for 2 people, and you only have to buy breakfast and dinner at the hotel you choose to stay. Since you have to eat anyway, I figured this was a wonderful idea.
If you don’t want to eat at the hotel, some hotels offer a buy one night get the second night free using the vouchers.
To be eligible you have to invest in our Platinum Shared Hosting Plan, or any of our Reseller Plans.
Aaron
At last after months of deliberating over whether to have reseller accounts or not, I’ve decided to include them into the Web Smart Central offering.
For those that don’t know, a Reseller has the ability to divide up their allocated space and bandwidth, and has a master control panel for their account. From there they can house other peoples websites completely separately (with their own control panel), effectively becoming a mini hosting provider. They can offer their clients the hosting space at whatever cost they desire. Being a reseller is fantastic for web designers, accountants, solicitors, and internet marketers.
If you chose your provider carefully then they deal with all the hard work, and you just get to make some profit. Some even deal with the support issues from your clients. This is still an area that I haven’t decided on what I’ll be doing. Let’s just say that I’ll find out the support ramifications as I go.
This is exactly where Web Smart Central started over a year ago, with a USA Reseller account. That was quickly outgrown, as we surpassed the hosting provider that was providing the reseller account. Plus there were clear signs that they were overloading their server so I moved away from them. Just in time as 2 months later they were no more.
If you haven’t read my report about overselling and the dangers of it, then I suggest you take a look.
The only force that drives hosters to overload the servers is monetary greed. But it’s just not worth it, it’s a business killer.
Aaron
I used to hate with a passion the web hosting providers that I used and relied upon (cough, cough) before I started Web Smart Central.
Just the simple task of communicating was a foreign concept.
Other things used to bug me but you could break it down in the end to just plain bad communication.
If you have watched the Seinfeld TV show at any stage, you may have seen the episode where George Costanza being completely inept and hopeless at everything he ever did in life, simply turned himself around 180degrees to lead a charmed life, by doing the exact opposite of what he normally would do.
Well that is the exact philosophy that I chose when starting this hosting firm.
I figured if I do the exact opposite of what the bad hosting firms were doing to me, then I would have a great web hosting company.
I was right! Thank you George Costanza.
My main goal was give my clients as many avenues of communication as possible and to keep them informed when necessary.
To achieve this, I’ve setup… a Postoffice (email lists), Forums, Support System, Phone contact, Emergency Mobile Contact
Since I’m in regular contact with my clients through email, I am building up a relationship with them that other web hosting providers fail or are unwilling to do. Their loss.
As I’ve always said (assuming that your product is good) business is all about relationships.
Aaron
I see it again and again with businesses not taking ownership of their web presence. They are leaving money on the table in the bucket loads.
If you don’t take control then no one else will.
Just talking with people that I come into contact with about their sites, it’s truly amazing to here what they have to say.
Some don’t even know how much their website is costing them in actual dollars per year to run, domain fees, hosting fees, useless editing fees from consulting firms that they pay and no edits ever take place. This astounds me, when they are small businesses that are usually solo operators.
When I talk with them just in general conversation (no sales pitching going on at all) about enhancing their website to generate more business for them, I’m met with blank stares. You can give people all the information in the world, but if they aren’t ready to take it on board, it’s a useless battle.
Does anyone else have this problem? Getting a point of passion across to someone that just isn’t as passionate about it as you are.
That reminds of what a founding hosting customer of mine once said to me. “You care more about my website than I do”. I remember laughing at the time, because it was so very true.
Aaron