Kontrastwerks.com

Lately I've been busy helping others setup websites. Just resently a local photographer approached me wanting to create an online presence. Working under the business name kontrastwerks, Dennis Reifsnider has been creating his high contrast black and white photographs for many years and has established quite a following in southeastern North Carolina. Checkout these examples of his work:

This shot of the Bodie Island Lighthouse (above) is one of my favorites. Below is a photograph of the dunes near my home after the tidal surge of a hurricane.




Ok, if you're still with me at this point, you have to be wondering what this, if anything has to do with blogging. Well, in the course of creating a website for Dennis, he expressed a desire to create and sell motivational posters that incorporate his photographs. To fulfill his wishes I enlisted the services of a print on demand company, and this is where you as bloggers come in.

POD's such as CafePress not only print posters, but all types of merchandise and apparel that you can sell or purchase online, which is a great way to promote your blog. For example, Duane at thejournalofaprizefighter.com was nice enough to send me a coffee mug with his blog's logo after I helped him with a little coding. I to have created items such as bumper stickers to spread the word about my websites, and I know many bloggers who sport t-shirts with there blog's header on them. So, check out CafePress, it's free to set up a basic store and be sure to check out more of Dennis's photos and posters at his CafePress shop.

Using Google Maps in your Posts

Google maps is a great resource, I use it to locate any unfamiliar place that I might be headed to, but did you know you can embed it into your Blogger posts. The map below is not just an image but a full functioning Google map that allows you the to zoom in and out or slide any any direction. Give it a try! Your map can be of any location you wish. For example, say you are blogging about a resent camping trip. You could show a map of the campground and surrounding area.

View Larger Map


It's easy to do. For starters, go to http://maps.google.com/ and type the general location you want a map of into the search box. In the case above I used Washington, D.C. You can then narrow your location by adding an address to your search or zoom in to a location. Once you have the final location showing on your map, click the "Link To This Page" text link at the top right of the map. A pop-up window will appear that gives you two options.

One: Paste link in email or IM
or:
Two: Paste HTML to embed in website

Copy the code in the box below the second option and paste this code into your Blogger post. Your done, it's that easy.

Domain Name and Hosting for your Blog

Having your own domain name lends a look of professionalism to your blog. I serve as webmaster for many websites and traffic to these sites that have their own domain name receive considerably more traffic than those hosted on the blogspot sub-domain. Not only do visitors give them more respect but it appears that search engines do as well. Since Blogger and the blogspot domain are owned by Google, other search engines tend to ignore them which can greatly impact your traffic numbers.

Notice that Blogatech is hosted on blogspot as it's subject matter is geared towards providing information on using Google's Blogger, but I'm sure it would have generated more traffic if I had originally created it under it's own domain. If your serious about blogging or your blog is business related, bite the bullet and invest in your own domain name and private web hosting, it will pay you in the long run. Domains are only $10 a year and some hosting providers give you a free domain with an account. Good hosting is really not that expensive, running between $6 to $10 dollars a month. If your creative you can actually make money with your hosting. By publishing ads on your site, the additional traffic generated will subsidize or pay for your hosting expenses. With the right hosting service you can host multiple domains on one account so that you could sell space on your account allowing you to host that cooking blog that your Aunt has been wanting or a business site for an acquaintance. They can have their own dot com domain names as well.

If you decide to use private hosting, you should shop around to find a host that provides you with the services you want and remember the least expensive is not always the best deal. I have used bluehost.com for the last several years and highly recommend them. They allow me to host as many sites as I want on one account, give me more file storage space and bandwidth than I could ever use, along with an easy to use control panel and simple ways to add all types of software such as blogs, forums, CMS, shopping carts, chat and more. Another big advantage to private hosting is access to a massive amount of statistical information on traffic to your site. Bluehost is one of the services that gives you a free domain name for the life of your account and I've found that if I have any problems, I can get advise from other users in there forums and you can actually get a support person on the phone when you need help.

When choosing your domain name, there are several things to take into consideration:

• You want a name that is short as possible. People are more apt to remember a short name and this will help with return traffic.
• Incorporate keywords into your name. For example, if your blog is about food, you want the word food in your name. This helps with optimize for search engines giving you more traffic.
• Choose a domain that ends with .com if possible. This is the extension that most people are familiar with. If the name you are dead set on is already taken, your next choice would be the .net extension. The other extensions are less know and will not generate the traffic of a dot com.
• Be careful how your construct your name. There is a site called "Who Represents" where you can find the name of the agent that represents a celebrity. Their domain name… is http://www.whorepresents.com/. I don't think this is really what they had in mind. Also be sure you have your name spelled correctly when you apply for it.

When naming a site, I start with a list of keywords related to the subject of the site and then I start brainstorming while using my hosting service's domain name checker to see if the name I have in mind is available. Once I have what I believe to be the perfect name I usually sleep on it overnight, sometimes what seems like a great name late at night is not so hot the next day.

I hope these tips are of some help to you and good luck with your name search.

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