AvekHost.com Achieves 100% Up Time For February & March 2008
Providing our clients with reliable web site hosting is our most important goal; after all deliver the ultimate customer experience is what we are all about. On February 10th of 2008, AvekHost.com signed up and permitted for third party verification of our web hosting up time. We are pleased to announce that our hosting service over the past 51 days (since signing up for third party verification) has been at impressive 100% up time.
Delivering this kind of excellence is what we work hard each and every day to ensure. Hosting your web site with us enables you to relax and think about the more important things at hand, like sales. You can view the third party report by clicking the image below.
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Making A Commitment to Service Excellence In The Hosting Industry
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Member: Avek Host
Website: http://www.AvekHost.com
Address: Emerald Glen Drive
Manchester MI 48158
Avek Host is a participant in The Hosting Code of Ethics™ Program as of 31-Mar-2008.
You can buy hosting services from Avek Host confidently.
Developed and maintained by Web Hosting Stuff, The Hosting Code of Ethics™ promotes service excellence by encouraging participating hosting companies like Avek Host to adopt strict best practices in their business conduct.
Avek Host agrees to abide by the following Code of Ethics in their business conduct:
To provide accurate and up-to-date hosting product information
To provide helpful solutions to sales and support requests
To honor the money-back guarantee period specified on their site
To provide clear and proper billing
To provide Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) encryption during payment transactions
To resolve customer disputes promptly and professionally
To pro-actively monitor services to ensure maximum server performance and uptime
To safeguard customer privacy by not sharing, renting or selling client information
As a participant in The Hosting Code of Ethics™ Program, Avek Host agrees to resolve disputes with customers promptly and professionally – in accordance with the best practices outlined in this Code.
In the event that you consider Avek Host to have violated this Code of Ethics in their business conduct with you, you may post a review of your experience on our site.
Avek Host is expected to respond to your review and resolve the alleged violation promptly – failing which we may review and/or revoke their Hosting Code of Ethics™ participation.
Disclaimer: Your use of this Hosting Code of Ethics™ Program and the relevant seal(s) are bound by our Terms of Use. If you find a participating hosting company in violation of this Code, please contact us.
AvekHost.com Springs A Great Promotion
Are you looking for a web hosting provider to host your current or future web site? If so, you’ll definately want to check out what AvekHost.com has to offer. Whether starting an online store, new blog, personal web site, or professional web site, AvekHost.com provides the quality service you not only come to expect but deserve.
For a limited time, we are providing 3 months free web hosting and eliminating the $5 set up fee. Simply use coupon code “Spring2008″ to take advantage of this incredible spring promotion.
Got questions? It’s a good thing we got answers. Email us at sales at avekhost.com
Build Your Sales Pipeline – Make Your Clients Go WOW!
Today I want to share with you how you can build your pipeline by thinking out of the box to WOW your current and prospective clients.
When I started in the mortgage industry I had heard a story about another loan officer located in California who really went out of his way to WOW his clients. Prior to the closing date on the refinance or purchase this loan officer would reserve a limousine for his clients to take them to and from the closing table. So just imagine for a second you are working here at Centennial Wireless and buying that new home because you building your pipeline report. It is closing day and you get ready to walk out to your car to see a limousine in the parking lot with the driver holding a sign with your name on it. You asked him what is the meaning of this and he informs you that your loan officer has arranged for me to take you to and from the closing today. WOW, is right, but think past the excitement of cruising to and from in a stretch limousine and think about how this benefits the loan officer. Would you go back to work and tell your co-workers about this incredible surprise? Would you go home and tell your friends and family about this awesome limousine you got to ride in? I can guarantee you would, why? Simply because your loan officer was able to WOW you. After conducting this a few times the loan officer from California worked strictly on referrals and is one of the leading loan officer when it comes to total volume of financing.
Here is another example of making your clients go wow:
Do you remember the commercials a while back from Saturn that featured the slogan “A different kind of car company”? What made Saturn any different? Having personally owned a Saturn in the past I can tell you what did make them different. The never negotiated the price of the car. They portrayed a belief that there product was superior. They invited you annually to attend there big family reunion in Memphis, TN were literally thousands of other owners would visit driving there Saturn to and from. If you took your vehicle in for service they ensured they washed it for you before pick up time and when you stepped in your car after being serviced there was a little carnation waiting for you saying thank you. I received a personally written thank you card, birthday cards for years, and follow-up calls to see how I liked my car. I even remember one day going in to get a simple 5 minute warranty repair and them noticing I had a hole in my oil filter. No expecting to have to purchase anything and being rather young (16) I had no means of purchasing this $4 to $5 item. Rather then ending me out to the streets to come back later the sales rep proudly picked up the expense from her own pocket to ensure I wouldn’t have any problems due to lack of oil. This alone made me a believer of “A different kind of car company”. Now you could tell me every car company does that these days and it couldn’t matter because it is based on perception and past experiences that makes a client go WOW! I never had the same situation with a hole in my oil filter in any other car. How we handle things now, makes the world of difference in retaining and recruiting our clients to sell for us.
Hopefully by now, I have you mind going a million miles per hour thinking of ways you can WOW your customers. Just imagine if you can WOW 1/3 of your customer base all the time. How many friends would they tell? How many co-workers would they tell? Would it be a conversation that may happen to discussed at the dentist office? How about the shopping line of the local grocery store?
So let’s talk about some ways we can wow our current customers and remember this is just some of the ways!
- Send a hand written thank you card after activating a line service.
- Properly conduct our lifecycle calls to ensure there satisfaction.
- Make a note of the clients birth date from there driver license and give them a Happy Birthday call on there birthday with no other intentions but to wish him/her a happy birthday.
- Pay attention to what they talk about and key in on the hidden secrets. For example, you may hear me talk about my five children a lot and no that one of my daughter is currently playing soccer. Would you be impressed if I asked how your daughter did at the recent game? Parents love to brag about there kids and they’ll be impressed you remembered.
- Working on Sunday with no walk-in traffic? Pull your adhoc and randomly go through your clients bill to ensure we are meeting there needs. How many clients have you seen with overages month after month who seem to never realize they can upgrade there minutes? Be the hero and save them money and even if you can’t do anything today to save them money let them know you took the time to review by giving them a quick call and saying you were checking in on them and everything still looks perfect.
- Make note of kids birthdays and send a kid friendly birthday card to our future client.
- Refer your friends and family to there business.
- What other ones can you think of?
Wowing your customers is an essential ingredient when wanting to grow your business. However, you must be consistent and balanced when attempting to wow your customers. Remember persistence is was beats resistance and don’t get discouraged if you don’t see immediate results. You have to really want it and do it for the right reasons in order for everything else to fall naturally into place.
Action Steps:
1) Don’t be afraid to think out side of the box, I am not saying go get a limo for every client but come up with ideas that will separate yourself from the competition.
2) Start by choosing one thing to do this month and add another thing next month.
3) Use a contact management system to help you stay on time with the delivery and balance of the
additional responsibility that will surely grow your business.
When You Are Leader You Got No One To Blame But Yourself
When I was 19 years old I was promoted to an assistant manager and had the pleasure of attending my very first manager training hosted by the organization in which I worked for at the time. Learning a lot I realized today; nearly 10 years later that there is one thing from my first management training that was rarely ever repeated again in other organizations and yet never forgotten.
“Your employees don’t have to love you but they got like you. Your team will either make you or break you.”
Some leaders might disagree and say they don’t even need to like but need to at least respect you. However, I personally disagree as I performed for those I respected but I worked harder and performed stronger for those I truly respected and liked.
Nothing holds more truth then the fact that your team can make or break you. With that said, as a new upcoming leader of a sales team I took the comment a little bit farther and perhaps a little more personal then perhaps some of the others in the training course.
If my team can make and break me, essentially I could make or break my team. Sure this could mean that I could make it difficult for them to succeed but it is meant to say that I am responsible for the success of each of my team members. When someone on my team fails, I failed! I failed to show them the path to success. I failed to manage past the associates own barrier preventing their success. I failed to motivate them towards a greater goal. I failed to lead them!
Again, some leaders might say that you can lead a horse to water but can’t make them drink. However, if you don’t allow that horse to drink for a week, I am willing to bet when you lead them to water they’ll drink it at some point. Besides, if you hired the associate you failed because you should have never done the associate injustice by putting them in a position they could not perform well. After all isn’t this the point of an interview process.
In either case, I guess I wanted to share the fact that no matter what the situation is, no matter what the real reason is, no matter how much it could be justified; when I loose a member of my team I take it personally. I failed to truly be a leader to that person. I have found also that because I do take personally that I provide more effort in increasing the skills and abilities of my team members in both their professional and personal lives. I work harder to lead them to success.
Today, my teams understand that unless we all succeed we did not truly succeed. When one fails we all failed. I believe strongly that because this thought process is in place they work harder to train each other, help each other, and back each other up.
So remember that when they fail, ultimately you fail. It doesn’t matter what it is in life, when it fails, you failed. Taking this approach may help you become a better leader and fight harder to prevent failure.
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Michael J. Orta
Motivation Gets You Going But Habit Is What Gets You There!
In today’s world we hear many different quotes quoted on a daily basis. Perhaps in an email, maybe in a movie, or perhaps on an advertisement. It isn’t to often when you hear or see a quote that it actually sticks instantly. I had the pleasure today of hearing a quote that actually changed my entire thought process when it comes to motivating others.
“Motivation Gets You Going But Habit Is What Gets You There”
How many times have you ever been excited about something and lost sight of that something a few days later. For me this happens almost daily as I am consistently thinking about new ideas and new ways to increase my yearly income. One day I am pumped up about an idea in which I know will be solid in producing results but a few days later I loose that momentum and fall back to square one.
Hearing this quote helped me understand the need to develop of habit in pursuing the ideas in which I generated. It also helped me see some areas of focus I need to implement with my existing sales team in bettering our opportunities for the future. I hope that you will find this quote to be of a benefit in whether pursuing goals as a sales representative or in your efforts in building a dynamic team.
I would be interested in hearing your thoughts when it comes to this post and whether or not it makes an impact on you!
Till Next Time,
Michael J. Orta
Possibilities vs. Opportunities
You may have heard the old saying that that anything is possible. Have you ever stopped to think about all the different possibilities? It is with out question that possibilities exist all around us; virtually in ever direction we turn our heads.
Unfortunately, we often times get possibilities and opportunities confused with each other. Opportunity is something that is created; a growing stem from what was just a possibility. Opportunities will never come knocking! Don’t ever wait for an opportunity to start knocking on your doors or if you decide to wait be prepared to wait forever.
Let suppose for a moment that someone comes up to you and offers you a ten dollar bill. In most cases you begin to think about what you would spend this ten dollar bill on. The opportunity isn’t truly created until you excerise several various possibilities and turn those into a plan of action. For example, one may think about to spend the ten dollars versus another who may think about where to invest the $10. Spending the $10 bill simply justifies a waste of money and opportunity while investing creates a future opportunity.
Understanding what is a possibility and what is an opportunity to can truly change the actions in which you take moving forward. Strategic planning is a key ingredient in any quest for success in our lives. Look for the possibilities and think about the opportunities in which stems from each possibility. Desire, dedication, commitment, and willingness to embrace the challenge that lies ahead will surely prove to be successful ingredients.
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Michael J. Orta
How to Submit Your Site Map to Google, Yahoo! and MSN?
How to Submit Your Site Map to Google, Yahoo! and MSN
By David Viney
XML Sitemaps are an easy way for webmasters to tell search engines about pages on their site that may be crawled by their robots.
A typical XML Sitemap file lists each URL, together with information about when it was last updated, how often it normally changes, and how important it is, relative to other pages in the site). This helps search engines to more intelligently crawl your site.
In November 2006, Google, Yahoo! and MSN joined forces to support a new industry standard for sitemaps: Sitemaps 0.90. As long as webmasters follow the protocol, they can ensure their sites are fully and consistently indexed across all the major search engines (a real step forward). This article is important for all those with missing or poorly ranked pages.
The official site for the joint venture is at sitemaps.org and contains a lot of info about the new standard and it’s syntax. What the site singularly fails to do is explain correctly how to submit your sitemap to the big three! The format suggested on the site of:
http://search-engine-url/ping?sitemap=your sitemap_url
does not currently work at any of the three sites! Until it does, this short article provides instructions for how to (a) create your sitemap and (b) how to submit to each of the three main search engines…
Creating your Sitemap
Some hosting providers (for example 1and1) provide utilities via their web control panel, to create your sitemap, so you should always check with your provider first. If this service is not available, then make a visit to xml-sitemaps.com and enter your site URL into the generator box. Copy-and-paste the resulting sitemap into notepad, then save-and-upload to your site with the file name: sitemap.xml
If you want to validate the XML prior to uploading to the search engines (useful if you have made any manual amendments), look at the XML validator (at the same site) where you can put in the URL of your sitemap and check it against the standard.
Submit sitemap to MSN
MSN have yet to implement a formal interface for Sitemap submission (as at July 2007). To monitor the situation, please visit (from time to time) the MSN Official Livesearch Blog (where where future announcements are likely to be found).
Whilst MSN have yet to implement a front door, there is a recognised back door for submitting your sitemap to the MSN Search index; namely moreover.com! You should use the following syntax directly in your browser URL box:
http://api.moreover.com/ping?u=http://yourdomain.com/yoursitemap.xml
Since February 2005, moreover.com have been the official provider of RSS feeds to the myMSN portal (see press release) and reliable evidence suggests that submission to Moreover will result in MSN spidering your pages within 2-3 weeks.
Note that, whilst MSN still do not support direct submission, they do suggest on their blog that you add a reference to your Sitemap into your robots.txt file (something now supported by sitemaps.org). For example:
User-agent: *
Sitemap: http://www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml
Disallow: /cgi-bin/
This would tell MSN (and all other engines) to crawl your sitemap file but not to crawl your cgi-bin directory. For more info on how to implement a robots.txt file (in the root of your site webserver) please visit: http://www.robotstxt.org
Submit sitemap to Google
Google originally developed the XML schema for sitemaps and have developed a dedicated portal for webmasters, from where you can submit your sitemap:
http://www.google.com/webmasters/
First, you need to tell Google all the sites you own, then verfiy that you indeed own them. The verifiaction is achieved by adding a metatag between the head tags on your site homepage. The syntax for the tag is as follows:
There are full instructions on how to do this on the Google site.
Submit sitemap to Yahoo
Yahoo follows a similar approach to Google. Again, there is a dedicated sevice for webmasters (Yahoo! Site Explorer) and a procedure for verifying your ownsership of the site. First go to:
http://siteexplorer.search.yahoo.com/
Add a site, then click on the verification button. You can then download a verfication key html file – which you will need to upload to the root directory of your webserver. Then you can return to Site Explorer and tell Yahoo to start authentication. This will take up to 24 hours. At the same time you can also add your sitemap by clicking on the manage button and then adding the sitemap as a feed.
Submit sitemap to Ask
Ask follows a simpler approach to the other three. To submit you sitemap, you simply enter a ping URL, followed by the full URL of where your sitemap is located:
http://submissions.ask.com/ping?sitemap=http%3A//www.yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml
After clicking return, you will get a reassuring message from Ask that they have received your submission. Very neat!
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About the author: David Viney (david@viney.com) is a leading UK SEO Expert and provides search engine optimisation and website promotion services to companies large and small, through his company SEO Expert Services. Further articles tackling the tricky SEO challenges faced by David’s customers may be found on the SEO Expert Blog. Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=David_Viney |
What is Fantastico?
What is Fantastico?
by: Mer Amer
Fantastico is a program that comes with most hosting packages, integrated with the popular online control panel- Cpanel to offer web hosting useres the ability to install popular programs and scripts. The installation of these programs and scripts are significantly simplified, all with the ease of a click of a button. Web-hosting users are able to install multiple instances of popular open source programs for their web design needs. For users who intend to get their sites up and running in minimal time, Fantastico is the perfect solution.
Also referred to as Fantastico Deluxe, the popularity of this program seems to just keep on growing, and with good reasons. An interesting feature of Fantastico is that it is updated on a regular basis to ensure that users will always get the latest software patches and upgrades. Users will have that peace of mind of knowing that their scripts are kept up-to-date with security updates and functionality improvements.
It is important to note that Fantastico is available for Linux / PHP web hosting only. Having said that, this is not to be mistaken with its compatibility with the user’s operating system. Linux / PHP web hosting works perfectly fine for users using Windows as their operating system. In fact, most of the web hosting services on the web are running on Linux system.
Fantastico Deluxe also normally comes with Templates Express, which is a series of static templates for website building. This reduces the hassle of having to build websites from scratch, especially for beginners. Webmasters can expect to easily set up a fully functioning dynamic website and has many features such as polls, calendar, weblinks, message comments etc. Other features include multiple polls, templates, unlimited options, IP logging, IP locking, cookie support, comment feature, vote expire feature, random poll plus more. Fantastico includes easily over 40 scripts for you to choose from. For the more experienced users, you would notice that Fantastico is an amazing cPanel/PHP based Web application. It automatically installs preconfigured PHP/MySQL scripts and databases into a Cpanel-managed virtual host.
In short, Fantastico is ideal for any web designer or developer, ranging from someone with no knowledge of building websites to an expert web designer. It provides streamlined development and management process of your website, thus ensuring a hassle-free and a greatly reduce human error in web designing activities. The best part is that Fantastico would normally come as default and for free with every cPanel hosting plans and WHM Reseller accounts. So, needless to say that the next time you go on search for your web hosting solution, having Fantastico is a definite must.
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Disclaimer: The information presented and opinions expressed herein are those of the authors
and do not necessarily represent the views of AvekHost.com and/or its partners.
AvekHost.com Restructures Its Affiliate Program
Prior to March 3rd of 2008, AvekHost.com affiliates earned 25% recurring revenue for each client they referred to AvekHost.com web site hosting services. Beginning on March 3rd of 2008, AvekHost.com will begin paying their affiliates $10 to $14 per sale referred by an AvekHost.com affiliate.
How much each affiliate earns depends on several factors such as there ability to promote their affiliate link and which plan the client ultimately decides to choose. Under the new affiliate program being introduce by AvekHost.com affiliates will earn $10 for every Basic Hosting Plan sign up, $12 for every Standard Hosting Plan sign up, and $14 for every Advance Hosting Plan sign up.
AvekHost.com current affiliate marketers have shared great interest in being paid more upon activation of each new web hosting client then earning recurring revenue each month. “We feel this new program will serve to satisfy our existing affiliates and attract new affiliate marketers to AvekHost.com” says owner of AvekHost.com, Michael Orta. Under AvekHost.com older program it would take up to 7 months for an affiliate to earn $10 for just one client and now they can make that upon signup of each new client.
The best part of the change is that current affiliates don’t need to change one thing. Their existing links will work no differently in the past; with the only change being they will earn more initially from each client that signs up for our Basic, Standard, or Advanced Hosting Packages. New affiliates are welcome to sign up by visiting http://www.AvekHost.com/billing/affiliates.php.
