{All of the following is a representation of the author's own views and understanding. While given in good faith, no liability can be accepted for any loss, harm, or annoyance suffered as a result of this page.}
This page is quite deliberately designed to be as simple as possible in design (no colours, no frames, minimal graphics and animations). This means that, should you want to dissect parts of the page to look at HTML codes and so on, it can be done as easily as possible.
There are some gaps in the coverage of subjects here. One could go on forever adding more and more, so I decided to present what is available now rather than wait any longer. The content of this page are the copyright of Robert Murray, as are all other pages in this website.

INTRODUCTION
People realise that the internet is an enormous concept, probably bigger than most of us can grasp. The world of stamps on the internet is very well provided for, with many thousands of stamp dealers, auctioneers, post offices, philatelic societies, publishers, and individual collectors having web sites.

If you have a web site, or are planning one, this page is intended to help you, and give you some suggestions, without being an in-depth training course.

Before you start, you must know that "HTML" is HyperText Markup Language. You must know that HTML is the computer language that makes pages on web sites work. You should know that HTML can actually be quite easy to learn about. You do not really need to know (unless you really wish to advance further) what JavaScript, applets, cookies, CGI scripts, and so on are.

DESIGN
It is my view that there are many uselessly gorgeous stamp-based websites to be found. Whether you are selling a product, or just wanting to share information with others, you must remember that, as in any area of human contact, first impressions are very important. If the first someone sees of you is a home page that takes two minutes to download, there is a good chance that you will lose them before you have even started.
It is good advice to be humble about your website. Yes, make it as good as possible, but don't be too "precious" about it. I recently sent a message to a UK charity whose website I had visited for the first time. It looked great, but every page had an animated background graphic that had to run before any page could be viewed. It took a few seconds each time - their online form needed a software download - one of their text boxes wouldn't go away - and so on. As they invited comments about their website design, I commented. They replied, but in a very defensive tone which suggested that they wouldn't even consider making any changes. Don't get like that - there is always room for improvement.

IN-HOUSE or CONTRACTED-OUT ?
As web design is something you either can or cannot do, there seems to be quite an obvious divide between those people who design their own website, and those who get a professional to do the job. Most professionals will do a decent job for you, and you will get what you pay for, but not always (my brother paid someone to design a website for him - they spelt his company name wrong, had very poor use of keywords and tags, and some of the graphics didn't work). You must take many things into account, such as;
{a} Is your time better spent dealing with customers and preparing stock, or in front of a computer screen trying to get to grips with a whole new concept ?
{b} Although you may have the time to create your website, will you always have time to update it ?
{c} If you contract-out the job of designing your site, who will make updates ?  Will your professional have given you instructions as to how to make alterations yourself, or will you always have to go back to them for changes ?  Will they always charge you to make changes ?
{d} If you do your own design, and a major problem occurs, will you always be able to drop everything else in order to get that problem fixed ?
{e} The chances are that, whoever does your initial designs, if you change to another designer they will not work, or not be able to work, in the same style.

HOW DO YOU LEARN HOW TO CREATE WEB PAGES ?
First of all, some people are probably more natural than others, as in any creative field. If you really want to learn, there are lots of books, lots of courses, and hundreds of websites on the subject. There are lots of people who are already good at it and who are quite happy to pass on some of their knowledge and expertise.
How did I learn ?  {1} I made an effort to get to grips with all the aspects of my composer software (Netscape Composer - available as a free download) - which means reading help boxes, trying all the options, and so on. {2} I went on an "Integrated Software" course at Edinburgh University (it sound grand, but it was only a few weeks of weekly two-hour classes plus homework). This was not directly relevant, but gave a much greater understanding of general computer issues. {3} I downloaded other people's web pages off the internet, opened them up as HTML, mucked around with the codes, and watched what happened. You do not need to understand HTML to make web pages, but it really does help to give you an insight as to how things can go wrong. {4} I bought (and importantly, read !) an easy book called "Teach Yourself HTML" by Mac Bride.

VISIBILITY
No website is any good unless people find it. You can of course advertise it it the traditional media, but you also have to get acquainted with the new methods of promotion on the internet.
-- Direct Emailing; Many people will offer you programmes to let you send emails to millions of people worldwide. It should be considered as an option, but your success rate will probably be tiny. Many people regard any such approach as being "spam" and delete such emails immediately. Others, while perhaps having a look, certainly have a negative opinion.
-- Directories; There are many general, collector-based, and philatelic directories on the internet. As you browse, ask for a listing on any that seem appropriate to your business. If it seems important to you, bookmark it so that you can revisit to make sure firstly that you get listed, and secondly that you don't get removed or your information changed. See our Directories Listings page.
-- Search Engines; These utilities are one of the backbones of the internet. (Can something have more than one backbone ?) There are hundreds, no - thousands, of search engines, some of more use than others. Some of the main engines can potentially bring you huge amounts of traffic, and others are not worth the bother. It is naive to think that websites will be found by search engines all by themselves. In almost every case you have to tell them. You can submit manually directly to the search engine's site, or you can use a software programme to do this for you. Some programmes concentrate on the more important engines, some go for bulk.
-- Keywords and Tags; This is a subject which occupies all the waking hours of some people's lives (and possibly their dreams and nightmares as well). Put as simply as I can, these are the important words which might sum up the intended content, audience, and subject matter of a web page. They are normally added to the HTML codes of a page, especially where the normal text does not include them. It is a surprisingly complex subject, but a simple understanding is important. I intend to revisit the subject and perhaps add more information on it in due course. In the meantime, here is an example. You must remember that different search engines work in different ways, so the following is intended to give the broad understanding, not the detailed know-how. Let's say you have a page with a price list of German stamps, and it is written in English. If the text does not include the words Deutschland or Briefmarken you should add them to the invisible keywords, so that a German-speaking customer might still find you. Are the words people are most likely to search with included in the name of the file - in the title line - in the bold text - in links out of the page - as alternative text when somebody puts their mouse over an image - in "comment" text ?  If they are not, you may well get low rankings. But don't fall into the trap of putting the keywords in too often - search engines usually have software designed to demote your web page if it is headed German Stamps German Stamps German Stamps German Stamps !!  See the note about Web Position software below - if you really want to learn more about this, you can download the trial version for free and give yourself a crash course, as well as giving your website a make-over (although I would predict that you will quite possibly go on to buy it once you have been using it for a while).

E-COMMERCE and security - to follow. Things are changing very swiftly in this field, and it is now possible to get services for free now that were always charged for just a few months ago.

NUMBERS OF HITS
Not all that important !  Obviously, if yours is a commercial site, you only have a handful of hits per day, but every one is spending with you, then you are successful. If your site attracts 1,000 each day, but once they get to your page they find that it is not what they want, and move on, then it is not relevant that you have had so many hits.
I run the website for a stamp oganisation (voluntarily). At the first of the society's AGMs after the pages were set up I reported to the members on what had been done. The only question came from the Chairman - "How many hits ?"  If all you want is hits, then you can set up your site to pick up all sorts of stray web traffic . . . . . none of which will be of the slightest use to you. (Remember as well that some website hosts give you a maximum amount of data transfer capacity per month, above which they will charge you. Don't use up your allowance with waste !)
If you get reports of the usage of you site provided by a third party, make sure that you understand the information they are giving you. Are the figures unique visitors, page visits, file transfers, or what ?  (If an individual visitor comes to your site, looks at ten different pages, and these pages contain ninety other files such as backgrounds, logos, images, and so on, some reports will show that you have 100 hits.)

COUNTERS are a waste of time and space. Remember that many of the counters you see were set up to start at 1,000, or 5,042, or whatever, just to make it look better. (If you have a genuine counter, and a visitor finds out that they are number 37 it looks as though you have an unpopular site, which does you no good. If you start at a fake number and somebody visits, sees that they are one of many visiting your pages, then two weeks later finds that the number has moved on by four, they might start to suspect your counter - do you really want people to doubt any part of your site ?)
Some computer people are weird. How do you account for someone who sets up their system to reload your page every five seconds. If they are getting free calls, they enjoy playing about with computer challenges, and they have an odd sense of humour, they could log up thousands of hits on a counter.

SOFTWARE; There are very many programmes available to help you with various aspects of your work. We specifically select the following two that we use ourselves, and commend them to you.
We recommend Web Position Gold from FirstPlace Software as an excellent programme to help you increase the chances of being found on the major search engines. Nothing can guarantee top positions all the time, but this programme will certainly assist you in getting closer. It tells you how to place keywords and search terms within web pages so as to optimise their chances with different search engines. It will analyse pages for you before you put them on the web (and point out your errors). There is the facility to check your rankings and show you who your competitors are (you can also analyse their pages !). The programme will submit your web pages to the major engines (and can be automated to do this on a regular basis). You can keep track of how many visitors you have had to which pages (without having any silly counters showing), where they came from, and what search terms they used, and so on.

For uploading your pages and managing the files on your web site, we suggest you try CuteFTP, one of the most popular FTP managers on the market. Once you set up your details, it is easy (and I mean really easy) to upload new pages, renew old pages with new versions, and see what is all on your site at any time (with file names, dates, file types, and sizes).

Mass Submissions to internet search engines might be helpful, but remember that the vast majority of searches are performed on a small number of search engines. Submitting to hundreds of other search engines will probably not bring very much more traffic. My overall advice would be just to concentrate on the main search engines (which Web Position, mentioned above, pretty well cover). Individual submissions to the smaller engines are probably not going to repay the time spent, in which case use a programme like SubmitWolf (produced by Trellian) comes into its own, as it can be used to submit the same web page to hundreds of search engines without having to go through the process individually.

All of the above can be downloaded over the internet without any difficulty, and you get a free trial period before you have to pay anything. Follow the links above to get straight to the information you need.

WAYS TO MAKE EXTRA MONEY OUT OF YOUR SITE
Affiliate Programmes;
"Affiliate" is the name commonly given in web-world to the owner of a website who advertises another website on a commission basis. The commonest way of doing this is by "click-through tracking", where the webmaster puts a link on their page (sometimes with text, sometimes with a logo or image). Whenever a third party clicks on this link, that browser is then tagged with a reference which came from the link code.
Here is an example, this being for a website called Swappers and Collectors, which has links to other collectables sites, and other features. Although their website URL is http://swappersandcollectors.com,  you will notice if you run your mouse over that URL (or indeed the name already quoted), the link URL is actually http://swappersandcollectors.com/cgi-bin/wafp/afp.cgi?a=j&r=00000013 which includes our affiliate number (00000013). If you follow that link, sign up as an affiliate, and start earning points, we then get a percentage of your points ! Here is the same thing, using their logo; This programme is (in my opinion, at the time of writing), hardly worth spending time on, as the paybacks are currently so small.
 

This one, and others like it, pay better. It is an opt-in system where advertisers pay to be allowed to send you emails. (People are going to get sent junk emails anyway, so why not let them choose the ones they want, and get paid for looking at them ?) The recipients of the emails are paid 5c each, and as a webmaster, you get 2c per email for first and second-level referrals. It is the kind of programme which with some numbers of people can start to add up lots of little payments. You can click here or on the banner to visit a web page where you can find out more, and sign up.
 

Here is a link to Amazon, the universally-known on-line book merchants. Again, if you look at the URL that appears when you put your cursor over the word "Amazon", you will see that quite a complicated string of text appears which includes not just the website's address, but also instructions to their software to recognise you as a customer that has come through me.

Always read the terms and conditions before you sign up. Some affiliate programmes are sensible, but others have very restrictive conditions. Normal reasonable terms are to be offered a commission of between 2% and 30% (depending on the type and value of the product), a payment each month as long as your commission has reached say $25 or $100 (and carried forward to the next month otherwise), and a facility to close your account and collect any dues (although sometimes, and quite reasonably, this might carry a small service charge). Things to be warned against are commissions that are not carried forward should they not reach the monthly threshold, draconion conditions that allow the other party to close your account and forfeit all monies, and so on.

SEARCH BOXES
With a little understanding of how web pages are constructed, and especially with a basic understanding of HTML, it is quite easy to add a search box to one or more of your web pages.
Why should you do this ?  {1} It is an extra feature or service for visitors to your site. {2} There is a possibility that some of your customers/visitors will bookmark the page because it is somewhere that they know they can get a decent working search facility - and every time they visit your page they might see some way of doing business with you. {3} It can earn you extra income. Naturally, if there is a search facility you particularly like, and you know how to put it on your page, do so. If you don't have a particular choice, try the one just below.
Why should you not put a search engine on your website ?  {1} It is an invitation for people to move away from your site, and they might not come back. {2} It is an extra complication on your page, and something else that might go wrong.

Our recommendation - This is a search box provided by an organisation called "SearchTraffic".

The big draw of this service is not just that the search box is available without too much difficulty, but the owner of the website also gets paid !  At the time of writing, each search performed from your site would earn you 6c (US). OK, so it isn't a lot, and you don't get paid until you have tallied up US$25., but if you are going to do it you might as well get some income as well. The set-up is surprisingly easy, and you can keep track of your earnings. Other styles of search box are available, as well as the one shown here. In addition, if another webmaster clicks on the bottom line of the box and goes on to insert a search box into their site from which they earn money, you will get a small percentage of these earnings. Remember that such search boxes return results which are usually "paid-for" listings, and don't have the coverage of, for example, Google, but the best search engines dont pay !
If you try the above search box to see how it works remember that you will go out of this site.
If you want to sign up to get a search facility on your website, click on the "Make Extra Money/Add a Searchbox" line at the foot of the box.
(This is possibly where you start to wonder whether it is worth being a webmaster . . . . . Please Note that some web page editors will corrupt the codes for the above graphic with links while you edit the page - you may have to correct it on WordPad or NotePad, or similar. There is a page on SearchTraffic's site which gives some advice, or get basic advice here.)

Written by Robert Murray, 2000, 2001, 2002.
Page last updated Saturday 2 March 2002.

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