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Homeworking Directory.
NEWSLETTER ARCHIVES
NOVEMBER 2004
1. News
Welcome to the latest issue of the Homeworking Ideas newsletter, the monthly
publication which gives you all the latest news from the UK on ways of earning money
from home.
New Scam
I've recently received a few enquiries regarding a new "job offer" that is being
sent out by e-mail, generally after the recipient has registered with a job site.
The offer claims to come from a Taiwanese company called DAH DU Corporation,
but expect the name to change over time, and appears to be offering guaranteed
work co-ordinating payments for their existing clients,
with your income being a percentage of all the payments you process.
If you receive a similar offer, and aren't convinced that it is a scam,
here are a few pointers you might wish to consider:
How many multi-national hi-tech companies do you think use free webspace from Tripod?
Why can't they open bank accounts in the UK? They have offices in Germany, Belgium and Sweden and are doing enough business to lose £75K from transfer delays each month and can't get a UK bank account? I don't think so!
If they have trouble getting payment from clients, why would they allow you to take in all the money, without checking you out. Surely you'd be tempted keep it all??
Why would anyone need to pay this sort of money to simply manage and forward funds. If it was genuine, why not send an employee over from Belgium (EC so no restrictions on banking) to open an account, collect the money and ship it over.
If you're still in any doubt, take a look at the registration details for the DAHDUCORP.COM domain (a quick check at whois.net). It's registered to a UK individual (who must have had a bank account to pay for the name) using a free e-mail address on yahoo and was only registered last week. Does that sound like an established Taiwanese company to you?
Whilst it is not immediately obvious how the scam will work, if it does not include you being asked to provide a registration fee when you respond further, then I suspect it either involves you providing your bank account details for them to abuse, or possibly funds will go into your account, which you'll forward on, only for the original payment to be cancelled, leaving you out of pocket.
Old Scam
On the subject of scams, just a quick note to mention that our old friend Mr Shevkat of IS Trading has given up trying to confuse people by changing the name to IS Enterprises. Obviously too many people still recognised the name, so he
is now using the name Top-Star Mailshare instead. Different name, same old scam.
2. Featured Business Resource
Site Reviews
If you've got your own website, it can often be difficult to get an impartial opinion from friends and relatives, especially if they are not your
target audience. This month I've found the perfect solution at a great price.
I've mentioned HTMail in the past as a site where you can get paid to review
websites, but this month I've been tempted by their latest promotional offer
into looking at them from the opposite angle, and using them to get people
to review my latest site www.prize-games-online.com.
They sent my e-mail to 100 people on their mailing list in the category of my
choice requesting a review of the site. Although that was only yesterday
already 40 people have visited the site and provided feedback on their
opinion of the design and content of the site, and encouragingly most
seem to like it and are likely to return. Particularly useful is to
find out what people don't like about the site, and the option
to add an additional question of your own, on top of the standard questions.
The review service can be used for any site you'd like people to visit, so if you have a replica site provided by a business you promote, this is also a great way to get a targeted audience.
They're running a series of Christmas promotional offers, and to start you off,
the first offer (the one I've tried) is aimed at letting you find the right
list to suit your product or service. You can trial 100 names from any of
their standard lists for just $5 (UK £2.72+VAT)! That's a 75% discount!
Just enter X12 in the discount / coupon code box exactly as shown,
with no leading or trailing spaces. But please note this is a limited time offer so I'm not sure how long it will remain available. For further
details and to place an order visit http://www.homeworkinguk.com/htmail.htm
3. Featured Business Opportunity
Niche Product Power Pack
Whilst selling information products has long been recognised as one of the best
ways to earn an income from home, particularly selling eBooks online, the biggest
problem is that most of the time you end of buying books about earning money online
and selling to other people who want to earn online - a very competitive and
crowded sector.
This month though, I've come across something different; a collection of eBooks aimed outside the business opportunity sector, as well as appealing to those looking to work from home.
The Niche Products Power Pack is a complete selection of easy to sell,
hot topic, niche products.You'll have full master resell rights to this entire
collection of 11 eBooks. This means you could sell them individually (You get
ready made web sites for each product!), you could repackage them and
sell them by theme from your own web sites or you can just resell this
entire package. You even get a copy of a web site to make selling the pack easy.
Products cover such topics as:
- Health & Fitness
- Diets & Recipes
- Crafts
- Gardening
- Golf
- How to stop smoking
- How to lose weight
I've looked through the collection and have been pleasantly surprised by the quality of the products on offer, although I wouldn't recommend buying it for the "Stop Smoking" guide
as this is noticeably inferior and not a product I would be happy selling.
As Ebay had one of their free listing days last week, I placed a few of the books on the site, just to
test the market, and was pleasantly surprised to find all of them sold, some with
heavy bidding, so there is definitely a market out there. The usual price for the
package is $97, but as I managed to get a discount through a contact of mine,
I'm passing on the discount to all newsletter subscribers and am making it
available to you for just £19.99. Further details are available through
http://www.homeworkinguk.com/niche.htm
although I haven't yet had to time to add more than brief details of the
individual guides. If you'd like more details on a specific product,
just drop me an e-mail and I'll let you have more information.
4. Featured Freebies
Free Fax Number
Although the widespread use of e-mail, and fax facilities on a computer, means
a fax machine is no longer vital to a home based business, there are often
times when somebody prefers to send you a fax and it isn't always practical
to leave your computer ready to receive faxes. Now PumaOne are offering a
free fax number that will accept faxes on your behalf and forward them directly
to your e-mail account. Completely free - you don't even need to download or
install any software. Visit http://www.homeworkinguk.com/puma.htm for more
details.
Free Digital Camera
Not too many details yet but this month, discount online bookshop BOL are giving
away a free digital camera to all new customer who make their first purchase
between the 22nd and 30th November. With savings of up to 60% (or even more
on collections) and free postage on orders of 3 or more items this could be
a great opportunity to solve some of your Christmas present problems, and get
yourself a free camera at the same time. Visit the site at
http://www.homeworkinguk.com/bol.htm after 22 November for full details
5. Featured Article
In recent months I've recommended various web hosting packages, but it can sometimes be difficult to know what to
look for when making your choice. This month, Derek Chambers of
http://www.1stChoiceWebHost.co.uk provides some advice.
Choosing A Web Host Company
For the inexperienced, choosing the correct web host can seem a very daunting task
and many important factors can easily be overlooked. Most people judge a web host
by the amount of disk space offered, with the impression generally being that more
space is always better. However, this is not an ideal way to choose a web host.
It’s important to remember that your website is an investment. You will therefore
not want your site to be ‘offline’ more than it is ‘online’, due to unreliable
hosting.
Before setting up my own hosting company, I had been faced with similar problems. I tried various reseller options but experienced seriously worrying unsatisfactory service from several hosting companies. This service failure affected my own business website and the sites of many clients. Eventually I made a considerable financial investment that
gives me guaranteed control and reliability for running my own efficient servers.
Below is a check list that you should consider when choosing a website hosting company:
Verifiable Address
Does the hosting company you are considering using have a physical address that is listed on their website and is included
in the WHOIS directory. Or are they hiding behind a PO Box number?
When interested in any business on the Web, always have a clear idea of the
company you will be dealing with. This is particularly important with web hosting,
as you can buy cheap and cheerful reseller packages. This makes it possible for
virtually anyone to start a hosting business - with no knowledge, no equipment,
etc. The hosting company can easily vanish overnight. This happened to me when
I first started out, after signing up with a company that used a PO Box number.
Make sure you have several points of contact for the company.
Hosting Platform & Compatibility
Make sure the web hosting company can provide the platform and software you need to host your web site. For example, if your site is programmed in ASP, choosing a Linux-only hosting company is NOT a good idea, given the cost of re-writing your code to make it compatible.
Uptime and Servers
This is probably one of the most important factors to look for in a good web host. Do they guarantee 99% or more uptime? Are their servers based in a secure Data Centre with 24/7 monitoring, or is it home-based using dynamic DNS? This consideration is crucially important as most home-based servers cannot maintain a high percentage uptime. They simply do not have the time, staff, or technical knowledge to achieve this.
Choose a web host that does not overload servers and provides adequate bandwidth.
Bandwidth
This key factor is usually overlooked until the bandwidth limit is reached and your site is suddenly not available. If you are planning to do a large amount of ftp or publish a site with several images or downloads, then your bandwidth will be a lot higher than a mainly text site, especially if content is seldom changed. Another important factor to consider when looking at bandwidth is the potential number of visitors to your website.
If your site sells a popular product (such as mobile telephones) and you advertise the site both online, maybe using Google ad words or other marketing campaigns, and offline displaying ‘for our latest offers visit our website at www.anyname’, you will find that your bandwidth is tight. The amount of bandwidth you should be looking at for maintaining a successful website is 1gb minimum.
Also check the web host’s policy on your monthly bandwidth usage. If you use up the agreed bandwidth, will your site simply vanish? Or will you be offered the option to purchase extra bandwidth for that month at a reasonable fee? (Generally around £2 - £3 per gb.)
Website Hosting Features
When choosing a hosting package, be sure to check that it supports the features you will require to run your site properly. Features such as:
CGI (now standard with good hosting companies)
PHP (many new scripts and programs require PHP support and some hosts charge £10 - £15 extra for this per annum)
MySQL - some scripts require MySql database to run, especially shopping carts which also require PHP
FTP Access - strange as it may seem, some hosts do restrict FTP access, so check that the web host you are considering does not have any restrictions
Customer Service
Regardless of whether or not you are technically-minded, sooner or later you will probably need to contact your web host. Before signing up, it’s worth sending them a test email to see how quickly they reply. (If at all)
Check their site to see if they have any testimonials available, as this will give some indication of their reputation - a good hosting company won’t mind sharing testimonials.
Domain Name
Some hosting companies will charge extra to transfer domain names to and from their servers so this is always worth checking before you sign up. Although many hosting companies will register a domain on your behalf you should compare prices and ideally learn how to register a domain yourself, which is very easy to do and enables you to stay in complete control. In this way, if your hosting company ever goes out of business, you can change the nameservers to another host quickly and efficiently. You will be back on line in no time with very little damage. (This happened to me when starting out. I had no control over my domain, which was down for 10 days while Nominet sorted it out.)
Pricing - The last consideration
Some deals look good at first sight but if one feature that is important to your needs is missing, then that deal is no longer so good. Do your research and compare different companies. Pricing should be the last consideration as hosting prices can range from being very inexpensive to almost no upper limit.
In the web hosting world, the terms “no such thing as a free lunch” or “you pay for what you get” is highly applicable. Many free hosts will put banners or advertisements on your site, and sometimes the free service is very limited. The inexpensive hosting companies often put too many customers on each server resulting in lots of problems - slow performance to the point of site unavailability, security issues, slow transfer rates, etc. Network and system resources cost the hosting company money, which in some way has to be recovered. This is why free or very cheap hosting packages are renowned for providing slow servers and poor customer service.
Using the guidelines on this page will help you to find an affordable, efficient and dependable hosting company for your business or personal website.
Derek Chambers
www.1stChoiceWebHost.co.uk
0870 740 2099 07956 412 059
6. Thought for the month
Finally, for anyone who thinks proofreading is little more than running a piece of work through a spellchecker:
I halve a spelling checker,
It came with my pea see.
It plainly marks four my revue
Mistakes I dew knot sea.
Eye strike a key and type a word
And weight four it two say
Weather eye am wrong oar write
It shows me strait aweigh.
As soon as a mist ache is maid
It nose bee fore two long
And eye can put the era rite
Its rarely ever wrong.
I've scent this massage threw it,
And I'm shore your pleased too no
Its letter prefect in every weigh;
My checker tolled me sew.
halve a nays day. In joy!
I hope you've found something of interest this month. I'll speak to you again next month.
Lynne O'Connor
newsletter@homeworkinguk.com
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If you have a business you'd like
featured on the site, send details of the
opportunity to the address below, for rates and availability.
Internet
Homeworking Directory
or write to:
Mrs L O'Connor, 91B Acton Lane, London,
NW10 8UT
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