We’ve been reviewing our affiliate scheme against the competition and believe we have the leading scheme in the industry. With the Heart Internet scheme you can earn 10% commission on all domain and hosting sales by referring new customers online.

Enrolling in our affiliate scheme is free of charge and we supply a range of banner and button sizes to place on your Website. When a visitor to your website clicks on any of these banners they are sent to our website and a special piece of information is stored on their computer (called a cookie). Cookies are used by many companies, including Microsoft, Amazon and Argos, so are widely accepted by computer users. The cookie stores your affiliate ID so that when that customer places an order for services from our website we know that the customer came from you.

Once an order is placed we automatically credit your account with 10% commission for web hosting and domain names from that sale. As long as you reach £15 by the end of the month we will automatically credit the amount you have earned to your bank account. If you don’t earn £15 in a given month we simply keep carrying this amount over until you reach £15.

To join simply login to your account/sign up for a new account and click the “Affiliate Link” once you have logged in.

Heart Internet takes the strain off creating your own forum and allows its users to install phpBB 2 & 3 easily from its extensive library of scripts.
 
phpBB is a high-powered, fully scalable and customisable open-source bulletin board package. phpBB has a user-friendly interface, simple and straightforward administration panel and helpful FAQ.

Below are some Top Tips in helping you run your own forum and get your community off to a good start.

Start off Small
Many forums make the mistake of creating too many categories too soon. If you’re just starting out with your forum, you’re going to create a negative atmosphere if you have plenty of categories but with zero or very few posts. Plan out the minimum amount of categories your forum needs and use those for now. Once the community becomes more active with regular posts and contributing members, you can start to introduce more categories that will suit your target audience.

Make the Forum Appear Active
When you first start building your forum, it’s important to create a sense of activity, as it will be less likely that users will register to a forum which appears to lack enthusiasm and where there are no new topics being created. If you’re determined to make your forum a success then you should either get friends to sign up and post topics or create multiple accounts that you can login and post as, so inevitably you’re answering your own questions to begin with, but it makes the forum appear more active.

Creating & Running a Successful Forum
Every member that is newly registered to the forum should be sent a “Welcome to the Forum” message via the private message system. This is a really nice touch that new members will appreciate, it doesn’t have to be unique to every user, you could have a standard template that you can simply copy from and paste into a message.  It’s a good idea to include links in your welcome message to the most popular categories on the forum , encouraging new members to participate. Give them the opportunity to introduce themselves to the community, add a link within the message to the “Introductions” forum on your board and make sure you greet them with a reply.

Reply to Posts as Soon as Possible
Make the right impression by subscribing to all forums so you will be alerted of new threads and posts. Login and reply as soon as you can, if you are unsure how to answer the question, it may be worth searching the internet to see if it has been answered before and use that information to help, be sure to credit the original source.

Hire Moderators
Over time you will find it harder to monitor your forum as post rates and the amount of new registrations increase. It’s almost impossible for yourself to monitor the forum 24/7 for inappropriate content, such as spam and advertising.  It would be highly advisable to hire a moderator to help run your forum, approach the active members on your forum and ask if they would like to help improve and grow the community. Due to their commitments to the forum, it’s likely they will accept your request and be happy to help. It’s advisable to create a set of rules and instructions for moderators to follow so the forum is still run in exactly the way you want. Also, try to hire a moderator who is in a different time-zone so when you’re asleep, the forum is still being moderated.

Remove Spam
Nothing can turn visitors away more quickly from a forum than spam, so make sure you keep a watchful eye on members trying to sell unrelated products and remove posts that do not serve any purpose or that are offensive. It’s advised to create a forum for “General/Off Topic” posts so members can chat about other things which are not forum specific.

Send a Regular Newsletter
Send a regular newsletter to your forum members which includes the latest popular topics and encourages them to participate. It’s a great way of reminded members about your forum and also a way of generating traffic back to your boards.

Useful Links:

Support:
http://www.phpbb.com/support/

Modifications and Styles
http://www.phpbb.com/customise/

Heart Internet offers our customers access to an extensive library of free cgi scripts allowing them to install professional applications very quickly and with minimal effort. This article will cover the benefits of using our Content Management Systems (Joomla, Drupal, Typo3 and Nucleus) and why using them will help streamline the publishing of content online.

Quick and Easy to Update
Content Management Systems allow users to add new pages to a website with minimal effort. Your entire website is managed via your administration control panel where you can add new articles, images, polls and many other features via an intuitive interface.

Web Experience not Essential
Traditionally you would need to hire a web designer/developer to manage your website. Using a CMS eliminates the need to do this. Everything from the look and feel of your website to article management can be handled via your control panel.  It is also a very cost effective way of running your own website as everything can be updated and managed by yourself. If you are ever in need of help or guidance, you can check the CMS provider’s FAQ (Frequently Asked Questions) section of their website or try posting your problem over at their official support forums. A list of useful links can be found at the bottom of this article.

Automatic Navigation Generation
Menu’s will be created automatically when you add new pages/categories which will form the basis of your websites navigation, e.g. Homepage, Contact, Articles, etc. This eliminates the need to manually update your navigation each time you add a new section, saving you time, effort and preventing the risk of creating dead links.

Searchable
Using a CMS will allow your entire website to be searchable enabling people to find content fast.  The advantages of having a search system in place on your website will save users the time of having to trawl through static pages trying to find what they need. It makes for a much better user experience and is certainly less frustrating.

Scheduled Content
With most Content Management Systems you can post date articles allowing you to publish them on a certain time or day of the week.  This is especially handy if you need to publish content at certain times but you’re not available to do so – the CMS will update it for you.

Protected Content
A CMS can make certain pages viewable only to people you choose. For example, you can allow visitors to your website to view all of your basic articles but require registration for them to view premium content.

Consistent Design
Don’t worry about creating new pages for every article as a Content Management System will automatically produce them for you. The article page will be created from a single template and, no matter how much content you add, you can rest assured the look of your website will stay the same.

Extendable
Content Management Systems, such as Joomla, have an excellent resource of extensions allowing you to develop your website further and offer more functionality.  There are hundreds of extensions available, including Ecommerce, Forums, Galleries, Classified Advertisements and so much more. A link to the entire database of extensions can be found below.

Remember you can easily install your own CMS from our database of scripts that come with any hosting account.

Helpful Links

Joomla Extensions
http://extensions.joomla.org/

Joomla Community Forum
http://forum.joomla.org/

Drupal Forum
http://drupal.org/forum

Typo3 Documentation
http://typo3.com/Support.1228.0.html

Nucleus Support Forum
http://forum.nucleuscms.org/

Heart internet offers an array of free tools in helping you getting traffic to your website. We also offer free Google Adwords vouchers on all our paid hosting accounts to give your website a good head start in bringing new visitors to your website.

It’s also worth trying the following methods to drive more traffic to your website.

Reciprocal Link Exchanges
Get more visitors to your website by offering free link exchanges with other relevant sites. By attracting more targeted visitors you are increasing your chances of creating a sale and converting them into customers. Reciprocal links will also increase your rankings within search engines as you are seen as a valued resource.

Join Forums & Discussion Groups
Promote your website on as many forums and discussion groups as you can.  Forums will normally give you the opportunity to create a signature, to which you can add a link to your website with a sentence of accompanying promotional text that should be enticing enough for users to click on.  Forums are also a fantastic resource of information where you will not only be able to promote your website but learn new skills along the way.  Take every opportunity you can to promote and talk about your website by joining in discussions and assisting other members.

Email Campaigns
Create a newsletter list that visitors to your website can easily sign-up to. Doing so will allow you to directly market to them via email giving you the opportunity to sell them a product or service and attract them back to your website.  Try to get your website listed on other websites newsletters by offering a commission to every product or service brought as a referral from it.

Submit Your Site to Key Directories
Submit your website to quality web directories such as Google’s Dmoz (www.dmoz.org) and Yahoo’s (http://dir.yahoo.com). You may not be successful the first time you submit but be patient as it can take up to several months for your website to appear. It’s advised you submit your website to more localised directories that are relevant to your business sector. This should yield better targeted visitors as opposed to directories that are more generic and cater for all types of businesses, it can also be detrimental to your business being listed in too many low quality directories.

Paid Advertising (AdWords)
If you have the funds to pay for advertising then you could try Google Adwords (http://adwords.google.com).  AdWords allows you to target specific search terms in Google where you bid for higher positions on the sponsored panel on the right side of the results page. This method is great for attracting visitors quickly but be sure to set a daily budget as it can become expensive. There are many other paid advertising networks out there, it’s worth experimenting and finding out which service works best for you.

Have you considered how important email etiquette is in your company? Email is often the first point of contact for a prospective customer and an ongoing communication method for your existing customers. How you deal with emails will say a lot about your company and its values.

6 Quick Tips

 - Start each email by saying “Hello name”, “Hi name” or “Dear Mr Name”.
 - Reply promptly, your customers could go elsewhere if you take too long to reply.
 - DON’T TYPE EVERYTHING IN CAPITALS. Unless you want to shout at your customers?!
 - Proof read your email before sending, check for spelling errors and grammatical problems.
 - Consider who you are sending the email to, do you really need to cc half your company?
 - Remember to finish your email correctly. I would recommend putting your name, phone number and email address as a minimum.

These are just a few tips to get you started, if your company uses email regularly I would recommend you have an email policy so that your organisation has a consistent approach to email.

For more tips have a look at Emailreplies.com or visit the Business Email Etiquette Blog which has some good ideas about how to maximise the use of email in your organisation.