Web Design Workshop Navigation (continued)

Subsequent to last night’s Workshop let’s recap some of the challenges faced when styling the Category Navigation. At the bottom you will find 3 sample navigation style codes as elaborated during the workshop.

1. Starting Position

During the previous session we had added style to the first level category navigation. Yesterday we added design to the drop-down menu.

Toni Leuenberger's raw Category Navigation

Toni’s starting style-sheet shows the styled top level Category list with the hover effect, Green-White switching to White-Green.

The drop-down is raw in gray tones and needs to be styled.

In our style-sheet, the concerned lines are lines 110 – 173 for the whole navigation design and for the drop down menu particularly lines 168 – 173.

The first important element for our Navigation Web Design is to be found on line 112:

border-bottom: 1px solid #fff;

This line adds a white bottom border to each list item block.

2. The Drop-down Menu Style

We are now looking at lines 168 – 173:

#navigation ul ul { position:absolute; top:24px; left:0; background:#ffffff; display:none; list-style:none;}
#navigation ul ul li {position:relative; border:1px solid #FFFFFF; width:188px; margin:0; }
#navigation ul ul li a {display:block; padding:0 7px 0 12px; color: #fff; background-color:#000080; border-bottom: 1px solid #FFFFFF; font-size: 12px;}
#navigation ul ul li a:hover {background-color:#B30000;}
#navigation ul ul li:hover ul { display: block; }
#navigation ul ul ul { left:188px; top:-1px; display: none; }

We start from the main Navigation, an unordered list (ul):

Felisa Ryan's Navigation

ul, li

In our style-sheet we find names for each item: navigation ul is the navigation unordered list, i.e. all the categories which will be represented in this list on top level. Sub-categories are dealt with as subordinated lists or lists under lists. If we have a list of the top level categories, then we can also have a list of second and third and so on level categories.

To designate the list under a list we use ul (for the first list) ul (for the second unordered list). In our case ul ul defines the second level list of categories which we want to show as a drop-down menu.

Felisa Ryan's Navigation Drop-down Menu

On Felisa’s drop-down menu we see the styling of the ul ul li … meaning the List Items (li) of the subordinated list (ul ul).

Under the Category Sports Club Fundraising we find a Category called Cricket Club Fundraising.

The problem is that the sub-category displays on two lines because of the length of the sub-category name.

In our original style-sheet, the width of the list item (li)  in the subordinated category list (ul ul) is defined in line 169 as follows:

#navigation ul ul li {position:relative; border:1px solid #FFFFFF; width:159px; margin:0; }

In order to increase the width of navigation ul ul li (you see how easy it becomes), you just increase the width:159px;.
In Felisa’s case, we just stretched it to 188 pixels:

Felisa's adjusted Navigation Drop-down

You see how the sub-menu now fits nicely. We just need to be aware that all sub-categories will be displayed in a block of that width. If we have just one specially long category name amongst all the sub-categories we display, it may look better to make an exception for that category and display the name on two lines. Up to you to decide.

Other examples of similar challenges we find on Larrie Perkins’ play-ground:

Larrie Perkins Test Navigation

Now: if we have to go through the 50 States on that menu on Larrie’s site, then we will most likely have to find another solution all together (a scroll-bar) or he may want to create different top categories, like East, Center and West.

But in any case, it will be worth while to increase the ul ul li width.

Also the white bottom-border from line 112 would make the design clearer.

The font color on the main category is not ideal; white is better for readability.

One more interesting menu is to be found on Gene Line’s Auto Parts site:

Gene Line Auto Parts Navigation

But then …

Gene Line Auto Parts Navigation 2

Ute Schaedler’s site shows a similar challenge:

Ute Schaedler Navigation Drop-down

We could of course decrease line spacing or line height for the drop-down menu by adding a call to ul ul li as follows:

line-height:130%;

The 130% means: line height is 130% of the font size.

Boruch Rappaport Navigation

Nice shot on Boruch Rappaport’s site where the ul ul li is adjusted to a width of 173 pixels. The choice of a color scheme with a light and a dark color results in a nice alternation of the colors when hovering.

A particular problem can arise if you use just black and white tones on the site. Besides the problem of readability, from a web design point of view, Bianca Gubalke wanted to show dark sepapartors on the white background of the drop-down menu.

This is achieved by modifying line #navigation ul ul li as follows:

#navigation ul ul li {position:relative; border-bottom:1px solid #222222; width:159px; margin:0; }

As you can see, we have replaced the # navigation ul ul li call border with a call for border-bottom.

Bianca Gubalke Navigation

As a result we now have the white background on the drop-down whereas the List Items are separated by a 1 pixel wide dark gray line. This is a more elegant solution than the full border as on a full border, all around the list item, the bottom border of the superior item and the top border of the inferior list item generate the impression of a 2 pixels wide horizontal separator, while the vertical borders left and right are just 1 pixel strong.

Final Style-sheet for the Navigation

1. The Demo Site:

Yorgo Nestoridis Demo Navigation

The corresponding code is as follows:

#navigation {
clear: left;
background: #222222 /*url(images/nav.png) repeat*/;
float: left;
width: 100%;
z-index: 100;
position: relative;
margin-top: 20px;
}

#navigation ul * {
margin:0;
padding:0
}

#navigation ul {
padding: 0;
margin: 0;
}

#navigation ul li {
position:relative;
font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
list-style-type: none;
float: left;
font-size: 12px;
line-height: 24px;
padding: 0;
margin: 0;
position: relative;
}

#navigation ul a {
display: block;
font-weight: bold;
color: #FFFFFF;
border-right: 1px solid #B30000;
padding: 0 15px;
}

#navigation ul a:hover {
color: #FFFFFF;
background: #B30000;
text-decoration: none;
}
#navigation ul li:hover ul { display: block; z-index: 1000;}
#navigation ul li:hover ul ul { display: none; }
#navigation ul ul { position:absolute; top:24px; left:0; background:#000000; display:none; list-style:none;}
#navigation ul ul li {position:relative; border:1px solid #FFFFFF; width:159px; margin:0; }
#navigation ul ul li a {display:block; padding:0 7px 0 12px; color: #FFFFFF; background-color:#222222; border-right: 0; font-size: 12px; }
#navigation ul ul li a:hover {background-color:#B30000}
#navigation ul ul li:hover ul { display: block; }
#navigation ul ul ul { left:159px; top:-1px; display: none; }

2. White as on Bianca’s site

#navigation {
clear: left;
background: #FFFFFF /*url(images/nav.png) repeat*/;
float: left;
width: 100%;
z-index: 100;
position: relative;
margin-top: 20px;
}

#navigation {
clear: left;
background: #FFFFFF/*url(images/nav.png) repeat*/;
float: left;
width: 100%;
z-index: 100;
position: relative;
margin-top: 20px;
}

#navigation ul * {
margin:0;
padding:0
}

#navigation ul {
padding: 0;
margin: 0;
}

#navigation ul li {
position:relative;
font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
list-style-type: none;
float: left;
font-size: 12px;
line-height: 24px;
padding: 0;
margin: 0;
position: relative;
}

#navigation ul a {
display: block;
font-weight: bold;
color: #000;
border-right: 1px solid #fff;
padding: 0 15px;
}

#navigation ul a:hover {
color: #fff;
background: #000;
text-decoration: none;
}
#navigation ul li:hover ul { display: block; z-index: 1000;}
#navigation ul li:hover ul ul { display: none; }
#navigation ul ul { position:absolute; top:24px; left:0; background:#ffffff; display:none; list-style:none;}
#navigation ul ul li {position:relative; border-bottom:1px solid #222222; width:159px; margin:0; }
#navigation ul ul li a {display:block; padding:0 7px 0 12px; color: #222; background-color:#ffffff; border-right: 0; font-size: 12px; }
#navigation ul ul li a:hover {background-color:#222222}
#navigation ul ul li:hover ul { display: block; }
#navigation ul ul ul { left:159px; top:-1px; display: none; }


3. Red and Blue like on Felisa’s site

#navigation {
clear: left;
border-bottom: 1px solid #fff;
background: #000080 /*url(images/nav.png) repeat*/;
float: left;
width: 100%;
z-index: 100;
position: relative;
margin-top: 20px;
}

#navigation {
clear: left;
background: #000080/*url(images/nav.png) repeat*/;
float: left;
width: 100%;
z-index: 100;
position: relative;
margin-top: 20px;
}

#navigation ul * {
margin:0;
padding:0
}

#navigation ul {
padding: 0;
margin: 0;
}

#navigation ul li {
position:relative;
font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
list-style-type: none;
float: left;
font-size: 12px;
line-height: 24px;
padding: 0;
margin: 0;
position: relative;
}

#navigation ul a {
display: block;
font-weight: bold;
color: #FFFFFF;
border-right: 1px solid #fff;
padding: 0 15px;
}

#navigation ul a:hover {
color: #ffffff;
background: #B30000;
text-decoration: none;
}
#navigation ul li:hover ul { display: block; z-index: 1000;}
#navigation ul li:hover ul ul { display: none; }
#navigation ul ul { position:absolute; top:24px; left:0; background:#ffffff; display:none; list-style:none;}
#navigation ul ul li {position:relative; border:1px solid #FFFFFF; width:188px; margin:0; }
#navigation ul ul li a {display:block; padding:0 7px 0 12px; color: #fff; background-color:#000080; border-bottom: 1px solid #FFFFFF; font-size: 12px;}
#navigation ul ul li a:hover {background-color:#B30000;}
#navigation ul ul li:hover ul { display: block; }
#navigation ul ul ul { left:188px; top:-1px; display: none; }

I am looking forward to today’s Workshop where we will take care of the Page sub-navigation.

More about this Topic

• Web Design Workshop 4 – Navigation
• Web Design Workshop 2
• Web Design Workshop
• Web Design by Bill Gates
• Fonts and Typography in CSS

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During these days I am relaunching my hosting company, BRap Hosting. I say “relaunch”, because indeed about a year ago I launched the business with a different structure, not far from a simple hosting reseller plan, but I quickly discovered a major problem in that too much power was in the hands of one person, (not me), and that if and when he would choose to be an @$$-&*##, he can essentially bring down my whole business. Not smart. So I disappeared sort of, and restructed the business in a different format, and now, well, let’s go!!!

There are three main divisions in BRap Hosting. First and foremost are the hosting packages. BRap Hosting is resolved to maximize customer benefit by supplying him with the best of both worlds — cheap website hosting without compromising excellent customer service. I work with several data centers, all of whom feature 99.99% uptime, but more important to me is the “percieved uptime”, that is, how the end user feels server response. There are many reasons why the user may get time out errors even though the server is technically up. For example, when Henry hogs system resources (before he gets caught), Sam will feel that the server is not responding, even though it is “up”. Anyway, I work with data centers that besides promises and guarantees, in practice the customer has a good experience.

I lowered my prices in order to provide the customer with cheap website hosting, as I am targeting households and small businesses, who don’t have extra money just to throw away. On the other hand, through my background in computer programming, and in education, coupled with my refined character traits and aspiration to be good and to do good for others, my customers position themselves to have above average customer service from a staff which has ears that hear, and a heart with empathy. I still remember not long ago when I was a newbie to internet use, so I understand what it means to be new, yet my understanding and experience are deep, and my ability to explain is well above average.

Since I work with several data centers I have the flexibility to offer two different hosting packages, to fit the customer with a framework which most corresponds to his needs. Additionally, I have the option to easily resolve something which is uncommon, yet does happen, that in retrospect the chosen data center does not correspond with the customers true needs, to move him over to more appropriate framework with a minimum of disruption.

I am offering a reduced rate through Sunday evening GMT, as a way to get acquainted with the company. See the link here:

http://braphosting.net/launchsale.html

The two other divisions, so to speak, are two blockbuster products which are in production. One of them, pre-hosted niche sites, is sort of finished, just undergoing upgrading for added quality and customer value. The other product you can see on the site, that one is not almost finished.

Additionally, in the “Other Products” department, BRap Hosting offers discounted prices on high quality products which are appropriate for someone with a hosted domain.

I will talk about these products more in later posts.

Boruch Rappaport

During these days I am relaunching my hosting company, BRap Hosting. I say “relaunch”, because indeed about a year ago I launched the business with a different structure, not far from a simple hosting reseller plan, but I quickly discovered a major problem in that too much power was in the hands of one person, (not me), and that if and when he would choose to be an @$$-&*##, he can essentially bring down my whole business. Not smart. So I disappeared sort of, and restructed the business in a different format, and now, well, let’s go!!!

There are three main divisions in BRap Hosting. First and foremost are the hosting packages. BRap Hosting is resolved to maximize customer benefit by supplying him with the best of both worlds — cheap website hosting without compromising excellent customer service. I work with several data centers, all of whom feature 99.99% uptime, but more important to me is the “percieved uptime”, that is, how the end user feels server response. There are many reasons why the user may get time out errors even though the server is technically up. For example, when Henry hogs system resources (before he gets caught), Sam will feel that the server is not responding, even though it is “up”. Anyway, I work with data centers that besides promises and guarantees, in practice the customer has a good experience.

I lowered my prices in order to provide the customer with cheap website hosting, as I am targeting households and small businesses, who don’t have extra money just to throw away. On the other hand, through my background in computer programming, and in education, coupled with my refined character traits and aspiration to be good and to do good for others, my customers position themselves to have above average customer service from a staff which has ears that hear, and a heart with empathy. I still remember not long ago when I was a newbie to internet use, so I understand what it means to be new, yet my understanding and experience are deep, and my ability to explain is well above average.

Since I work with several data centers I have the flexibility to offer two different hosting packages, to fit the customer with a framework which most corresponds to his needs. Additionally, I have the option to easily resolve something which is uncommon, yet does happen, that in retrospect the chosen data center does not correspond with the customers true needs, to move him over to more appropriate framework with a minimum of disruption.

I am offering a reduced rate through Sunday evening GMT, as a way to get acquainted with the company. See the link here:

http://braphosting.net/launchsale.html

The two other divisions, so to speak, are two blockbuster products which are in production. One of them, pre-hosted niche sites, is sort of finished, just undergoing upgrading for added quality and customer value. The other product you can see on the site, that one is not almost finished.

Additionally, in the “Other Products” department, BRap Hosting offers discounted prices on high quality products which are appropriate for someone with a hosted domain.

I will talk about these products more in later posts.

Boruch Rappaport

During these days I am relaunching my hosting company, BRap Hosting. I say “relaunch”, because indeed about a year ago I launched the business with a different structure, not far from a simple hosting reseller plan, but I quickly discovered a major problem in that too much power was in the hands of one person, (not me), and that if and when he would choose to be an @$$-&*##, he can essentially bring down my whole business. Not smart. So I disappeared sort of, and restructed the business in a different format, and now, well, let’s go!!!

There are three main divisions in BRap Hosting. First and foremost are the hosting packages. BRap Hosting is resolved to maximize customer benefit by supplying him with the best of both worlds — cheap website hosting without compromising excellent customer service. I work with several data centers, all of whom feature 99.99% uptime, but more important to me is the “percieved uptime”, that is, how the end user feels server response. There are many reasons why the user may get time out errors even though the server is technically up. For example, when Henry hogs system resources (before he gets caught), Sam will feel that the server is not responding, even though it is “up”. Anyway, I work with data centers that besides promises and guarantees, in practice the customer has a good experience.

I lowered my prices in order to provide the customer with cheap website hosting, as I am targeting households and small businesses, who don’t have extra money just to throw away. On the other hand, through my background in computer programming, and in education, coupled with my refined character traits and aspiration to be good and to do good for others, my customers position themselves to have above average customer service from a staff which has ears that hear, and a heart with empathy. I still remember not long ago when I was a newbie to internet use, so I understand what it means to be new, yet my understanding and experience are deep, and my ability to explain is well above average.

Since I work with several data centers I have the flexibility to offer two different hosting packages, to fit the customer with a framework which most corresponds to his needs. Additionally, I have the option to easily resolve something which is uncommon, yet does happen, that in retrospect the chosen data center does not correspond with the customers true needs, to move him over to more appropriate framework with a minimum of disruption.

I am offering a reduced rate through Sunday evening GMT, as a way to get acquainted with the company. See the link here:

http://braphosting.net/launchsale.html

The two other divisions, so to speak, are two blockbuster products which are in production. One of them, pre-hosted niche sites, is sort of finished, just undergoing upgrading for added quality and customer value. The other product you can see on the site, that one is not almost finished.

Additionally, in the “Other Products” department, BRap Hosting offers discounted prices on high quality products which are appropriate for someone with a hosted domain.

I will talk about these products more in later posts.

Boruch Rappaport

During these days I am relaunching my hosting company, BRap Hosting. I say “relaunch”, because indeed about a year ago I launched the business with a different structure, not far from a simple hosting reseller plan, but I quickly discovered a major problem in that too much power was in the hands of one person, (not me), and that if and when he would choose to be an @$$-&*##, he can essentially bring down my whole business. Not smart. So I disappeared sort of, and restructed the business in a different format, and now, well, let’s go!!!

There are three main divisions in BRap Hosting. First and foremost are the hosting packages. BRap Hosting is resolved to maximize customer benefit by supplying him with the best of both worlds — cheap website hosting without compromising excellent customer service. I work with several data centers, all of whom feature 99.99% uptime, but more important to me is the “percieved uptime”, that is, how the end user feels server response. There are many reasons why the user may get time out errors even though the server is technically up. For example, when Henry hogs system resources (before he gets caught), Sam will feel that the server is not responding, even though it is “up”. Anyway, I work with data centers that besides promises and guarantees, in practice the customer has a good experience.

I lowered my prices in order to provide the customer with cheap website hosting, as I am targeting households and small businesses, who don’t have extra money just to throw away. On the other hand, through my background in computer programming, and in education, coupled with my refined character traits and aspiration to be good and to do good for others, my customers position themselves to have above average customer service from a staff which has ears that hear, and a heart with empathy. I still remember not long ago when I was a newbie to internet use, so I understand what it means to be new, yet my understanding and experience are deep, and my ability to explain is well above average.

Since I work with several data centers I have the flexibility to offer two different hosting packages, to fit the customer with a framework which most corresponds to his needs. Additionally, I have the option to easily resolve something which is uncommon, yet does happen, that in retrospect the chosen data center does not correspond with the customers true needs, to move him over to more appropriate framework with a minimum of disruption.

I am offering a reduced rate through Sunday evening GMT, as a way to get acquainted with the company. See the link here:

*** Offer Closed ***

The two other divisions, so to speak, are two blockbuster products which are in production. One of them, pre-hosted niche sites, is sort of finished, just undergoing upgrading for added quality and customer value. The other product you can see on the site, that one is not almost finished.

Additionally, in the “Other Products” department, BRap Hosting offers discounted prices on high quality products which are appropriate for someone with a hosted domain.

I will talk about these products more in later posts.

Boruch Rappaport

Social Media Marketing Automated

Social Media require a good input of time. Be it Blogs, Social Networks or any other Web 2.0 platform where personal involvement is required, the time factor plays an important role as in any human relation based context.

Marketing involving social media requires therefore a good dose of planning and a solid concept.

Targeting

Social Media allow targeting based on internal search tools. Searching means: you have to know to know your targeted keywords, login, search and then invite people to join your list. It’s an active push approach.

This approach takes too much time, namely when you are involved in multiple networks.

The second approach would be: be open to anyone who wants to join your list and make yourself available under the search terms corresponding to your goals.

This is a passive, pull approach.

Screening

When targeting actively, we do the screening when typing our keywords and phrases into the search tool; when targeting passively we are available for all those who are searching for the keywords linked to our profile. In this latter case the screening is done without our personal active  involvement and we don’t need to have a case by case approach.

Automated screening, where our profile attracts interested people via the internal search engine is my preferred method as it does not require any additional tasks to be added to my daily work load once I have set up my account on a social networks.

Pipeline

Once we are available via the search engine, we then have to offer to interested people what they are looking for. To make the pipeline efficient, we need to make sure that we offer the shortest possible link to what people are searching for, and that’s a link to our web site, blog, online publication outside of the social network.

Follow-up

Our website allows readers to comment and subsequently we can follow up on those comments as the case may be. Or we offer an opt-in to our newsletter which allows yet another way to follow up or we just offer a contact form and or a call me button and the communication hooks are thus in place.

YORGOO Press Unique Automated Social Network Marketing Engine

YORGOO Press has added and implemented this week-end its new Social Media Marketing Module. The occasion was the Ycademy Online Seminar which allowed to test the resulting automated communication streams. The results are smashing.

How it works:

You post an article to your YORGOO Press. the post triggers a Twitter entry to your wall and all the friends walls you post to. It then triggers an entry into facebook, becoming available to facebook prospects and friends as well. The concerned entry is a 140 letter Twitter format entry with a link back to your original article on your YORGOO Press.

In social networks, people can find the entry and click on the link and visit your site straight away.

Or, they can comment on facebook or Twitter, which will trigger an feed back to your YORGOO Press or any other site of yours, which created there a new blog entry you can now comment or react to…which in its turn triggers again a Twitter entry and a facebook entry … and you have just created the perpetuum mobile. In my case I use for SN returns my U Q Me Site.

New YORGOO Press Features

YORGOO Press is an attractive website with exciting features providing visitors with an interesting surfing experience. We have added a media viewer which allows to view images, videos and listen to music on a fast opening overlay based media viewer without reloading the page which allows to view images in original size without the usual limits imposed by web site layouts. Spectacular views Guaranteed. Click on the thumbnails below at the bottom of the post for a demo.

YORGOO Press links directly to Social Networks such as facebook and Twitter and generates automatically the above described streamlined Communication Flow.

YORGOO Press provides users automatically with quality content articles from authority authors which are automatically imported and can then be edited for publishing purposes to match the publishers requirements, targets and objectives. The module drags content from a large article data base 9hundreds of thousands of articles to choose from) into YORGOO Press. the selection is made via a category selector. The import is based on a timer and allows up to 10 articles to be imported per day.

Automated Google Map integration with just one mouse-click is now possible in blog posts and static pages.

YORGOO Press has advanced to the finest publishing framework online, making ultimate technology accessible to ordinary people achieving extraordinary things.

Impact on search engines

Test articles posted during the seminar had immediate impact as well as on social networks as on search engines. Interesting progress we noticed namely on the sites from Larrie Perkin, Joe Cettina,  Alejandra Neri and Zo Nicholas.

We also noticed, that our South African friends were somewhat neglected by Google and the indexing of new content took longer than for Europeans or Americans. This concerns namely Bianca Gubalke, Hanno Coetzee and Eileen Cupido. In fact connection problems in South Africa prevented Eileen for hours to log on to the seminar.

Ute Schaedler as as usual: Speedy Ute!

Boruch Rappaport from Israel had a surprisingly good line yesterday and Felisa Ryan just consolidated her Google number 1 position.

New YORGOO Press Pricing

YORGOO Press basic version remains at $ 67. The upgrade installation of the new module is charged $50. A new complete YORGOO Press install costs $127. Please contact Bianca for more details at bianca(at)ycademy.com.

Author: Yorgo Nestoridis, Media Marketing & Publishing, Founder of YORGOO Publishing, YORGOO Press and Semiomantics.

My Short Simple Sledgehammer Internet Marketing Lesson

Did you ever have a conversation with someone where they said one word, one statement or question, that turned out to be life changing for you? I have had this on several occasions. One time I went back to the person who said the overwhelming statement many years later and reminded him about the conversation, and lol, turns out he didn’t even remember what he said even when I reminded him and quoted him.

Well, even in online business and internet marketing this happens. I had a private discussion with my mentor Yorgo Nestoridis about six months ago which taught me an important lesson and changed the whole way I looked at things.

Take a look once at my doctored up Yorgoo signup page:

http://freeleads.boruchrappaport.com/

We had learned the lesson then that when you promote something as an affiliate, instead of driving traffic to their domain, to build them up, instead bring the site to your domain and build yourself. Also there you have control over what’s on the page, all the links are under your control. I used this page for about a year until Yorgoo changed their approach with the sign up page to make dynamic content on each and every person’s individual page.

Anyway, there on the left side I added “Ads by Boruch”. I have hundreds of such items sitting on my computer. I was working to get them up on to sales pages and up on the internet. Every time you refresh the page you get a different item, from a random item generator. Yorgo saw the one advertising So and So’s splash page for a free giveaway. I put it there when it was brand new because he is a well known name, and he has a very powerful OTO (one time offer). I was hoping to cash in on a few bucks. But Yorgo told me that I was nuts. Because the generated leads are ten times more valuable than the affiliate commission that I will make from whatever percentage of conversions there will be. And the way it is set up all the leads go to So and So. What I have to do is to send the people to my own autoresponder in order to capture the lead, and then to get for them the free giveaway.

A simple comment, obvious to me now, but this comment changed the whole way that I viewed my online strategy. Just that I don’t expect Yorgo to forget it, because that night at our group get-together he made a point of my mistake so that everyone could learn from it.

They say in my country, “A fool learns from his mistakes. A wise man? He learns from other people’s mistakes.”

Boruch Rappaport

I do not keep it a secret that I have a hosting business at the above link. However, I must report that I currently have a problem with my whmcs installation, so even though you can see the site, you cannot get in to the software. Therefore the Knowledgebase, Announcements, and Support that I provide are unavailable. I have someone working on it, and I hope that it will be resolved by today already.

If you are interested in any additional information, please contact me at “support at braphosting.net”

Boruch Rappaport

http://braphosting.net

3) The third advantage is that by promoting your Yorgoo, you thereby promote all of the other programs that have a link in the back office. Take Agloco for example, a number of my downline signed up for Agloco through their back office, so with no extra work I had there an automatic downline. Agloco is no longer with us, obviously. But there are others.

The plan is to add a few bulldozer programs which will make you extra money automatically, just by developing your Yorgoo.

4) Every weekday night at 9 pm London time there is a training session with Yorgo and Bianca (and Zo) at the Yorgoo chat and conference room, http://www.yorgotalk.com/ . In the English call there are about 20-30 that are there every night. There Yorgo discusses fundamentals and details about various aspects of Internet Marketing, and we develop projects together, and opportunities together. Those who stuck it out day after day, week after week, month after month, they grew in 2007 from ignoramuses to savvy marketers. I recommend highly to try it out, and see if you can find your place there. There is no cost. This is free high level education.

In summary, there is place for all different kinds of people there in Yorgoo. You can shop around, try to understand, and decide where you fit in. We work here as a team, helping one another. This point is more valuable than gold, more valuable than all of the above points put together, appreciate it!

Boruch Rappaport

http://braphosting.net

1) The first point, the first level, is as a traffic builder. Traffic is the lifeblood of all online (and offline) business. Yorgoo is set up to develop for you a viral traffic mechanism. When you set up your Yorgoo back office, and promote your Yorgoo link, you will develop a downline, and then they will sign up under you for the various traffic exchanges and safelists and other things that you have there in the back office. All of the traffic exchanges give you referral traffic, so when your downline members surf on the various te’s you get Free Traffic. If you work with your downline and keep them interested (this is really applicable for the Pros) it just builds and builds and snowballs. All of this can be done for no cost. I personally have a significant number of downline members at most of the te’s through Yorgoo, and therefore I regularly get some free traffic. I try to give back some of these “interest payments” to my stronger surfers. This all relates to generic, untargeted traffic. Targeted traffic is generated through different projects that we work with together in the nightly calls, see below.

2) Leads and Downline Builder. If you do the same as above as a Pro, which costs only $10 per month, then besides getting the viral traffic mechanism that I mentioned above, you also get the email addresses, which means that you develop a downline which stays with you, that you have exclusive control of, that you can communicate with (in an intelligent non-abusive manner), and so forth. Only you have contact with your downline, not your referrers. (Of course, the administration has the emails of everyone, but they use it only for “Admin” functions). This is extremely valuable — let’s say that you work tooth and nail to develop a downline at Agloco, you promote and promote and promote, you invest your time and your money until you have 100’s of downline members. What happens if Agloco goes bust (which it did)? Then you’re left with nothing. You never had the email addresses, so kaput. Yorgoo provides you with a downline that stays with you. True, people can drop out, there’s no coercion here, it’s a free country. But even if Yorgoo would close you still have the email addresses, just that then the rules of the game would change. I have a number of Pros doing this choice.

YORGOO Pro is a Subscription to a non-profit program, where the funds are reinvested into development and products they make available to the subscribers at no fee or for next to nothing with the ambition to equip the subscribers at no or a fraction of the cost with the same type of infrastructure online heavyweights are using to compete. YORGOO invests in technology, education and products which help to improve your performance.

Still to be continued …

Boruch Rappaport

http://braphosting.net

Since 2007 I have been active in the insider Yorgoo group, a site which from the outside focuses on Free Traffic and Free Leads, but actually is much more than that.

To get the most out of Yorgoo it is important to understand what Yorgoo is, and what it is not.

Most of us are used to seeing money-making programs advertised on the internet  — affiliate programs where you sell someone else’s product or service, or MLM, and so forth. For example, I got to Yorgoo through the recommendation of my sponsor at GDI, where you build a network by selling hosting packs. The product is good, and you bring somebody in and the company gives you a cut of the monthly payments, there at GDI it is a dollar per person per month on five levels (if I remember correctly). And so on and so forth, I am sure that you understand what I am talking about. (Since then I have opened up my own hosting company, and I can offer much better).

Yorgoo is not really that, not really a money making enterprise in and of itself. This idea does exist there in the sense that when one of your downline members upgrades to Pro you get a one time payment of $3, and when he upgrades to Ycademy Gold, you get a monthly cut. But I think that to relate to Yorgoo in that way won’t really give you the success that will justify the time spent. This is the accepted outlook amongst most of the members that I know and work with.

Rather, Yorgoo is a Tool that can benefit you in many ways. From what I see from my experience, and from my downline, Yorgoo can be a power-house tool on four different levels.

To be continued …

Boruch Rappaport

http://braphosting.net

In my previous post, my first post, I started to talk about the importance of sending traffic to your website, and about the various kinds of people in the buyers marketplace. Today I would like to broaden the discussion.

Internet marketers are all here on the internet for the main purpose of making money. We are building relationships and having fun, but in general this is secondary. Our primary goal is to make money. Now, to make money you have to sell your product, for example selling an item, or getting signups for an affiliate program, and so forth. Now, to make sales requires traffic. Just like a physical store requires people coming in to the store, so does an internet business. If nobody comes in the store you get no sales. If someone comes into the store, he might buy, and he might not. It’s a numbers game. A certain percentage of the people who come in just look around and then leave. A certain percentage of Those ask a question about an item, and then leave. A certain percentage of THOSE, actually buy the item. The more traffic the more lookers, the more lookers the more askers, the more askers the more buyers.

How many people are required to enter the store to make a sale? Well, obviously it depends on many factors, but in a general sense it splits itself into two situations:

Let’s say that you have a store in the boondocks with no other stores around. You get people to your store by word of mouth and by advertising in the local media. In this case, people coming to your store are “targeted traffic”, they are coming to your store because they are reasonably interested in your merchandise, otherwise they wouldn’t make the effort to come. There your percentage of buyers per person entering the store will be higher. Many are holding their credit card in their hand already before they walk in.

But let’s say you do it a different way – let’s say you put your store in a shopping mall, and you don’t advertise at all. Nobody knows you are there, and they only discover you when they come to the mall for other reasons – to visit a different shop, or to get out of the sun or rain, or to take the kids to play. Then you will also have people coming into your store out of side interest, but it is less “targeted”, more the “cold market”. There you will need more people coming in to produce a question which will produce a sale.

The same is true on the internet, you have targeted traffic, and untargeted traffic, the warm market and the cold market.

I am part of the insider group at Yorgoo — Free Traffic and Free Leads. This is what Yorgoo is all about, developing various traffic systems and mechanisms to use in developing your online business, whatever it is; and also to supply you with generic leads (for the Pros); and to build you up with business principles to help you succeed in whatever you are doing, or whatever you want to do online. In principle, untargeted generic traffic and leads are harvested from setting up the Yorgoo back office and surfing, and targeted traffic is harvested from various Google and other search engine optimization strategies which are covered in the nightly talks. A third way of acquiring traffic is through the social networks, but more on that a different time.

Developing a traffic mechanism, the way things are now, is closely tied up with developing a network, a list, which is also valuable for you for ten other different things. If you invest in your Yorgoo, invest your time or your money or both, you will build for yourself a tool that will serve you whatever you want to do on the internet.

It can be done for free, but it takes time (but there are short cuts). It can be done without time, but it costs money. But it doesn’t come without that four letter word W-O-R-K, at least a little bit lol. We all know that ours is the “Push Button Generation”, we want everything quick, fast foods, fast this, fast that. “Put Your Business On AutoPilot”. How many times have you heard that? There IS something to that, but it is down the road a bit, later. At the beginning you have to work, physically work, the same as if you are opening a grocery store.

Boruch Rappaport

http://braphosting.net

Clearly it is self evident that one of the fundementals that an internet marketer has to work on, is to get traffic to his site. If there are no visitors, there are no sales.

It is possible to split up the marketplace of potential customers in several different ways. In this article I will speak about two of those ways:

From one standpoint we can see two groups of potential customers in the “warm market” and the “cold market”. The warm market are those people who know you, and/or respect you, and/or with whom you have established your authority about a particular subject. The “cold market” are people who don’t know you from a hole in the head. Clearly, it is easier to sell to your “warm market” then to your “cold market”.

From another standpoint there are people who have are desperate to buy your item in order to fill an urgent need. These are the people with the proverbial “credit card between their teeth.” On the other hand, there are people who are not looking for your product, but would be willing to buy it if the price/conditions were right.

Finally, market strategies can be split up into two, “push marketing” and “pull marketing”. Push marketing is where you go the the prospective client and offer him what you have to sell. Pull marketing is where you position yourself so that the buyer who is looking for what you are selling will find you.

Boruch Rappaport

http://braphosting.net

Goals are great to reach. “If you aim the moon and you fail, you end up with the stars” …. Edison dixit. Well my two Goals to finish sites and software for Boruch Rappaport’s braphosting.net and Larrie Perkin’s new Semiomantics Site at http://larrieperkins.com for Christmas has not been reached and that’s how I ended up with the Stars, Larrie Perkins and Boruch Rappaport.

How do I end up with the stars? By having the tasks related to these two sites on my agenda for the next 24 hours to finish the year toasting for two new great sites.

And why do you think I am writing about such an insignificant event?

Just to compensate Boruch and Larrie for their patience by doing something small for the promotion of their brands by publishing an article announcing  new sites and business to be launched.

Sometimes it’s not easy to reach the goals within a given time limit. In this particular case, the reasons are of technical nature; on Braphosting we are facing an exceptional bug which has to do with Ion Cube, the page loader (supposed to enhance the loading time and performance of the site pages) and in Larrie’s case, we are to finish the new Semiomantics scripts and face some difficulties to achieve the high performance we are used to in the WordPress 2.7 environment.

36 hours to go…. so let me run, because I don’t know what comes beyond the stars :-).

Yorgo
YORGOOpublishing 

Since YORGOO was created back in 2005, our slogan has been “The Power of Team-work”. Our traffic contest illustrates this perfectly: Success is not just when each subscriber promotes YORGOO and adds to his/her team of direct referrals, but also, when these referrals start building teams and adding to the overall success.

Today’s Leaders List shows the following:

Yorgo                     13  (not competing)
Alan Johnson           6
Musbah Corum        5
Bianca                     3   (not competing)
Dane Gregg             2
Toni Leuenberger    2 
Laetitia Paris           2
Stephan Barth         2
Alejandra Neri        2

…and many popular names such as Kostas from Lithuania, Maxine Gibson, Boruch Rappaport,Richard Taylor, Besma Bashier, Jaafar Mahmuddin, Laurie who is in Toni’s Team, Vic Dobner, Larrie Perkins,….

Congratulations for all the great scores!

Free YORGOO Subscribers:

An important number of new team members has sponsored by free YORGOO subscribers and that’s fantasic. However, I would like to recommend to have a look at the benefits of the YORGOO Pro membership, and namely the resulting possibilities to network and to build a personal generic network. It makes a huge difference when it comes to conversion.

Join tonight’s call at 9 pm London Time (GMT+1) for the News about the week-end ralley!

Today’s tasks: Please consult Bianca’s post just here-below..

Make it a great Surf!

Yorgo
YORGOO

During our Seminar week-end, the traffic show just went on and I am pleased to see many new names on today’s scorer list:

Today’s Leaders:

Yorgo (does not compete)                  13
Bianca Gubalke (does not compete)     7
Musbah Corum                                    4
Stephan Barth                                      2
Tord Svensson                                     2
M and G  Legg                                      2
Steve  (ID 65474)                                 2
Alejandra Neri                                     2

Also on the list: Boruch Rappaport, Gene Brown, James McGrane, Dane Gregg, Ute Schaedler, Phil Green, Chris Slater,Crystal Colebrook, Laetitia Paris, Melvin Bradley, Zo Nicholas …….

Congratulations and I hope you will be able to build long lasting relations with your new team members.

Today’s Common Free Traffic Targets

Free Viral

Sign up from your YORGOO Back-office under Traffic 2 and create a Text Ad, for example:

“Unlimited free traffic and leads with YORGOO, the downline builder with the highest Conversion rate.”

And promote your following YORGOO link:

http://yorgoo.com/cgi-bin/p.cgi/1/     (make sure it’s this link, just change the ID number at the end)

Mythology Surf

Let’s go back to this new Traffic Program: Sign up from your YORGOO Back-office and surf 100 pages. Load at least 2 links representing your YORGOO referral link.

Savvy Clicks

Sign up from your YORGOO back-office under Traffic 2 and promote your YORGOO referral link only. Enter the link 3 to 5 times (this is done under add websites).

Make it a great surf today and join tonight’s Traffic Call at 9 pm GMT +1 (London Time) at

http://yorgotalk.com

where we will attribute the first random Prize of $20 for performance - provided the winner is present.

Don’t forget:

Together we are unbeatable!

Yorgo

In spite of some server time outs we have noticed a steep increase of activity and a larger number of Subscribers being successful.

Just keep following the daily Common tasks!

Yesterday’s Leaders of the free Traffic Contest:

Yorgo:                       6   (not competing)
Musbah Corum      3
Zo Nicholas            2
Toni Leuenberger 2

Many followers amongst others: Bianca Gubalke, Boruch Rappaport, Terry Ashley, Danny Chua, Zhi Yen Lee, Casey Porter, Jill Haefner, Greg Dane, Hector Herrera. Congratulations and let’s make it another successful day.

YORGOO Day 3:

1. Today we introduce a new Program to YORGOO: Mythology Surf!

Please sign up with Mythology under Traffic 2 from your YORGOO back-office and promote there your YORGOO referral link only. It’s a new and small program, so I guess 100 pages will do.

2. Then lets surf 100 pages on Linkcrew, promoting just YORGOO

and finally

3. Surf 200 pages on FastEasyTraffic

That’s it, however feel free to surf more and add additional YORGOO links to the "Sites" you promote in these Exchange Programs. I usually just load as many times as I am allowed my Yorgoo link an then I surf for credits to assure a 24 hour marketing cycle on each link. Don’t neglect the banners either as you may have free banner credits in store. remember the banner image link is: http://www.yorgoo.com/images/yorgoo_468×60.jpg , then just add your YORGOO referral link in the appropriate field.

New Daily Random Rewards

Between now and end of august we will distribute 10 random rewards of $20 to the leader of the day…the problem is: we don’t know on which day we distribute them. Our friend Nikos Advertizopoulos has thought of a particularly sophisticated rewards machine which knocks even the Greek Goodsout of their summer party time.

Just try to beat the competition daily and raffle as many of these rewards as possible!

Let’s look forward to a great Surf today and remember:

Together we are Unbeatable!

Yorgo
YORGOO

Wow…Google is doing fine indexing our new Semiomantics websites from Ycademy!

Tonight we have 10 more indexed sites including the following:

As you can see, Toni Leuenberger, Alan Johnson, Ninfa Carpenter, Guus Visser, Jill Haefner, Marc Sibille, Boruch Rappaport, Alejandra Neri, and Larrie Perkins made it!

There is also Joe Cettina on rank 13 and more to come.

Great Job Well Done!

Yorgo
Ycademy Network

The first bunch of Ycademy Network Sites based on Semiomantics XY have been successfully  indexed by Google. Have a look at some of them as far as we are able to track them:

Hanno Coetzee’s new site is to be found on the top 10 under his name already:

The same applies for Besma Bashier and her new site about Cancer:

Even Casey Porter’s sex oriented site shows up…interestingly with the keyword "Music"; may be Casey explains us one day the rational behind this choice….

Chuck Madere’s Gold Site ranks on Nr 7:

Gene Line associated with his main keyword Cars ranks on number 6 of 8,700,000 sites!

For Ute Schaedler, recipes.ycademy.net is on Number 1, beating all the other sites who post about Ute!

Congratulations to a great start with the Ycademy Network Sites! Now let’s publish loads of great content and storm one keyword after the other.

Yorgo
Ycademy

PS: Not to forget the performance of Alejandra Neri with Music downbloads as well as Boruch Rappaport’s successful tagging.

Congratulations!

The following Ycademy Gold Subscribers have completed successfully the first Ycademy network Training and Seminar. Over 30 brand new Semiomantics Based Websites have been built:

Ycademy Network are devoted to provide 100% customizable websites to Ycademy Pro Subscribers. These websites are built on the basic script from WordPress and tuned by Semiomantics to constitute the most powerfull semantic publishing framework online.

During the Seminar which ended yesterday, July 6, 2008, the participants were introduced to the benefits and features of the new Ycademy.net websites. The Seminar served also as a bases for future Ycademy Trainings for Online Publishers and Business Builders, namely in the domain of search engine optimization and semantic publishing and publicising.

We are proud of the achievements by all participants; mastering some of the most difficult marketing and communication tasks promotes all Ycademy Pros to a unique Elite online.

We are looking forward to the first effects of the work accomplished as soon as the sites will be indexed by Google.

Yorgo
Ycademy Admin