Written By Loren Woirhaye, August 11th, 2010
Reading time: 8 – 12 minutes
If you’re new to online marketing and you are getting ready to launch your first real website, you need to know the following, very timely information about “web hosting”
In the next few minutes you’ll learn :
how to choose a sensible web-hosting plan and what to avoid
how to host multiple sites on one account
how to know the right time to upgrade to so-called reseller hosting
the best hosting control panel for internet marketers (in my opinion)
why a blogging platform may be your best way to get started and which platform to use
My first website was really lame and I had no clue what I was doing. I blundered through the process, wasting a lot of time but learning a bit in the process. Over the last few years I’ve learned a lot about webmastering. For me, web hosting and webmastering is a means to an end, not a career. Knowing how to manage my own web-hosting empowers me to try new things as a marketer and adapt rapidly to changes in the marketplace. I also save lots of money because I don’t have to pay someone to work on any of my sites. I am 
Written By Loren Woirhaye, August 2nd, 2010
Reading time: 1 – 2 minutes
It’s hard to believe everybody doesn’t have a PayPal account, but some people don’t, and many with good reasons. Many people starting online businesses may have been buying stuff for years online without having a PayPal account. Since PayPal allows purchasing through it with a credit card but without an account login, many people will just do that when presented with PayPal as the only payment option.
I can relate, because I am account-creation averse myself and for a time had a running dispute with PayPal that prevented me from using my account but did not prevent me from buying stuff with PayPal by paying without an account login.
You can earn commissions when people sign-up for merchant accounts through your referral link. The commission has limits, but it’s probably worth setting it up if you market, as I do, to people who want to start or grow online businesses.
PayPal has a referral program that pays commissions but they make it really hard to find your link.
I had a PayPal account with a referral link a while back, but I closed it and stopped using it and opened another…
The post
Written By Loren Woirhaye, March 4th, 2010
Reading time: 1 – 2 minutes
Here’s something interesting… and sad for the people affected by it.
When you choose to build a “business” around somebody else’s rules you put yourself in a vulnerable position.
If the company which controls the infrastructure you depend on to make your money changes the rules (usually to favor itself, not you) you could see your income drop by 50% or more.
This is apparently what has happened to “shopkeepers” at CafePress.com.
I’ve never paid much attention to Cafepress – so I had to go look at the website to jog my memory it’s about to have some context.
Cafepress has established a middleman-business, similar in some ways to what eBay does. It’s not an auction site though. What CafePress does is make prints, coffee mugs and T-shirts. Artists design these things according to their talents, set the designs up in CafePress, and split the proceeds with CafePress.
CafePress Helps Artists. Or Does It?
The post author, Loren Woirhaye writes sales copy and creates marketing systems for business clients who want to slash customer acquisition costs and position their businesses For 20%-30% sales growth in the next 12-18 months. He writes regularly about marketing and
Written By Loren Woirhaye, June 2nd, 2009
Reading time: 3 – 4 minutes
I don’t know about you, but in school I got by pretty well churning out reports and written tests using big words and self-important academic grammar.
For writing about ideas those stuff can be appropriate – and in the University environment readers are accustomed to such puffery. Ideas are abstract, which is why when we write about ideas in school papers the language gets complicated.
For advertising copy, chuck the write-to-impress model and get down with the common words we all use every day. If people don’t understand the word you use, you will lose them.
Write short sentences. Break up long sentences into shorter ones. Sometime this is easy. Sometimes it is not, but simplicity in communication is worth reaching for.
Try to write in concrete terms. Not abstract terms. Objects and people are concrete. Rudolph Flesch discovered that comprehension of written text increased when people were the subject matter and when their names were used.
For example: “John drove to Mary’s house and met Mary’s parents.”
The John and Mary story is boring but you know instantly what it means. Comprehension is easy because the words are common and short.
Written By Loren Woirhaye, May 31st, 2009
Reading time: 5 – 8 minutes
Despite having only recently hung-out my own shingle as a writer-for-hire, I’ve been writing copy for my own business ventures, and learning a thing or two, since at least 1999. Even though my businesses until 2005 or were mostly local concerns (aside from selling old tools on Ebay), I still used copy in ads and promotional materials.
I also learned some hard lessons about how many balls you need to juggle to make it in the hard goods business. Finally I threw in the towel and went into marketing and selling stuff only instead of what I had done before, which was design, customize, manufacture, maintain machinery, pick-up all manner of heavy and awkward materials, advertise, kiss clients’ butts, install stuff, work long hours for low pay, market, write copy, try to sell, network, and generally run myself ragged trying to do it all by myself.
Did someone call me a fool?
Actually I learned a lot. I learned that owning a small business is a lot more complicated than doing the same thing just for pleasure, especially if your business involves working with clients AND physical labor.
Call me stupid. Somehow I thought
