I have been looking into ways to increase the number of my visitors without having to pay any money. Yes that's right! I have spent no money and still increased the number of my visitors and my earnings.

Google Sitemaps

One simple way to gain more visitors from Google is to provide Google with a sitemap of your website. This will help Google to know what pages you have and how often they update. Go here and register for a free account. Once you log on you will be able to see alot of information about your website (this might take some time). You can also submit sitemaps to Google.

To create one simply go here and enter your domain name and change the other settings as required and off you go. Upload the file and your are done. Google will know find your pages easier when indexing.

Free Advertisement

There are some free advertising sites on the internet. Those will help you to get traffic to your site. There are two sites which I like especially. These are:

Adgridwork.com

Impressionz.com

Both sites require you to display advertisements on your site in return.

Social Bookmarking

Social Bookmarking is probably one of the best ways to get more traffic. The most important Social Bookmarking sites are

StumbleUpon

Delicious

Digg

Furl

LinkArena

Reddit 

Spurl

Blinklist

Technorati 

Newsvine

Magnolia

Go to all those websites and register for free and bookmark all your pages of your websites. Write good descriptions about your pages. Also provide methods for visitors to bookmark your pages. If you go to http://www.addthis.com you can add a little bit of code to your website which will make this very easy.

Forums

If you use forums on the internet then add your website addresses to your signiture. This will mean with every post you do you will get another link to your websites.

There are probably other ways to advertise your website for free on the interent. If you know of some please share them with us in the Comment Section below

There are many phrases and words that not everyone understands. Here is a list of some of the things you will see on websites of web hosting companies.

Types of Server

• Shared Server

  It means really what it says. You share the server with other users. The problem with this is that web hosts sometimes put more than 100 user accounts on the same server. Often they even oversell their servers.
  
  This is similar to overselling seats in an airplane. They sell tickets and hope that some people wont make it or cancel again. So overselling servers means that the hosting companies hope that the users never will use all their space. The Shared Servers are usually cheap but can be slow. Also you are limited to what server settings you can change. Usually private people and small businesses host their websites on these type of servers.

• Dedicated Server

  This is a server that only you use. You can write websites that use all the power that the server can produce. But this comes for a price.
  
  Dedicated Servers are much more expensive but you usually have the freedom that you can do with it what you want. Websites hosted on Dedicated Servers are usually much faster than on Shared Server. Busy websites are usually run on Dedicated Server.

• Co-location

  Hosting Companies have huge data centers with many ranks (shelves for computer equipment). Not all are full. they rent you the space but you need to provide the server. This has a great advantage.
  
  You can build the server to what you need. You can upgrade and downgrade as you wish. The downside is that you require access to the server which can be tricky. Often you have to book an appointment and even pay for it.

• Virtual Private Server

  VPS are cheaper than Dedicated Servers but still more expensive than Shared Server. Actually it is a mixture of both. You share a server with a small number of users but you work independent from each other.
  
  To you it seems as if you have your own server. This means that you can make changes to the settings that you couldn't do on the Shared ones but it is still cheap. When websites get too popular for a Shared Server webmasters usually move them first to a VPS before going to a Dedicated Server.

Features

• Uptime

  Many web hosts give you a Uptime guarantee. This means that the guarantee you that your website will be available for an x% amount of time. Sometimes it is 99% sometimes it is 99.9%.

• PHP

  This stands for Hypertext Preprocessor. It is a programming language which enables you to program complex websites with databases and much more. There are many websites that help you to learn programming PHP.

• Perl

  Perl is another programming language like PHP.

• MySQL

  MySQL is a Database. If you want to offer user registration, searches or other things, there is a good chance that you need a database.

• IMAP / POP3

  These are important if you wish to use your email account from Outlook, Thunderbird or similar. You have to provide the programs IMAP or POP3 details in order for it to connect to your email account. If you use web based email software from your hosting company then you do not necessarily need them.

• FTP

  FTP is a way to connect to the web space and upload or download multiple files easily. This requires usually some FTP software to be installed on your computer.

1. Do some research

   When looking for a web host, do some research. Look what companies are around. You can find loads using search engines like Google or Yahoo. You can also often find advertisements in Computer magazines. There are also Online Directories where Hosting Companies advertise. Sometimes they have reviews and ratings attached to them. You can also ask friends and colleagues that have websites about their hosting company and how happy they are with them.

2. What do you need

   One important tip is to sit down and figure out what you actually need. Websites can be so different and have different server requirements. One site might need more Data storage another site might need more Data transfer. Keep in mind that things you want might not be things you need.

3. Shortlist companies

   From your research of hosting companies and your determination of what you need make a shortlist of companies which meet your requirements. This list can be as long or as short as you want. Then when you continue with the hunt for the right hosting companies you can cross those off that do not meet your requirements.

4. Analyze hosting companies

   By now you should have a list with possible web hosting companies. Go down the list one by one and analyze them. Things you might what to have a look at are. How do their interface look like? Is it easy to find your way around? What does the fine print say? What is their uptime guarantee? Are you able to get a refund for down-time? Do they have a trial period? How long is it? If you are not satisfied how much money will you get back?

5. The Specs

   Now the list should have shrunk a bit. Lets have a look at the packages they offer. Most websites will not need more than 100MB data storage. So choosing a package with 500MB or even unlimited (which is a joke since there is no such thing as unlimited) is pointless. What functionality do they give you? Do they give you email addresses? If so how many? Can you access them via POP3 (Outlook etc). Do you have FTP access? Do you get some form of database (only if you need one ) like MySQL or Access? Do you have server side scripting like PHP, ASP, ColdFusion ect? Check out if it is possible to upgrade to a higher package later if needed.

6. Check them out

   Now it is time to check them out. Try to contact them via an online chat on their website and see how long they need to answer it. Also ask them question and see how good hey answer them. Find out if any large company is using them. They probably have a list with reputable companies that host their website with them. Contact this company via email of phone and ask them how happy they are with the hosting company and whether they would recommend them to you. You also will have to look at the unhappy clients. Search in forums and try to find out what these unhappy clients complain about. Sometimes its nothing big but at times you will find out that something is just wrong with them.

7. Choose

   After getting rid of all the unsuitable, unreliable and useless hosting companies you have to make a decision. This decision can nobody make for you. You need to think about what you have read about the hosting companies and what they offer.

Look at their prices. Sometimes it is better to pay a little bit more and get better service.

ProgrammableWeb

If you are developing a website and you want to reuse existing resources you can use so called API's. Websites like YouTube, Flickr and Google make it possible to easily integrate their content into your website. At Programmable Web you can find Websites that offer API's and example in different languages on how you can use them.

OpenDesigns

If you want to set up a website quickly or want to make a sample for your client you can reuse Designs. You can browse and download loads of templates which you can use for free.

Other Similar Websites: OpenWebDesign, OSWD

FamFamFam

Do you want to make your websites more attractive? Add some icons too it. People like icons. At FamFamFam you can find a selection of free icon. Brilliant.

TypeTester

You have a design but you are struggling to find the right font? Go to Type Tester who will help you making the right choice. You can compare loads of different fonts at the same time. Defiantly a time saver.

ColorSchemer

Are you struggling to get your colors right? ColorSchemer will help you to select your colors so that they match and make your website look good.

Other Similar Websites: ColorMixers, WellStyled

SXC

Sometimes it is difficult to find the right pictures for the right price. Try SXC and there is a good chance that you will find the right picture for the right price (free).

Other Similar Website: PublicDomainPictures

WebDeveloper

Stuck with a programming problem? Go to WebDeveloper and meet a comunity that is happy to help. Pretty much all programming languages are represented by developers that are ready to get you going again.

The network administrator has to enter all website addresses which he/she wishes to block by hand into the firewall. If you go to computersniffer.com you can see a list of so called proxy websites. These are websites which will enable you to still access any blocked website.

However, there is also a potential danger when using proxy websites. You can read about it here.