I built my business on providing a great solution to questions like the above, so I decided to put together a quick offer for everyone in the forum. Remember "The Fundamentals of Web Publishing", and "Sticking to the Fundamentals"? I didn't spend a lot of time on this offer, a lot of time that has a cost, a cost that I'd have to pass along to anyone who bought the offer. Instead I focused on creating a plan that I believe is better for a small beginner than every other plan that was mentioned on the thread, and my offer included comparison charts to prove it. I focused on making the explanation of the plan simple and to the point.

From: webmill_com I host websites for several dozen Amazon Associates who are all very happy with the support I offer for their websites. Here's the very best deal for beginning Amazon associates, you'll never outgrow this account! $1.50 per gigabyte of traffic (bandwidth)..... (Need more than 10 gigs a month? Then it's just $1 per gig. for each gig. over 10gigs.) $1 per month per each 100 megabytes of disk space.... Want to host more than one domain name? No problem, just $2/mo. for each extra domain name (each includes a free gigabyte of traffic...) Bonus: $10 a month in free pay per click advertising credits! You could have a great new website for just $2.50 a month! Get started for just $25 deposit... We'll send a monthly statement of how much is remaining in your account... This is a full service hosting account with .PHP, CGI, SSI, Perl, SSH, FTP, email (POP and webbased BUT NO SPAM!), aliases, auto-responders, web based easy control panel, subdomains, experienced technical support and web design help, etc. Other customers are paying as much as $40 a month for this. And we'll give you free advice and help with your website and it's promotion! http://click11.com/amazon/ P.S. Don't miss the nations birthday special: Free setup until July 10th! After the 10th, setup is just $15...... P.S. Re: Comments of others about low cost hosting.... Visit the link above and learn a little about my company's history and why it will continue to outlast many other internet companies, and why my offer is the best deal for your new website.... - Garnet http://www.mysleepcenter.com - Get a better night's sleep tonight.... http://www.spidermakers.com - Automate your digital life

Click on Click11.com/amazon link, and you'll see a very simple two page site that is uncluttered, and clearly explains the simple terms of the offer. Remember the fundamentals, the target audience for this site doesn't care about paying extra to support fancy graphic design.

Some of the users on the thread responded that the offer was "for small users not bad." Others wondered why I was willing to make such a good deal for Amazon associates. (Quick answer: I have tools that have helped several dozen Amazon associates build substantial websites quickly and easily. Some of these beginners might be interested in the tools. You can see the complete answer here.)

Unfortunately, one of the less helpful members of the thread pounced on the message, and chose to denigrate the offer. (Some of her other even less helpful comments are discussed in this article: "Is This Diversity?")

While she had some interesting points as she debated the wisdom of a quick offer to promote a very low cost service, she did a good job of proving she doesn't understand the funamentals of web publishing.

She wrote me to say that my websites are the most unprofessional business sites that she had ever seen. She said my site lacked the professionalism of even the cheapest free webhosting. She recommended I put a lot of work into the offer website before advertising web design services.

From: webmill_com Jul-5 5:31 am Thanks ..... I'm not really sure what your exact criticism is, but it's interesting, I don't remember you mentioning this before, perhaps you're refering to a different thread.... With this thread and web link, I wasn't really advertising web design services, just responding to someone's quest for decent, low-cost, hosting. If you're refering to the http://click11.com/amazon/ pages that I wrote in a few minutes: Rather than have one of my graphics designers add a bunch of bandwidth hogging eye-candy, and design a giant site, and pass those design charges onto those buying the service, I felt a direct and to the point couple of pages describing a rock bottom sustainable hosting service for beginners on a quality network would be helpful to some people. Surely you would agree that how good my graphics designers are (www.giger.com for an example) shouldn't be that important to someone who just wants a budget hosting account on a good system with a company who has been around since the beginning of the web... I've read your comments in other threads for a long time, and many others make references to you, but I don't remember the URL of your site. Perhaps you wouldn't mind posting the URL in your sig of a site you've designed? Maybe one of my QA people could take a look at your site and send you a few private comments. - Garnet P.S. I've spent a lot of time surveying web hosting offers, and I could send you a list of places that have cool home pages, but with all kinds of internal inconsistency and missing info, etc. Just browse through the links on one of the hosting search engines and you'll see what I mean. Even some of the other companies mentioned in this thread have rather strange problems on their sites if you look past the nice homepage and really think about their offers.... I think those companies would have been better off writing one or two pages sites that simply explained their service, rather than having a site with all kinds of links to obvious "this page under construction" type stuff.

Of course she never answered the question about her URL. This is probably typical of critical people who avoid the chance to have their own sites critiqued by the same standards that they apply to others. I did find her website address, and surprisingly it is a site with a reasonable design. I prepared a site ranking and analysis report on her website from my SeoMetrics site. She has complained to many associates who have offered services to other Amazon associates, but hopefully these reports will help her improve her site.

She did respond to the above message, and showed that she does have some awareness of the fundamentals, but she proves her lack of experience also..

On to Part IV - Case Study: A Typical Webmaster Who Doesn't Understand The Fundamentals

Some have even complained about us posting links to their sites. In an article on Search Engine Watch entitled Deep Linking Lunacy, Chris Sherman says

Although we most like to write parodies, (some of which are also attacked by clueless people), it's no laughing matter when you are mislead by your webmaster into wasting money. We hope that these case studies will help you avoid have your resources wasted by a webmaster that doesn't understand the fundamentals of web publishing.

If you are not sure about what your webmaster is recommending, maybe you need a second opinion. Some webmasters recommend unsavory things like using lists of millions of "opt-in subscribers" to send spam. In a case like that, we hope you'll get a second opinion before you jump into such an unproductive activity and suffer permanent harm from being associated with spam.

If you need help with the direction of your website marketing efforts, please consider our free website promotion tips, and also a personal consultation based on that list. We can work with your webmaster, to help you get a better return on your website investment.

Books for Angry People
Overcoming Anger and Irritability by William Davies
The Anger Habit by Carl Semmelroth

No federal monies or equipment were used in the production of this parody, no protected health information from a designated record set has been disclosed, and this site does not constitute a Data Aggregation service to any covered entity as defined in 42 CFR 164.504(e)(2)(i)(B).

Have you, or your website, been featured in a parody? We encourage you to request a reciprocal link to your site. You may also mail your comments for inclusion in our letters from readers section. Our policies regarding submitted content are disclosed here.