Raj Technologies Pvt. Ltd. - Blog

By Niharika Ravia

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How to Chose a Web Host
With thousands of website hosts out there, it can often be hard to choose the one that will work best for you. With a little bit of work, however, you can pick out the perfect host.

Focus on Your Needs

What is your website going to do? Do you need alot of storage space and bandwidth? Or can you get by with just a little? Do you need email addresses @yourdomain.com? Or are you going to use a Yahoo! Mail account (or similar)? What about databases, and spam filters, and website builders?

Develop a list of all the features your site will use - this list will be your key to finding a website host that fits you. On this list, you also might want to include those things that you think your site will need in the not-too-distant future. While it's not as hard as it used to be, switching web hosts can still be pretty complicated.

What Kind of User Are You?

Next, you'll want to determine what kind of user you are. Are you new to the Internet? If so, 24/7 phone support may be best for you. If you're a power user, however, you can probably do just fine with a host that offers only email or ticket support. The more you know, the less you'll have to be in touch with your hosting company. Just make sure that there is indeed a way to get in touch with your hosting company if you need to. If you can't find any contact information on the host's site, this is a red flag and you should probably stay away.

You'll also want to make sure that you will receive a response from your host in a timely fashion - having to wait two or three days just to get an email back is ridiculous. Make sure that your host offers a response-time guarantee somewhere on its site, before you sign up with them. If you can't find it listed on their site, contact them and see how long it takes for them to respond. The ideal response time is a few hours - the absolute maximum amount of time it should take is a day.

Your Budget

How much can you afford to spend for your hosting account? As it is with buying anything else, you get what you pay for. That $1.95-a-month host may offer a really great value, but will they be there for you when you need them? Many of the ultra-low-priced website hosts are not turning a profit, and have not been in business very long - and probably won't be for much longer. To check and see how long your host has been around, enter their domain name here: http://www.networksolutions.com/whois/index.jhtml. The Registration Date field shows when the domain name was registered, so you can tell how long they've been around.

That's not to say that every low-priced host lacks. HostGator and Site5 both have many happy clients and offer prices around the $6.95-a-month pricepoint. And you can find good website hosts that offer service for $3.95-a-month or $4.95-a-month. But I don't recommend going any lower than that. Judging by posts on online communities such as WebHostingTalk, going with a cheap host just does not pay.

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Reliability

Another important thing to find out is the uptime of any of the hosts you're looking at. Many hosts have an uptime guarantee that is usually around 99.9%. One thing you need to be aware of, however, is that this uptime guarantee does not apply to attacks such as Distributed Denial-of-Service attacks, or to acts of God. What these uptime guarantees do cover are things like hardware failure and server operating system crashes. If you can't find specific uptime information on a host's website, call them or email them and see if they'll share this information with you - if they do not, move on to someone else.

Where to Look for a Host

Now that we've covered the basic points of what to look for in a web host, it's time to talk about where you go to find the perfect host for you. There are many sites available for this, such as Cheap Web Hosting Directory, Web Hosting Directory, and Compare Web Hosts. You can also conduct a Google search for 'website host' or 'website host directory'. In addition, visit a forum such as Webmaster Sales to see what other folks are saying about different website hosts.

Conclusion

The main thing is to pick a web host that you are comfortable with and that works well for you. You'll know when you've found the one that's right for you - it will meet your website requirements, you'll feel comfortable with its support, you'll know you can afford it, you will have confirmed its reliability, and you'll know that its other clients are satisfied as well.


Warm regards,
Niharika Ravia
http://www.rajtechnologies.com/

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By Matt Haughey


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I'm frequently asked how Raj Technologies came to be, what the secret is, and what I've learned in the process of building it. I didn't have a tidy plan or set path when I started, I watched several big communities grow from nothing and prosper and I took my lead from them, but a good lot of what I know now was gained from trial and error. During those first few months, I picked up a lot of experience in dealing with new members, and got a chance to try out several different techniques to help growth and deal with problems. I noticed a lot of trends, I made a few mistakes, but above all I learned a lot in the process.

I'm here today to tell you the dos-and-don'ts of building a website community, but I can only give general guidelines. Every community is different, and every administrator of a community is different, so an aspiring community leader needs to adjust adjust accordingly.

...In case you were wondering, the title is a bit of a joke, building a website into a vibrant community filled with many contributors is very difficult and is impossible to break down the exact steps, but I'll do my best.

1. Make sure you really want to do this
You know how interviewers ask someone who has lived a full life and they're near death, if they could re-live their life again, what they would do different? You have to ask yourself that before you lift a finger building a community. Are you ready to be a leader? Are you ready to do all the work necessary to create not just a normal, engaging website, but one that many others can use? Are you ready to spend every waking moment watching it? Are you ready to stay up all night re-coding main areas of the site after someone hacks the files? Are you ready to keep it up, day in and day out for as long as you can stand it?

I can't underestimate how much time you will spend on a community website. It will take longer to create, often months to get rolling, with constant tweaking and twiddling of the code to keep everything running smoothly. I was lucky when I started MetaFilter because at that point in my life, I had plenty of free time, I was itching to learn a new programming language, and I had a laid-back job where I could take lots of little breaks to check in on the site. If someone asked me if I'd do it all over again starting today with my current life, I probably wouldn't, because I don't really have the time and energy to start a new multi-user community site from scratch.

This is the most challenging point in the list, but it's good to get this one figured out before you plunge full speed into new development.

2. Have both a compelling idea and compelling content
There are lots of possible reasons to start a community, but generally it's good to focus on a specific topic. Having a specific topic means you'll have an easier time explaining your site's purpose, and quickly find like-minded people to contribute their thoughts and content to your community. MetaFilter was created with the loosest of intentions, to simply have a weblog that covered anything on the web, and it took about nine months of daily posting before anyone noticed it existed. I guess having comments and allowing others to post was a compelling enough idea that lead to a busy site, but a frequent question from first time visitors was (and still is) "what's this site all about?" If my site was a model airplane owner's group site, with a well-defined mission and idea for its purpose, I'm sure I could have found other members a lot sooner.

Compelling content is more important than you probably think. The most well-defined group purpose, with lots of motivated members, will go nowhere unless there is something to draw everyone together and get people contributing. This rule could go for any site really, but it's important to have the best possible writing, design, photography, etc. that you can, and update as often as possible. This is where community sites can excel over single person operations. With a diverse enough membership, you can have an expert artist, fantastic writers, great photographers, and senior programmers to build the best community site imaginable, and everyone pitching in can update the content on a frequent basis. It's not exactly easy to get big membership numbers on which to draw for ongoing content, first you have to convince people to join your site, and contribute or comment on other work, and for that you need to start with good content. It's sort of a Catch-22, but once you get a group of members creating good content, it creates a strong positive feedback loop that leads to growth, popularity and quality.

3. Seed content sets the stage
In the early months of a community site, it's important that there is good content there, and that the comments or audience interaction are as close to optimal as possible, so that others reading the site can get a feel for how they are expected to act. If you're building a site that covers politics and you're dreaming of lively debate with a specific slant, make sure your first few articles, essays, or threads cover a good topic, and that some discussion follows where users (more than one) are debating things in an intelligent way. New members will see what is currently on the site, and react accordingly. If there is considerate and helpful criticism, others will usually follow. If there are "first posts!" and posts making threats on other members, other such garbage will follow that as well.

If it's a company discussion forum, set up some threads and have some friends start discussions. If it's a community of airplane enthusiasts, try and find 2 or 3 people to help start the site off the same way, by finding content and discussing it in a proper manner. You're not shooting for having hundreds of fake discussion posts with no one, you're just trying to convey a code of conduct by starting with things you can use as examples, and new members can follow.

4. Create some basic guidelines and be as fair as possible
When you're the administrator on a community site, it's important that you set the examples to follow. Post regularly and intelligently, and keep a high profile on the site so others know of your presence (this keeps some troublemakers away, since they know that the site owner will quickly catch wind of their mischief). Follow the Golden Rule, treat others as you would like to be treated, and watch for unsavory patterns that form. If you catch something that's happening with some regularity, and you'd like to see it stop, make it part of the rules of the site, and explain somewhere why people shouldn't do it (start by putting a pointer somewhere near the posting forms, so curious contributors can read them if they like). Keep track of these rules, and put them somewhere people can easily find them on the site. When you have to enforce them, be nice about it, and show people the rules and how they broke them. The world isn't a black-and-white place, so a lot of things will be up to your judgement, but explain as fully as you can why you chose to enforce a certain thing, and point out what the person can do to prevent it from happening again.

What users of a community don't want to see is a headstrong leader who rules with an iron fist, and seems to take pleasure in enforcement. Users also don't want to see a leader that changes his or her mind from day to day, enforcing rules with some users, while letting friends or long time members get away with murder. Users don't want to be yelled at publicly when they make their first mistake, and they want to be given second chances. Fairness and consistency are key practices when you're running an online community.

5. Have a place to talk about the site, somewhere on the site
I've had a lot of success with a special section of MetaFilter designed to talk about issues around the site, bugs and features users wish for, or any etiquette that may have been breached, and I created it because I noticed people were talking about the site on the site itself fairly regularly. Gone unchecked, I noticed it created circular discussions where people talked about other parts of the site on the site itself and it appeared to be senseless navelgazing. Having a separate section conveniently allows that to run in an organized fashion, while at the same time keeping the main site free of looking like one big game of Duck-Duck-Goose. It doesn't necessarily have to be on the site itself, or even on the web. It could be a many-to-many email list for interested parties to participate in, if that will easier for you to implement.

6. Spread the work out as much as possible
If it's possible, have a few trusted friends act as moderators and administrators and allow people to contribute and streamline the code that runs the site. When the day-to-day maintenance can be spread out among several people, it's okay if someone goes on vacation, gets busy with work or gets ill, or takes some time off from the site. If lots of new features are being requested, several people can work on them, and debug them faster. This situation isn't always possible, and there are only a few projects that come to mind, such as evolt.org where a sizeable, diverse group keeps a site running.

7. Deal with troublemakers as quickly and nicely as possible
If you're running a community site of some sort, there's a good chance that people are going to try and mess with it, push the envelope, and hack at it for no good reason. The important thing for you to do as the administrator is deal with problem members as soon as possible and as carefully as possible. If you act rashly, or too strongly, you may incite a casual hacker into a full-blown making-your-life-a-living-hell type of hacker. You want to defuse any situation before it gets out of hand.

Start by emailing the person as soon as you can (but give yourself a little time to think, don't send anything too rashly or in the heat of the moment), and asking them gently if perhaps they didn't catch the guidelines pages, or that you'd prefer if they did their thing in a different way. Be careful of your wording in these emails - you don't want to sound threatening or patronizing in any way. You might want to have a friend review the message before sending it to make sure it's neither of those things. A short email reminding a trouble-making member of the error of their ways can usually take care of 90% of problems. Even if a member is doing something obviously malicious, they'll usually stop when called on it.

If that doesn't stop the problem member, the next thing to do is enforce some sort of penalty. This would usually be something like taking away posting rights or moderation rights, posing some new limit on their participation in the site. You will probably want to email them, letting them know what you've done, why you've done it, and most importantly what they can do to get the ban lifted. Hopefully, you'll never need to proceed after these first two measures, because a situation can quickly escalate into a war of willpower. If you have to start banning members, doing so will prove quite difficult. You may take all rights away from their account, block their IP address or range of IP addresses, and/or remove their contributions from the site. There are trickier means of hiding a problem user's activity from the rest, but I won't go into that here. It's not a path you'll ever want to take, and no one "wins" in the end; it's just a big waste of energy for all involved.

The bottom line is to stop unsavory behavior by defusing nasty situations as early as possible, in as nice of a way as possible.

8. Highlight the good, recognize the work of others
I'm still searching for the perfect way to do this, but you'll encourage good contributions by recognizing and highlighting the best your community has to offer. This is especially true when your community is larger, and you need something to point to as a casual "Hall of Fame" that new users can take their cue from. This can take many forms, you can use voting/moderation to let the community pick its favorites, you can utilize some sort of Brownie Point system where members earn credits for good contributions which are displayed somewhere (an ego stroking stop, basically), or if you're lacking the extra technology just keep track of them by hand in a "Best of" setting.

Building an inviting place that attracts users and maintaining high quality content on a bustling community site is far from easy, but these key points should help get you going in the right direction.


Warm regards,
Matt Haughey
http://www.rajtechnologies.com/

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By Jennifer Irving

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Have you ever met someone who hears you have your own business, and immediately they launch into what they dream being a business owner is? Sleeping in, watching Springer, getting a tan, Shopping….. If only! Starting your own business Requires:

1. Guts. Everyone thinks of starting his or her own business one day. It takes guts to walk away from your “day job” into the uncertain waters ahead.
2. Being open to learning. Since I have started my business, I’ve learned more about marketing than I ever thought I’d need to know. Marketing is so much more than printing up brochures or placing an ad in the newspaper.
3. Dedication. Yes, it’s so much easier to wake up and decide you don’t feel like working today, stay in your jammies and watch TV. But in order to succeed in business, you need to be dedicated to your business. You have to work at it every day. Most of the time longer hours than you ever worked at your “day job.”
4. Passion. When you talk to truly successful people about what keeps them going, what encourages them, why they do what they do, it all boils down to passion. Running a business will take alot out of you. In order to keep going and not give up, you must have passion for what you do. If you’re doing something because someone else wants you to do it or for the money, it will get old real quick. If you don’t truly enjoy what you’re doing, you will never achieve the level of success that is attainable.
5. Desire to help people. Yes, everyone wants to make money. But in order to make your business a success, you must feel a need to help people. When you’re doing something because you want others to succeed, it makes you work that much harder, gives you that extra push, and makes you connect more to your customers. Customers are savvy. They can smell a line of bull a mile away. But if you honestly want to help people, it will show through and that is what draws people to you and your business.
6. Confidence. When you’re a business owner, you’re the face of your company. You need to have the self confidence and ability to talk to people about who you are and what you do. Most businesses rely, to some degree, on networking. If you lack confidence, it’s agonizingly hard to thrust yourself out there and make yourself be seen. Especially if you really don’t want to be seen.
7. The Ability to delegate. When you own a business, you are responsible for everything. Not only sales, but also marketing, accounting, customer service, shipping, administrative, PR, and IT. It’s way too easy to get buried underneath all the responsibilities and feel that because it’s your business, you must do it all. You don’t have to! Delegate! Work with a Virtual Assistant. A virtual assistant can take over the administrative and bookkeeping duties, can help you with marketing campaigns, and even help you bounce around ideas on where you should go or what you should do. Unlike an employee who is only there for the paycheck, a VA wants to see you succeed. Being a business owner is one of the best opportunities you'll ever get. When you're ready to take advantage of it, know what you're getting yourself into and it will go so much smoother.

Warm regards,
Jennifer Irving

http://www.rajtechnologies.com/

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By Jan Marie Dore

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I'm a big believer in mastermind programs and success teams. A business mastermind team is a group of entrepreneurs who get together to support each other in growing their business, in moving through stuck places, and in brainstorming ideas for new opportunities.

If you’re a business owner you may notice how easy it is to get stuck in the details of running your business and how hard it is to stay focused on the big picture of where you want your business to go. If we don’t get support and feedback from other people who know us and our business well, it's almost impossible for us to see how and where we’re getting stuck. We don't often take the opportunity to step outside our business, take an objective viewpoint, and reconnect with our vision.

The benefits of participating in a mastermind team are many. You benefit from the creative ideas of many people instead of just your own limited thoughts. The group will help you problem solve your biggest challenges. The synergy of the group helps you to step out of your comfort zone into the place of new possibilities. The group will also hold you accountable so that you're more likely to take action to reach your goals.

If you want to pull together you're own success team, here are some tips to get you started:

Create a vision of the outcome you want

The first step is to get clear on what you want to create. What do you want your business and life to look like 5 years from now? How do you define success? The clearer you are on your vision and the outcomes you want, the more likely you are to achieve them.


Write out your goals and objectives

Less than 5% of people write out their goals, but those who do are much more likely to achieve them than those who don't. Writing out your goals and objectives to achieve your vision will give you and your group a clear roadmap to your success.


Decide who you want on your success team

Think about who you’d like to invite. Who would be the right partners for you? It's been said that our business will be as successful as the five business people we spend the most time with. Our income and success tends to stay in the same range as the group we’re connected to.


Take responsibility for your experience

Decide what you’d want to get out of being a part of a mastermind team. What would be the best outcome you could achieve? If these people were your ‘virtual board of directors’, how would you want to interact with them? Establish guidelines for trust, honesty, confidentiality, commitment, timeliness, and accountability.


Rotate leadership

The group doesn't need one leader, but it's good for each member to rotate through the leadership role. This may mean the person who hosts the meeting reminds people of the day and time, sets the tone, facilitates the discussion, and keeps time so that everyone gets air time. Or, you may set roles for each member, such as meeting scheduler, host, note taker, and time keeper.


A mastermind team can be a powerful support for your business success. Commit to taking action to create your own personal success team, and watch your results multiply.


Warm regards,
Copyright 2006 by Jan Marie Dore

http://www.rajtechnologies.com/

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By Niharika Ravia

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Personal Branding can be a powerful tool for success. If you are marketing yourself or your professional services, a strong personal brand will draw people and opportunities to you like a magnet.


Personal Branding is about honing your skills, narrowing your focus, and getting clear on what you’re passionate about.


Branding is not just about you being better than your competition. It’s about getting your prospects to choose you as the ONLY solution to their problem.


Here are seven powerful benefits of creating a strong personal brand:


1. Increase your competitive edge

One of the greatest benefits to you of having a strong brand is that it creates a sense of individuality and "separateness" in the marketplace so that your clients are able to easily differentiate your company from your competitors.


2. Catapult your authentic self into the marketplace

Your brand is deeply rooted in your authentic personal identity. The goal of personal branding is to be known for who you are as a person and what you stand for. Your brand is a reflection of who you are, your opinions, values, and beliefs that are visibly expressed by what you say and do, and how you do it.


In effect, it evolves from the search for identity and meaning. For many, it’s about using your best talents and gifts in the service of others. With a clearly defined personal brand strategy, you will create your life from a level of personal authenticity that reflects your deepest priorities.


3. Focus your time and talents to achieve maximum leverage

Your personal brand plan can become your own compass or personal North Star. It can guide all your actions and communications so that you demonstrate authenticity and consistency in all your interactions.


4. Create top of mind awareness for your business or professional services

Product and service differentiation has now shifted to brand differentiation. It means consumers do not distinguish products and services, but brands. The branding process allows you to take control of your identity and influence the perception others will have about you and the services you offer.


5. Create the buzz to increase demand for your products, services and expertise

You can achieve effortless business growth using simple branding solutions to generate word-of-mouth marketing through the invisible networks that the buzz spreads through.

Your brand will connect you with the movers and shakers who will send you referrals and give you testimonials. It will get people talking about you to stimulate customer-to-customer selling. Persistent action to communicate your brand consistently through many channels will start to generate the buzz and create excitement for your products and services.


6. Generate more sales and higher income in less time

Most professionals don’t reach their full income potential. A strong personal brand will enable you to effortlessly attract clients and opportunities. You will position yourself in the mind of your marketplace as THE service provider of choice to dominate your market and command higher fees – work less and make more!


7. Establish yourself as an expert and become a celebrity in your area of specialty

Gain name recognition in your area of expertise where it counts the most – in your customer’s mind. Make a lasting impression and be super-rewarded for your individuality.


Trust, respect, and admiration will follow when your name and message are embedded repeatedly into the consciousness of your target market. You will be perceived as an expert the more you are visible to your target audience. Your brand will propel you to the top in your marketplace.

It’s your time to SHINE!



Warm regards,
Niharika Ravia
http://www.rajtechnologies.com/

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