Building an Emergency Response Plan for Your Business
by Kath Blackwell
Anyone who lives near any kind of a disaster-prone area knows
the importance of preparing for the inevitable. Folks in the south-east
know the importance of hurricane awareness; people in the mid-west
know exactly where every basement and cellar in town are located;
and California residents are only too well aware of earthquake safety
preparedness. Most disaster-related preparedness techniques are about
common sense and planning.
Have an escape route. Bolt things down that could come crashing down
on you, board up the windows, have emergency supplies available in
a safe place - these are all things that make sense in relation to
the problem at hand. The same holds true when you're considering how
to build an emergency response team or plan for your business. You
need to think about what could happen, what you would need to do to
respond to the crisis, and how you would possibly recover once it's
all over.
We all work in various areas within the adult industry, but we do
share many things in common. This article hopes to address those things
that are most common between the different categories and niches within
the community in order to help webmasters and business owners prepare
for and recover from changes or other issues that affect our industry
down the road.
Affiliate Programs
Working with affiliate programs is an essential part of most webmasters'
lives. The webmaster sends traffic to the affiliate program, the affiliate
program sells memberships to the traffic the webmaster sends, and
ultimately, both make a profit from the traffic sent. The webmaster
makes either a per-sale fee or a percentage commission of the transaction,
and the affiliate program keeps the balance or makes money from recurring
or up-sell sales.
Finding ways to keep your affiliate program's banners fresh - and
give you control over what banners are shown on content-specific pages
can be essential to the success of today's webmaster. Gone are the
days of simple basic niches and a mere handful of sponsors to choose
from - today's webmaster has hundreds of niches and hundreds of sponsors
offering multiple niches, webmaster tools and site/season-specific
banners and link codes.
Scripting resources and advertisement management software, are just
a couple of ways that today's webmaster helps to streamline his affiliate
program banners and link codes. Scripts that allow webmasters total
control over what banners are showing on what pages, ability to change
and/or update linking codes, add fresh banners, remove "dead beat"
sponsors from the banner rotation - even add in seasonal niche-specific
banners for the holidays or special promotions are very helpful time
savers. Most ad software packages - purchased either from a scripting
resource, program download site (i.e. www.download.com, etc.) or custom
created by a programmer specifically for your site's unique needs
- also have administrative areas that allow you to track banner traffic
by click-thru, impression and other valuable statistics.
So not only will these scripts help save you time, but they will also
give you additional valuable information that can assist you in tracking,
filtering and increasing conversions from your existing traffic. Your
best bet for finding a quality "out of the box" type program or script
is to ask around - find out what other webmasters who work with site
types similar to the program you are running. They can refer you to
programs they are currently using - and warn you off ones that were
a waste of money. Other webmasters might also be able to help you
get in touch with a quality programmer who could install the program
for you and get you set up and ready to roll in no time.
Having the ability to change banners, link codes, use specific banners
on specific content-driven pages or sites and be able to track those
banners in an easy-to-use administration area will do much to improve
the quality of your business. It is generally very affordable to purchase
and install; and most ad management administration areas are very
simple to learn and understand.
Hosting Services
Ah hosting - you can't live with it, and you can't live without it.
Some webmasters are lucky and find the perfect Web host on their very
first shot, but other webmasters are not so lucky and often have to
change several times before they find the match of their dreams. Because
changing hosts can be a life-altering experience, it's a good idea
to prepare ahead of time for the change - and in fact, prepare whether
you know you're going to move or not.
What? Yes - prepare anyway, even if you're 100% happy with your host.
One of the number one rules in life is that change is inevitable.
Another - less used yet widely accepted fact is that "shit happens."
It truly does - and always at the worst time. Let's take a moment
to explore a couple of common scenarios that have happened with Web
hosts in the past and you will see how being prepared ahead of time
could save you lots of time - and lots of money as well.
Let's say your hosting company goes out of business. It doesn't matter
what the reason - their fault or not - you are in deep trouble. The
first thing you have to do is hope you can transfer your sites to
another host quickly and without incident. You can do this if your
registration documentation is in order and up to date, and are able
to contact your registrar quickly to make the transfer happen. Your
potential new host must be made aware of the situation and be able
to make the transfer quickly - so make sure you ask lots of questions,
have all of your information handy, and understand that there will
probably be a few bumps in the road. Another fact of life - things
aren't always easy.
PART TWO: Another
Scenario...
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