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false-advertising, or junk science. Our contact info is at
inspect-ny.com/appointment.htm.
American micro Publish
Internet Page & Web-Site Design/Development
for ASHI Home Inspectors & Construction
Professionals
In case you're looking for one of the following just use the links shown:
This site contains online publishing advice for home inspectors, toxic mold
and other sick house investigators, and other construction forensic
researchers.
This is "A Not-Cute" website - Building your professional
practice is serious business.
Internet home page/website design and content development advice, specializing
in the construction professions and industry. Here is information & advice
about using a professional service provider to set up an Internet Home Page and
Website.
Due to our current workload and our commitment to our present clients, we
are unable to accept additional website clients at present. I've left this page
in place to offer some general advice and opinion in hope that you'll find it
helpful.
This website is a mini tutorial about choosing a web designer, web
promotion, getting results, and typical costs. It also offers our own
website design and support service. We focus on results: increased
customer response, reduced office, higher business income. Content, not
"cute" produces high site activity and increased consulting
business for our area of expertise. Look for that at our
demonstration and client websites and you'll be looking at results.
We also study methods to make your business highly visible, such
as search engine design, while remaining well within bounds of ethics, good
taste, and internet responsibility.
We provide our clients with complete writing, editing, typeset,
illustration, promotion services, specializing in construction-related
businesses. We can design your internet business site, design website
pages, develop actual content, and promote your services. Using various
computer services, we can provide actual internet email, SLIP/PPP, or other
services to serve as the internet home for your business. Send us Email:
amermicr@inspect-ny.com or contact us at the addresses
below.
Show Full Table of Contents
Website Kudos --  10/97 Site Design approved Search
Engines --  9/97 Website Promotion --  2/97
Luckman 4-Star winner out of 150,000 sites --  4/96
Leading Edge Kudos -- Aluminum
Wiring Website in PC Comp Mag's best 1001 Internet
Website Design & Content Development Services
· Choosing a Website
Designer/Provider
· Website Content
Development
· Some of Our Recent
Clients & Projects
· Fee Schedule &
Service Packages
· Contacting Us
· Who's Dan Friedman
· Who's Paul
Galow
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Choosing a Website Designer/Provider
What's the smartest buy for your business? Is it the lowest price? A
"free" site that is poorly designed, amateur, and ineffective might
hurt you. On the other handd, some very expensive services offer less good
design and personal attention than more moderately priced providers.
Here are some questions to ask:
- Site Success: How many
hits will your page get? One measure of a successful site is that it is
visited frequently by both new and previous readers.
- Website Designer
Qualifications: Be careful! There are thousands of would-be website
and page "designers." Some are excellent. Many computer
"enthusiasts" who offer web pages have no knowledge of good
design and no familiarity with your business nor with your customers.
- Good Design: Pages
must be interesting, or better, unique. Also, fast to load, and easy to navigate.
Too many cute but pointless graphics, poor text layout, and other factors
make your page so slow that no one reads it. Pages should be written so
that they can be read by all kinds of browsers.
- Good Maintenance:
Regular site maintenance is essential for a "live" successful
website. This means adding new material, fixing errors or expired links,
and checking to see that your site is known to major search tools on
internet. Will your site be upgraded as new internet enhancements are made
available? How much will you be charged for edits and maintenance?
- Website Promotion:
While some web search engines may find your site, others, particularly
those used by your potential clients may not. How much promotion will be
done in behalf of your site? Are there extra charges for listing the site
on search engines?
- Website features:
Tests of the effectiveness of your site's publicity include email received
and creation of links by others to your page. Will your page include
simple email procedures to send you messages? Are links to your pages
checked frequently? Can your site include other features like FTP (File
Transfer Protocol) to let your clients download information or products?
What about live "chat" groups or newsgroups?
- Website options: There
are various options at varying costs, for creating a website, ranging from
your own SLIP/PPP account and user-ID to a simple subdirectory on your
provider's system. What's right for you depends on your own business plans
and concerns. Where will your pages be placed?
- Cyberspace is a BIG place!
Without proper website design, promotion, and maintenance, your
efforts may amount to no more than placing a tiny sign amidst a cluster of
millions of signs, all jammed together along a busy highway. Few will see
it, fewer still will read it, fewer still will contact you.
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Using Your Website to Improve Service, Cut Costs, Obtain
Business
Your internet website is a place where you do more than just post an
advertisement. You can provide information and services online, available
24-hours a day, at virtually no cost to your clients other than an internet
account subscription.
If your clients need information quickly at any time, or if you find your
technical staff answering the same question repeatedly, your website can both
cut your costs and greatly improve the level of your service.
- Technical-Support Web
Sites can cut the workload for your technical support staff. Your
clients simply access your internet tech-support website where they can
leave email for your staff. Or they can download descriptions of your
products or services, or other information that you provide as a service
to your clients.
- Interactive Brochures and
Catalogs permit your clients to order your products 24-Hours a day.
- Chat Groups and Newsgroups
can permit your clients to contact one another for mutual support, often
enhancing your business while reducing the workload of your technical staff.
- FTP libraries let your
clients view and download files containing text, software, images, or data
that you provide for their use.
Content Development
For a successful internet site, content is king. Pages need be fast,
consistent, clear, inviting. But we've seen some very active,
"successful" sites that were really complex and ugly. Why? The
content draws users. Real content. So you'd expect to see some content at this
page. A simple example on this page is at Choosing a
Website Designer/Provider. For examples of real content, take a look at the
deep and wide unique content we've developed for some of our clients, for ASHI,
or look at The Home Inspection, Enviro-Hazards, &
Home Construction Information Website. Try out the aluminum
wiring hazards or the The Septic Information Website
and follow those links.
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Full Website Typical Fees & Costs
Costs vary depending on exactly what you need. We can explain the various
options and we will recommend what fits your company best. Of course you can
also change your choices later.
Some companies are spending literally tens of millions of dollars on website
development. Those are gargantuan projects involving commercial data bases and
very large storefronts. Other firms are spending literally tens of thousands of
dollars on smaller websites.
Some of these very costly websites may have no better function and less
visibility than a modest construction consultant's website which has been well
designed, with good content, and proper promotion.
You can also find "free" websites and offers of "free"
promotion. These are fine as a "business-card" type presence on
internet. But such promotional websites cannot possibly offer deign support,
content development, internet prospecting, custom linkage setups with search
engines. That level of support is best done by someone who knows your business.
But knowing your business is not enough. Your website developer also needs to
know good publishing, editing, the internet, public relations, and sometimes
very subtle search engine technical details. That's what makes a successful site.
We can provide a professional, well-designed Website, unique home
address, home page and links to additional pages, registration with the leading
internet search engines, consulting on design, layout, and steps to assure a
successful site, for a cost ranging from $750. to $995. for the first year.
We can provide a simple one-page Home Page linked to appropriate
pages in our Construction Information Website or American Society of Home
Inspectors Website for as little as $50. Image/artwork creation/scanning, copy
editing, design are additional.
If you prefer to take full responsibility for the design and content of your
home page or website pages, we can publish your documents on a top performing
Web Server.
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Here are some typical web site costs:
Home Page - Price $495.
Our Basic Home Page is suited for a personal or small company internet site.
We design and create your home page and publish it for a year for one low rate.
We include a page counter permitting you to track activity at your site. The
counter can be visible or hidden from the public. The fee quoted is an annual
rate. Depending on other features you require, additional internic or host charges
may be incurred and will be passed on to you without markup. Volume of
additional image scanning or text files is negotiable.
The typical services required for a basic home page include:
- Telephone and Email
Consultation
- Scan Your Graphic for Page Masthead
- Additional Images Scanned and
Placed on Your Page
- Email Link to your Email
Address
- Links to other Web Sites
- 1 to 5 typical pages of text
(about 1500 words)
- Site activity counter tracks
your visitor level
- HTML Text Error Checking
- Site Publication of Your Page
- make known to search engines, custom-tailored to your specific business
or industry
- 12 Months Home Page Site
Hosting
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Basic Website - Price $795
Similar to our Home Page Package, but larger in size and physical layout. A
website contains multiple documents, linked together through a master document.
The Basic Website permits additional documents, custom bullets, buttons, and
section dividers when appropriate. The fee quoted is an annual rate. Depending
on other features you require, additional internic or host charges may be
incurred and will be passed on to you without markup. For examples see Shelter Systems Home Inspection Website
and Property Consultants, Inc.
A basic website includes the services listed above for a basic home page,
plus additional consulting and content development to generate considerably
more business activity. Extra attention is paid to search engine indexing,
active searching for other websites which should be cross-linked to (and
generate activity at) yours.
Extended Websites
The Extended Website is similar to the Basic Website, only larger. It can
include unlimited additional documents, linked together through one or several
master pages. For an example, see our Aluminum Wiring Information
Website and The Arson and Fire
Investigation Website.
Extended website development includes content development service - we
assist in or completely conduct the development of in-depth content for your
website. We monitor site activity, monitor its placement in the "hit
list" on major search engines, monitor your competition, and make sure
that you're not lost in the crowd on Internet.
Extended and other Custom site development is billed at $50 per hour for
in-office work and $80 per hour for consulting out of our office.
For costs ranging from about $450. to $1000. a small company can have a very
functional, highly visible website which offers content, services, products to
its clients, and which significantly increases its business revenue.
You'll see some typical costs and site descriptions as well as links to some
examples below. Further in this page we also list some of the typical hard
costs behind even the smallest website.
Minimum Website "hard" costs
The typical details of "hard" internet website
costs (excluding content development and page editing) are made up of the
following:
$75. Initial fee - (optional*) register domain name with Internic (Assure
it's unique, reserve it.)
$75. Initial fee - set up static IP address with internet service provider.
$150 Initial fee - set up offline account and initial page consultation with
the page designer/provider
$15. Monthly fee - per xMB disk space for certain (not all) SLIP/PPP business
accounts
$50-75. Annual fee - (optional*) Internic domain name maintenance (two years'
payment when register)
$325. Annual fee - (optional**) online
$25.-$35. Monthly fee - host and maintain your web page site (often billed
semi-annually or annually)
$50.-$80. Hourly fee - Additional design, page maintenance, image scanning and
editing, illustration, research and OCR`work for content development are billed
hourly rates.
* This lets you have a short internet address like
"www.consult.com/concom/" instead of a long address like
"www.mhv.net/~provider/consult/concom/"
** Full SLIP/PPP account is not required unless you intend to do your own
website online management
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A Few Recent Clients & Websites
- The Home Inspection, Enviro-Hazards,
& Construction Information Web SUPERSITE samples our content
development services.
- The Sick House
Investigation Web
- Taconic Counseling Group a
psychotherapy group practice in New
York
- New York State Association of Home Inspectors
- American Home Service Co.
leading New York
home inspection firm. Dan J. Friedman.
- Shelter Systems Home Inspection Corp.
a leading New York
home inspection company. Stephen Vermilye.
- Corporate Investigative Services (CIS)
leading arson, fire, explosion investigation firm. Mike Lane.
- Property Consultants, Inc. a leading
New Jersey
home inspection company. Vincent Rasa.
- Protune.com Timpani Tuners, innovative
tuning equipment for this instrument for school bands, orchestras, church
music, etc.
- Total Building
Analysis, Matthew Hummell, Puget Sound Area home inspector. Matthew
Hummell.
- American Society of Home
Inspectors Hudson Valley Chapter Website-original implementation
- American Society of Home
Inspectors (ASHI) national professional association, certification,
standards, and training for Home Inspectors
We produced the original,official ASHI Website now under further
development at www.ashi.com
- Innovation Technologies, Inc.
- original website development for it, Inc a leading
state-of-the-art designer and provider of software products for home
inspection professionals, including report writing, client management, and
technical information and report text.
- J.
Aronstein, Consulting Engineer, Mechanical & Materials Engineering
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Contacting Us
contact
Daniel Friedman here or by Telephone: 845-463-0092
or by US Post: 3 Willowbrook Heights, Poughkeepsie
NY 12603-5707
 Contact Paul Galow by
Email: Paul.Galow@worldnet.att.net or Telephone: 845-462-7654
Website Kudos
Our websites receive frequent awards for content and ethics
such as following guidelines for good internet practice, no spamming, and
designing pages that meet search engine standards of honest practice in design
and indexing.
 10/2/97 Recognition
for Site Design approved by the Major Search Engines 9/25/97
Promote Your Website - try this free service 2/11/97 Website Receives Kudos:
"Of the more than 150,000 Web sites that we've checked out, our
editors believe that your site* should be publicly recognized as a Luckman
Four-Star winner." 4/10/96 Website Receives Kudos:
from Leading Edge. We like this Leading Edge Page.- 12/01/95 - PC Computing
Magazine: Names our Aluminum
Wiring Website among the "Best 1001 Internet Sites." See the
Engineering category, p. 146.
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