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<h3> 5 CGI Scripts You Must Use to Turn Your Site Into a Powerhouse</h3>
 
HTML is great. But what really makes your site super powerful? 
The Backend or the processes running in the background that 
make everything on your website really click. And what powers 
the backend? CGI Scripts. 
 
Some of you may know what CGI scripts are and others may not. 
CGI scripts are the key to creating interactive websites that 
automate your online business. Instead of getting too technical 
about scripts, lets talk about 5 powerful CGI scripts that every 
website should have if they have any desire to conduct 
E-commerce. 
 
Number 1: First off, you must have forms on your website. You 
should be utilizing forms for everything including retrieving 
demographic information from your visitors to processing credit 
card orders. You can also use forms to send contact information 
so that your visitors do not have to use email to contact you. 
The beauty of forms is that not only can you retrieve the 
information you request, you can also include hidden fields to 
be submitted with each form so that you know certain information 
like what website the visitor came from, their IP address 
(useful for fraud protection) and much more. Some form scripts 
even let you send autoresponses to the submitter. So, for 
example if someone fills in a form to sign up for a newsletter, 
you can send them an automated reply thanking them for their 
submission and including basically anything you want without 
having to lift a finger. 
 
Number 2: The next script every site should be using is a 
"recommend it" script. This is a script that allows your site 
visitors to recommend your site to their friends and contacts. 
Do not underestimate the power of this little tool. The 
recommend it script on our site at 
http://www.goldbar.net/recomm.html brings in tons of traffic 
and prospects that we may never have gotten on our own. The 
power of referrals should never, ever be underestimated. It is 
far more effective to have someone recommend your site to their 
contacts then it is to advertise. I use the Master Recommend 
script from William Bontrager, available for free at: 
http://www.willmaster.com 
 
Number 3: Affiliate Software. Without a doubt, one of the best 
investments you can ever make if you have your own product or 
service is in affiliate software. While usually not cheap it is 
by far one of the best methods of growing traffic to your site 
and exploding your sales. Many people advocate using a 3rd party 
affiliate company such as Commission Junction to manage their 
affilate programs. This is fine if you are a big company with a 
huge budget to WASTE on administrative fees and obscure 
technical charges. But, if you are a small to midsized company 
and you want to utilize the awesome power of a strictly 
commissioned salesforce sending you traffic and sales, you 
would be crazy to not consider purchasing affiliate software 
and installing it on your own site (or having it installed for 
you). Some affiliate scripts are so advanced that you can click 
one button on the administrative interface and send all the 
months commissions to a check writing program and have the 
checks printed out and all you will have to do is sign them. 
 
Number 4: Follow Up Autoresponders: Without a doubt, everyone 
should be using automated follow up mechanisms to: 
 
A. Capture the email addresses of targeted prospects interested 
in your products/services. 
 
B. Send a series of sequential, timed messages that trigger 
return visits to your website and turn potential onetime website 
visitors into return prospects. 
 
c. Remind customers about additional products and services that 
they may wish to order in the future or add to their current 
order. 
 
These are easy to maintain once they are installed on your site. 
All you have to do is write the email responses you want your 
prospects to receive and then upload them to your server. Then 
tell the script how long a time interval to wait before sending 
the next message in the sequence. 
 
An important point when using follow up autoresponders: make 
sure they offer an unsubscribe feature so that the recipients 
can opt out if they choose to. 
 
There are many great scripts out there that you can install on 
your own site. This will save you the monthly fees of using a 
hosted service but if you choose to use a third party tool, 
probably the best one is available from getresponse: 
http://www.getresponse.com/?13323 
 
Number 5: An error catcher. This may sound like a crazy tool to 
include in this list but bear with me. How many of you have 
tried to click on a link and found yourself on a 404 error page. 
Most web surfers who encounter this error immediately leave your 
site never to return again.This is probably the worst thing that 
could happen to an internet business. What if you could create 
a page that said, OOPS you reached this page in error but why 
not visit the rest of the site? This is certainly more enticing 
and if created properly can help keep a surfer on your site as 
opposed to off it. On our site, we use a script that catches 
errors and delivers a webpage apologizing for the mistake and 
offering other links to pages on our site. We have saved many 
visitors this way and we have also created many subscribers 
and customers through this method. If you want to see how it 
works, try this link http://www.goldbar.net/mistake.html 
 
The script we used to create these pages is freely available and 
can be set to email you when someone reaches a 404 page and also 
help you determine if anyone is trying to hack into your site or 
if a CGI script is not working. It is called errorbot.cgi and 
can be found at http://www.perlarchive.com 
 
These 5 scripts can make or break an internet business so why 
dont more people use them? I believe they don't have a clue how 
to install them. If anyone wishes to have CGI scripts on their 
site but needs help installing them, you can usually get help 
from the programmer or visit a site like http://www.cgiguru.com 
who will usually install scripts for a nominal fee. 
 
CGI scripts have been around since the advent of commerce on the 
internet and continue to power the best sites. Even with new 
technologies such as ASP, Cold Fusion and PHP on the rise, CGI 
is the oldest and still the best. Why not get these 5 scripts 
running on your website and start powering your way to new 
profits. 
 
Author Info
 
Marc Goldman, Goldbar Enterprises
Discover the exclusive members only website that
will easily explode your traffic and increase your sales
by thousands of dollars!!
http://www.goldbar.net/yoap/d.cgi?index-27
 
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