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Step-By-Step Guide for Website Building with NING #sponsored

ARTICLE – Gone are the days when creating a website was something only professional programmers could do. Thanks to modern website building solutions, a good-looking site can be crafted by anyone having a clear purpose and desire to get visible online.

One of these solutions is NING. It is a platform allowing you to make your own website from scratch and build up your online presence. What sets NING apart from the competition is its focus on social networking and content monetization. While other website builders provide tools for making regular, static sites, NING offers an opportunity to create an interactive online community where every member can contribute to the topic and share content on equal terms.

As for monetization, the platform enables users to make money from their websites through selling content, charging a membership fee or accepting donations. Thus, NING is an excellent solution for both internet enthusiasts who want to bring people together around a specific idea and content creators striving to promote their stuff and get paid.

In this brief guide, we will lead you through the basic steps for creating a social website on NING.

Step 1. Create a NING account

Before you can dive headlong into the creative process, you will need to sign up on Ning.com. Just go to their website and click “Get started” (the green button in the top right corner of the page). You will have to provide your full name and email, as well as specify the topic of your future website. This will determine the default design template which will be applied to your site. It can be changed later anytime.

Also, NING gives you a custom domain name, so you will have to specify the desired URL during the registration. Mind that all native domain names provided by NING end with .ning.com. However, if you want to change it, you can do it later by purchasing a new domain name elsewhere and mapping it to your NING website.

NING offers a free 14-day trial which should be enough for you to figure out whether the platform meets your expectations. Beyond that, there are three subscription plans ranging from $25 to $99 depending on the amount of storage, member capacity, and support privileges you want to get.

Step 2. Customize your website design

No doubt, you want your website to look unique and convey the idea behind it through dazzling visuals. Your website design can help you get recognized and stand out from the rest. This is why NING offers a broad array of customization tools to let you configure every aspect of your website:

● Design theme: select one of the available visual templates that determine the overall appearance of your website.
● Background: choose or upload an image that would appear at the backdrop of each website page.

● Header: configure a website header by changing its layout and size, adding your website name and logo, customizing a navigation menu, picking a custom background image, and modifying an account bar.
● Page: personalize the overall look of pages by customizing fonts, content blocks, and buttons.
● Custom CSS: insert custom CSS code to achieve advanced customization effects.

Start with selecting a design theme that serves your purpose and matches your industry. NING offers templates for various niches including blogging, business, education, sports, politics, gaming, charity, religion, etc. Then customize the template using the tools mentioned above. All of them can be accessed by clicking a Design Studio tab in the admin panel.

Step 3. Create the pages you need

When you’re through with designing your website, it’s time to think what kind of content you are going to fill it with. Everybody knows that websites consist of individual pages. Therefore, your next task is to create as many web pages as you need to achieve your goals.

By default, your newly created NING website will have several basic pages for different types of content, e.g., Home, Blog, Photos, Videos, etc. However, you can add the new ones or delete pages you don’t need anytime. To create a new page, follow these simple steps:

1. Go to Social Site Manager in the admin panel;
2. Select Site & Pages in the sidebar;
3. Click Add a Page;
4. Select a page type (e.g., Blog, Photos, Event, Forum, etc.);
5. Select a page status (published or draft);
6. Enter the page title and tab title;
7. Specify who can add content to the page (administrators, featured members,
all members) and who can view it;
8. Configure comments;
9. Choose the page layout.

Depending on your niche, you can add pages of different types. If your goal is to create a blogging website, focus on text-oriented page types like Blog and Articles.

Making a craft website? Add Photos and Videos pages which are tailored specifically for visual content. To generate more engagement and encourage communication on the network, create a Forum, Poll or Chat page. There are options for any topic or industry. And of course, you are free to add new pages whenever you want.

Step 4. Add content

Now, when you have all the pages you need, you can start imbuing them with your unique content. To do it, simply go to the corresponding website page (while logged in as an administrator) and click +Add. Depending on the page type and content added, you will be offered different editing options. Below is an example of a Blog editing page.

If you allow your network members to contribute their own content, you can easily moderate (approve or disapprove) their publications by going to the Content Management tab in the admin panel.

Step 5. Create a landing page

Now your website is almost ready. But you still have to promote it and make it attractive to visitors. Start with creating a professional landing page aimed at converting visitors into your network members. NING has a dedicated design tool for that too:

1. Create a landing page by going to Social Site Manager > Site & Pages and click Add a landing page.
2. Give your landing page a title and configure the basic privacy settings.
3. Click Save.
4. Click Edit layout and content.

Wait for the editing tool to load and start designing the landing page using the available Drag-&-Drop instruments.

Step 6. Grow your community

To grow your audience and stimulate the development of the community, use the extensive social networking features offered by NING, including personal and group messaging, live chat, comments, forums, polls, events, social sharing, and liking, etc.

Step 7. Monetize your website

When your community expands and your audience becomes loyal enough, nothing will prevent you from monetizing your website. Select the E-commerce tab in the NING admin panel and explore three different monetization options. Paid Access is perfect for content creators, Paid Membership is an optimal choice for closed communities, influencers, and celebrities, while Donations will help charities and start-ups to raise funds more effectively.

These were just basic steps for creating a website on NING. Explore more features of the platform by taking a free trial!

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Step-By-Step Guide for Website Building with NING #sponsored originally appeared on The Gadgeteer on November 6, 2018 at 10:00 am.

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#ad Xeric’s Fifth Kickstarter Proves Crowdfunded Watches Are Here to Stay


This post is sponsored by Watches.com

As retailers and marketers have gained expansive access to new markets through the internet in the past couple of decades; there has been growing distance between big brands and consumers that can result in “lost markets.”

The rise and rise social media, mobile and the struggling challenges of reaching millennials has lead to massive changes in the way consumers make purchases and interact with brands. 

To stay competitive and thrive in this new landscape, companies need to evolve the way they do business. Now more than ever, customers are longer passive observers but have become active participants, educating themselves about products and services before ever engaging with a brand. A traditional business that does not adapt will simply get left behind.

Kickstarter and social media allow businesses a return to the consumer by establishing a template for a direct relationship during every part of the process. And it does this not only by assisting businesses in jumpstarting their projects, but also in keeping an active and open line of communication through which ideas, feedback, and even criticism can be leveraged and brought back to a market where consumers could are able to vote with their money on the products that they truly want to be a part of.

A Tradition Built On Success

Xeric sees themselves as a design centric, Kickstarter first, brand. Unlike traditional swiss watch brands which design watches in silos and then market them using standard channels, Xeric turns to crowdfunding and social media to find out what their audience likes. They’ve resolved to talk directly to these consumers, find out what satisfies them (and what doesn’t).

Xeric is founded behind the team responsible for Watches.com. The family run team has seen considerable success from their followers for the crowdfunding campaigns.

The response to the Xeriscope, Xerics initial Kickstarter campaign, was positively humbling. The campaign quickly overtook its modest $40,000 goal and went on to raise $444,370 in pledges from 1,148 backers. Encouraged by their success, they began work on designing the Halograph and Soloscope. With expanded variation in limited-run designs, they once again saw that their idea of a unique, modern-but-timeless mechanical watch brought something to market that had, up until then, been hard to find in a wristwatch. 2015 and 2016 would see the Soloscope Kickstarter receive $679,310 in support from 1,623 backers, and the Halograph an incredible $885,593 in pledges from 2,409 backers.

In the course of their Kickstarter campaigns, they’ve received over $2M in backing for their designs. Clearly, what they were doing had struck a chord.

Xeric attributes a measure of this success to a three key factors:

• People just want to stand out – Xeric’s distinctive design flair and limited-edition mechanical watches were sure to be peerless in nearly any room full of people.

• Price and value are a factor for the buyers – customers want both superior artistry and high quality from their timepieces, and Xeric’s lower-than-luxury price-point was an ideal fit for this market. This notion of affordable luxury has been a driving factor for them in all of their subsequent watch designs.

• Design and aesthetic must not be lost in the presentation – Such a large part of the appeal of their watches, Xeric’s in-house photographers and videographers stopped at nothing when it came to bringing their designs to life in every intricate detail. Not only are the watches themselves beautiful; but the presentation of their watches online is near perfection.

The team also learned more about the audience they’d resonated with:

• Approximately 60% of their backers were from outside the US, indicating a wide international audience.

• The cities of Singapore, Tokyo, London, Melbourne, Sydney, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Brisbane, and Toronto were their top markets.

• Roughly two-thirds of their backers had already backed another Kickstarter campaign before backing Xeric’s.

Continued Success Through Kickstarter

Having already traveled the world to collect unique watches for their retail collection, the international nature of their consumer base was no great surprise. But that two-thirds of their support was from returning Kickstarter backers seemed to lend credence to what they had suspected all along — that Kickstarter represents entire groups of consumers who want something they simply cannot find anywhere else.

It’s something they feel so strongly about that the team is already looking forward to continuing this relationship with the Kickstarter audience through establishing a regular release of new designs – as two campaigns are being launched in 2017. Q1 saw the launch of the Evergraph Automatic Watch — A unique mechanical automatic timepiece with a design blending classic and modern. Inspired by the past, designed for the future. For Q2, Xeric launched it’s fifth and most current Kickstarted campaign, One-Handed RQ & SQ Watch Collections. Complete with two different case shapes (round or square) and multiple strap options, there are over 30 different options to choose from giving the customers the one thing they care about the most – personalization.

Xeric have become the authority in using the response from crowdfunding to drive the products that they create and introduce to the market, and their continued success coupled with innovative new designs (and campaigns) prove that crowdfunded watches are here to stay.

This post is sponsored by Watches.com

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#ad Xeric’s Fifth Kickstarter Proves Crowdfunded Watches Are Here to Stay originally appeared on on June 22, 2017 at 9:42 am.

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