Insurance Domain Names

[jeremyeast]

I am pretty new to these boards, but as I have been website obssesed as of late, I must ask Alston if he codes these websites by hand? W3 compliant is quite rare and as most use blogs nowaday for their sites there is very few people that hand code html. In any event my question is the egg and chicken variety. Did you learn insurance because you knew web programming, or did you learn web programming to to aid in your insurance sales?



Florida health insurance
Avmed Health Insurance Quotes

 

[Alston]

I use Dreamweaver to FTP my site. Sometimes I use it to generate HTML. It generates code that is compliant for the most part, but I hand code most of the time.

Hand coding isn't as hard as it sounds. After you've done it a while, you'll start typing the basic tags like <p> as automatically as you type punctuation. For the more complex stuff, you might use WYSIWYG software like Dreamweaver or just copy and paste from another page.

I failed as an insurance agent and spent a few years as a word processor in Manhattan. It sucked a lot, but bills needed to be paid.

When I came back in the business, I used some of what I learned as a word processor and a lot that I've learned since to develop my sites and generate leads for my agency and my business as a lead gen affiliate.

 

[jeremyeast]

If you like dreamweaver then you will love the new Microsoft Expression Web 3, (part 2 was kind of ehh, and I used dreamweaver until I got my grubby hands on expression 3). I read a couple of html books but css sheets can get exasperating and then coupled with div tags and I ended up mutilating a puppy litter rather than use another one of my handcoded jobs. DWT's are amazing as well but at the end of the day wordpress is the way to go, as all of these young hippy kids are doing it and anyone like you (Alston) I would advise to try with your next site. I only wish I had used wordpress from the beginning as they are so much cleaner and lighter coded. Anyways, your site is amazing and has a couple of great eye catching elements and obviously you have spent a few hours building your backlinks.



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[Alston]

I'm comfortable with Dreamweaver and since I hand code 90% of the time I mainly use Dreamweaver to FTP my site. Since I use a lot of PHP, I can't view a lot of my work until I put in on the web.

There is no incentive for me to change to Microsoft Expression Web 3 since 90% of what I do could be done with notepad and a free FTP program.

I can definitely see the benefit of using WP as the Content Management System (CMS) for one's entire site for most members of the forum.

My situation is a little different. I make a lot more money (at least on an hourly basis) doing SEO and SEM, than I do as an agent since I have the lead gen (affiliate) business. It's worth it to go the extra mile.

For me the way to go is with my sites is to modify a WP template for the blog and create a separate template (essentially a CMS) from scratch for the rest of the site.

 

[Aaron_4SIGHT]

Alston,

How much did you have to pay Bill Clinton to have him do the voiceover for that animated talking guy on LoveTheRates.com?



Aaron

 

[Alston]

Alston,

How much did you have to pay Bill Clinton to have him do the voiceover for that animated talking guy on LoveTheRates.com?



Aaron

I never thought that I sounded like Bill Clinton. The male voice is mine.

 

[jeremyeast]

So Alston you were doing the health insurance thing and then decided to concentrate on seo etc. and kind of market your leads to other agents (which is a great idea and helpful as that way health markets guys etc. don't get ahold of them) I am pretty impressed that you also code php as it is certainly a very complicated area of expertise. I would love to modify my site into a wordpress blog and in fact use the subdomains to throw up wp sites, but as you said it is a Heruclean task to make the switch. I joined your affiliate group actually and as we start expanding out of the Florida health insurance market into a national setting I will certainly use your service if we are not up and running in a particular state, or just to buy leads here and there if the situation comes up it seems safer than a led company.
I had Dave Miller do my seo and he actually did a great job in educating me in the finer points of it as I just started, but I do so much admire your coding ability and hope to catch up on mine.

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[Alston]

Apparently Dave is a monster when it comes to SEO.

He has a ton of satisfied customers on the board.