Part 2. Questions 66 – 75 (2.0 points - 0.2/ each)

Read the passage below and choose the best answer to each question

What I love about my job is the variety. I get enquiries from people all over the world asking me how they should go about setting up their own website. I’ve been asked about so many subjects - anything from someone wanting to teach people how to throw boomerangs to another people selling paper flowers which they make at home in their spare time.

Obviously with all the thousands of websites available at the click of a button, you want to create an impression with your website so that it becomes a must-see destination. Not everyone is prepared, however, for the way in which a website can become so popular that it actually has to be closed down.

When people first set up their websites they probably pay their web advertiser a monthly fee based on the number of hits or page impressions their site receives. If they can pay their monthly fee without it costing them too much, that is the best that most people hope for. One guy, Pete Bennett, whom I helped, wanted to set up a one-stop shop to provide decent images of the world’s flags. He’d been fascinated by flags since his boyhood and had no idea that thousands of other people share his passion. Anyway, in one month his web page had over 1.5 million hits. As a result his internet provider trebled the fee that he was being charged. He wasn’t a rich person and he couldn’t afford to spend that amount of money on a hobby without any benefit to him, so he decided to carry advertising on his site. He found a company which specializes in smaller sites and adverts were added to the pages on his website. So, although he doesn’t make a huge profit, at least his hobby provides him with a small income.

If you have specialist skills or expertise, it can pay you to sell the products that people want. I helped one woman design a page to advertise the fact that she tells fortunes, based on the information that her clients supply her with. If you want her to tell your fortune, you fill in a questionnaire online - your age, date of birth, hobbies, interests and so on and for a small fee she e-mails you back your fortune. You can print it out and it looks really good, decorated with moons and stars, your zodiac sign and your birthstone. I tried it myself and although I’m not sure I believe it, my future according to her is positive and exciting. I also found out that for someone born in August, like me, the birthstone is a period, a pale green stone which I’d never even heard of!

I also get a fair number of complaints from people e-mailing me to say that they can’t access the website. When they click on the site a message appears on their screen saying ‘An error has occurred in the script on this page’. This usually happens when someone has tried to achieve fancy effects on their website by using programming techniques based on a scripting language. This means that unless they really know what they are doing, whoever designed the site has probably made a mistake in their programming. This is where people like me come in. Most computer instruction guides make things appear quite straightforward, but unless you’re very skilled, you’re likely to run into problems. It’s generally worth getting a professional to help you set up your site in the first place - otherwise people like me would be out of work. And let’s face it, this is big business.

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