Excelling with Online Marketing

Excelling with Online Marketing

by: Richard Kraneis

Do you want to build a successful online business?

Then start using online math and use Microsoft Excel.

I’ve written an ebook this year that sells at a profit. In fact, I’ve written 2 ebooks that sell at a profit (I’m thankful to all my Internet friends who have helped me.). I can’t imagine anyone selling anything on the Internet without using Excel to keep score on profits and performance.

Are you making a profit or running at a loss? A plain old Excel spreadsheet (or Lotus) will get the job done for you. Are their any trends in profits (or losses) for your online venture? Excel graphs make it easy to see (and sometimes predict) trends.

When you started your venture, how did you estimate the demand for your product on the Internet? I did research on Overture to predict the volume of my Google paid click impressions. Using Excel was a key part of that process.

Whenever I make an ebook sale I add it to my Excel sales database. I click on an Excel macro button that automatically reformats my email sales notification into a record in my ebook sales Excel database.

Over the past year I’ve used a powerful Excel technique called a pivot table to analyze my ebook sales database. This is what I learned about my ebook sales:

1) Tuesday was my slowest ebook sales day. I corrected the sales problem by mass mailing offers on Tuesdays. Tuesdays are better now.

2) My ebooks have sold in over 37 countries. But 90% of my sales came from just 5 countries. Solution? I adjusted my advertising mix to better spend my advertising dollars.

3) Finally, men purchase about 70% of my ebooks. Women purchase 20% and 10% of purchases are from unknown genders (people that use initials only). Solution? None yet. Women just aren’t buying my ebook as much as I’d like. But if I find a great copywriter who needs to learn more about Excel I’m in business. We can trade.

Would you like to find an unexpected ally for ขExcelling with Online Marketingข? Just check your personal computer. If you have Excel (or Lotus) than you already have a great tool for tracking not only online marketing profits but all kinds of online marketing performance. Build a simple spreadsheet for tracking your weekly profits and then advance to other techniques for measuring online marketing performance.

So, that’s it for today. I know that I’m just a first year online marketer and have much to learn. But, I’m ขExcellingข with Online Marketing and you should too.

Copyright 2004 Richard Kraneis

About The Author

Richard Kraneis is a computer training consultant, ebook author, and an aspiring online marketer. Online marketing on the Internet reminds him of his favorite hobby, fishing. His website is www.TheWorldsShortestExcelBook.com. You can reach him at [email protected]. (He’s looking for a great, up and coming copywriter for future projects.)

This article was posted on September 19, 2004

by Richard Kraneis

The Other Side Of The Search Gods’ Abracadabra!

The Other Side Of The Search Gods’ Abracadabra!

by: Liji Elizabeth Thomas

Thousands of servers …billions of web pages…. the possibility of individually sifting through the WWW is null. The search engine gods cull the information you need from the Internet…from tracking down an elusive expert for communication to presenting the most unconventional views on the planet. Name it and click it. Beyond all the hype created about the web heavens they rule, let’s attempt to keep the argument balanced. From Google to Voice of the Shuttle (for humanities research) these ubiquitous gods that enrich the net, can be unfair …and do wear pitfalls. And considering the rate at which the Internet continues to grow, the problems of these gods are only exacerbated further.

Primarily, what you need to digest is the fact that search engines fall short of Mandrake’s magic mechanism! They simply don’t create URLs out of thin air but instead send their spiders crawling across those sites that have rendered prayers (and expensive offerings!) to them for consideration. Even when sites like Google claim to have a massive 3 billion web pages in its database, a large portion of the web nation is invisible to these spiders. To think they are simply ignorant of the Invisible Web. This invisible web holds that content, normal search engines can’t index because the information on many web sites is in databases that are only searchable within that site. Sites like www.imdb.com The Internet Movie Database , www.incywincy.com IncyWincy, the invisible web search engine and www.completeplanet.com The Complete Planet that cover this area are perhaps the only way you can access content from that portion of the Internet, invisible to the search gods. Here, you don’t perform a direct content search but search for the resources that may access the content. (Meaning be sure to set aside considerable time for digging.)

None of the search engines indexes everything on the Web (I mean none). Tried research literature on popular search engines? AltaVista to Yahoo, will list thousands of sources on education, human resource development, etc. etc. but mostly from magazines, newspapers, and various organizationsก own Web pages, rather than from research journals and dissertations the main sources of research literature. That’s because most of the journals and dissertations are not yet available publicly on the Web. Thought they’ll get you all that’s hosted on the web? Think again.

The Web is huge and growing exponentially. Simple searches, using a single word or phrase, will often yield thousands of กhitsก, most of which will be irrelevant. A layman going in for a piece of info to the internet has to deal with a more severe issue too much information! And if you don’t learn how to control the information overload from these websites, returned by a search result, roll out the red carpet for some frustration. A very common problem results from sites that have a lot of pages with similar content. For e.g., if a discussion thread (in a forum) goes on for a hundred posts there will be a hundred pages all with similar titles, each containing a wee bit of information. Now instead of just one link, all hundred of those darn pages will crop up your search result, crowding out other relevant site.

Regardless of all the sophistication technology has brought in, many well thoughtout search phrases produce list after list of irrelevant web pages. The typical search still requires sifting through dirt to find the gold. If you are not specific enough, you may get too many irrelevant hits.

As said, these search engines do not actually search the web directly but their centralized server instead. And unless this database is updated continually to index modified, moved, deleted or renamed documents, you will land yourself amidst broken links and stale copies of web pages. So if they inadequately handle dynamic web pages whose content changes frequently, chances are for the information they reference to quickly go outofdate. After they wage their never ending war with overzealous promoters (spamdexers rather), where do they have time to keep their databases current and their search algorithms tuned? No surprise if a perfectly worthwhile site may go unlisted!

Similarly, many of the Web search engines are undergoing rapid development and are not well documented. You will have only an approximate idea of how they are working, and unknown shortcomings may cause them to miss desired information. Not to mention, amongst the first class information, the web also houses false, misleading, deceptive and dressed up information actually produced by charlatans. The Web itself is unstable and tomorrow they may not find you the site they found you today. Well if you could predict them, they would not be god!…would they?! The syntax (word order and punctuation) for various types of complex searches varies some from search engine to search engine, and small errors in the syntax can seriously compromise the search. For instance, try the same phrase search on different search engines and you’ll know what I mean. Novices… read this line using search engines does involve a learning curve. Many beginning Internet users, because of these disadvantages, become discouraged and frustrated.

Like a journalist put it, ขNot showing favoritism to its business clients is certainly a rare virtue in these times.ข Search engines have increasingly turned to two significant revenue streams. Paid placement: In addition to the main editorialdriven search results, the search engines display a second — and sometimes third — listing thatกs usually commercial in nature. The more you pay, the higher youกll appear in the search results. Paid inclusion: An advertiser or content partner pays the search engine to crawl its site and include the results in the main editorial listing. So?…more likely to be in the hit list but then again no guarantees. Of course those refusing to favor certain devotees are industry leaders like Google that publishes paid listings, but clearly marks them as กSponsored Links.ก

The possibility of these ‘forprofit’ search gods (which haven’t yet made much profit) for taking fees to skew their searches, can’t be ruled out. But as a searcher, the hit list you are provided with by the engine should obviously rank in the order of relevancy and interest. Search command languages can often be complex and confusing and the ranking algorithm is unique to each god based on the number of occurrences of the search phrase in a page, if it appears in the page title, or in a heading, or the URL itself, or the meta tag etc. or on a weighted average of a number of these relevance scores. E.g. Google (www.google.com) uses its patented PageRank TM and ranks the importance of search results by examining the links that lead to a specific site. The more links that lead to a site, the higher the site is ranked. Pop on popularity!

Alta Vista, HotBot, Lycos, Infoseek and MSN Search use keyword indexes – fast access to millions of documents. The lack of an index structure and poor accuracy of the size of the WWW, will not make searching any easier. Large number of sites indexed. Keyword searching can be difficult to get right.

In reality, however, the prevalence of a certain keyword is not always in proportion to the relevance of a page. Take this example. A search on sari the national costume of India –in a popular search engine, returned among it’s top sites, the following links:

www.scri.sari.ac.uk/ of the Scottish Crop research Institute

www.ubudsari.com/ a health resort in Indonesia

www.sarienergy.org/ The South Asia Regional Initiative for Energy Cooperation and Development

Pretty useful sites for someone very much interested in knowing how to drape or the tradition of the sari?! (Well, no prayer goes unanswered…whether you like the answer or not!) By using keywords to determine how each page will be ranked in search results and not simply counting the number of instances of a word on a page, search engines are attempting to make the rankings better by assigning more weight to things like titles, subheadings, and so on.

Now, unless you have a clear idea of what youกre looking for, it may be difficult or impossible to use a keyword search, especially if the vocabulary of the subject is unfamiliar. Similarly, the concept based search of Excite (instead of individual words, the words that you enter into a search are grouped and attempted to determine the meaning) is a difficult task and yields inconsistent results.

Besides who reviews or evaluates these sites for quality or authority? They are simply compiled by a computer program. These active search engines rely on computerized retrieval mechanisms called กspidersก, กcrawlersก, or กrobotsก, to visit Web sites, on a regular basis and retrieve relevant keywords to index and store in a searchable database. And from this huge database yields often unmanageable and comprehensive results….results whose relevance is determined by their computers. The irrelevant sites (high percentage of noise, as it’s called), questionable ranking mechanisms and poor quality control may be the result of less human involvement to weed out junk. Thought human intervention would solve all probes….read on.

>From the very first search engine – Yahoo to about.com, Snap.com, Magellan, NetGuide, Go Network, LookSmart, NBCi and Starting Point, all subject directories index and review documents under categories – making them more manageable. Unlike active search engines, these passive or humanselected search engines like don’t roam the web directly and are human controlled, relying on individual submissions. Perhaps the easiest to use in town, but the indexing structure these search engines cover only a small portion of the actual number of WWW sites and thus is certainly not your bet if you intend specific, narrow or complex topics.

Subject designations may be arbitrary, confusing or wrong. A search looks for matches only in the descriptions submitted. Never contains full text of the web they link to you can only search what you see titles, descriptions, subject categories, etc. Humanlabor intensive process limits database currency, size, rate of growth and timeliness. You may have to branch through the categories repeatedly before arriving at the right page. They may be several months behind the times because of the need for human organization. Try looking for some obscure topic….chances for the people that maintain the directory to have excluded those pages. Obviously, machines can blindly count keywords but they can’t make commonsense judgement as humans can. But then why does humanedited directories respond with all this junk?!

And here’s about those meta search engines. A comprehensive search on the entire WWW using The Big Hub, Dogpile, Highway61, Internet Sleuth or Savvysearch , covering as many documents as possible may sound as good an idea as a one stop shopping. Meta search engines do not create their own databases. They rely on existing active and passive search engine indexes to retrieve search results. And the very fact that they access multiple keyword indexes reduces their response time. It sure does save your time by searching several search engines at once but at the expense of redundant, unwanted and overwhelming results….much more – important misses. The default search mode differs from search site to search site, so the same search is not always appropriate in different search engine software. The quality and size of the databases vary widely.

Weighted Search Engines like Ask Jeeves and RagingSearch allows the user to type queries in plain English without advanced searching knowledge, again at the expense of inaccurate and undetailed searching. Review or Ranking Sources like Argus Clearinghouse (www.clearinghouse.net), eBlast (eblast.com) and Librarianกs Index to the Internet (lii.org). They evaluate website quality from sources they find or accept submissions from but cover a minimal number of sites.

As a webmaster, your site registration with the biggest billboards in Times Square can get you closer to bingo! for the searcher. Those who didn’t even know you existed before are in your living room in New York time!

Your URL registration is a nobrainer, considering the generation of flocking traffic to your site. Certainly a quick and inexpensive method, yet is only a component of the overall marketing strategy that in itself offers no guarantees, no instant results and demands continued effort for the webmaster. Commerce rules the web. Like how a notable Internet caveman put it, ขWeb publishers also find dealing with search engines to be a frustrating pursuit. Everybody wants their pages to be easy for the world to find, but getting your site listed can be tough. Search sites may take a long time to list your site, may never list it at all, and may drop it after a few months for no reason. If you resubmit often, as it is very tempting to do, you may even be branded a spamdexer and barred from a search site. And as for trying to get a good ranking, forget it! You have to keep up with all the arcane and everchanging rules of a dozen different search engines, and adjust the keywords on your pages just so…all the while fighting against the very plausible theory that in fact none of this stuff matters, and the search sites assign rankings at random or by whim. ข

To make the best use of Web search enginesto find what you need and avoid an avalanche of irrelevant hits pick search engines that are well suited to your needs. And lest you’d want to cry ขYe immortal gods! where in the world are we?ข, spend a few hours becoming moderately proficient with each. Each works somewhat differently, most importantly in respect to how you broaden or narrow a search.

Finding the appropriate search engine for your particular information need, can be frustrating. To effectively use these search engines, it is important to understand what they are, how they work, and how they differ. For e.g. while using a meta search engine, remember that each engine has its own methods of displaying and ranking results. Remember, search strategies affect the results. If the user is unaware of basic search strategies, results may be spotty.

Quoting Charlie Morris (the former editor of The Web developer’s journal) ขSearch engines and directories survive, and indeed flourish, because theyกre all weกve got. If you want to use the wealth of information that is the Web, youกve got to be able to find what you want, and search engines and directories are the only way to do that. Getting good search results is a matter of chance. Depending on what youกre searching for, you may get a meaty list of good resources, or you may get page after page of irrelevant drivel. By laboriously refining your search, and using several different search engines and directories (and especially by using appropriate specialty directories), you can usually find what you need in the end.ข

Search engines are very useful, no doubt. Right from getting a quick view of a topic to finding expert contact info…verily certain issues lie in their lap. Now the very reason we bother about these search engines so much is because they’re all we’ve got! Though there sure is a lot of room for improvement, the hour’s need is to not get caught in the middle of the road. By simply understanding what, how and where to seek, you’d spare yourself the fate of chanting that old Jewish proverb ขIf God lived on earth, people would break his windows.ข

Happy searching!

About The Author

Liji is a PostGraduate in Software Science, with a flair for writing on anything under the sun. She puts her dexterity to work, writing technical articles in her areas of interest which include Internet programming, web design and development, ecommerce and other related issues.

letก[email protected]

This article was posted on August 16, 2004

by Liji Elizabeth Thomas

Microsoft CRM Modification – overview for IT speci

Microsoft CRM Modification – overview for IT specialist

by: Andrew Karasev

Microsoft CRM is now on the scene and it is increasing its market share, due to the Microsoft Business Solutions muscles and marketing strategy. It is tightly integrated with other Microsoft Business Solutions products such as Microsoft Great Plains, Solomon, Navision.
If you are programmer or database administrator who is asked: how do we modify Microsoft CRM – read this article and you will have the clues for further research.
1. Microsoft CRM SDK – this is software development kit with C# and partly VB.net code samples – it is supported by Microsoft Business Solutions technical support. It is based on web service calls, if you are C# .NET developer – you are excellently positioned to do this type of customizations. This is the preferred modification scenario and this should be easily upgradeable customization. VB.Net examples will be available soon.
2. Legacy SQL Data integration. This is also easy and safe. If you have SQL database, sitting on the same or linked SQL Server – you can create ASPX .Net application and simply integrate it into CRM. You can place it on the navigation bar or menu in isv.config – please refer to MS CRM SDK
3. Legacy ASP integration – this is somewhat more sophisticated. You have to deploy HTTP handler to be a middle party between CRM which is .Net based and ASP which is legacy IIS. The trick is – you have to have INI file with security settings to penetrate into MS CRM with proper credentials, calling web service.
4. Microsoft Exchange Programming. Microsoft CRM has Exchange connector – which moves CRM incoming email to MS if it has GUID in its subject. You can alter this logic (for instance move email to CRM if it doesn’t have GUID but it is from the sender who is contact or account in MS CRM). Refer to MS Exchange SDK onsyncsave event handling. Then simply apply some MS CRM SDK programming you need some COM+ objects creation and VB programming experience.
5. Direct SQL touch – in #4 above I described you the scenario with MS Exchange handlers – this would be ideal world if MS CRM SDK does the job. But – in real world this is not always true – you have to do direct flags correction in CRM database (like making Activity closed, moving email attachments/octet streams, etc). This is not supported by MBS technical support – but you can rescue to this technique if you have to get job done.
6. MS CRM Customization tool – this is rather enduser tool and we don’t describe it here – read the manual. We’ve described above the options to use when this tool doesn’t do the job
7. Crystal Reports feel free to create Crystal report tables and views structure is self explanatory. Try to avoid the temptation to create your own SQL view or stored procedure in MS CRM database, instead create custom database and place your view and stored proc in it.
Happy modifying! If you want us to do the job give us a call 18665280577! [email protected]

About The Author

Andrew Karasev is Chief Technology Officer in Alba Spectrum Technologies – USA nationwide Microsoft CRM, Microsoft Great Plains customization company, based in Chicago, Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Houston, Atlanta, and Miami and having locations in multiple states and internationally (www.albaspectrum.com), he is Dexterity, SQL, VB/C#.Net, Crystal Reports and Microsoft CRM SDK developer.

[email protected]

This article was posted on July 28, 2004

by Andrew Karasev

6 Good Reasons For Writing An eBook

6 Good Reasons For Writing An eBook

by: Jean Lam

Electronic books also known as ebooks for short are one of the hottest properties on the Internet. The benefits of writing an ebook are enormous.

As an Internet business owner, ebooks are powerful tools that you can use to grow your business. Here are 6 good reasons for writing an ebook:

(1) Easy to create

Ebooks are fairly easy to create and don’t require any special knowledge. Basically you can create ebooks in two different formats ie .exe and .pdf. Ebooks in .exe format can be read by Window users but not Macintosh computers whereas .pdf formats can be read by both. You just need Adobe Acrobat Reader to be able to open pdf files which you can download free at

http://www.adobe.com/products/acrobat/readstep2.html

There are a list of ebook compilers available on the market that you can use to create .exe ebooks and .pdf ebooks.

(2) No big investment needed

Creating an ebook does not require a big investment. I make use of Activ eBook Compiler to create .exe ebooks. You can try the software free at http://www.zineguru.com/ebookcompiler but there will be ads in your ebook front page when you build it. For an activation fee, the ads will be removed. This is a nice piece of software. I really like it and itกs fairly easy to use when you get accustomed to the software.

To create pdf ebooks, you can go to http://www.gohtm.com/convert_pdf.asp This is a free web based service that you can use to convert your word documents and other file formats to pdf documents.

(3) Developing your own paid product

If you know how to build your own ebook, you can easily create your own product to make real money. You just need to write what you know about. The Internet is a highway of information and you need to create a product which focus on a specific topic. Basically there is a huge potential for creating your own information products and there is an infinite number of topics you can write about.

Not just topics related to internet marketing and online business but other themes like cooking, gardening, pets etc. Now these are niche topics and if you have knowledge in these areas, you can easily create an info product in a digital format like an ebook talking about this.

(4) Fast and instant delivery

A big advantage with ebooks is that the delivery process is fast and instant. You don’t need product shipping for you don’t have any physical inventory due to the fact that an ebook is purely digital. You can give an unlimited number of copies to your customers.

(5) Subscriber generation

If you can create your own ebooks, why not create a useful ebook packed with quality information, then offer it as a bonus or gift to generate new subscribers to your newsletter. This is an attractive incentive to gain new subscribers.

(6) Viral Marketing Effects

Good ebooks can become your own traffic machine and it can has a viral marketing effect. By viral, I mean it can propagate across the Internet, hence your business can get big exposure for your ebook contains links to your websites.

Say you create an ebook packed with great articles that youกve written and you allow others to distribute it freely to their own susbcribers to give them quality information, or to get new subscribers, your ebook and business will have great exposure. If you have a quality ebook, some product owners might even use it as a bonus to add more value to their offer.

Ebooks are becoming more and more popular on the Internet these days for there is a huge potential to build a successful online business around them. So go ahead and start creating your own ebooks be it free or paid.

About The Author

Jean Lam is the editor of Web Biz Secrets Newsletter. Subscribe today for powerful marketing tips and receive a special report of netpreneurs earning $100,000+ per year PLUS his new PDF eBook ก3 SureFire Ways To Start An Internet Business And Strategies To Promote Itก Visit his website at http://www.zineguru.com

This article was posted on March 16

by Jean Lam

How To Choose a Perfect Home Based Business

How To Choose a Perfect Home Based Business

by: Nas Romli

Nowadays, more and more people are becoming a home based business owner. If you make a search on กhome based businessก at Yahoo, it returned a total of 51,000,000. No, I didn’t put any extra zeros. Itกs 51 million! Most of them are promoting business opportunities and others provide home based business information.

The question is now, if you want to start your own home based business, without having to go through all 51 million sites, how do you find the perfect business that really suits you?

Letกs begin.

Basically there’re 2 types of business that you can run. Iกll go through one at a time.

1. Selling a new product.

If you’re a super genius who knows what the marketกs wants, that this type of business is for you.

Advantage: You will be the owner of the product which means you control everything; from pricing to the product type. Youกll become the expert and people will see you as genius who create new product line.

Disadvantage: You will have to design your own marketing plan; sales letter, website design, autoresponder email system and everything. So, in other words, your business might no begin within 1 or 2 month after you develop your product. Even you already setup everything, your income might come in rather slow since most people are afraid to buy new product.

2. Selling other people product.

You sell other people product and you earn income by receiving your sales commission.

Advantage: You don’t have to design any market plan (most of the time). Everything will be provided to you. All you need to do is using these tools to market their product. Since everything is there, you can start promoting them almost immediately and so do your cheque.

Disadvantage: You don’t have the power to change the market plan, product or any tools. You have to use them whether you like it or not.

Which one you choose is wholly up to you. But for me who is so lazy of doing any thinking and working, Iกd choose option 2.

Still, you have to make filter out millions of products that you can promote for your business.

Here are the guidelines for choosing them:

Available marketing tools: Are they giving me any marketing tools? eg. email ad, banner ad, sales letter etc. The marketing marketing tools provided, the better.

Product is suitable for huge market: Choose a product that can be use by many people and not only for certain group of consumer.

Recurring commission: For me this is the most important factor. Some product, you earn your comission only once when you make one off sales. Normally, you earn a recurring commission when you sell product that needs the buyer make recurring payment every month. So, you will earn your commission every month as long as the buyer makes the payment.

It is easy, isn’t it?

Letกs we summed up everything that we learn.

If you want to start you home based business immediately, promote other peopleกs product. This product should have excellent support, all marketing tools are provided to you, many people use it and the buyers have to pay them every month.

There you have it. A perfect home based business for you (at least it is for me ;)).

About The Author

Nas Romli runs a site that help people to start their own home based business within 24 hours.Many have benefited from this service.Drop by at his site for more information about this amazing service: http://www.cashflowsecret.net

[email protected]

This article was posted on January 23

by Nas Romli

Can You Survive In An Online World?

Can You Survive In An Online World?

by: Jim Edwards

Do you have the skills to make it in a computer driven, increasingly online world?

Your immediate, kneejerk reaction may be กYes! Of course I have the skills.

I know how to send and receive email and surf the web.

I can even download and install files.ก

Well, three or four years ago, email, Web surfing and downloading files qualified you as กelectronically literate,ก but not any more! Computer and online survival skills now encompass much more than that.

Surviving in an online world involves maintaining a high degree of กelectronic literacy,ก which means focusing on and developing skills in the following areas:

** Personal Computer skills **

In the old days of 1998, the ability to use a computer, keyboard and mouse rated anyone as computerliterate.

In fact, you were a real pro if you could burn a CD, scan documents and manipulate digital pictures.

Fast forward to today and กpersonal computer skillsก carries a whole new meaning. You must know how to maintain and update not only antivirus, but กantispyware,ก and firewall software too.

You also need to understand how operating with Windows ME, or 2000, or XP will affect your ability to use certain software along with specific security precautions to avoid trouble from hackers.

** Internet Skills **

In the bygone era of 1998, friends considered you an online genius if you possessed basic surfing and navigation skills.

They watched in awe as you used search engines like InfoSeek.com (a longdefunct search engine) to find and download programs, pictures, and information on specific topics.

Now electronic literacy means the ability to set up, upload, and maintain basic web pages and blogs.

It also means understanding terms such as กRSSก and กnews aggregatorก because thatกs the next generation of how information will get disseminated online (and it arrives for the masses this year).

** Email Skills **

Perhaps the most deceptively simple of all the areas of electronic literacy, email actually presents the most challenges for keeping up with the times.

Previously, clicking the กsend and receiveก button meant you were proficient at using email.

Now, because of spam, viruses and กphishing scamsก (identity theft schemes delivered through email), email requires a whole new set of skills, กstreet smartsก and software just to survive.

You must understand how to use an email กpreviewก program such as MailWasher.net to eliminate spam and virus email messages before they ever reach your computer.

You also must learn to protect your identity and avoid กphishing scamsก by learning to recognize and defend against online conartist tactics.

** Buy or Borrow Expertise **

Though you should constantly upgrade your skills through personal education, nobody can do or know it all (except maybe your knowitall bother in law).

The good news is that you can always buy or borrow someone elseกs expertise to solve any online challenge.

A prime example of outsourcing in the consumer market is all the little stores popping up in strip malls to help you sell your stuff on eBay.

Through outsourcing, online survival skills can also mean taking what was previously the exclusive realm of computer geeks and making it as easy as dropping off the dry cleaning.

(c) Jim Edwards All Rights reserved

http://www.TheNetReporter.com

About The Author

Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and the coauthor of an amazing new ebook that will teach you how to use fr^e articles to quickly drive thousands of targeted visitors to your website or affiliate links…

Simple ‘traffic Machineก brings Thousands of NEW visitors to your website for weeks, even months… without spending a dime on advertising! ==> http://www.turnwordsintotraffic.com

This article was posted on August 23

by Jim Edwards

How To Maximize Your Profits With Forums

How To Maximize Your Profits With Forums

by: Christos Varsamis

Forums are one of the most effective free internet marketing strategies if done correctly. Many people participate in online forums for different reasons. Especially in internet marketing forums, they use it for getting advice and answers to their questions.

Another reason is finding new tools, products and marketing concepts that they can apply to their website or online business in general. Internet forums are also an excellent resource for contacting with other online entrepreneurs and build winwin and profitable joint ventures. Finally, you can promote your website in forums in indirect mode of course.

Taking advantage of forums can be focused on the link of your site you are allowed to place with your posts. However, this is not as simple as it sounds. Users must have a reason to click on your link. One reason could be a useful tip or resource you provide with your answer for instance. On the longterm run, you gain credibility and start becoming an expert in your field.

But how do you accomplish that? First, you must study carefully the forums before you join them. Check for their guidelines, their theme, the questions, the level of knowledge and experience the users have. After that, you group the questions in a specific block in order to provide the answers.

For example:

Questions:

1) How can I protect my website from theft?

2) Where can I find HTML security software?

e.t.c

Answers:

1) HTML encryption software

2) Hide your website’s code.

e.t.c.

Now it is time for getting answers. You can find answers using search engines, or a recourse you have already used in the past or even a ขhow toข ebook you had purchased. There are many options. Don’t forget that you shouldn’t restrict yourself to one topic. You can repeat this procedure as many times as you want.

You can provide your answers to forum users in three ways actually.

First, by informing the forum users with a website you saw, that contains the solution to the problem they have. This is the less effective way, because you are keeping them away from your primary cause, which is to visit your website by clicking your link.

Second, is to create a webpage to your website that contains the answer.

For example: www.yoursite.com/htmlsecurityreport.htm. This is an excellent way of promoting because it’s not a blatant advertisement (you are informing people) and on the other hand users visit your website.

Third, create a new website exclusively related on this subject.

For example: www.htmlsecuritytips.com. This way is extremely effective too, but you should keep in mind that you do have to spend some money for that (web hosting, domain registrar e.t.c.) and definitely more time.

The catch here is that with the second and third option you can promote your website, which can include your affiliate programs or even your products without breaking the forum’s rules.

Of course you could ask,ขwhere can I find forums?ข One way is using search engines. Write in the search bar ขinternet marketing forumsข and you will have many listings but you should notice that only the active ones worth your attention. Another thing you should be careful about is how many users and posts the forum has every day. If there are one or two users then you should go away, although forums indexed by the search engines are important because a link of your website to this forum could mean indexing for your website too.

When you post to a forum always, use your name and not some kind of number or code like 22357 e.t.c. You want to gain credibility with your name and not with characterless number or fake username. Use your signature in every post, which should contain your name, 23 lines of text (that depends on how many lines the forum administrator permits you to use) and of course your site URL.

Here is a list with great forums you can use:

www.webmasterworld.com/home.htm

www.sitepoint.com/forums

http://associateprograms.com/discus

www.ablake.net/forum

www.wilsonweb.com/forum

www.network54.com/Forum/184615

www.jimworld.com/apps/webmaster.forums/bin/Ultimate.cgi

www.clickbanksuccessforum.com/forum

www.howtocorp.com/forum

www.homebusinesswebsites.com/cgibin/index.cgi

www.affiliateboards.com/messageboard/index.php

www.internet.com/forums

www.webmastery.net/forums.html

www.ihelpyouservices.com/forums

www.aardvarkbusiness.net/chat

www.infosyssec.com/forum

www.abestweb.com

www.sowpub.com/cgibin/forum/webbbs_config.pl

www.network54.com/Forum/11488

www.marketingstrategy.org/forums

www.askmarketingexperts.com/forums

www.resourcezone.com

Copyright 2004 Christos Varsamis

About The Author

Christos Varsamis is an internet marketing consultant and the owner of the exclusive internetmarketing club http://www.internetmarketingsuccesstips.com. Get his knowledge at your desktop! Subscribe to [email protected]

This article was posted on October 11, 2004

by Christos Varsamis

How to Effectively Manage Your Time With A Home Bu

How to Effectively Manage Your Time With A Home Business

by: Kevin Purfield

Are you spending too much time with your home business and not achieving the results you desire. Focusing too much of your time and efforts on your business and achieving poor results can have detrimental effects on your business, your personal relationships, physical and mental health, and overall happiness in life.

One simple way to reduce the amount of time you spend working on your business is to set clear specific goals and objectives, clear and specific plans and to organize your day so you can focus continually on the most valuable uses of your time.

The clearer your are about your goals and objectives the more focused and efficient you will be in achieving them. One trait that successful people have in common is they seem to get more done in the same amount of time as the people around them. They use the minutes and hours of each day differently. They are more focused and productive and they get more done.

Study the way you spend your time during a typical day.

1.What are the things that you need to do more of, sooner in order to improve the quality of your business results?

2.What are the decisions that you have made in the past that have created the problems you are currently dealing with today? Whatever they may be, immediately make new decisions that will take you in a new direction.

3.Gain control over the sequence of events in your life, business and future. What changes can you make immediately to improve the quality of your business and your life? When you have written them down decide to work on those changes today.

Understand the law of leverage

There are certain things you can do that will enable you to accomplish much more than you would if you spent the same amount of time on other activities. Select one or two things you can do in your business that will make a extraordinary difference in your results.

Learn to employ other people’s knowledge and efforts. What could you offer to attract the support you need so your business can grow faster in less time with less effort.

Work harder on yourself than you work on your business

The more you practice a skill, the less time it takes you to perform a task. Bunching similar tasks that require similar skills together will allow you to take less time to do each subsequent task. Align your attention to your goals and objectives and focus until you complete each task.

Many home business entrepreneurs launch highly successful businesses that earn healthy six figure incomes or greater. By following these easy steps, you can give your business a big boost, improve your relationships and quality of your life

Copyright 2004 Kevin Purfield

About The Author

Kevin Purfield can help you launch your very own money making website today thatกs 100% ready to take orders and pull in massive profits for you right now … guaranteed! Visit: http://www.wealthsystemonline.com or subscribe to [email protected]

This article was posted on April 06, 2004

by Kevin Purfield

Bring That Difference To Your Business!

Bring That Difference To Your Business!

by: Arun Pal Singh

Romans had a phrase for this First among Equals.

Online marketing has too coined a similar one – when everything is equal the difference is me.

This is the key to build a successful business.

One who makes the difference succeeds.

That is what differentiates between the bestsellers and thousands of books that just come and go.

The uniqueness.

An artist sells million of albums and many others even fail to create a ripple. Why?

The uniqueness.

If you want your business to succeed you must bring that element of uniqueness.

It is good if you already have a unique product. You have already won half the battle. But what if you do not have that unique product. This is especially true if you are marketing affiliate products. You still can bring the difference.

How?

Introduce yourself in your product. Make your marketing unique. When your product is similar brand it unique with your style.

You need to have a passion for your business to bring that difference. A passion for your endeavor works like magic. Nothing beats a passionate entrepreneur. When you feel strongly for something you already start seeing the difference.

Your customers are life of your business. To become a good businessman think of your customers before your product. Convince yourself first if you would buy when you come across an offer you are going to make.

When you start thinking from customers’ perspective you are ahead of most of your competitors. What will your customers gain from your products? How will your product benefit from your product? People do not buy the products. They buy the benefits. Better life style, better health, secure future, freedom from debt…..

The list could be endless.

Try to build a trustful relation. People like to buy from the ones they can trust. After all, at the other end it would be a human mind that will decide to buy from you.

You can make that difference in spite of the competition because most of your competitors are not working on making that difference. Whatever your product is, whatever your offer is you can make it better by your touch.

Why are some marketers so successful that they make millions whereas others fail? If you make a search you will find that it is their style that makes them what they are. It reflects in their offers, their sales letters, their mails and everything they promote.

No! They were not born with it. They have developed and inculcated this while they struggled. They started no different from others. But they brought uniqueness to their business as they learnt.

Everybody can do this. Just keep working and keep trying. Learn, apply and analyze. Work diligently on improvement. Keep your minds open. Search for areas of betterment.

By and by you will develop your own style, your touch.

Every night when you go to bed just give a thought to your input for the day and what you will contribute on the coming day.

Have you worked for progress of your business today?

Be persistent in improving your business, work with passion and you are on your way to success.

Wish you success.

Copyright 2005 Arun Pal Singh

About The Author

Arun Pal Singh, a successful marketer and writer offers a unique and duplicable business opportunity at http://www.homeforprofits.com. To avail his free Income Course email to [email protected] with subject ‘subscribe’.

This article was posted on February 18

by Arun Pal Singh

Home Business Guide To Finding Your Own Online Bus

Home Business Guide To Finding Your Own Online Business

by: Allan McKenzie

Because tens of thousands of people all across the world want to know how they can work at home and earn enough money to run a household, there is a special need for this report. Today the need for women to work out of the home is stronger than ever. According to recent surveys, almost 70% are married and contribute up to 50% and more to the family income. Because family responsibilities play such an important part in the lives of men and women, millions of individuals and couples are seeking ways to make money online at home.

In the past decade online moneymaking, homebased opportunities that match a personกs skills, interests, abilities, and ingenuity have become almost limitless. The purpose of this report is to show you that itกs simple and easy to join the ranks of successminded people by choosing a workathome program that suits your interests and needs. Business histories have shown over and over again that the rewards and advantages of working at home can go far beyond a personกs wildest dreams! In fact, itกs perfectly possible to launch a small online business in the comfort of your home that grows in to a giant corporation.

Your first step will be to search out the Internet for a home business that suits you and then contact those that interest you. Itกs possible that you may not find exactly what you want right away but these may serve as that great motivator that makes you look further with a renewed determination. Once you develop that mindset, persistence will follow and then nothing will stop you from achieving your goals.

BECOME A GOAL SETTER!

If you expect any level of success you must set goals. If you expect to be successful, you must determine what that means to you and the best way to achieve it. There are two basic steps you can take to convert goals into achievements:

1) You can decide on a specific dollar amount; and

2) You can set a time frame for obtaining the dollar amount you want.

Your goal should be specific and indicate What, When, and Where. After making a list of every possible way you might accomplish a goal, select the method that best suits your situation.

IMPORTANT CONSIDERATIONS YOU MUST ASK YOURSELF

1) กHow can I support my family while I build up by business?ก

This question must be worked out according to each individualกs circumstances. Many people start out on a parttime basis after their regular jobs to see how much they can handle. Then when their incomes reach a certain level they will switch over and go full time.

2) กWhat are my abilities?ก

To determine your abilities you will have to take an inventory of yourself. Decide what you enjoy doing the most and what you กfeelก you would be good at. Examine every possibility and include every skill you have no matter how slight.

3) กIs there a market for the produce of service I have chosen?ก

Be cautious before you invest any money! Check it out by making inquiries directly to the company, competitors, or firms who are marketing a product similar to the one you are interested in. Test it on a small scale. Check it out thoroughly.

4) กHow long will it take this business to reach the financial goal I must have?ก

Itกs really a question of knowing how much time you can dedicate to your business, and what your profits are for that time. From there, a little simple addition will tell you how long it might take to reach a particular financial goal.

SUCCESS IS HAVING THE COURAGE TO BEGIN!

Starting a business at home is an economical way to start a small business that can easily grow into a larger one. Many entrepeneurs have proven that you don’t need a huge manufacturing plant to develop a successful business. Some of the most successful businesses in existence today started in a spare room or garage. It isn’t how you start out that is important. What really matters is, do you have the courage to begin?

SELECTING THE RIGHT PRODUCT OR SERVICE

Take a close look at your interests and abilities, and then decide what type of marketing you want to do. For example, do you want to create your own product or sell someone elseกs product for a commission, (become and affiliate)?

DEVELOP A GOOD MARKETING TECHNIQUE

A good marketing technique is one part of a business plan that is absolutely essential to its success. In fact, the ability to properly market a product or service is actually more important than the product itself. Even an inferior product can be a financial success if marketed properly. Seek out the advice of everyone in your field. Explain your needs and ask them questions. Experience is the best teacher. With good advice and a sellable product, you should be able to develop a winning marketing plan.

WORKATHOME OPPORTUNITIES ARE LIMITLESS!

Do a search on any search engine for home business and youกll literally find thousands of opportunities in countless different areas, affiliate programs, online marketing, online auctions, online malls, online ebook stores…

Anyone who is serious about workathome oportunities need only look around them. There are thousands of options everywhere! Not only online but offline too. No doubt, what you finally decide on will depend on your particular needs and interests.

Be a selfmotivator and continue moving forward towards the goals you want and deserve. Do it starting NOW!

Copyright 2004 Allan McKenzie

Allan McKenzie is the CEO of AMCMarketing.com, the only resource you need for practical business ideas, strategies and opportunities for the homebased entrepreneur.

http://www.amcmarketing.com

About The Author

Allan McKenzie is the CEO of AMCMarketing.com, the only resource you need for practical business ideas, strategies and opportunities for the homebased entrepreneur.

This article was posted on March 03, 2004

by Allan McKenzie

Home Based Business Opportunity

Home Based Business Opportunity

by: Darrell Knox

The allure of a home based business opportunity is very strong these days with uncertain economic times and the pressures of working long hours for less pay. More and more people are exploring home based business opportunities to see if they are cut out to work for themselves.
With the economy ever uncertain, employers are cutting back on everything. They are cutting health insurance benefits, pay, and they are outright eliminating jobs left and right.
There are many kinds of home based business opportunities. The internet offers the easiest, least expensive opportunity to start a home based business ever. Never before have people been able to start up an entire, legitimate business just by signing up for a hosting account and selling information or other products from their web site.
Careful What Home Base Business Opportunity You Choose
Not all opportunities are really what they seem. While any home based business opportunity involves hard work, some of them are just not worth the work you put in. They never pay back dividends the way you anticipated or the way the sales letter stated. That’s why when searching for the proper, legitimate home based business opportunity you need to watch for a couple of things.
Is the business wellestablished?
Are you buying into a franchise style business? If so, is the market saturated with other people doing the same thing and competing for visitors?
If the home based business opportunity involves network marketing, does it comply with federal and state laws regarding multilevel businesses?
The key to true wealth is to own the business opportunity, not work for it. A home based business owner is the top dog in their small company. That means any windfalls a new product or service you create or resell belong to you! That also means all the overhead and other expenses belong to you too. With the power of a home based business comes the responsibility too.
This is why you should thoroughly research a home based business opportunity to make sure you have all the bases covered and you are approaching working for yourself in a responsible manner.
Finally, you need to be aware that while it is very tempting to go for one of those cookiecutter ขbusinesses in a boxข, the greatest opportunity in the world on the internet is creating your own products and mixing them in with affiliate products that compliment yours.
A home based business opportunity many times is an opportunity a driven, hard working and creative person creates for themselves. Usually the most successful home based businesses are run by people who just had a great idea and ran with it.
Pick a home based business opportunity you love, that you are passionate about and hopefully knowledgeable about. You credibility shoots through the roof with your customers, and you work much harder on something you love to do rather than something you feel like you have to do!

About The Author

Darrell Knox is a writer and entrepreneur with 15 years of home business and marketing experience. Free Home Business Tips Newsletter at: http://www.cashgroup.biz/biztipspop.html.

Website: http://cgi.tripod.com/lazaraus26/cgibin/index.pl

[email protected]

This article was posted on May 29, 2004

by Darrell Knox