The Internet Life Without It

The Internet Life Without It

by: John Sheridan

For seven days this month, my Internet connection ceased to be; apparently (according to the engineer) because the cablemodem box thingy gave up the ghost. Seven whole days with no link to the outside world, except for the telephone of course, which isn’t quite the same is it? Now normally a very short period without Internet access would not cause too much of a problem; fortunately I can complete most of my work offline so I saw this as only a minor inconvenience.

However, the big shock to my system came with the realisation that for a period of time during those days I was extremely bored. It was fine while I was working, but afterwards without the Internet to distract me, I had nothing to do for the remainder of any working day. The evenings were fine because I have a very active social life, so no problem, but it did get me thinking about how the absence of the Internet might affect the majority of us in one way or another.

Since the ‘arrival’ of the phenomenon that is known as the Internet, we have become obsessed to some extent with the speed in which it lets us live our lives. We rarely expect to get letters from friends, family or businesses – email is there, ready, waiting and fast. We can visit just about any virtual shop in the world, buy more than we could physically carry and arrange to have it delivered, and all this can be done in just an hour of surfing without even getting out of a chair.

I began to wonder about the vast number of companies whose daytoday business is conducted online, and what would happen if for some reason the whole Internet suddenly ceased to work. The effects would be extremely farreaching, for example; a substantial amount of daily business communication is conducted via email, the loss of which would severely disrupt and significantly slow down the companies who rely totally on this media to send and receive information where speed is of the essence. Other parties to be considered are the private individuals whose emails possibly compare or even exceed in numbers that of corporate traffic, and business websites; without these virtual showrooms to look at, a customer would have to revert back to the old way of doing things and visit a real one very hard on the feet!

We are all aware that the rapid advances made in Internet technology over recent years have been nothing short of astonishing. From mobile phones and their ability to send messages and photo images, as well as being able to access the Internet, to email and its almost instant delivery capability. Both have transformed information exchange and communication beyond our wildest dreams, whilst simultaneously creating a mindset that has us expecting immediate answers to any questions we may ask. Itกs up to each individual to decide for themselves whether or not the Internet is for the better. I am sure there are a vast number of people in the world that prefer life the way it used to be, and their opinions must be respected.

However, to be offline felt like some sort of isolation even though it was only temporary. Itกs not something I would want to happen on a regular basis, and whilst I am sure that although we would undoubtedly cope without the Internet if we had to, the question is would we want to?

Sure, the simplicity and speed of email would be sorely missed; the comparative ease of online shopping; the click of a mouse to pay the bills; the creature comforts that the Internet provides and what we have quickly grown to accept and expect, would eventually be forgotten or committed to a nostalgic memory, but I sincerely doubt it would be an easy transition.

We are all increasingly reliant on the Internet to make life run a bit smoother – and for me, seven days without it was more than enough to prove that.

About The Author

John Sheridan is a professional proofreader of hard copy items and website copy. He also writes web copy and occasionally accepts small copyediting assignments. He can be contacted at: [email protected]

website: www.textcorrect.co.uk

This article is the property of the author and may only be reproduced in its original form.

This article was posted on August 11

by John Sheridan

Finding A Host That Cares

Finding A Host That Cares

by: Jane Fulton/Smart

This was one of the hardest things to do for me and I thought I would share my experiences with you.

Wow! I got my website done just the way I wanted it. I now needed to find a host to host กMy Perfectก website. I thought, กHow hard can this be? The hard part was getting my site builtก. Well, the experience didn’t turn out to be that easy……

Now remember, I was a กFreshก newbie. I didn’t know what a Control Panel really was, and had never seen one or operated one. I had only been using a PC for 4wks!

I started looking for ‘reasonableก hosting. At this time I was only interested in what it would cost. I found a host that I thought was ‘reasonableก. At least it was one of the better priced ones. 🙂

SecretI didn’t even know how much space was given to me. They listed it at 50MB. How much was that? I didn’t have a clue, but figured it was enough for me. It was, when I first started.

I won’t mention their name in this article. I went to their site and signup for a 50MB space for a website, paid my money and was anxious to get started. I couldn’t wait to see กMy Siteก on the internet!

I went to the control panel and tried to upload my site. (They had their own FTP). Well, I wasted about 4 days and then decided to email my host and ask for help. After another 3 days of waiting for a reply, I was very disappointed when I got the reply. They told me that they had a manualuse it! Guess what? I had already tried that. I couldn’t understand the ‘techyก talk. I emailed them back and told them that I didn’t understand what the manual was talking about, that I was a newbie. After another 3 days, they replied with, ‘thatกs the only help we offer.ก I emailed back and asked for my money back. After another 3 days, they emailed me back and told me that I couldn’t get a refund! Well, why not? I had paid my money, but couldn’t use the space I had paid for!

One thing I did learn, when I first came on the internet, was how to go about getting your money back, if you had been involved with fraud. I went to: http://ftc.com That is the Federal Trade Commission URL. I filed a complaint about the company and waited.

Well, in about 2 days, I received an email from the hosting company that they were giving a full refund of the money I had paid.

I then began my search, once again, for a host. I stumbled on my current host by accident. There was an ad in a newsletter, talking about a host. It also said they offered a Free site to start with. When I emailed the guy running the ad (Gary, my angel), he told me that I needed to pay for hosting, to be considered serious online. I told him about the experiences I had had with other hosts. He informed me that I could take a look at the control panel, before I decided to purchase hosting and that he would be my mentor through this process.

I took a look at the control panel and found that it didn’t look that hard, so I signed up for hosting. Gary was there every step of the way. Without him, I would be pulling my hair out! After my site was on the net for about 1 month, Gary got sick and I didn’t want to put a lot of pressure on him. I started emailing my host, Dan, when I had a problem.

The first email I sent to Dan, included the fact that I was a newbie and this was my first experience with a website. I soon found out that Dan was my second angel. He would tell me how to do something. If I didn’t understand what he was saying to me (because of the jargon), he would go in and do it for me. I admit that I didn’t learn much when he did it himself, but when I had a little Free time, I would go to the manual and try it over and over, until I could do it for myself.

Because of the problems I encountered with hosting and the one person I found to helpme, I decided to start my own hosting company and load it with features that I could have used as a new person just starting out. It had to be easy to use and I wanted it loaded with benefits that you didn’t have to go searching for. My solution? Have a look: http://jnjservices.biz.

Be careful when choosing a paid host. Make sure that they know you are a newbie and will need help. If they don’t have the time or won’t take the time to help you, then hosting with them is a waste of your money.

About The Author

Jane Fulton/Smart has been helping people online for over 5yrs now. She is constantly looking for solutions for you.Here is one of her affordable solutions for advertising: http://threedollarads.com.

This article was posted on April 19

by Jane Fulton/Smart

Virus Nightmare..Lessons Learned

Virus Nightmare..Lessons Learned

by: Mal Keenan

I got a virus the other day, Thursday I believe and since then I have been making FRANTIC efforts to save all my info.

The most important thing for me to save are my Outlook Express emails and my Roboform passwords. That way I can at least access all the places I need, to download and reinstall all the software I use.

Thankfully I was able to still access my Laptop and very, very slowly (the system was painfully slow because of the damge done by the virus) start a process of trying to save my system without having to reformat the whole disk. I say thankfully because after a virus attack not everyone is able to even access the system.

I tried antivirus software, I attempted to fix things using the various กmalicious advertisingก expulsion applications (Adaware, Spybot etc.). All to no avail. After almost three days I resigned myself to the fact that it would have to be a reformat which means restoring my Laptop to factory settings. What a nightmare!

First of all I made a backup of my Outlook express email software, emails, account settings etc. For this I downloaded a great little free trial software application called Outlook Express Back Up Wizard, a free trial can be downloaded here:

http://www.outlookexpressbackup.com/ This software met by needs better than others I tried.

If you don’t use Outlook Express then you can download others by searching here:

http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF8&rls=RNWE,RNWE:200435,RNWE:en&q=email+backup+free+downloads

The I did a search for some backup software to back up the files that I could and also to use for future occasions. After trying a few that either wouldn’t work on my system, or didn’t back up to the medium that I wanted (CD Rom Discs) I found a great tool that just did the trick and in fact I plan to buy as soon as the free trial is up. The software is called กNTI Backup Now 4 Deluxe Suiteก and it is so straightforward that even a tech dummy like me found it simple.

Again you can use the full version for 30 days free:

http://www.ntius.com/

I added my Roboform (www.roboform.com) passwords, my Internet Explorer favourites, my Outlook Express backup, my Microsoft Money backup files (For accounting purposes), as many software installation files as I had and most of the files and folders that I have used recently.

Of course what I also ralised is that I have not kept the Install files of loads of the software that I have on my Laptop. Bad mistake! This means that I will have to go search for these again to download to my reformatted system.

What I will do in future is save every Install file in itกs own folder with passwords, serial numbers and any other useful info in a notepad file alongside them.

The hard lesson I have learned is to make sure in future I do frequent backups of my system. I have been online since 1998 and never had any major problems. This is the first and I foolishly underestimated the damage a virus could do.

My next step is to get an external drive to use as a backup and as I mentioned to use it frequently.

I hope this has given you some food for thought. As I sign off here I am going to insert my Toshiba Product Recovery CDRom.

If I had taken the necessary precautions I wouldn’t have just lost three days of my time. Three days I could have been putting to better use.

Ah well, there is positive in every bad situation. Or at least thatกs what I keep telling myself:).

Copyright 2005 http://www.conceiveandbelieve.com

About The Author

Mal Keenan is publisher and editor of Home Business Tips Newsletter:

http://www.homebusinesstipsnewsletter.com/

Visit His Home Business/Internet Marketing Training Site Below: http://www.pluginprofitstraining.com/

This article was posted on February 13

by Mal Keenan

Combating List Building Frenzy: Take The Time To P

Combating List Building Frenzy: Take The Time To Promote

by: Dan J. Fry

It is an accepted fact among the experts now that online marketing succeeds only with a quality, highly targeted permission email list in place. As a result, the multilevel marketers have pounced on this and everywhere you look another กmatrixก lead generating system springs up.

There is no doubt that these are powerful techniques offering the advantage of building your subscriber base while basking in profits simply from growing your list. This is a bestofboth worlds sorts where the very thing that you are promoting is one in the same with what you are building > your list.

For กnewbieก marketers, it is easy to get caught up in the frenzy since one is desperately hungry to build a subscriber base and actually see the first profits rolling in. However, with working on an initially limited advertising budget, the monthly charges to stay in the กmatrixก can take a substantial bite out of other advertising resources.

What is one to do? Can you build a list with highly targeted subscribers, subscribers who are craving for your information, at relatively low cost? The answer: yes, but it takes time.

For those just starting out this is a doubleedged sword. You want profits soon, but also want profits to continue to come in. The problem here is that the two are contradictory. They straddle two opposite sides of the fence so to speak.

*Consider the following scenario:

Suppose you have a large subscriber base that trusts your opinions and judgments. On Friday you send to your list a promotion for which you either own the product or are an affiliate. Now suppose that your list is 3000 subscribers in size, your conversion rate is 5% (pretty good) and your profit per sale is $99. That amounts to $14,850 in sales from one campaign! Not bad, not bad. I could easily live with this kind of return.

Now lets take another scenario. You are just starting out, understand that building a list is of utmost importance, but really want to start making profits quickly. You purchase 600 leads advertised as กquality double optin MLMก. You then quickly blast away your promotion. Approximately 0.5% (note that this is an order of magnitude less than the first example!) actually make the purchase 3 out of 600, which is not a very good conversion. But hey, you paid $100 for the leads, made $297 in sales, for a $197 ROI! Just starting out, you become giddy and sort of euphoric at the profits you have just made.

All excited, you blast away another promotion the following week. But this time you only receive a single sale. Uh oh! Whatกs going on? So in a panic you only wait 3 or 4 days and try to re promote. But, over the next few days, not only do you see no sales, over half of your subscribers cancel their subscription.

*Question: What happened?

Your subscribers don’t know you. In all likely hood the sales you made were nothing more than pure luck. Within your list you will undoubtedly have a few people who are really serious, perhaps a bit frivolous with their money, and will buy immediately. But you have absolutely no relationship with your subscribers. They simply looked at your second promotion and said กI don’t know who this is, but they keep sending me emailsก, and cancelled.

What has happened here is the marketing analogue of the biochemical กquick fixก you get when eating a candy bar to curve your hunger. It works great initially, but you crash hard shortly after.

*Solution?* Take your time building your list!

One thing that I cannot stress enough is the time between sign up and first contact. When you buy lists, although sellers usually advertise only a few days old, you get addresses of people who don’t even remember what they initially signed up for. I don’t know about you but if I receive emails from people that I don’t remember, it gets canned immediately. Being that over 150 million people are on the internet today, and are constantly hit with advertisement after advertisement, can you really be surprised that after a few days they really can’t remember what they signed up for. The information age has catapulted us from one extreme to the next: information no load to information overload. So, you absolutely must make contact immediately after sign up.

There is another very important reason for the quick follow up after sign up building credentials. People will be much more likely to stick with you if they think กhey, I signed up and immediately received a response. This person cares.ก And you should care. If your serious about developing an online business you should care about your contacts and you should supply them with valuable information. To succeed first take the time to promote and build a quality list. Profits will come in due time.

About The Author

Dan J. Fry is an independent researcher and owner of eKinetic.com, a site devoted to providing resources for small budget home businesses. He has a PhD in Physics and is married with two daughters and two cats. Subscribe to his free EZine on home business resources at mailto:[email protected] or by visiting his site at http://www.ekinetic.com. He can be reached at mailto:[email protected].

This article was posted on April 10, 2004

by Dan J. Fry

Has Google Lost the Plot?

Has Google Lost the Plot?

by: Courtney Heard

With the help of MSN, recently I’ve been reminiscing about the Google of old. Remember those days? When you could take a good quality site, add a few keywords, get a few incoming links and badabing, badaboom, it’d be #1 on Google? Remember the old days, preFlorida, presandbox? The days when we, as search engine optimization specialists, didn’t feel like a private schoolgirl smoking in the bathroom? When we didn’t feel like the iron fist would come crashing down at any moment? Yes, those were the good old days. And MSN has finally brought them back, though on a much smaller scale.

Google hit it right on the nose back then. Search results were almost never irrelevant venturing to the second page of results was an event that drew gasps. There was never, ever any reason to leave Google and search for the same query on another search engine. Satisfied users the world over, it was the search engine of choice almost everywhere searches were conducted. I myself never strayed from Google, I was loyal and I was rewarded for my loyalty with consistently relevant results.

But has Google taken their quest for perfection a few steps too far? Case in point: http://www.jimmylerner.com this web site is the official site of an author. Search on MSN for his name, ขjimmy lernerข and his web site is the top result. Now, try the same search on Google. The top results are pages devoted to reviewing his book, book stores selling his book, a press release I sent out to announce his new site and a few times I’ve even seen sites show up in the top ten that simply have a link to his site from theirs and are completely unrelated. His site has been jumping from the second page to the first and back again.

This begs the question, optimization or no optimization, what, exactly, is the problem with a quality, informative web site reaching number one for a search query that is probably conducted specifically to find that exact site? Has the focus and aim of Google changed from offering relevancy to satisfied searchers to simply impeding the progress of SEOs? Is Google’s main concern now, to stop individuals from helping a site reach number one? It can seem that way, can’t it? And I can only say one thing about it. Bad move, Google.

I’ve heard a few people say that it’s just a transition period. That all web sites are in the same boat, everyone’s waiting to see the fruits of their optimization labour. Perhaps this is true, and perhaps over the next little while we will see changes at Google that make our jaws drop, impressed at the level of perfection we never thought possible. But I think maybe Google needs to refocus their energies. Take the focus back to the user, not the SEOs. Get back to the nearimpeccable relevancy level before I start using MSN to learn about all my favorite authors.

About The Author

Courtney Heard is the founder of Abalone Designs, a search engine optimization company in Vancouver, Canada. She has been involved in web development and marketing since 1995 and has helped start several businesses since then in the Vancouver area. More of Courtneyกs articles are available at http://www.abalone.ca/resources/.

[email protected]

This article was posted on February 06

by Courtney Heard

10 Tips On Offering A Free Ecourse

10 Tips On Offering A Free Ecourse

by: Radhika Venkata

1. Make your ecourse short like 5 7 days. The longer the ecourse easy for your subscriber to forget the matter of your previous emails.

2. Use double optin follow up autoresponders to stop accusitions of spam.

http://www.scripts4webmasters.com/arpproadv/index.shtml

3. Write one ecourse to promote only ONE product. If you keep ten product links in your ten day email course, it will look like a compiled sales letters.

4. If you are using affiliate links in your ecourse use some method to hide your affiliate links.

http://www.webmasterscentral.com/t/siteprotection/affiliatelinks.shtml

5. Try to keep brief synopsis of previous emails. For example, in fourth day email keep few lines about what he received for the past three days.

6. If you have a trial product or free demo, offer it for the download. You can keep the download link on top of every email.

7. Put a link to your ecourse in your signature files on forums, articles and emails etc. It is a great way of increasing subscribers.

8. If you have affiliates you can ask them to offer it to their visitors and customers with their affiliate id. So your affiliates get commission.

9. Provide กUnsubscribeก link at the end of all emails to make easy for your subscriber to unsubscribe if they want.

10. Track your promotional links in the emails, so to follow the results of your ecourse. (like how many people clicked on the link, who bought etc)

About The Author

Radhika Venkata

Subscribe to กiNet Marketing Ezineก which is completely focused on Internet Marketing. Receive FREE Ebooks with Resale rights!

http://www.webmasterscentral.com/subscribe.shtml

FREE Ecourse :: 30 days Solid work out to increase your online profits!

http://www.ebooksworld.com/ecourse/index.shtml

This article was posted on March 04, 2004

by Radhika Venkata

The Clickbank Crash of 2003: Lessons Learned

The Clickbank Crash of 2003: Lessons Learned

by: Timothy Kerber

I had a rude awakening recently. I checked the days worth of sales from one of my sites and there were none. This had never happened before and of course I was anxious to find out what was wrong.

I quickly found out that the credit card processor Clickbank was under a hacker attack. Their service was effectively paralyzed by computers around the world flooding Clickbanks computers with bogus requests for information.

They weren’t the only web site being attacked. Similar attacks have happened against Yahoo and CNN in the past.

This is the first one that effected me directly… right in the wallet.

Time For Emergency Action

Nobody knew how long Clickbank would be down.

I wasn’t going to wait around to find out! I had to take emergency measures to cope with it.

I was not only losing sales that couldn’t be placed, I was also losing money on online advertising. Pay per click accounts were sending people to my site which they couldn’t order from.

The first thing I did was pause my pay per click accounts until I got things under control. This saved me from wasting money on useless advertising.

Alternate Payment Choice

I needed another credit card processor to handle my sales and quick! I was lucky that I already had a Paypal account in place.

I quickly created Paypal payment links so that customers could pay for my products. It was a matter of creating the links correctly and changing the webpages to handle the paypal transactions.

I don’t normally use Paypal because Clickbankกs affiliate program is exceptional. In this case, I did not have much choice and it was easy for me to start accepting money again.

Once Paypal was up and running, I reactivated my pay per click campaigns. I was happily rewarded within the hour with a sale… My first in a day.

Thankfully Clickbank was back on its feet after about 3 days or so. I then switched things back to normal.

Handling My Affiliates

By using Paypal instead of Clickbank, I was denying my affiliates commissions on traffic they had sent me during this incident. I wanted to make it up to them as I didn’t think it was fair to them.

I did this by averaging out how much commission they had earned in the 30 days prior to the incident. I divided that total amount by 30 to come up with an average amount per day they had earned. I then gave them 3 days worth of this commission with an explaination of what happened. Ironically, I sent them their commissions through Paypal so they got them instantly.

I received excellent feedback from appreciative affiliates. Some of them stated that my commissions were the only money they made during the time that Clickbank was down.

How You Can Prepare Ahead Of Time

There is no guarantee that Clickbank or any other payment processor won’t be attacked by hackers again. It is extremely difficult to defend against.

It would be smart getting a backup plan in place just in case.

Hereกs a good back up plan:

Get a paypal account in place now in case you need it

Create your alternate order pages with the Paypal links and keep them ready กjust in caseก

In the event something does happen, keep good communication going with your affiliates. They will appreciate it and will likely reward you with more loyal sales in the future for you

I am sure a lot of lessons were learned during this time. I still love Clickbank, but now I have the experience of having a backup plan I can quickly put into place should anything like this happen again. You may want to prepare ahead of time also.

About The Author

Article by Tim Kerber from the Small Business Web Site. Learn proven secrets to make your web site a profitable success. Tips, tutorials, videos, interviews and more. Click here now http://www.SmallBusinessWebSite.com

This article was posted on September 09, 2003

by Timothy Kerber

Computer In The Shop? What Do You Do Now?

Computer In The Shop? What Do You Do Now?

by: Janice D. Byer, MVA

Have you ever had one of those days when you just feel like something is missing? … something just doesn’t feel right… like you should be doing something but you can’t remember what?

Well, I had one of those days recently… my computer was in the shop for a minor repair. Ahhhhh! What was I going to do?

Ok, so I planned to take my computer in for the repair. Then I would go shopping for my daughter’s birthday present and have lunch with my husband. But, that still left half a day. No problem. That was taken care of as my phone continued to ring even without my computer there. But, the whole time I felt like something was missing.

Why are we so dependent on our computers? Why do our routines feel completely out of whack if we don’t have our trusty keyboard and mouse?

In today’s high tech society, a computer is a common site in most homes and nearly all businesses. Everyone and his brother has access to these electronic lifelines and most depend on them to help run their lives smoothly.

For any entrepreneur who relies on the virtual work for business, when our computers are unavailable, we can be at a loss as to what we can do. So, the following is just a few ideas of what we can do during the time that you would normally be on your computer.

1. Get out of your office!

And, if your office is in the house, get out of the house. Take advantage of the time to separate yourself from your work. It may be hard to leave work behind but, for entrepreneurs who generally are dealing with all the aspects of keeping a business running smoothly, a few hours away from the office can help recharge the batteries.

2. Run some errands.

Not only will this help by getting you out of your office but you can get some of those odd jobs done that have been sitting on the back burner.

3. Spend some quality time with your family.

Now is the time to get out with your partner and/or kids, if they are not at work or at school. Go for a walk or bike ride; have a swim; or make a picnic. Relax & enjoy the company of your loved ones.

4. Clean up your office.

Now is the perfect time to organize all the piles of paper on your desk and file them away. You never know what you will find under there and how great it will be to see the nice wood that your desk is made of again.

5. Write an article.

Wild guess when I wrote this article? You guessed it… I sat in my comfortable rocking chair, watched my daughter play, and jotted down my thoughts.

6. Catch up on phone calls.

You know all those quotations that you have been sending out? Now is the time to followup on them. Or, have you been wanting to contact someone just because? Without the distraction of your ขyou have mailข dinger going off, make that call.

7. Give your home a little spring clean.

Those dust bunnies have been around long enough. It’s time to send them packing. Cleaning cannot only separate you from your daily work routine, the end result is great! Until the kids get back home.

8. Do something nice for yourself.

Have a long soak in the tub but keep that phone away from the edge of the tub. This may be hard to do because we always want to be there for our clients if they call. But you deserve a break every once in a while to help recharge your batteries.

These are just a few ideas to help you stay productive, in one form or another, while you are without your computer.

But, one thing to remember if you are going to be unavailable for any length of time… advise your clients and contacts of your down time. Send an email to all of them advising them that you will be out of the office or just without a computer for a few days. This way, should they happen to send an email to you for whatever reason, they will know why you didn’t respond to them right away.

About The Author

Janice Byer is a certified Master Virtual Assistant and owner of DocuType Administrative & Web Design Services (http://www.docutype.net). See this and other articles on her website.

[email protected]

This article was posted on December 18, 2002

by Janice D. Byer, MVA

Target Practice And The Internet Entrepreneur

Target Practice And The Internet Entrepreneur

by: Elizabeth Piotrowski

Internet marketing, a lot of the time really is hit and miss. Always keep in mind that when you promote your site you are, in effect trying to get the word out to the whole world. Not an easy task! How can there NOT be variables when you are advertising to billions? It isn’t always where you advertise that makes the difference; itกs HOW.

First and foremost, it is SO important to have effective ad copy. Without it, you truly are wasting your time and money. Along with effective ads, itกs imperative that you have variety! Don’t advertise all over the place with the same ad. The surfer of today seems to get bored very quickly, so itกs important to pique their curiosity as often as possible.

Rotate your ads this means, that if you post to ffa.net with Ad A on Monday, you will post to that site with Ad B on Tuesday. And track your ads so you know which ones are getting the most clicks. Once you know this, you can scratch the lesseffective ads off your list, and write new and improved versions.

The time of day you submit can also make a difference. You have to test/track this as well. Try different times of the day, different days of the week, and different ads on each site. See how your ads do when you advertise once a week, twice a week or every day. Itกs a lot of work!

I have found ffas to be quite effective. Now, before you say กUGH!ก let me tell you ffas aren’t the only advertising method that generate mounds of email! If you don’t like the idea of submitting to individual ffa pages, try a database submitter, like worldsubmitter.com or mymegasubmitter.com. Your ad can be on thousands of sites in minutes. And don’t forget to set up a กjunkก email account BEFORE you post to the ffas, or you will be in trouble!

Next are the safelists. I submit to under 40 safelists daily, but receive over 1000 emails in each of my 7 mailboxes every 2 days! The point is, whether you use ffas or safelists, you cannot escape a full inbox 🙂 Safelist examples are adtactics.com and mbpsafelist.com, and they get pretty good results if your headline is effective. If you can, try a sponsor ad (your ad at the top of every email sent to the safelist) incredible results, but only for the first 3 or 4 days I noticed a loss of interest shortly thereafter.

The list goes on and on start page programs, banner exchanges, reciprocal links, classified ads, ezine advertising try all of the above. Find the mix that works best for you. And, when it stops working, either drop it entirely or mix differently. Eventually you will find a winning combination.

Elizabeth Piotrowski

About The Author

Powerful ad copy is the key to producing the visits and sales you want. Drop by http://www.strategyadservice.com for lowcost, effective solutions!

This article was posted on February 24, 2003

by Elizabeth Piotrowski

How To See What Pages Of Your Site Google Has In I

How To See What Pages Of Your Site Google Has In Its Index

by: Tinu AbayomiPaul

There is a lag time between the indexing or updating of your site, and the time it takes to show new results in the database. Depending on your site, where it was linked from, who it was linked from, and who knows what other factors, the amount of time varies.
With the method I teach in my book it seems to take two to four days on average for the Googlebot to stop by initially, and then another two days to one week to appear in search listings for the first listing.
(You can read more about the book here: http://www.freetrafficdirectory.com/book )
But even if it takes more than four to seven days for the Googlebot spider to show up at your site, or to return, if ever, there are several ways you can track the results. First, you can use Google itself.
Go to www.google.com and type in site: then your domain name. So for yahoo.com, youd type in site:yahoo.com.
The results will show you which pages of your site are showing up in Google.
If you know you wont have time to check on a daily basis, you can use a site called Google Alert, which you can find at
http://www.googlealert.com .
The great thing about this site is that it will track up to five terms per email address and have them sent to you via email on a daily basis. Using this you can track your ranking for your most important terms, or see how often your competitors site comes up versus yours.
To use this to see when pages of your site come up, create an account , then in the search terms section, type in, as one word, whatever is between www and your sites suffix (.com, .net, .org, .biz, .uk, etc.) and you will start getting emailed results.
The only problem is that the resulting page is sometimes a day behind Googles actual indexing. But for a free automated resource, you really couldnt beat it.
Until now.
Googles new Web Alerts just came out on the 29th of March. You can access it here:
http://www.google.com/webalerts
You can use Googles new Web Alerts service in much the same way. Its currently in Beta development, so make sure you save the information sent to you. Since its so new, youll probably want to sign up to both services and compare the results.
My favorite use for this is finding out when people mention my name or reprint my article at their sites, so that I can link back, or email to thank them. A big advantage Google.coms inhouse version of the web alerts system is that they have a news version that you can subscribe to, which will help you stay on top of your niche in whatever industry youre in.
Currently I use the Google Alerts site for several ongoing searches, and Googles Beta Web Alerts for my most missioncritical, timesensitive news.
Theres yet another way to use Google to track how your site is doing in Google. It will tell you the cached version of your page, which Google stores. Sometimes the date posted next to the listing of the cached page can help give you a good estimate of when Google will be back at your site.
For example, at the moment, I seem to see the spider most predictably every day between midnight and 6 am EST since my home page began to score a PR of 5, then periodically at other points in my site during the day. I figured this out by looking at Googles cache of my home page over a period of one week.
This search will tell you pages that Google considers similar to yours. It will also show sites that it considered linked to you, and show sites that carry your full url, hyperlinked or not. Its not 100% accurate, but it will give you a much better idea than youd get from guessing and its free.
Go back to Googles home page www.google.com and type in info:yoursitenameandsuffix. So if your site was ExactSeek.com youd type info:www.exactseek.com. You can also use site:yoursitenameandsuffix to find out which pages have been indexed by Googles search engine spider.
Curiously, Google used to show different results for info:www.exactseek.com and info:exactseek.com instead of including results for exactseek.com in the www evaluation. I havent seen this much anymore, but if you see one permutation showing up in results for the other, you may want to do both.
Youre going to want to bookmark this page and visit it on a weekly basis. The best day to look would be the one week anniversary of what day Google last cached a page at your site. The date will often be shown next to the word cached on one of your page results. If the cached page date is the same, that means Google hasnt been back to your site.
Marry this information with your study of your web stats to get more ideas on getting the most out of your weekly or daily exercises involving search engines and links from other sites, not just Google.
Copyright 2004 Tinu AbayomiPaul

About The Author

Tinuกs adventureกs with Google began when friends challenged her to กput her traffic where her site isก. She was challenged to raise her brandnew site to top 100,000 status in Alexa and get well ranked in Google in 90 days, spending less than $100. When she won in 34 days, she decided to use the site she built to share her free traffic secrets. For more free traffic secrets, subscribe to her newsletter at [email protected] or visit her site for more free articles like this : http://www.freetrafficdirectory.com

This article was posted on April 08, 2004

by Tinu AbayomiPaul

The Hidden Cost Of Cheap Hosting

The Hidden Cost Of Cheap Hosting

by: Sanjib Ahmad

We often see server uptime statistics when looking for hosting providers, for example 99.8%, 99%, or 99.99% server uptime guaranteed. Though 99% server uptime may sound good, but is it really and what does it mean?

99% server uptime means that in a year of 365 days, your server will be up 99% of the time, which is 361.35 days (365 days x 99%). This is not really good, because even with 99% uptime your site could be down for 4 days. It would be disastrous if you owned an online store because even an hourกs downtime would cost you. Imagine, not only lost revenues, but also customers who switched to your competitors while your site was down.

Here are some server uptime examples with calculations showing what various percentages mean.

100% server uptime

Up = 365 days

Down = 0 days = 0 hours = 0 minutes

99.999% server uptime

Up = 364.9964 days

Down = 0.0036 days = 0.0876 hours = 5.256 minutes

99.99% server uptime

Up = 364.9635 days

Down = 0.0365 days = 0.876 hours = 52.56 minutes

99.9% server uptime

Up = 364.635 days

Down = 0.365 days = 8.76 hours = 525.6 minutes

99.8% server uptime

Up = 364.27 days

Down = 0.73 days = 17.52 hours = 1051.2 minutes

99% server uptime

Up = 361.35 days

Down = 3.65 days = 87.6 hours = 5256 minutes

Initial hosting offerings of very low prices bundled with a lot of disk space and server features may be lucrative, but when it comes to server uptime, you could be paying a heavy price.

You can use other tools like ping and traceroute to measure server response times and hops required to reach your server.

About The Author

Sanjib Ahmad Freelance Writer and Product Consultant for Business.Marc8.com (http://business.marc8.com/). You are free to use this article in its entirety as long as you leave all links in place, do not modify the content, and include the resource box listed above.

[email protected]

This article was posted on August 14

by Sanjib Ahmad

Your Own eBook in 7 Days

Your Own eBook in 7 Days

by: Michael Southon

Review: How To Write and Publish Your Own eBook in as little as 7 Days

Reviewed by Michael Southon

How To Write and Publish Your Own eBook in as little as 7 Days by Jim Edwards and Joe Vitale exe format, 208 pages

I was intrigued by the title of this book writing an eBook in 7 days? But thatกs exactly what Jim Edwards and Joe Vitale show you how to do.

However, your eBook doesn’t have to be 100 pages. In fact, Joe Vitaleกs best selling eBook ‘turbo Charge Your Writingก is only 22 pages (and 2 of those pages are order forms). And the authors give the example of someone who wrote a book just 7 pages long that sells for between $30 and $50. The fact is that people are swamped with information. So the shorter your book, the better.

Vitale and Edwards both have impressive track records in online publishing. Joe Vitale (also known as กMr. Fireก) is something of a legend in the world of marketing. He has written over 12 successful books and has helped more than 200 authors to write, publish and promote their books.

Jim Edwards writes a syndicated newspaper column called กNetReporter.comก and is a frequent guest speaker at national conferences on topics such as search engine traffic generation and กshoestringก online marketing. Heกs also the author of ก33 Days To Online Profitsก and ‘the Lazy Manกs Guide To Online Businessก.

If you’re like many aspiring authors, you may have the urge to write your book first and then find out if thereกs a market for it. But as Edwards and Vitale point out, thatกs a formula for eBook failure.

In chapter 2 (กSetting Yourself Up for Successก) the authors show you how to identify your niche market, how to analyze their wants, needs and problems, and how to write a book that satisfies those wants, needs and problems.

Don’t skip this chapter it provides very detailed techniques for using keyword research to find out exactly who your target audience is and where you will find them on the Internet.

The authorsก program for writing your eBook in seven days contains some useful techniques for getting your creative juices flowing and getting your words down on paper writing your material as a letter to a friend, and writing your sales copy first.

The chapter on กFormatting Your eBook Textก contains some valuable tips, such as breaking up your text with bullets and headers. Your readers will thank you for it one of the keys to avoiding credit card charge backs is to make it easy for your readers to absorb your information.

Chapter 10 (กHow To Make Money with your eBookก) gives you some tried and tested formulas for turning your eBook into profits, such as selling the reprint rights and กback loadingก your eBook with your own affiliate links, joint ventures and affiliate programs.

The book also contains interviews with eight successful eBook authors, including Yanik Silver, Rick Beneteau, and Jay Conrad Levinson.

The interview with Yanik Silver is worth reading very carefully. He reveals how he made tens of thousands of dollars by setting up 3 separate profit streams in the same eBook: reprint rights, his own affiliate links and customization fees.

If you want to create your own information product, this book is definitely worth reading youกll find out that itกs easier than you think. You can get your copy of กHow To Write and Publish Your Own eBook in as little as 7 Daysก at:

http://www.freezineweb.com/7daybook.html

(c) 2002 by Michael Southon

About The Author

Michael Southon has been writing for the Internet for over 3 years. He has shown hundreds of webmasters how to use this simple technique to get massive free publicity and dramatically increase traffic and sales. Click here to find out more: http://www.ezinewriter.com

This article was posted on July 30, 2002

by Michael Southon