Tops In Toolbars?

Tops In Toolbars?

by: Jakob Jelling

Most internet marketers are aware of, and probably use, the Google Toolbar. After all, it has been the only indicator of Googleกs PageRank number that has been assigned to a given web page. Whether the number is accurate, important, or even updated any more is a matter of debate on the marketing forums. But the only feature that was really worthwhile for more casual surfers, other than being able to use the Google search box directly, was the popup window blocker feature, which oddly enough, is the least favorite feature of many an internet marketer. But for many surfers now, the Yahoo Toolbar may well be a better choice. A 3 megabyte download for computers running Windows 98 or higher and Internet Explorer 5.0 or higher, the Yahoo Toolbar not only offers greater interactivity with Yahoo and My Yahoo, but now offers some benefits for your PC as well.

In addition, to the Search Yahoo box and quick access to Yahoo News, email, and bookmarks, the Yahoo Toolbar offers a PopUp blocker, and perhaps even more importantly for many surfers these days, AntiSpy, to detect and remove spyware from the userกs PC. Yahoo even has an antispyware community that is tied in with the AntiSpy software on the Yahoo Toolbar.

Many people prefer Google for search, feeling that it offers better results with fewer กspammyก sites while Yahoo search is going through a rebirth. However, many surfers prefer the amazing My Yahoo portal, that offers email, calendar, notes, and multiple news and information pages that you can customize just about any way you like. Since it offers such quick and easy access to My Yahoo, in addition to a PopUp Blocker and AntiSpy, the Yahoo Toolbar may be worthy of a place on your browser controls. Even if it means you have to type in the name of your favorite search engine!

By Jakob Jelling

http://www.sitetube.com

About The Author

Jakob Jelling is the founder of http://www.sitetube.com. Visit his website for the latest on planning, building, promoting and maintaining websites.

This article was posted on October 11, 2004

by Jakob Jelling

How To Create Urgency So People Buy Now

How To Create Urgency So People Buy Now

by: Steve Li

You must create urgency so people will buy your products or services now. They may not revisit your web site or see your ad again.

How do you do this? You must use a limited time offer. Limited time offers stop people from putting off buying your products or services. It stops them from procrastinating.

There are many different types of limited time offers. Here are a few.

Limited Time Price Offers For example, Order Now! While the price is still low. After Dec 23,1999 this price will go up to…

Limited Time Discount Offers For example, Order before Midnight, Nov. 5,1999 and you will get 25% discount!

Limited Time Free Bonus Offers For example, Order before April 2, 2000 and youกll get a free bonus!

Limited Time In Stock Offers For example, Order Now! While supplies last! After Oct. 31,1999 we can’t guarantee we will have any left in stock.

Iกm not saying everyone will order the first time they see your ad. They may not be interested in your products or services. It depends on your ad and the person reading the ad. If they are interested, usually, limited time offers will make them buy now.

About The Author

Steve Li is the webmaster of http://pushbuttonincomes.com. You can read more articles like this by subscribing to his twiceweekly Newsletter. Send a blank email to: mailto:[email protected]?subject=subscribe get a free course กOnline Advertising for the Completely Clueless!ก

[email protected]

This article was posted on January 18

by Steve Li

So, Is It Possible To Earn Free Money Online Fast?

So, Is It Possible To Earn Free Money Online Fast?

by: Gerardas Norkus

The answer is – yes! You can earn free money online fast, even without any web site or affiliate marketing. Youกll only need to invest some of YOUR time and a small amount of money.

It doesn’t matter if you are a stayathome Mom or Dad; a college student or a teacher; someone looking for a business opportunity; saving up for something special; or you just need to pay off some bills. The bottom line is this you could use an extra source of income, right?

To begin here are some quick Questions & Answers you may have about free Internet cash:

Q: How much money can I make?

A: Several hundred. It depends only on YOU.

Q: How fast?

A: Youกll have the money in your bank no later then 3 months. Usually, on average it should take about 2 months.

Q: Can anyone do it?

Yes, but in this article I will explain how to earn free money online only if you are: from the USA, you have a credit card, and you can invest some small money in order to make much, much more.

SIDEBAR

If one thing is for sure, itกs that nothing out there is totally free. (And if someone says it is, they’re probably selling something.) Whatever business online or offline in order to make money you must invest some first. And I will tell you shortly where and how to do that. Just keep reading on…

Q: Is it safe to use my credit card?

A: Yes, absolutely.

Q: Must I have a web site or a list?

A: Nope. If you are from the USA and if you have a credit card, you can start earning free money online immediately.

OK, enough of playing the questions and answers game. Your only question left by now must be…

Where And How Do I Get The Free Cash?

The short answer is using online rewards programs.

Don’t know what a rewards program is? A rewards program pays cash for all your actions: completing offers, shopping, reading emails, referring your friends, and more. You can visit http://www.cash4offers.com and see what a typical rewards program looks like and how it works.

Now I guess there should be two categories of readers. The internet กnewbiesก, who will say they don’t understand how it all works; and the internet gurus who will say that all reward programs are scams.

Wait! I will prove to you that they work in a moment; and that you can make not only extra cash but receive some great stuff too.

To get started making money with incentive companies, one needs to create an account with a rewards program like Cash4Offers. You will need an email address to sign up…

Worried about your privacy and spam? Please don’t! They will never send you spam, you can cancel anytime, and the email address is only used to track all of your actions when you complete offers, shop, etc. Thatกs how they know who to pay the free money.

Hey, in most cases you will get a signup bonus just for signing up!

And now, Iกll explain to you…

How to Earn Free Money Online Completing Offers?

Here is the Cash4Offers offers section link: http://www.cash4offers.com/offers.php?c=ALL&email=&uid=

If you click on the above link you can see that there are many various offers available, ranging from credit card applications to internet service provider deals. And, they all will pay a certain amount of cash to your Cash4Offers account if you accept them… But, just to warn you, most of the offers will require that you use your credit card. Thatกs why I told you about the money youกll need to invest in the beginning. Not to worry though, you can definitely make more than you spend, and most of the offers are great trial deals where you can receive not only free cash but top merchandise too.

There were total of 111 offers available when I wrote this article on 22/11/2004.

SIDEBAR

Make sure to login to your account and access the offers from the memberกs area when completing the offers so that your cash is credited to your account.

If you wonder where the free money comes from, here is the answer incentive companies are affiliated with top online merchants (advertisers), and the merchants pay a commission for advertising their products and services. Rewards companies pass the majority of the commission they make on to YOU, the customer, when you accept their offers!

And here is my promise to you…

A Proof You Can Earn Free Money Online

Please open or download the following excel file to your computer: http://www.cash4offers.com/offers_rewards.xls

As you can see I have selected only the offers that interested me from the first 3 pages of all available offers at Cash4Offers. And look what my earnings potential is I can make $65.40 after completing only 13 offers (approximately $5.00 for each offer), and receive a bunch of great merchandise too! Remember there were 111 offers available. Imagine how much I could earn if I completed all of the offers?!

It doesn’t matter if you have already signed up with a rewards program or not, I advise you to explore all available offers and use the above excel file as a template in order to evaluate your earnings potential. Just click on each offer that interests you and make notes of all offer details how much you earn, how much you have to invest, your profit, the merchandise you receive, and your total profit. Use the template every time you decide to complete offers online.

It really helps to decide which offers are the best choice for you and what you will receive by completing each of them. Of course, although there are well over one hundred offers available, you should complete only the ones that really interest you. You are not going to apply for all available credit card offers, or get a free trial of all ISPs, are you? My guess is that you should be able to make about $200 $500 by completing all of the offers that interest you.

SIDEBAR

How long does it take to receive cash for completing the offers? Well, some offers pay instantly! And some may take up to 30 days (e.g. some credit card applications) before you receive your cash to your reward programกs account.

If you don’t receive the cash from the offer within 30 days of accepting it, you should contact the rewards program and send them all of the details related to the offer:

The date of offer completion

The confirmation email

Your contact info: name, email address, phone number etc.

Usually the rewards company will do the investigation for you and if you really completed the offer (offers) they will credit your account with the offer cash amount within about 3 weeks.

Got your cash in your account? Great! Whatกs next? Now, the last step…

Request Payment & Verify Your Account

Why do reward programs ask you to verify your account by phone or mail? The answer is simply this they are trying to protect their advertisers and themselves from fraud.

So, request your payment either by check or another method if available, and expect a phone call several days before your payment is processed. You should receive your payment in about a week or two!

Well, it was easy making free cash on the internet, wasn’t it? But your earning potential doesn’t stop there, you could make even more by receiving cashback for shopping or referring your friends. But thatกs another story for the next article.

P.S. FYI, you can choose to receive great free stuff like computers, TVs, gift cards and much more instead of free cash, again, by completing offers. Visit http://www.1stinrewards.com for more information about all available online rewards that you can take advantage of.

About The Author

Gerardas Norkus is a successful author and publisher of http://www.1stinrewards.com. Great tips on receiving free merchandise and money from top online rewards programs.

(c) Copyright 2004. All rights reserved.

Publishing Guidelines: You may freely distribute or publish this article provided you publish the whole article and include the copyright notice and links in full. A courtesy copy is requested upon publication.

[email protected]

This article was posted on November 22, 2004

by Gerardas Norkus

Internet Buzzwords and Newbies: Proceed With Cauti

Internet Buzzwords and Newbies: Proceed With Caution!

by: Francisco Aloy

Learning the ropes of Internet Marketing is one of the hardest things to do; even more so if you are a Newbie to computers and the Web.

I remember watching the movie ‘the Flim Flam Manก and heard the quote กYou Can’t Con an Honest Man.ก

The above quote, taken in the context of the movie, did make perfect sense. The movie dialog implied that the selfish desire to gain an unethical edge was the hook the experienced con man used to snare his victims or กpigeons.ก In the end, the victims fell for the con because they had a disregard for the Golden Rule!

Iกm bringing this up because the thinking implied by the quote doesn’t fit many of the offers the Internet Newbie will encounter while searching for a business guide.

You can be a good, honest and hard working person and still fall for many of the traps awaiting you in cyberspace! The most appealing target for the experienced Web con man, is the Newbieกs lack of experience and knowledge!

All over the Net there are offers constantly bombarding Newbies with the latest systems and applications; กnewก methods that will grow a business with a minimum effort!

Some of them are given fancy names: ‘the K15 System Will Make You Wealthy!ก or, กYou Have a Ground Floor Opportunity with GZAP, get in now because it won’t be available tomorrow….ก

The above offers should be investigated from heat to toe! Many of them are simply more of the same rehashed information aimed at Internet business Newbies.

One of the main reasons Internet Marketers continue coming up with so many new programs, applications and systems is known as กInternet Time.ก Internet products have a very short shelf life; what was the latest thing a year ago will now be old news!

That isn’t to say there aren’t good systems and technology. However, due diligence is a requirement to ascertain the value of any offer presented.

Take your time and look at the offer to examine it with a fine tooth comb! You should check out any buzzword filled business offer with extra caution!

Ask all the questions you need answered until you’re sure you understand what you’re getting into. If there are no straight answers to be had, perhaps you should reconsider.

About The Author

(C)2004 Francisco Aloy

Francisco Aloy is the author of กYes, I Want to Start My Internet Business Without Being SCAMMED!.ก He has an online business catering to the needs of the Newbie Net Entrepreneur. Visit his site to see more of Mr. Aloyกs articles.

http://www.newbiebusinessguide.com

[email protected]

This article was posted on December 18, 2004

by Francisco Aloy

What To Look For When Shopping For a SEO Specialis

What To Look For When Shopping For a SEO Specialist

by: Joe Balestrino

When, shopping for a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) company/specialist you need to be aware of a few things.

If someone offers you fast results they may be pulling your leg. If you aren’t listed on search engines the average time to be index takes around 4 weeks. Someone offering submissions in less then that is coning you. Websites that are already listed and are just being updated will have a faster result.

A guarantee isn’t always reinsurance. Just because a site states they can get you in the #1 spot doesn’t mean they can deliver. Or, they may have you listed under an obscure keyword or phrase. Most legitimate SEO’s will tell you no one can guarantee a top stop on all keywords and phrases. Search Engine optimization is not an exact science. Trail and error along with constant tweaking will help bring your site closer to your goal.

Most SEO’s should give you some information on where your site stands currently. You links, keywords, where you rank on major search engines etc.. Or, do one yourself. My article ขGoogle’s Helping handข show you free tools that can help you evaluate where you are on search engines. Don’t go into any SEO work blindly. Know where you stand before and after.

Price is never an indication of how good a service is. More isn’t always better.

Shop around try to get the most for your money, but be realistic. If it seems too good to be true then it may just be. Be prepared to shell out some cash. SEO is not cheap. You should think of SEO as advertising. It should be contestant as should all of your advertising efforts.

Ask questions! Do not be afraid to ask what will be done to increase your ranking. Most SEO’s will have no problem telling you what they will do. They may not want to reveal their whole SEO operation. But, they will give you some insight to what they will do. Talk to more then one SEO company. Compare what each has to say. Do some research on your own. Find out if these companies have been reported to the Better Business Bureau. If the company or persons have had any articles or reviews written about them. Ask around. Try to have some idea of the company or persons creditability.

A few additional things to keep in mind are:

Is SEO there main business or is it a sideline to other businesses. SEO is a full time job. Especially, keeping up with the constant changes. Do they have a specialist? Do they outsource? How much do they really know?

What are there view points on link farms and doorway pages? Will they do anything to get you links and traffic? Even though search engines frown on those practices.

Can they explain to you clearly how their plan of action? Are they looking to take small steps with you? Or, are they trying to sell you the biggest SEO package possible?

Follow this outline when you are searching for someone to optimize your site. In the end it will be worth it.

Joe Balestrino’s site is www.mrseo.com he offers affordable SEO, submissions and other articles on SEO and marketing. His other site www.jnbdesign.com offers affordable web design and free lifetime hosting.

About The Author

Joe Balestrino’s site is www.mrseo.com he offers affordable SEO, submissions and other articles on SEO and marketing. His other site www.jnbdesign.com offers affordable web design and free lifetime hosting.

This article was posted on April 11

by Joe Balestrino

How My Friend’s Poor Hygiene Exploded My Sales

How My Friend’s Poor Hygiene Exploded My Sales

by: Jason Tarasi

My friend had not had a bath in over three days, there where pizza boxes littered across his apartment, and a funky odor filled the room.

As I walked into his apartment, I quickly became disorientated and started to feel myself losing consciousness. I felt my eyes starting to roll back into my head, and staggered to the window to get a breath of fresh air.

กJohn,ก I mumbled to my usually hygienic friend, กwhat happened to you?ก

He then gave me a wry smile and his eyes became as large as Bill Gateกs bank account.

My friend led me over to the TV where he had on ขThe Home Shopping Network.ข

John needed to take some time off work to relax, but within three short days, had become a กHome Shoppingก junkie.

My normal, levelheaded friend had become hypnotized by one of marketingกs most powerful techniques: Time sensitive offers.

If he didn’t order กPeppi the singing fishก within the next 15 minutes, the offer would be gone forever.

The Yoda phone that exclaimed, กMay the force be with youก when it rang would disappear into a galaxy far far away if he didn’t act now. They only had 100 left in stock.

As I sat there watching my zombified friend order useless items he would never use, I decided I would apply this same technique to my own business.

I care deeply about all of my customers, so I wanted to make sure of two things:

My offers would only be for useful products and services.

The offers had to truly be time sensitive.

The results where astounding.

The first time sensitive offer I brought to my customers almost tripled my sales. I was immediately hooked.

Now I never make an offer unless it is time sensitive.

For my offers I use a customized script that keeps track of my orders or counts down the time left until the offer expires. When my product is sold out, or the offer has expired, the script then removes the order page.

I rarely make exceptions and extend the offer, unless someone had a problem ordering the product.

So how can you implement this strategy into your business?

To have a successful offer you should generally follow these two simple rules:

Make the offer truly special (give a discount, extra bonuses, etc.)

Make sure the offer is pulled when you say it will be.

I have tested 72, 48 and even 24hour offers with impressive results.

These kinds of offers usually pull much better than if I limit the offer to 2030 packages.

However, each list is different. So don’t be afraid to test various offers until you find the right formula for maximum sales.

The kiss of death, and quickest way to lose credibility with your customers, is to make an offer that insults their intelligence.

Don’t make a 48hour offer, then run it for a week, just to make extra sales.

Your customers will quickly catch on to this, and you will see your response rates fall drastically.

Treat your customers with respect, and they will return the favor by making your bank account balloon to new levels.

Copyright 2005 Jason Tarasi

About The Author

Jason Tarasi publishes the reciprocal links newsletter กElite Linksก

Learn HOW thousands of other Elite Links members generate FREE traffic and increase their search engine rankings by swapping links. Grab your free lifetime subscription now at: http://www.freeclassifiedlinks.com/enter

This article was posted on February 09

by Jason Tarasi

Scanner Review

Scanner Review

by: Blur Loterina

Are you having a hard time trying to decide on what kind of scanner to buy? Here are some scanner samples you can choose from.

There are different types of scanners. A flatbed scanner is used to convert any printed or reasonably flat material, such as photographs, into digital image. A document scanner is used to create digital records of a range of documents, especially for paper office documents. The film scanner enables you to scan film.

Canon CanoScan 8400F is a flatbed scanner with 3,200 dots per inch (dpi) optical resolution. It has four buttons located on the front part that automates some scanning function. The connection is via USB 2.0. It scans an actual area of 8.5 inch by 11.2 inch. Its transparency adaptor can scan one strip of mediumformat film. It offers two modes, simple and advanced. Of course, the advanced mode produces the better scan. For $150 you get a very quiet scanner. However, it does not have the ability to reproduce a long tonal scale and it only works with Windows XP.

Another flatbed scanner is the Epson Perfection 4870 PHOTO with specs that call for 4,870 dpi. It has a transparency adaptor that will scan 35 mm or medium format film, either negatives or slides. This one offers three modes, full auto mode, home mode and preview mode. The full auto mode is the simplest and easiest. The home mode offers you eight different types of originals and allows you to set your resolution and image type. The preview mode allows you to manipulate your image with few limited adjustments. It’s compatible with Kodak Digital ICE Technology. You get a fast scanner for only $450.

For $600, you can have a Microtek ScanMaker i900 with 5inch by 14inch scanning bed. This flatbed uses a dualscan technology for scanning film. It connects via FireWire or USB 2.0. It comes with ScanWizard Pro software and uses ICE technology, a very good tool for photographers.

Super Coolscan 5000 ED is a 4,000 dpi film scanner with a new light source and a new ED lens. It offers an 8bit mode and Scan Image Enhancement technology, and incorporates fourthgeneration ICE technology. This one can give you a clean scan for a price of $1,050.

If you need a scanner that will enable you to scan an old film, use the Microtek ArtixScan 120tf. This film scanner is similar to Nikon 9000 ED and can scan mediumformat film up to 6 cm by 9 cm. Only, it does not have the ICE technology. It has SilverFast software that offers smart removal defects (SRD). You can connect it through a Firewire or SCSI2.

Imacon Flextight 646 is a high performance machine that will give you a high quality scan for a high price of $9,995. It comes with FlexColor software and has no ICE technology. It requires the highest level of operator skill. This scanner picks up every flaw in your film.

In choosing a scanner, consider your budget and the features the scanner offers. Your scanned images will tell the tale.

About The Author

You may wonder why I write articles. Besides from the fact that it’s my job, I used to write short stories when I was younger. I think it would be helpful if I said I’m a big fan of Zach de la Rocha and Rage Against the Machine. This would explain my own views about a lot of things. Their songs were about national issues, politics and human rights. They support the American Indian Movement and Che Guevara, the face you see on tshirts. Not that it concerns me. I only like their music and idealism.

I like to read anything that contains words in the old English form, though I can’t understand it. You know, the King James Version of the Bible with words like thou, thy, thine, wilst, etc. The words used are different. The construction of the sentence is different, too, which makes sentences sound artistic. I also like gothic metal, a music genre, because most of the lyrics contain such words. It is not only the words that fascinate me; it’s the hidden meaning it contains. It’s like an abstract painting; you don’t get the real picture until you see through it.

I’m not an artist, I’m not a poet. I just love writing anything I want. I wasn’t born a genius, I just want to know and understand something I don’t. I like to find the difference between similar things. It’s like counting birthmarks on each identical twin.

For additional information and comments about the article you may log on to http://www.printingquotesonline.com

[email protected]

This article was posted on February 24

by Blur Loterina

PopUps Still Work. At Least For The Time Being

PopUps Still Work. At Least For The Time Being

by: Jason Blackston

Do you remember playing with the jackinthebox toy as a child? You knew that if you kept winding it up, eventually jack was going to burst out of the top and startle you!

Many of you found old jackinthebox an annoying toy and confined it to the toy box…..

Well, it reminds me of popups on the internet. Eventhough you know that when you get on the internet there is a good chance a popup will present itself, you always act surprised and somewhat violated.

But as irritating as they are, popups work. Most businesses are able to utilize pop ups for growing their list. This way they can market to you for years to come. Others actually make sales off of pop up offers.

Now, these days if you don’t want to deal with pop ups, you have the pop up blockers and stoppers. This pretty much remedies the situation if you don’t like multiple offers etc.

However, many people still don’t have any type of pop up blockers because they haven’t gotten around to purchasing it or because they actually want to view the pop up offers.

*Aggravating Pop Ups Mop Up!

With jackinthebox, jack always popped up. With pop ups, you can have multiple offers. Depending on the pop up software, you can have them pop up on entrance or on exit and even have them set on a time delay.

Plus, you can have them load on the front or behind the page. And even position them to the exact spot on the page where you desire.

**Remember when I said that pop up blockers and stoppers can pretty much be stopped these days?

Not so fast!!

Check out this article online at http://www.govisitors.com/jb/article4.html

After you get there youกll notice a pop up that flies onto the page.

Even if you have a pop up blocker set up on your computer, it shoudn’t stop it. You see, this pop up is built into the html page. This way when it loads, it does not open in a separate window. It is a part of the page and can not be stopped.

Maybe itกs sneaky, but it works….

The word on the street is that Pop Ups will soon be done away with. Believe me, this will not hurt my feelings in the least! They tend to annoy me also. However, until then, you can continue to reap the benefits of utilizing pop ups for your business!

About The Author

Turn website visitors into paying customers! Free Epackage at http://www.govisitors.com/epackage.html. Take Advantage of Pure Internet Marketing Genius at GoVisitors.comกs Article Library http://www.govisitors.com/articles.html

[email protected]

This article was posted on December 12, 2003

by Jason Blackston

Optimizing for Visitors not Search Engines

Optimizing for Visitors not Search Engines

by: Michael Medeiros

Most people feel that optimizing is to target the search engines alone. In my opinion, this is not the only case. Optimization requires a balance of traffic enhancements and a user friendly atmosphere that provides clear navigation. Most will agree it would be much better to have people accept offerings from a Site, rather than masses of people who do nothing. Here are some general tips and thought to make pages userfriendly.
Focus on the Offerings
Is something being offered? Make it clear for people to see what is being offered. Give an eye catching call to action for your offers. For example, if you’re a Real Estate Agent offering, ขFree CMA’s,ข make it clear for people to see the offer. Use font styles or colors to give the offers prominence over the rest of the text. Give links to offers a focal point on the page. This can be done by centering the offers or putting them on top of menus.
Keep your pages concise. Many search engine optimization programs and professionals suggest keeping your pages under 750 words. In my opinion, this is good for visitor optimization as well. Focus your page on the topic at hand. As in the example above, if someone clicks a link that reads, ขFree CMA,ข the next page should be about free CMA’s. Don’t waste valuable space describing a CMA. Give a concise explanation, and then a call to action.
Keep your pages fast
In addition to pages loading fast, they should be fast at delivering information. Consider why people are surfing the Internet. In my opinion, the internet is used for finding and retrieving information. Because of this, pages need to be concise. If I follow a link that says, ขAvailable widgets,ข that’s what I want to see on the next page, front and center. I want to find the information I am looking for quickly and easily.
Don’t overcrowd the subpages. While your front page is bound to have a variety of topics and links, your subpages should be concise. I often come across pages that focus on several topics. In my opinion this is a bad technique. Make two pages instead of one page with two topics. This helps establish fast information retrieval.
Use Headings for clear navigation
Headings are recognized by the search engines and they provide clear navigation. Using headings will give pages an outline format. This allows people who browse your pages to quickly find the information that is relevant to their needs.
Heading tags in HTML start with H1 and range through H6. In my opinion, you should only have one H1 tag on a page. This tag should describe the overall premise of the entire page. If there are multiple subheadings, use H2 tags. If there are additional subheadings, use the H3 tags and so forth. You can also use text bolding to call attention. Try to scatter your keywords throughout the headings so search engines will know what the page focuses on, but keep it userfriendly.
Using colors
Make it easy for people to read the text on the Webpage. Designers often get the urge to make their websites appear unique. Uniqueness is good, but hard to read text is bad. I strongly urge the use of colors to make different aspects of a page stand out. However, you should ensure that there is enough contrast to make the text standout. Pages that are hard to read or pages that have hidden text, loose credibility. This gives the impression of deception and is overall frustrating. Unless your site uses an overwhelming amount of Audio, make sure people can read the page.
Making your pages user friendly has many significant benefits. Your pages should achieve their goal with a limited amount of traffic. Surfers are more likely to bookmark the site. This will establish a user base and generate a larger audience as time progresses. Most importantly, other webmasters are more likely to put links to your Website.

About The Author

Michael Medeiros is the owner of Mjmls.com. Mjmls offers free advertising for the United States.

[email protected]

This article was posted on June 04, 2004

by Michael Medeiros

Emarketplaces from Sellerกs Perspective

Emarketplaces from Sellerกs Perspective

by: Nowshade Kabir

What is an Emarketplace anyway?

Emarketplace is a business to business web based venue, where buyers and sellers meet online, generate business leads and conduct business transactions. The emarketplace features are tailored in a manner so that a large numbers of buyers and suppliers can be serviced as a community. A participant of an Emarketplace can be a buyer, a seller or both. Unlike an Edistribution portal which is oriented to assist suppliers selling their products or an Eprocurement system which is focused on buyers solely, an Emarketplace is a platform which caters buyers and sellers equally. As a participant of an Emarketplace you are able to explore buying and selling opportunities, make sales offers and buy products and services, add products and services to aggregated ecatalog and use numerous other value added features.

Emarketplaces are tremendously beneficial to all businesses that decide to participate in them. However, the potential benefits that a company can accrue from an Emarketplace are directly proportional to the factor — how heavily the company uses the offered features of that Emarketplace. Naturally, a company that makes emarketplace as its primary sales channel and integrates its sales resources to supply chain solutions of the Emarketplace avail more in sales and administrative overhead cost savings, reduced paper work, better customer service, reduced product distribution costs and online sales growth than a seasonal user of the emarketplace.

A committed participant of an Emarketplace can benefit from and improve two primary factors of company productivity: Revenue Growth and Cost Savings.

Revenue Growth

Expand Customer Base

A seller, once registered with an Emarketplace, gets immediate access to a large community of prospective buyers of his products or services.

Revenue Increase from Existing Clients

Existing clients get faster and easier access to product information, quicker response to their requests, get better customer support and buy products online.

Revenue Increase from Value Added Services

Once an Emarketplace is set as primary sales channel, freed resources can be used to create more value added services for clients. Some of the services that the Emarketplace offers also can be utilized to generate more value.

Cost Savings

Order Processing Cost

The supply chain solutions of Emarketplace allow sellers to reduce order processing cost significantly. Studies show that cost of processing a purchase order can be reduced from US$ 70 down to US$ 6 only.

Sales and support costs

By automating sales and customer support processes companies can reduce over head costs over 2530% easily.

Inventory keeping costs

Clearer visibility and forecasting ability allow companies considerably reduce inventory keeping costs.

Most executives agree that primary reason why they feel that the companies should participate in Emarketplace is its ability to streamline supply chain mechanism. Many inherent inefficiencies of supply chain process can be eliminated thanks to integrated to emarketplaces supply chain solutions.

What sellers have to do in order to participate in Emarketplaces and reap numerous benefits that it can provide?

As most of the administrative and operational tasks are done automatically by the emarketplaces, participation in them is not a difficult process.

These are the basic steps that a seller must take to participate in an Emarketplace:

Register

Registration might be an easy job of filling up a form. It is much better to take some initial preparations before doing this.

Choose a good login name: your login can be used by the Emarketplace to give you subdomain name, i.e. login.emarketplace_name.com.

Profile: A wellwritten profile increases company image.

Logo: your logo helps you brand your company.

Add your products or services to Ecatalog

Most Emarketplaces furnish with easy to use forms or wizards for sellers to add their products to Ecatalog. As the product and service classification used in the Ecatalogs often is an industry standard, it is important to spend some times to find the perfect subcategories for your products or services. If you have any doubt contact the customer support of the Emarketplace. Fill up as many given fields are there for a product as you can. The more information buyer gets right away the faster his buying decision would be.

Create offers

Most sophisticated Emarketplaces have various sales platforms apart from the Ecatalog inclusion. Make general sales offers, time sensitive offers (hot offers – with offer expiry dates) and auction offers of your products and services. Determine the terms and methods of price, payment and shipment.

Decide how you will handle portions of the supply chain that you have to do offline.

Although, most of the supply chain process can be done online, not all emarketplace offer a complete end to end solution. You also have to figure out what part of your back office can be integrated to the Emarketplace.

About The Author

Nowshade Kabir, Ph.D., is the founder, primary developer and present CEO, of Rusbiz.com, a global business to business ecommerce portal with feature like storefronts, aggregated catalog, emarketplace, trade leads, internal messaging system supply chain solutions, etc. With a doctorate in Information Technology, Dr. Kabir has worked an advisor to government projects and has over 12 years experience in International Trade. An author of many B2B and business related articles; he publishes a biweekly Ezine for online business community. You can subscribe to his newsletter free of charge from http://www.rusbiz.com.

[email protected]

This article was posted on July 11, 2003

by Nowshade Kabir

How to Avoid the Marketing Blues with Your Offers

How to Avoid the Marketing Blues with Your Offers

by: Charlie Cook

กHereกs a little tip I would like to relate Big fish bites if ya got good bait.ก

To attract more prospects and clients, you need what Taj Mahal calls กgood baitก in his song the Fishin Blues. One of the biggest mistakes you can make, as a small business owner, is forgetting to use good bait in the form of your offers. Whether you use direct mail, a web site or media advertising to market your business, the success of your marketing depends on whether you provide prospects with compelling offers.

Your offers motivate prospects and clients to visit your web site, read your marketing materials, contact you and buy your services and products. Without the right offer you won’t attract big fish or as many fish as youกd like.

What bait are you using to motivate your target market to:

Visit your web site?

Sign up for your free newsletter?

Buy your products and services?

How many new prospects per week are your offers attracting?

Which Offers Work Best?

Your offer needs to be something that your target market wants. You wouldn’t use a worm to catch a whale or a safety pin to catch a tuna. Offer your target market something they can’t refuse. Everybody likes to get something for free, whether itกs an article, guide, ebook, report, consultation, a demonstration, offer of membership or added services. If your offer helps your target market solve a common problem, it will attract more prospects and clients.

Whether or not it is free your offer needs to provide value. Prospects will judge the quality of your products and services based on your offer. If you give away a subscription to a newsletter, follow up with useful content and substantive ideas your prospects can use. Give them something that is so good they will want more.

Attracting Prospects

My target market is service professionals and business owners. I offer a 15 page free marketing guide to prompt people to give me their contact information so I can market to them in the future. My target market, want to attract more clients, want ideas to help them. A 15 page marketing guide is something that tens of thousands of people have found to be irresistible. Each week this simple offer pulls in hundreds of new prospects.

You too can come up with an offer to prompt more prospects to contact you. If you’re a lawyer you could offer a report on the ‘the 10 Biggest Legal Mistakes Homeowners Makeก. If you’re a massage therapist you could offer a guide to ก5 Ways to Avoid Damaging Back Pain.ก If you provide an online service, you could offer a free or almost free onemonth trial.

Clarify Value

People buy your products and services based on their perception of value. Whether you are charging five dollars or five thousand, your prospects need to be convinced that the benefits you provide will outweigh the cost. Too often service professionals and business owners rush to quote a price, trying to make the sale before clarifying the value to buyers.

To stimulate sales place your offer in the context of your target marketกs concerns. Once youกve clarified how your product or service meets their concerns the value of your offer will be apparent.

Use Problem Solving Offers

People don’t buy your products or services because youกve been in the business for decades, or because your ebooks are well written or designed to please the eye. People buy your products and services because they solve a problem.

Use Additional Incentives Carefully

In their rush to sell their products and services some small business owners offer huge discounts or bundle free services. Discounting and bundling can work but make sure you’re not undermining prospects’ perception of the value of your products and services or your profits.

Key Elements of Your Offer

Creating a compelling offer is an art and involves blending the following items together to create a sentence or two which will move people to take action, whether it is contacting you or making an immediate purchase.

Include the following items to create an offer that helps sell:

Name What you are selling

Benefit The problem it solves

Credibility Why they should buy from you

Value How useful it will be to them

Guarantee Your promise to them

Motivation to act A reason to take advantage of your offer today.

If you want to catch big fish, you need good bait. To increase your catch, improve your offers and youกll be reeling in many more new prospects and clients.

2004 © In Mind Communications, LLC. All rights reserved.

About The Author

The author, Charlie Cook, helps service professionals and small business owners attract more clients and be more successful. Sign up to receive the Free Marketing Guide, ก7 Steps to Grow Your Businessก and the กMore Businessก newsletter, full of practical tips you can use at http://www.charliecook.net

[email protected]

This article was posted on March 03, 2004

by Charlie Cook

7 Key Ingredients for Rock Solid Website Hosting

7 Key Ingredients for Rock Solid Website Hosting

by: Michael Turner

Every website needs a great web host, however when you are looking online for a host you may be overwhelmed with the wide variety available ranging from absolutely free to relatively expensive. How do you know what you need and what is the best choice? The answer to this depends on your business and whether you will have a lot of business or none at all, however you always want to have more space than you think you will need as well as the following options for a great web host.

Ingredient #1 24/7 Support

When choosing a web hosting company you definitely want to make sure that they have 24/7 support. The reason for this is if you have a problem with your website, you need to be able to talk to someone and have them fix it immediately. As long as the host offers this type of support it should not be a problem. If they don’t, you might wait several days with your website down and not be able to contact anyone. Think of the customers you will be missing and all of the lost sales youกll suffer.

Ingredient #2 Large Bandwidth

You want to make sure your web host offers a generous amount of bandwidth in order to support your website and ensure it loads as quickly as possible. The more bandwidth means the more information that is carried and the quicker your page opens. So, make sure you have a web host with plenty of bandwidth to support your site.

Ingredient #3 Excessive Storage Space

Regardless of whether you need it now or not you want a web host that offers plenty of storage space in case you do need it. Give yourself some growing room.

Ingredient #4 Email

When you have a web host as well as URL you will also want to have your own email that ties into your company name. Find a web host that offers this as well. Most do, but some might trick you with fine print so be careful.

Ingredient #5 Additional Domains

You may only have one domain name today, but the future holds all kinds of possibilities. Be sure you can add additional domain names if you need to.

Ingredient #6 Domain Parking

If you have a domain name, but do not have your own name server then you will certainly want a web host that will allow you to store or ขparkข your domain name on their server for your domain to remain valid for an extended period of time.

Ingredient #7 Tools to Manage your Site

While you have found a web host that meets all of your needs, be sure you also have a tool box that will help you manage your site easily and whenever you want. This is really important for you to be able to do, especially if you need to change something like prices, or other important information.

About The Author

Michael Turner shows you exactly how to increase web site traffic in his free 7 part miniseries. Grab it today at http://www.powertraffictactics.com/.

[email protected]

This article was posted on August 05

by Michael Turner