How Online College Classes Work

How Online College Classes Work

by: Timothy D. Arnold

Itกs no secret that more and more people are looking to the internet for a convenient way to further their education. Online classes are a great way to obtain an accredited college degree from home and continue to work a full time job. Many times a student can attend classes from their computer and schedule those classes around their job. Some schools allow the student to login to a class at their convenience. Imagine taking a class from the comfort of your own home and not having to deal with parking problems, child care, lunch, or transportation expenses.

You can also get an online degree from top, accredited online colleges and online schools that may not be available in your local area. An online education is also a great option for nontraditional students, the handicapped, people in remote areas, and people with a fulltime job or a schedule that doesn’t allow for a traditional education.

Distance education can be delivered in several ways. We will examine two of the many ways education can be delivered via the internet.

One of the most common is through live media. In this type of online classroom, students typically login to a chat room type environment that allows not only for text chat but also live audio chat, similar to many of the popular ขinstant messagingข programs that are widely used today. The lecture can be heard through the computer speakers or through a set of headphones. The students communicate with the teacher and other students by text chat or simply by talking into a PC microphone. The teacher can also allow students to view him/her in a smaller window on the monitor via a webcam. The lecture can also be recorded and posted to the school website to allow students to listen to the lecture and review the material at a later time according to their schedule, and as many times as necessary. This type of online class makes it necessary to be at the computer at a scheduled time each day.

One advantage to this type of online college classroom environment is the student receives live instruction with structured classes. It is well known that students working within in a structured setting have a higher probability of success of finishing their degree. An obvious disadvantage would be lack of scheduling flexibility.

Another variation of the online classroom setting involves text messages such as email and message boards. Each class may share a group mailbox or a message board system, which becomes the กelectronic classroomก. The instructor generally posts lectures on the topic of study, posts the assignments, and provides discussion questions related to the topic. The student can view lectures, notes from the instructor and other students, and assigned projects. The student can also post messages or questions to the instructor and other students.

One advantage of this system is 24 hour access to course materials and the ability to work at oneกs own pace without regard to scheduling. A disadvantage would be lack of direct contact with the instructor.

In both scenarios students are expected to logon to the class site a certain number of days per week. Students also can contact the instructor via email to ask questions or receive answers. When assignments are due, students send them to the instructor online, where they are graded and returned. Students may also have access to their individual performance reports by logging in to a website where that information is posted. Test may also be taken online. Typically, online classes last five to six weeks.

Although the degree of difficulty is the same for the online classroom as in a traditional setting, the internet has broken down many barriers for people wanting to obtain higher education.

About The Author

Timothy D. Arnold has recruited college students for http://www.acit.com and also recruits students via his online college portal at http://www.allcollegedegrees.com

This article was posted on February 09

by Timothy D. Arnold

How to Determine Good Online Business

How to Determine Good Online Business

by: Mira Marsellia

Many people would like to start an online business, but sometimes get confused by so many offering letter which contained with hoax and seemed like scam things.

If you like to determine whether an online business is reputable one and do will give you potential income that works, you must spot in their website the things hereunder.

Good online business must have YES answer for this following question :

Is there any real address and real people behind the business?

Do you think they have good product not only for you but for MOST of people that will make people buy again and again?

Do they provide a trustworthed payment method for the transactions?

Do they have good marketing kit and representative tools for you ?

Do they have continuous education and training program?

Do they provide you with reasonable pay plan and better comission payment method?

If thereกs any representative sending you offering letter, also note for the alarm sign in this kind of letter:

Look at the title text on email subject. Do you think the email was originally written by the person who sent it to you?

This is NOT SPAM or This is NOT HOAX in title, is a phrases in title which indicated an unsolicited email indeed.

No valid reference or link to outside resource could give you more confirmation

Claims for some business which absurd and much exaggerate, and you never heard before from legitimete sources.

The language in those kind of letter give you less information and most of them geared to persuade you.

Many of them using excessive CAPITALS and EXCLAMATION marks and using extreme phrases.

Good email business letter always provide you with link to stop receive offering letter from them and the link to unsubscribe you from their database.

A representative of real business opprotunity will like to provide you with their real name, phone number, and valid address.

To find more about determining good online business, read here http://fantasticfree.blogspot.com

About The Author

Mira Marsellia is an Internet marketer and independent representative for Financial Freedom Society Inc and member of Elite Team. Subscribe here and you can get 30 days Free Training to success in internet business.

[email protected]

This article was posted on December 07, 2004

by Mira Marsellia

Search Engine Marketing 101: What Search Engines S

Search Engine Marketing 101: What Search Engines See When They Visit Your Web Site

by: Robin Nobles

If you have a Web site, have you ever wondered what a search engine sees when it visits your site to add the site to its index? Do you know that it doesn’t see the beautiful graphics or the fancy Web design? Do you know that it only sees the source code, or the กskeletonก of your Web site?

Do you realize that knowing this little tidbit of information and doing something about it can make a huge difference in your search engine rankings and, ultimately, the success of your online business?

One very important thing that you need to remember is: the search engines like simplicity. The simpler your Web site is, the easier it is for the engine to determine what your Web site is about. And, if the search engine can determine exactly what your Web site is about, you have a better chance at top rankings under the keyword phrases that are important for your online business.

Letกs look at this concept in action with a page I recently created for one of my online businesses: Search Engine Workshops.

http://www.searchengineworkshops.com/articles/searchengineseminars.html

As you can see, itกs a very plain, simple page that was not created to be the กmainก or กhomeก page of a Web site. Rather, it was created to pull in traffic through the keyword phrase, กsearch engine seminars.ก

What I really want you to see is the source code of the page. So, when viewing the page, click on View on the top menu bar, then Source or Source Code.

The most important part of a Web page is what appears at the very top of the page. Why? Because a search engine starts at the top of the page and begins moving down as it indexes.

So, what appears in the section of your Web page is very important, because the section is at the top of the page.

Letกs look at the section of the source code:

Search Engine Seminarsyour path to success on the Web!

There are only three tags in the section of this Web page: the title tag, the keyword META tag, and the description META tag. Because the title tag is in the section, and because of the importance that most engines place on the tag, it is considered one of the most important tags on your page, so it should always be the first tag in the section.

Notice that in the title and keyword META tag, the important keyword phrase (search engine seminars) appears as the first words in the tag. In the description META tag, the keyword phrase is still toward the beginning of the tag, as opposed to the end.

In other words, where you place your keyword phrase in the tags and content of your page is important. If you place your keyword phrase toward the beginning of all of your important tags and toward the beginning of the contents, you’re กprovingก to the engines that the page is really about that particular topic.

Iกve mentioned one reason why the title tag is important, but thereกs another reason too. The title tag is important because it almost always appears as the title of the site in the search engine results. Your description META tag may appear in the search engine results as well and is considered important by the some of the engines. So, when you create your title and description tags, remember two things: put your keyword phrase toward the beginning of the tags, and make the tags captivating and designed to pull in traffic.

Think of it this way. If your site is #10 in the search engine rankings, but if the sites above yours haven’t gone to the trouble to create appealing titles and descriptions, a search engine user may skip over those sites to visit yours.

Now, letกs go back to the source code. Look for this tag, which isn’t far from the tag:

This is the image, or graphics, tag for the Search Engine Workshops banner that appears at the very top of the page. Notice that the engine doesn’t กseeก the graphic itself. It sees the name of the graphic (banner3.jpg), and it sees the ALT text that describes the image. It sees the width and height of the graphic. But, it doesn’t see the graphic itself. So, the engine doesn’t know that the graphic says, กSearch Engine Workshops.ก

Next, look for this tag, which directly follows the image tag:

Search Engine Seminars

An tag is a heading tag, and heading tags are very important to a Web page. Try to put a heading tag at the very top of your page, if at all possible, and use your important keyword phrase in that heading tag. When you look back at my actual Web page, do you see the words กSearch Engine Seminarsก right under the graphic? Thatกs the heading tag.

Now, look for this tag in the source code:

Is your Web site achieving the success that. . .

This is where the contents of the Web page begin. Look on the actual Web page and find the text: กIs your Web site achieving the success that . . .ก Notice that the keyword phrase (search engine seminars) appears in the first paragraph.

In other words, with all of these tags and the placement of our keyword phrase in the pageกs contents, we’re proving to the engines that the page is really about กsearch engine seminars.ก

So, letกs visit your site on the Web. View the source code. Whatกs in the section? Are your title and description tags using the keyword phrase thatกs important for that particular page? Are your title and description tags captivating and designed to pull in traffic? Each page of your site should have different title and description tags, and those tags should be based on the focus of that page what that page is really about: in other words, its keyword phrase.

How many graphics do you have before the actual contents of your site? If you have a lot of graphics, navigation bars, or buttons before the contents of your page, the engine has to sort through all of that source code before it gets to the actual keyword containing content.

Does your page contain lengthy JavaScript or other code that pushes the important contents toward the bottom of the page? If so, it could be hindering your chances at top rankings.

Are you using a heading tag that contains your important keyword phrase toward the very top of your page? Is your keyword phrase used in the first paragraph of the page? Is it used in several places throughout the page?

Look back at my page. Notice that the keyword phrase, search engine seminars, is used as link text to describe several links. Are you using your keyword phrase to describe links that are leaving the page? If not, try to do so.

Study your own site carefully, and apply these guidelines to your pages.

Doing whatever you can to push your important keyword phrase toward the top of the page and toward the beginning of your tags is the first step toward having a successful Web site thatกs ranked in the top of the search engine rankings.

If you would like to learn more about how to achieve top search engine rankings, visit: http://www.searchengineworkshops.com/articles.html

Or, sign up for online training at: http://www.onlinewebtraining.com/courses.html or 3day search engine marketing workshops at: http://www.searchengineworkshops.com.

About The Author

Robin Nobles, Director of Training, Academy of Web Specialists, has trained several thousand people in her online search engine marketing (http://www.academywebspecialists.com) training programs. Visit the Academyกs training site to learn more (http://www.onlinewebtraining.com). She also teaches 3day handson search engine marketing workshops in locations across the globe with Search Engine Workshops (http://www.searchengineworkshops.com).

Copyright 2002 Robin Nobles. All rights reserved.

[email protected]

This article was posted on August 18, 2002

by Robin Nobles

Sales As A Positive Experience

Sales As A Positive Experience

by: Don Osborne

No matter what your age or stage in life, some words come with preconceived meaning. กSalesก is one of them. For most people, it means being put in a position to have to buy something you don’t want at a price you can’t afford. Therefore, how do you conduct a critical element of the small business marketing process without incurring the negative impact of the word กsalesก?

It starts with you. Check your own attitude about the word. What does กsalesก mean to you? How do you feel when you’re the one being sold? How much of that feeling do you transfer to the experience you’re now being asked to conduct as a small business owner?

Next, putting aside any of your own negative feelings, what exactly are you offering your potential customers whatกs in it for them? How you answer this question is the starting point for a กPositive Experienceก for your potential customer. When a person really understands the pain youกll helped them relieve or the joy youกll help them experience as a result of your product or service, theyกll see your กsalesก process as a positive experience.

So, whatกs the lesson to be learned? Develop a positive, personal understanding about your own products and services. Determine what you’re selling in terms of itกs value to the potential customer. Present that value in a solutions manner. Result: youกll turn your sales process into a Positive Experience for both you and your customer.

กLearn & Doก Action Steps:

1. Write a 3 5 sentence description of how you feel when you’re the customer?

2. Select the product or service you’re most passionate about. List 5 incentives with matching features and benefits you feel have a high value to your customer.

3. Role play with a trusted friend the perfect, interactive presentation of the product or service youกve selected.

About The Author

Don Osborne is the Author/Publisher of THE PROFIT PUZZLE A Free Small Business Course http://www.ProfitPuzzle.com

[email protected]

This article was posted on March 29, 2004

by Don Osborne

A Simple Ebay Money Making Trick Revealed!

A Simple Ebay Money Making Trick Revealed!

by: Dayne Herren

Let me guess, you hear of all these people making thousands if not millions on eBay and you are just completely baffled as to how they do it. Well, most of these people either sell high ticket items or sell hundreds and hundreds of specific กhotก items.

As you may know, finding items to sell on eBay can be tough and most of all, it takes time. You have to search through junk at garage sales and even thrift stores.

But what Iกm about to reveal to you will be an easy way for you to make some extra cash on eBay. It may even be enough to pay your mortgage or car payment. And best of all, it is very simple. You don’t even have to search your local garage sale or flea market for that hidden treasure to sell on eBay.

So here is what you do. First of all, you have to find a market on eBay that is buying. Take a look at expired auctions or current hot auctions. Once you find a hot subject, write up a 35 page report that gives solid content on that subject. If it solves a type of problem or explains กhow toก do something, even better. Sell your report on eBay for something around $2.99 to $5.99. Be sure to make your listing keyword rich so it gets viewed but the right audience.

Now, here is the part that may earn you even MORE money AFTER the sale of your report. If you haven’t heard of กaffiliate marketingก, then you are missing out! In a nutshell, affiliate marketing means that you sell someone elses product, and you get a percentage of the sale. There are multiple places you can sign up to start promoting other peoples products. A couple big ones that come to mind are cj.com, Linkshare.com, Clickbank.com and even Amazon.com. When you sign up, you find a product you want to promote, and then you you can pick either text links or banner ads to promote the product. When someone buy from that link or ad, you get paid. Plain and simple.

If you really want to make SERIOUS money on affiliate products, I would highly recommend you pick up your own copy of Rosalind Gardnerกs Super Affiliate Handbook. She makes over $400,000 a year just by selling other peoples products! She will show you exactly what to do to make great money. Go to http://dayne.us/affiliatehandbook.html and grab your copy.

The key to making more money off your report is to make sure you put in affiliate links within your report. I wouldn’t use more than two. I would advise using text links, that way you can blend them within the report text. Once you create your text links, they will be long, so go to www.tinyurl.com. This is a great site that can shorten the link for you.

Once you have your affiliate links shortened, blend them in within your report and hype them up a bit to promote the sale. But don’t overdue it. If you push it too much, people will realize that you are just trying to make a sale.

Lastly, when your report is complete with content and links, make sure you put in PDF format. If you don’t want to write the report yourself, just go to Elance.com and find someone who will write it for you. For a small report, it should only cost you around $20$40. Remeber, you can sell this report over and over again on eBay and you have exclusive rights to it!

Thatกs it! Now, you have the opportunity to make $5.99 from one sale on eBay and maybe even MORE with your affiliate links…and you didn’t even have to go hunting for items to sell! Just think if you get 10 reports selling on eBay. The profit potential can be huge!

About The Author

Learn how you can make THOUSANDS of dollars a month by selling other peoples products at http://dayne.us/affiliatehandbook.html.

Dayne Herren is a freelance artist, writer, and online marketer.

This article was posted on April 20

by Dayne Herren

THREE ways You can Use the Ezines to Increase Your

THREE ways You can Use the Ezines to Increase Your Sales

by: Radhika Venkata

***1. FIRST PROMOTIONAL METHOD: Write ezine articles and submit to ezine publishers

Writing ezine articles is one of the three best promotional methods that Iกd ever know. (search engines and free ebooks are other two in my experience). Ofcourse your results may be different.

Collect email addresses of ezine publishers that are willing to receive articles on certain topics.

http://www.ezinelocater.com/

http://www.webmasterscentral.com/Ezine_Directory/index.shtml

Search the database on these web sites and collect the email addresses of ezine publishers who are willing to receive your articles. If you have a mailing list manager or autoresponder software, you can import them to your software. Seperate the publishers emails based on the article topics they want to receive.

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

You can send your article(s) to these publishers at certain interval like a month or two. DON’t forget to include a thankyou note for their time.

***2. SECOND PROMOTIONAL METHOD: Joint ventures with ezine publishers

Follow กWin and winก theory. If ezine publishers get something from the joint venture proposal sure they are gonna agree to your proposal. For example you have an affiliate program for your product, you can ask the ezine publishers to join in your affiliate program and send the advertisement to their subscribers with their affiliate link.

Or publish a free ebook with your product and relevant articles and offer it to subscribers of ezines. So ezine publishers can give away the free ebook to their subscribers (remember, ezine publishers now offering free ebooks to subscribers for signups). So you can use innovative methods to approach ezine publishers.

***3. THIRD PROMOTIONAL METHOD: Buying ezine ad space

Sometimes you sign up for an ezine, publishers offer you free ad that run in one or two issues. Or if you join an ezine coop, you will get to publish some free ads in your ezine inexchange of your free ads. Or you can buy cheap ads like $2 dollar ads. Beleive me. I experimented with all those. Not even got reasonable click through rate.

Few tips in selecting correct ezine for buying ad space: (Afterall you are spending money from your pocket. So spend sometime in researching that ezine)

=Choose the ezine carefully that related to your product.

=Subscribe to that ezine atleast few months. See how the ads are being placed.

=Check the number of subscribers, ad placements, price etc. But remember, It is the click through ratio that is important, not the number of subscribers. Ezine lists with double optin supposed to be with loyal subscribers.

=Always track your results of an advertisement. More on ad tracking http://www.webmasterscentral.com/wprofits/tracking.shtml

=Check if the ezine is published on the web simultaneously. Because some ezine publishers will send their ezines through emails and also publish them on their web sites. This will be an advantage for you as your ad will be placed on the web and will pull continuous visitors.

=Placement of ads: Top ads certainly pull more results than bottom ones.

=Writing good headline: Writing a good headline is very important to pull the reader in to the ad. No matter where the ad is placed, attractive headline always matters.

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 April 10, 2004

by Radhika Venkata

Top 5 Tips for Frustrated Affiliate Program Market

Top 5 Tips for Frustrated Affiliate Program Marketers

by: Isaiah Hull

Do you go through affiliate programs like most people go through pairs of socks? Many Internet marketers do. In fact, 97% of all Internet marketers never make a single cent advertising opportunities on the Internet. They jump from one opportunity to the next and never see results. If you want to break free from this cycle of failure if you want to earn a living off of your Internet venturescontinue reading. I will tell you exactly how you can earn money from any legitimate affiliate program.

In order to get the most information from what I am about to explain to you, you must accept that these methods are not intended to be กsecrets.ก These are scientificallyproven, bestpractice methods that all top marketers use. If you want results, you will have to do and continue to do the following five things:

1. Know your product. Do not advertise for a product or affiliate program that you are not currently using. I cannot even count the amount of affiliate programs and product offers I have rejected immediately from people who know very little about what they are actually promoting. If you want to make money selling a product or service, you have to use it, understand it, and be able to convince your prospects that they should own it. If you yourself do not believe in it because you have not even tried itthen you will have a hard time convincing anyone else it is worthwhile.

2. Know your field. You must continually become more knowledgeable about the market in which you are selling your product or service. For instance, I try to read at least 50 pages on Internet marketing each day to complement the marketing I do. This keeps me learning about my field. The best part about this is that you can do it without spending any money at all. The Internet is loaded with free content sites where you can find free ebooks and special reports on any subject. The Internet is also loaded with affiliate program promoters who are outselling you. Use google to find these sites and then reverse engineer thempick apart the source code, page setup, and content layout to find out how you can become more like your competition who is outselling you.

3. Focus your efforts and limit your innovation. As much as กlimiting your innovationก may go against your business instincts, it is an absolute must with a limited marketing budget. Figure out what works for you scientifically by measuring your advertising results. When you find something that works, stick with it. If you are getting traffic from reciprocal links, continue to build them. If you are getting constant signups from your newsletter, improve your newsletter and order more leads. Do not stray far from your original plan. Preset the amount of innovative ideas you want to try out each night, but center your marketing efforts around getting better results from methods that have already worked for you.

4. Spend money wisely. The Internet is loaded with scams and bad information. It is really easy to be tricked into blowing money on กget rich quickก schemes and information that you can find in free resources. I personally have spent thousands of dollars needlessly. But do not get me wrong; I am not saying there are no legitimate affiliate promotion services or information products out there: I am saying that the vast majority of them do not work as well as they say they do. So hold onto your cash. When you find a product that multiple people have personally recommended to you, then consider buying it. Otherwise, conserve your cash for purchasing services or products that will produce hard, definite results, such as email leads for your newsletter or phone leads you can contact personally to promote your program.

5. Remember that your success is dependent on your choices and your work alone. If you get upset about not becoming successful with a specific affiliate program, do not blame the programblame yourself. Do a thorough analysis of what you could be doing better and how you could be making quantitative progress every single day. There are people who do not pay any money at all for promotional services and yet are still able to make a living just from using free tools on the Internet. If they can do it, there is no reason at all why you cannot. Joining a marketing group or forum in your field will help you realize this reality. Seeing and talking to people who are succeeding in your field will remind you that it is entirely possible to make money online without having a million dollars to begin with.

While there are some กsecretsก to getting more signups and site visitors, the bigger part of affiliate program marketing is following a sound business plan. If you keep the five concepts I have listed above central to your marketing campaign, you will not fail. But, if you continue to market sporadicallyswitching from product to product and method to methodyou will never break out of that 97% who never make money.

Copyright 2004 Isaiah Hull

About The Author

Isaiah Hull publishes Home Business Tips, a fresh and informative newsletter that focuses on building successful internet businesses and promoting affiliate programs. Stop by http://www.workathomerightnow.net or send a blank email to mailto:workathomerightnow.com to receive a yearกs subscription for free.

This article was posted on September 26, 2004

by Isaiah Hull

The Copyright Debate and RSS

The Copyright Debate and RSS

by: S. Housley

RSS is commonly defined as really simple syndication. So, this means that any material contained in a feed is available for syndication, right? Well no, not exactly. It means that the content contained in an RSS feed is in a format that is syndication friendly, if the copyright holder allows for syndication. Offering a feed for syndication does not in fact grant any legal rights to anyone to reuse the feeds content beyond what the Copyright laws grant as Fair Use.

In practice, while your feed might legally be protected, you could literally spend weeks attempting to protect the contents of your feed. Legal gray areas are introduced with Search Engines indexing feeds and RSS Feed Directories including copywritten feeds, in their categorized directories. How do you distinguish between a legitimate search engine, RSS directory and someone simply reproducing the contents of a feed for personal gain? Legally how can you defend against one and not the other?

One can ask whether it is legally is it wrong to reproduce content in a feed. Morally is it wrong? Does the site have a purpose or value outside of the syndicated content? Is the aggregation of topic specific feeds in itself a value?

If you use the feeds for content and label the site a directory does that make it any more legal? What about personal web aggregators? If it is for personal use,is it OK?

Take a look at the following topic specific feed directories:

Financial Investing http://www.financeinvesting.com

or

Security Protection http://www.securityprotection.net

One could argue that the above sites do in fact provide value, aggregating and categorizing related topic specific feeds in a single location. In fact those in the security sector of the finance arena might find the above sites of significant value but what of the content creators?

Laws and Technology Collide

Most people publishing content via RSS support republication of feeds. Because the technology is fairly new, the laws and legalities are still murky. It is assumed that content in RSS is protected by copyright laws but let us not forget the Internet is global and their is not a centralized body governing what is right or what is wrong. Not only does law and technology collide the laws of different countries, those creating the feed and those displaying the contents of the feed may contradict each other. It is for this reason, I would advise that publishers using RSS to assume that the contents of their RSS feeds will be syndicated and replicated.

Tips and Tricks to Protect Your Feed.

That is not to say there are not things that can be done to protect feeds. At the end of the day being proactive is the best way to protect intellectual property.

Part of feed protection is ensuring that appropriate credit is given, this can be arranged by including a copyright assignment in the final line of the Item Description field.

Additionally you can include links back to your website in the Item description field.

Use teaser copy in the RSS feedกs Item description field, linking back to your website which contains the full contents of the post.

At the end of the day, protecting the contents of a feed can be daunting and limiting. Controlling your contents to ensure appropriate credit and links are included is critical.

About The Author

Sharon Housley manages marketing for FeedForAll http://www.feedforall.com software for creating, editing, publishing RSS feeds and podcasts. In addition Sharon manages marketing for NotePage http://www.notepage.net a wireless text messaging software company.

This article was posted on August 17

by S. Housley

How Directories Help Search Engines

How Directories Help Search Engines

by: Mario Sanchez

At the beginning of the web era, users would go to directories to find sites relevant to their interests. In fact, Yahoo!, the webกs number one destination, started as a directory. Nowadays, most users rely on search engines, not directories, to find what they’re looking for.

When search engines started to become popular, they relied on web pagesก กkeyword metatagsก to determine the topic and relevance of the page (the keyword metatag is a section within a web pageกs HTML code where webmasters can insert words that are relevant to the pageกs content). Webmasters discovered that by stuffing their meta tags with popular search terms repeated hundreds of times, they could propel their pages to the top of the search results.

Search engines caught up to the abuse and decided to ignore the meta tags and rely instead on web page copy. Webmasters then started to overstuff their page copy with popular search terms, often writing them in the same color as the web pageกs background, so that they could be detected by search engines while being invisible to users.

Again, search engines discovered the trick and decided that the best way to rank a web pageกs content and its topical relevance was to rely on inbound links from other pages. The rationale behind this is that it is much more difficult to influence other people to link to you than it is to manipulate your own web page elements. In fact, inbound links are the foundation of Googleกs Pagerank™ algorithm.

There are several ways to get inbound links, among them writing articles that include your bylines with a link to your page, exchanging links, and listing your site in directories.

Listing your sites in good directories is probably the best way to get quality links that are highly valued by the search engines. Since directories rely on human editors who enforce strict criteria to list a site, and since directories organize the information in highly focused categories, they are an invaluable resource for search engines to measure the quality and the relevance of a web page.

In summary, directories are important not because they generate significant traffic (they don’t), but because they are given great importance by the search engines to qualify and rank web pages, and to determine their topical relevance.

You should definitely list your site with quality directories if you want to increase your chances of success with the search engines.

About The Author

Mario Sanchez: http://www.theinternetdigest.net. For more search engine tips go to: http://www.accordmarketing.com/seotips/

This article was posted on November 24, 2004

by Mario Sanchez

7 Ways to Stop กSellingก & Start Building Relation

7 Ways to Stop กSellingก & Start Building Relationships

by: Ari Galper

Sometimes we can all use a friendly reminder to keep us from backsliding into old ways of thinking about selling that lead us down the wrong path with potential clients.

I was inspired to write this article after a few coaching sessions with a client named Michael, who sells a technology solution. Michael had been struggling with a mental block about how to detach from the traditional sales thinking he had learned from oldschool sales กgurusก.

You know who they are. You may even have some of their books or tapes. And you know their sales messages too: กAlways be closing,ก ‘think positive, and youกll overcome all your cold calling fears,ก กAll you need to boost your sales is a few new sales techniques.ก

But all these outdated sales messages fail to address the core issue of how we think about selling. And unless we get to that core, and change it once and for all, weกll go on struggling with the same counterproductive sales behaviors. Weกll go on experiencing the same difficulties and frustrations.

And weกll continue to believe that we’re always just one new sales technique away from the breakthrough we’re looking for.

New Thinking = New Results

Maybe itกs time to take a different approach. Maybe we need to seriously analyze our sales thinking so we can identify why we’re not making more sales. Take a look at the table below and thinkabout your current selling mindset. How would your selling behaviors change if you changed your sales thinking?

Traditional Sales Mindset: Always deliver a strong sales pitch.

New Sales Mindset: Stop the sales pitch and start a conversation.

Traditional Sales Mindset: Your central objective is always to close the sale.

New Sales Mindset: Your central goal is always to discover whether you and your potential client are a good fit.

Traditional Sales Mindset: When you lose a sale, itกs usually at the end of the sales process.

New Sales Mindset: When you lose a sale, itกs usually right at the beginning of the sales process.

Traditional Sales Mindset: Rejection is a normal part of selling.

New Sales Mindset: Sales pressure is the only cause of rejection. Rejection should never happen.

Traditional Sales Mindset: Keep chasing every potential client until you get a yes or a no.

New Sales Mindset: Never chase a potential client youกll only trigger more sales pressure.

Traditional Sales Mindset: When a prospect offers objections,challenge and/or counter them.

New Sales Mindset: When a potential client offers objections, uncover the truth behind them.

Traditional Sales Mindset: If a potential client challenges the value of your product or service, you must defend yourself and explain the value.

New Sales Mindset: Never defend yourself or what you have to offer it only creates more sales pressure.

Letกs take a closer look at these central concepts so you can begin to open up your current sales thinking and become more effective in your selling activities:

1) Stop the sales pitch and start a conversation.

When you call someone, avoid making a minipresentation about yourself, your company, and what you have to offer. Start with an opening conversational phrase that focuses on a specific problem that your product or service solves. If you don’t know what this is, ask your current customers why they purchased your solution. One example of an opening phrase might be, กIกm just calling to see if youกd be open to some different ideas related to lowering the risk of any computer downtime you may be having in your company?ก Notice that you are not pitching your solution with this opening phrase.

2) Your central goal is always to discover whether you and your potential client are a good fit.

Let go of trying to กclose the saleก or กget the appointmentก and you will discover that you don’t have to take responsibility for moving the sales process forward. If you simply focus your conversation on problems that you can help potential clients solve, and if you don’t jump the gun by trying to move the sales process forward, you will find that potential clients will actually bring you into their buying process.

3) When you lose a sale, itกs usually right at the beginning of the sales process.

If you believe that you lose sales because you make a mistake at the end of the process, take a look back at how you began the relationship. Did you start with a presentation? Did you use traditional sales language like, กWe have a solution that I believe you really needก or กOthers in your industry have bought our solution, so you should consider it as wellก?

When you use traditional sales language, potential clients can’t help but label you with the negative stereotype of กsalesperson.ก This makes it almost impossible for them to relate to you from a position of trust. And if trust isn’t established at the outset, honest communication about the problems they’re trying to solve, and how you might be able to help them, becomes impossible too.

4) Sales pressure is the only cause of rejection. Rejection should never happen.

Rejection happens for only one reason: Something you said, as subtle as it might have been, triggered a defensive reaction from your potential client.

Yes, something you said. To eliminate rejection, simply shift your mindset so that you give up the hidden agenda of hoping to make a sale. Instead, everything you say and do should stem from the basic mindset that you are there to help potential clients. This makes you able to ask, กWould you be open to talking about issues you might be having affecting your business?ก

5) Never chase a potential clientyouกll only trigger more sales pressure.

กChasingก potential clients has always been considered normal and necessary, but itกs rooted in the macho selling image that, กIf you don’t keep chasing, it means you’re giving up and that means you’re a failure.ก

This is dead wrong! Instead of chasing potential clients, tell them that you would like to avoid anything that resembles the old catandmouse chasing game by scheduling a time for your next chat.

6) When a potential client offers objections, uncover the truth behind them.

Most traditional sales programs spend a lot of time focusing on กovercoming objections.ก These tactics only put more sales pressure on potential clients and also fail to explore or understand the truth behind what the potential client is saying. When you hear, กWe don’t have the budget,ก กSend me information,ก or กCall me in a few months,ก do you think you’re hearing the truth, or do you suspect that these are polite evasions designed to end the conversation?

Rather than trying to counter objections, you can uncover the truth by replying, ‘thatกs not a problemก no matter what clients are กobjectingก to and then using gentle, dignified language that invites them to reveal the truth about their situation.

7) Never defend yourself or what you have to offer it only creates more sales pressure.

When a potential client says, กWhy should I choose you over your competition?,ก your first, instinctive reaction is probably to start defending your product or service because you want to convince them to buy.

But what do you think goes through your potential clientกs mind at that point?

Something like, ‘this กsalespersonก is trying to sell me on why what they have to offer is better, but I hate feeling as if Iกm being sold.ก Rather than defending yourself, try suggesting that you aren’t going to try to convince them of anything because that would only create sales pressure.

Instead, ask them about the key problems that they are trying to solve, and then explore how your product or service might solve those problems without ever trying to persuade.. Let potential clients feel that they can choose you without feeling กsold.ก

About The Author

With a Masters Degree in Instructional Design and over a decade of experience creating breakthrough sales strategies for global companies such as UPS and QUALCOMM, Ari Galper discovered the missing link that people who sell have been seeking for years.

His profound discovery of shifting oneกs mindset to a place of complete integrity, based on new words and phrases grounded in sincerity, has earned him distinction as the worldกs leading authority on how to build trust in the world of selling.

Leading companies such as Gateway, Clear Channel Communications, Brother International and Fidelity National Mortgage have called on Ari to keep them on the leading edge of sales performance. Visit http://www.unlockthegame.com to get his free sales training lessons.

This article was posted on December 02, 2004

by Ari Galper

Offsite Backups Provide Digital Peace of Mind

Offsite Backups Provide Digital Peace of Mind

by: Harald Anderson

In today’s fast paced datacentric world of personal computers and consumer/business electronics (such as PDAs and digital media players) we have, as a society, developed a reliance on digital data. We have particularly developed a dependence on data stored on various magnetic media such as hard drives, removable disks, and magnetic tape. While some computer users may never have had a problem with loss of data due to viruses, Internet worms or file corruption, most of us have at some time experienced the frustration and loss of productivity that comes with the loss of computer data.

Perhaps someone in your office deleted files off the network that your entire team had been working on for months. Or maybe the corporate firewall didn’t stop the latest Internetborne virus that has a penchant for overwriting ข.docข files with junk data. Like it or not, if you connect your computer to the Internet (and in some cases, even if you don’t), your mission critical data is at risk. The question is: What can you do about it?

An excellent solution is to employ offsite backups. Offsite backup solutions allow you to store critical data that is crucial to your business or personal computing experience. Offsite backup providers make it quick and easy for you to back up your most important files to a secure, offsite facility that offers redundant storage, and round the clock accessibility to your files in the event of a critical ขsystem meltdownข. When you use an online offsite backup provider, you can be secure in knowing that your files and important information will be available to you no matter what happens to the machines you work on every day.

Even if your computer needs to be completely formatted or your laptop is stolen you can have the peace of mind that the most important part of your computing experience — the data you generate on a day to day basis — is safe and secure and always available to you.

Your DATA is your Life. Protect it.

Copyright 2005 Harald Anderson

About The Author

Harald Anderson is a freelance writer and webmaster for http://www.SafeHarborData.com an online backup service. Download your free thirty day trial and experience the Digital Peace of Mind that accompanies a secure disaster recovery routine for your business. http://www.SafeHarborData.com

This article was posted on February 01

by Harald Anderson

Is Your OnLine Business Customer Friendly?

Is Your OnLine Business Customer Friendly?

by: Philippa Gamse

Customer service is increasingly seen as one of the most valuable uses for a commercial World Wide Web site. Your Web site is available on a 24 hour, seven days a week basis. So it is well worth exploring ways in which your customers can virtually ขserve themselves,ก without the need for overtime staff, or lengthy voice mail procedures.

James Feldman is President of JFA, Inc., an online business offering high quality and unique gift items including automatic watch winders, Grundig shortwave pocket radios, and nitroglycerine pill fobs. The JFA Web site has been online since 1997, and has doubled its income every year it’s now a multimillion dollar ecommerce enterprise.

Jim, who’s also a professional speaker and expert on customer service, highlighted for me how the online buying experience differs from the bricksandmortar model.

Buying online eliminates the physical presence and personality of the salesperson from the process. This makes the Web site copy critical in creating a onetoone relationship with the customer or prospect.

Which echoes one of my favorite mantras:

Every page of your site should be written from the visitor’s point of view, not yours.

A visitor should be able to look at your offerings, and immediately answer the questions:

ขWhy me?ข – that is, is your Web site the right place for me?

ขWhy should I care?ข – does this copy convince me that you can meet my needs?

It’s much easier and immediate to jump from Web site to Web site than to move between realworld stores. So the visitor has far more freedom of choice online. Jim says that the challenge for customer service is therefore very clearly to focus on one customer, one purchase at a time. Ecustomers expect great service, with little or no direct interaction. They will tolerate some mistakes, but not many.

Jim offers five rules for effective online customer service:

1. Be accessible. Show very clearly on your site all the ways that your customer can contact you – including email, phone and fax numbers, and your office hours.

And, if it’s practical for your business, be personal – give your visitors a real person to call who has a name, as opposed to [email protected]

Of course, if you’re really upscale, you can include a ขCallmeข button on your site.

2. Return every email or phone call in the same day, as far as reasonably possible. This may sound simplistic, but a recent experiment with the top Fortune 100 companies showed that nearly a third failed to respond to email sent through their Web site within one month! Some of these companies still don’t provide a usable email address on their sites at all.

3. Acknowledge all orders. Send email confirmations (this can be done very effectively with autoresponders), and if you’re shipping actual products, give tracking numbers and expected delivery dates.

4. Provide a clear return policy, honor it and learn from it. This may give you more information about what’s working and what’s not. Jim’s products are sometimes returned with no explanation, so his staff always call the customer to establish and resolve the problem.

5. Expect more phone calls. Jim says: ขCustomers can’t read or write!ข If your Web site traffic and response rates grow (which is, of course, what we want), so will the volume of phone calls, whatever your business or industry.

Regardless of the site quality, clear returns and privacy policies, secure servers, etc., people still require human interaction. All of my clients report talking to customers on the phone, and walking them through the Web site, where their questions are clearly answered. Maybe these psychological barriers will lessen over the next few years, but right now, they are very much there.

If you can get the customer service aspects of your business working well, there’ll be a definite bottom line impact. Jim is quite clear that his business has grown substantially through repeat business and referrals from satisfied customers.

And in contrast, we can see the impact of poor customer service and fulfillment procedures in many of the dot.coms that are currently failing. Jim says that people buy things online in the expectation of getting something more valuable than the actual money they spend.

Does your Web site do this??

JFA Inc. can be found at http://www.jfainc.com/

About The Author

Philippa Gamse, CyberSpeaker, is an internationally recognized ebusiness strategist. Check out her free tipsheet กBeyond the Search Enginesก for 17 ideas to promote your Website: http://www.CyberSpeaker.com/tipsheet.html Philippa can be reached at (831) 4650317 or mailto:[email protected].

This article was posted on November 14, 2002

by Philippa Gamse