Is It Legal? Indecent Naming With Tradition

Is It Legal? Indecent Naming With Tradition

by: Wolfgang Nedobity

When Mitsubishi launched a new car with the name „Pajeroข on the Spanish market, it became obvious very soon that the name chosen was not optimal because it immediately was the subject of jokes due to its homophony with a Spanish expression related to masturbation.

The same happened to Ford’s model „Pintoข(Portuguese for male genital) in Brazil where it was quickly renamed into „Corcelข(horse).

There is quite a long list of product names that give food to the dirty mind be they chosen accidentaly or deliberately. Obviously there seems to be a kind of tradition for this in the history of naming which originally started with place names.

Some of our ancestors obviously were too innocent to realize what burden they place on their offspring when naming places like Pratts Bottom (Kent), Brown Willy (Cornwall), Lickey End (near Birmingham), Booby Dingle (Powys), Great Cockup (Cumbria). Even places such as Thong (Kent) seem to have revealed far too much for not being the victim of lewd remarks.

The European continent, however, is also challenging the innocent mind of the English speaking travellers. In Southern Bavaria they will come across a village with the name of ขPettingข and about eleven miles from there, in neighbouring Upper Austria, the shock might be inevitable when they enter the village of ขFuckingข. Inspite of the fact that the inhabitants of Fucking have had enough with Englishspeaking tourists swiping their sign, they refuse to change their name. It goes back to the ancient Bavarian settlement and although this area was christianized by Irish and Scottish monks in the 9th and 10th century, an amendment of the name has never been deemed necessary.

No wonder that in many countries there are restrictions regarding the choice of a place name as a trademark for goods and services. One way around these restrictions is to distort the name so that it becomes indisputable but on a subliminal level takes advantage of the fact that sex sells. A recent example of successful distortion are the products of a British based fashion retailer called French Connection Group plc with the trademark FCUK. Linguists tell us that the power of a word depends on its context, and clearly the English word ขfuckข falls into that category. To make it even more explicit, two new fragrances were launched named ขFCUK Himข and ขFCUK Herข. On its website, FCUK demonstrates a clear picture of its marketing strategy. Whereas the linguistic allusions are close to Shakespeare’s bawdiness, the images remain subdued and innocent, which on the one hand is rather cynical but on the other hand tries to bridge the generation gap because most parents finance the quite conventional fashion attire that their children obtain from FCUK. Thus FCUK’s clients in each major market display a range of attitudes when confronted with the provocatively distorted fourletter mark. The American Family Association (AFA) promotes initiatives against FCUK such as prefabricated emails protesting against the exploitation of youngsters in such a manner.

Sex in marketing is bound to raise demand along with a few eyebrows which in addition either secure the necessary publicity or ban the product from the market. Branding an almost swear word in order to create a cash cow is, however, not restricted to fashion clothing and related products. On a recent visit to New Orleans I was surprised by the abundance of labels for their traditional hot pepper sauces. Besides the well known Tobasco, there are more spicy brand names such as ขBurning rectumข or ขHot shitข.

It shows that name design must be ready to apply wit to anything that makes the blood boil and the label sell. Obviously this does not really work with other economic fields, for instance with tourism, because the places mentioned above are not among the hot spots that travel agents propagate in their catalogues.

About The Author

Wolfgang Nedobity is terminologist and CEO of NameDesigner. More info at www.namedesigner.at

[email protected]

This article was posted on April 27, 2004

by Wolfgang Nedobity

Marketing Your Online Business On A Budget

Marketing Your Online Business On A Budget

by: Kathy Joyce

Do you have a great online business but few customers,and a very limited budget to work with?

Just uploading your site onto the internet is not enough, even submitting to the main search engines and directories takes time. Often it may take months for a website to get listed.

You don’t have to spend a fortune on marketing your site, the best methods are often very inexpensive or free.

1,Pay Per click search engines

Pay per click search engines work by bidding for keywords. This is an immediate way to get your site listed.

They work by bidding for specific targetted keywords related to your site.

You pay only for hits to your site and bidding can start as low as $0.1 depending on the popularity of the keyword.

For example if you sell blue widgets then กwidgetsก is to vague. กblue widgetsก will get visitors who specifically want to buy blue widgets!!

กWidgets would probably be more expensive as it has a more general audience but กBlue widgetsก is more targeted to a particular audience and would most probably be cheaper.

Here are a couple of well known ones, http://www.overture.com and http://www.goclick.com

2,Submit ezine articles

Submitting ezine articles is free and often one of the best ways of getting visitors to your site. Write an article about a subject that relates to your site giving useful information, but don’t use it as an advert for your site or it probably won’t be accepted. You can however advertise your website in a resource box at the end of your article.

Articles should be of a 65 character line length. Editpad lite is a free download enabling you to set character line lengths on your file. http://www.editpro.com/editpadlite.html Saves a lot of work in counting characters!! Another useful free programe is http://www.nch.com/.au/typecharge it is designed to count characters and words in any document.

Submit your articles with online article directories at http://www.ezinewriter.com/articlelists.html ,http://www.ezinewriter.com/top10.html ,http://www.ideamarketers.com and http://www.articlecity.com

If your articles are of value with good content they will soon be circulated amongst many other websites providing you with links back to your site. Search engines love sites with lots of links so it will increase your websiteกs popularity.

In time you will find that traffic to your site has dramatically increased. This will be targetted traffic from visitors having read your articles.

Success doesn’t happen overnight and takes hard work and perserverance but if you write a couple of articles a week you will soon find an increase in visitors to your site.

3,Write your own ezine

Start your own ezine and publish it regularly. This is a good way of informing your visitors of any news and updates on your website. Have an opt in form on in a prominate place on your site so that people can subscribe to it.

The ezine should also have an unsubscribe option as well. Any visitors who do unsubscribe should be deleted from your database immediately.

You can install some free cgi scripting that enables visitors to subscribe and unsubscribe to your newsletter or ezine. Go to http://www.siteinteractive.com/subscribe/index2.html There are tutorials as well to help you install the script.

A good idea is to have a pop under box for visitors to subscribe. This will appear after they have closed your site. I personally find pop up boxes annoying, but with a pop under box the visitor has already left your site anyway.

You can get the cgi script for a pop under box at http://www.clickforcontent.com/pop_under_script.htm

If you need articles to put in your ezine there are many sites that have databases of free articles that you can use. Try http://www.freezineweb.com and http://www.ezinearticles.com

These are just some of the methods that you can use to get traffic to your site.

There are also many offline ways as well including just talking to people you meet!!

You could design and print out some flyers to advertise your business and place them in cafeกs, libraries, supermarket customer advertising boards, and even place some on car windscreens in car parks that you are passing through. I have often gone back to my car after a shopping trip and found a flyer on my car advertising a business or local event!!

Design and print out business cards. You can get some nice quality paper for printing these out on to make them look proffessional. Hand these to everyone you meet and leave one with a bill whenever you eat in a restaurant.

How about designing a car sticker and place it on the rear windscreen of your car.

Placing an ad in your local paper is a good idea and reasonably inexpensive.

Always make sure that you carry some cards and flyers whenever you leave the house you never know when an opportunity will occur!!

About The Author

Kathy Joyce owns her own mlm home based business. http://www.healthandbeautytowealth.co.uk. For more advice and resources on starting a home based business visit http://www.healthandbeautytowealth.co.uk/startahomebiz.html.

[email protected]

This article was posted on October 07, 2003

by Kathy Joyce

10 Easy Steps to a Useable Website

10 Easy Steps to a Useable Website

by: Nigel Lew

Building a useable website can seem daunting. Here is a quick guideline to help you on your way.

1.It’s all about your content

To get your website listed appropriately the content of your website needs to be nested between the tags. This way it gets read by the search engines. Your content also needs to be unique and get your point across.What is it about your product or service that is better and different from your competitions. This is called your usp or unique selling proposition and should be conveyed clearly and immediately upon hitting the page.

2.Make effective use of your title and description tags

These are your two most important tags when it comes to referencing your page content. Meta keywords rarely have any impact what so ever on your pages listings.

3.Make sure content is well formatted

It is very important to break up your content with italics, bold text, bulleted lists, etc. Well formatted content makes your pages more accessible to visitors but the search engines also. Visitors scan across your page rather than read it so it makes sense to format your page so it can be browsed yet still convey your message.

4.Proper code

Having proper progamming in place is quite simply a must. Web standards have changed substantially over the years and it is important to make sure your pages validate both html and css. Think of it this way. How effective could you get your point across if you were talking swahili. Your code is no different. Why make it difficult for the search bots to index your content.

5.Do not use Front Page, Dreamweaver, or any other WYSIWYG editor.

While accurate, MS Front Page, for example, makes it easy for just about anyone to throw up a web page it doesn’t take W3C compliancy into account Hence the code it outputs is an absolute train wreck. This is terminal for your website as you need a strong code base (foundation) or your site will never stand up to the competitions.

6.Don’t design in Flash

Seemingly technical in nature or ขneatข perhaps flash animation only serves to distract visitors from what they came to your site for in the first place, your product or service. Your services are what visitors are interested in not a blinking, noisy, website. Flash also creates major problems with getting it properly indexed. There is no way for the search engines to extract content from your website as it is all contained with in the swf. If you absolutely must have a flash page it is imparitive to offer an html version as well.

7.Easy on the eyes

Graphical elements play a huge role in a website design as well. You need to make sure you don’t have any extreme contrasts between colors and that you don’t use really bright colors as they are quite hard on the eyes. Your logo or brand should be clearly displayed on the home page and in more than one place.

8.Instill a sense of well being with ease of use

Make sure you have all legal documents in place such as privacy and return policies. It is also important to have all of your contact information pricing etc. displayed in a manner that conveys legitimacy. It should be very easy to contact you for any questions your visitors may have.

9.Include an optin newsletter

A great way to generate return customers is to offer an optin newsletter. This allows for direct marketing to people who you know are already interested in your product or service. What better way is there to keep customers abreast of new products or changes in the services you offer.

10.Use a trademark or tag line

In our case we trademarked the manipulated at symbol with the phrase bringing esolutions to you, thereby effectively increasing the strength of our brand. We are now able to effectively convey who we are but give a good creative idea as to what we do.

About The Author

Nigel is the Owner and ECommerce Project Manager of Ultimatech Computer Consultancy located in Aspen Colorado. You may reprint this article by leaving my name in tact. www.ultimatechcc.com

[email protected]

This article was posted on December 26, 2004

by Nigel Lew

Kindness

Kindness

by: Rev. Sue Borg

There is an inherent generosity in the human spirit to be of help, to be of service to others. What is it that makes us decide to be of service. What is it that inspires us and encourages us to be of support to others? What is it that makes you want to serve others.
The dictionary describes service as ขwork done for, and benefit given to another; an act of kindness.ข As an Interfaith Minister, I have studied the world religions and found the common thread in all religions is The Golden Rule. Treat each other in the exact manner in which you would like to be treated.
His Holiness, The Dalai Lama says, ขMy religion as very simple; ขmy religion is kindness.ข After the events of the past year, I believe it is kindness that will help the world return to a more loving place. Kindness is what will bring us back to feeling safe and loved and loving.
Thoughtful communication, loving words and feelings of unity are kindness in action. Being kind inspires us to be more loving, which in turn inspires us and leads us to be of service to others. When we are being of service because it is our heart’s desire, things come to us in a very loving way. Spirit shows up for the task at hand. When spirit is at hand, all tasks become easier.
When our focus is on helping, our minds move away from fear and problems to a place of peace and clarity. There is no place where love and fear can exist simultaneously, so if peace is your goal, you must find a place to share your kindness and service as then watch how things change.
One way to do this is to bring to mind one who has made an important contribution to your life – anyone who actually made you feel loved and supported. When you feel loved and supported, then you can easily go forward to be of service in the world – no matter what form it takes. Being of service happens naturally as you live and express gratitude for all that has been given you.
I’m sure you have experienced loving thoughts and deeds from others many times. Remember how it felt. The greatest gift you can offer anyone is kindness and full appreciation. When we are kind and take the time to be grateful, then God rushes in with more. This is the way in which we move forward to help others in a very kind and rich manner.
With gratitude in my heart, I bless you all today with a heart full of kindness, a mind full of gratitude, and a joyful spirit to nurture yourself by nurturing others. Teach and nourish our children with lovingkindness. This is the way in which we celebrate all that is good and true and beautiful in the world. God Bless You.
Get information regarding 2005 International A Course In Miracles Conference at www.iammiracle.com

About The Author

Reverend Sue Borg has been teaching and speaking on spiritual truths for almost 20 years. Her humor and delight have impacted hundreds of individuals seeking to find ขa better way.ข Reverend Sue has a profound awareness of human potential through ขsimple truth.ข Many individuals have experienced spiritual freedom and increased peace of mind by participating in the retreats, seminars and study groups she has conducted. She also does spiritual counseling on a personal level.

[email protected]

This article was posted on July 09, 2004

by Rev. Sue Borg

What Successful Sellers Know Others Don’t … Th

What Successful Sellers Know Others Don’t … The Subtle Art of Closing

by: Paul Shearstone

Ask any salesperson, กAt what point in the selling process does the กCloseก take place?ก Eight out of ten will answer, ขat the Endข. To be fair, they are not totally incorrect but they are, nevertheless, more wrong than right proving in principle and in practice, Peradoกs Law: Twenty percent of the sales force make eighty percent of the sales and profitability.

The questions that should then be asked are, กWhy it is so many professional sellers have it wrong?ก and, กWhat is right?ก

For decades salespeople were [and still are] taught certain accepted selling fundamentals; the best being Dale Carnegieกs 5Steps to a Sale: Attention, Interest, Conviction, Desire and Close. Perhaps a little ahead of his peers, Carnegieกs formula has certainly stood the test of time and continues to work. On the other hand, selling, like so many other disciplines, has many subtle layers that color the process, especially as it relates to the Close and like the 1/100th of a second that can separate a Gold Metal winner from Silver, the outcome in sales is equally dramatic.

The กNo Closeก KnowNots!

The last couple of decades spawned some major changes regarding how sellers were to sell and redefined some of the rules of engagement. It also produced new selling gurus convinced in theory that the กArt of Closingก was no longer in fashion. Things like their new Funnel approach all but eliminated the need to understand and hone closing techniques of any kind. History demonstrates that convincing though they were, in practice, they were dead wrong.

Regardless of whether one is selling pens, mufflers, computers or airplanes, customers still possess an innate psychological need to have what is often a new direction [the decision to buy] validated. Asking for the order and reaffirming the decisiontobuy a good one, does this and yes, it takes place at the end of the selling encounter. Not surprisingly, however, what transpires at the กFrontEndก of the sale the point successful sellers know the art of the close actually takes place is what allows this process to transpire.

From another perspective, we can draw parallels of closingstrategies to that of the last war in Iraq. Long before the firing of the first bullet or cruse missile launch, specially trained soldiers [Special Ops] had already been in Iraq for months covertly uncovering strategic information to send back to the invasion architects.

War experts agree and it’s been well documented, the job the US and British Special Ops did was so exceptional it all but captured victory before the war in the Middle East ever took place. Interestingly, those who have read Tzu Sunกs book The Art of War, would understand the uncanny parallels of the Iraqi campaign to his conflict strategies conscious too of how he [Tzu Sun] would have certainly been impressed.

What, though, should we glean from this example? An overview of the battle strategy for the Iraq war clearly demonstrates the success of the campaign was frontend loaded: first understand the enemy. Learn its strengths, weaknesses. Uncover ahead of time what challenges may be faced. Then and only then, develop กPracticed Strategiesก expressly designed to overcome any such resistance. Simply put, the Iraq war was won in the quality of its Preparation in keeping with Tzu Sunกs mantra: The war is already over before the enemy believes it has even begun.

Drawing our parallels from this to selling, customers, although not our enemy, nevertheless put forward unique challenges [real or otherwise] requiring first, an intimate and compassionate understanding of their needs BEFORE the implementation of a strategy/process using proven/practiced skills designed to garner customer Trust, Rapport and Satisfaction [the Close] ever takes place.

The Bottom Line:

Successful sellers continue to hone their closing skills ever mindful of the importance closing and the ‘Ability to Close’ has to the success of the sale. The difference for them, however, is they see the art of closing from a point most others can only see through their rearview mirror.

About The Author

Paul Shearstone aka The ‘Pragmatic Persuasionist’ is one of North America’s foremost experts on Sales and Persuasion. An International Keynote Speaker, Author, Writer, Motivation, Corporate Ethics, / Time & Stress Management Specialist, Paul enlightens and challenges audiences as he informs, motivates and entertains. To comment on this article or to book the Pragmatic Persuasionist for your next successful event we invite to contact Paul Shearstone directly @ 4167285556 or 18668554590.

www.success150.com or [email protected].

This article was posted on November 08, 2003

by Paul Shearstone

The Testimonial Trick

The Testimonial Trick

by: Terence Tan

One of the most popular methods of traffic generation is the link exchange. Not only can they generate fairly targeted traffic from other related web sites, the number of quality links to your site is also a major factor determining your web siteกs ranking in major search engines like Google.

The problem with link exchanges is that they require you to give a reciprocal link in exchange for linking to your site. This inevitably means that there will be a limit to the number of links you can tastefully place on your site without compromising your layout, content, and credibility. Links to other sites also provide extra temptations for surfers to leave your site. Also, search engines place more importance on the quality than the number of sites linking to your web site. It is of course difficult for small web sites to convince large, successful web sites to exchange links with them.

An incredibly simple, but little used so is to use testimonials to gain a link on large successful web sites, WITHOUT having to place a reciprocal link on our own site! No webmaster, no matter how successful, can resist an honest, glowing compliment to their creation. The trick is to write short, flattering testimonials for the content, design, functions, products, services etc. of many web sites and send it to them as a sincere กfeedbackก.

Many webmasters will feel so flattered and want to publish these กunsolicitedก compliments to reinforce the credibility of their web site and products. To make the testimonial credible, they must naturally mention who it came from.

This would be your opportunity to request a link to your web site. At a minimum, you should be able to get a link in the form of กyourname, webmaster, yoursite.com ก. This is really a beautifully simple, no cost way of getting links in many high quality web sites.

About The Author

Terence Tan is the founder of HugeAffiliates.com, a website dedicated towards the development of Multi Level Affiliate Programs as an alternative system of business. Visit http://hugeaffiliates.com to learn how MLAPs can multiply your affiliate referral commissions.

(Please feel free to to freely reproduce and distribute this article, so long as it is reproduced in full, including the hyperlinks, and no modification is made).

[email protected]

This article was posted on October 12, 2003

by Terence Tan

Forums – Should you have them on your website?

Forums – Should you have them on your website?

by: Anne Moss

Forums have become a common feature in many websites. With good free scripts available, and paid scripts being relatively cheap, it seems that every new website has its own forum(s). But is it wise to add forums to your website?

In this article Iกd like to take a look at the pros and cons of adding forums to your website. The largest of my websites, www.TheCatSite.com boasts one of the largest online forums on pet related subjects. In fact I have yet to see a larger forum dealing with pets. As of the writing of this article (Summer 2004), we have over 7,000 members and nearly half a million posts. In the past four years I have struggled with the hardships of community management and learned what works and what doesn’t. Let me share a few insights that may help you decide if you want to take the forums path yourself.

The Pro Side of the Equation…

Forums Generate Content

Large, active forums generate content for your website. Google now has literally tens of thousands of pages indexed for TheCatSite.comกs forums, and people looking for some of the more esoteric subjects related to cat health and cat behavior are very likely to meet one of our forum pages in their search results.

Forums Make People Return to Your Website

Forums are truly a กstickyก element. Most people come back, at least to check on developments on their threads. With a good community, you get some real addicts who have to get their daily fix. TheCatSite.comกs forums run on Vbulletin Forums , which means members can opt to receive an email whenever someone replies to their thread. Most people use it and that little email sends them right back to the forums…

Forums Create a Sense of Community

Reaching from behind their computer screens, people from all over the world join together, get to know each other and create a community. This is actually happening! Members connect with each other, offering support in time of needs and some of them even meeting each other in real life. For you as the webmaster, this means loyal visitors that keep coming back to a place they consider to be home.

And Now To The Cons

Forums Can Take a Lot of Time to Take Off the Ground

I remember how I could feel my posts echoing in the empty board four years ago… It can take a long time before your forums pick up. An empty forum can actually drive new visitors away. Itกs a vicious circle – when they see that no one else is posting, they don’t post themselves, and move on to the next website. It can take weeks and even months of hard work to get your forums off the ground.

Forums Need A Lot Of Ongoing Management

You need to constantly monitor your forums to make sure that they are clean of spam, troll posts, and just keep everything where it belongs. Once your forums are large enough, you have to have a team of quality moderators to help you run the place the task being too timeconsuming for one person. This is the place in this article to say กhi!ก to any TCS team members reading this – thank you guys – you’re the ones that make it all happen!

For the webmasters reading this article, I will say that managing a team is a task in its own right. Finding the good mods can mean the difference between success and failure. And it doesn’t end there. You have to put your heart and mind to it – all the time.

Forums Take Up a Lot of Resources

Forums are databasetype applications that generate web pages on the fly. Every time a user views a page, itกs being created from scratch. As the forums become more active, this can take a heavy load on the web serverกs resources. When our forums reached 2,000 members, we had to switch over to a dedicated server. When they reached 7,000 members, we had to upgrade to a new dedicated server… With several other websites stored on our server, the forums are the big resources hoggers, taking up bandwidth, disk space and, most importantly, CPU resources. This brings us to the next point…

Forums Do Not Make Lucrative Advertising Stock

You think that with successful forums, generating millions of targeted pageviews each month, you would do well financially? Think again. Forums not only cost you a lot to run, they also don’t bring in a whole lot of revenue, compared to regular web pages. Advertisers don’t like to run ads on forum pages. So much so, that most CPM based ad networks won’t even let you place their ads there.

Our experience with CPC ads shows that they may have a good point. Clickthrough rates on forum pages are significantly lower then on other types of web pages. There are ways to make your forums generate revenues, but trust me, itกs not that easy. I will be writing a separate article on how we got our forums to pay for their keeping.

The Bottom Line

Forums are not for every website. Don’t just put it up there and hope for the best. If you can’t or don’t want to put a lot of time and effort into creating a viable community, just leave it. Having no forums is better than having dead forums. Having dead forums on your website may actually drive people away.

Research your field. How easy will it be to create a community geared towards the subject of your website? Is it something that people want to talk about with each other? Are there other forums on this subject? How are they doing?

Get your feet wet. Join several forums and become an active participant. If possible, become a team member or a moderator in a large forum. Big forums often have secret team forums, where you can learn a lot about community management.

Think ahead. Where do you see your website in a year or two? Is this your main project and passion? Will you have the time and energy it takes to maintain a forum? Above all: Will you enjoy it?

Copyright © Anne Moss

About The Author

Anne Moss has been the webmaster of www.TheCatSite.com and www.Meowhoo.com, as well as several other sites, since the year 2000. You can read more advice for webmasters on her webmasters resources website –www.4NetNeeds.com.

You may use this article in your website, provided that you leave the กAbout the Authorก bit intact and make sure that the names of the websites mentioned are clickable and lead to the right place.

This article was posted on September 13, 2004

by Anne Moss

The Value of Building An Internet Community

The Value of Building An Internet Community

by: Lois M. Jeary

Synopsis: The internet is a constantly changing, evolving entity. Understanding new laws, new regulations and even new technology is vital to your success. Unless you are prepared to embrace these changes, you may be left behind.

We see thousands of people adopting the internet and its offerings every day. Some will just want to browse from site to site to see whatกs there. Many have started using the internet to do their shopping for both home and business. Others are simply looking for a way to keep in touch with friends and family. A select group of these individuals will see the advantages of creating a homebased business using the internet as their platform.

It is rare though that you will find an individual who can กwear all the hatsก required to run a successful business in todayกs world. There is a huge amount of information that requires consideration when starting your business, not the least of which is a sound business plan.

Selfstarters require talents that range anywhere from being an accountant, a web designer to a graphic artist. Then there is a need for copywriting skills, management and delegation ability, technical know how, legal knowledge and perhaps software development. And letกs not forget about marketing. Thatกs a full plate for anyone, particularly if you are just getting started.

With a bricks กn mortar style business, corporations can hire the talent they need when they need it. For the small, homebased business that is just starting out, this can present problems. And this is where building a community or network of responsible people can be a real boost for you and your business.

You and I have had a chance to connect with other ethical and responsible people who also run an online business. Weกve had the chance to learn from our mistakes and adjust to the changes taking place on the internet on a regular basis. Now think of all the newbies who are just starting their internet adventure today.

Experienced marketers have had some trouble understanding the FTC regulations as well as the new CANSPAM law which went into effect on January 1st, 2004. The law came into effect on January 1st, however, the FTC has until September, 2004 to กfine tuneก the regulations.

Now we are facing more new challenges with email. Personally, Iกve been very disillusioned with email delivery for about a year and a half and I know Iกm not alone. Thatกs why you have seen more publishers switching to rss feeds or weblogs. You’re going to see more publishers adopting a weblogtype format. Others will send a note telling you where the latest online edition is located. The big thing lacking here is interaction. Think back to why you started publishing an ezine in the first place. Didn’t you love getting feedback from your subscribers? Thatกs what made it fun and worthwhile.

With all the changes taking place, we are losing that essential contact with our readers. Of course we need to make money, but that isn’t the whole picture. Subscribers, your customers, are also becoming numb to the reasons behind all the changes taking place. How many times have you asked them to resubscribe? How many did you lose each time? Inboxes have become so congested with unsolicted email, it has become next to impossible to find the information they have requested.

We need to provide a safe place for our readers so that we can get back to providing good content as well as share products and services that will benefit their business as well as yours.

A perfect example is the Quikonnex Service created by Jim Gray and Carolyn Peltier (http://quikonnex.com/109). Here publishers and members of the community can work together. They can share resources and help each other build their businesses. Quikonnex also offers the latest in private messaging (QMTP) which virtually eliminates the need for email to stay in touch with fellow publishers and members.

Quikonnex is a mediarich content management system that beats any service currently out there. You can use Quikonnex to publish your ezine even if you don’t currently have a website or tie it in with your site if you do. The Quikonnex Forum contains a wealth of information. Publishers and members can share tools, ideas, suggestions or tips that help them in their day to day business itกs all about people helping people. What a refreshing change.

For those of you who are hesitant about downloading programs, the creators of Quikonnex built their own crossplatform, cross browser reader called QuikView that makes subscribing to a channel a breeze no matter what browser or operating system you currently use. If you don’t mind downloading a reader, they provide a customized version of the Awasu reader. And itกs all backed up with support.

Don’t let the changes taking place on the internet paralyze you into inaction. And don’t be afraid to make a change that will benefit you as well as your readers. We all have tools that we use in our daily business. If that tool becomes less effective, itกs time to replace it. Just because you started publishing using email as your method of delivery doesn’t mean you have to keep doing it that way.

I wouldn’t be where I am today if I hadn’t met some of the amazing and resourceful people who have become my mentors and friends. My way of saying ‘thank youก to them, is to help others along the way. Imagine how powerful, how positive our internet experience would be if we all helped each other succeed.

About The Author

Lois Jeary publishes KIT (Keeping In Touch) through her Home4Success channel which features straight forward articles, helpful hints and suggestions, interaction with subscribers and more. Join today: http://home4success.com/go/to.cgi?l=quik Helping you build a successful homebased business one step at a time. View the Home4Success Channel here: http://quikonnex.com/channel/page/home4success/109/4

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This article was posted on April 02, 2004

by Lois M. Jeary