Your Condensed Guide for Working a Room

Your Condensed Guide for Working a Room

by: Oscar Bruce

Working a room…if only it could be fun…or at least guaranteed productive. I am referring to that mandatory event that requires us to mix and mingle, to meet and greet.

Command performance events like a cocktail party, a business dinner, or a charity event can feel stiff and uncomfortable. Very few people actually enjoy walking into a room full of strangers.

So why put yourself through that torture? Well for one thing, Nathan Keyfitz, professor of sociology at Harvard observes, กSocial skills will be of even greater importance for economic success in the future. The most successful people will be those who can communicate and connect best.ก

Put another way, itกs free advertising, and you control the entire message. Is it sometimes uncomfortable? Absolutely, but the upside is huge. The more you put yourself in networking situations, the easier it becomes and the greater the professional, social, and personal benefits.

Here is a condensed guide for working a room:

Approach every networking opportunity with the attitude that it is going to be fun. While no single event is guaranteed to change your life, any single event could. Remember, success is measured by percentages, not perfection. Who isn’t attracted to someone who is smiling, laughing, and enjoying him or herself!

Be Prepared. Be clear about your objectives. Keep focus on your purpose in being there. Don’t be easily distracted from the outcome you have in mind.

Next, don’t wait for others to approach you. Yes, I know it is a bit uncomfortable for some, perhaps you. So think about how great you feel when someone takes the initiative to walk up to you and introduces themselves. Then you do the same.

Acquire and practice several good conversation openers. The best technique is art of asking intelligent questions that convey the impression there is depth and style to your personality. Show them that they could benefit by getting spending more time with you.

When you make an interesting contact, focus all your attention on that single person. Don’t let your eyes wander around the room. Keep eye contact and actively listen. Give that person the sense that you have been waiting all evening just to meet them. In other words, make them feel important.

Learn the art of small talk. Call it chit chat or even foreplay if you like. Its purpose is to put people at east. It starts with finding an area of common interest. This means knowing just the right questions to ask, and at precisely the right moment. Always remember, small talk doesn’t teach, preach, or try to impress. It is just light and easy conversation.

Do your homework. If possible review the names of the people attending, their spouses or partners, their affiliations. If you can recall any prior contacts, refer to that to open the conversation. That will appreciate the fact that you remember.

Finally, common sense tells us not arrive late, drink too much, dress too casually, or push your agenda excessively. Don’t glue yourself to one person the whole night just because they are fascinating, mingle.

Few things personally or professionally happen by accident. Consider going to your next command performance (thatกs what it is) totally prepared. Then watch how much fun you can have when you know why you are there, and can tell your story with style and humor, persuasively.

About The Author

Oscar Bruce is considered the ultimate personal communications guru. His dynamic books are considered field manuals for mastering conversation and confrontations. His website offers several verbal strategies that can add power to your conversations at no cost.

HIS FREE NEWSLETTER is available at http://www.oscarbruce.com

Copyright: 2005

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This article was posted on March 25

by Oscar Bruce

Ten Awesome Ways To Incease Your Sales In Holidays

Ten Awesome Ways To Incease Your Sales In Holidays

by: Radhika Venkata

Everybody thinks that the businesses will slow down a bit in holiday seasons. Ofcourse everybody thinks that people don’t want to start new ventures in holidays too.

But that is not true. People do spend money… a lot in holidays. On gift items, special discount goods, coupons etc.

The only thing is to know how to do business in the holiday season using this attitude.

Here are 10 tips to maintain or maximize your sales in Holidays:

1. Put a paragraph on your webpage that related to the particular holiday. Like chrismas greetings for Chrismas, Happy mothers day greetings for Motherกs day etc.

Then put a picture of your product under it with a discount price for that particular day.

Advertise about this discount product on your home page from a month before the actual selling day.

2. Send discount coupons to your old customers and subscribers and tell them the offer lasts for one or two days.

3. If you use pay per click engines, change your ads a little bit to give the essence of holiday season.

If your ad is like

กGarden tools for gardenersก

Change this to

กGarden tools for Gardeners.Price reduced to half for the first fifty people. Limited for Thanks giving.ก

OK…OK…You get the idea. Right?

4. Install some greeting card cgi scripts on your site. Use them at holiday seasons. So with every greeting card your website link goes to other people. This is very cheap and affordable advertising.

5. Tell your affiliates that they will receive more commission on their sales through their affiliate links in this holiday season.

6. Always submit two or three pages of your website to search engines with holiday discount prices. So if anybody search in the search engines about discount products, your pages will show up.

7. Offer free shipping and handling to your customers.

8. Put a special pop up window that closes with in a particular time. So you can encourage your visitors to buy the product at discount price or with special bonuses through the link in that pop up.

9. Use your Autoresponder to offer special courses or tutorials for holiday seasons. Send the links to your discount products, samples of your product as a special holiday delivery. Encourage them to buy with a holiday discount.

10. Holidays means parties, get togethers and massive sales. You can do offline advertising about your product and website by keeping banners or free brochures at the reception tables, sales centers etc.

About The Author

Radhika Venkata Subscribe to กEbookBiz Magazineก which is completely focused on ebook business and Internet Marketing. Receive FREE Ebooks with Resale rights every month!

http://www.ebooksworld.com/freetosell.shtml

Webmaster Resources: List Your product, ezine or web site free! http://www.webmasterscentral.com/

This article was posted on November 14, 2003

by Radhika Venkata

Defend Your Thank You Folders From URL Guessers

Defend Your Thank You Folders From URL Guessers

by: Robert Plank

If you sell downloadable products, you’re going to have a thank you page (a URL where the buyer is redirected after a sale). With just a couple lines of HTACCESS code you can make that folder airtight.

You shouldn’t be putting a buyer through a mandatory signup process to download the product. They already paid, just give them the file right away and offer a chance to optin for updates later. Otherwise youกll be getting lots of support emails from people asking where the product is they just paid for.

Itกs always smart to name your thank you page something with a number a name like postorder735.html or thankyou9987.html will do. You just want to make this impossible to guess.

When itกs possible I like to separate the sales page from the download, so I stash them in a folder called something like กdownloadก or กorder.ก Problem: If you have these separate folders, these URL guessers can see the contents of them.

The obvious solution is to put an index.html in the folder, which keeps its contents from being listed… but what if you have, say, 25 of these folders? Do you need 25 index.html files?

No, and thatกs where HTACCESS comes in. Open up a new text file in Notepad and put this text in exactly:

Options Indexes

Then save the file as: .htaccess (WITH that dot in front)

Upload it to the root of your web site. Now, if you try to view the contents of a folder thatกs missing an index.html file, your browser will show a ก403 Forbiddenก error.

Don’t worry, this won’t block out all files. It will simply keep a guesser from viewing a list of what files are in a given folder.

If you don’t want to see that ugly generic Forbidden page, you can supply your own by adding this line to that .htaccess file of yours:

ErrorDocument 403 /sorry.html

Now you can put your message into a HTML file (maybe it could be a link to the main page of your site), put it into a file named sorry.html and upload it. Now youกll have a friendly notice that says anything you want.

One last bonus tip for you. If your forbidden message is extremely short, you don’t even need to create a separate HTML document. If itกs possible for your message to fit all on one line you can remove that ErrorDocument line above from your .htaccess file and put in something like this:

ErrorDocument 403 กSorry…

Iกm aware that there is a starting quote and no ending quote. Thatกs just how you have to type it. If you put in a quote at the end there it would show up in your HTML document. I know it looks funny, but it works. Remember that กSorry…ก text is HTML so you could put in line breaks, links, bold tags, H1, H2 tags, and so on. Itกs all up to you.

About The Author

Robert Plank

Experienced PHP/JavaScript Tutor Solves 19 Of Your Most Frustrating Direct Response Sales Page HangUps

http://www.salespagetactics.com/Your_Clickbank_ID

The above article may be copied as long as this resource box is included, You may rebrand the above URL with your Clickbank ID however.

This article was posted on March 27

by Robert Plank

Boost Your Sales Copy With One Simple Tweak

Boost Your Sales Copy With One Simple Tweak

by: Palyn Peterson

Do you want an amazingly simple trick to move far ahead of your competition and increase sales? With this free, no software little tweak, you will be able to put customized information into a web page that is different for everyone you invite to visit. It is incredibly simple; seriously, I promise! All that you need is a very basic understanding of HTML, like how to make hyperlinks, and I will teach you everything else. Sound fair?

What can you do with this, you may be wondering? Well, if you have a newsletter, you can create a link to your web site and the page displayed could have your subscribers first name where ever you want it. It doesn’t have to be their first name either; it could quite literally be any custom variable that your newsletter managing service/script/program has saved for each of your subscribers their last name, email address, snail mail address, gender, age, favorite color, etc.

But we don’t have to stop there, not at all. You can go on and use as many variables as you want, not just one. Weกll thoroughly cover this.

Why is this HTML tweak useful, you may now be asking? Just imagine this, you email your list of subscribers about a new product you have recently released. In your email, you write a few paragraphs about the product to generate interest and conveniently provide a link for them to click on to go back to your website and read your full sales copy. Since you have such a trusting reputation with your subscribers, they give your product the benefit of the doubt and click on the link to read more. When they get to your sales copy, lo and behold their name is used throughout the page!

We all learned in Marketing 101 that your sales copy needs to be personal; that when you write it, you need to speak to one person and in everyday language. With this cool HTML tweak, you will be able to reach new levels of personalization. Yes, the subscriber will be impressed that their name is used in the middle of your sales copy, and yes, they will have more personal interest in what you are saying. It is a whole new experience at that point, because you are talking to them individually. Heck, you just used their name! It won’t just be, กYou will get big results!ก but, กFred, you will get big results!ก

Now, letกs get on to the code! For this example, we are going to be using an HTML file named กchoppers.htmก.

Open up กchoppers.htmก in your favorite editor. Now, where ever you want the subscribers first name to appear, put this code: กก (minus the quotes), and wherever you want their last name to appear, put: กก (again, minus the quotes).

Do you see the ก$aก in the first bit of code and the ก$bก in the second? For every custom variable you want to appear on your web page, just put that little bit of code with a different letter.

To explain it a little more, for every place the subscribers first name should appear, put กก. For every place the subscribers last name should appear, put กก. For every place the subscribers email address should appear, put กก. And so on and so forth. Yes, you can use each bit of code as often as you want. No, it doesn’t really matter that the first name is using the code with ก$aก it could be ก$hก, ก$pก or even ก$zก, just as long as each custom variable uses a different letter.

Now you will need to rename กchoppers.htmก to กchoppers.phpก. Some HTML editors do not open up .php files, so I suggest only doing a กsave asก to a .php file. That way, you will still have กchoppers.htmก to edit whenever you need to, then just do another กsave asก. Upload the .php file to your web host.

Now we need to create the link the subscribers will click on to get to the newly created กchoppers.phpก file. For this part, you need to know what codes your newsletter managing service/script/program uses to customize your emails. Just for this example, letกs say two of them are ;FirstName; and ;LastName;.

When you write your email, the address of your sales page in the link you will create to go to it, will look like this: กyourdomain.com/choppers.php?a=;FirstName;&b=;LastName;ก. But when you send out your email to your subscribers, your newsletter managing service/script/program will fill in those codes with the subscribers first and last name. So when the subscriber clicks on the link, the address to your sales page will actually look like this: กyourdomain.com/choppers.php?a=Fred&b=Jonesก.

If you only cared to use the subscribers first name, you would only need to use กก in กchoppers.phpก, and the address to that page in the link in your email would look like: กyourdomain.com/choppers.php?a=;FirstName;ก, and for your subscriber Fred, his link address would end up looking like: กyourdomain.com/choppers.php?a=Fredก.

You have just now taken many steps in front of your competition. You are now able to market much more personally than most people think is even possible.

Copyright © by Palyn Peterson

mailto:[email protected]

About The Author

Palyn Peterson publishes the acclaimed Advanced Internet Marketing News. A professional newsletter with a refreshing perspective and a strong focus on nocost techniques. http://FutureInternetMarketing.com. FREE Tips, Tricks, Tools, Resources, eBooks, and More!

This article is free to publish with resource box. If using this article, please send a brief message to mailto:[email protected]

This article was posted on December 18, 2003

by Palyn Peterson

The Jigsaw Virus

The Jigsaw Virus

by: Gary Durkin

Stay with me on this, the ‘penny may drop’ about halfway into the article!

Target in very general terms, this article is targeted at anyone involved in business, whether it be offline ‘realworld’ business, or online ‘cyber’ ebusiness.

Let’s define the title.

ขjigsawข a puzzle with multiple parts which requires some element of skill to correctly piece them all together in the right way, making one complete ‘picture’.

ขvirusข an infection which grows, replicates and spreads.

Make sense yet? No!

One of the key fundamental basics in business starts with this. Business is based on the law of ’Supply and Demand’.

In simple terms, this means that if people have a demand (need or want) for something, then someone (perhaps you, or other businesses) supply them.

In simpler terms…. Have a product or service that customers want, then provide them with it.

JIGSAW…. Now has 2 parts / pieces…. Product (or service) and customers (people who want / need it).

If YOU are the business supplying customers with what they want, you may look at other products which complement or contrast. You may also look at adding new ways to deliver your product or service, perhaps new markets / countries / demographics…..

You may also want to have different versions / types of your product…. Plus you may want to promote / market your company in new / additional ways.

Also, you may want to have added computer systems, take payments in different forms, different currencies….. translation (remember stay with me on this!)

You have seen competitors using ‘800’ Freephone numbers….. You’ve read about faxback services, callcenters, fulfilment services….. You want to get involved in these.

JIGSAW….. From the original (and simple) 2 parts / pieces….. Your jigsaw now has many more, even dozens (or more) of pieces. The simple puzzle is infected. It’s spreading and growing. .. It’s out of control.

The original focus you had, is now a distant blur. Even if you had as many arms as an octopus, you still wouldn’t piece together THIS puzzle.

Let’s take just one piece of a small, simple jigsaw puzzle, and call it ขAdvertising, Marketing, Promotionข. They all mean the same…. ‘spreading the word’.

This single piece can start like this. Put a simply poster in the back of your car, on a notice board, in a shop window.

Then, get business cards, then marketing ‘postcards’…….then leaflets, a brochure, a fullcolor glossy brochure….a catalogue…..CD Rom business cards, interactive multimedia…

Advertise in the local ‘free papers’, then a small ad in the town newspaper, then a halfpage….fullpage ad…. Full color……. Then a 10 second ad on radio….. Then 30 seconds…..

Then 20 seconds on local / cable TV….. Then 60 seconds….. And on…and on.

Get a domain name, a website, software, design, hosting, auto responders, mailing list, Flash, Audio, Video, Keywords, Meta Tags, Keyword Density, Pay Per Click, Search Engine Optimization…

Ask a few friends to hand out some leaflets for you, create a reseller program, an affiliate program, an introducer scheme, get the software, the systems, Advertising Agencies, Copywriters, Professional Marketers, International Business Promoters…..

Where will it all end? With an army of Armani suited Harvard Graduates jetsetting all over the planet, trying to sell your widget?

Once the virus infects, it spreads, it grows and it can get out of hand very quickly.

Your ‘Jigsaw Puzzle’ is infected, the infection has spread, and grown and replicated the couple of pieces you originally started with, and turned into something unmanageable.

Just as you cannot take antibiotics to cure a virus in health, there is no simple cure in business.

Prevention is the best cure.

Your Jigsaw Puzzle should start with the simplest of forms…. 2 pieces (remember the 2 parts to basic business? Supply & Demand have a product or service which people want or need, and give it to them (well…. Sell it!).

Make sure the first two pieces of your puzzle fit together perfectly, before you even think about adding pieces.

Once the first 2 are set, then perhaps consider expanding your jigsaw puzzle but ONLY ONE PIECE AT A TIME.

Once that third piece fits, then move on. Don’t try adding multiple pieces all at the same time, and trying to fit them altogether in one go.

If you’re first few (2, 3 or 4) pieces of your puzzle don’t fit, then STOP.

Stop right there. Reassess the situation.

If you cannot get the pieces to fit correctly before moving on, then perhaps that piece of the jigsaw, doesn’t belong to your puzzle.

Many people fall flat on their face by ignoring this point.

If they cannot fit the pieces, they put them to one side, and get more pieces to try….. And some of them won’t fit, put them aside…. Get some others…

INFECTED!!!

The final part of the article goes back to our army of Armani Suited Harvard Graduates… remember them?

The point of that paragraph was to illustrate how the ’infection’, if unchecked, will go on and on… where will it end?

Is your Jigsaw Puzzle ’infinite’? How far will you push your business? Is there a point where it’s just too much?

You may have carefully put together your jigsaw puzzle completed finished….. And you may not even realize it!

Know when and where to STOP… and BLOCK the Virus.

© Copyright 2005 All Rights Reserved worldwide.

About The Author

Gary Durkin

Founder of the Internet Advice Center®

http://www.InternetAdviceCenter.com

Gary has more than a decade of offline international business success behind him, and has been doing business online for 6 years.

If you would like to join thousands of subscribers to his newsletter ‘Delivering Success’ send a blank email to [email protected]

© Copyright 2005 All Rights Reserved worldwide.

You are free to distribute this article, providing it remains unchanged and with this box attached.

This article was posted on April 23

by Gary Durkin

TEN Tips For Your Web Site Home Page

TEN Tips For Your Web Site Home Page

by: Radhika Venkata

1. Loading time:

try to be below 20kb
less number of images
specify height and width of images
Html with out erros
WYSIWYG editors load up your html code. so try using text editor part of your html editors instead of visual editor

2. Images Only home page:
Say goodbye to images only home pages. Home pages with flash only introductions or only graphics don’t attain good ranking in search engines.
3. Content:
Put content that related to your products or a list of your products with some text under them. Don’t forget to sprinkle some keywords in that text.
4. Links to your Products:
Make it Easy for your visitor to reach your product pages. Afterall your purpose of setting up a web site is to do few sales. Right? On each page you can use same navigational menu. So your visitor can reach any page on your web site with two clicks.
5. Headings and subheadings:
Highlight your product benefits or services. Put your content as short paragraphs. Beleive it or not, if the matter is like short paragraphs anybody can read whole page instead of a half page singe paragraph.
6. Promotions and sales:
If you are offering any promotional methods on your products like free upgrades for limited time or reduction of price to half for limited time etc, state them bold on your home page. This may make your visitor click on your link and check out your product.
7. Links to Outside domain:
As a rule of thumb, don’t put links to other domains from your homepage, unless those are also yours. If you are participating in link exchanges then create seperate folder for link exchanges like yourdomain.com/linkpartners/index.html
8. Popups on Your home page:
Personally I never liked them before and even I don’t advice to put pop ups on your web sites. If you do a search on Overture, there are more searches for the term popup blockers. So you decide yourself.
These are first 4 terms (148790 pop up blocker,65195 blocker free pop up,53141 pop up stopper, 47157 pop up blockers)
If you still love pop ups go for floatingbox that keep a small box that floads at the cornet of your home page.
More here: http://www.webmasterscentral.com/t/floatingads.shtml
9. Home page ranking:
Try to stick on to one url in link exchanges or ezine articles. When you do pageranking in Google, all these urls give different pageranking

yourdomain.com/
yourdomain.com.index.html
www.yourdomain.com/
www.yourdomain.com/index.html

10. Look little professional:
Little professionalism on your home page keeps your visitor few more seconds. And that few more seconds counts a lot to increase of your newsletter sign ups and sales. Little logo, your web site motto, same font, display of your products are only few to say.
(c) Radhika Venkata

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 May 23, 2004

by Radhika Venkata

Details of Getting a Blog

Details of Getting a Blog

by: Daniel Punch

Blogs, the abbreviation of Web Logs (online journals), are becoming more and more popular all the time. People are starting new blogs at an astounding rate so it’s safe to assume that there are constantly people out there who want to know how to get a blog going. Despite personal feelings about the actual quality of the majority of blogs out there on the Internet, that’s what I hope to be able to help you do with this article.

First things first, you need somewhere to deposit your thoughts. You need to decide how you want to attack this. Your choices are:

To use a blog hosting service such as eBloggy (http://www.ebloggy.com) or BlogEasy (http://www.blogeasy.com).

To host a blog yourself on a server of your own choice.

Both options have their free or paid subsections. The blog hosting services mentioned here are free but there are paid services out there. MSN now offer ‘Spaces’, which are essentially blogs attached to your MSN account and may be of interest to some. Web hosting can also be free or paid but you’ll find it difficult to find a free service that will offer you the features you’ll need to run a blog backend. One place to look is your Internet Service Provider (ISP) that may offer some free web space. This web space often contains as many features as many professional web hosting packages although it offers less space. Blogs tend not to take up a whole lot of room so this shouldn’t be a problem. The advantage of hosting your own blog over using a service is that you have greater control over how it works, how it looks etc. You also don’t have to put up with there being ads on your page (unless you find some free hosting which usually has advertising put at the top of your site). The downside is that it can be a bit more complicated to function.

If you’re going to host your own blog you’ll need to find yourself a blog backend. This is the program that runs on the server and allows you to upload new journal entries while allowing other people to view them. You’ll have to either choose a backend that fits within your web hosting package’s limits or a hosting package that meets the backend’s requirements. The general requirements are PHP and MySQL but you can get some backends that work solely with PHP or even Java. It’s important to make sure that you can change the read/write permissions of the PHP files on your server (using CHMOD or an equivalent, talk to your host—they’ll know what you’re talking about). There’s a nice breakdown of many different beckends and their features and requirements that can be found at, http://www.asymptomatic.net/blogbreakdown.htm. I personally use Pivot because it doesn’t require MySQL and it has RSS distribution, which is nice.

Once you’ve got yourself a hosting package and a backend you need to install the backend. This can get tricky but most of them come with an install program and you should be able to work through it if you follow the instructions that will undoubtedly come with the package. If you run into difficulties your hosting provider’s support team should be happy enough to help you along.

So now you have yourself a blog up and running; it’s time to fill it with content. What you write is up to you. Generally people write about their lives, how they feel, what they think, and similar topics. You can be much more diverse and creative than this though. You could for example post creative writings on your blog, as well as discuss news and current affairs, or anything else that you can imagine. It’s your personal space to write what you like and get it out there for others to read and give their opinions on.

Making people come and read your blog could take some effort. You need to make them aware that it exists and keep it interesting so that they continue coming back. Nothing kills off a readership base like a lack of updates. At first you can start small with your ‘publicity’ by telling friends and family about it. Put a link to your site in your MSN or other messenger program nickname. Put a link in your email signature so that everyone you email sees it. Get your friends interested and they’ll tell others and you’ll probably be able to build up a small community with relative ease. For attracting the broader public you need ways to let the wider community know you are out there. Spend time at other people’s blogs, make it a habit to head over there and read their posts. If it’s appropriate put a link to your site in a comment box or guest book on their site. Visit forums related to blogs (or just forums in general) and become an active member there. As long as you have a link to your site in your signature, people will probably head on over for a look.

You can also submit your blog to lists such as Blogrank.net (http://www.blogrank.net). These are sites dedicated solely to getting people into blog sites, and while it may be hard to climb into the higher ranks, simply having your site listed will probably improve your hit rate. You could also submit your site to as many search engines as possible. Perhaps you could even write yourself an article like this one with your link in the bio field. Beyond this you’re going to have to work out your own methods for publicizing your site. Just think creatively about how and where you can get a link put in and you’ll be fine.

Getting your blog set up and running can be an involving task but the results will be worth it. A final word of warning: Don’t get too engrossed in your blog. You need a life in order to be able to write about your life! As I wrote in a previous article it has been found that blogging can sometimes have a detrimental effect on a person instead of the positive effect that it was designed for. Try not to write only for yourself; it’s a public forum for others to read so try and write entries that will be of some benefit to the wider community as well as to you. Blog safe and have fun!

About The Author

Daniel Punch

M6.Net Web Helpers

http://www.m6.net

[email protected]

This article was posted on March 13

by Daniel Punch

Googlebot Won’t Go Home

Googlebot Won’t Go Home

by: Tony Dean

I have กGooglebotก crawl my site every day like a dispossessed spirit that can’t leave.

It was not always like this, I would go for a month or more before he came to my site and then would only crawl a few pages and leave again.

This has been going on now for two months or more, Iกve been watching the stats on my server everyday seeing just where he goes. He will crawl a few pages one day, and the next some other pages, and then finally leave until the morrow. After just three or four weeks, I noticed I got an infestation of lesser bots calling as well, some I have never heard of before, they seem to follow กGooglebotก as though he is the Pied Piper of Hamelin.

What caused this infestation of bots?

Well, I got interested in rss feeds, I thought กWhat a good tool for drawing traffic to my site.ก

So I studied up on rss feeds until I understood what was involved. Now I am no ‘techieก, and the most programming I do is html in กNotepadก, making my own web pages.

Rss feeds use a similar language called xml, so it was easy to understand for me, and I was able to quickly make up an rss feed page in กNotepadก, placed it on my server, downloaded a กfeed readerก software, opened it up, placed the address of my feed in the กfeed readerก, and up came my rss feed in the reader. It was so easy I wrote an ebook to tell everyone how to do it, itกs called ‘really Simple RSSก.

There are many rss directories and syndication services that I submitted the address of my rss feed to, so other people can look at the feed in their กfeed readerก and see what articles I am posting.

Some of the กsubscribersก to the feed actually come and visit my site to see what itกs all about, which happened almost straight away after I submitted my feed.

In less than 36 hours, กGooglebotก found my feed!

In a little over two days later Yahooกs กSlurpก bot found my feed, and from there on they have both been crawling my site with the lesser bots every single day.

They crawl everything, they crawl all my pdf ebooks, they look at a few pages in กWebmasters Cornerก, they even look at my กBonus Reportsก, and even descend the staircase into my กSecret Vaultก!

When will they go home and stop prying into my little secrets?

I know I encourage them like leaving cheese for a mouse, by putting more pdf files, software and ebooks on my site every day, so I suppose the poor bots can’t ever keep up!

I found out that like mice like cheese, that กGooglebotก likes my pdf files, he has been fitted with digital spectacles so he is now able to actually read keyword rich pdf files all the way through to the end! So he likes pdf files.

So I have obliged him!

I put 85 pdf files up on my server one night just to keep him happily reading! I have put many more up on the server since, and will continue to create more pdf files of classic authors for free download, just to keep him calling with his กfriendsก.

Isn’t this a laugh?

Itกs like taking in a stray dog, feeding him, housing him, and the dog loosing the ability to wander off again and finding you have got a lodger for life.

My siteกs ranking has risen considerably both in Yahoo and Google, but for some reason that escapes me for the time being, my ranking rose more quickly in Yahoo and they rank it much higher than Google. I may well find the reason for this before long and put it in another article.

So if you are a web site owner struggling to get noticed by the web bots, don’t put it off much longer, put up an rss feed with articles about your products or service and not only will กGooglebotก call with his กfriendsก, but actual live people will call too.

About The Author

Tony Dean runs a web site selling ebooks and software at: http://www.ebooksales.com

Subscribe to his ezine just send a blank email to: [email protected]

This article was posted on October 21, 2004

by Tony Dean

Make Money At Home Online

Make Money At Home Online

by: Joel Teo

Need an idea to make money from home online? Here is a list to provide you with a good place to start!

1. Try looking for a telecommute job. You may be uncomfortable with a home business, try instead bringing your job home to you. You could try asking your boss but if that doesn’t work, search online for telecommute jobs.

2. eBay is hot! Try selling some of those items you’ve collected over the years and sell them at auction and get top dollar for your products. It’s quick and easy.

3. Make a website with chat rooms. Chat rooms are popular. Niche them to make a concentrated gathering. If it’s a music chat room, you can put up affiliate programs from Amazon.com.

4. Take flour and eggs and make dog biscuits! These are a hit online as well as offline too. You could sell them wholesale to pet stores.

5. Start an online directory. People will want to leave their links with you and link back to be included. People will save your website as a resource if you niche it out. Put up advertising too.

6. Google Adsense offers a great way to earn some money. Write an article, put it on a website and put the ads in the page. People will come, read your article and click on the matching ads.

7. Take $2 and turn it into $20. Buy wholesale and sell retail online. Sometimes you don’t even need to carry the products. Drop shippers will be happy to do all the hard work, you just make the website and sell.

8. Do you know things most other people don’t? Do you know how to take a new author and help him sell his first novel? Offer your services for a fee as a consultant or a coach.

9. Kids are a great way to make money. Make a kid’s website and sell advertising space. Make sure that it is per click and companies that sell toys or candy will love the added exposure.

10. When in doubt, look at what you love and do what you love to do! If you like games, make a game website. If you like teddy bears, sell teddy bears. Stick with what you know and you will never be steered wrong.

Also, try asking around for more ideas. Look at business you admire and figure out how you can make it better. Sometimes the best ideas are ones that are adjusted from old ideas. This is how a lot of people get their start, why not you?

About The Author

Joel Teo is the owner of the Money Making Directory which boasts of money making tips, recommendations and resources to help ordinary people make money online. Signup for his free newsletter today at http://www.MakeThousandsToday.info and receive his complimentary ข7 Insider Secrets to making money onlineข Course.

[email protected]

This article was posted on August 07

by Joel Teo

Advertising What Sets You Apart

Advertising What Sets You Apart

by: Shane Woods

When advertising, you need to sell your opportunity, your products and yourself. What sets you apart from everyone else? Maybe you produce a newsletter with a specific content where there is a demand from a particular group of people, or you promote your own special product that no one have not yet seen.

That´s a huge benefit! That´s what you need to sell in your ad campaign, and those are the things you need to do in order to become successful.

You don´t have to be worried that network marketing prosperity is difficult. It isn´t. In fact, it has never been so easy to make a decent second income or even a full time. But it takes time, persistence and uniqueness.

The people looking at your ads and reading your follow up letters are going to judge you and your whole business not only by what the materials have to say, but also by their appearance.

Be sure you send a powerful, positive and convincing message. Invest some time and money on your marketing materials, the payoff will be well worth it. Look at others ads on the Internet, see what´s attracting you, this will most likely attract others too.

Do you see what I have in mind? Your advertising campaign will be the propel to your business success. By now you think กHow do I create one of those successful adsก After all, It´s the words that sell your opportunity. Write a good ad and It´s taking you to the top. Read others ads, get some good ideas from it, don´t copy it, that´s theft. Just get some inspiration from it.Let your friends take a look at your new written ad and say what they think about it, honestly.

Now where to put your ad? If you place your ad in a pets publication and the ad is promoting toys for children you might not get a single response. But placed in the right publication it will be a winner. It´s very important that you from the beginning know exactly where to put your ad. Just think about you having spent hours on that ad and then you put it in the wrong publication and get no response at all, that´s a big waste of time and effort.

My best advise is that you always work on your ads. Write them down, leave them for some time, go back to look at them again, let others look at them and after a while you will see the picture of your ad and you will se if it´s working or not. If not then you have to start from the beginning and write a new one and follow the same procedure again. But now it´s easier because you are deeply involved in the process.

The Internet are full of ads, start clicking around and read others ads, this is the best way to learn what is working or not. You probably can tell instantly when an ad is good or not at least after a while.

About The Author

Shane Woods, successful Internet marketer founder of http://www.automatedrecruiting.com.

This article was posted on August 03

by Shane Woods

To Survey Or Not To Survey

To Survey Or Not To Survey

by: Dave Weeks

I have learned over the years that when it comes to online marketing as I know it, itกs not about what I want in my business.Itกs really about what people who visit my website want. For awhile I didn’t understand that philosophy. How do I find out what people want?

Finding out what people want is not something you, I or anyone else for that matter can pull out of thin air. If we are going to be successful online, even offline in the brick and mortar world, we have to take our eyes off of ourselves and put them onto our potential customers.So how do we do this?

The answer is quite simple yet complex.That is to conduct a survey or surveys.Conducting surveys is simple.On your website you can create forms for people to fill out. If you are going to put a form on your website, I would limit only one form. You do not want to bombard people with forms.Keep it simple as the saying goes.

Do not get too personal in your form.In other words only ask for first name and email. That is it when it comes to their personal information.

Now, from their you can use your own imagination on the rest of the form makeup. Whatever it is you want to sell, make your survey easily accessible on your website. The number of visitors visiting your site will determine the number of surveys filled out and sent to your emails inbox. Its all numbers anyway….whether its marketing a product or service and conducting surveys. This is an excellent way of building lists specific to what people want to buy.

Notice how I said whatever it is you want to sell. What that means is, you don’t know yet if you have what people really want. That is the purpose of the survey. To find out if they want what you have. Once you collect the data and you are ready to sell, you have in your hand a ready made list of names specific for that product or service you are offering.

Not too long ago, this year as a matter of fact (2004 currently), I learned what not to do in a survey. I will give you my experience of what not to do and how to remedy this situation.

I recently got married and five of my family and friends took me to dinner two days prior to the wedding. As we were finishing our meal, the manager came to our table and told us that we have been selected to participate in a survey. She told us that if we participated, we would receive $3 off of our next meal. Come to find out, our bill which totaled over $120 collectively, the $3 off was for the entire group at the table. Ok, I think its nice that they offered this, but lets look at the reality of this situation. First of all, $3 off of over $120 does not get anyone too excited nor does it want to make anyone go through the hassle, yes hassle of filling out a survey when they are enjoying a night out with family and friends. Secondly, the odds of us getting together again and eating at this particular restaraunt are slim to none. So what does that tell me? That tells me one of two things. Either someone did not take their eyes off of themselves and put them onto their customers or, they knew the odds of us coming back as a group were slim and it works completely in their favor.That is disturbing to me. Now for my input on a remedy.

What would I do in this situation? Well first of all, everything I stated in the above paragraph, all of my family and friends after we were กselectedก kind of looked at each other in amazement and disbelief. We all knew that it was a silly thing to do to come up to us and play us like we were born a few days ago. First, If I am going to get a group to fill out a survey, especially if I have been กselectedก, and I am going to give them something in return to do so, I would offer the table, say, free desert now. Why do I say this? remember, you are marketing your business….make it work.Make people who just enjoyed the meal and the service go out and tell someone else.Stand up and believe that the way you are conducting your survey is for your customers, not just you alone. Don’t try and fool people, were not fooled.If you are going to have a couple fill out a survey, how about buy one meal get the second meal half off. After all, it appears this is a random selection. Not everyoneis doing this. Now, I am not looking for free handouts. As a matter of fact, I would have rather given the manager (and no disrespect to her) $5 to leave. Itกs obvious to me in this circumstance that this particular establishment does not want to give away anything. They want it to only benefit themselves.But if you are a business and you want true success in surveys, do it right.

The final approach? Instead of offering anything, put surveys out on the table and let people make up their own minds. People like to be left alone and not annoyed. Its ok to ask for the sale, but no means no. If you continue to push someone, they won’t come back. After all, would you?

About The Author

Visit Dave Weeksก website at http://www.etypewriter.com or write to [email protected] for any comments you may have.

This article was posted on February 02, 2004

by Dave Weeks

Search Engine Optimization for Dummies

Search Engine Optimization for Dummies

by: Mira Marsellia

Simple Steps for Beginners to Get Good Rank Position and Make Your Site Sell

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) method important for you especially if you come to the world of internet marketing in a shoe string budget promotion for your business. If you are a newbie or beginner, don’t worry about this! This method is for you who want to optimize your website and then get the top rank on search engine. And it all could be possible for you by follow the simple steps hereunder:

1. Have Your Own Website

If you like to be an affiliate, much business opportunity will give you personal website as your rep tools which it will be customized to your name, id, etc. This is good since you don’t have to put any effort to design your website and hosting. But remember, you can’t modify it and put anything on your own to enrich the content and optimized to website. Besides the customized website is very similar to each other and the content is beyond your control so it is not easy to get indexed by search engine. So if you want to give good popularity to your main website (the customized website from your company) get some free or paid hosting and have your own website. Or try blog. For me blogging is very easy to use and can be purposed for many idea, both publishing personal thoughts and business. Blog is easy to update, it could give good informative things with nice template to choose. Personally I like Blogger at www.blogger.com.

2. Content, Content, and Content again.

Why content could be the most important in optimizing your website? Because no matter how beautiful and attractive your website with animation or banner, you must understand that the content hold the main important role to be indexed in search engine. Don’t just put big banners and abundant links of affiliates on your website. You must focus on what your main business and what you want to offer most. Don’t offer too many and wide range of product. Except they are related each others, be unique in you content. Give good quality of information, use simple words in short paragraphs and good structure and language.

3. Domain Name is Your Business Name

Try the best you can to get domain name which described your business well. Your domain name must be used as your main ad most important keyword for people to find your website or what you offer. If you like to sell food for chicken, for example, let your domain name www.foodchicken.com. Avoid putting unrelated name and description since it will hurt your rank position in search engine. If you like to list your website on directory, put the first capital like A or number 1 is good for you to get top position.

4. Put Good Certain Keywords

The next step you must evaluate with good care in your content is keyword. Put extra attention to good keywords which you think will be used by people to find your site. Use the most related keywords and focus on what your business offer. Don’t just use single word only, people like t search by using certain keywords with phrase. Collect good keywords with low competition. Use Wordtracker at http://www.wordtracker.com. After you get your certain keyword, put it as Title of your Website and as the first words in sentence of your paragraph.

5. Put Brief Description

Give short and clear description on the top and at the beginning of your website informing your website content and your business offer in brief. Don’t forget to emphasize your main keyword here. But avoid use excessive keywords in your sentence. It won’t be good for your website and business since you put yourself in danger as noticed doing spamming by search engine. Make good language and well structured sentence always.

6. Give Important Note

Give bold, italic or under strike to your important keywords and phrase. Search engine will note that the keywords are important and will give good rank to you in search result. Make link to your other website with the main keyword as link name. It will give your sentence nice looking. For example: Enhance your knowledge and get more information at Your Business Name.

If you don’t familiar with HTML, I would like to inform you even you don’t want to be a webmaster it’s important for you to know HTML at least the basic one. If you like to get HTML knowledge, www.webmonkey.com is good place for you to learn.

7. Meta Tag

Some search engine still use the information from meta tag as their method to index website. Meta tag should be put after and before in your template. This is the sample of meta tag:

8. Link Popularity

Link Popularity is known as the number of websites that link to your website. And it is become one of the factors that help search engines determine your relevancy for a search term and index your website there. Gaining link from other site has proven to be a popular method for people seeking to improve their search engine rankings.

But not all the link your site will be good link for you and measured by search engine. If it comes from popular and reputable website sure it will give you good performance, but you must avoid the bad link which comes from spammer site or from link farm. If you can’t get link from important site, just try to have it from the same content and your own related site.

Some good links can come by join forum and make good PR campaign or write articles. Sign your name at the bottom of your posting or writing and be sure to include a signature that includes a link to your website.

The most of all, the natural links will come if you give good quality content and good features on your website, people would like to link to your site as the results. So get focus on this. The links will flow naturally.

About The Author

Mira Marsellia from Indonesia is member of Elite Team International. Enhanced your knowledge about internet marketing and doing online business by get Elite Team Marketing 30 days Free Training at: http://eliteteammarketingsuccess.blogspot.com.

Mira Marsellia Personal Blog: http://www.eliteteamcenterindonesia.blogspot.com

[email protected]

This article was posted on February 05

by Mira Marsellia