Article Title: Take Advantage of 'Lazy' Journalists to
Reap a Bonanza
Take Advantage of 'Lazy' Journalists to Reap a Bonanza
of Free Publicity
Author Name: George McKenzie
Line Space: 55 characters
Word Count: 441
Category (key words): Publicity, free publicity,
promotions, small business, PR, public relations,
radio, TV, newspaper, marketing, mass media
Article URL:
http://www.publicitygoldmine.com/articlelibrary/lazy.html
Homepage URL: http://www.publicitygoldmine.com/ea
Autoresponder Address (If Available): george2-
52126@...
Copyright Date: October 31, 2003

Please feel free to publish this article with the
resource box intact in your ezine, newsletter, offline
publication or website.


Take Advantage of 'Lazy' Journalists to Reap a Bonanza
of Free Publicity

by George McKenzie

During a recent interview for his
'Internet Marketing
Lounge' radio show at
http://www.internetmarketinglounge.com), Peter Twist
asked me if I thought
today's journalists had
gotten lazy.

Peter noted that to get a journalist to do a story
about you, a product, or an idea, you almost have to do
all the work for them:  give them a good headline,
figure out an intriguing angle, etc.

On the surface, it would seem then that's
today's
reporters, producers, and editors HAVE gotten lazy.

But in fact, the opposite is true.  It takes more hard
work than ever to stay in the journalism business these
days, and only the most dedicated, energetic people
survive.

Think about it this way.

When I got my first TV job in 1974, the city where I
worked (Altoona, PA) had only ONE station.  Even big
cities, like nearby Pittsburgh, only had three
commercial outlets.

So those stations got to divide up ALL the TV
advertising dollars.  The pie was cut into no more than
three pieces.

Look at what you have now.  Hundreds of stations and
cable channels competing for less and less money.  The
pie is no longer cut into pieces.  It's
down to
slivers.

Plus, advertisers just
aren't spending right now.
Revenues are down.

As a result, some news operations are shutting down
altogether.  Others are merging and streamlining
(streamlining is a euphemism for 'cutting
jobs').

The laws of economics apply.  Reporters, producers, and
editors who are still in the business have to do more
work for less money.

While that's
bad news for them,
it's good news for you.
It opens up some terrific opportunities to get exposure
and free publicity.

Here's
how:

If
you're sending a press release, make sure

1. it has a great headline that offers a benefit to
viewers, readers or listeners.  It has to be about
something they need to know, or would like to know.
Focus on THEM, not you.

2. its 'news
value' is apparent at a glance. A
reporter, producer or editor wants to be able to figure
out in seconds what the release is about, and why it
would be of interest to their audience.

There's
never a guarantee that
you'll be able to get
the free publicity you want from the media.  By if you
do the things I've
mentioned above,
you'll certainly
increase your chances.

Remember this advice from Joan Stewart, a former
newspaper editor.  Joan says the five most important
words you can say to any reporter are 'How
can I help
you?'

That's always been true.

But in this day and age of shrinking budgets and
expanding job descriptions,
it's truer than ever.


During his 31 year broadcasting career, George's
TY Reports have appeared on ABC, NBC, CBS, ESPN
and CNN. George offers a free 7-day mini course to
anyone who subscribes to his free weekly ezine,
Register at http://www.publicitygoldmine.com/ea

Article Title: How To Produce The PERFECT Viral Ebook
Author Name: Harvey Segal
Email: hsegal@...
Word Count: 950
Category: Internet marketing
Copyright Date: 2003
Web Address: http://www.supertips.com
Autoresponder address: viralebook@...
Reprint Instructions: This article may be reprinted freely with
bylines and url. Please notify author if published.

--------------------------------------------------------

How To Produce The PERFECT Viral Ebook
by Harvey Segal


Viral marketing is probably the number one method for
generating traffic and sales - IF it is set up properly.

Take the case of a viral ebook - which means a book that
can be passed from one person to another bringing
benefits (profits) for each party in turn.

How is this achieved ?

The basic concept is that the book contains links to
affiliate products. When a reader of the book makes a
purchase from a link then the affiliate receives the
commission.

The creator of such a book will allow some of the links
to be 'rebranded' which means a  person (who we will
refer to as the rebrander) can replace them with his own
affiliate codes thus collecting commission. This is the
obvious incentive for him to pass the book around and
begin the viral progression.


If we want to maximize the benefits for everyone and
create the perfect viral ebook we need to have THREE
key factors in place.


1) Wide Distribution

There are many permutations in the ways that you can
offer an ebook. It can be free or paid, and for either
option you can charge for rebranding or offer it free;
plus you can have part customization or full
customization. On top of that, for a paid book you can
offer resale rights and even the right to grant resale
rights.


Let's keep it simple.

What we want is the widest possible distribution so that
we get the most commission from the affiliate links.

So we will have a FREE book and FREE rebranding rights.


2) Quality Affiliate Links

It goes without saying that your book should contain
good content on a topic of interest.

But will readers click on those affiliate links ?

The answer is 'NO' if you copy the poor example of many
authors, for instance:

- have you ever opened an ebook and been faced with a
barrage of affiliate links ?

- or seen affiliate products which have nothing to do
with the theme of the book ? For example in a book about
hypnotism you get a link to a web hosting company.

So what is the best way ?

The secret is to have highly relevant links and weave
them naturally into the content in a low key style
without appearing to push for a sale. So when you
discuss a particular topic and want to show where more
detail can be found, or how a particular problem can be
solved, that's where you can mention the affiliate
product as a source of further information. If you want
to see really good examples of how to do this read the
free book at the end of this article.

See - that last sentence was an ACTUAL working example
of how to weave in a link.



3) Maximum Return For Both Parties

You need to get the rebranding balance right.

If you give away an ebook and allow all the affiliate
links to be rebranded that is a great deal for the
rebrander - but what do you get out of it ? No affiliate
commission, just subscribers maybe for your mailing list
if you have a sign-up form in the book.

Conversely if you hand out only a few affiliate links
for rebranding then that provides little incentive for
the rebrander to distribute the book.

Ideally what you want is the maximum motivation for your
rebrander which would be

* to allow free rebranding
* to allow ALL the links to be rebranded

but in a way that you can still benefit.

Can that be possible ?

Fortunately it is, using any of 3 different methods

* if the links in the book are for your own products

* If the links are for products for which you have
resale rights

* If the links are for 2-tier affiliate programs so that
you collect the 2nd tier commission when a rebrander,
who has signed up under you, makes a sale


And so, if you use these techniques you can begin a
viral marketing campaign which will continue to generate
traffic and sales with little on-going effort on your
part.


EXCEPT for two issues we need to resolve

1) What happens if everyone rebrands the book and only
makes purchases from their own copy ?

Well, I have found that in practise only a minority (say
10%) will take the time to rebrand a book which means
that the majority (90%) will be reading your book and
purchasing from YOUR links.

So there's no problem here.

2) Suppose you plan to produce a viral book. It's about
a popular topic - so it's bound to have a wide
circulation - but you can't find any of the three types
of suitable links to put in the book, i.e. links to a
product of your own, to products with resale rights or
for 2-tier affiliate programs.

Is there a solution ?

There is and you can find out the answer in my book "101
SuperTips" - it's  actually tip 100.

As you might expect this book is free, with valuable
information linking to highly relevant products, and you
can rebrand it, again for free.

By all the rules above it's a candidate, I hope you
agree, for 'the perfect viral ebook' and a profitable
source of revenue for you.

=======================================================

Harvey is the author of several viral ebooks including
101 SuperTips, a collection of unique Internet Marketing
tips, which you can collect at
http://www.supertips.com/101/
As a further example of viral marketing you can
reproduce this article and change the URL to point to
your own rebranded version.

Article Title: How Much Should You Protect?
Author Name: Amar Mehta
Email: amar@...
Word Count: 859
Category: Internet marketing
Copyright Date:  2003
Web Address: http://www.OnlineProtectionSuite.com
Reprint Instructions:  This article may be reprinted freely with
bylines and url. Please notify me when you publish.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

	           How Much Should You Protect?

			 - By Amar Mehta
		 http://www.OnlineProtectionSuite.com/
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-


The votes are in and everyone agrees to the fact...

I knew no one was really willing, just because someone has
developed that doesn't mean that we have to use it!

All the experts finally agreed on the fact that one shouldn't get
overwhelmed using HTML Code Encryptors.

In recent times there has been a spurt in the HTML Code
Encryption  softwares, you will find plenty of sites on the web
claiming  to be the BEST HTML Code Encryption software with the
most advanced encryption technology. And most of them offer you
features like complete code encryption, which makes your page
undecipherable if someone views the source and allows you to
disable Print, Print Screen etc.


Why People Use HTML Encryptors:

-  To prevent search engines from picking up some of pages,
specifically thank you pages for downloads and pages for
subscribers/members only.

-  To encrypt would be one's search contact pages where you keep
your email addresses to prevent email strippers from getting to
them.

- Another area where encryption may come in could be people with
art sites where they want to prevent the art graphics to be
copied.

All these are GREAT features and the person who has put up the
software must have worked really hard to achieve these features,
but the question is do we really need these features like:

- Disable Printing - Completely encrypted page - etc...

The reason why I have written only 2 factors above and for others
it is etc... is because, these two are of prime concern.

In fact you should allow your surfers/ prospective customers to
consume more. You must have seen "Print This Page" button
becoming ubiquitous. So, I really don't know what are we
achieving by disabling print?

Also, by encrypting the code of complete page, we will be not
allowing Search engines to find relevant keywords and thus lower
search engine rankings?

And last but not the least, I have Win 95 system at home (I know
I live in ancient era :) it crashes Internet Explorer when I even
visit the sites which are using some of the advanced and very
popular HTML Encryptors (I won't like to name them, for obvious
reasons) because they take control of OS for disabling copy,
print, print screen etc. functions.


Simple Solutions To Problems Mentioned Above:

- You can prevent search engines from picking up certain pages by
creating a robots.txt file and uploading it to the root directory
of your site.  Performing a search on Google for a "robots.txt
tutorial" should turn up a lot of good sites on this subject.
Creating a robots.txt file is easy, and it doesn't cost a dime.

- Put e-mails on your site or other places for display as "amar
at onlineprotection.com" or don't put your primary address for
display.

- For Art sites encryption may not be of great help as newbies
also with some knowledge know that they can go to Temporary
Internet Files to get images. In those cases, keeping small
thumbnails or using watermarked image on the site should help.

HTML encryption tools do serve a useful purpose, but if someone
has a strong will to steal another person's content, they can
find a way.  People can use screen capture programs to take
images from a site if the right mouse button is disabled, etc.
None of this is morally or legally right; I am just asserting a
point that none of those tools can offer 100% protection.

HTML Encryptors interfere with the user's experience and rightly
upset some users who can't right click or print. Unlike what some
people try to make you believe there are more reasons to use
right click than just trying to steal your product.


The Other Side:

The other side is of the opinion that their primary emphasis
online is money-generating programs.  Affiliate, MLM, Team
Advertising, Webmaster Tools and the like. That being the case
they WANT people who join them to be able to steal (use) their
work. They even go so far as to offer to set the whole thing up
for them with their referral codes embedded at no charge!

Around 98% of Internet users have JavaScript enabled. The other
2% might not be a concern to you; but if you receive 1,000,000
unique visitors per year, 20,000 of those people might not be
able to access your site if it is HTML encrypted.

That being the case why pray tell them should they be encrypting
anything?


Bottom line:

You have to do a cost-benefit analysis to determine if HTML
encryption tools are a good option for your business. I,
personally, will not use them for encrypting my complete page or
disabling Print Screen or Printing of Page, but that does not
mean that they are bad or ineffective products.

In my opinion there are better ways to provide the same
functionality while providing   better security and not
interfering with your visitor. For protecting people from
stealing your intellectual property (content or images) you do
have Legal protection statements/ packages, which if violated you
can easily sue the person doing the act. This will also ensure
better user experience on your site!

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Amar Mehta is Online Business Protection Expert and Editor of
Online Protection Update, a weekly newsletter that keeps you
updated with latest tools and techniques for protecting your
online business. Learn how you can be ripped off online & how to
protect. ===> http://www.OnlineProtectionSuite.com/ecourse.html

-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

__________________________________
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You have permission to publish this article free of charge either
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This article contains approximately 826 words.


How Deep into Your Site
Are the Spiders Crawling?

By Robin Nobles

Have you ever wondered how far down into your site the search
engine spiders are going? Are the pay inclusion spiders coming at
regular intervals like they're supposed to?

Wouldn't it be great to see which spiders are visiting your site
and which pages they're crawling . . . at a glance?

Robot Manager Pro
(http://www.websitemanagementtools.com/robot.html) is undoubtedly
one of the most helpful software programs I've seen in a long
time. It actually serves two purposes:

1) It will create robots.txt files for you, and
2) It will monitor spider activity to your Web sites.

What is a Robots.txt File?

A robots.txt file is simply a text file that "disallows" (or
keeps spiders out) of certain pages or areas of your Web site.
For example, if you have a section of your site that's devoted to
your personnel, you can keep the spiders from finding and
crawling that entire section by including it in a robots.txt
file.

If you've ever tried to create a robots.txt file by hand, you
know that it's nothing short of tedious, and it's so easy to make
a mistake. So having a program create the file for you
automatically is ideal.

However, what's really exciting to me about Robot Manager Pro is
how it monitors spider traffic. But first, let's look at the
software as a whole.

At Look at Robot Manager Pro

The program is simple to use. On the left-hand side of the
screen, you'll see numbered areas. On the right-hand side of the
screen, you'll see a Quick Help section that explains how to use
that portion of the program.

What you're doing in steps #1-3 is creating your robots.txt file.
You'll tell the program which areas or pages that you want to
keep the spiders from crawling, and the software will create the
robots.txt file for you and upload it to the root directory of
your Web site.

Keep in mind that you don't have to create a robots.txt file if
you don't want or need to. You can simply use the spider
monitoring portion by itself.

Now Let's Get to the "Fun" Stuff

As I stated previously, the most exciting part of the program to
me is the way it monitors spider traffic.

The first time you download your log files to analyze your
traffic, it won't be quite as interesting as it gets each
additional time you use the program.

Every time you use the program, you'll open the initial file you
created, hit "refresh" to download the latest log files, and let
the program update your spider visits.

If we were to click on one of the spiders, such as Googlebot,
we'd see how many pages from this site that Google has
spidered.

Google is a deep crawling engine, and it really can find most of
your Web pages if you provide text links to them.

If we were to click on any of the actual Web pages, we'd see a
screen that tells us how often the spider has visited the page.

Can you see the value in having this type of information?

* If an engine hasn't found one of your important pages, maybe
you need to add more links to that page from pages that are
getting spidered more frequently.

* When you create new pages, you'll be able to see at a glance
when the spiders find and crawl those pages.

* If you use pay inclusion, you'll be able to monitor whether the
spiders are visiting like they're supposed to.

* You'll know exactly which pages of your Web site are being
spidered by which search engines, and when.

In Conclusion

If you're interested in tracking spider visits to your site,
Robot Manager Pro is a "must have" software program for you. It's
fast and easy to use, and it provides key information about how
the spiders are crawling your Web site.

Visit the Robot Manager Pro Web site at
http://www.websitemanagementtools.com/robot.html to learn more or
to download a free trial version. They also offer a regular
version of Robot Manager, but it doesn't monitor spider traffic.


Robin Nobles with Search Engine Workshops teaches SEO strategies
the "stress free" way through hands-on, search engine marketing
workshops (http://www.searchengineworkshops.com) in locations
across the globe and online search engine marketing courses
(http://www.onlinewebtraining.com). Visit the World Resource
Center, a new networking community for search engine marketers.
(http://www.sew-wrc.com)

Copyright 2003 Robin Nobles. All rights reserved.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

You may publish this article free of charge in your ezine,
web site, ebook or print publication so long as the copyright
notice and the resource paragraph (at the end of the article)
are included.

Sopan Greene, M.A.
Email: Sopan@...
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

How to Love Marketing and Make More Money!
by Sopan Greene, M.A.
http://www.AngryEnoughToChange.com


I love a lot of aspects to marketing.  The creativity in
designing ads, the thrill of watching an ad campaign work
and connect with people, and learning new ways to market
better are all fantastic.

But the best thing about marketing is that when we market
we're helping people discover products and services that
impact their lives in positive, sometimes even amazing,
ways.

The key to loving marketing is to only market products
and services that you would buy, use and find value in
yourself.  The reason that "sales" gets such a bad rap
is that so many people are marketing things they don't
believe in.

If you try to market something for the sole purpose of
making money, you will probably fail.  If you don't
beleive in what you're selling, you will probably fail.
If you don't market from an honest belief that your
customer will benefit from what you're marketing, you
will definitely fail.

When I was in high school I began my first career as a
radio disc jockey.  I was a very popular DJ and it wasn't
because I was special or cool.  It was because I loved
music and I loved turning people onto bands and songs
that touched their souls.  (Marketing is really just
turning people onto something they'll appreciate finding
out about).

People would tell me how much they loved my shows and
loved the music I spun in clubs.  This was because my
passion for music and love of seeing how it got listeners
excited was a turn on for me.  (This was college radio
so I had the freedom to only play songs I liked.)

Marketers are messengers.  If we stopped marketing then
no one would ever know about the wonderful ideas,
products, services,experiences and opportunities that
are available to them.

When you look at marketing in this light you see that
marketing is a gift.  It's actully a disservice to not
market to people.

Whether you're in business or not, you're a marketer too.
You're probably a much better marketer than you realize.
Everytime you recommend a movie, a book, an activity or
anything else to your friends guess what?  You're
marketing to them.

Marketing is full of juice to me because I know that
when I recommend something or advertise something it's
because it impacted my life.  Knowing that, I know it
will have a great affect on other people.  I love
helping people touch their souls and marketing does
that everytime it leads to someone buying something.

Also, it's an art to know how to connect with people
through words and I love words.

What I'm most passionate about is helping people to
raise their consciousness and learn to create the lives
of their dreams.  I produce and market products and
services related to spirituality, psychology and
personal development because that's what I love.

I help people to use anger to get what they really want.
By marketing CDs,books and coaching programs I'm
teaching people how to transform their lives. I'm
showing them how to master the five key areas of life
(spiritual, physical,financial,social & family, and
education). You can check out www.AngryEnoughToChange.com
for a full idea of what I mean.

If you want to love marketing as much as I do then I
have three tips for you:

1.  Have an honest passion for what you market or don't
market it.

2.  Only market products and services you believe will
provide huge value to your customers.

3.  If you're only in it for the money then get out
before you bury yourself.

It's such a cliche to say do what you love and the
money will follow, but it's absolutely true.  Market
what you love and love what you market and you'll be
joyful and wealthy....Even better, your customers will
thank you for  the impact you have on their lives.

------------------------------------------------------------------
=>ARE YOU SICK AND TIRED OF BEING SICK AND TIRED YET?<=
Grab your free e-mail course: "How To Get Angry Enough to
Change?"  along with 2 free eBooks: "Angry Enough to
Change?: 8 True Stories About Real People" and "The
Angry Enough to Change? Quiz"
Click here now: webmaster87-41205@...
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TITLE: Tried and True Search Engine Optimization Techniques
AUTHOR:  Nancy Talley, 1SecureHost.com
WORD COUNT: 564
URL:  http://www.1securehost.com
Mailto: nancy@...
_____________________________________________________________________________

Hi

Please consider the following article, for your ezine or on your
web site. Please include
the resource box. If you intend to publish the article, an e-
mail notification as well as a courtesy
copy of your publication would be greatly appreciated.

Best Regards,

Nancy Talley
nancy@...

Article submission:
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-
Are Meta Tags Still Important?
Do It Yourself Search Engine Optimization Tips

By Nancy Talley

You know that getting a high page ranking in one of the top
search engines should be the first priority of your marketing
plan.

Although not as significant as they once were, meta tags are
still an important aspect of search engine optimization.

This article discusses ways that you should use the Keyword and
Description meta tags in your overall optimization strategy.

What Are Meta Tags And How Should I Use Them?

Meta tags are HTML tags that contain information about the
content of your web page.

Meta tags are located at the top of the page between the <HEAD>
</HEAD> tags. To view them, right click anywhere on your page
and click "View Source."

If you don't see any, add them to your page before you submit it
to a search engine.

The most important tags to include are:

1) Description Meta:

<META NAME="description" content="A well-written description of
your web page. Be sure to include your most important keywords.
Maximum of 250 characters." >

Keep in mind that many search engines use the contents of your
description tag to
summarize your site.

2) Keywords Meta:

<META NAME="keywords" content="web site optimization, search
engine optimization, meta tags, search engine techniques">

The better you know your target customer the better your choices
will be. Think like your customer in order to make a list of
keyword phrases.

Test your list on one of the search engines.

See how your competition ranks and what keywords they are using.

Don't forget misspellings! If one of your keywords is commonly
misspelled in searches,
include the misspelling in your keyword Meta tag.

What Else Do The Search Engines Look For?

Search engine algorithms change frequently, however two
important factors are:

1) Link popularity - how many pages link to my site and what is
the "quality" of each link? Think of it as the number of
"endorsements" you site has in your target market.

2) Click-through - the number of clicks received by each site in
a search engine's results page.

Both of these "off the page" measurements are influenced by the
quality of your content.

Remember, however, that the quality of your site is your best
marketing tool. Tips and tricks for getting search engine
listings won't help if your site is poorly written or organized.

How Do I Submit My Pages?

You can submit your pages through a service or you can do it
yourself.

To manually submit your pages use the Add URL form for any of
the following search engines:

Google Submission page (free):
http://www.google.com/addurl.html

Alta Vista's Basic Submit (free):
http://addurl.altavista.com/addurl/new

Ask Jeeves Site Submit:
http://ask.ineedhits.com/

Expect a long wait. Plan to submit weekly until your site is
listed.

Things To Remember

Don't repeat tags on a page and don't repeat keywords
excessively within a tag. Both of
these are considered spamming and the search engine may
blacklist you.

Finally, don't forget the <TITLE></TITLE> tag! Most search
engines use the contents of your title tag as the name of the
link to your site. Do you want to appear at the top of the
Google results as UNTITLED?

----
Complete Internet business including audio, ad-tracking,
hosting and more for a monthly cost you won't believe!
Just visit: http://www.1securehost.com.
Also, feel free to republish this article in your
own ezine or web site.

This article may be reproduced in any ezine or website provided
the resource  box at the end is included.


                   Tips to Avoid Online Auction Fraud


While most buyers and sellers on internet auction sites are honest,
there is always the threat of underlying fraud.

Auction sites have had instances of sellers posting pictures of items
for sale, only to include in extremely small print that buyers are
only bidding for the photo rather than the item itself.  When the
photo  arrives in the post and not the product, buyers are obviously
outraged.

                   Steps to avoid online auction fraud


1) Check seller's feedback

One of the best ways to judge a seller's honesty is to check his or
her feedback. Most buyers will give feedback on a sale, rating
the seller in the seller's Feedback Profile. If the feedback is
negative, it will be very difficult for that seller to buy or sell
anything on that auction site in future.  Check the seller's feedback
and if it is not overwhelmingly positive, do not buy.


2) Find out seller's contact details

Before you enter into a deal, try to establish contact with the
seller.
On eBay you can search information on a member by visiting the
Find Members page. If you can get a phone number or an email
address, you have a better chance of solving any future problems.
You could establish contact with the buyer by requesting further
information about the nature of the product in which you are
interested.


3) Payment Methods

Credit cards are the safest way to buy anything online for the simple
reason that, in the case of fraud, most credit card companies will
cover the cost. Online payment services such as PayPal and FastPay
are also popular with auction site users because of their safety.
These are account-based systems that send money via credit card or
bank account.


      4)  Use an Escrow Service

For higher priced items you should consider an escrow service.
An escrow service acts as a middleman between the buyer and the
seller  to ensure a fair transaction.

The escrow service holds the item and the money until the buyer has
inspected and approved the goods. Only then does it release the money
to the seller.

The only downside is that it will cost the buyer extra to use this
service.
However, it is something to bear in mind when buying more expensive
items.



       5)  Complaints/ Fraud Protection

Most online auction sites have a complaints' procedure. For example,
if you're unhappy with the goods or you have not received them,
Ebay operates a fraud protection program. For more information
go to : http://pages.ebay.com/help/community/fpp-guide.html


FlipShark has a useful site on internet auction scams.
www.flipshark.com/scams/ebayindex.html


The US Federal Trade Commission has a useful guide for buyers
and  sellers on internet auctions which has relevance to other
countries.
www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/online/auctions.htm


To sum up, most buyers and sellers on internet auction sites are
honest.
However, if you use the above tips, you should not fall victim to
auction fraud.


©  2003  John Lynch



==================================================================
Visit http://www.merchant-account-service.com/ebay.html for a
FREE extensive auctions course on how to start a successful online
auctions business.
==================================================================

Hi,

Here is my latest article for your consideration.

Publishing Guidelines:  This article may be freely published
so long as the author's resource box, bylines, and copyright
are included. A courtesy copy of your publication would be
appreciated. http://www.wise-buys.info/cgi-bin/msb.cgi?3

--

TITLE: Add "Wow!" To Create A Buzz, Online!
AUTHOR: Steve Nash
EMAIL: http://www.wise-buys.info/cgi-bin/msb.cgi?3

WORD COUNT: 700 words (60 characters wide)

SUMMARY:
Make your site a "wow!", and get everyone talking about (and
visiting) your site. Sounds simple, doesn't it! It isn't,
but there are lots of tools and resources on the Internet to
help you. Just add your brain... then create a buzz!
This article helps you get those creative juices flowing!


ARTICLE URL:
http://www.howipromotemywebsite.com/add-wow.html

ARTICLE AUTORESPONDER:
http://www.howipromotemywebsite.com/add-wow.html


________________________________________

Add "Wow!" To Create A Buzz, Online!

       - by Steve Nash

(c) Steve Nash - All Rights reserved
     http://www.howipromotemywebsite.com
________________________________________


[Article last revised: Oct 2003]

Why is any web site special?

Is it special because the site is unique? Is it because the
site loads quickly, has fresh content, and is easy to use?
Is it special because the site contains the best content (or
range of products)?

Is the site great because of the other people that visit?

Or is the site so useful or so much fun that people SIMPLY
CANNOT stop talking about it, cannot stop re-visiting it?

You guessed it, it's all of the above (and more!).

Making any website a "wow!" takes time, and there really are
no quick-fix solutions. But it is possible to make your site
special - a site that visitors bookmark without you asking;
one that they willingly tell ALL their friends about.


=> USE THIS RESOURCE

Use your brain!

Your brain is *the* single best resource you have when
trying to create a website with wow-appeal. It is vital you
use your brain to be creative, to be inventive, to be
original!

(I mean just how interested are you in yet another version
of (the brilliantly simple) http://www.hotornot.com ?)

So, to get your creative juices flowing, take a look at the
following websites. (I visit these sites on a regular basis,
you might too!) Find out what you like (and what you
dislike) about these sites? And see what can you 'borrow'?

- http://www.amazon.com
   (Personalisation, product choice and recommendations)

- http://www.amazon.co.uk
   (How does the UK version differ from Amazon.com ?)

- http://www.google.com
   A simple, but powerful site

- http://www.mail2web.com
   Access to pop3 email accounts. Simple, but effective

- http://www.sitepoint.com
   Great web developer resource, with informed forums

- http://www.greasypalm.co.uk
   A nicely designed shopping guide, offering cash back

- http://www.textmefree.com
   Guide to free sms text messaging, worldwide

Yes, that last site, TextMeFree.com, is my site. I built it
in a week or so, a couple of years ago, from content I found
via Google. I built it, because it was a site I wanted to
use (but didn't exist yet!).

And now the site gets OVER 5000 unique visitors per day, and
is very much appreciated by its visitors
(http://www.textmefree.com/happy-users.html).

The point I'm trying to make is that anyone can build a site
with "wow!"-appeal, anyone that uses their brain!


== Aside ==
If you have yet to build your website, then can I politely
recommend that you take a look at an all-in-one suite of
tools that goes by the name of Site Build It!

Site Build It! (SBI) lets you use your brain, lets you
explore your passion, and provides you with the tools to
convert that passion into a profitable website. It allows
you to build (and promote) a site that pleases both the
search engines AND site visitors. So you concentrate on your
business (or passion), and SBI does the rest!

http://buildit.sitesell.com
== Aside ==


=> OR COMBINE THESE SERVICES

Intelligent and imaginative use of these excellent services
WILL also make your website a compelling place to visit, a
website with "wow!"

http://www.blogger.com
Add a web log (blog) to your site

http://www.willmaster.com
CGI and WebMaster Tools

http://www.everyone.net/main/html/community_tour.html
Create a community

http://www.web-source.net/free_articles.htm
Put other people's content on your site

http://www.fonetastic.net/getfreesms.php
Offer free SMS on your site

http://subportal.iboost.com/subportals.html
Offer free stuff

http://www.atomz.com
Add search to your site

http://www.prizeengine.com/host.asp
http://www.loquax.com/webmaster/
Offer a prize or competition

http://www.hi2.com
Let visitors play games


=> OR DO IT YOURSELF!

The web is literally brim-full with free website building
tools that can really improve your website.

Again, you are only limited by your own imagination (or
creative combination of other people's imagination!). I
recommend you visit all of these sites, and get thinking...

   - http://www.bignosebird.com  (script called Birdcast)
   - http://cgi-resources.com/Programs_and_Scripts
   - http://reallybig.com
   - http://www.builder.com
   - http://www.web-source.net/web/
   - http://www.jessett.com


=> READ MORE...

Think for a while about the sites that *you* really like,
and think why it is that you like them. And always be on the
look-out for good ideas, both online and offline.

For more "add wow!" ideas, why not read my article: 21
Reasons Why The Next Site I Visit Could Be Yours. You can
get your free copy here:
http://www.wise-buys.info/webmaster-articles.shtml

--

Make your site a "wow!", and get everyone talking about (and
visiting) your site. Sounds simple, doesn't it! It isn't,
but there are lots of tools and resources on the Internet to
help you. Just add your brain... then create a buzz!


     C Copyright 2002-2003 Steve Nash. All Rights Reserved.

__________________________________________________________

STEVE NASH is the author of the ebook: "3 Super-Tips To
Build, Promote And Profit More From Your Website." Download
your free copy now! http://www.wise-buys.info/bonus.shtml

HIS BEST TIP? Use Site Build It!, and use your brain, to
develop a profitable business online! Learn more, at my
free guide here! http://www.site-buildit.com
__________________________________________________________

Article Submission:
AUTORESPONDERS: EASE YOUR LIFE

Guidance:
Feel free to publish this article in your e-zine, your
newsletter, or at your Web site, as long as resource
box is included.

A courtesy copy of your publication will be appreciated.
Please, email to mailto:info@...
Thank You.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------\
--------------

Article Title: AUTORESPONDERS: EASE YOUR LIFE
Author Name: Pavel Lenshin
Contact Email Address: mailto:info@...
Word Count: 794
Category: email autoresponders, internet marketing
Autoresponder Address: mailto:autoresponders@...

Article URL:
http://asbone.com/publications/articles/autoresponders_ease_your_life.htm

The database of other available publications is located at:
http://asbone.com/publications/
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------\
--------------
Synopsis:

Discover why the use of autoresponders is that much
important for small business owner, how they can automate
your business, become true viral marketing generators and ad
tracking service at the same time.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------\
--------------

AUTORESPONDERS: EASE YOUR LIFE

------------------------------------------------------------
copyright (c) Pavel Lenshin
------------------------------------------------------------


What every small business operator always lacks is time.
Sometimes lack of time leads to inefficiency, what in its
turn, leads to business failure even if you have plenty of
financial resources.

That is why there are so many programs designed to automate
every business step starting from sign up process and ending
with processing online payments.

Autoresponders play a special part. At the dawn of their
usage they greatly assist in solving the most time-consuming
business task that is customer support. Nowadays there are
other ways of how autoresponder can help with your everyday
routine tasks. Below are the most common tasks where
autoresponder fully reveal its potential:

1. Customer support;
2. Singup/unsubscription procedures;
3. Timely delivered emails;
4. Electronic materials on request;

Response tracking.
The usage of autoresponder as a customer support is based on
the topic your customer interests in. Whether it is problems
with program installation, billing or general question, it
will reply with pre-written answers the same moment email
was received from customer.

In very basic way autoresponder can simply notify
customer/visitor that his/her inquiry was received and will
be answered within 24 hours.

Subscription/unsubscription is also usually required instant
notification. The majority of existed mailing scripts have
an automatic notification feature, still in its basis it is
the same old autoresponder.

Ezine or newsletter subscription is not the only process
where autoresponder can give you a hand. They help in many
cases with all sorts of email notifications of successful
sale, accepted inquiry, thanking for completing the survey
and many other cases.

Next way of autoresponder usage proved to earn huge income
to many online entrepreneurs. Timely delivered follow up
emails that are based on autoresponder are widely recognized
as a must-have marketing strategy. The theory behind claims
that biggest customer response is gained at 8th contact
only. That is why business owners setup a follow up
autoresponder sequence that, when signup for, starts
emailing pre-written messages on specified time basis -
daily, every other day, weekly, biweekly etc, generating the
biggest possible response rate on complete autopilot,
without any need of owner interference.

Email courses are small variation of previous strategy. They
were designed to educate interested people, work the same
way as product follow-ups do, still serving as a perfect
marketing tool for generating subscribers, customers without
any hassle.

Publications on request play another important role. It may
be articles, reports, brochures, schemes, ebooks, audio,
video files, any electronic media may be emailed in the body
of the email message or as an attachment to every person
immediately on their request and to an email box they
considered to be the fastest to download from, presumably,
ISP's.

As strange as it may seem, autoresponder may be used for
tracking response rate as well. For instance, by putting
slightly different autoresponder email addresses on
different web-pages you can easily count how many requests
came from each page, testing which web-page generates the
biggest interest.

To track ezine advertisement response you will also have to
setup a different autoresponders for each ezine you plan to
run your advert in. At the end you will see how many people
each ezine has sent you and generated the biggest income.

Dominating majority of web-hosting plans, offered today on
the Internet market, come with simple, usually unlimited,
email autoresponders. That means they can help in 4 main
cases that we have discussed above, except for timely
delivered emails. That is because they imply one-time reply
email, so you can setup (1) customer support emails, (2)
subscription notifications to both your subscriber and
yourself, (4) publications on request, (5) response
tracking, but (3) timely delivered emails like email
follow-ups or courses.

In order to offer automatic, say, weekly, email courses you
will have to look for:

1) custom autoresponder internet application (script);
2) 3rd party autoresponder providers.

The rule of thumb is to know your needs and resources. First
choice is preferable if you know what FTP and CGI mean or
have someone with basic knowledge of how scripts are setup,
want to install it once and forever, have time and money to
make one-time investment. You can even try to find free
script that in some cases may be even quicker to setup than
sign up for some 3rd party service.

Autoresponder service, provided by independent Internet
company, is easier for new comers as all technical stuff
will be hidden, leaving simple web-interface to manage your
autoresponders. For such convenience Internet companies will
charge you on monthly or yearly basis, although there are
free so-called adware autoresponders available.

In general you can find discounted all-in-one services,
hosting offers or mailing lists coming with follow-up
autoreponders and allowing you to save money.

------------------------------------------------------------
Pavel Lenshin is a devoted Internet entrepreneur, founder of
ASBONE.com, where you can find everything to make your
business prosper. Discounted Internet services,
FREE ebooks http://ASBONE.com/ebooks/
FREE reports http://ASBONE.com/reports/
------------------------------------------------------------

You have permission to publish this article electronically
or in print, free of charge, as long as the bylines are
included. A courtesy copy of your publication would be
appreciated.


Increase Your Web Sales With Better Site Readability

By S. Denise Hoyle

If the language used on your web site is over the head of the
average eighth grader, you’re probably losing traffic and sales.
This is not to say that your site’s visitors are stupid, but
they are easily bored and they have plenty of other options.
Sites that are loaded with jargon or technical information
aren’t typically easy to read and if you’re not creating a site
only for doctors or scientists you need to make sure that you’re
using plain, everyday English to describe your products and
services.

If you’re a professional in any field it’s easy to get stuck in
your own world and use mostly formal words and technical terms
that are easily understood by your colleagues.  This kind of
language can even be used to convey expertise when speaking with
potential clients or customers, but it can also be sales suicide
if it clogs up the pages of your web site.

The good news is that it’s easy to improve your site’s
readability in minutes using a couple of free tools.  Financial
consulting firm Deloitte & Touche offers a free software
download called Bullfighter at
http://www.dc.com/insights/bullfighter/index.asp.  This software
works like a spelling or grammar checker within Microsoft Word
and PowerPoint except that it focuses on jargon and readability.

Once you’ve cut the unnecessary jargon and technical language
from your pages, you can use the readability tool within
Microsoft Word to check their reading grade level.  The tool
basically scores your pages based on the number of words per
sentence and the number of syllables per word and you want to
aim for an eighth grade reading level.

To use the tool in Word select the Tools menu, click Options and
then click the Spelling & Grammar tab.  Select the checkbox
marked Show Readability Statistics.  Now whenever you click
Spelling & Grammar on the standard toolbar it will finish with a
readability statistics window after it's done checking for
errors in spelling and grammar.  This window will display a
Flesch Reading Ease score of between 1 and 100, the higher the
score the easier the document is to read.  Below that score will
appear the Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level score of between 1 and 12,
for example a score of 7 indicates a seventh grade reading level.

Copy and paste the text from your web pages into a Word document
to check them for excessive jargon and poor readability scores.
If your pages get between 9 and 12 on the Flesch-Kincaid Grade
Level score, try making the paragraphs and sentences shorter.
Check the readability level again and if it’s still high take a
look at the average number of syllables per word.  Use the built
-in thesaurus to help you replace as many of the long words as
you can.  Keep checking your scores until you’re comfortable
with them.  Remember that lengthy URLs in your text can increase
your score due to the number of letters and “syllables” in them
so you may want to test the pages with and without the URLs
present to get a more accurate reading.

These tips can help you to instantly increase the amount of time
that visitors spend perusing your web pages, which will help you
get your sales message across.  Internet surfers generally scan
pages looking for information that they’re interested in before
deciding what they want to read, so your shorter sentences and
paragraphs will keep their attention longer and that will have a
positive impact on your sales.

****************************************************************

About the author:

S. Denise Hoyle is President and co-founder of
http://getitappraised.com, the domain name portal offering
expert domain name and developed web site appraisal services
from certified appraisers.

(c) Copyright 2003, S. Denise Hoyle. All Rights Reserved.

****************************************************************

Please consider the following article for your
e-zine or on your web site. Please include
the resource box at the end of the article.

Thanks,
Larry Dotson

P.S. Make mo^ney publishing this article. Just
replace my URL in the resource box with this
clickbank URL and add your clickbank nickname.
http://hop.clickbank.net/?nickname/bizzreport
You'll earn 50% of all sales!

----

3 Profitable Marketing Plans!

by Larry Dotson

1) Use reward programs to keep people revisiting
your web site and buying your products. You could
reward them with gifts or discounts for revisiting or
buying. For example, you could say "Buy Over ($)
Worth Of Products And Get (product) Free!"
Another example, "Buy (no.) E-books And Get A
50% Discount!"


2) You could offer your potential customers a free
sample of your product. If the sample proves what
you claim, there is a high chance they will buy it.
For example, if you are selling an e-book, give your
prospects a free excerpt or sample chapter. Another
example, if you are selling a print magazine, give
them some online examples of your content.


3) Use incentives to gain referrals if you don't have
an affiliate program. Tell people when they refer
customers you will award them with free products.
For example, you could say "Get 5 FREE E-books
If You Refer 5 Of Your Friends To Our Web Site!"
Another example, "Get Free E-book Cover
Software Valued At ($) When You Refer 3 People
To Our Web Site Who Buy!"
----
FREEE eBook!  5000 Words & Phrases That Sell
Like CRAZY! http://www.ldpublishing.com


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

You may post this article on your web sites or use it in your
newsletters, providing you keep the author resource box at the
end of the article and the byline at the beginning.  I would
appreciate notification if you should use this article.

How to choose your link partners
By Donald Nelson  (copyright 2003)

To link or not to link? That is the question we face when we
receive e-mail from people asking us to make a link to their
website, or when we are looking for link partners ourselves and
find a prospective site. How can we decide if it is worthwhile to
take the effort to make a link for such site? If we look at the
fundamental reasons for making link exchanges in the first place,
then it is easy to  decide which link possibilities we should
pursue and which we should drop.

So what are the most important reasons for exchanging links? They
are as follows:

1. To get more traffic to our websites:

People just love to follow links on the Internet. They love to
poke around and follow their interests and see where it will
lead. I know this from my own taste but more importantly, when I
look at traffic logs for various websites, I see that link pages
are very popular on many sites. So, if your site is well placed
on link pages around the Internet you can definitely expect some
additional traffic from these links.

Keeping this in mind. When you are reviewing the site of a
potential link partner, take a look at how that site displays the
links. Is the links page visible, and linked to the other pages
of the website? Some people want to exchange links but they don't
want people to leave their website through links to other
websites, and they do not even provide a path to their link pages
or make it very difficult to find. You can never get any
additional traffic from a listing on a site like this, and if
this is the case, you should just forget about linking.

Also, if the links are haphazardly arranged, 200 links on one
page with no apparent order, your chances of getting traffic is
also reduced. Will your link be buried in a huge directory, many
layers removed from the main pages of the site?  Look at the
possible placement of your link, and judge it from the standpoint
of visibility and its capacity to generate traffic to your site.

2. To add value to your website:

Your website is valuable to your visitors if it provides
information that they need.  The articles, products and other
content that you publish is your first source of material for
satisfying the needs of your visitors, but the links you provide
can also make your site an important source of information and a
convenient place for people to visit and revisit.

Accordingly, choose your links from the standpoint of satisfying
the needs of your clientele. If your site is offering web
hosting, for example, then it is likely that your visitors will
also be interested in web design, graphics, software, website
promotion, etc. By providing a directory of links to such
products and services you will be adding value to your website.

Just as you carefully consider what products you are offering or
what your own information articles contain, consider the value
that the various links offer. Do the products or services look
shoddy or below the standard of your website, if so then do not
go after the link. Is the product or service completely unrelated
to your website? If so, then it doesn't really add much to the
site.

A well constructed directory of valuable resource links that
complement your own offerings should be your goal, and you should
judge potential link partners on how well they fit into that
picture.

3. To Build Link Popularity and Boost Ranking in  Search Engine
Results:

Results in search engine queries are determined by the material
you have presented on your web page, and by other off-page
factors, such as, how many other sites link to your site. The
concept of link popularity got a huge boost from Google whose
Page Rank system, not only weighs the amount of links that point
to  your site, but the quality of those incoming links.

Indeed, if you make a query on Google as follows: link:
www.yoursite.com  . You will get a list of sites that link to
you. But in this list are not all the links that you have.
Currently they are only from web pages whose Google Page Rank is
4 or higher. From this standpoint, in order to increase your
results in Google, you need links from sites whose main pages
have a high Google Page Rank and whose link pages are similarly
well ranked.

Does this mean that we shouldn't link to sites if their Page Rank
is less than 4?  Not necessarily. Remember, a page that is 0
today, can get higher ranking tomorrow. Also, just as you may be
starting out from scratch, other sites are similarly beginning
their life on the web and we should take this into account, and
be generous.

Finally, weigh all the factors when considering link candidates,
and balance it against the time you have to do for this task, and
choose your link partners. If you do this work diligently and
carefully you will be rewarded for your efforts.

-----------------------------------------------------------------

Donald Nelson is a web developer, editor and social worker. He
has been working on the Internet since 1995, and is currently the
director of A1-Optimization (www.a1-optimization.com), a firm
providing low-cost search engine optimization, submission and
Internet marketing services. You can subscribe to his monthly
newsletter, A1-Web Promotion Tips, by sending an e-mail to
subscribe@...

You have permission to publish this article electronically,
in print, in your ebook or on your web site, free of charge,
as long as the author bylines are included.


"And You Thought Popularity Only Mattered in High School"


By Merle http://MCPromotionsPress.com

Remember the most popular kids in High School? Everyone
wanted to be around them, date them or be friends with
them. Being seen with the "in crowd" you look good.
Popularity has its advantages. Turn the clock forward
a few years and throw in the Internet, and even though
you might be long past your school days, being popular
still has its perks.

What I'm referring to is called "Link Popularity," and
if you don't have the faintest clue what I'm talking
about, strap on your seatbelt -- we're going for a ride.

Link popularity is very important to your website and
can give you an "edge" when it comes to ranking with the
search engines. Oh, I see I have your attention now. Your
site's link popularity is based on how many other "quality"
related sites link to yours. It's based on incoming and
outgoing links so don't overlook the fact of setting up
your own "links page" to reciprocate a link to all of the
websites who have agreed to link to yours.

The reason why search engines give sites with more links
a higher rating is based on the logic that if other
sites are linking to a site, it must contain valuable
content. Thus you'll score a few extra points for being
so popular and end up ranking higher.

What kind of sites should you link to, and how do you
find them? Good questions. Most site owners' biggest
fear is linking to their competitors. Not a great idea.
Instead of looking at it that way, what you want to do
is find "complementary" sites that will enrich your
website while making it more of an informative resource.
For example, say you have a landscaping /nursery site.
You could link to sites that explain how to grow better
flowers or shrubs, how to treat soil, tips and tricks of
landscaping design, etc. All of these sites will enrich
yours by providing  more information on a subject your
website guests are already interested in..

So how do you find link partners? The easiest place to
start is with the search engines, by typing in keywords
that relate to your site's theme and searching for
complementary websites. You might want to check a site's
page rank with Google before deciding if it will make
a good linking partner. The experts say you should look
for sites with a page rank of at least 2 or higher.
Page rank can be checked with the Google toolbar.

Once you find some suitable partners, you'll want to
email each site owner asking if they would be interested
in swapping links with you. They may receive many such
inquiries so you'll want to make yours stand out from
the crowd by complimenting them on their site and telling
them the benefit of linking to your site.

I'd strongly suggest you stay away from banner and
button linking and use text links, for a few reasons.
The biggest is if you can write a fun, interesting site
description for yourself and use your key phrase in that
description, it will also rank higher with the search
engines. Remember this when sitting down to write up
your link text for the exchange. Smart website owners
know this and use it to  their advantage.

If you would like automate the "link exchange process"
there are software and services that will help speed
up the process. Let's look at a few:

1) LinksManager: http://LinksManager.com

If you'd like to use a 3rd party service to automate
the process and can afford $19.95 a month, LinksManager
does a great job. No software to install and you can
import your current links page easily. Offers a 30 day
free trial.

2) LinkageExpress.com: http://www.LinkagExpress.com

If you don't want to do the job yourself you can pay
this company to find link partners for you. Twenty-five
link partners will cost you $497.00, and the prices
go up from there.

3) Zeus: http://www.Cyber-Robotics.com

A software program that actually goes out and finds link
partners for you. A demo version is available for free
but the pro version will run you $195.00

4) Reciprocal Marketing: http://www.ReciprocalMarketing.biz

An outside service that handles finding and setting up
reciprocal links for you. They only charge $1.00 per link.

5) Links 2.0:
http://www.gossamer-threads.com/scripts/links/index.htm

Links is an easy-to-use Directory Management program.
It allows you to run a complex link directory without
being overwhelmed by editing and updating htm pages.
You can download it for $150.00

6) Link Survey:
http://antssoft.com/linksurvey/index.htm?refchr

Multi-purpose software that can compare inbound links
of your website with those of your competitors, locate
potential high-quality link partners of your website,
and more. Buy it for $39.95 or download the free trial
version.

7) Arelis: http://www.axandra.com/arelis/index.htm

Software to automate the process of finding link partners
also has a great "Find Competitor Links" feature that
allows you to quickly find all Web sites that link to
your competitors, and these are good candidates to have
link to your site. Free trial version available.

So how popular are you? There are many ways to test
your website's popularity right online without the
expense of software. They all pretty much work the
same way: Just enter your url and hit submit.
Some of them are:

1) MarketLeap: http://marketleap.com/publinkpop/

2) I Need Hits http://www.ineedhits.com/free/popularity/

3) AddMe http://www.addme.com/popularity.htm

4) Submit Corner http://www.submitcorner.com/Tools/Assessment/

5) Link Popularity http://checkyourlinkpopularity.com/

6) Market Position http://linkpopularitycheck.com/

7) LinkPopularity.com http://www.linkpopularity.com/

If after checking your popularity you find out you're
lacking in the "popular" department, you'll need to get
busy with your research and start compiling a list of
possible linking partners. Yes, it does take time, but
the benefits of a good linking strategy are well worth
it.

If you'd like to read more on link popularity check out
some of these great sites:

1) Linking 101: http://www.linking101.com/

Plenty of good resources to help you with your link
popularity.

2) Eric Ward: http://ericward.com/articles/primer.html

An excellent primer on linking.

3) Spider Food:
http://www.spider-food.net/link-popularity.html

Excellent information on linking strategy.

4) Linking Matters: http://linkingmatters.com/

You'll find more information here than you'll know what
to do with. Don't forget to download the 33-page PDF
report for even more resources.

5) Axandra:
http://www.axandra.com/arelis/increase-link-popularity.htm

A free ebook on linking especially geared towards those
who are using Arelis Software.

Remember, "no man is an island," and that is especially
true on the Internet. Make sure you're seeking out other
quality,related sites and exchanging links with them
on a continual basis. By doing so, you'll make your
website a more valuable resource and increase your search
engine ranking at the same time... and that's one
"popular" marketing idea.

**********************************************
Merle http://www.EzineAdAuction.com
"Where some of the BEST Deals in Ezine Advertising are Made"
Buy & Sell Ezine Ads in a live auction setting!
Publishers sell off your excess inventory and Buyers
pick up some Fantastic bargains. Free E-book on how to
write "glowing" ezine ads.....Download Now at
http://www.ezineadauction.com/ebooks/greatezineads.pdf
************************************************






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You have permission to publish this article electronically
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included. A courtesy copy of your publication would be
appreciated.


Is Your Domain Name Secure? Interview With a Domain Appraiser

by Sarah J. Doyle

Denise Hoyle is a certified real estate appraiser.  She is also
an expert in the field of internet domain names.

For over 13 years Mrs. Hoyle, owner of her own appraisal office,
and holding licenses in several states, has been appraising real
estate for lending institutions as well as for estate purposes
and financial planning portfolios.

Hoyle is quick to point out, however, that land and homes are
not the only things that need to be appraised and included in
estate planning.  It is not uncommon for individuals to be the
owners of one or more domain names, and more than 31.5 million
domain names have been registered, since they first became
available.

Here Mrs. Hoyle points out a sobering statistic.  Of the 31.5
million registered domain names nearly 67% registered to date
have been deleted for non-renewal.  “The frightening thing here
is the question of how many of those deleted names were money
making web sites, or valuable domain names that simply got
deleted because the owner forgot to renew the name, or perhaps
was sick or in the hospital and unable to get it renewed on
time”.

Your domain name is YOUR piece of cyber real estate, just like
a piece of land or house you own and should be treated in the
same way. For example, just as you keep up the insurance on your
home and provide for it in your will, you should keep your
domain registration information current and include it in your
estate.

As the co-owner, with her husband, of over 300 domain names,
Mrs. Hoyle knows and keeps up with domain name statistics.  She
quotes a recent landmark case where the 9th US Circuit Court of
Appeals has stated that “domain names, despite their virtual
nature, should be treated exactly as a ‘plot of land’ would be”.
She says this is a huge victory for all domain name registrants,
not just for Gary Kremen who can now continue his lawsuit
against Network Solutions for allowing the theft of his Sex.com
domain name.  Network Solutions, Inc. (NSI) had argued that
domain names are intangible property and therefore they could
not be held liable for damages (Kremen vs. Cohen Case #01-15899).

Hoyle says this ruling means that traditional property
protections can now be legally applied to domain names.  She
then posed a few very timely and provocative questions: “Is your
domain name secure?  What would happen to it if you should
suddenly take ill or pass away?  Do you have provisions made in
your will as to who will take over the running and management of
the website or domain name and insure that it gets renewed each
year?”

As a real estate appraiser, domain name appraiser, and author of
“The Dot Comment” book, Mrs. Hoyle asks “do you know the value
of YOUR domain name and/or website? Have you ever had it
appraised to see what the actual value is?”  A domain name
should certainly be part of your estate, just like your house,
bank accounts and insurance policies.

“If you’ve never had your domain name appraised, nor added it to
your estate,” she continues, “You could be in jeopardy of losing
a valuable part of your loved ones inheritance.  Your domain
name or web site could be worth several thousand dollars or
several hundred thousand dollars.  Consider the loss that would
be sustained if no one but you knew the particulars of the
domain name or web site, and at renewal time it got ‘dropped’
because you weren’t there to renew it!”

You may contact Mrs. Hoyle directly at CEO@...
with any questions or for further information, or visit her
site at http://getitappraised.com

****************************************************************

About the author:

Sarah J. Doyle owns and operates http://YouCanWorkAtHomeNow.com
along with five other craft and business web sites.

(c) Copyright 2003, Sarah J. Doyle. All Rights Reserved.

****************************************************************
Sarah J. Doyle
e-mail sarah@...
or sarah@...



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Article Submission:
AUTORESPONDERS: EASE YOUR LIFE

Guidance:
Feel free to publish this article in your e-zine, your
newsletter, or at your Web site, as long as resource
box is included.

A courtesy copy of your publication will be appreciated.
Please, email to mailto:info@...
Thank You.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------\
--------------

Article Title: AUTORESPONDERS: EASE YOUR LIFE
Author Name: Pavel Lenshin
Contact Email Address: mailto:info@...
Word Count: 794
Category: email autoresponders, internet marketing
Autoresponder Address: mailto:autoresponders@...

Article URL:
http://asbone.com/publications/articles/autoresponders_ease_your_life.htm

The database of other available publications is located at:
http://asbone.com/publications/
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------\
--------------
Synopsis:

Discover why the use of autoresponders is that much
important for small business owner, how they can automate
your business, become true viral marketing generators and ad
tracking service at the same time.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------\
--------------

AUTORESPONDERS: EASE YOUR LIFE

------------------------------------------------------------
copyright (c) Pavel Lenshin
------------------------------------------------------------


What every small business operator always lacks is time.
Sometimes lack of time leads to inefficiency, what in its
turn, leads to business failure even if you have plenty of
financial resources.

That is why there are so many programs designed to automate
every business step starting from sign up process and ending
with processing online payments.

Autoresponders play a special part. At the dawn of their
usage they greatly assist in solving the most time-consuming
business task that is customer support. Nowadays there are
other ways of how autoresponder can help with your everyday
routine tasks. Below are the most common tasks where
autoresponder fully reveal its potential:

1. Customer support;
2. Singup/unsubscription procedures;
3. Timely delivered emails;
4. Electronic materials on request;

Response tracking.
The usage of autoresponder as a customer support is based on
the topic your customer interests in. Whether it is problems
with program installation, billing or general question, it
will reply with pre-written answers the same moment email
was received from customer.

In very basic way autoresponder can simply notify
customer/visitor that his/her inquiry was received and will
be answered within 24 hours.

Subscription/unsubscription is also usually required instant
notification. The majority of existed mailing scripts have
an automatic notification feature, still in its basis it is
the same old autoresponder.

Ezine or newsletter subscription is not the only process
where autoresponder can give you a hand. They help in many
cases with all sorts of email notifications of successful
sale, accepted inquiry, thanking for completing the survey
and many other cases.

Next way of autoresponder usage proved to earn huge income
to many online entrepreneurs. Timely delivered follow up
emails that are based on autoresponder are widely recognized
as a must-have marketing strategy. The theory behind claims
that biggest customer response is gained at 8th contact
only. That is why business owners setup a follow up
autoresponder sequence that, when signup for, starts
emailing pre-written messages on specified time basis -
daily, every other day, weekly, biweekly etc, generating the
biggest possible response rate on complete autopilot,
without any need of owner interference.

Email courses are small variation of previous strategy. They
were designed to educate interested people, work the same
way as product follow-ups do, still serving as a perfect
marketing tool for generating subscribers, customers without
any hassle.

Publications on request play another important role. It may
be articles, reports, brochures, schemes, ebooks, audio,
video files, any electronic media may be emailed in the body
of the email message or as an attachment to every person
immediately on their request and to an email box they
considered to be the fastest to download from, presumably,
ISP's.

As strange as it may seem, autoresponder may be used for
tracking response rate as well. For instance, by putting
slightly different autoresponder email addresses on
different web-pages you can easily count how many requests
came from each page, testing which web-page generates the
biggest interest.

To track ezine advertisement response you will also have to
setup a different autoresponders for each ezine you plan to
run your advert in. At the end you will see how many people
each ezine has sent you and generated the biggest income.

Dominating majority of web-hosting plans, offered today on
the Internet market, come with simple, usually unlimited,
email autoresponders. That means they can help in 4 main
cases that we have discussed above, except for timely
delivered emails. That is because they imply one-time reply
email, so you can setup (1) customer support emails, (2)
subscription notifications to both your subscriber and
yourself, (4) publications on request, (5) response
tracking, but (3) timely delivered emails like email
follow-ups or courses.

In order to offer automatic, say, weekly, email courses you
will have to look for:

1) custom autoresponder internet application (script);
2) 3rd party autoresponder providers.

The rule of thumb is to know your needs and resources. First
choice is preferable if you know what FTP and CGI mean or
have someone with basic knowledge of how scripts are setup,
want to install it once and forever, have time and money to
make one-time investment. You can even try to find free
script that in some cases may be even quicker to setup than
sign up for some 3rd party service.

Autoresponder service, provided by independent Internet
company, is easier for new comers as all technical stuff
will be hidden, leaving simple web-interface to manage your
autoresponders. For such convenience Internet companies will
charge you on monthly or yearly basis, although there are
free so-called adware autoresponders available.

In general you can find discounted all-in-one services,
hosting offers or mailing lists coming with follow-up
autoreponders and allowing you to save money.

------------------------------------------------------------
Pavel Lenshin is a devoted Internet entrepreneur, founder of
ASBONE.com, where you can find everything to make your
business prosper. Discounted Internet services,
FREE ebooks http://ASBONE.com/ebooks/
FREE reports http://ASBONE.com/reports/
------------------------------------------------------------

Dear Friend,

Please feel free to publish this article in your Newsletter or
on your Website with the Resource Box included.

Word Count: 988
Wrap: 65 characters/line

It can also be viewed by sending a blank email to:

cgiscriptinstallation@...

or online at:

http://www.isitebuild.com/cgi-script-installation

If you use this article, please send a brief message to:
mailto:articles@...

Warm Regards,
Herman Drost

**************************************************
How to Install a CGI Script and Increase Web Site Interactivity
by Herman Drost

You may have delayed cgi script installation due the apparently complex
process. Well, I avoided it also for several years, however if you want to
increase your web site's interactivity it's a necessity to know how to do it.
It's not hard to learn and you don't have to be a programmer.

What is CGI ?

Common Gateway Interface or CGI is a program that can interact with an
html form on your web site, and processes the results on your server using
a cgi script. The result generated is a dynamic web page. The cgi script is
written in a language called PERL ("practical extraction and reporting
language").

Uses of CGI scripts

CGI scripts are most commonly used for creating user interaction with an html
form on your web site. Other uses include: autoresponders, shopping carts,
counters, mailing list managers, ad management, surveys, polls, discussion
boards, content management, calendars and click tracking.

There are 100s of free cgi scripts that can be found on the Net. Just do a
search
on Google for "free cgi scripts" or visit the resources at the end of this
article.

We will create an html email form to collect the name, email address and
comments of subscribers using a secure cgi formmail script. The form results
will automatically be sent to your email address.

Steps to installing your own cgi script

1. Check that your web host supports CGI - your web host will have a cgi-bin
folder installed on the server. The cgi-bin is a special directory in the server
where all the files which require security are kept. This is where you will
upload your cgi script once it has been modified.

2. Download the cgi script - this is a secure cgi formmail script. Spammers
can't access and harvest your email address from this script.

http://nms-cgi.sourceforge.net/formmail.zip

3. Read the documentation that comes with the script - this will give you a
thorough understanding  what changes you need to make to have it work
correctly with your web site and server. It will also provide you with some
examples.

Editing your script

4. Open and edit your cgi script using notepad (don't use an html editor as this
can create errors).

5. Remove the html tags from the script (at the top and bottom).

6. Change the path to perl to:  #!/usr/bin/perl -wT (this is the first line of
the
script to be edited).

7. The section of the cgi script shown below, are the other minimum fields
to fill out in the script (replace the fields in the script you downloaded with
the changed fields in the script below).

# USER CONFIGURATION SECTION
# --------------------------
# Modify these to your own settings. You might have to
# contact your system administrator if you do not run
# your own web server. If the purpose of these
# parameters seems unclear, please see the README file.
#
BEGIN
{
   $DEBUGGING         = 1;
   $emulate_matts_code= 0;
   $secure            = 1;
   $allow_empty_ref   = 1;
   $max_recipients    = 1;
   $mailprog          = '/usr/lib/sendmail -oi -t';
   $postmaster        = 'youraddress@...';
   @referers          = qw(yourdomain.com);
   @allow_mail_to = qw();
   @recipients        = ();
   %recipient_alias = ('siteowner' => 'youraddress@...',);
   @valid_ENV         = qw(REMOTE_HOST REMOTE_ADDR REMOTE_USER HTTP_USER_AGENT);
   $locale            = '';
   $charset           = 'iso-8859-1';
   $date_fmt          = '%A, %B %d, %Y at %H:%M:%S';
   $style             = '';
   $no_content        = 0;
   $double_spacing    = 1;
   $wrap_text         = 0;
   $wrap_style        = 1;
   $send_confirmation_mail = 0;
   $confirmation_text = <<'END_OF_CONFIRMATION';
From: youraddress@...
Subject: Subject of Your Contact Form

(short note here->> )Thank you for your interest. We will respond shortly.

END_OF_CONFIRMATION
#
# USER CONFIGURATION << END >>
# ----------------------------
# (no user serviceable parts beyond here)
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

$postmaster = Who's sending the email
@referrers = Domains that are allowed to host the script
%recipient_alias = Whom the script will send email to

In my form:

[form action="http://www.mydomain.com/cgi-bin/formmail.pl"
method="POST"]
[input type="hidden" name="recipient" value="siteowner"]

You can see how the siteowner variables match up in the .pl script and in my
form. This way, nobody can tell what address the form is being emailed to!

8. Rename your cgi script - name your script something else besides formmail
(ie contactus.pl), as this is the most common name people use. This will prevent
spammers from harvesting your email address.

9. Create your html form (contactus.htm)
Note: Replace [ ] with < > for your form to work.

[html]
[head]
[title]Contact Us[/title]
[/head]
[body bgcolor="#FFFFFF" text="#000000"]
[form method="post" action="http://www.yourdomain.com/
cgi-bin/contactus.pl"]
[input type=hidden name="recipient" value="siteowner"]
[input type=hidden name="subject" value="Subscribe Me Please"]
[input type=hidden name="required" value="fullname,email"]
[input type=hidden name="redirect"
value="http://www.yourdomainname.com/thankyou.htm"]
Full Name[br]
[input type=text name="fullname"]
[br]
Email Address[br]
[input type=text name="email"][br]
[br]
Comments[br]
[textarea name="comments"][/textarea]
[br]
[br]
[input type="submit" name="Submit" value="Submit"]
[/form]
[/body]
[/html]

10. Create a confirmation page (ie thankyou.htm) - this will automatically
thank people for filling in your form. It can be a simple html page with the
comments "Thank you for your interest. We will respond shortly".

Uploading the cgi script and html email form.

Use your favorite FTP program for uploading to your server (I use
SmartFTP.com which you can download for free).

11. Set permissions to 755 - in SmartFTP right click on the script file you
wish to upload, click on Properties/CHMOD and set the permissions to 755.

12. Upload the cgi script - there are two modes of uploading, ASCII and Binary.
Upload the cgi script (contactus.pl) and any txt files in ASCII mode. Upload
the script to the cgi-bin folder. If you don't follow this you will not be able
to
execute the script.

13. Upload the html form and any image files like .jpg or .gif in Binary mode.

14. Test your cgi script by filling out the html email form and submitting it.
You should receive an immediate confirmation.

By adding interactivity to your web site using a cgi script, you can expand the
functions of your web site and create a more interesting experience for your
visitors. This will keep them coming back and help you stay ahead of your
competitors.

Resources

Formmail script
http://nms-cgi.sourceforge.net/formmail.zip

Free CGI scripts
Scriptarchive.com
Hotscripts.com
cgi-resources.com

***************************************************************
Herman Drost is the Certified Internet Webmaster (CIW)
owner and author of iSiteBuild.com
Affordable Web Hosting Plans from $30/year
http://www.isitebuild.com/sitehosting
Subscribe to his insightful  “Marketing Tips” newsletter for
more original articles. mailto:subscribe@...
*****************************************************************

Please accept the following article submission

Permission is granted to reproduce this article electronically, provided the
resource box is used with all hyperlinks active and that a copy of the
publication is forwarded to the author's attention.   For print
publications, please contact the author.

10 reasons why people "think" they can't make money online

By Fraser Hay

Here in my opinion are the top 10 reasons why people "think" they can't make
money online -

1. Not having a product or service to sell
Many people sign up to affiliate programs or business opportunities where
they do not offer a real product or service, or it isn't very apparent
either to the affiliate or the potential customer what it is that's being
sold.  Find a market or the needs of a market, then find the solution, and
supply it to that market at a profit.  Ensure there is a market and a demand
for the products and services you want to sell online.

2. Concerned they are a Newbie to the internet
Many people are scared of running their own business, they are apprehensive
of the jargon, or lack the experience or confidence. If you are starting
your own business or selling someone else's products and services, make sure
they offer backup, help, support and guidance either by phone, email, FAQs
or instant messenger.

3. Concerned that they have no marketing Training
A common problem on the net, there's lots of how to information, but a lack
of real helpful, detailed step by step marketing training offering advice
and guidance on how to sell a specific product or service.  Customers want
facts, features and benefits, they want to know why you're different and why
they should do business with you - tell them.
If you don't know, then do a search on google for "online marketing advice"
or "online marketing resource" for some help.

4. Don't know how to generate leads or prospects
Probably one of the biggest problems or concerns for the new guy starting
up.  See point 1 above, if you know who your market is or who your potential
customers are, you can find them via search engines, or search the search
engines for "leads" or "opt in leads" for suppliers of leads who may be able
to help you.

5. Don't know how or where to advertise
There are a plethora of options here - e-zine advertising, classified
advertising, newspaper advertising, banner advertising, email advertising,
magazine advertising.  Too many people only focus on free advertising, for
best results, always pay for your advertising.

6. Dont have a website
Many affiliate programs now offer template websites or replicated websites,
mini sites or build your own sites.  There are hundreds of build your own
solutions on the web too. Do a search on the web for "build your own
  website" or "free website" and look at the results.

7. Cant get their questions answered
Many website owners don't return phone calls or respond to email messages.
Remember at the end of the day, People buy people, its one of the most
important factors about doing business online.  Make sure that you can
contact your suppliers, and your customers can contact you by phone, email
or instant messenger - it will pay dividends in the long run.

8. Have no working capital
Sorry, but this is tough one.  You can't seriously expect to run a
professional business online without spending money. It just needs a bit of
careful planning to decide what your budget is going to be, and which forms
of advertising you are going to use.  If you are not continually promoting
your site and url, guess what, people wont find or visit your site and you
won't make money.  It's your choice.

9. "Think" they lack technical knowledge
You can always hire a web designer, or webmaster by looking for one on the
search engines.  Many affiliate programs offer you free websites that
require no technical knowledge and are hosted for you. You do not need any
engineering, programming or HTML skills.  All you need is a receptive and
open mind, and be prepared to test different concepts, techniques and
promotional methods to promote your site.

10. Been "bitten" by scams in the past and are now badly conditioned to
their true potential on the web
Then use above checklist to ensure that the companies you wish to deal with
in the future can assist you and address each of the points listed above.
Remember, at the end of the day, there is no such thing as a free lunch, and
if you truly want to be successful online, its all about creating real
personal human relationships with people, and applying daily effort to
promoting your site each and every day.

© Strategic Marketing Ventures Ltd - all rights reserved

About the Author

© Fraser J. Hay is a happeneur® and CEO of Strategic Marketing Ventures,
owners of happeneurs.com. His Free 7 day marketing course, happenetics, has
been successfully completed by over 34,000 subscribers in over 70 countries
worldwide.  For further information please visit www.happeneurs.com

email - fraser@...
url - http://www.happeneurs.com


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

This article is free to reprint as long as you:
1. Print the article in its entirety.
2. Print the resource box with the article in it's
entirety.
3. Notify me if you use the article.
Mailto:jcolanzi@...


Your Valuable Marketing Tool
by John Colanzi
http://www.thesimplesystem.net

A lot of marketers talk about their best marketing tool.

Ask a group of marketers what their most valuable
marketing tool is and you'll get a variety of answers.

Some of the replies will be:

* Email

* Autoresponders

* Search Engine Placement

* Pay Per Click Search Engines

* Linking

So which one is it?

None of the above.

The most valuable tool in your marketing arsenal is
the awesome power of your mind.

Being rational and creative will take you further than
ant marketing method or technique.

Right now the big fear is the rapid changes in the
effectiveness of email.

Many marketers have become spoiled by the ease and
effectiveness of email.

Now that some changes have taken place, everyone is
running around crying "The sky is falling."

Well the changes are here, so forget the "thumb sucking"
and "pity parties" and get on with it.

Start putting that high performance mind of yours to
work and start getting creative.

Every problem is an opportunity to cash in on.

Get out your thinking cap and start finding ways to
build your business in spite of the changes.

Find ways to build your business on the new internet
and by solving your problem, you've created a new
opportunity.

Once you've developed a system that works, others will
pay to learn your secret.

Problem solvers are always in demand.

The great motivational speaker Charles Tremendous Jones
says he prays every day that he'll be sent problems.

Why?

He knows that if he receives enough problems, he can
cash in on some of them.

So rev up your high performance mind, the sky isn't
falling.

So next time someone wants to know your most valuable
marketing tool, I hope you answer that powerhouse
between your ears.

Wishing You Success,
John Colanzi

****************************************
Copyright (c) 2003 John Colanzi.
At Last... The TRUTH About Ezine Writing Revealed!
Discover how you can literally turn hundreds of online
newsletters into your own 24 hour sales machine. Forget
the hype and learn what really works online. Visit:
http://www.internet-profits4u.com
****************************************

Publishing Guidelines: Permission is granted to publish this article
electronically or in print as long as the bylines are included. A
courtesy copy of your publication would be appreciated.
mailto:luann@...

Title "7 Questions Home Business Owners MUST Answer"
Word Count:  654
Article URL:
http://www.websuccesscentral.com/articles/ecommerce/7questions.shtml
Article in Auto Responder:
mailto:7questions@...

Thanks,

LuAnn Elliott
For a complete list of my articles for reprint please email:
mailto:ws_articles@...

-----------------------------------------------------------------
      7 Questions Home Business Owners MUST Answer
                       Copyright © LuAnn Elliott 2003
-----------------------------------------------------------------

There are a few items any home business owner must address if
their business is to properly function and turn a consistent profit.

Some of what a business must do is obvious, other things
are often not realized until too late, after time and money has
been lost.

Whether you are just starting out, or simply not yet getting the
results you'd hoped for, answering the following questions for
yourself will help you position your home business for success.

1.  What Am I Going To Sell?

An obvious question, but one not always properly addressed.
Anybody can sell anything, potentially, but what are you actually
qualified to sell?  What knowledge do you have, or can you get,
that relates to your product?  Why should people come looking
to you for it?

2.  Who Is Going To Buy It From You?

You don't just sell to 'people'.  You sell to a target audience
who is interested in your product and has the means to pay for it.
Not everyone will be.  How will you identify your market?  How
will you separate them from the crowd?  What do you call those
who would use your product?  Where will you find them?

3.  How Will You Contact Potential Customers?

All marketing plans require a vehicle to reach potential
customers.  What form of advertising will you choose?  How will
that reach your market?  What resources do you have for
advertising?  Will you pay to contact others' lists or create your
own list of potential buyers?  How will you attract others to you?

4.  How Will You Present Your  Product?

Even after you attract others to your business, you still need to
present your product to them.  Just because they are there does
not guarantee they will buy from you.  What benefits are you
offering them?  What problems does your product solve?  How
can you showcase these benefits and solutions?  What can you
do to associate with your potential customers and gain their
trust?  What will make them want to buy products from you?

5.  How Will You Follow Up With Your Contacts?

Great!  People have looked over your product.  How will you
follow up with them from here?  Can you automate that
process?  Can you offer more than one way to follow up with
them?  What incentives can you offer for potential customers
and even current customers to stick around or buy from you
again?  What can you do to create a lasting interest?

6.  How Will You Take Orders?

Will you get your own merchant account, or use third party
billing services?  How will you deliver your product to people?
What guarantees will you offer?  What confirmation will they get
after purchase?

7.  How Will You Handle Customer Support And Service?

After the sale, what are you willing to do for your customers?
Do they need follow up support on your products or future
updates?  How will you handle refunds if necessary?  What
systems are in place for them to contact you with questions or
problems?


Too often inexperienced home business owners start out without
covering each of the seven areas listed above.  Taking the time
to answer each of these questions with regard to your business
positions you in reach of your ultimate goal -- consistent profits.

Need some help answering these questions?
Free eCourse  - "You can be a MARKETING MASTER"
Learn the  ABC of Home Business Building.
mailto:easyhomebiz@...

-------------------------------------------------------------
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LuAnn Elliott is the publisher of Web Success --
Sign up for a free subscription and get access to 200 + FREE E-
BOOKS - FREE RESOURCES + Much MORE!
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Title: "How To Overcome The Obstacles Of Being New In Business"
Word Count: 725
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Joe Bingham
Internet Author and Humorist
Exposing the realities of Internet Marketing
And having FUN along the way.
http://www.NetPlayNewsletters.com

************************************************
  How To Overcome The Obstacles Of Being New In Business
************************************************

Getting started with your own business is difficult.  There will
be many people try to tell you how easy it is, but don't believe
them, it's not.

By your own business, I do not mean affiliate programs, at least
not for this article.  Affiliate programs, while they are great
ways to learn, and can make money, will never really be your
own business.  You can make your own business around being
in other's affiliate programs, but that's different.

With your own business, however, there are some difficult
things you need to overcome.

For instance, one of the best ways to convince potential
customers to buy is with the power of your previous customer's
testimonials.  Well, testimonials are pretty hard to come by
when your brand new.

As an alternative to using testimonials from your customers,
instead use quotes from notable people that testify to the
usefulness of your product or business.  It doesn't have to be
specific to you in order to be a personal recommendation.

Another problem is often people will ask about your
experience, preferring to work with or join under those who
have been around a while and have shown some proven
results.  This is also difficult to overcome.

However, you can turn the focus away from experience, if you
lack it, by promoting your other qualities.  Show what education
you have, or talk about the support your upline offers and their
experience.  Relate how your experience elsewhere transfers
into what you are doing now.

Then, if it comes right down to it, suggest that while you don't
have the experience of others, you do have plans for the future,
are pursuing more education, and have a positive belief in what
you are doing.  Show that you plan on being around for the long
haul and that you love what you are doing.  Positive energy can
be contagious.  Use this to replace your lack of experience.

Naturally, you must actually have that attitude and plans for the
future.  Whatever you do, always be honest with your intentions.

Focus as much as you can on what you do offer, and stay out
of a defensive posture.  If you have a great product, flaunt it.
Really promote the positive features or benefits of your
business and people will not tend to notice your 'newness'.

Often when you are starting out, you also end up making
several changes as you go along.  If not handled correctly, this
may leave the impression that you don't know what you are
doing and are floundering around looking for a better way.

At times, this may even be true.  However, never let that show.  If
you need to make changes, promote the benefits of the new
change.  Explain that you are doing it to improve what your
customers get from your site, product, ezine, service, or
whatever.  If you show that you are working for them, to
provide more to them, they'll give you the time to perfect things.

Another crucial aspect to overcoming the challenges of being
new in business is to continually seek learning and experience
for yourself.  People are right, experience is a good thing.
While there is nothing wrong with being new, you'll want to get
through it as fast as you can.

Ask for and collect feedback about your business.  Take care
of problems immediately and show your customers you care
about serving them.  Push yourself to provide the best you can
for your customers and you'll soon find them accusing you of
being a guru.

Remember, there are a lot of other newbies around as well.
Even though you don't know as much as those you look up to,
there are still others greener than you are that will ask you for
advice.

The main key to starting any new business is simple.
Perseverance.

Don't give up if you've got a good concept.  It does take awhile
to become recognized and build a solid reputation.  Your
business is an investment in the future.  Build it carefully.

----------------------------------------------------------------
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Article Title: Search the Web More Efficiently: Tips, Techniques and
Strategies
Author Name: Daniel Bazac
Contact Email Address: danielbazac@...
Internet Address: http://www.web-design-in-new-york.com/search-the-
web.html
Autoresponder: search-the-web@...
Word Count: 4,257 words
Formatted to 60 Characters per Line
Category: Web Searching, Internet Searching, Search the Web
Copyright Date: © Daniel Bazac 2003
Date of Article: November 6, 2003

Search the Web More Efficiently: Tips, Techniques and Strategies

By Daniel Bazac - November 6, 2003
Copyright © 2003. All Rights Reserved.

Studies show that after email, searching the Web is the most
popular activity on the Internet. Searching is easy; finding
what you're looking for can sometimes be difficult.
Hopefully the advice below will make your next Web search a
breeze.

Do you really need the Web?

Before using the Web to search for information, you'll have
to ask yourself if the Web is the most appropriate medium to
use to find your information. You can find a florist shop in
your neighborhood faster by using the local, printed Yellow
Pages instead of using the Web. And sometimes a library can
give you better, more comprehensive answers than the Web.

However, in most of the cases, the best and fastest way to
find information is... a Web search.

Obviously, the first thing you need to search the Web is a
computer with Internet access.

Before really starting your search, you'll have to decide
which browser you are going to use. As a reminder, a
browser, according to WhatIs.com is a program "that
provides a way to look at and interact with all the
information on the World Wide Web." You can select a
popular browser such as Explorer, Netscape, Mozilla or Opera
or you can use an alternative browser. My favorite: Avant
Browser. (I have NO connection with MyBookmarks.com)
Keep in mind that some browsers are faster or have
more options. You can download these browsers from their
companies' web sites.

Tools for searching the Web

There are many search tools available: search engines,
subject directories / virtual libraries, invisible (deep)
web databases, meta search engines, etc.

A search engine is a keyword searchable database of Internet
files that uses a software program to continually scour the
Web. The resulting information is then indexed and stored in
its database.

My favorite search engines are:

* Google™ [ http://www.google.com/ ]
* AlltheWeb [ http://www.alltheweb.com/ ]
* MSN [ http://www.msn.com/ ]
* Teoma [ http://www.teoma.com/ ]
* AltaVista [ http://www.altavista.com/ ]
* WiseNut [ http://www.wisenut.com/ ]

A subject directory (web directory) is a searchable
collection of Web pages gathered, selected and organized by
human editors into hierarchically subject categories. A
virtual library is a web directory that includes highly
selective links, chosen mostly by librarians.

Web directories cover a much smaller proportion of the Web
but using them will bring you more highly relevant results.
The largest web directories index a few million pages
compared with the billions of pages indexed by some major
search engines.

Remember that the web directories - like the search engines
- do not search the Web directly. Instead, they search their
own databases of indexed Web pages. Also, be aware that
directories might not be up-to-date. Some search engines are
in fact hybrid search tools because they are both search
engines and web directories. (Google™, for example, has a
search engine and a directory, powered by Open Directory
Project)

Some widely used web directories are:

* Google™ Directory [ http://directory.google.com/ ]
* Open Directory Project (ODP) [ http://www.dmoz.org/ ]
* Yahoo! [ http://www.yahoo.com/ ]
* Zeal  [ http://www.zeal.com/ ]
* JoeAnt  [ http://www.joeant.com/ ]
* Gimpsy [ http://www.gimpsy.com/ ]

Popular virtual libraries include:

* Librarians' Index to the Internet [ http://www.lii.org/ ]
* Internet Public Library [ http://www.ipl.org/ ]
* The WWW Virtual Library [ http://www.vlib.org/ ]
* Internet Scout Project [ http://www.scout.wisc.edu/Archives/ ]
* BUBL Link [ http://www.bubl.ac.uk/ ]

The so-called invisible (deep) web is a collection of online
information stored in live databases accessible on the Web
but not indexed by traditional search engines. Examples of
excellent invisible web databases are:

* ProFusion [ http://www.profusion.com/ ]
* Invisible-web.net [ http://www.invisible-web.net/ ]
* Complete Planet [ http://www.completeplanet.com/ ]
* Resource Discovery Network [ http://www.rdn.ac.uk/ ]
* direct search (Gary Price) [
http://www.freepint.com/gary/direct.htm ]

A meta search engine (also known as metacrawler or
multithreaded engine) is a search tool that sends your query
simultaneously to several search engines, web directories
and sometimes to the so-called invisible (deep) web. After
collecting the results, the meta search engine removes the
duplicate links and - according to its algorithm - will
combine and rank the results into a single merged list.

Because most of the meta search engines take only the top 10
or 20 from each search engine, you can expect excellent
results, "la crčme de la crčme."

But be aware that because some search engines and web
directories do not support advanced searching techniques -
such as quotation marks to enclose phrases or Boolean
operators - no results from those search engines will appear
in the meta search engines' results list when those
techniques are used.

Remember, meta search engines do not maintain their own
databases and therefore cannot accept web site submissions.

The best meta search engines are:

* ez2Find [ http://www.ez2find.com/ ]
* Vivisimo [ http://www.vivisimo.com/ ]
* InfoGrid [ http://www.infogrid.com/ ]
* Infonetware [ http://www.infonetware.com/ ]
* iBoogie [ http://www.iboogie.com/ ]

A special kind of meta search engine is the search utility
(also called desktop search programs or client-side search
software). Unlike the web-based meta search engines listed
above, search utilities are software programs that you
download to your computer. The most popular are:

* Copernic [ http://www.copernic.com/en/index.html ]
* Arrow Search [ http://www.rt-software.co.uk/arrow_search/ ]
* SearchRocket [ http://www.searchrocket.com/ ]
* WebFerret [ http://www.ferretsoft.com/index.html ]
* ProtoSearch [ http://www.npccenterprises.com/products.shtml ]

Meta search engines are excellent tools, but they do not
eliminate the need for search engines.

For more about meta search engines, see my article: The Meta
Search Engines: A Web Searcher's Best Friends.

Which Search Tool Should You Choose?

* If you're looking for specific information use search
engines.

* If you're looking for a unique or obscure search term or if
you want to make an in-depth analysis of what's out there
on a specific subject, then use meta search engines.

* If you're looking for general information on popular
topics, use subject (web) directories.

* If you're looking for scholarly information use virtual
libraries.

* If you're looking for real-time information or for
dynamically changing content such as the latest news, phone
book listings, available airline flights, etc., then use
specialized databases (invisible or deep web.)

There are thousands of search engines, hundreds of meta
search engines and dozens of web directories and specialized
databases. Choosing the right search tool - from the start -
can make the difference between a successful search and a
frustrating experience.

Before Starting the Search

The easiest way to find information is when you know a web
page Internet address or URL (Uniform Resource Locator) such
as Fortune Magazine at http://www.fortune.com. You can find
these addresses on business cards, TV commercials or
newspapers. Simply type the URL in the browser's address
box and hit the <enter> (PC) or <return> (Mac) key.

Be aware that in most browsers, you do not have to type
"http://" or even "www" before the domain name. You can
access a site simply typing the domain name such as
"sony.com."

Special note: Be careful when you copy and paste a long URL
from an email message or from some web sites. URLs that span
two lines have a gap (space) between the last character of
the first line and the first character on the second line.
First, get rid of the gap and then paste it in the
browser's address line.

Other times you may not know the URL but... you can guess
it. Often companies will use their name, acronym or
abbreviated name followed by ".com", such as ibm.com or
apple.com. The same thing is true for educational
institutions (add the ".edu" suffix) or government sites
(add ".gov") So, whenever you don't know an URL, you can
try to guess it.

If you do not know the URL, you'll have to find it by
searching the Internet. In many cases, a simple search on
the name of an organization within most search engines will
return a direct hit on their web site.

Tips For Searching Smarter:

* Read the search engine's "search tips" or "help" page
before using a search tool. Strangely enough, most of the
time you'll find the "search tips" link on the "Advanced
Search" page or on the "results page." Anyway, regularly
check the search tips page because the rules often change.

* Customize the output of the results. Use the search
engine's "preferences" page. Some search tools allow you
to select the value for:
* the total results per page; usually 10 by default (select
* the maximum - often 100)
* the search tool's timeout - select the maximum
* the search depth - select maximum.
Be sure to save the new "settings" or "search
preferences" for the next time you use the search tools.
Also, set the browser you use to accept cookies.

Tips To Make Your Search Faster:

If you're searching for information and you are not
interested in graphics on the pages you see, turn off or
disable graphics. You can also turn off sounds, animation,
Java, JavaScript, etc. See your browser documentation for
instructions.

If you decide to keep the graphics, in the case of a
"heavy" page, you can always press the <STOP> button in
the browser, immediately after you see the text and before
the graphics are entirely loaded.

More Tips:

* Most search tools are case-insensitive which means that you
can construct a query - your search request - by typing all
the words - even proper names - in lower case text.

* If you type a long query, most of the search tools' search
boxes are not very wide so you cannot see the entire query.
Write the query in a word processor and then "copy and
paste" into the search box. Be aware that Google™ only
allows 10 words in the search box.

* Some search tools offer an option called "similar pages"
(Google™) or "related pages" (AltaVista and Teoma.)
Clicking on that option will show you relevant results for
the page you're interested in.

* Some search engines have a function called "see more
hits/results/pages from the same domain." Sometimes it can
be useful.

* Also, some search tools, such as Google™, allow you to see
an English translation for a results page that is written in
a foreign language. If you want to translate a web page and
you have the URL, you can also use these sites:

* Systran [ http://www.systransoft.com/ ]
* Fagan Finder [ http://www.faganfinder.com/translate/ ]
* AltaVista' Babel Fish [ http://babelfish.altavista.com/ ]
* alphaWorks (IBM) [ http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/aw.nsf/html/mt ]

Remember, don't expect perfect translations because that
seldom happens.

* Looking for pages in a specific language? Some search
engines (Google™, AlltheWeb, etc.) have an advanced search
page that allows you to select the language from the
pull-down menu.

* If your search terms contain letters not present in the
English alphabet such as "é" or "ü" (example fiancé or
München), use Fagan Finder's (Search Engine Ultimate
Interface) which allows you to use these special letters in
many major search engines. It makes a big difference. A
search for Munchen in Google™ gives 570,000 results while
for München - "u" with umlaut - gives 51,700,000 - almost
10 times more.

So, let's start searching!

Most of the search tools can be searched using keywords. Web
directories and the invisible web databases can also be
searched by browsing categories and subcategories.

Start with a popular search engine such as Google™, for
example.

Before typing the keywords, take your time and brainstorm
relevant words. Create a list of search terms. Write them
down. A few seconds of brainstorming could save you minutes
or hours of retrieving irrelevant results.

Advice for Searching Better:

* Select the most descriptive words. Brainstorm thoroughly.

* Use at least two keywords.

* Place the most important words or phrases first.
Whenever two or more words can appear in exact order,
enclose the words with double quotation marks ("word 1 word
2".) Example: "United States." If you use a longer
phrase, you will achieve more precise results. With a very
long phrase, however, you may get zero results. Some search
engines allow you to select the "phrase" option in the
pull-down menu on their advanced search page or you can type
it in special phrase search box, so you don't have to use
quotes.

* When possible, use unique, rare or unusual keywords. The
more uncommon / obscure or less frequent the keywords you
use are, the fewer and more relevant results you will get.

* Use nouns and objects as keywords. Do not use the so-called
"stop words" such as "what," "where," "the," "in,"
"and," etc. Many search tools ignore them. If you need a
stop word to appear in the results, place the implied
Boolean operator "+ " in front of that word. The standard
Boolean operators AND, OR, NOT (or AND NOT), NEAR, BEFORE,
AFTER and the Boolean logic "(parenthesis)", are used to
construct complicated queries. The implied Boolean operators
"+" and "-" can replace the AND and NOT respectively. An
example of Boolean logic is (tips OR tricks) AND ("search
engines" OR "web directories"). It will find tips or
tricks for search engines or web directories. Check the
search tool's tips to see if they accept Boolean operators.
For example Google™ does not support full Boolean logic.

* Do not use common terms such as Internet, Web, etc. except
for cases that it is necessary. (For example, the query is
"searching the web" with quotes.)

* Avoid redundant terms and complicated query structures.

* Choosing the right words for your query is the most
important part of web searching. The more specific the
search term, the more relevant your results will be and the
more likely it is that you will find what you seek.
Remember, work smarter not harder.

* The secret to constructing a professional query is to type
words you expect to find in the matches.

Note: Some search tools, such as Ask Jeeves allow you to use
the so-called "natural language." This means that you can
construct a query as a question in plain English, such as
"What's the weather in LA?" When you have a specific
question in mind, these tools can be helpful.

Checking the Results:

After typing your keywords into the search box press either
the "enter" key on the keyboard or, click on the
"search," "find" or "go" button on the search tool's
homepage. You will receive a list of documents that -
hopefully - match your query. If you do not, it may be
because some unscrupulous webmasters use unethical methods
to cheat the search engines and achieve undeserved, top
rankings for their sites. To learn more about this topic,
please read my article, "Search Engine Spamming Sucks!"

The results returned, also called "matches" or "hits"
will be web pages related to the subject you're searching
for, ranked in order of relevancy according to the search
tool's algorithm or by date, URL, title, etc.

Each result will contain information such as the title of
the page, a short description, the page's URL and the size
of the page.

Now you have a tough job. You have to decide which of the
search results will take you to the most informative site.
Your best bet is to take a look at the title and description
of the page. Are they relevant to your search? If yes, open
the page. If not, check the next result, by scrolling down
on the right side of the browser.

To view a page you have two options:

1) Click on the title of the page - even if says "No title"
or "?????". Place the cursor on the page title and the
cursor will change to the picture of a hand. Usually the
links are in blue and underlined, but often they are not.
You can find links in any color, including black, which
makes it difficult to recognize a link in text of the same
color.

2) The second method is to open the page in a new browser
window. Right-click over the title of the result. This
produces a pop-up menu. Select "open (link) in new
window." After checking the result, close the new browser
window. You will still have the first window browser with
your search. Some search tools have an option that allows
you to open the result in a new window. Don't get used to
that, do the right thing: open a new browser window by using
the mouse's right-click.

If you use the first method most likely you will not use the
back button to go back to the results page, but instead you
will simply close the window, losing the search page
altogether.

Criteria for Evaluating a Web Resource:

First of all, don't believe everything you read on the
Internet. Recently I found a page where it stated that
Google™ has about one billion web pages indexed. Well,
according to Google™, it indexes 3,307,998,701 web pages. Be
careful what you believe. Governmental agencies, educational
institutions, libraries and prestigious publications are the
most reliable sources of information. Be circumspect with
information found on personal sites stored in free hosts.

Six Tips For Evaluating A Site:

1) Is the web site published by an authoritative source?
Is the author a recognized expert in the field or subject
area?

2) Is the information relevant, credible and accurate? It
doesn't hurt to cross check two to three additional,
reliable sources.

3) Is the site current and recently updated?

4) Does the site have a professional "look and feel":
structure, layout, color scheme, navigation menu(s), etc.?

5) Are there spelling, grammar or punctuation errors?

6) Does the site have contact information such as a postal
address, phone or email?

Four Additional Tips:

1) Don't look only at the top ten listings. Excellent results
can be found on the top 20, or even top 50 results. This is
why customizing the result output at 100 results per page is
handy. You don't have to open a next ten-results-per-page
page. If you don't find relevant results in the first 20 to
50, reformulate your query or try another search tool - a
meta search engine, for example.

2) Check only results that truly looks relevant.

3) Be aware that many search tools list "sponsored links" at
the top of their results page. These are not results from
the search tool's database. Instead these results are paid
listings from corporations that have an interest in
providing you with information about their products or
services. Studies show that searchers find it hard to
distinguish between regular and paid results, so be aware
that these exist.

4) To quickly discover if a result is relevant, use the "Find
(on This Page)" command of the browser (in the Edit menu)
or simultaneously press CTRL and F keys then type one of
your important words and press "Find next". You will find
the location of that word, and you can see if the page is
really relevant or not.

What To Do When You Get TOO MANY Results:

It's common to receive millions of results, often unrelated
to the search. To receive more relevant results you'll have
to refine or even rethink the search. Here are some ideas to
help you refine your search:

* Add one or more descriptive words to your query.

* Use phrases. Enclose two or more words that can appear in
exact order within double quotation marks.

* Exclude words you don't want in the results by using the
implied Boolean operator "-". Example: the query "red
apples" -"yellow apples" will find pages that contain
"red apples" - in that order - and will not include pages
that contain "yellow apples. " As you see, there is no
space between the "-" sign and the word or phrase you want
to exclude. There is, however, a space between the "-"
sign and the previous word.

* Use the search tool's "advanced search" functions. Limit
your search by language, date or by field searching: title,
URL, link etc. See the search tool's "search tips" for
details.

What To Do When You Get Too Few Or Irrelevant Results:

Sometimes you will get messages like "Your search did not
match any documents" or "No pages were found containing
your query" or "No results." Other times you may get few
or irrelevant results.

What You Should Do:

* Check the spelling of the query. Some search engines
automatically detect misspelled words and will show the
correct spelling. Just click on the suggested word or words.

* Delete the least important word from the query.

* If you used a search phrases try eliminating the double
quotes.

* Use more general terms, alternate spellings, plural forms or
synonyms. Recently, "Google™ introduced a new advanced
search feature that allows you to not only search for a
particular keyword but also for its synonyms. Just place the
"~" (tilde) diacritical mark directly in front of the
keyword in your search query. For example, "browser ~help"
not only searches for "browser help", but also for
"browser support", "browser tips" and "browser
tutorials."

* You can also check the spelling of the Web page's URL if
you typed it directly into the address field of the browser.

* If all the above strategies fail, switch to another search
tool, preferably a meta search engine such as ez2Find
(formerly ez2www.)

Remember: if you're doing a serious research, consider
asking a professional Web searcher to do the job. In a few
hours, he may find information that would have taken you
days to find.

If you receive the message "The page cannot be displayed"
or "Not found" the page has been discontinued.

What you can do:

* If a page that doesn't display is not the site's home page
you can use the following trick. Cut the Web address of the
page starting on the right-hand side and stopping at every
forward slash (/). Let's say that the URL of a dead link is
www.domainname/archive/article_1.html. First delete
"article_1.html" and click "enter." Hopefully you will
see the "archive" page and the "article 1." If not, also
delete "archive" and click "enter." Hopefully you will
get the home page and there will still be an option
"archive."

* When you cannot see a page, use the "cached" function of
some search engines, such as Google™. Go back to the results
list and click on the "cached" link near the result. You
will get a snapshot of the page stored in Google™'s index.
Keep in mind that Google™ does not cache all the Web pages
in its index and cached pages are often not up-to-date.
Wayback Machine can also show you previous versions of a Web
page. Simply type the URL and than select a date in the
results list. Keep in mind that there are a limited number
of URLs indexed in the Wayback Machine's database.
Be aware that sometimes receiving few results means that
ONLY a few results matched your query. Switch to a meta
search engine and I guarantee you will receive better
results.

Sometimes a search tool simply will not work. Why? Because
it may be disabled or undergoing changes. Try again later.
Other times you might receive messages like "503 Server is
busy" or "Too many users. " Check back later. For U.S.
residents, early morning and late night are the least busy
times.

Qualities Of A Good Web Searcher:

* Patience. You can find what you're looking for in ten
seconds, ten minutes or never. Keep in mind that searching
the Web can be a very time consuming operation.

* Persistence. Don't be scared of millions of results. Don't
give up too fast. Searching the Web is a process of trial
and error.

* Good memory. When conducting extensive research, you'll
have to remember all your previous search queries so you
know what terms you have already tried. Write them down -
it's easier.

* Good organizational skills. Plan your strategy ahead of time
and stick with the plan.

* Creativity. Select the best words for your query.

* Decisiveness. Learn to quickly recognize relevant results in
the search engine's result page. Don't waste your time
with search tools or strategies that don't work.

* Learn and accept the Web's limitations. Sometimes you
cannot find the information because there is no information
available on the Web related to your search. But this
happens very rarely. Most of the time, the problem is not a
lack of information but rather being overwhelmed by relevant
results. That is if you know where and how to search.

And yes, practice, practice, practice. The more you search,
the more you'll know and soon you will be scoring the most
relevant results in the timeliest manner.

A final piece of advice: use bookmarks or favorites.

When visiting a page that you think you might want to visit
again, it's wise to save its web address (URL) in your
"bookmarks" or "favorites" folder in your browser or -
much better - in a Web-based bookmarks manager - such as
MyBookmarks.com - which allows you to access your bookmarks
from any computer at any location.
(I have NO connection with MyBookmarks.com)

The next time you want to visit that page, you simply open
the saved bookmark instead of searching again or typing the
page's URL.

Be aware that in time you can collect thousands of
bookmarks. Be smart and organize them in thoughtfully
labeled categories and subcategories.

Last but not least, back-up your bookmarks just like all the
other important information you back-up from your computer.

Rest assured that finding information on the Web is never a
question of luck. Instead it is the result of a thorough
understanding of how search tools work, combined with
mastering the art of creating a targeted search query.
Searching the Web is not difficult. Like any task, you
simply must press the right buttons.

Good luck with your searches!

Note: Google™ is a trademark of Google Inc.

Do you have searching tips not listed above? Please send
them to mailto:danielbazac@... . Thank you.

RESOURCE BOX:

Daniel Bazac is the Search Engine Marketer for Web Design in New York
[ http://www.web-design-in-new-york.com ], a site design, search
engine optimization and promotion company. He also maintains Bazac
Weblog [ http://www.bazac.blogspot.com/ ] a blog about the search
engines and search engine marketing news and articles. He can be
reached at mailto:danielbazac@... .

Permission is given to reprint this article provided the author's
bylines remain intact.
=====

New Legal Guidelines for Newsletter Publishers
by Aaron Turpen of Aaronz WebWorkz

The marketing environment online has been changing over time to
reflect new needs and to remove new problems.  E-mail may no longer
be the "killer app" it was, what with the evolving changes taking
place.

With ISPs filtering email at ever-increasing rates as consumers
complain about the volumes of junk e-mail (SPAM or UCE) they're
receiving; with spammers getting more and more aggressive (and
ingenious) with their tactics; and with consumers continually
complaining to politicians to "do something about it;" life for the
newsletter publisher is no longer simple.

It used to be that accepting signups and sending your newsletter was
the EASY part – putting it together and getting subscribers to find
you was the hard part.  Not any more.

Now you have to deal with a myriad of laws – laws which may or may
not apply to you, which vary by location, and laws which you may be
completely unaware of.

Many states in the United States have laws which prohibit certain
types of email marketing.  These are usually based on how the email
address is acquired and what the contents of the email actually
are.  California, of the states in the Union, has the most stringent
laws.

In addition to this, many member countries of the European Union
have passed or are in the process of passing similar legislation
against unsolicited commercial email.

"How does this affect me?"  The newsletter publisher asks.  Well,
the way these laws are written, you could be in violation even if
your entire list of subscribers are opt-ins.  How?

Since California's law is the most stringent and since estimates say
that 20% of Internet traffic around the world originates, passes
through, or is served from that state, we'll look at the law there.
Most laws in other places are not as strict, but many countries in
the EU are working on laws that will be similar.  Plus California is
commonly known as a "test zone" for laws in the United States.

The law defines an "unsolicited commercial email advertisement" as
being any email sent without the "direct consent" of or without
a "preexisting or current business relationship" with the receiver.
Interestingly, the receiver doesn't have to be a California resident
because the law states that if the email originates or has been
sent  "within, from and to" the state of California, it is covered.
So if your server is located in California and you send email
through it that someone doesn't like, you could be subject to the
law – even if you're a resident of New York and the receiver is in
Washington!

The other crux of this law is the definition of "direct consent."
It is defined as "…the recipient has expressly consented to receive
e-mail advertisements from the advertiser, either in response to a
clear and conspicuous request for the consent or at the recipient's
own initiative."

The penalties for violating this law are immense: $1,000 for each
offending e-mail and up to $1,000,000 per incident, plus actual
damages and attorney's fees.

The up-side to all of this is that the law, as written, is full of
holes.  There are a myriad of ways to get around trouble with it,
but there is definitely an increased risk to email marketers.  After
all, a new law means that it's easier for those with complaints to
force legal action, which means your chance of ending up in court is
higher than it was before.

My personal opinion is that as soon as this law is used (it goes
into effect on January 1, 2004 in California), it will be challenged
Constitutionally and probably fail to hold up because of the
ambiguous wording of much of the legislation.

It is still a good idea, however, for the e-zine publisher to make
sure their email collection techniques are on the up-and-up: double-
opt-in if possible, collect names as well as emails, provide VERY
easy unsubscribe options (links in every email are the best), and
don't abuse your list.

Most of us are following good guidelines and have nothing much to
worry about.  Just make sure you aren't setting  yourself up for
anything.

=====
Aaron Turpen is the proprietor of Aaronz WebWorkz, a full-service
online company catering to small and home-based businesses.  Aaronz
WebWorkz offers a wide variety of services including Web
development, newsletter publishing, consultation, and more.
http://www.AaronzWebWorkz.com

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Hi,

Here is my latest article for your consideration.

Publishing Guidelines:  This article may be freely published
so long as the author's resource box, bylines, and copyright
are included. A courtesy copy of your publication would be
appreciated. http://www.wise-buys.info/cgi-bin/msb.cgi?3

--

TITLE: 3 Super-tips To Build, Promote And Profit More From Your Website!
AUTHOR: Steve Nash
EMAIL: http://www.wise-buys.info/cgi-bin/msb.cgi?3

WORD COUNT: 787 words (60 characters wide)

SUMMARY:
Whether you're thinking of creating a new website, or
you're busy promoting an existing one, the 3 super-tips in
this article *will* boost the performance of your site. And
they are: 1) Make sure your website has a most wanted
response; 2) Use these 6 strategies to promote your
website...; and, finally, 3) Build trust in you and your
website. The article explains all.


ARTICLE URL:
http://www.anyonecansellonline.com/3tips.shtml

ARTICLE AUTORESPONDER:
http://www.anyonecansellonline.com/3tips.shtml


________________________________________

3 Super-tips To Build, Promote And
Profit More From Your Website!

       - by Steve Nash

(c) Steve Nash - All Rights reserved
     http://www.anyonecansellonline.com
________________________________________


[Article last revised: Nov 2003]


Are you happy with your website? (Does your business even
have one?)

Does it 'perform' as well as you'd like?

I'm a professional web designer and I always try to
influence the design of a client site with the following
three so-called super-tips. If I apply these tips to a new
(or existing) site, I always feel that the site will
'deliver' much more.

So here are three super-tips, to help anyone get the most from
their website:

    (1) Make sure your website has a Most Wanted Response
    (2) Use these six strategies to promote your website...
    (3) Build trust in you and your website


-------
Tip (1) Make sure your website has a Most Wanted Response
-------

"What do you mean by most wanted response?"

Well, do you know what the main purpose of your website is?

- Does your site sell goods? Then which items do you most
   want to sell?

- Does your site offer content, supported by affiliate
   programs? Which affiliate programs do you most want to
   promote.

- Does your site simply operate a newsletter or ezine? Then
   do you make it easy for people to subscribe, from any page
   on your website?

What is the 'point' of your website?

Dr Ken Evoy introduced the concept of Most Wanted Response
(MWR) in his ebook called: Make Your Site Sell. In his
words, "MWR is what you most want your visitor to do after
reviewing your content. It should always:

     . be reasonable
     . be measurable
     . be a good fit
     . qualify your visitor "


-------
Tip (2) Use these six strategies to promote your website...
-------

I think you should employ some (or all) of the following
six strategies if you want to successfully promote your
website:

      Strategy 1: SUBMIT to search engines and directories
      Strategy 2: BID at pay per click search engines
      Strategy 3: SPREAD word of mouth
      Strategy 4: PUBLISH a newsletter
      Strategy 5: KNOW your visitor
      Strategy 6: CONTINUE to learn more...!

I'll explain a little bit more about a few of the strategies
below.

* Strategy 1: SUBMIT to search engines and directories

As you may know, you do not need to submit your site to
10,000 search engines. Simply make sure you get your site
listed on major search engines like Google. This link
contains 'add your site' links to major search engines like
Google. Use it.
http://www.howipromotemywebsite.com/bin/ap.pl?site-submit

* Strategy 2: BID at pay per click search engines

You must have heard about pay-per-click search engines like
Overture, Espotting and Google AdWords.

Pay per click search engines can deliver guaranteed traffic
to your site at pennies per click. To learn more about using
pay-per-click search engines (which ones are worth bothering
with, etc.) read my article called 'Pay Per Click To
Guarantee Targeted Traffic!'
http://www.howipromotemywebsite.com/bin/ap.pl?pay-per-click

* Strategy 6: CONTINUE to learn more...!

No groaning, please - it's vital that you keep on learning
about new ways to promote your website. Quite simply, you
must always continue to learn.

These resources can help your 'quest to keep abreast':
. http://www.sitepoint.com
. http://www.iboost.com
. http://www.apromotionguide.com


-------
Tip (3) Build trust in you and your website
-------

So you want to sell online?

Well it isn't that easy, I'm afraid.

One of the first things you must do online is to get people
to trust you and your online business. And there are a
variety of methods of doing this. I'll cover one method
here:

      - Offer invaluable (and relevant) information,
        free, via repeat contact if at all possible.

Or in other words, offer a free ebook, e-mail course or
article (a bit like the one you're reading right now ;-)  ).

Here's an example

http://www.cheap-dvd-players-uk.co.uk/buying-guide.html

This is one of my affiliate mini-sites. Usually visitors
take a quick look at the site and then head off to the main
merchant site (in this case Amazon).

So I offer a brief guide to buying a DVD player online, in
the hope that I can build a little bit of trust in my site,
and collect my site visitors' e-mail addresses (that I may
be able to use in the future, when they have long since
forgotten my mini-site).

When done properly, offering valuable freebies can be
powerful stuff.

(Just ask Harvey Segal of Supertips.com, who bases much of
his online business on providing invaluable freebies like
this - http://www.anyonecansellonline.com/supertips.shtml.)

--

I've talked enough.

Hopefully, you can use the three super-tips in this
article(*) to boost the performance of your site. Or I may
have given you some extra ideas for your next (or first)
site!

Either way, thanks for reading and good luck


(*) Note: this article is an extract from my ebook: "3 Super-
tactics I'd Tell *Anyone* - Yes, Even My Mum! - To
Successfully Build, Promote And Profit From Their Website!"

It contains more examples, more links and more ideas to help
you, and is available, free, by visiting
http://www.wise-buys.info/bonus.shtml


     C Copyright 2002-2003 Steve Nash. All Rights Reserved.

__________________________________________________________

STEVE NASH is the author of many popular articles aimed at
webmasters, affiliates, even complete beginners. Read them
here! http://www.wise-buys.info/webmaster-articles.html

HIS BEST TIP? Use Site Build It! to develop a profitable
business online! Learn more, here! http://site-buildit.com
__________________________________________________________

Please consider the following article for your
e-zine or on your web site. Please include
the resource box at the end of the article.

Thanks,
Larry Dotson

P.S. Make mo^ney publishing this article. Just
replace my URL in the resource box with this
clickbank URL and add your clickbank nickname.
http://hop.clickbank.net/?nickname/bizzreport
You'll earn 50% of all sales!
----

3 Fast Opt-In List Building Ideas!

by Larry Dotson


1) Product Discounts

You could offer your visitors a discount on all the
products you sell if they subscribe to your free e-zine.
For example, you could say, "Subscribe to our free
e-zine and get 50% off all our products!" Another
example, "Subscribe to our free e-zine and get $8
off our brand new e-book!"


2) Free Advertisements

You could offer your visitors a free advertisement
in your free e-zine if they subscribe. For example,
you could say, "Subscribe to our free e-zine and get
a no-cost e-zine ad! Another example, "Subscribe to
our free e-zine and get a free classified ad!"


3) Special Services

You could offer your visitors a free web service,
like free e-mail, if they subscribe to your free e-zine.
For example, you could say, "Subscribe to our free
e-zine and get a free bonus e-mail account!ā€¯ Another
example, "Subscribe to our free e-zine and get a
free autoresponder!ā€¯
----
FREEE eBook!Ā  5000 Words & Phrases That Sell
Like CRAZY! http://www.ldpublishing.com


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Article Submission:
THE TRUTH ABOUT INFO BUSINESS

Guidance:
Feel free to publish this article in your e-zine, your
newsletter, or at your Web site, as long as resource
box is included.

A courtesy copy of your publication will be appreciated.
Please, email to mailto:info@...
Thank You.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------\
--------------

Article Title: THE TRUTH ABOUT INFO BUSINESS
Author Name: Pavel Lenshin
Contact Email Address: mailto:info@...
Word Count: 712
Category: online business, general business
Autoresponder Address: mailto:businesstruth@...

Article URL:
http://asbone.com/publications/articles/the_truth_about_info_business.htm

The database of other available publications is located at:
http://asbone.com/publications/
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------\
--------------
Synopsis:

This publication will shed some light on the obvious, but at
the same time hidden facts of money making guides through
self-publishing. Eye-opening fact nobody tells you about.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------\
--------------

THE TRUTH ABOUT INFO BUSINESS

------------------------------------------------------------
copyright (c) Pavel Lenshin
------------------------------------------------------------


Let me save you, at least, several hundreds of dollars you
would have spent on different business guides and tutorials,
claiming to bring you online wealth.

We both read many times sales and endorsement letters the
only aim of which was to show us the ultimate way to
Internet profits. We saw those screenshots of checks or
financial statements, proving huge author's earnings, tens
of supporting testimonials and risk-free guarantees.

The distillation of these letters can be put into the
following statement: "Order that ebook and I will show you
how to make money online."

Now the ultimate truth is that the process of selling this
ebook, the process of doing what author does is the Real and
True way of making money online! That is the only way to
online prosperity, failing which, no screenshots of super
check statements will ever appear.

Examine what the author of any "internet business" guide is
actually doing - that is the key to success. In many cases
the results of your "examination" will be more important
than what you may read in the offered ebook itself!

The sweetest part is that everything, except for ebook
content, is visible for your observation and research. Don't
miss a chance of getting acquainted with real tools and
facts of how this particular author makes money online every
day, rather than reading what s/he wrote!

Let me approach from other angle and offer you to imagine
quite common example: there is a popular Internet author of
2-3 ebooks, who shows proofs of good profits to tempt you
into reading his "ultimate success guide" and "feel
involved". The truth is there is no rocket science and you
shouldn't be a Solomon to understand simple fact - the
actual way to success is to sell and promote these 2-3
ebooks as the author does!

Keep in mind that I'm not speaking here about specialized
materials, as you would hardly be able to observe all the
knowledge explained by taking a close look at the author's
online business.

How to Uncover the Truth

Write down the subject author picked up for his product(s)
and mark it as in-demand theme - otherwise this profitable
author would not have chosen this theme after conducting a
research and revealing certain selling potential.

Read all supporting materials author created to promote
his/her ebook, whether they are free email follow-up course,
reports or articles. You will find there many answers on
what should be done in order to reach online success.

Examine how he/she wrote sales letter. How does the author
attract traffic (how have you been brought to visit his/her
site)? What are referring affiliated sites (discover via
Google toolbar)? What particular keywords were picked to
target at Search Engines and Directories?

Does the author offer affiliate program? What is the 3rd
party processor serving online payments? How does site owner
try to pick visitor email address? How autoresponder course,
mentioned above, is used in the sales letter?

The list of your conclusions and answers for these questions
is the whole truth about online living off of this
particular author, nothing more or less.

Believe me, if s/he had discovered some other powerful
approach to internet profits, don't you think s/he would
have surely implemented it?

For now, those who we used to call "heavy hitters" don't use
FFA, classified ads, email blasting applications or services
of submission to zillion of directories.

Facts state that dominating majority of them don't
participate in MLMs, 99% have their own info products to
sell with established follow-up email courses and affiliate
programs. There are many other things to observe and learn
from.

Now answer me a very simple question - Do you still plan to
build online wealth by joining MLMs and advertise them via
Free-For-All web-sites? In my humble opinion, facts don't
lie and such fortune-building attitude won't work.

On the other hand, if you decided to create your own product
and have access to specialized literature on, say, how to
write an ebook, pricing techniques and other, you are fully
equipped with knowledge of being truly successful.

The rule is to believe in what profitable online
entrepreneurs actually do, rather than in what they say!

------------------------------------------------------------
Pavel Lenshin is a devoted Internet entrepreneur, founder of
ASBONE.com, where you can find everything to make your
business prosper. Discounted Internet services,
FREE ebooks http://ASBONE.com/ebooks/
FREE reports http://ASBONE.com/reports/
------------------------------------------------------------

You have permission to publish this article electronically
or in print, free of charge, as long as the signature box is
included.

Word Count: 914 words at 65 characters per line

Thanks,
Judy

P.S. To receive a complete list of over 100 free articles
with autoresponder addresses go to
www.bookcoaching.com/freearticles.shtml
===============
Ten Steps To Prepare Yourself for Online Marketing
Judy Cullins   c. 2003   All Rights Reserved

Still marketing through press releases, networking groups, and talks
to groups? If these ways have brought you few clients or product sales,
you may now be ready for your virtual marketing machine, the Internet!

To get ready follow the following ten tips.

1. Buy an up-to-date computer with a 56k modem or more and Internet
capability.

2. Open an email account. Bypass the freebies, because you
need an email account from which you can send an attachment.
You want to look professional. Don't use confusing letters and
numbers. Use your name plus business key word such as
Judy@....

3. Educate yourself about email, the Internet, and your own
computer program.  Take a community college or adult school
computer and Internet program at low cost or free. You'll notice
many others like yourself there, eager to learn. More advanced
students will help you each step of the way.

4. Hire a one-on-one low-cost computer/internet coach, who
can give you individual lessons if you don't want to attend
seminars. They can help you proceed successfully with your
eBusiness. Call your local high schools, computer schools or
colleges for computer-savvy student who will be happy to
receive $8 an hour.

Connect with teachers, career centers, or student centers to
start the ball rolling. Tell them you want an assistant. Make
an ad that lists the capabilities you need.Be sure to follow up
because schools are less business oriented and may not call you back.

5. Hire a virtual/computer assistant because you are not only a coach,
speaker or author, you are a business! These assistants can send
out emails, create appropriate folders of important contacts and
email lists, send out appropriate email and keep everything up-to-date
and organized.

Make them part of your virtual marketing machine at a very low
cost. Use your assistant as much as you want to expand your success.
You will look like a successful professional  by adding new part-
time staff.  Start with 6-9 hours a week, and watch your clients
and product sales grow!

6. Offer more than just one product to your potential buyers. Part
of the plan is to allow automatic, ongoing sells for your lifetime,
either on your Web site or other seller sites. If you plan to
write a book, write a short one first. Then, expand as you
can. Publishing a short book is savvy business because you
start making money right away to fund your other projects.
Divide and conquer. Think of chapter excerpts, articles, tips,
or how-to lists you can email free to prospective buyers.

Incorporate a plan and action steps to sell other products that relate
to your book. These could submitting informational pieces to
ePublishers so that your word gets out to thousands, even
tens of thousands of people daily on the net. This untapped
audience awaits your service and product. For more information
on this, contact your book and Internet promotion coach.

7. Include your five-to-eight line signature at the end of every email
you send with a benefit or special book you want to sell. Include
your name, email address, Web site address and phone number, local
and 800 numberInclude your business practice number one benefit
and be sure to offer a free special report or ezine e sure to include a
free offer so you can collect those email addresses and use hyperlinks
to make it easy for your client to click through.  Separate your note's
end and signature with graphics such as ==== or #####.

8. Market your service, book, or products  through writing short
articles to submit to opt-in ezines. Use a search engine to find Web
site ezines in your category or genre or send directly to the ezines.
Your article must be compelling, concise and useful,  so take
care and edit it until it shines.Most editors and publishers want
articles from 500-1000 words.

These people want and need your free information for their
ezines web sites. They publish with your Signature Box at the bottom.

9. Submit your articles to top Web sites to multiply sales. To market
your service business or books, boost your Web site popularity to the
top ten by submitting how-to articles to sites with your category.
Top site ezines get from 25,000 to 500,000 readers daily.  These
sites need your daily content, and they will pay you handsomely by
including your key words that help your search engine position.
Your coach is #3 now on Google and 35 others. They also include
your url in a hyperlink straight to your Web site or where ever you
sell your products or service.  In no time, you can be listed on 900+
other sites with a link back to yours.

10. Create your own inexpensive book Web site. Coaches can
catapult their business with a short print or eBook.  While it's
possible to sell books on other publishers' or book sellers' sites,
you need to look forward and eventually develop your own site.
Authors without a site are like business people without email.
You don't need a fancy Web site. Make your home page sizzle
with dazzling ad copy, headings, and a sales letter. You will sell
books and make your coaching practice a household word.

Be willing to do what it takes, such as hire an internet or book
coach, to get Online savvy because this wonderful marketing
machine is there for you.
===============
Judy Cullins: 20-year author, speaker, book coach
Helps entrepreneurs manifest their book and web dreams
www.bookcoaching.com/teleclasses.shtml
eBk: "Ten Non-techie Ways to Market Online"
To receive FREE "The Book Coach Says..."
go to www.bookcoaching.com/opt-in.shtml
Ph:619/466/0622


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

You have permission to publish this article electronically or
in print, free of charge, as long as the signature box is included.

Word Count: 501 words at 65 characters per line

Thanks,
Judy Cullins

P.S. To receive a complete list of over 100 free articles
with autoresponder addresses go to
www.bookcoaching.com/freearticles.shtml
===============
Make your Book Stand Out From the Crowd: Know your
Audience
Judy Cullins ©2003 All Rights Reserved.

Most authors say, "Everyone will want my book, and when I
take it to Oprah, it will sell millions, and I'll make millions, too."

Not exactly true. If you are writing a book you need to know
your specific audience. This gives your book its unique selling
point. Writing for your target audience focuses your writing and
gives your book a great advantage because you know and can
communicate your unique selling point. (USP). Now, your book
will stand out from the crowd. Although everyone won't buy it, it
will sell more copies because your targeted book buyers really want your
message.

How do you know who your audience is?

The biggest mistake most authors make is that they don't write
for their one preferred audience. If an audience is "everyone," the
book doesn't have an angle. Without a focus audience, it has too
much competition among other popular authors. The "Dummy"
books have done well because they have one particular focus--beginners.

Know your audience inside and out through the "Audience
Profile."

What do they look like? How old are they? Male? Female?
Age? Baby boomers? Seniors?  Entrepreneurial? Corporate?
Are they middle or upper class? What kind of work do they do?
What is their income? What do they spend discretionary time
and money on?  Where do they live? What books and
magazines do they read? What values and attitudes are reflected
by those books? What are their interests, hobbies, and values? How much will
they be willing to spend on your book?

What challenges do they face that they want answers to? Are
they business people, retired people, over 50? What radio
shows do they listen to? What TV programs do they watch?
What do they do with their free time? What events do they
attend? What organizations do they belong to? What causes do
they support? Are they Internet savvy? What kinds of sites do
they visit and bookmark? How many of them are out there to sell
to? What do they want? Need?

Go to your library or use the Internet to research just how many
people belong to your audience. Ask for the reference books
that have census and other information.  All agents and
publishers will want this information from you to include in your presented
book proposal.

Even if you publish this book yourself, do some market research.
Research can help you with numbers: 45 million readers read
new age books; 65 million baby boomers and 60 million seniors
are out there. They buy online, too. Think of one segment of
these groups your can write and market for: New Age newly
divorced-age 50 and up; Senior women creating a new career at
60; Baby boomer working mothers who want healthier food for
their children.

By writing a book with an angle, you will attract your preferred
audience because your whole book is devoted to answering its
concerns.
===============
Judy Cullins: 20-year author, speaker, book coach
Helps entrepreneurs manifest their book and web dreams
www.bookcoaching.com/teleclasses.shtml
eBk: "Ten Non-techie Ways to Market Online"
To receive FREE "The Book Coach Says..."
go to www.bookcoaching.com/opt-in.shtml
Ph:619/466/0622


[Non-text portions of this message have been removed]

Publishing Guidelines:

You have permission to publish this article in your ezine
or on your web site, free of charge, as long as the bylines
are included. If published, please send me a copy for my
records.


Local Search - Searching by Geography

A Timely Search Marketing Article by http://www.WebAdvantage.net (byline at
bottom of article)

As more and more brick and mortar businesses market themselves online,
search engines ("gateways to the Internet") have reacted by becoming more
like an advertising platform and less like a simple directory. In fact, a
few (Yahoo, MSN) have morphed into whole "portals" providing online users
with options galore. Still, no one can deny the power of search which
remains the #2 reason people go online behind checking email.

What hasn't necessarily worked well to-date, however, is the online
marketing of local-only businesses. The 'Net is not necessarily conducive to
finding a painter in Stony Point, New York.

Now, with the advent of new developments, some of the largest purveyors of
search, namely Google and Overture, are out to change all that...and likely
to take a financial bite out of their off-line informational counterparts
along the way.

Will phone book yellow pages, direct mail, local radio and newspapers take a
hit if search goes local? We've compiled the information surrounding this
subject from Google and Overture localized testing to breakthroughs in
geo-targeted search advertising to changes that can be made to your web site
to optimize for localized search.

** Google and Overture Lead Localized Search **

  Last month both Google and Overture released beta test versions of their
geographic search solutions. Overture is currently testing localized search
on its newly acquired property, AltaVista. It's also testing a handful of
geographically-specific advertisers. Overture's local search demo allows
users to enter a keyword and then the state, city, or zip code of the
location they're looking to pinpoint.

While Google's local search (called "Search by Location") is set up
similarly, they have also partnered with MapQuest in order to be able to
show local matches on a map. If you're looking to get in a golf game around
the Queenstown, MD area, a Google location search for "golf" and
"Queenstown, MD" yields 326 results and maps 10 of them. Here are the Google
Local Search results.

Google's Search by Location reveals tidbits of how it generates its results,
which include site content with zip codes, town names, and addresses. Notice
the second listing on the above search resulst page is for a bed &
breakfast. It "made the cut" because its site content aligned with the
parameters of the search. If you are a local business that would benefit
from these kinds of related searches, it seems it would behoove you to
include keyword content not just related to your specific business.

** Localized Search and Advertising Potential **

While ads are currently missing from the current Google Search by location,
don't expect that to last forever. The ad dollar potential in mapping plus
localized advertising is enormous. Google could get ad revenues from "mapped
advertisers" in addition to pay-per-click Local AdWords, much as it does
right now. Overture already estimates that local-search web advertising will
be a $1 billion market by 2008. Not a bad chunk o' change is it?

Clicking on either ad brings the user in seconds so much more information
than a yellow pages or AAA travel book ad does. Plus, the advertiser could
enhance the user experience by offering special coupons to be redeemed on
location or any number of other promotions they couldn't do otherwise
because of limited space or time in other forms of localized advertising.
Giving the searcher the ability to click directly to a web site is like
giving them a yellow pages dedicated entirely to their own business

** Optimizing Your Site For Local Search **

Along with basic search engine optimization (SEO), if you have a
geographically-specific business you should be looking at localized SEO as
well. Things may change in how the search engines eventually refine their
local search technology, but it can't hurt to do a few simple things...and
get a jump on your local competition.

1) Add your address in a prominent place on your web pages. Many sites use
the very bottom of their pages for their address listings. Address location
didn't use to matter. Localized search may change all that, so consider
including all or part of your address nearer to the top of your page.

2) Add city and state information to your meta and title tags.

3) Add local information to your site's content. As demonstrated in our
local golf search example, links to and information on other businesses and
attractions in your town may end up helping to promote your own site.

** Obstacles in the Way of Local Search Success **

Of course there are obstacles to successfully pulling off local search. In a
study released by The Kelsey Group which surveyed search and directory
executives, the top four perceived obstacles cited were:

1) Most small businesses lack a web site so won't show up in local search
results

2) Small businesses won't be able to bid for keywords against national
chains

3) Pricing models for localized search may be too complex for small
businesses to grasp (versus Yellow Pages)

4) Local search may be too labor intensive, like today's normal search
results. Do small business owners have the time to keep up with localized
SEO?

It may take a while for Google, Overture and the others to get their
localized search solutions polished and refined, but you can bet that it's
going to happen, and probably sooner than you're ready for. If you're not
thinking about it now, get prepared.

------------------------------------------

WebAdvantage.net - Internet Marketing Gurus

A high profile eMarketing firm specializing in Organic SEO, Search Engine
Marketing, contextual targeted online advertising and profitable results.

Review our Marketing Services at
http://www.webadvantage.net

Read our eMarketing News at
http://www.webadvantage.net/tip.cfm

-----------------------------------------

TITLE: 8 Simple Rule For Web Writing
AUTHOR:  Jim Phillips, 1SecureHost.com
WORD COUNT: 284
URL: http://www.1securehost.com
Mailto: jim@...
______________________________

Hi

Please consider the following article for your ezine
or on your web site. Please include the resource box.
If you intend to publish the article, an e-mail notification
as well as a courtesy copy of your publication would
be greatly appreciated.

Best Regards,

Jim Phillips
jim@...

Article submission:
-----------------------------------------------------------
8 Simple Rules for Web Writing
by Jim Phillips


Writing for the web is different than writing for print.
People read differently on the web.

They scan text looking to pick out information
rather than read your article word-for-word.

Here are some simple guidelines for making your
content scannable:

1. Start with your conclusion.

This is called the "inverted pyramid" writing style.
Most people will only read the first paragraph
of an article anyway.

2. Keep it short.

Most web articles are 600-800 words. Keep the most
important information "above the scroll" since most
readers do not read to the end of the article.

3. Use headings, subheadings and highlighted
keywords to make your text easy to scan.

4. Keep the article to a specific topic.

Cut any sentence that doesn't directly relate to your
point. Develop one idea per paragraph.

5. Limit anecdotes and examples to one per topic.

Again, most people won't finish the article anyway,
so cut the fluff.

6. Use lists and bullet points.

Help the reader find the information they are
looking for.

7. Use hyperlinks. Links to other sites and source
material increases your credibility.

You've done your homework! And you can keep your
articles shorter if you provide external links to
background information.

8. Don't rely on adjectives and adverbs for punch.

Say "dashed" rather than "ran very quickly" or "finish"
for "successfully complete".

Remembering the way your readers use the web will help
you write effectively and will get your articles noticed!

----
Complete Internet business including audio, ad-tracking,
hosting and more for a monthly cost you won't believe!
Just visit: http://www.1securehost.com.
Also, feel free to republish this article in your
own e-zine or web site.