Sticking To Your Plan
March 31, 2010
So you have a good idea for a business and decided that the Internet would be the perfect place to start it.
WAIT.
Having an aspiration is only half the battle. In fact, too many people start an Internet Business with only a hunch or a rough idea of what they plan to do. I’ve also heard that if you don’t know where you are going, you are guaranteed to get there!
I can’t stress how important it is to have a clear idea of your goal and develop the strategies to attain it. Too many people overlook that and that, my friend, is why they reached Nowhere Land in their Internet Business vehicle. Wouldn’t it be silly of you to climb into your car just to find that you don’t know where you want to go? On the same token, why should having a goal or financial destination be any exception?
And when times get tough (notice I didn’t say IF), you will have to be tougher. Tough times don’t last, tough men do. Many of the successful Internet Entrepreneurs you see on the Internet have been through tough times, in one way or another, before they succeed. Also notice that most of them coped with difficulties by expanding their Internet Business offerings rather than contracting.
Promotional Tools That Work For Online Businesses!
March 30, 2010
Promotion… also known as selling. Not an easy task in today’s market, but with the right tools you can succeed. What I know is what I have learned in promoting a.k.a. selling my web site, spiritwhole.com, and trust me, I could write volumes by now. But, to make it short and sweet, here are some tips that you can use to get your business purring like a kitten that actually work:
- Your friends and family. Yes, they love you, and most of them are more than happy to help you out. What I did was design a killer flyer and asked them to distribute them to their co-workers and the like. Now that’s cheap labor.
- I wrote a few articles that interested me and tied them in with my business then, approached various sites that I thought would be genuinely interested. Most of them that I approached were interested and, guess what, people are reading my articles with my business name tagged at the end.
- Donate a percentage of your profits to a good cause that interests you. This generates tons of interest in your business by word of mouth and by association with the company that you are donating to. And hey, you’ll have better karma too.
- Send small inserts with your bill payments. Yes, with your bills. Traffic to my site doubled after I began doing this. The people that you pay money to are opening the envelope and depositing the checks that you sent to them. Why not add a small insert with your payment….they promote like crazy with inserts when they send you the bill. You’re just returning the favor.
About The Author
Watch Your Mouth!
March 30, 2010
Watch Your Mouth!
by: Dijana Dimitrovska
Internet users are very autonomous and self-directed people. With this in mind, you will have to echo those character traits and use the right tone of voice to fit with them. You should also be very careful and really watch your mouth while talking with them, since they are just one click away to your competitors.
There is no correct tone of voice and approach towards interacting with website visitors. There are millions of them, and each of them is right for a certain type of website and business. What you can have in mind in all the cases is:
• To master the right tone, try to think about what your potential customer really likes, what is he interested in and what can catch his attention;
• Always be clear and direct while talking with your website visitors (your clients have enormous choice);
• Be fast with providing response. It is better to give partial information immediately than the whole information and be late. Remember: Internet is all about immediacy and people are sick of WWWait - language;
Liberalization of in-Domains?
March 29, 2010
Communications and IT Minister Dayanidhi Maran has -as Hindustan Times reports-some advice for Indian patriots: use in-domains for Websites and e-mail IDs to popularise Indian identity in the world.
With India emerging as a global “labor” for IT, Indian companies should change the domain names of their Websites and e-mail IDs to in-domains, just like other countries.
“In every part of the world, the practice has been to use the short form of the respective countries at the end of the domain names by companies and individuals,” the minister said during his first speech as IT Minister.
“During my trips abroad, I have always noticed that people have their e-mail IDs with the initials of their country in the end. For instance, in Britain, the Websites or e-mail IDs have at the end .co.uk, in Singapore it is .co.sg, in Japan it is .jp, in Hong Kong it is .hk and even in Pakistan they have .co.pk. But in India, we are still reluctant to use .co.in or .in. Why this hesitation?”, Dayanidhi Maran has asked in an interview.
Therefore the minister has been urging upon Indian captains of industry, heads of organisations and individuals to switch over to use in-domains in order to indicate that their website or e-mail ID originates from India.
How to Succeed and Stay on Task with Your Internet Marketing Promotion Strategies. A.C.T.I.O.N..
March 28, 2010
How to Succeed and Stay on Task with Your Internet Marketing Promotion Strategies. One Simple Word. A.C.T.I.O.N.
Working from home can get stressful. With all the distractions presented to you each day, you need an effective way to stay focused. When working online, it is difficult to always stay on task and not get sidetracked.
The difference between those who succeed and those who don’t can be summed up by one simple word. A.C.T.I.O.N. Use this acronym to motivate yourself to stay on top of your daily plan.
Automate as many things as possible. You can do this with autoresponders, mailing list filters, signature emails and other tools of this type.
Catagorize your daily to-do’s and make sure your highest priority is always on the top of the list.
Target. Know your target audiience, Also know your target goal of what you want to accomplish each day and make sure it gets the most attention it deserves.
Invent and Inspire Every day, jot down notes — ideas on how to promote your site and ideas for new articles. Keep yourself motivated and inspired by setting a goal to promote at least one new article or product each week.
Effective Keyword Optimization and Analysis Techniques
March 27, 2010
Keyword optimization involves vital keyword selection and placement strategy depends on successfully identifying your industry related important keywords and then where you can place those keyword for maximum effectiveness.
Effective use of keywords optimization and Phrases on your website
Key to successful web optimization begins with effective use of keywords selection and placement. When researching keywords to use on our website we need to understand how customers really search. As web visitors get more and more internet savvy, they have started searching for two or three words phrases instead of a single word. As study suggest people are using more than a keyword for searching on the net.
By fine-tuning your keyword selection, you’re targeting traffic that is looking for your particular web page. You’ll stand a much greater chance at getting top rankings under the particular keyword phrase. Once you’ve achieved this, move on and look for another competitive keyword phrase. This will get leads for your website.
Ask your customers for advice what they think when surf the net. As a family member, a close friend, or your next door neighbor how he or she might try to find your site on the web. Get different opinions.
Web Servers and Firewall Zones
March 26, 2010
Web Servers and Firewall Zones
by: Chris Weight
Web and FTP Servers
Every network that has an internet connection is at risk of being compromised. Whilst there are several steps that you can take to secure your LAN, the only real solution is to close your LAN to incoming traffic, and restrict outgoing traffic.
However some services such as web or FTP servers require incoming connections. If you require these services you will need to consider whether it is essential that these servers are part of the LAN, or whether they can be placed in a physically separate network known as a DMZ (or demilitarised zone if you prefer its proper name). Ideally all servers in the DMZ will be stand alone servers, with unique logons and passwords for each server. If you require a backup server for machines within the DMZ then you should acquire a dedicated machine and keep the backup solution separate from the LAN backup solution.
The DMZ will come directly off the firewall, which means that there are two routes in and out of the DMZ, traffic to and from the internet, and traffic to and from the LAN. Traffic between the DMZ and your LAN would be treated totally separately to traffic between your DMZ and the Internet. Incoming traffic from the internet would be routed directly to your DMZ.
Battle Of The Hostings
March 25, 2010
There are literally thousands of hosting solutions on the internet right now, from the free ones at www.geocities.com to the ones who charge you an arm and a leg. After filtering out the sharks, the copy cats & other crap, finally I have decided to review two of the best and most complete hostings package available on this planet. Please note that these are not the cheapest hostings around but these really give good value for your money, instead of asking you to upgrade later for an additional fee. Here is why :
Host 4 Profit is our first contender weighing at 300 Megabytes disk space and with a traffic limit of 10 Gigabytes per month. You might think that 300 megabytes is nothing compared to your hard disk but for doing business on the web, this should be more than sufficient. Besides being a heavy weight, you are also going to be quick footed by getting unlimited pop e-mail accounts and e-mail aliases. You also get unlimited mailing lists / newsletters and autoresponders which means being able to utilize the best marketing tool ever, which is building your own opt-in list which is going to be your prospective customer base for current anf future product offers.
4 Marketing Tips for Resourceful Webmasters!
March 25, 2010
The internet is a sea of knowledge. Getting your information to ‘float’ by the right audience can be like finding that one special grain of sand on the seashore. Paying big bucks for marketing can strain your already limited budget. What is a webmaster to do? Let’s discuss four valuable and proven ways to market your site without breaking the bank.
1. Join forums. Yes, even if running a forum is something you already do, join forums similar to what you have and become a moderator. No, I do not mean for you to siphon traffic from that site to your site. Rather, show yourself useful to that community and you will naturally draw people to your site. Bonus: Very helpful if you can offer a link to your site in your signature too!
2. Business cards. A good idea and not that pricey. Search the internet and you can design your own cards right online. I’m not talking about cheap cards, but professionally done cards. Check out how many cards you can get for less than $100! Give them away like crazy and watch your traffic soar.
Advertising Approach For The First-time Webmaster
March 24, 2010
For the first time internet entrepreneur [newbie] the best ways to promote your website at first instance are :
1. Express inclusion of your website for the usual 12 months offered by most of the major search engines. You can choose express inclusion for askjeeves, inktomi, altavista,msn etc but keep in mind to have your site submitted to the local index of your region.
For example if you reside in Toronto, Canada and you are submitting for express inclusion in the DMOZ or Canada.com search engine/directory you must ensure that your site is indexed in the Toronto’s business and economy directory. Get your site in the local index first things first.
If your submission listing includes the regional version of the DMOZ directory then thats good enough to go.
One point to note is that many of the major search engines and directories actually inter-relate that is they search across each other’s database therefore submitting to only one major engine or directory will satisfice for the Internet Marketing beginner.
2. Next, the most overlooked approach for the first-time website owner is the maximisation of the benefit of offline marketing methods.
