Oct 31, 2005

Crying For Help Online

Welcome to Flo's Business Blog

When I first started using the computer I had no knowledge, I quickly learned it needs cleaning at least once a week!!! The first time I took my computer to a tech I was not happy at all. I was charged $80.00 for them to re-program it and it took me a week to get it organized. I end up using the tech several times and I decided... no way am I paying that kind of fee!

I learned how to clean my computer on my own, the only reason I would need a tech today would be to copy and change my hard drive. That's an area I do not want to work on but the rest I don't mind, I need to clean my computer twice a week for good performance because I work all day long and seven days a week.

I showed my family and friends how to clean there own computer to save them a cost. I could tell you more about my experiences with computers but it would take a full page. I believe everyone should learn the cleaning process because... it will get costly if you don't know how!!!

In today's article Jim shares the following tips that will help you get what you need and get on your way quickly...

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Crying For Help Online
- by Jim Edwards
(c) Jim Edwards - All Rights reserved
www.TheNetReporter.com
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Anyone surfing the Internet for more than a week eventually needs help from someone else. Whether regarding an online purchase, technical support on computer hardware, software support or some other type of help, sooner or later everyone needs assistance. The way in which you ask for help has everything to do with how fast and how well you receive assistance. In the online world where email rules, the following tips will help you get what you need and get on your way quickly.

* Remember the "person" on the other end *

When something on your computer or a particular website doesn't function properly, irritation seems a natural reaction, especially when you have no clue why things don't work or how to fix them. A sense of helplessness often leads to feelings of frustration and anger. However, no matter how upset you get, you must always remember that a live person will receive your email communication and, in many cases, they didn't cause your problem directly.

Remember, those email "missiles" that make you feel better in the short term will almost always come back to haunt you over the long haul.

When first asking for help, never send notes with phrases such as "If you don't respond to me within two hours I'm going to contact my lawyer." or "I sure hope this isn't a scam." Rarely do such comments produce the cheerful help or assistance you actually want.

* "Please" and "Thank You" *

Common courtesy goes a long way towards getting what you want, especially regarding technical support. Notes with nasty comments put the person on the receiving end in a bad frame of mind. However, notes with a polite tone sprinkled generously with "please" and "thank you" will usually receive prompt and courteous attention. You can always get more severe later if you must.

* Don't use ALL CAPS *

Using all capital letters in an email rates the same as SHOUTING in someone's face! Ignorance of this custom online does not excuse the behavior.

Though you may think typing certain words in ALL CAPS merely shows emphasis on your part, to a "computer geek" you will seem rude and offensive. Once you have offended the person from whom you seek help, your chances of receiving that help diminish significantly.

* Get to the point *

Everything happens quickly online. Time ranks number one as the customer support person's scarcest resource and they don't have time to read long emails to figure out what you need.

When asking for help, always include your name, contact information, order information, specific dates and a clear description of the help or information you need.

Avoid including any extraneous information that won't contribute directly in assisting someone in giving you exactly what you need.

Though the Internet and email may seem like an instant solution to many problems, people still run the technology. If you need help from another person, don't treat the person like a machine. You'll get a lot further by doing it this way.

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Jim Edwards writes a syndicated newspaper column in plain language for non-technical people about current Internet issues, challenges, news, HOT new tools... and much more!
"The Net Reporter" ==> www.TheNetReporter.com

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"Finally – a Simple, Video-Based Training System on CD-ROM that Teaches You Step-By-Step How to Make Real Money Online- 100% Guaranteed!" You can start with a few bucks and a good idea to make lots of money online! I did, and I'll teach you how no matter what product or service you sell...
Click Here => www.33daystoonlineprofits.com/video
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Have a great day and success to your online business

Oct 30, 2005

Be More Productive

Run Your Business From Home? Here's 10 Ways to Be More Productive
Welcome to Flo's Business Blog

Lot's of parties happening on Friday and Saturday, hope you had a great time. I didn't do much this year I decided to stay in and enjoy my day off. Tomorrow night will be for the little ones and I'll enjoy looking at the various costumes that was created for the special night. I don't get to many children at my door I live out in the country and it's a little far for them. Sometimes I have one or two that lives near so I get some goodies just in case a little one knocks. Usually I go to my sisters and help her so I can enjoy the Holloween costumes.

I like the article today because I work from home and I enjoy that very much! I do have a tendency to work longer hours and I do need to remind myself to take breaks and a day off. Before my vacation I was working long hours every day, seven days a week. During my vacation I decided on my return home I would take Saturday for my day off... it's my Sabbath day. I feel better and more refreshed when I return to work on Sunday but I do have to admit I am tempted a few times to get on the computer to work... but I resist.

Alexandria shares 10 simple ways to help you stay on track when working at home...

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Run Your Business From Home? Here's 10 Ways to Be More Productive
by Alexandria K. Brown, "The E-zine Queen"
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Ah, working at home... Visions of leisurely days, conference calls in comfy sweatpants, increased productivity with fewer interruptions. But the distinctions between work life and home life soon blur. You really should throw some laundry in the wash before you write that proposal. You have an hour before a meeting: Should you balance your books or clean the kitchen? And remember to call that client back right after you empty the cat box.

Welcome to the real world of working at home: unforeseen distractions, a lack of structured time, and sometimes a perceived loss of identity. But don't give up the dream just yet! By putting into place a few simple ideas, you can reap more of the rewards of working at home. Based on my experiences and those of my clients, here are 10 simple ways to help you stay on track.

1. Separate Your Space.

Keep a separate, distinct work area in your home. Very important. (This is especially difficult if you're living and working in a shoebox apartment, like I was when I started my business in New York City!) If you don't have a separate room, at least define an area, and know that when you're in it, you're in "work mode."

2. Structure Your Time.

As your business and personal time mesh, it's more important than ever to structure your day. For example, if you regularly take a walk or go to the gym, try to do it every day at the same time. Value that personal appointment with yourself -- even when you're very busy. It will actually help you keep your business on track! I like to get up early and work until 1 pm, then I take a few hours off to enjoy lunch and go to the gym or jog on the beach. Then I'm back at my desk at 5:00 until who knows when!

3. Outsource All You Can.

When I began my business, I made the mistake of doing all my own administrative work. Whenever you start thinking, "Well I can just do that myself," STOP. Streamline your business, making everything as automatic as possible. Use outside services to stay focused on your *real work*. Get accounts with an overnight delivery service, messenger service, bookkeeper, etc. Save your energy for your brilliant ideas! (Learn more about hiring a virtual assistant (VA) at www.ezinequeen.com/assistanttele.htm)

4. Use Technology to Your Advantage.

In-person meetings are very valuable when appropriate, but schedule them sparingly. Try to do most of your business via phone, fax, and e-mail using the best equipment you can afford. For most home-based entrepreneurs, when you're out of the office, you're NOT making money. So it's important that you can communicate flawlessly from where you are. PLEASE do us all a favor and get separate lines/services for your phone, fax, and Internet! No one likes getting a busy signal.

Get separate phone numbers for business calls and personal calls, or ask your phone company about getting "distinctive ring". Also, voicemail is better than an answering machine, because if you're on an important call and don't want to be disturbed, other callers can still leave you a message.

5. Group Your Errands.

Try to group your meetings and errands together to minimize your out-of-office time. Make a list in the morning of all the outside tasks you need done for the day, and attempt to complete them in one fell swoop. Even better, do what I do and designate just one day a week as your "blitz" day for errands and meetings. Plus, then you only need to get dressed up one day a week! : )

6. Stay Focused.

Make your workspace off-limits to other roommates or family members when you're working. For you animal lovers, this may go for pets as well. (My cat Francine gets jealous when I'm not giving her complete attention!) Keep all personal paperwork such as bills, magazines, and to-do lists out of sight, so they won't distract you from your projects.

7. Beware of Yappers.

Many of your friends and family will be immediately delighted when they learn that you're working at home. They picture you lounging on the couch, eating potato chips, and waiting for their calls. When they call you simply to chat, politely remind them that you're working, and ask them if you can call them back after your day is over. It may take them a while, but they'll eventually get the idea.

8. Work With Your Moods.

Keep track of your moods and productivity compared with the time of day. For example, if you find you're more alert in the morning, use this time to make important calls and do your creative work. Take advantage of your natural cycles. If you feel better after an afternoon nap, go for it! (I'm a BIG proponent of the catnap. In fact, I may start a support group.)

9. Suit Yourself.

To bring out your best work, make your environment perfect for YOU. How do you work best? With plenty of breaks, or with no interruptions? In silence, or with some light music in the background? On a cushy couch and coffee table, or at a business desk in an ergonomic chair? (My friends thought I was nuts when I spent $750 on my Herman Miller Aeron chair, but they quickly understood why once they sat in it! And my spine thanks me every day.)

Also, find some places you can do work when you need a change of scenery. How about the library, the park, or your neighborhood coffee shop? When I need to do serious reading, thinking, or editing, I take my work outside to the pool or the beach. The sea air, sunshine, and soothing waves help me think much more clearly.

10. Break for People.

Feeling sluggish, lonely, or moody? Arrange for at least one social break during the week. (I aim for two or three.) Schedule breakfast, lunch, dinner, or even just coffee with a client, vendor, or friend. Join a business networking group, or sign-up for social activities such as dance class or recreational sports league. Don't go into hermit mode -- it can be self-destructive!

© 1999-2005 Alexandria K. Brown

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR E-ZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include this blurb with it: Online entrepreneur Alexandria K. Brown, "The E-zine Queen," is creator of the award-winning home study course, 'Boost Business With Your Own E-zine.' To learn more about this step-by-step program, and to sign up for FREE how-to articles and teleclasses, visit www.EzineQueen.com

Have a great day

Oct 28, 2005

Your Marketing Funnel

"What's In Your Marketing Funnel?"
Welcome to Flo's Business Blog

I hope everyone had a great night last night... I retired early. Yesterday morning I seen light flakes of snow that's a warning of snow storms will follow. During the night I woke up a few times and the sky was covered with big stars... it was really pretty. This morning I peeked through the window and it was white with thick crisp frost with sparkling specks of crystal glittering all over. It's 9:00 am and the sun is shinning so we will have a beautiful day!

In today's article Alexandra explains "people and your products" and that marketing is like a funnel. Read more about Marketing Funnel so you may start to sketch out YOUR funnel to see where the holes are. Start thinking about what products you can add to make it easier for your prospects to sample your expertise and buy from you...

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"What's In Your Marketing Funnel?"
by Alexandria K. Brown, "The E-zine Queen"
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A client of mine, whom I'll call "Mary," is a financial planner. She'd had a Web site for a few years that pretty much served as an online brochure for her. When Mary came to me, she was looking for other ways to generate income besides working directly with clients.

During our first conversation I introduced her to the MARKETING FUNNEL. If you picture a funnel, you know it's wide and open at the top, and tiny and narrow at the bottom. At the top of the funnel is where you want to get as MANY prospects in as possible. At the bottom of the funnel is your HIGHEST PRICED service or product. And in the middle are in-between levels of services/products and prices.

So as you go down the funnel, the products are priced higher and higher, and the idea is to keep people flowing down from the top to the bottom.

First, Get Them IN the Funnel

Offering something for FREE is the ideal way to get tons of people into your funnel. Most people collect prospects by giving away something free, such as a report, an e-zine, or a teleclass. When people sign up for these goodies, you get their names and e-mail addresses, allowing you to contact them again.

At the top of Mary's funnel was her e-zine. And at the bottom was her pricey one-on-one services. But there was nothing in the middle of her funnel.

I see this often with many solo professionals, such as coaches and consultants. There's either free or high-fee. This is the reason many of them have so much trouble converting prospects --- people usually aren't ready to make that big jump from $0 to several thousand dollars!

So I helped Mary brainstorm several information products ("info-products") and other programs she could quickly create and begin to sell.

Info-Products Are a Great Solution

By packaging your knowledge into info-products, you give your prospects the chance to "sample" you at a lower price, filling the middle of your funnel. Here are a few ideas to get you started:

* Books
* E-Books
* Special Reports
* Manuals
* Workbooks
* Journals
* Audio (downloads, CDs, or cassettes)
* Video (downloads, DVDs, or VHS tapes)
* Home Study Courses or Tutorials (usually a mix of media)

Even better, selling these products on your Web site gives you passive income. That is, it's money coming in automatically. It didn't require your working X hours for Y dollars. Sales can come in 24/7, and you don't even have to be there. (For help in getting started, see my program "How to Create, Sell, and Profit from E-books and Special Reports".)

And don't forget about teleclasses or teleseminars, delivered over the phone, or even Webinars, taught over the Internet. These require your direct involvement, but allow you to teach many people at once. These formats allow you to make much more money per hour, and they give your prospects access to you for a lower fee than hiring you one-on-one. (For help in getting started, see my program "Insider Secrets to Making Money With Teleseminars".)

Here's an example of MY own product funnel:

TOP OF FUNNEL:
Free e-zine
Free audio class

MIDDLE OF FUNNEL:
Teleseminars and audio programs ($67-$97)
Boost Business With Your Own Ezine System ($247)
Online Success Blueprint Workshop Home Study Version ($697)

BOTTOM OF FUNNEL:
One-hour private consultations ($500)
LIVE Online Success Blueprint Workshop ($1,997)
VIP Private Access Mentorship Program ($9,700-$16,700)

Now, your funnel may look entirely different. For example, here's what Mary's funnel now looks like:

TOP OF FUNNEL:
Free e-zine

MIDDLE OF FUNNEL:
Workbook ($29)
Teleseminar ($49)
2-CD audio program ($69)
4-week tele-course ($149)

BOTTOM OF FUNNEL:
One-hour private consultations ($250)
2-day live workshop ($699)
Personal mentoring program ($6,000)

Take a few minutes right now and sketch out YOUR funnel. See where the holes are, and start thinking about what products you can add to make it easier for your prospects to sample your expertise and buy from you.

© 2004-2005 Alexandria K. Brown

WANT TO SEE MORE ARTICLES LIKE THIS ONE?
See Alexandria's Small Business Marketing Blog.

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WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR E-ZINE OR WEB SITE? Online entrepreneur Alexandria K. Brown, "The E-zine Queen," publishes the award-winning 'Straight Shooter Marketing' weekly ezine with 20,000+ subscribers. If you're ready to jump-start your marketing, make more money, and have more fun in your small business, get your FREE tips now at www.EzineQueen.com
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Have a great day and a relaxing weekend!

Oct 27, 2005

Yahoo Briefcase

Take your files anywhere with Yahoo Briefcase
Welcome to Flo's Business Blog

Four weeks ago I had my vacation at London and St. Catharines Ontario, during my trip I added a few articles to my blog... I used Yahoo Briefcase. Before I left for my vacation I chose the articles and then downloaded them to my briefcase. It was easy! When I arrived and it was time to add an article all I needed to do is sign in to Yahoo then retrieve my briefcase. In today's article it's about Yahoo Briefcase... it's a neat service!

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Take your files anywhere with Yahoo Briefcase
- by Jim Edwards
(c) Jim Edwards - All Rights reserved
TheNetReporter.com
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Imagine you worked all week on a report for presentation to an important client tomorrow morning. At the end of the day you congratulate yourself and save the report files to your computer's hard drive.

The next morning you arrive at work only to find your worst nightmare coming true - your computer won't boot and you can't get the files. Your boss starts breathing down your neck to produce the report because the client arrives in five minutes. What will you do?

Yahoo to the rescue! With lightning-like speed you jump onto a colleague's computer and pull up your personal hard drive on the http://briefcase.yahoo.com website. Log onto your free account with a unique user name and password and bingo, your files come up on the screen.

Almost instantly you download the report, print it off and produce lifesaving - not to mentions career saving -results.

Yahoo Briefcase, a free service of search portal giant Yahoo!, offers users a free 30 megabyte hard drive on the Internet. The site supports itself by -you guessed it -displaying banner ads to entice you to buy things. The advantages of the service, however, far outweigh any pains of viewing a few ads.

Remote file backups Everyone knows they should back up their files, but most people keep their computer and backup files in the same place.

Ever wonder what would happen if your computer and your backup files get destroyed by fire, flood or theft? Large corporations spend big money to keep their files archived on remote servers "just in case". Now you can do the same thing with your vital files at no cost.

Mobile file access

Everyone moves around so much these days. Have you ever wanted access to a file on your home machine while you worked at the office? Ever needed to finish up some work at home but with files on the office PC? Now you can easily access, edit, share and modify your files anywhere you can access the Internet just by uploading and downloading files through virtually any web browser on any web connection.

File sharing between users

Do you enjoy waiting for huge files to upload or download through your e-mail program? Nobody does! Don't tie up the e-mail servers with file downloads, use Yahoo Briefcase to share files with other users. Simply upload your files to your briefcase and then email your friend a message with a link and instructions to download the file. Yahoo Briefcase even lets you place a time limit on how long the link remains valid. This means the link will "expire" after a certain period of time so people can't pass it around.

Digital Family Photos

Another great use for the service involves sharing digital pictures over the web. As those file sizes grow with enhancements in digital photography, having a password protected spot online from which to share the virtual family photo album comes in very handy.

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Jim Edwards is the co-author of an incredible new ebook that will teach you how to write and publish your own highly profitable ebook in a week or less... even if you failed high school English class!

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Why are some people getting rich selling their ebooks? Jim Edwards and Joe Vitale have created the *ultimate* guide "How to Write and Publish your own Outrageously Profitable eBook... in as little as 7 Days!"
FREE Details: ==> Write and Publish Your Own Ebook!
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Have a great day

Oct 26, 2005

The Perfect Images

How To Find The Perfect Images Online
Welcome to Flo's Business Blog

The weather is a lot better these couple of days, a little wind from the north but that's not bad. The furnace was off that makes me happy :-) because it saves wood... February is the coldest month for around here.

Did you look at the pictures yesterday? I received some pictures from my niece from her trip to Italy and I was sharing with my visitors. If you haven't seen Italy and if you didn't have time then visit Flo's Space from what I see... it's really beautiful there!

In today's article Jim has some EXCELLENT information for you that will save you both time and money. If you make websites, mini-sites, content sites, brochures, flyers, ebook covers, dvd/cd covers (or anything else that requires images) then read the article...

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How To Find The Perfect Images Online
- by Jim Edwards
© Jim Edwards - All Rights reserved
TheNetReporter.com
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Has this ever happened to you?

You need a photo for a website, brochure, flyer, or CD / DVD cover.

You buy one of those 100,000 photo and clipart collections on 10 CD-ROMs hoping to find the "perfect" picture, but after hours of searching you find your brain tired, your mouse hand numb, and no "perfect" photo in sight.

Fortunately, the photo and clipart business got a lot smarter online, and anyone who ever needs good photos at rock bottom prices stands to benefit.

Buying one of those mega-photo collections to find one photo rates about the same as buying an entire aisle at the supermarket in hopes of finding a single Snicker bar!

Personally, my shelves hold over 2,000,000 photo and clipart images on over 100 CD-ROMs, most of which rate quite useless to me.

To further complicate matters, photo collections on CD-ROM tend to go out of date.

Many of the photo collections I bought in the mid-1990's contain photos of people from the 980's, so the hair, clothes and even makeup look out-of-date.

The solution to this dilemma lies in the fact that you can now buy photos online at bargain-basement prices.

Previously, in order to buy photos online, you either joined a membership site, which charges a monthly fee, or you bought by the photo from sites charging $100 or more for one photo.

Do a search on google.com for "royalty free photo," "stock photo," or "buyout photo" and you'll find plenty of websites offering photos at premium prices (not to mention the confusion of finding what you want).

Two excellent options for buying photos and clipart are ClipArt.com and BigStockPhoto.com.

Clipart.com charges a membership fee to browse their database and download images.

Their best deal is the yearly subscription of $169.95 (equates to about $15 a month) with unlimited downloads.

This represents an excellent option if you plan to use a large number of images over the year, but I found the actual photos (they also carry clipart, sounds, illustrations and more) about average.

At BigStockPhoto.com I found the photos much more compelling and dramatic than ClipArt.com.

I also like the fact that BigStockPhoto.com lets you buy only the photos you want by purchasing credits instead of paying for a membership.

You can buy a single photo for $2.50, but the price per picture goes down when you buy multiple credits (10 gives you the first price break).

Whenever you buy images, carefully read the fine print in the license about how you can and cannot use the images, especially for commercial purposes.

It does you no good to buy an image you can't use. Beware of "free" clipart and photo websites, they can often display images of dubious origin.

Also, free clipart sites frequently carry tons of banner and pop-up advertising (along with some more sinister spyware applications that install themselves automatically on your computer).

Regardless of why you want them, buying images online now rates much better than buying a huge clipart collection and hoping to find what you need.

And, by purchasing only the pictures you need, you'll save yourself significant time and money in the long run.

--
Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and the creator of an amazing course that will teach you step-by-step and click-by-click how to finally create your own money-making mini-sites...

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"Finally! A Quick and Easy Way For YOU to Painlessly Set Up Your OWN Moneymaking 'Mini' Websites... Without Being a Computer Geek, Buying Expensive Software, or Paying Outrageous Fees To A Webmaster!"

Click Here => www.MiniSiteCreator.com
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Have a great day

Oct 25, 2005

Three Very Cool Things

Welcome to Flo's Business Blog

One year ago my niece visited Italy, if your interested at taking a look at the beautiful pictures she sent last week then visit Welcome to Flo's Personal Space. I doubt I'll make a trip to Italy so it was really nice to see, I found Italy very beautiful it felt like I was there myself. If you didn't visit Italy here's your chance to see a little of it... maybe it will inspire you to plan that trip!

Today's article will help you if your writing a real book or if your thinking about it... it might just motivate you to just do that. Now you can publish your book as easily as uploading a Word document! See what Jim is sharing with you if you want to publish a "real " book without the hassles and disappointment of traditional publishing...

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Three *Very Cool* Things You Can Do Online
- by Jim Edwards
© Jim Edwards - All Rights reserved
TheNetReporter.com
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** Publish Your "Real" Book On LuLu.com **

"Print-on-demand" publishing makes it simple to get your book into print without a traditional publisher.

"Print-on-demand" does just that: no copies of the book get printed until after there's an order.

This style of self publishing really hit its stride in the last few years as a result of improvements in computerized printing technology and the emergence of Amazon and other online book sellers as legitimate distribution channels.

However, expensive setup fees and high printing costs per book still kept print-on-demand outside the reach of many smaller or first-time authors.

Lulu.com changes all that. Now you can publish your book as easily as uploading a Word document, using a "wizard" to design your cover, click a few buttons, and you're published.

LuLu.com will also list your book via Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble's website.

They don't charge a setup fee and only charge 20% of the book's cover price as a royalty (on top of a per book printing cost that rates as low or lower than most print-on-demand publishers).

If you want to order a crate of books for yourself to hand out as business cards or as Christmas gifts, you can get a special cut rate where you only pay for printing and binding costs.

Overall, Lulu.com rates a "must look" if you want to publish a "real" book without the hassles and disappointment of traditional publishing or the usual up front fees of print-on-demand publishing.

** Get Free Tech Support **

Log on to HelpOnThe.net to find a wealth of free technical support staffed by volunteer geeks and nerds who know the "real" story behind those error messages.

Search their extensive collection of discussion threads to find the answer to your question someone else probably already asked.

Or, post your question in one of the forums and wait for an answer.

As always, beware of free advice and take precautions to back up files before making any changes to your system.

But, before you spend 2 or 3 hours on hold waiting for tech support (did you know some companies started charging for phone support?) see if you can find the answer to your problem from The Tech Support Guy at HelpOnThe.net

** Create Your Own "Podcast" - Fast **

"Podcasting," or audio "blogging," enables content creators to share their thoughts, rants and raves via MP3 audio over the web.

A variation of traditional text-only "blogging," podcasting takes its name from the Apple Ipod MP3 player used to automatically download and play MP3 audio files.

Despite many advancements in MP3 encoding technology, it's been difficult for many people to record their podcast and get it on the Internet in a way others can automatically download.

Log on to AudioBlog.com and your problems are solved. This nifty online service enables users to record MP3 audio right through your web browser or even over the telephone and then publish the RSS feed (Real Simple Syndication) necessary to create a podcast.

Basic accounts start at $4.95 a month.

--
Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and the creator of an amazing course that will teach you step-by-step and click-by-click how to finally create your own money-making mini-sites...

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"Finally! A Quick and Easy Way For YOU to Painlessly Set Up Your OWN Moneymaking 'Mini' Websites... Without Being a Computer Geek, Buying Expensive Software, or Paying Outrageous Fees To A Webmaster!"
Click Here => www.MiniSitesCreator.com.
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Have a great day

Oct 24, 2005

MARKET-ESE

Welcome to Flo's Business Blog

Priya is sharing some "pick-up" lines, a tongue-in-cheek look at the hype and half-truths used online in marketing to unsuspecting customers. Priya be warned - this may not be very pleasant reading for those that take it too seriously...

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MARKET-ESE
What They Say, What They Really Mean
Copyright © 2002 Priya Shahn
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All of us have (and will continue to be) guilty of using the half-truths below at some time or another. And as long as there are newbies on the net, people will continue to fall for these customer "pick-up" lines.

Be warned - this may not be very pleasant reading for those that take it too seriously.

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What They Say:
"And you get XYZ Super Bonuses for ordering now."

What They Really Mean:
"By giving you all these worthless products that I failed to sell I'm making it easier for you to shell out your hard-earned cash."

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What They Say:
"This price is only valid if you order by midnight December 31, 2002 "

What They Really Mean:
"After which the offer will continue with a different date thanks to the brilliant little Javascript code I use"

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What They Say:
"This price is for a limited time only"

What They Really Mean:
"I'm wondering how long I can keep selling this overpriced stuff"

-----

And a follow-up to the above

What They Say:
"After which the price will be increased to [insert unaffordable amount here]"

What They Really Mean:
"After which I may be forced to sell it at much lower price or even give it away"

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What They Say:
"Five of your own complete internet businesses"

What They Really Mean:
"Yours and a thousand others who will soon be selling this to one another"

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What They Say:
"Here are the excellent reviews that this has been getting"

What They Really Mean:
"These are the people I gave it to free - what do you expect them to say but anything good"

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What They Say:
"And we have hundreds of other customer testimonials that are not included here"

What They Really Mean:
"They include the many adverse reviews, criticisms and chargebacks that I received, but that I don't want you to read"

-----

What They Say:
"Get Guaranteed sign-ups"

What They Really Mean:
"These are people we actually pay a dime to signup for your free program. How else do you think we can guarantee them?"

-----

What They Say:
"Spam-free List"

What They Really Mean:
"We've never mailed these people ourselves - just harvested their emails off various sites - so technically we haven't really spammed them yet."

-----

What They Say:
"These are prospects who have asked to be mailed"

What They Really Mean:
"They filled in our home biz form, didn't they? So they're asking to be spammed"

-----

Yeah, right!

-=-=-
Priya Shah swears she has has never been guilty of Market-ese (OK, OK maybe just once... or twice). She is the CEO of eBrand360. Her areas of specialization include internet marketing, search engine optimization and business blogging.
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Have a great day

Oct 23, 2005

Set Up Your Own Blog Free

Welcome to Flo's Business Blog

This article is for people asking how they can set up their own blogs, it tells you exactly where to go to get your own blogs up and running in minutes at no cost. Blogs are a great way to connect with your audience, get feedback, do market research, create content, get links spidered by the search engines and much more.

=> FREE Video

If you don't understand trackbacks, scroll at the end of the article so you can get this free video that explains "trackbacks"...

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Set Up Your Own Blog Free
- by Jim Edwards
© Jim Edwards - All Rights reserved
TheNetReporter.com
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I've received a lot of email lately from people asking how they can set up their own blogs for family, friends, or business purposes without spending much money or hiring an expensive programmer or web developer.

Well, ask no more because I will now show you exactly how to get your own blog without dipping too far into your own pocket (if at all) and get up and running, even if you don't have your own website, hosting account, or domain name.

You basically get two choices when it comes to setting up a blog: host it yourself, or use a service that hosts the blog for you.

Each one carries advantages based on your level of skill, experience and how many options you want to add to your blog.

If you choose to host your blog on your own website, then you can pick from a number of different options, including MoveableType.org and WordPress.org.

However, if you don't want to host it yourself, you can also go to Yahoo.com, put in the term "free blog" and obtain a long list of services that will host a blog for you, either free of charge or for a fee.

Probably the best-known free blog service resides at Blogger.com Recently purchased by Google, Blogger boasts thousands of blogs on topics ranging from ecommerce to pet manners.

Blogger enables you to set up a functional blog in about 5 minutes and start posting your thoughts, rants, or family facts with the world.

Log on to http://Spaces.MSN.com and find another free option offered by Microsoft's online service, MSN.

This service makes it a bit easier to share photos than Blogger, which requires a separate software tool called Picasa (also available from Google for free).

MSN's blogger service also seems to appeal more to individuals sharing their thoughts than to businesses trying to scare up new customers or get their links crawled by search engine spiders (another advantage of publishing a blog).

So if you're publishing the family blog, this one might offer more of the user-friendly options you need.

The one drawback to using free services always comes back to the age-old saying, "You get what you pay for!"

These free blog services come with virtually zero customer support, so if you can't figure it out on your own, good luck finding anyone to assist you.

If you don't mind paying $5 a month, you can get a full- featured weblog at TypePad.com that offers a decent level of customer support.

The blogs available here offer many more features than Blogger or MSN, but also require you to understand a bit more about blogging's more advanced features like "trackback links" and "pinging" blog directories to let them know you've updated your blog (so others can come take a look at your new material).

Regardless of whether you choose the free or paid option, using a hosted blogging solution rates best when getting started.

However, once your blog really starts to take off and you find you need more "bells and whistles," you may want to consider upgrading to a more sophisticated blogging solution.

=> For a free video that explains "trackbacks" and more, check out: http://www.igottatellyou.com/trackback.html

-=-=-
Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and the co-author of an amazing new ebook that will teach you how to use free articles to quickly drive thousands of targeted visitors to your website, affiliate links, or blogs...
-=-=-

-=-=-==-=-
Need MORE TRAFFIC to your website or affiliate links? "Turn Words Into Traffic" reveals the secrets for driving Thousands of NEW visitors to your website or affiliate links... without spending a dime on advertising!
Click Here> www.TurnWordsIntoTraffic.com
-=-=-==-=-

Have a great day

Oct 21, 2005

Profit With Free eBooks

Welcome to Flo's Business Blog

Burr ... a layer of white frost covering the grounds this morning, it looked cold! Priya and I have a habit of collecting every free eBook we could lay our hands on. For myself these eBooks are a great way to learn from others and get the knowledge I need to succeed online, also to keep up with the ongoing changes to the WWW.

Here's other reasons why I collect free eBooks...

=> To give them away on my website
=> For subscribing to my weekly newsletter
=> To add on my weekly newsletter
=> For referring someone to my website
=> Signing up to notification of site update
=> To a package deal for an extra bonus

I'm hoping to be publish to the WWW in 2006! It's taking awhile because I'm doing it by myself and it's a large site. This year I didn't work on it much, my mom was diagnosed as terminal a year and a half before she passed away on September 13/2004. She lived with my sister in Sundrae Alberta, I lived three hours away in Edmonton. I went often to see my mom... so I wasn't able to focus on designing. I was under a lot of stress and made to many unnecessary errors, I will resume after Christmas.

In today's article Priya says her collection proved very profitable to her while building her business, she shares 20 ways that you can use free eBooks to boost your profits...

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20 Ways To Profit With Free eBooks
Copyright © 2003 Priya Shah
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My habit of collecting every free eBook I could lay my hands proved very profitable to me while building my business.

Here are 20 ways that you can use free eBooks to boost your profits.

1. Build Your List

Use free eBooks as an incentive to get more people to join your list.

2. Keep Your Subscribers

Give away a new free eBook every time you mail your list or at least every month, so they have a reason to stay subscribed. Create a subscribers-only eBook library and keep adding new ones often.

3. Get More Affiliates to Promote Your Product

Offer free eBooks and free brandable eBooks as an incentive for join your affiliate program.

4. Sell Customization Rights to Your Own eBooks

If you've written an eBook and have a number of affiliate links in it, you can make more money by selling the customization rights.

5. Back-End Profits

Purchase customization rights to others' eBooks and give them away free to your list. Profit when they purchase something through your links.

6. Become an Instant 'Expert'

Write an eBook on a topic that you know well and give it away to a target market. Once people know you as an expert on your subject, they will be more willing to spend money with you.

7. Grow Your Downline

Offer free eBooks as an incentive to join a program under you. Allow your downline to give away the eBooks as well so they can build their (and your) downline.

8. Become a Leader

Train your team by giving away free eBooks that help them learn how to build their business. eBooks help you save on the cost of ordering printed copies and shipping them to your distributors.

9. Boost Your Website Traffic

Write an eBook yourself and insert your website links in a way that gives your readers a compelling reason to visit your website, either for the resources you offer or an invitation to download more eBooks.

10. Survey Your List

Have a great idea for a new product or eBook, but need to find out if there's a market for it? Create a survey and use free eBooks to entice people to respond. To ensure a good response to your survey, offer two or more eBooks, or a product that you own, or even a download of the product you plan to create as a result of the survey.

11. Get Viral

Give away a free eBook that others can brand with their own links so they will give it away eagerly to their own lists. Include your own affiliate program, or traffic exchange programs, or two-tier or multi-tier affiliate programs that readers can join through your links, to get most from this strategy.

12. Get Free Advertising

Give away a free eBook that hasn't been circulated much or one of your own products or eBooks to ezine editors in exchange for free ads in their ezine.

13. Get Joint Venture Partners

Make your JV offer more attractive by offering your partners a valuable or unique eBook that you own or have the right to give away.

14. Build Link Popularity

Get others to link to your website by offering them free eBooks or one of your own products. The more links you have pointing to your website, the higher you will rank on search engines and the more traffic you will get.

15. Promote Your Own Products

Offer free preview versions (say, the first few chapters) of an eBook that you wrote to promote it and get more people to buy it from you. Combine this with a rebrander to get a viral effect and increase downloads of your preview version. If you are selling a software product, give away a free report that explains why your software solves your target market's problem and how it will benefit them.

16. Enhance the Value of Your Product

Give away free eBooks as Bonus Products along with your own product to enhance its value. This works best if the bonuses are related to the topic of the product you are selling.

17. Keep in Touch with Your Customers

Send your customers free eBooks often to show them you value their business and remind them of your products in a way they won't object to.

18. Get Testimonials

Offer free eBooks or bonuses to existing customers in exchange for testimonials that you can put up on your sales page.

19. Boost Flagging Sales

When sales are low, create an eBook with discount coupons or special offers and give them away to your customers. You can also use this strategy to boost holiday sales.

20. Revive Your Old Articles

Update or rewrite old articles or sections of your ezine archives and compile them into an eBook to give them a new lease of life.

-=-=-=-
Priya Shah is the CEO of eBrand360. Her areas of specialization include internet marketing, search engine optimization and business blogging.
-=-=-=-

Have a great weekend

Oct 20, 2005

Skyrocket Your E-mail List

Welcome to Flo's Business Blog

-=-=-
Trivia

Japan is one of the most competitive soft drink markets in the world. Approximately 1,000 new soft drinks are lauched in Japan every year, of which only a small number survive. There are more than 7,000 different soft drinks sold in the country.
-=-=-

Do you want to quickly build your email list? Then find someone who's already reaching your target market and use them to build your list. If you know exactly what you're going after, you're much more likely to get it. Alexandria shares how she quickly build her email list with these three easy steps to get you started...

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"How to Reach Thousands of Your Ideal Clients
and Customers and Skyrocket Your E-mail List"
by Alexandria K. Brown, "The E-zine Queen"
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One of the questions I'm asked the most by my clients is, "How can I most quickly build my e-mail list?"

My answer is, find someone who's already reaching your target market in droves, and use THEM to build your list! How? With these three easy steps:

======
STEP 1: Determine exactly who your ideal client or customer is.

The more descriptive you can be here, the better. For example, don't just think "men". Think "men ages 18-40 who like sports and working out". Don't just think "small business owners". Think "women owners of professional service businesses that do less than $1 million a year".

Can you take on clients or customers who fall outside of this description? Of course! But you need to know who you're going after.

Example: About three years ago, I spent a romantic summer week on Nantucket Island in Massachusetts. My beau was wonderful in letting me decide most of the activities we'd do each day. But there was one thing he definitely wanted to do at least once - go bluefishing!

Now I'm not sure if you could have guessed this, but I'm not really into fishing. ; )

But hey, I'll try anything once, so off we went to the docks. Now, I figured we could go on any boat with any captain and do this. But no ... we went with "Captain Dan the Bluefish Man" (who smelled like his specialty). Dan took us on his special boat to this special place off the island where the bluefish were, and we even used special bait that the bluefish liked. And we had great success - they just kept biting!

I realized that if you know exactly what you're going after, you're much more likely to get it. The same goes for reaching your target market.

=======

STEP 2: Find other people, companies, or websites that are ALREADY reaching your target market en masse.

Sit down with a cup of coffee this weekend and do some online research regarding your target market. What sites are they already visiting? What newsletters or magazines do they already read? For example, if your target market is stay-at-home moms, find the most popular sites they visit. Find the most popular e-zines they read.

Come up with a list of your top five websites and top five ezines that are already reaching your ideal client or customer.

=======

STEP 3: Contact these websites and ezines and see if they will:

--> REVIEW your book, products, services, or ezine for their readers. If so, send them a review copy and follow up a week or two later. Request that when they run the review they mention your e-zine and direct people to your website to sign up.

--> accept guest ARTICLES. If so, then submit one of your best, with a short bio that links people back to your website to sign up for your ezine.

--> SWAP ads or recommendations for each other's websites, products, or services. If you have an ezine that reaches the same target market they want to reach, this is a great win-win.

--> do a CO-REGISTRATION deal. If you already have a good amount of e-zine subscribers and website traffic, they may be open to adding your e-zine to their ezine signup form if you do the same on your part. (Ideally folks should just check a box to subscribe to the additional e-zine automatically.)

--> run a recommendation or ad in exchange for a COMMISSION on resulting sales. For example, you give them the ad to run, tagged with a link that lets you know if any sales come from it. (This is easy for you to do if you have an online affiliate program.*)

--> accept PAID advertising. Banner ads, text ads, and other paid placements obviously cost you money, but if it's your only option and you really want to reach these folks, go for it. But be sure to track your results so you can see if it's working. (You'll need a link tracking program to do this.*)

And these are just a FEW ideas to get you started!

=====

Remember, your #1 goal is to get people back to your site to sign up for your e-zine or other email list, because THAT is how you guarantee the chance to market to them repeatedly!

(*I use and recommend www.QueenCart.com for automating your affiliate program and tracking all your ad links.)

© 2004-2005 Alexandria K. Brown

WANT TO SEE MORE ARTICLES LIKE THIS ONE?
See Alexandria's Small Business Marketing Blog.

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR E-ZINE OR WEB SITE? Online entrepreneur Alexandria K. Brown, "The E-zine Queen," publishes the award-winning 'Straight Shooter Marketing' weekly ezine with 17,000+ subscribers. If you're ready to jump-start your marketing, make more money, and have more fun in your small business, get your FREE tips now at www.EzineQueen.com

Have a great day

Oct 19, 2005

5 Proven Headlines

Get More Sales With These 5 Proven Headlines
Welcome to Flo's Business Blog

Yesterday it turned out to be a great sunny day... I loved it. Last night around midnight it started to rain and still is, huge puddles of water everywhere, windy with thick dark clouds and high humidity... hope it's only for today - we will see!

When someone arrives at your website or reads your articles the first impression of your visitor or subscriber is very important! What I mean by "first impression" is with your headlines on your website or articles that entice them to stay on and read what you offer. Your headlines will either lead to marketing success or failure to your online business! Over the years copywriting pros have used headline formulas that always work well, Alexandra shares her fab five ...

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Get More Sales With These 5 Proven Headlines
by Alexandria K. Brown, "The E-zine Queen"
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In the world of marketing communications, your first impression -- your headline -- can lead to either marketing success ... or failure.

It's important to realize that headlines work best when they appeal to your reader's interests (not yours). And not only can they *grab attention*, they can also make your message easy to read, convey your main selling points, and lead your customer to a sale.

Over the years copywriting pros have used several headline formulas that always work well. Here are my fab five:

1. The Question: "Are You Worried About Your Financial Future?"

A question headline automatically gets your readers involved in your message, because they answer it in their minds. Many people will read further into your letter, ad, or Web site copy just to find out what answer or solution you provide. Again, make sure the question focuses on the reader's interest, not yours. A bad example would be: "Do You Know What New Product We've Created This Year?" (No one cares but you!)

2. The How-to: "How to Get Thinner Thighs in 30 Days."

How-to headlines work very well, because people love information that shows them how to do something. (Thousands of book titles begin with "How to....") Think of the benefits your product/service offers and then try creating some "how to" headlines.

3. The Testimonial: "Jane Smith's Consulting Is Pure Magic -- Our Sales Have Increased by 30%!"

Why not let your clients do the selling for you? Their commendations can go a long way in convincing others to use your services. Tip: To appear credible, always include your clients' full names and the cities they live in.

4. The Command: "Boost Your Business Today!"

Turn your most important benefit into a commanding headline, such as "Make More Time for Your Family," "Look Younger Instantly!" and "Get 7 New Clients This Month." (By the way, throwing a number into your headline is another good tactic. And readers seem to like odd numbers as opposed to even.)

5. The News: "Introducing Our New 'Rest-Assured' Tax Service!"

Caution: This only works if you truly have something big to announce that is of interest to the reader. (Something that will make her life or business better.) Don't try to make news out of something that's not.

Once your readers know you have something they're interested in, they'll take the time to read your entire article, brochure, letter, ad, e-zine, or Web page. So put some TLC into creating headlines that entice!

© 2002-2005 Alexandria K. Brown

WANT TO SEE MORE ARTICLES LIKE THIS ONE?
See Alexandria's Small Business Marketing Blog.

WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR E-ZINE OR WEB SITE? Online entrepreneur Alexandria K. Brown, "The E-zine Queen," publishes the award-winning 'Straight Shooter Marketing' weekly ezine with 17,000+ subscribers. If you're ready to jump-start your marketing, make more money, and have more fun in your small business, get your FREE tips now at www.EzineQueen.com

Have a great day and the best to your online business

Oct 18, 2005

No Customer Left Behind

Welcome to Flo's Business Blog

The sun is out today and looks mighty pretty! I believe will have a beautiful day today and that makes me a very :-) happy gal.

Email as a means of communication has become unreliable over the last couple of years. Anyone who does business online should consider installing a help desk solution to manage their customer communication. Spam makes it impossible for a company of any size to operate with email-only support. In today's article Jim shares how to go about this annoying problem with spam...

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No Customer Left Behind
by Jim Edwards
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

As more companies make the jump to cyberspace every week and billions of dollars flow across the Internet, nobody can deny that ecommerce plays a significant roll in business today.

However, as the aisles of your local online shopping site get more crowded, the tendency for customer service issues and contact to fall through the cracks increases dramatically.

The main problem for any site revolves around the fact that email as a means of communication has become unreliable over the last couple of years.

Spam (unsolicited commercial email) lies at the heart of the problem since it clogs the email boxes of both the company and the customer.

In an attempt to stem the tide of spam, email gets filtered, lost, or deleted on both sides, often leading to hard feelings as customers think their emails have been ignored when actually they've never been received.

As a result, many companies, large and small, have started using "help desk" software to manage their customer communication.

Gone are the days of just emailing for support and getting a simple reply back from a live human being on the other end.

Spam makes it impossible for a company of any size to operate with email-only support.

A help desk makes it possible not only to maintain a "chain" of communication, but also avoids messages disappearing into cyberspace.

Help desk solutions run the range from free to several thousands of dollars for a custom program.

Two very workable and reasonably priced solutions are Kayako.com and Perldesk.com.

(You can also do a search in Google for "free help desk software" if you don't want to spend any money.)

Both offer the choice of installing the software on your own server, or paying a monthly fee to get a copy of the software installed and maintained on the provider's server.

Which option you choose depends on your level of technical ability, level of customization needed, and how much support you'll need over time.

I suggest starting out with the hosted version until you get the hang of the system, then switch over to a version on your own server to avoid the monthly charges.

An online help desk operates fairly simply.

A customer submits a ticket through a form on your website, the customer support staff (even if it's a staff of one) responds to the ticket through the website, and all communication gets posted on a private web page.

Both Kayako and Perldesk enable customers to search a "knowledgebase" or collection of articles to try solving their problems on their own (especially during non-business hours), thus frequently eliminating the need to get a live response.

Anyone who does business online should consider installing a help desk solution from the start rather than putting it off until the future.

Get your customers conditioned to operating with a ticket system rather than switching on them in mid-stream once your business gets too busy to handle support via email.

Here are a couple of other tips to help you.

Designate one person to act as the "sorter" answering the basic issues, then referring off the ones they can't answer to other staff members.

Also, post your help desk hours and stick to them.

Answer questions the same day if possible, but no later than the next business day.

-=-=-=-=-
Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and the co-author of an amazing new ebook that will teach you how to use free articles to quickly drive thousands of targeted visitors to your website or affiliate links...

Simple "Traffic Machine" brings Thousands of NEW visitors to your website for weeks, even months... without spending a dime on advertising! ==> www.TurnWordsIntoTraffic.com
-=-=-=-=-

Have a great day and great success to your online business

Oct 17, 2005

Appoint Yourself the Expert!

Whatchya Waiting For? Appoint Yourself the Expert!
Welcome to Flo's Business Blog

Do you feel you're not an expert in your field? Today's article is about making yourself an expert even if your not so you may benefit with your online business. It's VERY important to position yourself as an expert in what you do! Alexandra has a few pointers she shares to her clients if they are expressing doubt about their "qualifications"...

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"Whatchya Waiting For? Appoint Yourself the Expert!"
by Alexandria K. Brown, "The E-zine Queen"
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There's one marketing condition I see over and over with my clients, and it's called "but-I'm-not-an-expert-itis". These people are afraid to play bigger because they think it's not their time yet. (The important words there being "they think".) They're waiting for something to happen - a degree, a certification, a blessing from the gods in their industry, a recognitional nod from their respected peers.

Please listen carefully: This attitude will kill your business and take years off your life! It's VERY important to position yourself from the get-go as an expert in what you do.

Why do you want to be seen as an expert? Experts are more respected, get media attention, can market more easily and inexpensively, get paid more, and receive less price resistance (meaning people are happier to pay what you ask).

So, instead of waiting for someone to invite you to the top of the mountain, I urge you to simply "leap frog" your way over everyone else at the bottom.

Hear me loud and clear: You do not need anybody's permission to believe you're the best at what you do and share that fact! In fact, here are a few points I make to my clients if they are expressing doubt about their "qualifications" to sell information, programs, or services and charge well for them.

In the eyes of your prospects, clients, customers, and the media, you're seen as an expert if...

1. You Know More About Your Topic Than Your Target Market Does

When I first created my Boost Business With Your Own Ezine system, I wouldn't say I was an expert on ezines by far. But by studying the topic in depth to create my own ezine, I'd weeded through all the junky information to get to the good stuff, and I wanted to share it.

You'll find you can make quite a good living just teaching people how to get started in something. (You don't have to be the end-all wizard of the topic.)

2. You've Done What You're Teaching Others to Do

One client of mine, whom I'll call "Pat", teaches real estate investing. She wanted to create a high priced mentorship program of her own, but was nervous about it. She didn't feel right charging a lot of money for her personal time and advice, which meant deep down she wasn't confident in what she was teaching.

I asked her, "Did you make a million dollars investing in real estate?" She said yes. "Then just show them what you did," I replied. "Are you confident in that?" Her answer was a resounding "YES!" Once she realized she'd simply be teaching what she herself had already done, it eliminated her nervousness, made her sales much easier, and she was comfortable charging a hefty (and well deserved) fee.

3. You've Been Quoted on Your Topic in the Media

Sometimes the cart comes before the horse, and a brush with the media IS what makes you seen as an expert. A cosmetic surgeon friend of mine was recently a guest on a Los Angeles television show, and he now proudly promotes that fact in his ads, brochures, and office displays.

When I was interviewed by The Wall Street Journal on the subject of small business email marketing, you can be sure I added that to my bio as soon as I got off the phone!

4. You've Written a Book or Articles on the Subject

Nothing says "expert" like writing a book or by getting your name "out there" via articles. When you put a pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) and simply share what you know, no matter how simple the information seems to you, people instantly view you as an authority figure. All you have to do is put yourself out there.

A friend of mine recently chose a financial planner based on the fact that he was a published author. "After all, he wrote the book on it!" she said. In her eyes, that sealed the deal, and she was happy to pay more for his services without question.

5. You SAY You Are the Expert!

I dubbed myself "The Ezine Queen" several years ago, simply because it had a ring to it. I had no idea at the time how much that would help me get famous and be remembered.

Did you know that Muhammad Ali became known as "The Greatest" because Ali himself said it? Yep -- he just kept saying it, and then eventually so did the media!

So if you have a good moniker in mind, go for it.

The Bottom Line... It's up to YOU.

Remember this: Your prospects, clients, and customers will virtually always accept the positioning that YOU choose for yourself and present to others.

So, whatchya waiting for? : )

© 2005 Alexandria K. Brown

WANT TO SEE MORE ARTICLES LIKE THIS ONE?
See Alexandria's Small Business Marketing Blog.

-=-=-=-=-
WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR E-ZINE OR WEB SITE? Online entrepreneur Alexandria K. Brown, "The E-zine Queen," publishes the award-winning 'Straight Shooter Marketing' weekly ezine with 20,000+ subscribers. If you're ready to jump-start your marketing, make more money, and have more fun in your small business, get your FREE tips now at www.EzineQueen.com
-=-=-=-=-

Have a great day and the best to your online business

Oct 16, 2005

Saturday Is My Day

Welcome to Flo's Business Blog

Today I didn't post an article but I do have a quote at the end of this post...

On Saturday's it's my day of rest from work so for now on I feel I should not add to my blogs on this day. I enjoy playing with my blogs but it still turns out to be work. My day of rest should be for prayers and do fun and restful stuff out there... like bicycling or walking in the park, visiting family and so on, I will resume playing with my blogs on the next day... Sunday.

Burr... it's cold today!!! I needed to turn on and put wood in my furnace today, the wind is blowing and the trees are swaying back and forth. This morning I needed to wear light gloves to go out and feed my horse and an extra sweater under my jacket - it's not very nice at all out here!!!

I had a very nice belated Thanks Giving Day with my family yesterday. My nephew Pat is based in Barry Ontario and was not able to join he's family on Thanks Giving Day. I was driving all day to return home from my vacation that was in London and St. Catharines, Ontario. My sister decided to celebrate Thanks Giving Day again yesterday for the ones that was not able to join the family last weekend - it was really nice to see everyone and to catch up on family news.

In my family three generations served in the war...

First generation - my great great grand-father
Second generation - my grand-father, my dad and mom, plus an oncle
Third generation - my nephew Pat

My generation was missed, this week I started an album with my family that served in the war, so far I added three pictures. If your interested to view the album please go to Welcome to Flo's Personal Space to check it out. I will be adding more as I receive them from my aunts so I may share the pictures with my visitors as I find it interesting... maybe you will too.

-=-=-
Quote
-=-=-

Kindness makes a fellow feel good, whether it's being done to him or by him.

- Frank A. Clark -

Have a great day

Oct 15, 2005

Self Improvement Millionaire

Welcome to Flo's Business Blog

This morning I opened my mailbox and received a Guestmap Notification of someone has just posted a new entry in my Bravenet Guestmap. To my surprise it was a special person in my life, he's name is Drew and at this time he's in Canmore Canada working hard and he says the mountains are very nice there.

*Here's a special message to you Drew*

Hi, thanks for dropping by and taking a moment to post and pin the Guestmap (:-) YOU made my day! It's nice to know you are safe and well, I'm looking forward to hearing from you soon. Take good care out there, also I'm letting you know... I miss you a whole bunch!!!

Today you have something different because last night I was on a powerful tele-class with Russell Brunson and Gary Ambrose. I’m not sure if you were on the call, so I wanted to share with you what was discussed - it might just interest you so judge for yourself...

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First – The "self help" industry is huge. Just check out how many people were searching for this information last month alone:

Self-Help & Self-Improvement - 202,000 searches
Stop/Quit Smoking - 416,000 searches
Time Management - 60,000 searches
Motivation -150,000 searches

...and I have a list of about 30+ more of these.

2nd – To create an info product for any of these niches is VERY profitable, but usually runs from about $600 to $1,000 for each product you develop (and this isn’t counting cost of graphics and sales letters). With that said, you can usually recover your investment in under a week because the industry is so hot now.

3rd – Russell just created a site that will give you private label rights to "self-help" products that are already researched, already written and the sales letters finished for you also.

You get private label rights to two products each month for as long as you remain a member, but if you are one of the first 200 new members, then you will get 8 products this month.

So, if you’d like private label rights to 8 already developed products, then click on the link www.TheSecondTier.com... it might just be what you are looking for.

Have a great day and the best to your online business

Oct 14, 2005

Get More Website Visitors

Get More Website Visitors Without Going Broke
Welcome to Flo's Business Blog

The last two days of my vacation in St. Catharines it was raining and cold, since I arrived Monday night it was raining too with high humidity. It gets gloomy after awhile... hopefully the sun will appear tomorrow to get some warmth before winter! This week's article it's about how any business, large or small, should approach buying traffic to make sure you're building your business (and not wasting your time or money).

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Get More Website Visitors Without Going Broke
- by Jim Edwards
© Jim Edwards - All Rights reserved
TheNetReporter.com
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In the never-ending quest to make money online, every website owner wants to get traffic to their website fast.

The main problem they face: finding traffic that converts into buyers without breaking their bank.

In their haste to get the traffic they need, many website operators start throwing money at the problem buying ads and exhaust their advertising budget without any meaningful profit (unless you count the person they paid for the advertising).

The following three rules should help any business, big or small, make money with their online advertising.

** Set An Online Advertising Budget **

Most businesses, especially smaller ones with only a few people (or even one person), don't operate with an advertising budget.

The advertising money gets spent when everything else gets paid, or worse, they spend money on advertising without a plan so they're basically gambling with their money.

By setting an advertising budget, you can factor it into your overall business picture and it gives you a yardstick to measure results.

If you budget $500 a month to advertise and look for ways to spend that money wisely, then your business will grow more predictably than if you advertise sporadically and then wonder why you don't operate with a predictable income stream.


** Follow The Numbers **

Unlike offline advertising on billboards, magazines or in direct mail, you can track virtually all aspects of an online ad, including: how many people saw the ad; how many people clicked the ad; how many sales and how much revenue the ad generated.

Since you can track everything, you can test various phases of the advertising process.

Regardless of whether you operate a real estate agent website, sell an ebook, or hawk your plumbing services online, you can and should measure each phase of the advertising process.

If clicks on your ads fall below expectations, then work on your ad until it generates a healthy click-through rate turning viewers into website visitors.

If you don't convert very many of the website visitors you get into buyers, then your site needs work to do a better job of selling people.

By following the numbers, you can see where you need to focus in the online sales process.

The number one rule of online advertising: use a unique tracking link for each and every one of your ads, preferably one that tracks not only unique visitors, but also sales.

This might add an extra 5 or 10 minutes of work to placing each ad, but it will allow you to see which ads make a profit (so you can run them again) and which ads don't (so you can change or cancel them).

** Go Beyond Pay-Per-Click **

Google AdWords and Overture, the Web's top pay-per-click advertising sources, have made people lazy.

Many website owners never go beyond buying advertising from these two.

However, a whole world of advertising exists buying ads on websites targeted to specific niche audiences.

For more, check out www.adbrite.com, a leading broker of online text link and banner advertising.

--
Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and the creator of an amazing course that will teach you step-by- step and click-by-click how to finally create your own money-making mini-sites...

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"Finally! A Quick and Easy Way For YOU to Painlessly Set Up Your OWN Moneymaking 'Mini' Websites... Without Being a Computer Geek, Buying Expensive Software, or Paying Outrageous Fees To A Webmaster!" Click Here => www.MiniSiteCreator.com
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Have a great day and the best to your online success

Oct 13, 2005

3 Power Steps

3 Power Steps To Finding Elusive Joint Venture Partners
Welcome to Flo's Business Blog

Joint Venture Marketing is a HOT topic right now but first, let me give you some proof that this topic is a hot one. Do a search for "Joint Venture Marketing" in Google, I found 52,500 targeted searches! Now that's a 'demand' for JV information. Learn more about Joint Venture Partners Marketing below so you may benefit too...

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3 Power Steps To Finding Elusive Joint Venture Partners
by Dave Lovelace
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You've got your product or service on the web and it's proven to convert prospects into sales and you're ready to pack your virtual bags in search of a partner to joint venture with for an exciting and lucrative money-maker.

But there's one problem. You have absolutely no idea how to go about it.

Until now ..

I'm about to take you on a JV Safari in search of the elusive speckled-feathered Joint Venture partner.

Are you up for the challenge?

Grab your binoculars; cause this species is tricky to spot. You’ve really got to zoom in close when traveling the dusty roads of the Internet back country, but with a little practice, I’m confident you’ll develop a well-trained eye for spotting this creature with ease.

Here are 3 bushes you can search behind starting today:

1. Clickbank.com
2. Google.com
3. Alexa.com

With Clickbank, you can search for product owners whose product is related to yours. You can click over to their site from within Clickbank to review their site and product.

To start this search, look for the Marketplace link from Clickbank’s home page.

Alternately, go to Google.com and type in keywords or phrases related to your product. Investigate the first two pages of results as these will be the sites with the most traffic.

These are the sites you want to contact. First take a look at each site to make sure the product or service is a good match and compliments your product. If so, look for the site owners contact information on the page. This can usually be found at the bottom of the page or many times as a Contact link at the top or bottom of the page.

Now you’re ready for the next step. And this one’s the real kicker.

This secret method will keep you busy for hours as you collect a small goldmine of prospective JV partners no matter what niche you’re in. Here it is:

Simply take the research you’ve just compiled in the previous steps and point your compass North to Alexa.

Here's what I mean:

Start by taking one URL link that you found using the search methods above and go to Alexa.com. In the search box, enter that web address and start the Search. Alexa will then return two things. The contact information for the site owner (if available). And most importantly, Related Sites.

Related sites are links to other sites who offer related products and/or services. All of which are potential JV partners! And guess what

You can now take each of those web addresses and plug them into the Alexa search box and repeat the process. Can you see the power of this method?

Take an hour a day if you’re really "gung ho", or as little as 3 hours a week devoted to doing your research and you’ll soon come up with a large list of potential partners.

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Internet marketing expert Dave Lovelace generated a 5 figure income in 7 days using the power of Joint Ventures. Now YOU can learn the step-by-step formula that some of the most successful one-man Internet businesses have used over and over again to sell tons of products and generate huge profits fast.
Click NOW for FREE details: --> http://tinyurl.com/d8esv
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Have a great day!

Oct 12, 2005

Blogs And RSS

How Blogs And RSS Boost Your Search Engine Visibility
Welcome to Flo's Business Blog

I arrived Monday at 5:30 pm, the traffic was light on my side but going towards Toronto it was very busy. I enjoyed my eight days in London, I stayed at my daughter apartment and slept a few nights at my sister. I decided to extend my vacation an extra three days so I drove to St. Catharines where I have another sister, I stayed there and visited my nieces and nephews. It was really great to see them all... now I'm home and feel refreshed and very ready to get back to my routine.

Today's article is very interesting for you and how you can boost your Search Engine visibility and how to get indexed within hours with fresh, updated, relevant content compared to the time it takes to index your website that will take days, even weeks...

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How Blogs And RSS Boost Your Search Engine Visibility
Copyright © 2005 Priya Shah
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Marketers have found that blogs are excellent tools for communicating with their audience. Anyone who has something to sell or an idea to promote can benefit from using blogs.

Search engine marketers especially favour blogs because they have a number of features that make them the darling of search engines.

1. Fresh, Updated, Relevant Content

When you write a good blog about a theme that you’re passionate about and post to it frequently, you’re creating fresh, keyword-rich, content that search engines love.

2. Natural, One-Way Links

Search engines view links to your site as a recommendation of your site content. More links pointing to your site or blog boosts your visibility and search engine rankings.

Google gives more weight to natural, one-way incoming links, and blogs make it easy to get two types of one-way links to your site.

· Similarly Themed Blogs

A well-written, authoritative blog, with unique content, is likely to get linked to from a number of other bloggers writing on similar topics. These are natural links that are viewed highly and given more weight by search engines like Google.

· RSS Feed Syndication

Blogs and the RSS feeds built into them, help you build valuable, one-way links to your site by syndicating your content online.

3. Get Indexed Within Hours

When you post to a blog it “pings” a number of services that list blogs. This notifies the service that your blog has been updated.

Search engines like Google give more weight to blogs that are updated regularly. It is possible to get your pages indexed in Google and other search engines within hours of writing your first blog post.

Compared to the time it takes to index a website (days, even weeks), you can see why blogs are better search engine optimisation tools than static websites.

Indirect SEO Benefits of Blogs

Besides the SEO benefits, a well-written, authoritative blog can also create publicity and branding for you, which promotes even more people to read and link to your blog.

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Priya Shah is a partner in the search engine optimization firm, SEO & More www.seoandmore.com. Request the detailed version of this whitepaper Boost Your Search Engine Visibility With Blogs And RSS here. www.seoandmore.com/blogs-rss
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The best to your online success

Oct 9, 2005

Eliminate Time Wasting Tasks

Free Software Quickly Eliminates Time Wasting Tasks
Welcome to Flo's Business Blog

Hi... Friday, I arrived in St. Catharines, Ontario. I had a great ride until Hamilton, it was just pouring and it poured all the way to my destination until next morning. I'm really enjoying this time off and I feel very refreshed - I'm ready to go home tomorrow!!! At 10:00 am I'll be leaving for a 7 1/2 hours drive, so that I may arrive before dark... I don't enjoy night driving because there is to many animals crossing the road during the day as I enjoy looking at the scenery along the way.

Do you spend a lot of time on email or other typing activities? Would you like to cut down the time you spend on email by 90% or more? In this article -- Jim reveals a cool FREE program that he started using that will absolutely change the way you type... especially if you type slowly or make mistakes. Why? Because it virtually eliminates time wasted typing the same text over and over... Jim LOVES this software! This article is especially valuable right now since I'll bet you really want to save time! And please, if it's a fit for your list -- *send it out* or post it to your website!

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Free Software Quickly Eliminates Time Wasting Tasks
- by Jim Edwards(c) Jim Edwards -
All Rights reserved TheNetReporter.com
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Ever find yourself typing the same things over and over on your computer? Maybe you type the same blocks of text into your email messages thirty times a day. Or maybe you find it hard to remember a long website address and never seem to get all the characters correct when you type it into your web browser's address bar.

Not too long ago, I came to the startling realization thatI spent over 45 minutes every single day just on completing repetitive email tasks. Bottom line: that amounts to over 273 hours a year doing the same things over and over again - talk about a waste of time!

Much to my delight, I recently discovered a free software program anyone can use that instantly gave me back almost all of that wasted time! With email, I found myself answering the same questions repeatedly. I spent way too much time retyping or hunting down the answer so I could copy and paste it into my reply.

On the surface, a task that takes only 30 seconds to complete might not seem like a time waster, but if you perform that task 100 times throughout the day you will chew up almost an hour on repetitive activity.

What if you could reduce that time by 90% or more? What if you could claim that time back and use it for other, more important things?

Well now you can, because a free software program called "ShortKeys" helps you reclaim the time you waste on most repetitive typing tasks. Log on to www.shortkeys.com/lite.htm and download the free version of the program, which offers all the features most of us will ever likely need or use.

"ShortKeys" is a macro utility, which means it performs repetitive tasks for you. In this case, it allows you to set up replacement text or paragraphs for any given number of keystroke combinations you can define. For example, I set mine up so whenever I type #7 faq into an email message, the program automatically inserts six paragraphs with the most frequently asked questions I get from people surfing my www.7dayebook.com site.

The program quietly monitors your typing activity and, anytime you type in a pre-defined keystroke combination, the program will automatically insert the replacement text. You can use the program with email, word processing, web browser, and even with your web page editor.

You simply choose a word and associate it with the replacement text. ShortKeys will then insert virtually anything you could type, including: simple sentences; extremely long web addresses; single paragraphs; even several paragraphs with up to 3,000 characters of text(and that's a lot of text!). Not only do you save time by not manually typing in the sentences or paragraphs, but you will greatly reduce the inevitable errors and typo's all of us make.

I don't normally get this excited about a free piece of software, but if you ever find yourself typing the same text over and over, get a copy of this program and start using it!

--
Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and the co-author of an amazing new ebook that will teach you how to use free articles to quickly drive thousands of targeted visitors to your website or affiliate links...

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Need MORE TRAFFIC to your website or affiliate links? "Turn Words Into Traffic" reveals the secrets for driving Thousands of NEW visitors to your website or affiliate links... without spending a dime on advertising!
Click Here> Turn Words Into Traffic
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The best to your online business

Oct 2, 2005

About Website Links

Welcome to Flo's Business Blog

I'm in London Ontario which is 7 1/2 hours from where I live, I decided to go for a vacation at my daugther's for one week so far I'm enjoying myself very much... it's great to be spending time with her! I arrived three days ago and didn't have access to a computer until today so I'm taking a moment to let my blogger friends and visitors what I've been doing.

On Thursday I'll be going to St Catherines Ontario which is 2 hours from London to visit my sister... she has a computer so I'll post an article. It's really good to get away and do something different, at times when the work is from home the hours are longer and the breaks are not often enough. I will returning home on next Tuesday or Wednesday then I'll post a different article daily for those that are interested.

Today article is about linking and what impact is has with Search Engine Ranking, this article will give you some answers from experts...

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About Website Links
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Links to your Website have a big impact on your Search Engine Ranking for a number of reasons. But there’s a lot of misinformation about links and just how useful they are, here's answers from experts for some answers.

Successful Search Engine Optimization experts say:
"The anchor text and the PageRank of the page would be the most important factors... all links help -- whether they’re from sites with a low Page Rank or not.

"The thing about using inbound links to determine what a site’s about is that it's very scalable and it works very well. As soon as you start to base a page’s relevance on the number of times a keyword appears, people are going to fill their text content with keywords. Using link popularity as a basis of relevance, a site can be heavily optimized without the text becoming keyword-filled gibberish," they say.

Links are a major part of Search Engine Optimization. As the experts says, they are probably the best way that search engines can gauge the quality of a site.

Most experts agree that a link from a site with a high Page Rank (PR) is more valuable (in terms of increasing your won sites Page Rank) than a link from a site with a low PR.

3 ways to get links from high PR sites:

Hope for them.
Ask for them.
Buy them.

www.linkadage.com, www.linkauctions.com and www.buyselllinks.com are just 3 link selling sites.

Have a great day and the best to your online success