Secure Business Ideas

2012-01-30T00:23:00.000-08:00

Understanding The Business of Marketing Business Ideas

Just like your offline personality, your online persona now forms a significant part of your professional identity. Understanding how those personas align, diverge, and complement one another is crucial to ensure your professional effectiveness, on- and offline.

According to a study by the Boston Consulting Group in a study supported by web giant Google, it is assumed that in four years 3bn people will be using the internet, or nearly 50% of the world's population. Right now, every year about 200 million people are going online for the very first time

Before we can maximise our online footprint, let us try to understand the business of marketing in a basic offline setting:A Professor at one of the Business school was explaining marketing concepts to the Students:

1 Direct Marketing: You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and say: "I am very rich. Marry me!"

2 Advertising: You're at a party with a bunch of friends and see a gorgeous girl. One of your friends goes up to her and pointing at you says: "He's very rich. Marry him."

3 Telemarketing: You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and get her telephone number. The next day, you call and say: "Hi, I'm very rich. Marry me."

4 Public Relations: You're at a party and see gorgeous girl. You get up and straighten your tie, you walk up to her and pour her a drink, you open the door (of the car) for her, pick up her bag after she drops it, offer her ride and then say: "By the way, I'm rich. Will you marry me?"

5 Brand Recognition: You're at a party and see gorgeous girl. She walks up to you and says: "You are very rich! Can you marry! Me?"

6 Customer Feedback: You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and say: "I am very rich. Marry me!" She gives you a nice hard slap on your face.

7 Demand and Suuply: You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and say: "I am very rich. Marry me!" And she introduces you to her husband.

8 Competition: You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and before you say anything, another person comes and tells her: "I'm rich. Will you marry me?" and she goes with him

9 Market Restriction: You see a gorgeous girl at a party. You go up to her and before you say: "I'm rich, Marry me!" Your wife arrives.

I hope you will agree that the professors explainations are accurate and non complicated.

Your offline personality as well as your activities on twitter, linkdn and facebook will go a long way in deciding if you will succeed at the next project

2012-01-18T00:46:00.000-08:00

Healthy Man, Healthy Business Business Ideas

wellcome to 2012, most people in the new year make healthy resolutions. Here are a few tips that can help.

Dream Big, Give Big, Pray Big.................For Faith is superior to Fear and Love is superior to All .......Emmanuel Sodipo

There is strong evidence that certain fruits and vegetables rich in plant-based nutrients can both prevent cancers from starting and halt their growth.

Blueberries- Brazilian acai berries, raspberries and cranberries come from phytochemicals that protect against numerous types of cancer. In studies particularly important to women, cranberries have recently been discovered to be an important weapon in the fight against deadly ovarian cancer.

Green tea- have been known for some time to prevent and reduce recurrence of breast and other cancers. With just two cups a day a chemical known as EGCG inhibits breast tumor growth.

Garlic- The strongest evidence so far has focused on digestive cancers, but garlic appears to protect against all types of cancer, including breast and prostate. The more raw and cooked garlic a person consumed, the lower his risk of stomach and colorectal cancer; one study found that middle-aged women who regularly consumed garlic had a 50 percent lower risk of developing colon cancer. Two active ingredients in garlic, allicin and allyl sulfur, prevent and fight cancer in both animals and humans. Add crushed, fresh garlic to your meals whenever possible; some experts also recommend waiting 15 minutes between peeling and chopping the garlic to get the full effects of the active compounds. A diet high in garlic,onions and leeks shows a direct relationship between high consumption of "allium" vegetables that reduces the risk of many common cancers

Broccoli- Consuming broccoli four times a week prevents the growth of prostate cancer. Other studies have shown anti-cancer benefits from eating cabbage, brussels sprouts, and other cruciferous vegetables.

Tomatoes- lowered the risk of many different cancers, particularly prostate, breast, lung and colon cancer. The good news is that cooking tomatoes seems to enhance the effects of lycopene, qualifying tomato-based spaghetti sauce as a nutritional powerhouse.

Red wine- centers on an antioxidant called resveratrol that's present in grapes and grape juice, but is most concentrated in red wine. Cancer Prevention Research demonstrated that resveratrol suppresses the abnormal cell growth that leads to most types of breast cancer. Breast cancer is fueled by estrogen, and resveratrol acts to block the action of the estrogen, preventing it from feeding tumor growth. 87 percent reduction in the risk of developing prostate tumors of the most dangerous kind.

Recommended solution? One glass of red wine a day,

Soy- the active ingredient genistein, which is a phytoestrogen that protects against hormone-dependent cancers. It's also a powerful inhibitor of several proteins that are implicated in the uncontrolled growth of cancer cells. To get the anti-cancer benefits of soy, you need to consume about 50 grams per day of the whole food, such as raw fresh soybeans, known as edamame, dry roasted soybeans, or tofu.

Turmeric- spice best known for its role in Indian curries and other Asian dishes, fights cancer because of an active ingredient, curcumin, that's a powerful antioxidant. Researchers concluded that curcumin demonstrated anti-cancer effects at virtually all stages of tumor development. The great news about turmeric is how easy it is to work into the diet, because you don't need very much. Add a teaspoon of the spice to soups, salad dressings, meat and pasta dishes and you'll reap the preventative effects.

Watercress- consuming watercress everyday can prevent the DNA damage that leads to cancer. Research found that antioxidants in the nutrient-rich greens prevented free radicals from damaging healthy cells. Spinach, which we're all more familiar with, is also a cancer-fighter; research conducted showed spinach to protect against bladder cancer. The chemical that gives spinach its dark green color, chlorophyllin, proved to reduce the risk of liver cancer

None of this is to say that an anti-cancer diet or nutritional supplements should be used in place of doctor-recommended treatments such as chemotherapy and radiation.

A great resource for those interested in learning more about making dietary changes to prevent cancer or cancer recurrence is a new book, AntiCancer: A New Way of Life by David Servan-Schreiber, an MD, PhD, and professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine.

What is good for the body is good for the brain is good for the business; To a healthy business in 2012.

2011-12-22T03:12:00.000-08:00

Season Greetings Business Ideas

Seasons Compliment; may all your ideas lead you to a perfect relationship for Business Succcess in 2012:

Richard Branson is the founder of Virgin Group and Companies, such as Virgin Atlantic, Virgin America, Virgin Mobile and Virgin Active.

He plans to personally respond to questions from business owners through The New York Times Affiliates.

Please send your questions to Richard.Branson@nytimes.com

Include your name, country, e-mail address and the name of the site where you got this info.

Please enter your name and email on the right column titled "BrainStorm" so that we can follow up.

Have a great season and a Profitable 2012

See you at the Top

Business Ideas for 2012

2011-11-27T07:20:00.000-08:00

Be a Creative Producer Business Ideas

There is talk of a double dip recession, based on the fact that the world economies are taking too long to recover from the last economic downturn.

Goldman Sachs in 2001 predicted that Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRICs) would dominate global economic markets. At that time it seemed like a fairytale, but in 2010 China surpassed Japan as the second largest economy, while in 2011 Brazil surpassed UK as the sixth largest economy in the world.

China by market capitalization is home to the three largest banks in the world and also home to the worlds biggest reserve of Rare Earth.

India is closing in on Germany as the fourth biggest economy, while Russia with big oil reserves and high human capacity will only need a little fiscal adjustment to also close up the gap.

Why are these BRICS and very few western companies achieving such incredible momentum?

What can we learn ?

How can we apply these lessons to our personal economies?

We know that Google was started by two guys at Stanford hostel. We know that Bill Gates dropped out of Harvard and sold DOS without even owning it. We also know that Steve Jobs started Apple while understudying his mentor.

Apple, as you know, makes its own mobile device hardware as well as software. As a result Microsoft is now talking with Nokia about Windows smartphones. So it only makes sense that Google is seeking similarly tight integration between its mobile hardware Motorola.

One common theme with momentum is the creative production for world market

There are very few places where you can practice both skills

Zazzle allows you to be creative and productive at the same time

Zazzle also allows you to design your own products online and to sell those products directly through zazzle, ebay or amazon as well as having your affiliates promote them.

Sounds great, zazzle is currently the best place to design products online and have them dropshipped direct to your buyers.

This is the best season to launch your creative production

Online holiday shopping reached record levels in 2010. And e-commerce spending is already up this year. All signs point to consumers spending even more online this holiday season

Best wishes, lets us know how much momentum you are gaining

2011-10-31T00:22:00.000-07:00

Innovators Business Ideas

Apple had 90 days working capital on hand when Steve Jobs took over — in other words, Apple was only three months away from bankruptcy

Steven Paul "Steve" Jobs (February 24, 1955 – October 5, 2011) was an American entrepreneur and inventor. He was co-founder, chairman, and former chief executive officer of Apple Inc. Jobs also previously served as chief executive of Pixar Animation Studios; he became a member of the board of directors of The Walt Disney Company in 2006, following the acquisition of Pixar by Disney. He was credited in Toy Story (1995) as an executive producer.

When describing his period of exile from Apple — when John Sculley took over — Steve Jobs described one fundamental root cause of Apple's problems. That was to let profitability outweigh passion: "My passion has been to build an enduring company where people were motivated to make great products. The products, not the profits, were the motivation.

Sculley flipped these priorities to where the goal was to make money. It's a subtle difference, but it ends up meaning everything."

There were thousands of layoffs. Scores of products were terminated. He knew the company had to make money to survive, but he transitioned the focus of Apple away from profits.

Adopted as a baby, Jobs recalled as a child once confronting his parents in tears about why his real parents had rejected him. His parents sat him down and said, "No, you don't understand. We specifically picked you out."

Profit was viewed as necessary, but not sufficient, to justify everything Apple did. That attitude resulted in a company that looks entirely different to almost any other modern Fortune 500 company. It's almost the opposite of what is taught in business school. Apple is just the opposite: It thinks of great products, then sells them. Prototypes and demos always come before spreadsheets."

While growing up Steve Jobs will go unbath for several days his managers at Atari made him work the night shift because his co-workers complained about his body odor, and he drove a Mercedes with no license plate because he didn't want people tracking him.

Everything — the business, the people — are subservient to the mission: building great products. And rather than listening to, or asking their customers what they wanted; Apple would solve problems customers didn't know they had with products they didn't even realize they wanted. They can do it because Apple hasn't optimized its organization to maximize profit. Instead, it has made the creation of value for customers its priority.

A driven eccentric and sometimes cruel man who grew more reflective and fatalistic in his later years.

A Professor at Harvard Christensen's predictions on Apple: "There's just something different about those guys. They're freaks."

Jobs was profoundly influenced by the Innovator's Dilemma — took Apple from bankruptcy three months away, to one of the most valuable and influential companies in the world.

Steve Jobs was intially a Buddhist and he began to have Faith after developing Cancer

2011-09-30T06:48:00.000-07:00

Profit From Public Domain Business Ideas

Typically 'public domain' describes literary, musical, artistic and other creative works that are no longer protected by copyright, alongside others that never were subject to copyright. As such those items can be picked up and turned into valuable commercial products such as books, films, postcards, prints, calendars, and countless other high profit products.

The fact is there are many millions of articles in the public domain, covering a massive range of topics. In fact, especially in the United States, there are articles printed as recently as the 1970's packed with valuable up-to-date information and no longer subject to copyright

2011-08-23T00:22:00.000-07:00

The Land of the Free Business Ideas

I came accross this peace by Erin Burt of Kiplinger and I thought I should share:

Free Hobbies
Want to learn something new in your spare time? Many local retailers offer free workshops. For instance, you can improve your culinary skills at Williams-Sonoma's free technique classes. At REI, take advantage of free clinics on bike maintenance, backpacking, camp cooking and more (offerings vary by location). Lululemon Athletica stores host free yoga sessions. Apple, Home Depot, Lowe's and Michaels stores offer free classes for adults and kids.

Check your local library, too. We've seen free hands-on workshops for computers, chess, knitting and more. You can learn a new language at FSI-language-courses.org, learn to draw at Drawspace.com, or improve your golf game at Golf.com, just to name a few resources.

Free Food
Your favorite snack shop or fast food restaurant may have an annual freebie day. Mark your calendar for free IHOP pancakes and Rita's Italian ice in March; free Ben & Jerry's ice cream, Pretzelmaker pretzels, Cinnabon treats and Starbucks coffee in April; free Haagen-Dazs ice cream in May; a free Krispy Kreme doughnut and TCBY frozen yogurt in June; and a free Chick-Fil-A meal in July -- to name a few.

You can also sign up to score free food on your birthday from Famous Dave's BBQ, Cold Stone Creamery, Denny's and other eateries. Search the Web for "birthday freebies," or call your local restaurants to ask whether they offer such a deal.

Free Investing Apps
Stay up-to-date on the financial markets with free apps on your iPhone, Blackberry or Android.

Some of our favorites: Bloomberg for up-to-the-minute stock quotes and breaking news, Morningstar for mutual fund research at your fingertips, and Yahoo Finance for the latest financial headlines, stock news and videos.

Free E-Books
If you own a Kindle, iPad or other electronic reader, you can populate your e-library without breaking the bank. E-books commonly sell for $9.99 -- less than hardcovers but about as much as paperbacks. But at Gutenberg.org or the University of Pennsylvania's online books page, you won't pay a cent to legally download thousands of books whose copyrights have expired, including War and Peace, Moby Dick and Little Women.

You can also search for free e-books at Amazon.com, Barnesandnoble.com, iTunes.com and Kobo.com. Or check your public library, where you can get newer titles for free too.

Free Shipping
If you love to shop online but hate to pay for shipping, go to FreeShipping.org. The site can direct you to retailers -- such as BlueNile.com, Linens 'n Things, LLBean.com and Zappos.com -- who still offer free shipping on every order, big or small. The site also gives you coupon codes to snag free shipping at other retailers.

Also, many retailers' sites offer free shipping if you'll pick up your order at a local store, such as AceHardware.com, BestBuy.com, Payless.com, REI.com and Walmart.com.

Free Diet & Fitness Help
Need help sticking to a diet and exercise plan? At Fatsecret.com, MyFitnessPal.com and SparkPeople.com, you can craft meal plans and count calories, put together a fitness plan and track your progress, and get support and advice from other users.

Some employers offer free diet and fitness help to their employees. After all, it's in their best interest that you stay healthy and show up for work. These programs may include free gym access, weight-loss support groups and smoking cessation programs. Some will even pay you for your progress. Ask if your workplace has a wellness plan in place.

Free Kids' Meals
How much do you hate buying a $12 entrée for a picky 6-year-old? If the answer is "a lot," visit KidsMealDeals.com. The site points you to restaurants in your area where kids eat free (usually at certain times or on certain days). It includes independent eateries as well as national chains.

Also, call your local eateries and ask if they offer kids' deals. Some do but they don't advertise them, so it's worth asking.

Free Outings
You can entertain friends, family or even a date for free -- without looking cheap. Many top-notch museums, galleries and zoos offer free admission year-round, including the Smithsonian museums in Washington, D.C., the Getty Center in Los Angeles, and Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo. Others, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York, let you in for free on certain days of the week or month. And many college campuses host free concerts and student art exhibits.

Every October, select theaters nationwide give free performances. Go to FreeNightofTheater.net to learn more. And public parks, beaches and forests are ideal settings for walking, biking, hiking, sledding, wildlife-watching, picnicking, kite flying, stargazing ... the sky's the limit.

Free Books, Music, Movies & More
No list of freebies would be complete without our perennial favorite: your public library. Most offer books, magazines, audiobooks, e-books, video games, CDs and DVDs for free (as long as you return them on time, of course).

Your library may also host free activities, such as book clubs, lectures, film screenings, children's story hours and craft activities.

Free Tax Help
Understanding the U.S. tax code can be, well, taxing. But Kiplinger.com is here to help. During tax season, we publish a tip a day to make sure you get every dime you're due. Also check out the discussion board at HRBlock.com, which is monitored by tax professionals during tax season.

The IRS wants to help, too. (Yes, you read that correctly.) Call 1-800-829-1040 to get answers from the people who enforce the rules. You may also qualify for free face-to-face help from a tax pro volunteer. See the IRS's list of free tax return preparation resources for details

Enjoy the Savings

2011-07-21T23:10:00.000-07:00

The Business of an Entreprenuer Business Ideas

An entrepreneur is willing to accept the risk of starting and managing the type of business that lets them do the kind of work they want to do, and offers them a balanced lifestyle.

That is a good way of describing what we are all doing or at least aiming to do? Just consider the following common themes that unite the various money-making opportunities we can follow:

* Low entry barrier - Thanks to the likes of eBay and Amazon, international trade is no longer just for those with warehouses. With the explosion of e-readers like the Ipad it means anyone can now self-publish to a global audience.

* Controlled risk: - As the upfront investment is low (or sometimes zero) the actual financial risk involved is minimal.

* Home-based - You do not need an office building and the inherent travel cost. With a laptop, an Internet access you can run a global enterprise from home.

* Low start up & running costs - The investment required to start and run your enterprise is low or even zero, and once successful the business can be self-financing.

* Fun & personally fulfilling - It is not only possible to use your interests and hobbies as part of your business; it should be at the very core of your decision.

* Flexi-time -Due to the leveraged nature of many of the strategies, it's possible to greatly magnify the potential gains compared to the time and effort invested.

* Unlimited upside - Your earning potential is unlimited.

Excerpt "What Really Makes Money"

2011-06-28T05:32:00.000-07:00

Securing the Digital Universe Business Ideas

Approximately 75% of the digital Universe is a copy, only 25% is unique, while enterprise account for 20% of the data generated they are liable for 80% of the data created and by 2020 more of this data will live or pass through the cloud.

In terms of sheer volume of data to be protected from 2009 to 2020 the amount of data in the Digital Universe is expected to grow by a factor of 44times to 35 trillion gigabytes. Although identity, financial account and credit card data are the most sought after even surpassing illicit drugs as organized crime most desirable commodity.

The compromise of system data i.e configurations, settings and log files can be the gateway for access to this data and needs continuous monitoring and protection.

2011-05-27T06:43:00.000-07:00

Privacy Versus Secrecy Busines Ideas

To the older generation privacy is about secrecy and once something is no longer secret it is no longer private.

To the younger generation privacy is about control, a lot of data is shared with government agencies, employers and social media, but when you can control the flow of your data and who is granted access then it is considered private

Join the debate, what is your take on this?

2011-04-29T08:19:00.000-07:00

The Team Business Ideas

My strong guess is that if you and I were to sit down and analyze your business right now... The odds are incredibly high that YOU are doing all the work to grow your business. And that's where the overwhelm, overwork, and frustration comes from. After all, growing a business takes a lot of work.

But, if you, and you alone, are doing all the work to grow your business, it means that your business is designed wrong. Because while it's true that growing a business takes a lot of hard work - it doesn't mean that YOU have to be the one doing all the hard work.

Now before you tell me you can't afford employees... Or that the ones you have are unwilling to do the hard work necessary... Let me stop you.

What I am talking about is much bigger and exponentially more powerful than simply hiring more help.

What I am talking about is growing your business in an entirely different manner.

What I am talking about is designing your business so you satisfy, better than your competitors, the essential needs, unconscious expectations, and perceived preferences of everyone your business interacts with.

That includes employees, outsourcers, affiliates, joint-venture partners, prospects, customers, suppliers, and anyone and everyone else your business relies on.

In other words, you build a business that every member of your team understand the business culture and knows how the business makes money .

The mistake most entrepreneurs make is they neglect everyone other than themselves. They design or default into a business where they are the only ones who truly benefit from it. And if that's the case, it shouldn't come as any big surprise that they're the ones who are going to have to do all the work to grow it.

What's worse? If you do all the work to grow your business, you end up with a job that owns YOU instead of a business that you own.

Thanks to Strategic Profits

2011-03-18T05:49:00.000-07:00

Global Water Crisis

Over 1.1 billion people lack access to clean water and 2.5 billion lack access to clean sanitation. Potters for Peace will help reach the bottom of the pyramid in these communities; access clean water, improve hygiene, educate and financially empower.

Water.org wants to access 100million people in 5 years, with your help they can

Please watch the video on the link below and see our idea and solution to help solve this global water crisis....

See Here

If you like the idea, please vote in favour

2011-02-07T05:14:00.000-08:00

The Market Place Business Ideas

If you have ever traded online, you have probably used ebay as a platform for your trades.

I suggest you consider these alternative platforms that could be cheaper than ebay depending on your trades:

cqout.com - works similar to ebay but simpler and a lot cheaper

folksy.com - if you are into crafting and unique gifts

tinypayme.com - great platform if you want to sell through your twitter, facebook, blog.

No account needed, listing is free, just take a picture, write a description and give a price and you in business all under 5 minutes.

preloved.com - more like a second hand shop with both free and paid membership, free to sell.

Amazon is another great site to sell and good alternative to ebay................

Have a profitable trade and enjoy the new experience

2011-01-28T03:10:00.000-08:00

Brand Effect Business Ideas

What image does your brand conveyed about its users.

For example:

Marlboro cigarettes convey customers as rugged and manly...
Mercedes conveys that customers have arrived financially and can afford the finer things in life...
The Wall Street Journal conveys readers as educated, center-right, and upwardly mobile...

Branding is an old concept, but still relevant in today's market if it is consistent over time

Most people are no longer sure about their goals and purpose and the meaning of their lives. Nowadays, the average person changes careers a minimum of five times and changes social relationships, homes, and social roles even more often. Which means most people are struggling to find meaningful ways to live.

A consistent brand can be a source of hope and a great marketing tool.

2010-12-22T06:14:00.000-08:00

Online Marketing and Free Software Business Ideas

Seasons Compliments..............

Here is a perfect example of good Internet Marketing; please let me know if you are willing to take advantage of this:

Dear emmanuel sodipo,

My name is Isabella White. I am a public relations manager in
Digeus, Inc.We would like to giveaway 10 licenses of Free
Windows 7 Registry Tune Up Suite Program among you and your readers
in exchange for the review of Free Windows 7 Registry Tune Up
Suite Program.

The review may be written in any language you want, on any
blog/forum and have minimum 100 words. You may organize a
contest among your readers or just post this information on your
blog, it is up to you. Your readers shouldn’t contact me directly
with their reviews as you may send me a list of their names
and links to their reviews and then I will issue you licenses.
The license of the Free Windows 7 Registry Tune Up Suite Program
to be issued has no limitations and expiration date. It is equal
to the license as if you bought the product.

Here is brief information about Free Windows 7 Registry Tune Up
Suite Program:

Free Windows 7 Registry Tune Up Suite Program offers easy-to-use
optimization tools to speed up and improve the stability of your
Windows 7, Windows Vista,or Windows XP PC. Regardless of your level
of expertise, Free Windows 7 Registry Tune Up Suite Program safely
cleans, repairs, and optimizes the registry and automatically backs
up changes for future recovery. Now includes essential tools to fix
Windows security loopholes. Permanently erase your Internet activity,
personal files, and free space to keep your information away from
prying eyes.

Download and install Free Windows 7 Registry Tune Up Suite Program:
http://digeus.com/downloads/regcleaner/files/5/regcleaner_5_5.exe

Merry Xmas and enjoy the holiday

2010-12-06T05:25:00.000-08:00

Why Joint Ventures Business Ideas

A joint venture is a business relationship
- hopefully, a mutually advantageous one
- between two (or more) parties.

It is not a merger, a general partnership, or an ongoing business agreement.
It's not you buying someone else's company or them buying yours. It's not an equity sharing or equity position in anybody's company. It's not a private placement.

It is a single-purpose, shared business activity that can create massive profits...

Without a lot of expenditure on your part...
Without a lot of tooling up in terms of equipment, staff, or facilities...
Without taking all the risk/work on your own shoulders...

Simply put, joint ventures are:- The fastest way to make a fortune.
- The easiest way to make a fortune.
- The safest low-risk way to make a fortune.
- The best way to create/leverage business relationships that make you a fortune.

By its very nature, short-term. You can try one out for a trial period of a few weeks or months. A new joint venture can then be refined from this initial effort. Any arrangement you make with your JV partner proceeds only if it works to the advantage of both parties. If it doesn't, you terminate the relationship.

Most Internet marketers function through joint ventures. However, not all of them are as profitable as originally hoped. This is often because sufficient due diligence had not been done by the prospective JV partners, and the "match" was not - to use an old adage - made in heaven.

Even when the partnership has merit, failure often stems from inefficient, ineffective communication between the parties. To be truly successful, any joint venture you take on should be carefully thought out, and the parameters should be spelled out in a signed contract. The plan of action needs to be monitored, as does the income generated.

You usually find suitable JV partners by establishing rapport with other businesspeople you come across while conducting your own business - even those in different industries. At some point, an opportunity arises to combine forces.

Keep in mind that workable deals take time to mature and finalize. So, to give yourself the best chance of arriving at a truly rewarding alliance, it's a good idea to enter into more than one joint venture with more than one partner.

Keep in mind, too, that most joint ventures are unique, and the best ones will be the result of applying your own imagination and creativity to form the best win/win situation for you and your partner.

The success of your joint ventures will be limited by only two things: your own creativity and your own sense of what's possible. Make sure your joint ventures are profitable for all involved, meet legal guidelines, and operate in an ethical manner - and the sky is the limit!

Extract From Rich-- Strategic Profit

2010-11-05T06:28:00.000-07:00

Bribery in a Security Perspective Business

The Bribery Act 2010 comes into force in April 2011 in Uk, and it is important we are all well-informed about it. The Act creates offences of individuals or commercial organisations giving or receiving a bribe. If a commercial organisation has committed an offence, any senior officers who have consented or connived are also liable. The Act creates a new, separate offence of bribing a foreign official. It also creates an offence of failing to prevent bribery.
The offence of bribery can be committed by anyone associated with the company -- this will capture employees, subsidiaries, agents, joint venture partners and anyone who provides a service for the organisation. The bribery can take place anywhere in the world and the Act specifically makes no allowance for local custom or practice in foreign jurisdictions. It is a strict liability offence and a statutory defence is only available if the organisation can show it had "adequate procedures" in place to prevent Bribery.

It would be an interesting terrain to observe

2010-09-24T01:04:00.000-07:00

Technological Trend Business Ideas

The trend here is for new technologies to be made available for
the consumer market before they are available to the business market.

Businesses are under pressure to use these new technologies. Younger
employees simply are not satisfied with using outdated technology.
They're either going to figure out ways around the corporate security
rules, or change jobs to a trendy company.

With cloud computing a lot more employee computing devices are nothing
more than dumb terminals with a browser interface; When corporate e-mail
is all webmail, corporate documents are all on GoogleDocs, and when all the
specialized applications have a web interface, it's easier to allow employees
to use any up-to-date browser

Senior management may also pressure security out of the way, they may
want to get to the company's databases from their brand new iPad.

With these pressure from employees and senior management, it is going to be
harder and harder to say no.

2010-08-26T09:32:00.001-07:00

Social Media Security HomeBusiness

There are diffrent ways to look at user data:

Some of it you give to the social networking site in confidence,
expecting the site to safeguard the data.
Some of it you publish openly and others use it to search for you. 
some of it you share only within a circle of other users.

At the back end, social networking sites can monetize all of the data:
generally by selling targeted advertising. Users often do not mind if
a site uses its data to target advertisements, but users are
less appreciative when it sells that data to third parties.

Different social networking sites give users different rights for each
data type:
Some are always private,
some are always public.
Some can be edited or deleted 
Some can be viewed and some cannot.

It is fundamental that users should have different rights with respect to
each data type. Users should be allowed to export, change, and delete disclosed data.

2010-07-29T00:30:00.000-07:00

Developing the Business Model HomeBusiness

2010-06-28T04:02:00.000-07:00

Ebook Versus Published Books HomeBusiness

Sony claims eBOOKS is set to overtake paper BOOKS in 5years.

What does this mean to your business?

Within five years there will be more digital content sold than physical content, the initial prediction was for ten years, but as Sony is experiencing the same patterns in the digitization of music and photography this will be repeated in the book
market within the next 5 years.

eBOOK reader sales soar
Global ebook reader shipments totaled 1.43 million units in the first quarter of 2010.
Global ebook reader shipments from manufacturers to vendors in April-May 2010 reached
740,000 units, with Barnes & Noble's nook accounting for 37% and Amazon's Kindle
trailing at 16%.

You can view more statistics at

http://www.digitimes/.

2010-05-14T08:23:00.000-07:00

Keeping International Business Simple Business Ideas

The Internet has exponentially increased the ease of working with international customers and suppliers. The Internet Technology eliminates a lot of boundaries and makes it convenient to conduct business globally.

Doing business overseas.

1.Start simple. Start with Anglo-Phone countries with a legitimate banking system and established regulations.

2.Communication. Ongoing Communication maintains Trust and understanding with your partners which is crucial in International Trade.

3.Unique Product. Offer Uniqueness otherewise someone in a different country will undercut you on price.

4.Get Help. Get professional advise, it does not have to be expensive, there are lots of free resources provided by the government on brokers and freight forwarders.

5.Exercise Caution: There are plenty of fraudsters ready to prey on the Ill-Informed Entreprenuer. Remember; there is no Free lunch.

Enjoy the Business and Have Fun

2010-04-22T03:06:00.000-07:00

Getting Buyers to keep your Goods HomeBusiness

How do you get happy customers and how do you get them to become regular satisfied buyers?

-You could try offering bonus gifts and product updates that extend beyond the refund date for your product, this will make people less likely to return goods.

- Offer genuine value for money, include free gifts, unadvertised bonus, add a friendly letter to outgoing packages, and you will also find most people reluctant to request a refund without good reason.

- Sell less expensive goods to generate first time buyers, for example; ebooks or accessories such as guitar strings and wool, and then offer more expensive products, (guitars and knitting machines!), as back end products

- Ask buyers for feedbacks, this will help you spot regular complaints for possible inferior products and allows you to make improvements or drop products with high refund rates.

2010-03-22T04:35:00.000-07:00

Managing Crises HomeBusiness

Triumph and Crises are cyclical, our success in business and personal lives depends on how effectively we manage all seasons:

There is always a solution to a problem
Crises need to be looked at as opportunities
Crises should galvanise you to action and stimulate your creative thinking
The solution to a problem is often an improvement on the situation that existed before the problem
Crises help you break uncreative habits
Giving up is the only guaranteed method of losing
Solutions to problems will often come from the most unexpected sources
In problem situations, keep your eyes and mind wide open and expand the membership of your team
It is not over until it is over - and even then it is not over

Extrcts from Mind Maps by Tony Buzan

2010-02-28T16:25:00.000-08:00

UPDATE HomeBusiness

2010-01-19T06:21:00.000-08:00

A Productive Season Business Ideas

People hardly earn above their personal development, here are a few things that can make this a productive season:

Poverty is not a lack of material things. It is the lack of dreams.

Honor your loved ones by living a life they can be proud of.

To love and to be loved is the greatest of human connections.

Common human experiences such as marriage, children and friendship, shape peoples lives. Enjoy more of life experiences.

Invest regularly in your professional, personal and spiritual growth.

Plant the seeds today and harvest in the fruits tomorrow.

Your time might be the only thread of hope for a friend.

Let the people you care about know you care.

Do not let fear of failure cripple your determination to succesd .

Opportunities are cyclical, when you get a second chance embrace her with all your might.

Learn to commit 100% to everything you do.

People do not succeed because they have talents or knowledge, they succeed because of how they use those skills.

Have a great season

2009-12-21T05:58:00.000-08:00

Choosing a Mentor HomeBusiness

Selecting a mentor should be taken seriously, it is not just a matter of finding someone you like. Choose mentors that have genuine history of success.

There are several people who look only at superficially successful people as role models for their own goals, do not make such mistake.
For instance there is a good chance that some of the companies cited as models of efficiency in the top selling business books and magazines will be out of business in the next five years.
There is a need for great care in selecting a mentor whose success will stand the test of time.
Choose based on their achievement of goals that are similar to yours, they should have overcome some of the obstacles you are facing.

Ideally, a mentor really represents both the challenges you face and what you intend to become in a particular area of your life.
Merry Xmas. Enjoy the festive season, this is a season for family, friends and love, make the best of it. Get close to family, make new friends and find true love. See you in the New Year

2009-11-18T06:27:00.000-08:00

Tax Knowledge Business Ideas

How much tax knowledge do you have? How effectively can you answer the following questions?

1. Should you own properties in your own name, via a limited company, a partnership or another structure?
2. Do you know the Key changes to the tax treatment of investment properties.
3. How to become non domiciled for tax purposes and how this tax status can help you pay virtually no tax.
4. How rental income is treated by the revenue and how to minimise your tax bill.
5. Which expenditures related to your property business you can legitimately offset and which you can't.
6. Tax loopholes that apply when carrying out maintenance on your properties - understanding the difference between a repair and a capital improvement.
7. How to properly offset interest paid on loans including mortgages.
8. Why do so many professional property investors set up property management businesses and how are they using them to help them save tax?
9. Advanced strategies for reducing your income tax bill.
10. How to pay less tax when purchasing properties - stamp duty strategies for the smart property investor including tips for mitigating stamp duty.
11. The rent a room relief and how to use it to reduce your tax bill.
12. What is capital gains tax? When does it apply?
13. How to use PPR relief to completely mitigate capital gains tax.
14. How to time your property purchases and disposals to minimise the amount of tax that you will have to pay.
15. Husband/wife strategies for reducing taxes.
16. How to quickly and easily calculate your capital gains tax liability.
17. How and why are holiday lets are treated differently to buy to lets and why do so many smart property investors choose to own holiday lets?

2009-10-15T05:32:00.000-07:00

The Business of Marketing Business Ideas

As a business owner, You are in the business of MARKETING

What % time do you spend on the following?:

Production - the creation of the product/service. Most people 30%
Operation - the running of the business. Most people 50%
Marketing - the marketing of the product/service Most people 20%

For a new business the stats should be:
Production: 20%Operation: 20%Marketing: 60%

What is the size of your backend:

Many business owners have a front end product or service but they have no backend, where most of the profits are really made.

The business of marketing is to retain and service your old customers, One of the way to ensure you have a successful business is to think about what the customer would like next.

If a customer is happy with your first offering then there is a good chance they will purchase something of a higher value.

What can you create to market to your customers once they are happy with your first offering?

This could be your most lucrative product.
What do your competitors offer?

Always be upselling and downselling!
When a customer says yes to a product, what do you have to offer them during their 'buying mood'?
Mc Donalds, 'would you like chips with that?' to which most people say 'yes'.
Italian Restaurant, 'would you like garlic bread to start' to which most people say 'yes'.

What can you offer at 'point of sale'?

What if they say 'no' to your first offer? Always downsell something of less value, that way they may buy something as opposed to leaving without a purchase.

What can you offer instead of your primary product?

2009-09-28T03:41:00.001-07:00

Selecting a Book Title Home Business

Finding a great title for your book can be one of the most challenging yet satisfying
processes you will go through. The title is the purpose of your book and very
important that it presents your book’s subject in the best way possible. It needs to
grab your audiences attention, make them question and think and act by picking up
the book and start reading and eventually buy.
You’ll need to go through a series of questions, digging deep into the why, how,
what motivated you to write the book in the first place… then dialogue and become the ‘devils
advocate’ coming up with as many arguments, ahem, questions, as possible so we flush out what the
underlying concept is.
One way is to write down a bunch of possibilities and have people vote, another way is to go through
the manuscript looking for ‘themes’ and writing them down, also any re-occurring words and then
haul out the Thesaurus and create a whole other list.
Then, start creating phrases of 3-5 words, short preferable. Look at them over and over and keep
reworking them until you get what you want. Hopefully, there will be some ‘meat’ in the title to assist
with the sell. And, of course, keeping in mind who the audience is for you book. What are their
interests, mind-set, demographic, etc that are another part of the equation.
Remember, do something every day toward your book and promotion.
Karrie Ross,

2009-08-13T06:57:00.000-07:00

Steps To a Perfect Press Release HomeBusiness

Businesses need to get their press releases read by the media. But first they need a catchy subject line for those press releases, so how do you draft the perfect headline ?

Follow these 12 steps.

1. It needs to be short with few words.
2. Write for your targeted audience.
3. Abbreviations and slang are good for Headlines
4. You can make a statement, a prediction, raise a question, state a statistic or report news
5. The statement is something bold: Gordon Brown Must Resign, says economist
6. The question makes you think: Should Gordon Brown resign? asks economist
7. The statistic paints a picture: 62% say Brown should resign
8. News hits hard: Brown Is One Step Away From Resigning
9. Predictions have lots of feexibility: Brown Could Resign Tomorrow
10. Referencing something in the news is always helpful
11. Link your headline to things that matter most: love, health, wealth, fun, beauty, art,business
12. Start your story with the word: EXCLUSIVE

Now go get the PUBLICITY

2009-07-27T10:01:00.000-07:00

A Little Advertising Tip Homebusiness Ideas

'PPC' ('pay-per-click') adverts...The interesting thing about these adverts is the fact that you can actually pay less than someone else competing on the same keywords- even if your search result is placed higher which traditionally should cost more.

The question is Why?

If you are more 'relevant' than they are, then you will pay less than they do...all other things being equal i.e your main site is relevant

How is 'relevancy' determined?

The more people who click your advert as compared with the number who see it will suggest that you are more relevant. In other words, if your advert is shown 1,000 times and you get 100 people clicking through and your competitor only gets 50'click throughs' per 1,000 ad times -then you're more 'relevant' and you pay less.

This kind of logic applies to eBay too - the more relevant you are the higher you are in the search results.

2009-06-18T07:51:00.000-07:00

Press Realease Basics Homebusiness

Press Releases can be submitted to press release sites. Press releases have two broad purposes:

1- To attract the attention of the media and generate free publicity.

2- They can also be used for search engine optimization purposes.

When searching for an expert on a given subject, the media often search the internet. So, if your press releases are keyword optimized, the media will find them. To rank highly for the chosen keywords, It is important to put your most important keywords in your press release titles and throughout the body of the press release.

The search engines constantly crawl leading press release sites, they know that this is where breaking news are often first posted and they want to have the content listed for their users. A properly keyword-optimized press release submitted to the leading press release sites, can give you the top ranking for your keyword.

2009-05-19T08:45:00.000-07:00

Emotional Words HomeBusiness

People don't buy things for rational reasons. They buy for emotional ones. They want to feel good... hopeful... satisfied... proud... relaxed... acknowledged... secure... ... .If you can identify the underlying emotional needs your product or service satisfies, you can write copy that identifies with your reader in a very intimate way. In a way that says YOU understand them. That you've been there yourself, that you've found a solution to the very problem their emotions are driving them to solve.

That's powerful stuff.

So how can you write emotionally-charged salescopy that connects to your reader? Start by looking at the problem your product solves. What's the underlying emotion it addresses?

The first step to writing emotionally-charged copy is to identify which "power" emotions are at the core of your product. The use those words to write salescopy that converts the MAXIMUM number of visitors into paying customers...

Fear of Loss:
One of the most powerful human drivers of change is fear. Fear of losing those things that are most important to us. It could be our sense of security that's at stake. Our money. Our health. Or even our happiness. When you identify fear, you can write salescopy that speaks to that emotion, and indicates how your product will overcome that fear.Here are some examples of copy that recognizes fear and offers a solution to it:

"Lose $3,000 tomorrow without this advice…"
"Protect your computer from viruses that can wipe out your entire hard drive."
"Selling your home? Avoid the top 10 mistakes that can cost you thousands of dollars!

"Notice how these examples use words like "protect" and "avoid"?Just as there are power emotions, there are power words that correspond to those emotions! What are some other power words besides "protect" that correspond to fear? Well, you can try words like:
Save
Secure
Safety
Clinch
Red flag
Defend

Keep in mind that when you identify negative emotions like fear, your ultimate goal is to show how your product or service takes away these fears. Your job is to identify the fear that is there, relate to your reader based on that emotion, then provide relief from that unpleasant emotion. That's why the power words related to fear are positive.

2009-04-27T05:02:00.000-07:00

Tackling Worklessness HomeBusiness

We are starting the our first of many series of Believe the Dream Seminars. We would be taking the audience through practical steps of:
Discovering your Passion
Communicating your Passion
Monetising your Passion
Managing your passion

"A Success Story, I believe for most people has been and still is to provide an adequate living for themselves and their family: that means a home, a measure of financial security, to have hope, to have opportunities and have time for their friends. Planning, preparation, perspiration, persistence, and opportunity are still very much part of the formula to achieve that Dream. Today, it may take several career changes, several new disciplines, several new associations and plenty of brainstorming during one's lifetime. It may mean moving to a different part of the country, or starting one's own business. Brainstorming is an extremely good way of scanning through your resource of knowledge. A brainstorm can work with an individual or a group. This technique requires the generation of as many ideas as quickly as possible to solve a problem. "

The first seminar will be held at Friends House on the 12th of May at 18:00pm. The venue Friends House was founded by a Christain religious group called Quakers in 1650 who believed Business and Marriage is a form of worship and in the depth of recession formed businesses like Sony, Barclays Bank, Llyods Group, Clarks, Cadbury, Oxfam, Imperial Oil (Exxon) which are still very successful to date.

Learn to turn your Passion into Business as we tackle Worklessness and Youth Crime.

You can Register Here

2009-03-25T07:47:00.000-07:00

Accumulate Writing Ideas Business Ideas

As you go about your day, try to accumulate ideas for articles in your mind. You can use this time to consider various titles for your articles and to recall relevant events.

Keep a notebook for ideas. I find that an article becomes quite easy to write if I have;
A good title
key points
knowledgable on the subject

Having written many articles on different topics, I know how difficult it can be to write on a subject I have very little experience on.
When writing on new topics it can be hard to offer something unique and original.
So, when starting out stick to what you know and wait until you have developed a good background on a new subject before writing.

2009-02-25T08:41:00.000-08:00

How To Motivate Your Affiliates Homebusiness Ideas

Seven things you can give your affiliates to keep them motivated to SELL:

Fair commissions: If you’re not giving your affiliates a significant portion of the business they refer to you, it’s simply not worth their while to promote you to their list and their visitors. After all, the credibility of their recommendation is on the line! We recommend you offer 20% to 50% commission on every sale. It might seem like a lot, but you wouldn’t have had that sale otherwise... OR any of the other revenue you’ll generate when that customer buys AGAIN, straight from you!

Timely response: Another way to make your affiliates feel loved is to provide great customer service. If they’re having trouble with some element of your program, make sure to follow up right away and get things sorted out. Not only will you ensure that your affiliates stay active, but you’ll also avoid the potential flip side of great affiliate marketing -- a bad public review of your program!

Salescopy: What’s so special about your product? Why can’t your customer do without it? You have the answers to these questions, so make sure your affiliates do, too! Give them plenty of benefit-rich copy to get your message across effectively to guarantee better conversions, which will make both you AND your affiliate happy!

Graphics and photos: What good is it to have your product promoted on another website if the ad or image doesn’t do it justice? Provide quality images and graphics for your affiliates so they can put YOUR best foot forward! That includes any banner or sidebar ads you provide, or photos for reviews. The best way to provide both copy AND graphics is to set up an Affiliate Resource Center on your website where affiliates can sign in to get everything they need.

Special deals or offers: Do your customers rush to take advantage of special offers and sales? Well, so will your affiliates! If you’re offering discounts or deals of any kind, make sure to let them know so they can use that angle to promote your products. Make sure to think up a few special deals for JUST your affiliates to offer, too!

Product updates: If you change any of your products in any way, let your affiliates know right away. It could create serious hassles for them if they’re misrepresenting what you offer (in terms of product features, pricing, etc.)

Timely payments: The BEST way to make your affiliates feel loved? Pay them commissions on time!Many people who run affiliate programs find this to be the biggest argument for using an affiliate management program or system... the payments are automatic and reliable. But if you can’t remember to pay people, don’t expect them to remember to talk about your product!

Extract from Kate Morrison

2009-01-26T05:58:00.000-08:00

Biometric Security

Biometrics may seem new, but they're the oldest form of identification. Fingerprints have been used to identify people at crime scenes for more than 100 years.

What is new about biometrics is that computers are now doing the recognizing: thumbprints, retinal scans, voiceprints, and typing patterns. There's a lot of technology involved here, in trying to both limit the number of false positives (someone else being mistakenly recognized as you) and false negatives (you being mistakenly not recognized). Generally, a system can choose to have less of one or the other; less of both is very hard.

Biometrics can vastly improve security, especially when paired with another form of authentication such as passwords. But it's important to understand their limitations as well as their strengths. On the strength side, biometrics are hard to forge. It's hard to affix a fake fingerprint to your finger or make your retina look like someone else's. Some people can mimic voices, and make-up artists can change people's faces, but these are specialized skills.

On the other hand, biometrics are easy to steal. You leave your fingerprints everywhere you touch, your iris scan everywhere you look. Regularly, hackers have copied the prints of officials from objects they've touched, and posted them on the Internet. We haven't yet had an example of a large biometric database being hacked into, but the possibility is there. Biometrics are unique identifiers, but they're not secrets.

A stolen biometric can fool some systems. It can be as easy as cutting out a signature, pasting it onto a contract, and then faxing the page to someone. The person on the other end doesn't know that the signature isn't valid because he didn't see it fixed onto the page. Remote logins by fingerprint fail in the same way. If there's no way to verify the print came from an actual reader, not from a stored computer file, the system is much less secure.

A more secure system is to use a fingerprint to unlock your mobile phone or computer. Because there is a trusted path from the fingerprint reader to the stored fingerprint the system uses to compare, an attacker can't inject a previously stored print as easily as he can cut and paste a signature. A photo on an ID card works the same way: the verifier can compare the face in front of him with the face on the card.

Fingerprints on ID cards are more problematic, because the attacker can try to fool the fingerprint reader. Researchers have made false fingers out of rubber or glycerin. Manufacturers have responded by building readers that also detect pores or a pulse.

The lesson is that biometrics work best if the system can verify that the biometric came from the person at the time of verification. One other problem with biometrics is that they don't fail well. Passwords can be changed, but if someone copies your thumbprint, you're out of luck: you can't update your thumb. Passwords can be backed up, but if you alter your thumbprint in an accident, you're stuck. The failures don't have to be this spectacular: a voiceprint reader might not recognize someone with a sore throat, or a fingerprint reader might fail outside in freezing weather. Biometric systems need to be analyzed in light of these possibilities.

Biometrics are easy, convenient, and when used properly, very secure; they're just not a panacea. Understanding how they work and fail is critical to understanding when they improve security and when they don't.

Extracts from Bruce Schneier

2008-12-27T02:18:00.000-08:00

Capitalize On Seasonal Keywords Business Ideas

At this time of year, there's a substantial increase in searches based on gift-related keywords, as shoppers look for presents for their loved ones.For example...Hobby-Related Key Phrases:
Golf gift idea
Fishing gift idea

Video game giftIndividual-Specific Key Phrases:
Christmas gift for Fisherman
Christmas gift for Plumber
Christmas gift for Student

So make sure you've set up a pay-per-click campaign to take advantage of these seasonal searches -- and you'll increase the number of holiday shoppers to your site almost IMMEDIATELY. But don't just write your ads and call it a day!

To get the highest possible conversion rate from your PPC campaign, you need to continue the theme of the keywords you're bidding on in the salescopy.So if someone comes to your website after searching with the keyphrase "Christmas Gift for Student," your copy on the landing page needs to explain why your product will make a good gift for a student. If there isn't a direct connection between the copy in the ad, and the copy on the page, visitors can easily feel they've landed on the wrong page... and leave again.

One final word of advice: Avoid more general keywords and phrases, such as "Christmas Gift". You won't get the kind of qualified traffic that you need.

2008-11-27T07:29:00.000-08:00

Close the Sale Home Business Ideas

Closing the sale is perhaps the most stressful and challenging part of the sales process.

There are secrets that can unlock your very own selling skills;

Here are 3 closing secrets that can easily triple your sales.

#1: The Preference CloseThe first technique is the Preference Close. It is based on the fact that people like to have choices. They don't like to be given what may sound like an ultimatum to either buy it or not buy it.
To apply this technique, you simply structure your close by saying, "Which of these would you prefer, A or B?"
With the preference also known as alternative close, You should always try to give the customer two choices. Even if you are selling a single product, you can give him two choices with regard to payment, or delivery. For example, "Would you like this delivered to your office or to your home address?" "Will that be MasterCard or Visa?"

#2: The Secondary CloseThe second closing technique is the Secondary Close. This is extremely popular. It is a way of helping the customer make a big decision by having him make a small decision that infers the big decision. Instead of asking the customer to go ahead with the product or service, you ask a question about a peripheral detail, the acceptance of which means that he has decided to buy the larger product.
For example, you could ask, "Would you want this shipped in a wooden crate, or would cardboard be all right?" "Would you like us to include the drapes and rods in the offer?" "Did you want the standard rims or would you like the customized racing rims on your car?"
In each case, if the customer agrees to or chooses the smaller item, he has indirectly said, "yes" to the entire offering. People often find it easier to agree to small details than they do to making a larger commitment. That's why this is sometimes called the Incremental Close, where you get commitment bit by bit to the entire offer.

#3: The Authorization CloseThe third closing technique is the Authorization Close, which is often used to conclude multimillion-dollar transactions. At the end of the sales conversation, the salesperson simply asks if the prospect has any questions or concerns that haven't been covered.
If the prospect has no further questions or concerns, the salesperson takes out the contract, opens it up to the signature page, places a check mark where the customer has to sign, and pushes it over to him saying, "Well then, if you will just authorize this, we'll get started on it right away." The word "authorize" is better than the word "sign." A check mark is better than an X. Offering to "get started right away" is better than sitting there hoping for the best.
However you do it, be prepared to ask for the order.

Extracted from Brian Tracey

2008-10-30T02:51:00.000-07:00

Four Strategies for a New Business Business Ideas

There are four strategies you can use to find a new product or service to start or build your own business developed by Brian Tracy.

LOOK IN YOUR OWN FIELD: The first strategy is to find a new product or service in your own field or skills. You may have a million dollar idea in your own mind. Many people have had the experience of having an idea for a product or service nag at them over and over again, and you keep pushing it away or ignoring it. They say the average person has four ideas each year driving to and from work, any one of which would make them a millionaire if they would just follow it up. So look into your own field or skills. Look into your own mind. Look into your own ideas.

LOOK FOR OPPORTUNITIES WHEN YOU TRAVEL: The second strategy is to find a new product or service while you travel. Keep your eyes open for opportunities. A very good friend of mine who is now a multi-millionaire, started his fortune by traveling east and seeing a unique type of orange drink called Orange Julius and then getting the exclusive rights to sell it in a large Western city. From there, he expanded into other restaurants, into real estate, and into apartments. He developed a high positive cash flow from his Orange Julius business that made him a millionaire. Sometimes just finding a new product or service that is doing well somewhere else that hasn't come to your market area can make you wealthy.

GET THE RIGHTS TO SELL IT: Remember your objective, when you find a new product or service, is to acquire the rights to sell the product or service exclusively in your market area. Sometimes these rights are available for the asking. A gentleman I know named Peter Thomas got the rights for Century 21 to Canada simply by going to the offices and asking for them when Century 21 was a young company. From that, he turned Century 21 into one of the most successful real estate franchises in Canada. He is now worth millions of dollars, having taken the cash flow from Century 21 and channeled it into other real estate investments.

BE SURE IT IS ALREADY SUCCESSFUL: Sometimes just asking for the right to sell it in your market area is all you have to do. Here's the key, though. Before you bring a new product or service back to your market area, be absolutely sure that it sells well somewhere else. Many people advertise products outside their market area because they are not selling inside their market area, so make very sure that the product is selling well already in other markets.

DEVELOP A MONEY MAKING ATTITUDE: Strategy number three is to keep your eyes and ears open and alert to new business opportunities occurring around you. Develop a money-making attitude. A friend of mine became very successful by building commercial property across the street from a new shopping center that was being developed. The traffic from the shopping center made that commercial space extremely valuable. He opened two businesses in it, and started his fortune. So be alert to what is going on around you.

BE SURE YOU LIKE IT YOURSELF: And strategy number four is this. Remember you will only be successful marketing and selling something that you believe in, use yourself and would recommend to your best friend. Many times, I see people who make the critical mistake of trying to sell a product or service that they themselves would neither use nor afford, nor would they recommend to someone else, but they think that other people will buy it even though they wouldn't. So remember you must really, really believe it the product. You must be excited about the product. You must absolutely believe that this product can enhance the life or work of someone else and then be eager to tell them about it.

ACTION EXERCISES: First, develop a new business mentality. Continually look around you for new products and services that people need, want and are willing to pay for.
Second, develop a money making attitude. Look around you for opportunities to sell products or services that are not currently being offered, at either higher prices or in greater quantities. The possibilities are everywhere.

2008-09-22T09:27:00.000-07:00

How To Design Your Survey Business Ideas

Surveys can be a useful source of information for planning and effective marketing.

Designing your survey takes a bit of skill, but with a small amount of consideration you'll have no problem putting an effective one together. Just be sure that you're putting the questions in a logical order, and not exhausting your customers by asking for too much detail.

Here are a few tips to help you design a better survey:

Start with the good stuff -- To ease your customers into the survey, start off with some simple questions they can answer without a lot of thought. This can be something as simple as basic demographic information (age, location, etc.), which also happens to be useful information.But don't load up the front end with all of the easy questions. Save a few for the end of the survey. That way, it won't get increasingly difficult throughout, which can cause some people to bail before they complete it.

Avoid asking too many questions -- 5-10 minutes is about the maximum length you can reasonably expect somebody to spend answering a survey, so be sure to limit your questions.At the same time, be sure to let your respondents know up front how much time will be required to complete it... and be honest! People will begin to drop out if it starts to take longer than you say.

Give your survey an introduction and ending -- It's a good idea to include an introduction to the survey, to clearly explain what people are required to do. At the same time, it's a nice touch to end the survey with a "thank-you" page, just to let people know you appreciate the time they spent taking the survey.

Respect people's privacy -- You may want to collect personal information like age, income, and occupation. If you do so, make sure to reassure your customers beforehand that you have a strict privacy policy, and remind them that their answers are all confidential. When it comes time to write the actual questions, make sure you write in a relaxed, conversational voice, and avoid things like abbreviations, acronyms, and double negatives.

You want to be sure that EVERY person who takes your survey clearly understands all of the questions.

Here are a few tips to help you write compelling and effective survey questions:

Avoid asking leading questions -- Be sure that your questions don't sway your customers toward answering them in a particular way, or giving an answer that's not actually true. For example, don't say: "How quickly did we resolve your problem? " This assumes that the problem was indeed resolved.The question you should ask is, "Was your problem resolved?"

Avoid questions that rate more than one thing -- Avoid asking questions that require people to rate more than one thing at a time.For instance, don't say: "How fast and accurate did you find our customer service representative?"While the service may have been fast, it may not have been accurate (or vice versa) so this question is impossible to answer accurately.

Focus on asking "close-ended" questions -- In a survey, a close-ended question is one that can be answered with a simple yes/no or other specific piece of information, or a selection from multiple choices.This makes the survey faster and easier for your customers, and the results more simple for you to manage.So instead of a question like "What did you think of your customer service experience?" try something like "Did you enjoy your customer service experience?"

Be consistent with your questions -- If you ask your customers to rate certain things on a numbered scale, make sure to use the same scale each time.So if they need to rate something on a scale of 1 to 5 in one question, avoid using a scale of 1 to 10 elsewhere.

Watch out for long questions -- If your questions are too long, your customers will soon get tired of answering them, and abandon the survey. Look for questions that can be broken into two or more parts.

Don't test your customers' memories -- Try not to ask your customers to recall a lot of information that happened far in the past. They'll soon get bogged down trying to recall specific details, and if they're in a hurry to complete the survey, will often abandon it.

Enjoy

2008-08-26T04:56:00.000-07:00

Fast Online Business Business Ideas

Join the world's LARGEST online marketplace.

There's no better way to start making money online (potentially thousands of dollars each month), than to start your own eBay business!

Over $60 BILLION changes hands on eBay every YEAR, so you've got a built-in market just waiting to buy what you're selling!

Unlike drop shipping and affiliate programs...... you don't even need a website to start making BIG profits!There are other reasons to consider eBay if you're looking to start making money right away:

No startup money required -- You can easily create an account with eBay, get your first listing up, and start making serious profits, for just a few cents

No business experience necessary -- You don't need to know ANYTHING about running a business to get started on eBay, so it's perfect for people who are just beginning to work for themselves

You don't need to be computer savvy -- If you know how to check your email, you have all the computer skills you NEED to start making profits on eBay!

ANYONE can start making money quickly and easily on eBay...... but to make really BIG money, it helps if you understand the more advanced strategies (i.e the ones that very few other "eBayers" know about).

2008-08-12T07:44:00.000-07:00

The Value of Change Business Ideas

Lets talk about eBay:

A company who already had a clear track record of success, but recently made some BIG changes anyway!With over 84 MILLION active users spending almost $2,000 a second (that's $60 BILLION a year),

EBay is one of the true success stories in the short history of the Internet.Clearly, eBay wasn't broken. So why fix it??

Well, they're smart enough to know that resting on their laurels isn't the way to keep growing, or reacting to the needs of their customers.So over the past few months, they've been making some pretty radical changes.

The biggest change is that they've revamped the way their customer feedback system works... and it was a pretty risky change for eBay. But that's just the beginning!They've also changed the way some listings get ranked during a search, played around with minimum bid amounts, changed the way you qualify for coveted "Power Seller" status, and a bunch of other things.

There was a bit of an outcry at first from regular eBay sellers, who accused eBay of no longer caring about the "little guy" who made them successful in the first place.

But here's the thing about all of this change...these major changes that seem to have upset so many people are turning out to be HUGE WINS for everyone!

By fine-tuning their system, eBay is slowly discouraging the mountains of "hobby" sellers who list one or two-buck item once in a blue moon just for kicks...... and making it MUCH easier for serious professionals who want to use eBay to build a solid, full-time business.It's a SMART move on eBay's part, because they know it's these pros who make them the most money!

An excellent lesson about the value of focusing your efforts on your best customers! ;

So if you've been thinking about making changes to your business, but you've been afraid of any negative fallout, remember that change even those that ruffles a few feathers at first can create new opportunity for you AND your customers

2008-07-12T21:25:00.000-07:00

What is in Your Hands Business Ideas

An extract from Stephen Pierce:

A basketball in my hands is worth about $19. A basketball in Michael Jordan's hands is worth about $33 mil'lion.

A baseball in my hands is worth about $6. A baseball inMark McGuire's hands is worth $19 mil'lion.

A tennis racket is useless in my hands. A tennis racket inVenus Williams' hands is a championship win'ning.

A rod in my hands will keep away a wild animal. A rod inMoses' hands will part the mighty sea.

A sling shot in my hands is a kid's toy. A sling shot inDavid's hand is a mighty weapon.

Nails in my hands might produce a birdhouse. Nails in JesusChrist's hands will produce salvation for the entire world.

As you see now it depends whose hands it's in. So an oppor'tunity is only an oppor'tunity depending on whosehands its in.

So now this message is in your hands.

What will YOU do with it?"It Depends on WHO'S Hands it's in!!"

bustablog_com_JG8D69D

2008-06-30T08:39:00.000-07:00

Facts About FAQ Business Ideas

Your FAQ page can actively attract traffic to your site, establish your credibility, and make sales for you. Not bad for a "functional" admin page!
Lure traffic to your site with your FAQ page!

Have you optimized your FAQ page with keywords yet?

Think about it. This is the perfect place.

You can use long-tail keyword questions about your product -- the questions people actually type in to the search engines when they have a problem that your item can solve. In fact, you can use those "problem statements" in both the questions AND the answers to make the search engines really sit up and take notice!

Your FAQ page is also a great place for product names and other specifics that people search on when they're ready to buy.

And the more frequently you update your FAQ with your best-performing keywords, the more often the spiders will crawl all over it and boost your search rankings.

2008-06-16T01:28:00.000-07:00

Optimize your site for local search Business Ideas

What is involved in getting top search engine rankings for the region you want?

1. Use "geo-keywords"
First, decide on how specific to be with your location. The smaller the geographic location, the more targeted your customers will be... although of course you will appeal to a smaller audience. The restaurant in Los Angeles would want to include "Los Angeles" and "LA." But he'll also have to say exactly where he is -- the city, the neighborhood... even the street. People will use all those terms when they perform their searches. And here's a tip: When you're deciding on the location keyword, think about how locals would search for it. For example, Southern California is often referred to as "SoCal;" while residents of Port Coquitlam in British Columbia call it "Poco." If you're targeting locals, you definitely have to speak their language and use those keywords on your site. Make sure you work your location keywords into your copy and code wherever possible.
Use them in your headlines and subheads. And throughout your copy for extra impact. One of the pages on your website should be a directions page, complete with a Google map. By using location keywords often you'll tell the search engines that your site is relevant for those words.

2. Display your address and phone number
Have your full street address on the footer at the bottom of each page and on the side navigation bar. Include a phone number with a local area code. This will give the search engines all the information they need to nail your location.

3. Get inbound local links
Search engines reward you for having links pointing to your website from other reputable sites and organizations. Local directories give you an easy way to build up your inbound links... and get your site seen by highly targeted groups of local buyers! You can submit your site to:

Goog411 --
Yahoo Local Business --
TrueLocal.com --
Switchboard.com Yellow Pages --
Ask Local --
MSN Local/Live Maps/InfoUSA --
CitySearch --
SuperPages --
Internet Yellow Pages --
Better Business Bureau --
Chambers of Commerce --
Yelp.com --

Most of these directories offer both free and paid listings. Test out the free service before upgrading to paid to see if it works for you without having to pay any further fees.
Don't forget to look for other local directories and networks too.
Search on "location name + directories" and see what comes up.
More and more are appearing every day!

2008-06-03T08:38:00.000-07:00

Marketing Fundamentals Business Ideas

1. Wrong location means wrong audience:
Take your pitch to the City where there are plenty of 'boys' with money who would love nothing better than to splash out on riding around in a red Ferrari for the day.
Know the target market you want and take your products to them.

2. Good product knowledge:
As good sales person, you need to know your product's benefits inside out. Even if you don't have any interest, then you need to step outside your comfort zone and immerse yourself in the product.
What are the end benefits to the user?
What differentiates your product or service from all the others out there?
What makes your offer unique?
What makes the offer urgent?
How rare is it?
How fast does it go?

3. Engage the prospect:
This is one of the simplest sales techniques - never ask a question that expects a simple yes or no answer. "Would you like to hire this Aston Martin for the day?" "Er, not today thanks!" Much better to try something like . . . "How would your mates feel if you pulled up in this car tomorrow morning?"

4: Respect your prospect:
Never intimidate, disrespect or bully your prospect. In fact, do not hard sell all. As the great adman David Ogilvy said: "The consumer is not a moron, she is your wife. Never write an advertisement you would not want your own family to read. You would not tell lies to your wife. Don't tell them to mine."
If you product is strong, your pricing right and your benefits clearly expressed then you can let the prospect make their own decision. Be a friend.

2008-05-18T09:52:00.000-07:00

The Security Of Your Data Home Business Ideas

Encrypting your entire hard drive, something you should certainly do for security in case your computer is lost or stolen, or even interborder travels.

The border agent is likely to start this whole process with a "please type in your password." Of course you can refuse, but the agent can search you further, detain you longer, refuse you entry into the country and otherwise ruin your day. You're going to have to hide your data. Set a portion of your hard drive to be encrypted with a different key - even if you also encrypt your entire hard drive - and keep your sensitive data there.

Lots of programs allow you to do this. I use PGP Disk (from pgp.com).
TrueCrypt (truecrypt.org) is also good, and free.

While customs agents might poke around on your laptop, they're unlikely to find the encrypted partition. (You can make the icon invisible, for some added protection.) And if they download the contents of your hard drive to examine later, you won't care. Be sure to choose a strong encryption password. Details are too complicated for a quick tip, but basically anything easy to remember is easy to guess. Unfortunately, this isn't a perfect solution. Your computer might have left a copy of the password on the disk somewhere, and smart forensic software will find it. So your best defence is to clean up your laptop.

A customs agent can't read what you don't have.
You don't need five years' worth of email and client data.
You don't need your old love letters and those photos.
Delete everything you don't absolutely need.
And use a secure file erasure program to do it. While you're at it, delete your browser's cookies, cache and browsing history. It's nobody's business what websites you've visited. And turn your computer off - don't just put it to sleep - before you go through customs; that deletes other things.

Think of all this as the last thing to do before you stow your electronic devices for landing. Some companies now give their employees forensically clean laptops for travel, and have them download any sensitive data over a virtual private network once they've entered the country. They send any work back the same way, and delete everything again before crossing the border to go home. This is a good idea if you can do it. If you can't, consider putting your sensitive data on a USB drive or even a camera memory card: even 16GB cards are reasonably priced these days. Encrypt it, of course, because it's easy to lose something that small. Slip it in your pocket, and it's likely to remain unnoticed even if the customs agent pokes through your laptop.

If someone does discover it, you can try saying: "I don't know what's on there. My boss told me to give it to the head of the New York office." If you've chosen a strong encryption password, you won't care if he confiscates it.

Lastly, don't forget your phone and PDA. Customs agents can search those too: emails, your phone book, your calendar. Unfortunately, there's nothing you can do here except delete things. I know this all sounds like work, and that it's easier to just ignore everything here and hope you don't get searched. Today, the odds are in your favour. But new forensic tools are making automatic searches easier and easier. It's better to be safe than sorry.

2008-05-05T01:57:00.000-07:00

Start Reading Home Business

It has been said that standard education will get you jobs, and self-education will make you fortunes. This is no doubt true, and I believe that reading is a key skill necessary to self-education. Statistics say the average CEO reads 4-5 books per month while the average American reads 1 book per year! This same statistic goes on to say that 60% of those average Americans don't even get past the first chapter in that one book! You may shrug your shoulders and say – okay big deal – so what? I am not a reader and why should that bother me?

Whether it should bother you or not is for you to decide. I simply share the facts with you. So here is another interesting fact: The average CEO of a Fortune 500 company will earn an average of 536 times the salary of the average employee of the company he runs. This means that the employee of that company will work for a year and a half to equal the salary of the CEO for one day! What an extremely amazing and true statistic! Now, I am not going to suggest to you that the only difference between the CEO and the average employee is that the CEO reads a lot of books and the employee doesn't, however, I will suggest to you that is one of the major differences.

2008-04-22T01:47:00.000-07:00

Threat Contest Business Ideas

For this contest, the goal is to create fear. Not just any fear, but a fear that you can alleviate through the sale of your new product idea. There are lots of risks out there, some of them serious, some of them so unlikely that we shouldn't worry about them, and some of them completely made up. And there are lots of products out there that provide security against those risks. Your job is to invent one.

First, find a risk or create one. It can be a terrorism risk, a criminal risk, a natural-disaster risk, a common household risk -- whatever. The weirder the better. Then, create a product that everyone simply *has to* buy to protect him- or herself from that risk. And finally, write a catalog ad for that product.

Here's an example:

"A Turtle is Safe in Water, A Child is Not! Even with the most vigilant supervision a child can disappear in seconds and not be missed until it's too late. Our new wireless pool safety alarm system is a must for pool owners and parents of young children. The Turtle Wristband locks on the child's wrist (a special key is required to remove it) and instantly detects immersion in water and sounds a shrill alarm at the Base Station located in the house or within 100 feet of the pool, spa, or backyard pond. Keep extra wristbands on hand for guests or to protect the family dog."

Will be judged on creativity, originality, persuasiveness, and plausibility.

It's okay if the product you invent doesn't actually exist, but this isn't a science fiction contest.

Portable salmonella detectors for salad bars.
Acoustical devices that estimate tiger proximity based on roar strength.
GPS-enabled wallets for use when you've been pickpocketed.
Wrist cuffs that emit fake DNA to fool DNA detectors.
The Quantum Sleeper.
Fear offers endless business opportunities.

Good luck.

2008-04-14T01:47:00.000-07:00

Solve the Impossible Business Ideas

As a college student, George studied very hard and always late into the night. So late that he overslept one morning, arriving 20 minutes late for class. He quickly copied the two math problems on the board, assuming they were the homework assignment. It took him several days to work through the two problems, but finally he had a breakthrough and dropped the homework on the professor's desk the next day.

Later, on a Sunday morning, George was awakened at 6 a.m. by his excited professor. Since George was late for class, he hadn't heard the professor announce that the two unsolvable equations on the board were mathematical mind teasers that even Einstein hadn't been able to answer. But George Dantzig, working without any thoughts of limitation, had solved not one, but two problems that had stumped mathematicians for thousands of years.

Simply put, George solved the problems because he didn't know he couldn't.

Bob Proctor tells us to "keep reminding yourself that you have tremendous reservoirs of potential within you, and therefore you are quite capable of doing anything you set your mind to. All you must do is figure out how you can do it, not whether or not you can. And once you have made your mind up to do it, it's amazing how your mind begins to figure out how."

2008-03-30T15:28:00.000-07:00

Good Communication Skills Business Ideas

Effective Comunications is a major key to your personal and business success. Knowing when to initiate a conversation, keeping it interesting and asking effective questions

Create effective communications by following these seven steps:

Step 1: Exude confidence. When you're comfortable in your own attributes, you make others comfortable. If you take the attitude that you bring something to the table, you will see that attitude reflected in others. Enthusiasm is infectious.

Step 2: Show up with something to say. Always be on the lookout for material. Although it may sound contrived, read Journals for interesting, timely information that you can share at a party, meetings or business. Think about keeping a file that you can review before your next event.

Step 3: Begin with a question. Besides showing interest in someone, one simple question can start an entire conversation. Asking something a bit unusual sets you apart from the crowd. Rather than, "What do you do?" ask, "How do you enjoy spending your weekends?"

Step 4: Find common ground. The surest way to build rapport is to find something you have in common and build on that interest. Don't shy away from topics that have nothing to do with business. They often crate the perfect connection.

Step 5: Focus on others. Putting your energy and interest in another person marks you as a great conversationalist.

Step 6: Be inclusive. Excluding others in the group is a conversation killer. Make eye contact with everyone in the group, not just the person who asked you a direct question.

Step 7: Close a conversation with style, take advantage and say, "It's been my pleasure talking with you, I hope our paths cross again soon." Before leaving, be certain to thank the hosts.

2008-03-25T10:16:00.000-07:00

Build Your Passive Income Business Ideas

CURRENT CAREER MODEL

Works best when focused on what the marketplace wants to buy
Income is entirely dependent on time spent working
The goal is to work as hard as possible
Income potential is inherently limited
Finite, non-replenishing capital sources will support you for a limited length of time beyond retirement

PASSIVE INCOME MODEL

Works best when you first focus on what you know and what you love
The amount of money you make is not tied to the amount of time you work
The goal is freedom from work
No limit to the amount of money you can generate
Unfixed, continually growing revenue sources will support you indefinitely, whether you work or not

Passive income is money that is generated AUTOMATICALLY and REGULARLY, from a source or MULTIPLE SOURCES other than your job. And it’s exciting for a number of reasons.
For starters, building wealth through passive income:

• Doesn’t require you to change careers or work two jobs. A good passive income source requires very little of your time and energy to initially set up or to maintain
• Minimizes your taxes and keeps more cash in your pocket. Because passive income is unearned, it isn’t subject to the same tax rates. So you enjoy the double bonus of working far less for that money, and keeping much more of it
• Releases you from job dependence and makes you truly financially free. It’s like having a wealth-building machine that runs all on its own and makes money
24 hours a day, 7 days a week

When you’re spending time at your regular job, your passive income is working for you.
When you prop your feet up in front of your TV at home, you’re still making money.
When you enjoy the weekend doing what you love, you’ll love all the extra cash.
When you are sound asleep at two in the morning, your passive income is wide awake.
If your job disappeared tomorrow, or if something happened that made it impossible for you to perform it, your financial life would be virtually untouched.

2008-03-17T17:36:00.000-07:00

Search Engine Optimisation Strategy Homebusiness Ideas

Use the following on and off site stratetegies for effective SEO optimisation

Onsite Optimization:

Keyword Research and Selection
Titles tags Generation
Meta tags Optimization
ALT tags Optimization
Hyperlink Optimization
Sitemap Generation
XML Sitemap creation and submission in Google
Proper linking structure
W3C validation of homepage

Offsite Optimization:

Link popularity analysis
Link Generation by one way links.
Analysis and Reporting

2008-03-08T14:19:00.000-08:00

Great Free Tools For Online Business Homebusiness Ideas

The great news is, there are tons of free tools available online!Here are some of our favorites, in no particular order:

Tool #1: Alexa toolbar http://www.alexa.com/site/download/The Alexa toolbar gives you instant information about any website you visit.It's a downloadable "plugin" for your browser (IE or Firefox) and shows you a site's traffic, pagerank, related sites, who's linking in, and much more.It's one of our "must-have" research tools!

Tool #2: Google Website Optimizer http://services.google.com/websiteoptimizer/Google offers this free "multivariate" and A/B testing tool to help you improve your conversion rate -- and your sales! -- by testing different versions of your site content to see which gets the best results.Google offers tips on what and how to test, so even if you're a "newbie," this tool can help you boost your site performance.

Tool #3: XML Sitemaps http://www.xml-sitemaps.com/This quick and easy sitemap generator helps search engine spiders find their way around your site and index it faster so you can rank better in the search results.(And for 5 bucks, this site has a broken link finder that will search up to 500 pages for you.)

Tool #4: AdWords Keyword tool https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternalThe Google AdWords Keyword Tool is a free tool that provides ideas for new keywords. It also gives you graphs showing the relative number of searches to amount of competition for those keywords among AdWords advertisers.This tool is invaluable both for your niche research and for your SEO and pay-per-click efforts.

Tool #5: Optiview http://www.optiview.com/Optiview is a free site analysis tool. It lets you find out what your site looks like when it loads at different speeds and checks for images that make your site load slower than it should.The faster your site loads, the better -- which is why a tool like Optiview is such a big help.

Tool #6: Quantcast http://www.quantcast.com/Would you like to find out who is coming to you site? It's really easy with this free tool that shows your audience's age, education gender, income and more.

Tool #7: Google Alerts http://www.google.com/alertsThis simple tool helps you keep up with the latest news in your industry, get ideas for content, and check out your competitors.When it comes to research, Google Alerts are a huge time saver!

Tool #8: Blogger http://www.blogger.com/Blogger is the twelfth most popular website in the WORLD. And it's the easiest way to get your own blog up and running in as little time as possible.With a blog, you can publish articles -- or any other kind of content related to your market -- and link it to your website to get higher rankings in the search engines!

Tool #9:Audacity http://audacity.sourceforge.net/Audacity is a free audio recorder and editor you can use if you want to include any audio on your site. Plus, it's great for recording instant podcasts!

Tool #10: Youtube http://www.youtube.com/These days, people are demanding more multimedia features on a website... and that includes video.YouTube allows you to host your videos on their site and makes it easy for you to show those videos on your site, as well. It's not just a time waster, it can help spread the word about your business!... So those are 10 of our favorite free tools.

2008-03-02T04:09:00.000-08:00

Get the Ideas From Forums Homebusiness Ideas

1. Go to www.groups.Google.com or www.groups.yahoo.com and use the search facilities to find forums related to the market you want to create a product for.

2. Sign up to a few of the forums and make a few posts. Don't instantly start posting asking for help with your research you'll be shot down by all the forum regulars. A good way to avoid being shot down is be a "marketing ninja". Stay under the radar and don't give away that you are an Internet entrepreneur looking for a few ideas.

A great way to do this is make a "newbie" post introducing yourself. So for example lets say you wanted to find out what problems pregnant women want solved. You could go to groups.Google.com and type in "pregnancy". Then you could sign up to these free forums and make a "newbie" post like this one:

"Hi my names Josephine and I'm new to the group. I'm pretty nervous about the whole pregnancy thing so thought I'd come here for support. My husband's great, but he just can't seem to understand why I'm so worried about every little thing (like are you allowed to eat mozzarella? Is it o.k. to use the cream with rose oil in it?). I seem to spend my whole time checking what's 'safe' and what isn't and he thinks that's crazy! Hopefully some pregnant women here will be a bit more understanding :c)"

See how you'll be "under the radar" due to that post? After that make a couple of posts a day for a week or so. Then you're ready for the research.

3. Make a post asking people what their biggest problem or question they have in your chosen niche market is. An example might be this:

"Hi all. I was just wondering what problems you've encountered with being pregnant that you'd like to be able to overcome? For me it's back ache!"

What you'll find is people will start posting like crazy to what you ask. These online communities are desperate to help "one of their own", whereas if you go in their as an entrepreneur they'll be a bit stand offish. When you do it in this under the radar way you'll find people will tell you all of their problems.

4. You leave the forum for a week or so and then come back. I assure you you'll be stunned at the results you get. All you need to do is go through the answers people have given you and identify the common problems they are having.

Finally you create a product that answers those questions or solves the problems they have - easy!

2008-02-19T02:55:00.000-08:00

Business Continuity Management: Preparation and Risk

The BCM objectives as defined within the standard are “to counteract interruptions to business activities and to protect processes from the effects of major failures of information systems or disasters and to ensure timely resumption”. Usually, the better prepared you are, the more likely you will be to meet this objective, and the more effective will be your recovery.

Unfortunately, many organizations do not properly embrace risk assessment, and often start their business continuity project ill prepared.

PREPARATION: It is important at the outset to have the full commitment of the Board or Governing Body of the organization. Without this, problems downstream are inevitable. An awareness campaign should follow, to ensure that all staff are notified of that commitment. The business continuity project can then be initiated (central to which is the delivery of a business continuity plan). It is essential, however, that this project is formal and structured.Initial steps for the project itself will include defining scope, and obtaining copies of all appropriate documents and information. A formal risk assessment exercise must follow.

RISK ASSESSMENT: Initial emphasis on effective risk assessment will enable you to predict different types of incidents with more accuracy. It will help ensure that focus is applied to those areas to which it is most needed.
This aspect of BCM involves analyzing the business processes and identifying vulnerabilities through risk assessment and probability analysis. It includes the establishment of critical business timeframes including recovery time objectives (RTO) and maximum tolerable period of disruption (MTPD).

The RTO will represent the time interval between the incident occurring and the time when a measurable negative impact will result on the business whereas the MTPD will represent the time interval between the incident occurring and the time when the impact from the incident will become extremely serious for the business.

Following a detailed risk analysis of the business and its processes, suitable levels of safeguards and controls should be implemented that will protect the business processes and product delivery. It is important to understand that none of the above tasks can be short cut.

Proper planning and preparation may seem to be a burden, but the pay back could well be the survival of the organization itself.

FURTHER INFORMATION. Fortunately, this is a well trodden path, and specialist portals like the Disaster Recovery Planning Guide provide sound advice on how to take the initial steps described above.

2008-02-10T09:16:00.000-08:00

Partnering For Profit HomeBusiness Ideas

The way you can stand out from your competitors is for you to position your self as a business partner, always looking for ways to improve your customer's business.

Help Your Customer's Business: When you deal with a business person, you can be sure of one thing: that person thinks about his business day and night. It is very close to him. It is dear to his heart. And if you come in and talk to him and ask him questions about his business, looking for ways to help him run his business better, the customer is going to warm up to you and want to be associated with you and your company.

Differentiate Yourself from Your Competitors: As a partner, you should always be looking to help your customer to cut costs and improve results in his or her area of responsibility. You should look for ways to help your customer in non-business areas as well. You should position your self as someone who cares more about the success of your customer than anything else, even more than you care about selling your product or service. This approach to partnering in profit with your customer is a key way to differentiate your self and to keep your customer for the indefinite future.

Practice the Reciprocity Principle: There is a principle of reciprocity in business that is very powerful. It is simply this; If you do something nice for someone else, they will feel obligated to do something nice for you. You should be looking for opportunities to go the extra mile, to do more than you are paid for, to put in more than you take out. By extending your self, you improve your positioning in the customer's mind and increasingly differentiate your self and your company from your competitors who are after the same business. If you do this long enough and strong enough, you will eventually develop the partnership to the point where your competitors don't have a chance against you.

Action Exercises: Here are two things you can do immediately to put these ideas into action.First, think about how you can help your customer's customer with your product or service. Take time to understand how your customer uses your product to do his business better.Second, focus on increasing your customer's profits and financial results. Show your customer that doing business with you is both satisfying and profit able in the long run.

Brian Tracy

2008-01-26T08:39:00.000-08:00

Ebooks as a Marketing Tool Homebusiness Ideas

Here are seven proven ideas you can use to get started creating your own free viral eBook today:
Idea #1: Industry update report. If major changes have recently happened in your industry -- or if there are any major developments on the horizon -- an industry update report can be a great way to get your name associated with these hot new trends and developments.This is a great way to make a name for yourself within your industry. And when the trend heats up, you can bet that the number of people reading and sharing your eBook will skyrocket, too.

Idea #2: Industry resource guide. A resource guide can be really helpful to people who are just getting started in your industry, or who are looking for new contacts, ideas, or opportunities.By writing this type of guide, you can develop a strong reputation for yourself as a reliable "industry insider" whom people can approach when they're looking for resources. And when the time comes for them to buy a product or service, you can bet that YOU will be the first person they turn to.

Idea #3: Interviews with industry experts. Everyone loves to hear what the leaders in their industry are doing. After all, one of the best -- and fastest -- ways to become successful is to follow in the footsteps of those who've already achieved incredible success.It's easy to create an eBook that's made up of a collection of interviews. All you have to do is send out a few emails to people in your field and ask them to share their experiences with you. People love to talk about what they do.Plus, with this type of eBook, you'll have 100% exclusive, original content - which is sure to appeal to your potential readers!

Idea #4: Special tips from industry insiders this variation on Idea #3 can be another great source of valuable content. Instead of interviewing experts, you simply contact them and ask for their tips on how to solve common problems and overcome obstacles in your field. Then, group the tips by topic and you'll have a book of "insider tips" that's sure to be a hit.

Idea #5: "How-to" instruction guides. Of course, if you're something of an expert yourself, there's no need to consult with other experts to create your eBook! Go ahead and write your own eBook that teaches people a hard-to-learn skill or helps them get started in your field of expertise.

Idea #6: User manuals for hard-to-use products. If you have expert knowledge or lots of experience with a product that's hard to use, you could create a start-to-finish user manual or beginner's guide that helps new users get up and running with the product. If it's a product that's just starting to grow in popularity, your eBook will be sure to create a buzz. Another variation on this idea is to create an eBook that lists alternate uses for common products and explains how people can start using them in new ways. For example, you might write a guide that lists 10 little-known uses for iPods, or 10 creative ways to recycle your old computer equipment.

Idea #7: Reviews of industry products. Product reviews are becoming indispensable resources in the online shopping community. People love to read reviews of products before they buy them - so if you've tried out some popular products that would appeal to your market, you've got some great information to include in your eBook.

So there are some ideas to get you started... Choose the one that appeals to you most and run with it!

2008-01-20T08:27:00.000-08:00

Forget the Business Competition Focus on Marketing Homebusiness ideas

First, when generating targeted traffic for your business don't focus on the competition, other marketers, focus on you. Do the best job possible you can and don't worry about what the competition might be up to. Direct your energy into marketing.

Personally I use Google's pay per click program to drive traffic for my business, but atthe end of the day it only accounts for small percentage of the total traffic I generate. So, Google is not the be all and end all of traffic. You want to have many streams of traffic coming your way.
Diversification in this regard creates real and long lasting quality lead flow and stability.

Second, in Google itself being number 1 in the listings doesn't guarantee you better results. Some of my best converting campaigns are in spot 6 through 8. The clicks are cheaper and the lead cost is lower.
The goal is NOT to focus on the most obvious keywords it's to spend some real quality time brain storming keywords that are less prominent, but even more targeted. Few marketers really put time into this activity and so there is less competition just from this fact alone. Further, you'll find better quality leads this way.

Third, more important than beating the competition in ranking is everything that comes after someone clicks your link. You must put real time into presenting the right offer to the right person and then do an excellent job of follow up. If you master this third point you'll soon sit in a position of having a competition proof business.

If you are first in the minds of your prospects they do not care about who else is out there.

2008-01-13T15:14:00.000-08:00

Profitable Online Business Homebusines Ideas

Information is by far the most profitable kind of product you can sell online. Why? Think about it for a moment... What do the vast majority of Internet users go online to search for?That's right. Information.
Which means that by selling highly sought-after information on your website, you're giving people exactly what they're looking for! And that's a recipe for online success. Here are some more reasons why information is the best type of product to sell on the Internet... When you sell "hard" products that require physical delivery, you have to deal with the cost and hassle of manufacturing, stocking, and packaging -- not to mention shipping your product. And all those things take a serious bite out of your profit margin.

However, when you sell information -- in the form of an electronic "eBook," for example -- once you've created your master copy, you can make countless duplications of it, at NO additional cost. Your manufacturing, stocking, and packaging expenses are non-existent! And because you can deliver your electronic eBook instantly to your customers, your shipping costs are zero, as well. That means your profit margin is 100%!
Your customers will be especially attracted by the promise of instant gratification. They won't have to wait days (or even weeks!) for their product to arrive -- it'll get downloaded to their desktop in just a minute or two, which means they can start accessing that information right away. And once your website is up and running, you can automate your entire business so it takes just an hour or two a week to run!

You can set up your order form and "shopping cart" system to automatically process the order, put the money in your bank account, and electronically deliver your product to the customer.

It's the perfect "hands-free" business! ... And you don't even have to be a writer!To create a best-selling eBook, you don't even have to be a professional writer! You can hire someone else to do the writing for you. Simply tell them what topics you want your eBook to cover, and then let them go to it. (A great place to hire writers who won't charge you an arm and a leg is http://www.elance.com/. Or, if you're just starting out and don't have any extra money to invest in product development, you could create an "interview compilation" book. All you have to do is interview various leaders in your industry then type up the interviews and put them all together in your eBook.

For example, if you want to sell a book on how to house-train a puppy, interview three or four well-known dog trainers in your area. Then type up the transcripts of the interviews and put them together in an eBook.

You could even consider compiling articles written by other people that focus on a particular topic of interest to your customers. Maybe there are already a bunch of articles online that talk in detail about the different ways to house-train a puppy. All you have to do is get permission from the original authors to reuse their content, put all the articles together into an eBook, and ta-da! You've got a product on your hands.

How do you get permission from the authors? Simply explain to them that your eBook will provide great publicity for them and let them know you are planning to widely distribute the final product. Make sure they understand they'll receive full credit for their work and that their contact information will be made available to readers (along with mention of other products and services they might offer). Once you have compiled all of the contributors' work, you should have a highly valuable publication on your hands. And you didn't have to write any of it yourself!

The FASTEST way to be making good money online You can write a profit-generating eBook -- and build the site to sell it -- in as little as 2-3 weeks. There's no faster way to make a solid income selling your very own product online. And once your site is up and running, you can get feedback from your visitors and customers and start testing new ways to sell to them, so you can perfect your product and your sales process so it's making maximum profits in the minimum amount of time.

But that's not all... Once your eBook business is truly booming, you can start adding more products on to the back end, which you can then sell to your customers and boost your profits still higher! So that's my best possible answer to the never-ending question of, "What do I sell online?"

2008-01-06T09:32:00.000-08:00

Internet Advertising Homebusiness Ideas

There are several ways to make money online: Adsense - Advertising - Adwords - Affiliate Marketing - Blogging Co-Registration - Copywriting - Craigslist - eBay - Email Marketing-Forums - Free Traffic - Giveaways - Graphics - Internet Marketing-Joint Ventures - List Building - Membership Sites - Niche Marketing- Outsourcing - Private Label Rights - Product Creation - Resell Rights-SEO - Software - Squidoo - Traffic - Video Marketing - Viral Marketing

Advertisers,especially those with small budgets, can't afford to waste money on ineffective buys. In order to optimize your advertising buys, you need to concentrate on improving your creativity.
Here are some tips that might help:
Step 1: Define clear goals of your advertising campaignThe most important aspect of any advertising campaign is to have a clear objective in mind. You may be targeting a specific group of people, your initial aim may be to target at least 1000 internet surfers and so on and so forth. Havea well defined, clear purpose.
Step 2: Identify the most effective sites for achieving your goals Sites that are most relevant to your product or servicewill, more than likely, be your best bet; but also consider larger sites or networks that can target the audience you're trying to reach. They can be very cost-effective. If youhave multiple products or services that appeal to various target markets, you'll have to consider sites that reach all those various segments.
Step 3: Craft your message to fit the needs of the audienceyou're targetingThis comes down to understanding the audience of the sites you're advertising on. The message you use on a technologysite to appeal to technologically savvy customers won't have the same appeal for visitors on a small-business site. Focus your campaign.
Step 4: Content of your AdPay particular attention to the content of the Ad. The content should be such that it clearly distinguishes your product or service from your competitors'. Have a catchyheadline. The headline is probably the most important partof the Ad - It is the customer puller.
Step 5: Formulate the specific promotional messages that correspond to your goals. The promotional messages should concentrate on the majorselling points of your product or service and have a strongcall-to-action.
Step 6: Make the desired action clearly visibleThis certainly doesn't mean the desired action should necessarily blink, bounce or do flips, but it should bevisible within an accepted format for the media you'reusing. In the case of the Internet, underlined text links,"click here" text entry boxes, and pull-down menus are allways you can make the desired action clearly visible.
Step 7: Design the ad so it looks like it belongs on thesites where you're advertising For instance, you may want to use the site's font faces in your text, color schemes in your background, font colorchoices overall, and emulate images where appropriate. Try to conform to the environment so potential customers visiting the site don't gasp in shock when they see your ad.
Step 8: Produce multiple versions of each ad Create three or four versions of each ad, changing thepromotional message, call-to-action, font faces and colorschemes. This is especially important if you're doing price testing or gauging reaction to specific promotions. By splitting your advertising buy among the various versions of your creative, you can then start to optimize your buy based on the message that works best.

With these tips, you will not only be able to create an ad, but you will be able to create an effective ad that doeswhat it is supposed to do - sell your products and services.

2007-12-28T01:06:00.001-08:00

Internet Marketing Explained Homebusiness Ideas

Bad uses of time include...

1.Checking your sales stats constantly - check them at the end ofthe day if you must

2.Checking email all day long - I constantly struggle with this. Myphone allows me to check my email and I've gone so far as to checkmy email several times on a date.

3.Reading everyone's emails - start unsubscribing from othermarketers lists. You shouldn't be spending any more money online until you have a hosting account, domain name and autoresponder.

4.Being on instant messenger all day - Only use instant messengerwhen you have to

5.Being on forums and sites like myspace/facebook all day long -set a time limit

Good use of Time on include...

1.Writing sales copy - you need to be able to write sales copy orhave someone else write sales copy for you

2.List building - you need to work on building your list. My listallows me to spend a lot of time doing what I want to do all daylong.

3.Networking (JV's) - start connecting with other marketers andstart going to offline events

4.Product creation - you should have your own products it is easierto sell your own products to your existing customers so keep givingthem what they want

5.Public speaking - be on teleseminars, webinar or start speakingat events because you can create a product while you speak and makemoney selling products at the end.

6.Testing - start testing your sales copy when you boost your salescopy you will build a bigger list and make more money.

7.Write Articles - articles are a wonderful way for you to becomean expert in your prospects eyes and you can use them in yourproducts as bonus special reports

2007-12-22T04:30:00.000-08:00

How to Secure Your Computer, Disks, and Portable Drives

Computer security is hard. Software, computer and network security are
all ongoing battles between attacker and defender. And in many cases the
attacker has an inherent advantage: He only has to find one network
flaw, while the defender has to find and fix every flaw.

Cryptography is an exception. As long as you don't write your own
algorithm, secure encryption is easy. And the defender has an inherent
mathematical advantage: Longer keys increase the amount of work the
defender has to do linearly, while geometrically increasing the amount
of work the attacker has to do.

Unfortunately, cryptography can't solve most computer-security problems.

The one problem cryptography *can* solve is the security of data when
it's not in use. Encrypting files, archives -- even entire disks -- is
easy.

All of this makes it even more amazing that Her Majesty's Revenue &
Customs in the United Kingdom lost two disks with personal data on 25
million British citizens, including dates of birth, addresses,
bank-account information and national insurance numbers. On the one
hand, this is no bigger a deal than any of the thousands of other
exposures of personal data we've read about in recent years -- the U.S.
Veteran's Administration loss of personal data of 26 million American
veterans is an obvious similar event. But this has turned into Britain's
privacy Chernobyl.

Perhaps encryption isn't so easy after all, and some people could use a
little primer. This is how I protect my laptop.

There are several whole-disk encryption products on the market. I use
PGP Disk's Whole Disk Encryption tool for two reasons. It's easy, and I
trust both the company and the developers to write it securely.
(Disclosure: I'm also on PGP Corp.'s Technical Advisory Board.)

Setup only takes a few minutes. After that, the program runs in the
background. Everything works like before, and the performance
degradation is negligible. Just make sure you choose a secure password
-- PGP's encouragement of passphrases makes this much easier -- and
you're secure against leaving your laptop in the airport or having it
stolen out of your hotel room.

The reason you encrypt your entire disk, and not just key files, is so
you don't have to worry about swap files, temp files, hibernation files,
erased files, browser cookies or whatever. You don't need to enforce a
complex policy about which files are important enough to be encrypted.
And you have an easy answer to your boss or to the press if the computer
is stolen: no problem; the laptop is encrypted.

PGP Disk can also encrypt external disks, which means you can also
secure that USB memory device you've been using to transfer data from
computer to computer. When I travel, I use a portable USB drive for
backup. Those devices are getting physically smaller -- but larger in
capacity -- every year, and by encrypting I don't have to worry about
losing them.

I recommend one more complication. Whole-disk encryption means that
anyone at your computer has access to everything: someone at your
unattended computer, a Trojan that infected your computer and so on. To
deal with these and similar threats I recommend a two-tier encryption
strategy. Encrypt anything you don't need access to regularly --
archived documents, old e-mail, whatever -- separately, with a different
password. I like to use PGP Disk's encrypted zip files, because it also
makes secure backup easier (and lets you secure those files before you
burn them on a DVD and mail them across the country), but you can also
use the program's virtual-encrypted- disk feature to create a separately
encrypted volume. Both options are easy to set up and use.

There are still two scenarios you aren't secure against, though. You're
not secure against someone snatching your laptop out of your hands as
you're typing away at the local coffee shop. And you're not secure
against the authorities telling you to decrypt your data for them.

The latter threat is becoming more real. I have long been worried that
someday, at a border crossing, a customs official will open my laptop
and ask me to type in my password. Of course I could refuse, but the
consequences might be severe -- and permanent. And some countries -- the
United Kingdom, Singapore, Malaysia -- have passed laws giving police
the authority to demand that you divulge your passwords and encryption
keys.

To defend against both of these threats, minimize the amount of data on
your laptop. Do you really need 10 years of old e-mails? Does everyone
in the company really need to carry around the entire customer database?

One of the most incredible things about the Revenue & Customs story is
that a low-level government employee mailed a copy of the entire
national child database to the National Audit Office in London. Did he
have to? Doubtful. The best defense against data loss is to not have the
data in the first place.

Failing that, you can try to convince the authorities that you don't
have the encryption key. This works better if it's a zipped archive than
the whole disk. You can argue that you're transporting the files for
your boss, or that you forgot the key long ago. Make sure the time stamp
on the files matches your claim, though.

There are other encryption programs out there. If you're a Windows Vista
user, you might consider BitLocker. This program, embedded in the
operating system, also encrypts the computer's entire drive. But it only
works on the C: drive, so it won't help with external disks or USB
tokens. And it can't be used to make encrypted zip files. But it's easy
to use, and it's free. And many people like the open-source and free
program, TrueCrypt. I know nothing about it.

2007-12-17T01:48:00.000-08:00

Keyword Hot Spots HomebusinessIdeas

By placing your top-performing keywords in strategic places on your website, you tell the search engine "spiders" that those keywords describe exactly what your site is all about. And that's what convinces the search engines to include your site in the search results for those keywords.

So... where should you put your keywords on your site?Here are the strategic "hot spots" that are considered most important by the search engine "spiders":Keyword hotspot

#1: Your domain nameThe search engines REALLY like URLs that are saturated with keywords! Sites whose domain names include keywords will likely rank higher in the search engine results for those keywords than sites that don't.Brainstorm a list of URLs containing some of your hottest keywords.Next, check if the domain name is available by entering it into www.DomainTools.com.Did you find a keyword-rich domain that's available? If so, you should definitely consider snapping it up! (Even if you already have another URL, you can set this new domain up to automatically forward visitors to your existing URL.)You want to get that domain working for YOU -- instead of your competitors!Keyword hotspot

#2: A well-written title tagYour title tag is a simple piece of HTML code that's located in the "head," or top, of your Web page.Within the source of your web page, it looks something like this:
(title)Insert keyword-rich site description here (/title) In your title tag, include a descriptive, accurate bit of text that describes your business clearly, letting potential visitors know EXACTLY what they can expect to find on your site.For example, if "discount yoga mats" is your main keyword phrase, then in your title tags you could write something like:
(title)Discount yoga mats - Great selection of discount yoga mats for all yoga levels and all types of yoga(/title)As you can see, your main keyword phrase "Discount yoga mats" is in there twice, and the word "yoga" is used a number of times.Keyword hotspot

#3: Your headline tagsA headline tag (or tag) is like a brightly colored post-it note within your HTML source code that alerts search engine spiders to your headline and subheads — places that contain important information, according to the search engines.HTML (h) tags look like this:
(h1), (h2), (h3)As you can see, they always contain a number, since the search engine spiders view them in order of importance — an (h1) tag is more important to note than an (h2) tag, for example.Framed around a headline, an (h) tag looks like this within your source code:
(h1)Looking for a great selection of discount yoga supplies for all yoga levels and all types of yoga?(/h1)You should use an (h1) only once around your main headline, and (h2) tags around your subhead, like so:
(h1)Looking for a great selection of discount yoga supplies for all yoga levels and all types of yoga?(/h1)(h2)We've got the best quality yoga mats, yoga videos, and yoga gear at the deepest discounts!(/h2)(Notice how we included more "yoga" keywords in the subhead? This is another keyword hotspot opportunity you shouldn't pass up!)Keyword hotspot

#4: Your image tags The only thing search engine spiders can "digest" as they crawl your web page is text. Spiders can't index images so they skip right over them. But by placing keywords within the source code of your images, you can transform them into spider bait!Here's an example of what a regular image looks like in your source code:
(img src="myimage.jpg" height="120" width="476" /)As you can see, this piece of HTML code identifies the location of the image — "myimage.jpg" — to ensure it gets loaded to your web page.But by adding an tag, which is simply a place to insert text within this image HTML code, you can add more of your keywords to your web page, like this:
(img src="myimage.jpg" alt="Blowing Bubbles Bubble Gum Factory - homemade bubble gum - bubble gum kits" height="120" width="476" /)So instead of finding boring old source code attached to your image, the search engine spiders will find more keywords to index!Keyword hotspot

#5: Your description "meta tags(/a)"A description meta tag describes the purpose of your web page and ideally sits just below the title tag in the source code of your web site.Description meta tags look like this:
(meta name="description" content="Blowing Bubbles Bubble Gum Factory: your one-stop homemade bubble gum kit source offering entertainment for the whole family!")The text you include in your description tag usually appears as the blurb that's included in your listing in the search results. This blurb gives searchers an idea of what your site is about before they click through to it.However, not all search engines use your description meta tag to summarize your site — some will generate a random description from your web page content!Even still, it's worthwhile to include the tag in your source code for the ones that do feature it in the listing.Keyword hotspot

#6: Your keyword "meta tags(/a)"A keyword meta tag usually sits right under your description meta tag. At one time the keyword meta tag was essential for letting the search engine spiders know the keywords a web page was optimized for.Keyword meta tags look like this:
(meta name="keyword" content="homemade bubble gum kits, make your own bubble gum, making bubble gum")Here are a few guidelines for writing spider-friendly keyword meta tags:
List the 2-3 keywords you're optimizing that particular page for in order of importance, with your main keywords appearing first.
Separate keywords with a space comma or space, but avoid words like "and," "or," and "but" which take up room and are ignored by the spiders anyway.
Don't overdo it on your keywords. If search engines think you are "keyword spamming," you run the risk of being penalized.And last, but certainly NOT least...Keyword hotspot

#7: Your salescopyIn the search engine's eyes, your web page content is a VERY important element of your web site.... This because search engine spiders "crawl" through your site looking for text that tells them how to categorize your material.The spiders also check how relevant your site is to certain search terms, so you'll want to be sure to pepper your top-performing keywords strategically throughout your salescopy.The optimal spots to put keywords on your web pages are:
At least once in your first paragraph of content (two or three times, if possible)
At least once in your last paragraph of content (again, two or three times would be better)
A few more mentions in the body of your content if you can get away with itIn addition to your main keywords, you should also use slight variations and synonyms of them.For example, if your keyword phrase is "legitimate home business opportunity," be sure to include similar phrases, such as "legitimate home business opportunities," "legitimate business opportunity," and "work-at-home business opportunity." Not only will your content read better, the search engines will love it!...

Finally, I just want to point out that you should only try to optimize each page of your website for 2-3 keywords MAXIMUM. (That includes your main keyword and one or two secondary keywords.) You simply won't be able to do an effective job if you try to optimize your site for too many different keywords at once

2007-12-09T13:28:00.000-08:00

Opt-In Advertising Homebusiness Ideas

That's because the vast majority of online shoppers DON'T make a purchase on their first visit to a web site. Most people need a minimum of 7-8 points of contact with a business before they feel comfortable enough to buy from them.So if you don't reach out to them and give them a compelling reason why they should give you their contact information-- so you can stay in touch with them and overcome their buyer resistance -- you'll never realize your full income potential.

Here are some more reasons why it's essential that you start building an opt-in list as soon as you possibly can...
Your "opt-in" email list is made up of people who want to hear from you.
They've visited your site, or they've come into your shop, and they've decided that they like what they see enough to give you their email address.
They are actually inviting you to sell to them!
You are giving your customers and subscribers something they've ASKED you for.

When someone gives you their email address, they understand that you'll be using it to send them information they actually want to receive — meaning your opt-in list will be highly responsive to any email promotions you run in the future.

You are developing valuable lifetime relationships with your customers and subscribers.

Email allows you to contact the people on your list over and over again, so you can build genuine relationships with them. There's simply NO WAY you could do this offline without spending a fortune on printing and postage!

Every time you send a mailing, the response is 100% measurable.Unlike other forms of marketing and advertising, email allows you to evaluate the success of your campaigns within just a few hours. This will save you thousands in wasted advertising dollars!

Opt-in email marketing is effective... instantaneous... and FREE! This is my favorite thing about email marketing: You can contact your customers and subscribers whenever you want, with whatever offer you want, and it never costs you a single dime!So those are the "whys"... now here are the "hows":
The key to growing your opt-in list is to convince your visitors to give you their contact information by offering an enticing free gift that's so valuable they can't say "no" to it.

What kind of free gift am I talking about?Here are some ideas that have proven to be incredibly successful for us and our clients:
An eBook on a topic that's of interest to your visitors
A free report full of valuable information
A free subscription to an online newsletter that covers topics your visitors want to know more about
A free "how-to" course, delivered as a series of emails
Entry into a contest for a fabulous prize!

2007-12-02T09:15:00.000-08:00

Memory and Effective Presentation

The human memory has the ability to hear a 100 digit number or more once and then repeat it forwards and backwards, it has the ability to memorize a Shakespearean play word for word or memorize the stats of every baseball player for the last 100 years, and the human memory has the capability to meet 100 people in 20 minutes and recall every single name!

Now, the question is, are you doing these things? If not, the reason is simply that you have not been trained to. Two thousand years ago a Greek named Simonedes developed a memory method called 'Loci'. With this method, Simonedes numbered locations in his home. He started in the doorway and then logically proceeded around his home. He reviewed these items so many times mentally that if you asked him what was number 25 then he could instantly tell you what piece of furniture that number corresponded to.

These 25 objects were actually mental files for Simonedes. Then if he had a list of items he wanted to recall he would place them mentally on these objects in his home. Let's say that you are a professional who wants to give a speech without notes. Simply turn the key points into pictures and then file them to your 'house files'. When you are called upon to speak simply mentally walk through the house and give your talk without notes.

For example, recently I gave a one hour keynote in Atlanta at a home builders conference. I wrote my speech out the night before. The first thing I wanted to do was talk about the book, 'How to Win Friends and Influence People.' So I visualized the book on my front door and then mentally walked through my house and gave the one hour talk without notes! That can work for you as well. Anything that you want to recall simply turn it into a picture, place it on your house files and get ready to be amazed! YOU are the greatest computer ever created!

2007-11-26T04:28:00.000-08:00

The Effective opt-in form!Homebusiness Ideas

An opt-in form is simply a small script-based form on your site that allows you to collect people's names and email addresses and add them to a database, so you can send them relationship-building emails in the future.

If you don't have an opt-in form to collect your visitors' contact information on your site, I can guarantee that you're only making a small fraction of the sales you could be making!That's because the vast majority of online shoppers DON'T make a purchase on their first visit to a web site.

Most people need a minimum of 7-8 points of contact with a business before they feel comfortable enough to buy from them.So if you don't reach out to them and give them a compelling reason why they should give you their contact information-- so you can stay in touch with them and overcome their buyer resistance -- you'll never realize your full income potential.Here are some more reasons why it's essential that you start building an opt-in list as soon as you possibly can...

Your "opt-in" email list is made up of people who want to hear from you.They've visited your site, or they've come into your shop, and they've decided that they like what they see enough to give you their email address.

They are actually inviting you to sell to them!
You are giving your customers and subscribers something they've ASKED you for.When someone gives you their email address, they understand that you'll be using it to send them information they actually want to receive — meaning your opt-in list will be highly responsive to any email promotions you run in the future.

You are developing valuable lifetime relationships with your customers and subscribers.Email allows you to contact the people on your list over and over again, so you can build genuine relationships with them. There's simply NO WAY you could do this offline without spending a fortune on printing and postage!

Every time you send a mailing, the response is 100% measurable.Unlike other forms of marketing and advertising, email allows you to evaluate the success of your campaigns within just a few hours. This will save you thousands in wasted advertising dollars!

Opt-in email marketing is effective... instantaneous... and FREE! This is my favorite thing about email marketing: You can contact your customers and subscribers whenever you want, with whatever offer you want, and it never costs you a single dime!So those are the "whys"... now here are the "hows":

The key to growing your opt-in list is to convince your visitors to give you their contact information by offering an enticing free gift that's so valuable they can't say "no" to it. What kind of free gift am I talking about?Here are some ideas that have proven to be incredibly successful for us and our clients:

An eBook on a topic that's of interest to your visitors
A free report full of valuable information
A free subscription to an online newsletter that covers topics your visitors want to know more about
A free "how-to" course, delivered as a series of emails
Entry into a contest for a fabulous prize!

2007-11-18T12:55:00.000-08:00

Business and Biographies Homebusiness Ideas

"Don't worry boy, it will be alright. I've taken this road you are walkin' down. I've been in your shoes. It is just somethin' that you have got to go through. I had this same talk with my dad."
Those were the words I heard from my dad at the age of twelve, when my heart had flushed my eyes with tears because the life of my dog was flickering out. Through the years I have taken walks down the same road with my dad and I've heard different versions of the same speech when business was tough, friendships ended or I wasn't feeling my best.

Sometimes it is nice to know that what you are going through isn't an experience unique to you. There is comfort in knowing that others have been there and there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Often, when you are in the midst of the tunnel – the only thing that catches your focus is despair, discouragement and depression. Yet, it can turn your day around when someone ventures into the tunnel – walks with you and grabs your hand to say, 'I've been here... hang in there. I turned out alright and you will as well.'

Unfortunately, we don't all have someone who will tread into the tunnel and walk beside with encouragement. This is why it is so important to read biographies! A biography is a unique way to have a successful person walk beside you as you examine the story of their life. You will often be surprised that the most successful people of all time experience the same struggles as you.
Einstein was divorced, Lincoln battled depression, Ronald Reagan had his heart broken by his first wife and Sam Walton went broke twice. Where did I learn these facts? From the biographies I read! Did it make me feel better because they had hard times? Yes and no. I never delight in someone else's pain.

On the other hand, it is without question that Einstein, Lincoln, Reagan and Walton were monumental successes. It is refreshing and inspiring to read that they were also human and have walked down the same road that you and I have.

2007-11-11T08:49:00.000-08:00

The Meetings You Have With Yourself Homebusiness Ideas

You are your most important critic. There is no opinion so vitally important to your well being as the opinion you have of yourself. As you read this you're talking to yourself right now. "Let's see if I understand what he means by that… How does that compare with my experiences? – I'll make note of that – try that tomorrow – I already knew that…I already do that." I believe this self-talk, this psycholinguistics or language of the mind can be controlled to work for us, especially in the building of self-confidence and creativity. We're all talking to ourselves every moment of our lives, except during certain portions of our sleeping cycle. We're seldom even aware that we're doing it. We all have a running commentary in our heads on events and our reactions to them.

• Be aware of the silent conversation you have with yourself. Are you a nurturing coach or a critic? Do you reinforce your own success or negate it? Are you comfortable saying to yourself, "that's more like it". "Now we're in the groove." "Things are working out well." "I am reaching my financial goals." "I'll do it better next time."

• When winners fail, they view it as a temporary inconvenience, a learning experience, an isolated event, and a stepping-stone instead of a stumbling block.

• When winners succeed, they reinforce that success, by feeling rewarded rather than guilty about the achievement and the applause.

• When winners are paid a compliment, they simply respond: "Thank you." They accept value graciously when it is paid. They pay value in their conversations with themselves and with other people.

A mark of an individual with healthy self-esteem is the ability to spend time alone, without constantly needing other people around. Being comfortable and enjoying solitary time reveals inner peace and centering. People who constantly need stimulation or conversation with others are often a bit insecure and thus need to be propped up by the company of others.

2007-11-04T09:05:00.000-08:00

Challenges Propels You To New Heights homebusiness

What is the only single quality that distinguished those who succeed it from those who did not?
Adversity will come to everyone at some time. How you meet it, what you make of it, what you allow it to take from you and give to you, is determined by your mental habits.
You can train your mind to face life's toughest challenges-and it is important to develop this habit before you actually need it.

Challenges can actually be a positive thing, even though it certainly doesn't feel like it when we are facing it. Challenges define us. It is easy to have a great attitude, a strong work ethic and a positive outlook when things are going great. But how do we stand up during tough times?

Consider the following phenomenal achievements of famous people who experienced severe challenges:
- Walt Disney experienced both bankruptcy and a tragic nervous breakdown and still made it to the top of the mountain.
- President Harry S. Truman went broke in the men's clothing store he started.
- Sir Walter Raleigh wrote the "History of the World" during a 13-year imprisonment. - Martin Luther translated the Bible while enduring confinement in the Castle of Wartburg

We must push through the adversity we face. If we do not, we will be poorly prepared for winning. People are successful because they face challenges head on to gain strength and skill. They do not take the path of least resistance. Adversity is a powerful teacher.

2007-10-27T10:15:00.000-07:00

Link Building Secrets Top ideas homebusiness

Here are a couple tips before you start submitting your site to these directories...

Don't expect to get much traffic from the directories themselves. That's not what this is about. It's about getting those links! The more links you can get from high PageRank sites to yours, the higher you'll get ranked in Google's listings.

Every directory you submit to will ask for a short description of your site. Make sure you use your top keywords strategically throughout your description.However, you'll need to use a slightly different description for each directory you submit to. It'll make these links seem more authentic in the eyes of Google.

Now on to the directories!Here's a list of paid directories you should think about submitting your site to. If you do, you're sure to see a boost in your rankings, in a relatively short period of time:

Directory-URL-Price

Yahoo! Directory- dir.yahoo.com- $299
Best of the Web-www.botw.org-$69.95
GoGuides-www.goguides.org-$39.99
JoeAnt-www.joeant.com-$39.99
Wow Directory-www.wowdirectory.com-$37
Site-Sift-www.site-sift.com-$29.95
Uncover The Net-www.uncoverthenet.com-$49
Gimpsy-www.gimpsy.com-$40
Librarians Internet Index-www.lii.org-FREE
Site Snoop-www.sitesnoop.com-$10
Browse8-www.browse8.com-$35
01 Web Directory-www.01WebDirectory.com-$49
Starting Point-www.stpt.com-$99
Web Beacon-www.web-beacon.com-$39.99
Rubber Stamped-www.rubberstamped.org-$29.95
Illumirate-www.illumirate.com-FREE
Massive Links-www.massivelinks.com-$24.95
This Is Our Year-www.thisisouryear.com-$24.95
SevenSeek-www.sevenseek.com-$40
Aviva-www.avivadirectory.com-$34.95
Azoos-www.azoos.com-$89.95
Skaffe-www.skaffe.com-$39.99
DMOZ-www.dmoz.org-FREE

Although this isn't the cheapest way to get quality links to your website, it's definitely one of the fastest. And the extra traffic you'll get from a good ranking with Google will easily pay for your investment!Here are two final parting comments I want to leave you with:

Make sure you do your keyword research and pick the right keywords to include in your descriptions when submitting to the directories!The "right" keywords are the ones that send you visitors who are highly likely to buy your product. If your keywords don't attract qualified traffic, you can have a #1 ranking and still not make a penny.
Make sure your site is properly optimized for those keywords, using all of the strategies we teach in our Search Marketing Lab.If your site isn't optimized for your keywords, Google still won't include you in its rankings for those keywords -- no matter how many paid directory links you get. And it would be a shame to spend all that money on links for nothing, wouldn't it?

2007-10-20T05:35:00.000-07:00

Creativity and Curiosity HomeBusiness Ideas

Develop the curiosity of a child. Leonardo Da Vinci, who is said to be one of the greatest geniuses of all time, also had this creativity. I don't think that it is a coincidence that Leonardo and Einstein were both extremely creative and that so many years after their deaths we are still talking about them.
Let me give you a few of Da Vinci credentials:
500 years ago he:
- drew blue prints for the worlds first helicopter
- drew blueprints for a submarine
- built an extendable ladder that is still being used by fire departments today
- built the world's first hydraulic jack
- built a rotating stage
- and 500 years ago he build a water powered alarm clock!

Those are some pretty amazing credentials if you ask me.
Curiosity might have "killed the cat" but it can help you think like a genius. Leonardo Da Vinci had a book of questions. In this journal of sorts he would write down questions as fast as they would pop into his head. He would write down questions such as:
why do birds fly?
why do they slow down as they land?
what do their feathers do?

The interesting thing is that he didn't worry about the answers. He simply wrote down the questions because he knew something about the power of the human mind. He knew the subconscious mind was powerful and if he wrote down the questions his subconscious mind would continue to work on the answers.

Creativity is defined by Webster as "creative ability or intellectual inventiveness." This is a skill that everyone has to some extent. There are ways to improve your ability to create and generate new ideas. Not everyone can be a great artist or a creative genius, but it makes sense to make the most of the potential we are given.
Brainstorming is an extremely good way at practicing creativity. A brainstorm can work with an individual or a group. This technique requires the generation of as many ideas as quickly as possible to solve a problem.

It does not matter how outlandish an idea might be, all ideas are written down. The ideas need to be written down, and a time limit should be imposed for accepting ideas. If this is a group brainstorm, an individual should be appointed as recorder to write down the ideas. If this is an individual project, the person should write as the thoughts come. Remember the less judgment of ideas the greater the number of ideas generated. Although many of the ideas may be unreasonable and ineffective, they may lead you to the idea that will really work. It is helpful to set a goal for the number of ideas you wish to generate. This will give you something to work toward, and may unleash the perfect solution.

Journal your thoughts for future use. This includes writing down dreams, insights, experiences, quotes, problems with friends, and any other information that is pertinent to you. This should have some kind of organization so you can look back on it periodically. You may find the answer to a problem in last month's dream, so remember to review these personal logs frequently. This system will compliment the complex subconscious mind, and allow you to retrieve from this boundless resource.

Allow your ideas to develop and follow through on them. It is said that a good idea is worth fifty cents, and the plan to implement that plan is worth millions of dollars. It has been said another way as well: Anyone who has ever taken a shower has had an idea. It is the man who gets out of the shower, dries off and does something about it that changes the world.
As you learn about creativity and the techniques that work best for you, a whole new world will open up to you. Creativity can be helpful in problem solving, dealing with people, and creating success in all areas of your life. Take the time to tap into your greatest power, the power of the imagination and increase your creativity in all areas of life.

Sometimes when we face a problem we struggle with our thoughts so much, our energy is spent. The stress that comes with this kind of problem solving also affects how we think. If the anxiety level becomes too high, parts of the brain will shut down and it is impossible to generate the ideas needed to deal with the problem. When faced with too much stress the mind goes into the "fight or flight" mode. This allows the mind to deal with only two alternatives, fighting the opponent or fleeing the danger.

You can avoid these mind numbing emotions by altering your environment. When you feel yourself getting stressed out or you begin losing your focus, walk away from everything for a change of scenery. Allow yourself to focus on another task. Some people, golf, juggle, or exercise to get away from their mind blocks. When you return to this important task, you will have shifted from your stressed out mind set to a new relaxed and ready to conquer attitude.
Blaise Pascal said, "Almost all of the problems of mankind arise from the inability to be alone with oneself in a room for any period of time."

Getting away from the problem allows your subconscious mind to problem solve, while your conscious mind is occupied with other things. Sometimes you will find the solution to your problem in your sleep. This is when the subconscious mind is most active. Basically, all your experiences and learnings are stored in this part of the brain. This is where your creativity gets turbo-powered. If you can tap into this force you will have creative powers beyond your wildest expectations.

Another good way to help your creativity is to read. That is right, read.You see when you read your subconscious mind is automatically creating pictures whether you like it or not. So develop a passion for reading and watch your creativity increase. Both Einstein and Da Vinci were avid readers. Model this behavior and watch your creativity increase.
Einstein said that he would simply imagine it so and then go about to prove it. In other words the creative process occurred before the experiments.

2007-10-13T04:00:00.000-07:00

Keeping Your Attitude Up HomeBusiness Idea

"Instead of spending your time thinking about how bad things are, think about how good they will be!"
Everyone knows that a positive attitude is key to the successful life. But what happens when things go wrong? What happens when circumstances deal us a blow? We have a tendency to let our attitudes take the dive along with our state of affairs. Life deals us setbacks, both minor and major, on a regular basis, but if we are going to be successful, we need to know how to deal with them and keep our attitudes intact! We need practical tools to help us understand how we can go about keeping our attitude up, when the circumstances are down. Here are some thoughts to help us do so:

Take some time-out. I'm sure you are aware of what happens. You are going about your day and everything seems to be going well, when out of nowhere disaster strikes. All of your best-laid plans begin to tumble. Sometimes circumstances surprise us and we react. Unfortunately, this often compounds the problem because by reacting we tend to operate out of our weaknesses instead of our strengths. We make decisions that are not well thought out. We function with a bad attitude that says, "I can't believe this is happening!"

The next time circumstances turn against you, take some time to just step back from the problem and think. This will enable you to deal with the issue at hand rationally, instead of emotionally. It will allow you to put your state of mind back into its proper place. It gives you the opportunity to choose your attitude as you face the circumstances at hand. Remember that we don't have to do something right now. Go grab a cup of coffee and relax little bit. By doing this you function with you being in control and not the circumstances.

Keep your eye on the goal. A second step in keeping our attitude in the proper place is to make sure we keep the important things important. One of the biggest problems with trouble is that it gets your focus off of where it should be. When I experience difficult circumstances and people ask me how it is going, I tell them, "I am just keeping my eye on the goal." It has always been fascinating to me that when racecar drivers get into trouble, they keep their eyes straight ahead and do not move them away. There is just too much chance of wrecking that way. Instead, their eyes are on the goal, and this keeps them out of trouble. If you find yourself getting down about circumstances, sit down and write out what the goal is. Give some thought to how you can achieve that goal or others you may have.

A man was asked how he was doing and he responded, "Pretty well, under the circumstances." The other man asked, "What are you doing under the circumstances?" Good question. We shouldn't be under the circumstances we should be focused on the goal and moving forward.
Focus on solutions, not problems. The squeaky wheel gets the oil, the old saying goes. Negative circumstances don't sit idly by. They scream for our attention. When we face difficult circumstances, we tend to dwell on them. We talk about them, fret about them, and give them way too much attention. Instead of talking about problems, talk about solutions. Instead of spending your time thinking about how bad things are, think about how good they will be! Don't have family or staff meetings about the problems and how big they are.

Have meetings on the solutions and how you will implement them. Don't let yourself or other team members complain. Encourage them to solve, with an emphasis on the positive results that will come from doing so. Then take some time to put these solutions down on paper, so you can monitor your progress.
Get some positive input. The mind tends to build on itself, so when we begin to go in one direction, i.e. worry, it can be a slippery slope. One thing we must do is get our thoughts back on track with positive ideas. When circumstances have got you against the emotional wall, get with a good friend who can encourage you. Listen to a CD by Jim Rohn, Zig Ziglar or another motivational speaker. Pick up a good book and give it a read. Whatever external influence you can get to put your attitude back on the positive side of the tracks - do it! It must be one of our first goals to start plugging good things into our minds to fuel our attitudes.

Tell yourself the good. One of the greatest internal powers we have is the power to control our thoughts. Spend time dwelling on the good things about your life or job instead of the problems. Think about positive things, things you enjoy and give you a sense of happiness and peace. There is an old childhood song that says, "Count your blessings, name them one by one." That is great advice! Let your positive attitude develop from within as well as from without. This makes all the difference!
Remember that circumstances are not forever. Sometimes it seems like we are going to be up to our eyeballs in the situation forever, when in reality, this too shall pass. There will be a time in the future when circumstances will change and you will be on the mountain instead of the valley. This will give you a sense of hope as you live and work that will change your attitude, make you feel better and put you on the fast track for growth!

Some questions as we close:
Q. Do you have a habit of reflection before responding?
Q. Do you have a habit of keeping your eye on the goal?
Q. Do you focus on solutions or problems?
Q. Do you give yourself positive outside influence?
Q. Do you have a habit of telling yourself the good?
Q. Do you remind yourself that nothing is forever?

2007-10-05T07:41:00.000-07:00

Baby Steps in Online Business Homebusiness Ideas

If you are new to computers, the learning curve involved in starting an online business can seem insurmountable. On top of trying to figure out all the business and marketing stuff, you're also faced with technical challenges around every corner.So if you are a complete newbie with very little computer experience -- but are desperately eager to start a business on the Internet -- where do you begin?
Here is a step-by-step action plan that will give you the technical knowledge you need to get your business up and running as quickly as possible:

Step #1: Assess and build your general computer skills!
If you are reading this newsletter, it's probably safe to assume you have basic computer skills and know how to use common programs (such as Microsoft Word and Internet Explorer), send email, and navigate to different files on your computer.If you are not comfortable with these basic tasks, then you need to brush up on these skills -- and the easiest way to do that is pick up the following books:
PCs For Dummies (Or Mac for Dummies)
Windows for Dummies (Or Mac OS X for Dummies)

Don't take the 'Dummies' theme personally :-) -- these are great books that will teach you the fundamentals, so you can spend less time banging your head against your keyboard and more time building your business.Best of all, they can typically be purchased for less than $20 each on Amazon.com!Alternatively, you can also take an "Introduction to Computers" course at your local community college.Either way, you need to acquire these basic computer skills.The good news is, it shouldn't take you long to learn them. If you spend an hour a day reading one of the books mentioned above, you'll be able to acquire a solid foundation of skills in just a couple of weeks.

Step #2: Assess and build your general Internet skills!
Once you're comfortable with your basic computer skills, it's time to move on to your Internet skills. You need to know your way around the Web if you want to build a successful online business!This doesn't mean you need to know the technical details of how the Internet works. (For example, you're not going to fail if you don't know what the initials "http" means!)But you should understand the basic principles of how websites work and how they fit into the big picture of the Internet.The best way to figure this out is to buy the book "Internet for Dummies." It'll give you the fundamental knowledge you need to proceed to the next step.

Step #3: Build a Basic Website!
Some people will say you don't need to know anything about building websites in order to have a successful business on the Internet. All you have to do is hire web designers to do it for you.
(If you're able to afford it.) Personally, I don't subscribe to this theory.I believe it's important for you to have at least some basic understanding of how to design and set up your own website. These skills will give you a significant advantage when communicating with the designers you hire to build your site for you in the future.(And obviously, these skills are even more important if you decide to design and build your website yourself!)
If you choose to get someone else to build your site -- and don't have any web design skills of your own -- then you're totally at the mercy of your designers whenever you want to make little changes on your website in the future.Every time you want to change your salescopy... or your images... or your price point... you'll need to get THEM to do it. But if you know how to make the changes yourself, then you'll be able to save yourself both time AND money.
Now, you could learn basic web design skills from a book like
"Web Design for Dummies."However, since the skills you need for building a good website are more technical than the others we've covered, I suggest you look into taking a web design course at a local college. It'll help you fast-track the learning curve and bring you up to speed much faster than simply reading a book would.
Most community colleges offer web design courses take place one or two evenings a week over the period of a month or two. If you can afford to take a course like this, I strongly recommend it. It'll give you the knowledge you need to be a truly savvy website builder.

Step #4: Get your business started!
Now you're ready to start building your business on the Internet!Fortunately, for this step I can give you a complete step-by-step manual that will walk you through all the steps of starting and growing a successful business on the Internet, building on the technical skills you developed in the previous steps.

For more information on this manual and to try it for the next 30 days for only $2.95, click here to continue:www.marketingtips.com/business-building-tips

Starting a business on the Internet without any technical skills is a daunting task. But like most challenges in life, if you break it down into bite-size goals and conquer them one at a time with a combination of patience and perseverance, you will be surprised at how quickly you progress.All the best!

2007-09-29T13:40:00.000-07:00

How Email Marketing Works Homebusiness Ideas

I'll admit it, I'm an absolute NUT for testing.But when most email software these days allows you to test absolutely every single aspect of your marketing efforts -- so you can discover exactly what's working and what's NOT -- why on Earth would you not take advantage of that ability?When it comes to your email campaigns, I strongly urge you to test as many different elements as possible. These include:

Your offer: Try testing different price points, different bonuses to go along with your main product, different product "bundles" -- as many variables as you can come up with.

Different segments of your list: Send the same offer to different segments of your list (e.g., your customers vs. your subscribers)

Subject lines: This is the first point of contact with your audience. Your subject line has to grab their attention and encourage them to open your email!

The email itself: Be sure to test different email messages to see which one encourages the greatest number of buyers through to your salesletter.

Different calls to action: You never know what language is going to get your readers to click on your call to action! Maybe they'll respond to a simple "click here." Or maybe they like more casual language, such as "check it out by visiting..." Maybe they don't need the URL written out for them -- or maybe they do.The only way to know for sure is to test different calls to action -- and see which works best for you!

Time to send: Which day of the week yields the best response? And which time of day? Will you get better results if you send on Wednesday at 3:00 p.m. -- or Sunday at 8:30 in the morning?Once again, the only way to know for sure is to TEST. Most email marketing solutions allow you to do this kind of testing. If yours doesn't, it's time for you to start looking for a new software package or service provider.

Follow the rules!The rules I'm talking about here are the international laws that outline what emailers can and cannot do in order to avoid being labeled as spammers.Some of the things you'll need to do are...

Include your physical address in every email
Include easy-to-follow "unsubscribe" information in every email
Remove your "unsubs" from your list within the required 14 days
Remove all "hard bounceback" email addresses from your subscriber listThese are just of the few of the rules regarding email.

If you want to learn more of them, go to: www.spamlaws.com.There you'll find everything you need to know about the CAN-SPAM Act, which regulates emailers who live in the United States, as well as the rules that apply to Europe and elsewhere.One last thing: Be extremely wary of lists for purchase!Often you'll come across sites offering to sell you something like a list of a million names for the low, low price of $59.95.

Buying a list like this might seem like a good idea... but it's not.Chances are, the names and emails were taken without the people's permission. So when your emails start showing up in their inbox, they're going to think you're a spammer, and may even report you to their ISP or an anti-spam organization like SpamCop.Bam! Now you're blacklisted and aren't allowed to send email to anybody.

Just remember, if you follow the rules and be a good "email citizen," then you will be able to grow a responsive list of subscribers who will be eager to read your emails.

And a responsive email list = more sales for you!

2007-09-18T05:01:00.000-07:00

Start at Any Point, Just start homebusiness ideas

What we ponder and what we think about sets the course of ourlife. Any day we wish; we can discipline ourselves to change itall. Any day we wish, we can open the book that will open ourmind to new knowledge. Any day we wish, we can start a newactivity. Any day we wish, we can start the process of lifechange. We can do it immediately, or next week, or next month, or next year.

"We can also do nothing. We can pretend rather than perform. And if the idea of having to change ourselves makes usuncomfortable, we can remain as we are. We can choose rest overlabor, entertainment over education, delusion over truth, anddoubt over confidence. The choices are ours to make. But whilewe curse the effect, we continue to nourish the cause. AsShakespeare uniquely observed,
'The fault is not in the stars,but in ourselves.' We created our circumstances by our pastchoices. We have both the ability and the responsibility tomake better choices beginning today

2007-09-11T03:11:00.000-07:00

Four Words that Make Life Worthwhile (homebusiness Ideas)

Over the years as I've sought out ideas, principles and strategies to life's challenges, I've come across four simple words that can make living worthwhile.

First, life is worthwhile if you LEARN. What you don't know WILL hurt you. You have to have learning to exist, let alone succeed. Life is worthwhile if you learn from your own experiences - negative or positive. We learn to do it right by first sometimes doing it wrong. We call that a positive negative. We also learn from other people's experiences, both positive and negative. I've always said that it is too bad failures don't give seminars. Obviously, we don't want to pay them so they aren't usually touring around giving seminars. But that information would be very valuable – we would learn how someone who had it all then messed it up. Learning from other people's experiences and mistakes is valuable information because we can learn what not to do without the pain of having tried and failed ourselves.

We learn by what we see so pay attention. We learn by what we hear so be a good listener. Now I do suggest that you should be a selective listener, don't just let anybody dump into your mental factory. We learn from what we read so learn from every source; learn from lectures; learn from songs; learn from sermons; learn from conversations with people who care. Always keep learning.

Second, life is worthwhile if you TRY. You can't just learn; now you have to try something to see if you can do it. Try to make a difference, try to make some progress, try to learn a new skill, try to learn a new sport. It doesn't mean you can do everything, but there are a lot of things you can do, if you just try. Try your best. Give it every effort. Why not go all out?

For more on personal development

Third, life is worthwhile if you STAY. You have to stay from spring until harvest. If you have signed up for the day or for the game or for the project - see it through. Sometimes calamity comes and then it is worth wrapping it up. And that's the end, but just don't end in the middle. Maybe on the next project you pass, but on this one, if you signed up, see it through.

And lastly, life is worthwhile if you CARE. If you care at all you will get some results, if you care enough you can get incredible results. Care enough to make a difference. Care enough to turn somebody around. Care enough to start a new enterprise. Care enough to change it all. Care enough to be the highest producer. Care enough to set some records. Care enough to win.

Four powerful little words: learn, try, stay and care. What difference can you make in your life today by putting these words to work?

2007-09-06T03:57:00.000-07:00

How to Create a Successful Advertising Site (Homebusiness Ideas)

One that makes all its money through paid advertisements for other companies' products -- my first reaction is always to ask,
"Why bother going to the trouble of creating a site if you're just going to use it to advertise OTHER people's products instead of your own?"
People are often surprised to hear me say this... but the truth is, creating an ad site that actually makes good money involves a LOT of work.It's not as simple as putting up a web page and then hoping that advertisers will flock to you in order to get their ads on that page!In order for an advertising site to be successful, it needs...

1. A LOT of traffic: Advertisers are only willing to pay for space on your site if they know you can get their ads in front of HUGE numbers of qualified leads.In order for this revenue model to work for you, you need to have a lot of highly targeted traffic coming to your site.Remember, on the Web, all conversions related to advertising are trackable, which means advertisers will know exactly how many people click on the ads on your site, and how many of those people actually convert into customers. They're not going to pay you unless you send them enough paying customers to cover their advertising costs.So... what does this mean for you?It means you have to be able get your site listed at the top of the search engine results, in order to guarantee high traffic numbers. And that means devoting many hours a month to optimizing your site and using strategies such as article sharing, blog writing, and forum participation to build a huge web of links all pointing back to your site.Again, I have to say -- that's a whole lot of work simply to advertise other people's products!Of course, you can also put Google Adsense ads on your site -- but since you're only going to make pennies a click for those ads, unless you're getting thousands of highly targeted visitors to your site a day, all you can expect from Google Adsense is a little extra pocket money each month.

2. A HUGE content-rich presence on the Web: The more advertisements that appear on a web page, the less effective any one of those advertisements will be. After all, they'll all be competing with each other for your visitors' attention.That's why -- in order to be successful -- an advertising site should have a huge number of content pages, with just one or two advertisements per page at most. That way, you'll be able to offer valuable content to your visitors without overwhelming them with the number of advertisements you put in their path.If you bombard your visitors with ads -- and don't provide them with any useful information otherwise -- they will leave your site and never come back.Not only that, but the search engines (who LOVE web pages that are loaded with valuable content -- and HATE web pages that have nothing but ads on them) will knock your site to the bottom of their listings.So... how large does your site need to be? The ones that are actually making good money using Google Adwords and other forms of advertising tend to have anywhere between 1,000 and 300,000 pages.These aren't just websites... they're full-scale information empires!And it's not like the owners of these sites just throw up a whole bunch of content pages and then hope for the best... they spend all their time on keyword research to find the juiciest keywords out there, and then fully optimize their pages so that they appeal to both the search engines AND their human visitors.As you can guess, this is more than full-time job.

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3. A large and responsive opt-in list: You will have a far better chance of actually getting people to click on your clients' advertisements if you include them in a weekly e-newsletter that you send to your opt-in list.Of course, first you have to develop that opt-in list...... Which means including an attractive opt-in offer on your web pages that encourages people to join your mailing list, and then sending them tons of valuable free information so they look forward to your emails and actually open them -- and, hopefully, click on those ads.

4. A community-centered, user-friendly site: One of the best ways to make an advertising site profitable is to increase its "stickiness" by turning it into a popular community hangout.You can do this by adding a forum to it and encouraging your visitors to talk to each other about their shared interests, and the problems they're hoping to solve. This has the added advantage of getting your visitors to create content FOR you -- so you don't have to spend as much time writing articles, etc. yourself.You also want to make sure your content is as accessible to your visitors as possible!I recently came across a realty advertising site that required its users to fill out fields of personal information before they could even look at the property listings.
(And to make matters worse, the privacy policy stated that the site owners had the right to sell that personal information with other businesses -- yikes. Hello, spam!)Remember, the success of an advertising site depends on the ads being seen by as many people as possible. If you make your visitors jump through a bunch of hoops before they are able to access your site's content, how many of them are going to stick around long enough to see the ads on your web pages?Not very many, I'm afraid.

So, should you abandon the advertising model altogether?As you can see, creating a profitable ad-based site requires a LOT of work. And if you're going to do all that work, you might as well go one step further and create your own product to advertise on your site.That way, instead of making just a few dollars -- or even pennies -- per ad, you get to keep ALL the profits from the sale!However, if you find the idea of creating your own product to be particularly daunting, there IS an easy way to make money online that doesn't involve having your product.

I'm talking about affiliate marketing, of course. Typically, you'll make far more money as a company's affiliate -- earning a commission for each sale you help them make -- than you will from traditional advertising.Why? Because businesses are willing to pay FAR more money for actual sales!But ultimately, you will earn the most money by selling something you have created yourself.However, that doesn't mean you should completely IGNORE advertising. When you're first starting out, you might find it a useful way to generate a few extra bucks to supplement your income as you work on developing your business.You could start by building information-rich content pages that have a moderate amount of advertising on them -- and then replace those ads over time for plugs that promote affiliate products.

Then, as you listen carefully to your audience and discover the products they're most interested in buying -- as well as the products they'd like to buy, but aren't having any luck finding online -- you can work on developing your own product that has its own special USP (unique selling proposition) and explode the profitability of your business!

2007-08-30T03:12:00.000-07:00

How to Identify Genuine Drop Shippers (Homebusiness Ideas)

Whether you're just getting started with an online store or you're a veteran eBay Powerseller, drop shipping provides an easy entry point into wholesale buying.Drop shippers are simply wholesalers who are willing to send products directly from their wholesale warehouse to your customers' homes for you, one at a time.
For online sellers, this product sourcing method offers numerous advantages -- no inventory investment, no storage or shipping issues, and the ability to offer a much broader product selection.It's also an excellent model to test new products and identify hot sellers (so you can source them in bulk for even greater profits).
Of course, drop shipping does have its limits, two in particular: slimmer profit margins and occasional delivery problems.

Using drop shippers brings certain strengths to your Internet business, but that doesn't mean you should limit yourself to using only drop shipping. No single sourcing method will make you truly successful. Using only one method is like driving a car with only one wheel... four wheels works much better. Drop shipping provides a great complement to your other sourcing techniques, and should be one part of your overall product sourcing strategy.Unfortunately, locating real wholesale drop shippers isn't all that easy.

Most new Internet retailers start by looking in the search engines -- this is actually the worst place possible to look for legitimate wholesalers and drop shippers.You'll almost never find legitimate wholesale suppliers advertising in the search engines. The suppliers that advertise there are, with few exceptions, middlemen and scammers, trying very hard to convince you they're true wholesalers.There are a couple of different ways you can locate real, genuine wholesale drop shippers on your own:
Attend quality trade shows and meet with wholesalers and manufacturers who've been vetted by a trade association. Not every exhibitor at a show will drop ship, but many will, and you'll know that they're legitimate.
Call the manufacturer of the product you want to sell, and ask for a list of their factory-authorized wholesalers. Then start calling the suppliers on that list to see which ones drop ship. Once you know you're looking at genuine suppliers, you can start narrowing down the list of ones you want to work with. You do that by asking questions.The following are a few questions that can help you determine whether a drop shipper is a good fit for your E-Biz

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(some of these questions may also apply to other types of wholesale suppliers):
Do you work with online retailers?
The fact is that wholesalers aren't always eager to work with online sellers. Wholesalers operate on thin profit margins and make their money selling in large quantities.Most feel they're wasting the time and expense it takes them to set up lots of little accounts for e-tailers that they don't expect to place any sizeable orders on a regular basis. Many of them also have sales territories that they'd violate if they let their customers sell across the Internet.It's important to establish early in your conversation that you're talking to a wholesaler that will work with your online business.
Do you work with eBay sellers?
If you are mainly an eBay Seller, you'll want to ask this question too. Even if a wholesaler will work with online sellers, that doesn't always mean they'll work with eBay sellers. This is because the manufacturers of the products fear their items will be devalued in the market if they sell for too little there.If eBay is your main sales venue, you don't want to waste time setting up accounts, only to discover a supplier won't allow you to sell their products there.

Do you offer single-item drop shipping?
The key phrase here is single-item. If a drop shipper has a quantity minimum for drop shipping, then you can't offer their products to your customers Without imposing those same quantity demands. Look for suppliers who will drop ship items for you, one at a time.

What is your minimum dollar amount requirement for drop shipping?
Some drop shippers have a minimum dollar amount (sometimes called a minimum ticket). This limits the way you can offer their products -- you may have to bundle them, or simply avoid carrying any of their single items that cost less than their minimum order.

Do you offer blind drop shipping?
Blind drop shipping means the drop shippers' name doesn't appear on your labels, invoices, or inserts, so your customer is unaware of where package comes from. They may use a label that simply says "Fulfillment Center" or a blind PO Box.The end result is that they remain invisible to your customers, and your small business appears larger than it really is.

Locating genuine wholesalers is a tedious, pain-staking process: from tracking down manufacturers, to attending trade shows, to finding wholesalers willing to work with home-based E-Biz. You must be patient, take the time, and do the work to find authentic wholesalers.Of course, there's an easier way to find real suppliers:
At OneSource, the Internet's largest source of factory-authorized suppliers who will single-item drop ship for your online business.
Beyond drop shippers, OneSource lists every kind of supplier your business could ever need -- light bulk (low minimum) wholesalers, general wholesalers, liquidators, even direct import buys.

2007-08-28T01:04:00.000-07:00

The Simple Secret to Having More By Doing Less (Homebusiness Ideas)

The secret I'm referring to is known by several names. Maybe you've heard it called the Pareto Principle, or the 80/20 Rule.
The 80/20 Principle states that 80% of results, rewards, or outputs are generated by 20% of causes, efforts, or inputs.
In other words, when it comes to getting the results you want, only a very few things you do really matter. The rest...well, they're just a waste of your time.

Business philosophers love to talk about the 80/20 Principle, because it applies so clearly to corporate situations. You've probably heard it said that 80% of profit comes from 20% of customers, or that 20% of a company's staff generates 80% of its productivity.
But the 80/20 Principle is much, much bigger than that. It's a universal, natural fact, proven over and over again in scientific research. And it's visible in nearly every imaginable circumstance.
For instance, in the wider world, roughly:
20% of thieves account for 80% of the value of all crime
20% of drivers cause 80% of all car accidents
20% of any community's population utilizes 80% of its resources

And if you look at your own personal life, you'll find that about:
20% of the time you spend at work accounts for 80% of what you achieve
20% of your clothes are worn 80% of the time
20% of your home's carpeting receives 80% of the wear

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These fascinating little statistics demonstrate the truth of the 80/20 Principle — and the fact that, like it or not, it has an impact on your life.
Interesting, you're probably thinking. But where is the power he keeps talking about?
Well, the real power of the 80/20 Principle — the secret to using it as a tool for massive life transformation — lies in finding, focusing on, and exploiting the most important 20% of your resources in every situation in your life.
I'm not talking about cheating or cutting corners. I'm talking about learning to identify the things that matter most to you and add the most value to your life...shifting the majority of your energy and attention to those things...and disregarding everything else.

In theory, applying the power of the 80/20 Principle is really quite simple.
You see, we've all been ingrained with 50/50 thinking. We intuitively believe that hard work will bring about equal results. That cause and effect are equally linked.
The 80/20 Principle demonstrates that just the opposite is true. The world is imbalanced. Everything isn't fair. Working really hard doesn't necessarily mean you'll be amply rewarded. And hardly working at all can sometimes make you a multimillionaire.
That can be a very difficult idea to get your mind around. It can be even harder to put it into practice. After all, we're programmed to believe that a truly productive workday must consist of eight hours at a minimum. It can feel impossible to cut that down to just one or two hours, even when the results you're generating are the same or even better.

2007-08-22T02:15:00.000-07:00

Developing Your Vocal Impact (Part II)

Remember to try to 'fill down' with your breath - rather than filling up and lifting your shoulders and chest. The latter cuts you off from your breath powerhouse in your centre.

Centring the breath enables you to:

Project without push
Be connected to a deeper place - thus giving you more gravitas
Work freely, because you would not be supporting your voice in your throat
Open up your pitch range - giving variety and interest
Resonate more effectively

Find that centred, grounded position again and try to maintain it throughout the exercises

Place the flat of your hand between the base of your ribcage and your navel
Breathe out fully through an open mouth; notice that little moment of 'nothingness' deep inside you as your body changes gear from breathing out to breathing in. Wait for the impulse for you next IN breath and the relax the area beneath your hand in order for the breath to replace. Repeat 6 times, always making sure not rush the exercise.
Breathe out fully and easily through an open mouth, letting the outgoing breath last for a mental count of 5. Relax the area in the centre of your body, as in the previous exercise, in order for the breath to be drawn in. Then release the breath for six mental counts then 7, 8, 9 and 10 - always relaxing in your centre, not lifting your upper chest. Think of the outgoing breath as warm quality and allow your throat and jaw to release and feel spacious
Then repeat the exercise but count aloud easily fo five on one breath. Send the counts to a specific place across the room. Repeat, gradually extending the counts as far as you can without feeling strain. Always stop when you feel your breath supply has been exhausted.
Repeat - this time intoning the counts. Start on a comfortable, mid register, but try going to your lower register and upper register, before going back to your most comfortable range. Keep the voice forwards as though the sound is leaving you on an arc of energy.
Ribs - Place the back of your hand on your ribcage. Breathe without lifting your upper chest, feeling your lower ribs expanding. Then find a point some distance away from you. Focus clearly on that place and send a stream of hissed sound on 's' to that place for 5 mental counts.
Repeat on a 'z' and a 'v' - focusing the sound across the space in a steady stream

RESONANCE

Using your breath support, hum a very internal hum and feel all the vibrating places on your face, neck and skull. Turn the hum into a 'chewy' hum to get the facial muscles involved. Try to focus the hum to different surfaces, notice how the voice resonates differently in each place. Repeat as you go from 'mmm' to 'ah' then 'mmm' to 'oo'. Also to different surfaces. Try saying the opening of a speech, feeling the vibrations of your voice coming forwards into your cheeks, lips, back of neck and top of skull. Do it on different pitches. Speak it feeling grounded with your energy filling your personal space and beyond.

ARTICULATION

First massage your face and jaw, being aware of any particular tension areas. Yawn vertically, horizontally and with your lips together - each time keeping your tongue tip in light contact with the back of your lower front teeth and programming your soft palate at the back of the roof of the mouth to rise.

Stretch your tongue out onto your chin to release tension from the tongue root. Speak with your tongue out on your chin and then with it back inside your mouth noticing how free it feels as a result. Say the "the sixth sheik's sixth sheep's sick" with precision and clarity, without missing out any of the sounds. When you feel it is clear, speed it up, still maintaining clarity.

Repeat on: Peggy Babcock (6 times -gradualyy speeding up) and Popacatapetyl, Popacatapetyl, Popacatapetyl - Pop

Finally:

Always make sure you understand and believe in what you are saying. This applies equally to conversation as it does to presentations and speeches
Wherever necessary and possible, prepare the material to be spoken
Most listners want to hear you speak, they are generally on your side and want you to do well.

Homebusiness Ideas

2007-08-20T06:05:00.000-07:00

Developing Your Vocal Impact (Part I)

With just ten minutes of gentle exercise per day, you can build vocal stamina and improve the tone of your voice.
Always start with some gentle limbering to release excess tension from your body. Work from a ‘centred’, grounded position, with a strong spine, but working towards releasing the muscles you are not using.
The breath is the powerhouse for the voice, so once you feel your body is released and centred, start to focus on your breath. Always try to breath to the base of your lungs not into the top or you will risk causing shoulder and chest tension.
Once you feel the breath is ‘centring’, then go onto sounds, words, sentences and whole speeches.

The Exercises:

Finding A Centred Position:
The body works at its best when it is firmly grounded and working in a state of equilibrium. First get the feet right
put the together
turn the toes to 'ten to the hour'
turn out the heels so the feet are parallel
within a short time, this will happen instinctively without you having to gom through the whole process.
Close your eyes and start to part the area just below the belly button. Focus all your attention there and try to imagine the area beneath your hand as a ball of powerful energy. Imagine that energy spreading out all over your body. Feel the strong connection between your feet and the floor. Let your knees have a little 'give' in then- not bent and not braced back. Notice if you feel more connected in this 'centred' position.

Stretching:
First have a really good stretch. Stretch up to the ceiling, keeping your shoulders down, but feeling the stretch coming from your ribs and arms.
Develop into a stretch and a yawn to release the jaw and open your throat. Keep your tongue tip touching the back of your lower front teeth as you do this and conciously open the top of your throat.
Stretch up and hold the body in a tight position for a moment
Flop down as you breath out fully
Repeat This time
Stacking up the spine, starting at the tailbone and continuing up as though you are stacking small building blocks one on top of the other.
Leave your shoulders and head till last
Then let the neck stack up and the head float

Pushing
To release tension around the arms and shoulders, imagine you are pushing against a wall a foot away at shoulder height. Push really hard, then gradually release the effort and allow your arms to fall easily beside you.

Head & Neck
Then release your neck by allowing your head to fall heavily onto your chest. Raise it slowly until it feels well balanced on your shoulders. Try to use the minimum of effort and try to engage the muscles at the back of the neck - not the front.
Repeat this three times, Imagine your head getting heavier as it falls and lighter as it rises.
Repeat the above exercise, allowing the head to fall to the back and then each side in turn.
Each time there should be no sensation of 'placing' your head, but of allowing it to find its resting position on its own.

Chest & Shoulders
Lift your chest up and forward until you feel an exaggerated hollow in the centre of your back. Hold it there for a few mental counts and then release the chest.
Roll your shoulders forwards three times and back three times
Then lift them up to your ears and try to move them into different shapes
Try to speak with them up around your ears
Then loosely shake them up, notice the contrast while you speak.

Wrist & Ankles
Shake out your wrist - trying to make them go as completely floppy.
Remember, even tension in your hands- although a long way from your voice box it affects the way you sound.
Then do the same for each foot - shake them out as though you could gently shake your foot off.
Replace on the ground and feel the connection.

Homebusiness Ideas

2007-08-17T02:11:00.000-07:00

How to use EBay to Promote Your Internet Business (Homebusiness Ideas)

Few people realize what an incredibly useful tool eBay can be for promoting a "regular" Internet business.However, there is a right way to use eBay for promoting an off-eBay website -- and there is a wrong way.
The right way can drive huge waves of qualified visitors to your business... but the wrong way can get you banned from ever doing business on eBay again!So before I tell you about what you can do, I think it's important you understand what eBay's stringent regulations say you can't do. That way, you can make sure you never get on eBay's bad side, and can continue to tap into its enormous pool of 244,000,000 registered users!eBay DON'Ts:

DON'T include any links to your off-eBay website in your auction listings
DON'T include any links to your website in your eBay store or custom pages
DON'T include an opt-in offer in your auction listings
DON'T include an opt-in offer in your eBay store
DON'T automatically add your customers or visitors to your auctions to your opt-in list ...

In short, don't overtly try to send people off eBay or collect their information for marketing purposes on your auction listings, your eBay store, or any of your custom pages without their expressed consent."But wait a minute," you're probably thinking, "then how on earth can I use eBay to drive new visitors to my website?Well, there is one place you can include a link to your off-eBay website. AND you can put an opt-in form there to collect people's email addresses, so you can build a relationship with them and promote your products to them in the future.
What is this place? It's your "About Me" page. And it's the most important weapon in your eBay marketing arsenal!Here's how you use it...eBay DOs:

DO include a link to your off-eBay website on your "About Me" page, and encourage visitors to see what other products you have to offer
DO include an opt-in form on your "About Me" page, with a compelling offer -- an interesting newsletter or valuable free report -- that encourages people to sign up
DO use every possible opportunity in your auction listings and your eBay Store to encourage people to check out your "About Me" page
Tell them to go to your "About Me" page to learn more about important information such as your shipping policies
Tell them to read your FAQs on your "About Me" page
Tell them to learn more about the products you sell on your "About Me" page
When people buy something from you, send them ONE follow-up email to thank them for their purchase and invite them to sign up for your newsletter or free report, so you can get them on your opt-in list.

BUT: They HAVE to opt in for you to be able to mail to them!
(If you just start mailing them out of the blue and they complain to eBay, you WILL get kicked off the auction site for good.) And that's basically it! You create as many reasons as possible for people to visit your "About Me" page, and then you give them a compelling reason to...1. Sign up for your newsletter.
Check out your off-eBay store to see what you offer there, If you do it right, you'll discover that eBay is an excellent customer acquisition tool for your business.In fact, you might find it more effective NOT to sell your main product on eBay, but to sell related products for minimal profit, simply to grow your customer base so you can back-end sell your main products to them in the future.
Here's an example of what I mean... Say you sell an eBook teaching people how to cure their tennis elbow. eBooks are great products in the off-eBay world because you get to keep 100% of the profits from each sale.But on eBay, eBooks tend to sell for relatively cheap. So don't sell your eBook there, where you'll take a loss in profits!Instead, sell tennis-related dropshipping products on eBay for very little profit. You won't make a huge amount of money on the front end... but you WILL be able to grow a huge customer base of people who are obviously interested in tennis.Then, once you've persuaded them to sign up for your opt-in list, you can promote your "tennis elbow" eBook to them down the road -- as well as scores of other tennis-related products.And THAT's when the money will really start pouring in.

Finally, I'd just like to point out that eBay does regularly change their policies, so it's important you regularly check to make sure you're following eBay's official seller regulations, so you can stay on their good side.You can find everything you need to know about selling on eBay here: http://pages.ebay.com/sellercentral/resources.

2007-08-13T03:44:00.000-07:00

Essential Internet Business Tools(Homebusiness Ideas)

Imagine you have access to every software tool you might need to get your internet marketing business started. We will show you six essential software programs that you must have. Best of all they're free. These are not stripped down versions or limited time trials. These are full versions that are every bit as powerful and easy to use as the full retail programs you might be familiar with.

Open Office (openoffice.org) - Even if you have MS Office(tm), you need to check this office suite out. Open Office meets your needs word processing, spreadsheets, presentations, graphics, and databases. You can also create pdf documents on the fly.

Gimp (gimp.org) - This program rivals Photoshop(tm). Now you can create and edit graphics with ease. If you are already familiar with Photoshop(tm), then check out Gimpshop (gimpshop.com). This gimp version really looks and feels just like Photoshop(tm).

3D Box Shot Maker (bosseye.com/boxshot/) - Did you every wonder how those sales pages made the wonderful looking product box pictures? Now you can do it too. This great little program combined with gimp is all you will need to start knocking out great product graphics.
LS Screen Capture (linos-software.com/capture.html) - This program will let you capture whatever is on your screen. You can edit it in gimp for even better results.

NVU (nvu.com) - This Web Authoring System is similar to Frontpage(tm) and Dreamweaver(tm). Anyone can create professional looking webpages quickly and easily without knowing HTML or other technical stuff.

Audacity (audacity.sourceforge.net) - A great Audio Editor and Recorder. With this program you have everything you need to record and edit podcasts.

With these programs loaded onto your computer, you will have all of the tools to build a very profitable Internet Marketing business. You now have the professional tools to bootstrap yourself to success. Now go out and build a profitable business. Money is no longer holding you back

2007-08-04T23:45:00.000-07:00

Website Review (Homebusiness Ideas)

John and his wife own the site, which sells a variety of different guided journals.They haven't had much luck selling their books, so they turned to the IMC team for help

I have to say that writing in was great idea. Whenever your website has you completely stumped, the quickest way to pull yourself out of your rut is to reach out to an expert for advice.I'm pleased to offer you a helping hand.

In this site review, I'm going to focus on the following points:
1. Your business model
2. Your keyword phrases
3. Your salescopy
I hope these tips help you get your business on the right track!Now, to begin...

1. Your business model
The first thing I noticed when I looked at your site is that you're trying to sell products to completely different audiences.For example, the main product featured on your homepage is a pregnancy journal. But you also sell an engagement journal on the same site. And you have a couple of pages with links to affiliate sites -- for people who are looking to buy baby products, as well as people shopping for wedding products.Plus, you're also trying to sell home security systems on your site.
Online, this "something for everyone" approach simply doesn't work. I strongly urge you to set up a different dedicated site to promote each of your main products (e.g., your pregnancy journal and your wedding planner).
You'll have more success if you laser target your audience and speak directly to their specific needs, rather than muddying your message by trying to appeal to too many different people at once.(Then, once you start making some sales, you can stay in touch with your two main customer groups via email and promote different affiliate products to them over time.)
A good principle to follow is:
one problem + one solution = one website.
If you use one site to sell too many things to too many people, you'll end up selling to no one.

2. Your keyword phrases
One of the first things I do when checking out a website is look at its source code to see what keywords and phrases it's optimized for. After all, your keywords are the "key" to your success with the search engines.
I was pleased to see you do have keywords inserted into your meta tags (it's a basic search engine optimization technique that not everyone knows).
However, the cluster of words and phrases in your keyword meta tag is far too broad to be effective.
Your keywords include words like pregnancy, journal, and wedding. Individually, these topics don't really have much in common. And bundling them all together in your meta tags is going to dilute your ranking in the search engines.Plus, the keywords themselves are far too general.
If you do a search on "pregnancy" you get 81,700,000 results. And a search on "journal" yields 554,000,000 results! There's no point optimizing your site for keywords that have such overwhelming competition.
Instead, you need to find keywords that are far more focused and speak directly to your target market's needs.
For example -- and this is just off the top of my head -- phrases like "memory problems during pregnancy" or "how to celebrate my pregnancy" should get you a far more targeted audience for your pregnancy journals than simply, "pregnancy."But are these actually phrases people type into the search engines? I don't know... That's for you to find out. It's research time!Conduct some keyword research on Wordtracker (http://imc.wordtracker.com) to see exactly what phrases people are typing into the search engines in order find a solution to the problem YOUR product solves.(E.g., how to remember pregnancy, how to celebrate pregnancy, how to cope with pregnancy memory problems.)
Visit popular pregnancy forums, blogs, and chat groups. See if people really are talking about these problems -- and if so, what language they're using to describe them.THAT'S the language you should be using in your salescopy.Which brings us to our next point...

3. Your salescopy
People go online to search for information related to a problem they have. Your keyword research will show you exactly which problem your market is trying to solve -- and the specific phrases they're using to describe it.
Now it's time to put those phrases to work in your salescopy.You have to show visitors your site offers a solution to their problem. And you have to do it RIGHT AWAY.That's why you need a large, easy-to-read, very clearly defined headline at the top of your site.
It should be the first thing people see when they arrive at your site, and it needs to present their problem -- and promise a solution -- in an attention-grabbing way.(Also, your headline shouldn't be part of an image, as it is now. It should be text, like the rest of the copy on your site.
This allows the search engine spiders to crawl it -- which is important, because the search engines place a lot of importance on the text you've got in your headline tags.)
If you discover that your market is mostly looking for information on how to cope with memory problems during pregnancy, your headline might be something like this:

Do You Have "Pregnancy Brain"?
Discover how you can hold on toYour memories of this once-in-a-lifetime experience
And recall every "miracle moment"for decades to come
No matter HOW forgetful you are right now!

Other phrases you might want to work into your salescopy (either in the headline or elsewhere) include...
"Pregnancy is a magical experience you'll want to remember for the rest of your life.
But if you don't keep a record of your experience, you're at risk of losing those precious memories forever!"
"It's a known fact that when you're pregnant, your memory is AWFUL, due to all the crazy hormonal changes your body is experiencing.
If you don't write your experiences down, you'll forget them -- and never be able to recapture them."
"Your body is going through amazing changes right now... and you need to keep track of them! The "While You Were Waiting" pre-birth journal makes it easy for you record important medical information that will help you AND your baby for years to come."
"Plus, you can write down the time of your doctor's appointments, so you never miss a single one. It's so important for you to keep all this information in one convenient place!"
"It's not just for you -- it's for your baby. It helps answer their most important questions, "Who am I?" "Where do I come from?"
"Imagine sitting with your child one day and sharing the story of their pre-birth life with them. It's the beginning of the relationship, an essential part of the bonding process with your unborn child."
(Note that these phrases all talk about your product in terms of its BENEFITS, not its FEATURES.)
In your copy, your wife also needs to explain who she is and why she's the perfect person to offer this product.
For example, was SHE ever pregnant? Did she suffer from horrible "pregnancy brain" and worry that she'd lose the most precious memories of the whole experience?Did writing things down in a journal solve that problem?
Over time -- and several pregnancies, perhaps? -- did she perfect a style of journaling that made it easy for her to record all the important information in a way that made it easy to access?

A story like this will show your visitors that you and your wife can relate to their problem, and will make you seem far more credible.Also, you have to include testimonials on your page! People need to see real words from real people, explaining how your product has made their lives better.John, I know you said you haven't had many customers yet.
But you can easily get testimonials by giving your product away for free to friends and acquaintances (or people you meet online, at pregnancy forums, blogs, or chat groups).
Simply send them a copy and ask for some feedback in exchange.

Finally, your copy needs to include a strong call to action that compels your visitors to buy.In your case, you have a definite advantage. Your product comes with built-in urgency -- your audience's clock is ticking! They're going to have that baby -- and the longer they hesitate to buy your pre-birth journal, the more their memories slip away, never to be recaptured.
(And don't forget the P.S. at the end of your letter. It should restate your main benefits or emphasize the urgency angle.)

I hope that gives you enough to get you started.

2007-08-04T23:27:00.000-07:00

Mission Statement (Homebusiness Ideas)

If you're like most people, you've probably flirted around with New Year's resolutions: You've said, "THIS is the year I'm gonna lose weight and get in shape. Starting January 1, no more snacking. I'm joining the health club and I'm gonna work out daily. I may even do my first marathon."
What happens? By March 1 (the latest ...) you're back on the junk food regimen, you've been to the club a total of five times (you're "just too busy to get there"), and you've filed that marathon application in the trash. And you've concluded, "Resolutions don't work for me." (You've got a lot of company on that one ...)
Maybe you need a better approach. Instead of making a mental resolution, create a Mission Statement. The difference?

A Mission Statement
is a handwritten or typed-out paragraph
is posted someplace you can see it regularly
is committed to memory
has specific, measurable outcomes
has a deadline — in this case, December 31st

Here's a process you can use right now to create a Mission Statement for personal success in your career or business. Get out a pen and some paper, or if you'd like to do this online, go to http://www.nightingale.com/mission_select.aspx.

Step A. Write down 5 positive personality characteristics you like about yourself in your career/business. For example: willingness to learn, persistence, creativity, friendliness, sense of humor.

Step B. For the items you listed above, describe the way you express each positive characteristic on a regular basis in your career, using the word "by" to begin each phrase. For example, if you listed "willingness to learn" above, you might write "by being committed to ongoing professional development" below. Another example: If you wrote "persistence" above, you might write "by making sure the job always gets done" below.

Step C. Write down 5 goals you’d like to achieve by one year from today. Be sure to list a specific financial goal separate from these 5 goals.

Step D. Look back over Steps A, B, and C, circling the 3 most important items in each column.

Step E. Now fill in the blanks of the following paragraph: "My purpose is to express my __________________________ ,________________________, and ______________________ (write in the three items you circled in Step A) by __________________________________________________, by ________________________________________________, and by ____________________________________________ (write in the three items you circled in Step B) to create ___________________________________________________, ___________________________________________________ and _____________________________________________, (write in the three items you circled in Step C) and at least ____________ (write in your financial goal) by ___________ (write in the date one year from today)."

When finished, you will have a short paragraph that reads something like:

"My purpose is to express my intelligence, creativity, and people skills by continually learning and applying new ideas, by finding unique solutions to my clients' problems, and by building a powerful network of contacts to create 15 new corporate accounts, a steady flow of referral and renewal business, and full technological competence, and at least $125,000 in gross commissions by this date one year from today."

I hope you give this deceptively simple exercise a try, and I encourage you to follow the guidelines above by posting it where you can review it, committing it to memory, and reciting it daily. Then you won't need to make any more fruitless resolutions — you'll be like The Blues Brothers ... you'll be on "a Mission from God."

2007-08-04T03:26:00.000-07:00

Security and Compliance (Part III)

How to do BS7799/ISO17799 Projects

Who to Interview?

Security Management --------Sec Policy/Organisation

Security Management -----------Asset Classification and Control

Typically HR --------------------- Personnel Security

Site Security/IT manager------- Physical and Environmental Security

Business Manager/IT Manager--------------- Communications and

Operations Management

System Administration Staff---------------- Access Control

Development Staff-------------- System development

Business Continuity Manager---------- Business Continuity Management

Internal Audit/Legal-------------- Compliance

Appropriate staff/line Management----------- Business/Info Process

A Good Gap Analysis

Clearly defined scope

Clear findings against each control (good areas as well as gaps)

The ISMS

Clear practical and appropriate recommendations leading to compliance

All recommendations reinforced and supported by findings

Finalising Resources

Resourcing:

Match actions with in-house resources and confirm availability

Identify availability shortfalls

Identify where specialist support is needed

Obtain necessary approvals for SIP

Ensure the group have access to the full

Gap Analysis Report for guidance

Establish the ISMS through the creation of the Information Security Forum

Risk Assessment and BS7799/ISO17799

Define a systematic approach to risk assessment

Identify the risk

Assess the risk

Select control objectives and controls for the treatment of risk

Identify and evaluate options for the treatment of risk

Generic Steps

Identify assets

Identify asset dependencies

Business Impact Assessment (Asset Valuation)

Threat Assessment

Determine levels of risk (Risk Assessment)

Countermeasures Selection

Map to BS7799/ISO17799

Risk Treatment

Document Management

BS7799/ISO17799 section 4.3 calls for Distribution /Availability to staff as required

Version/ Change control

Documents to be dated (Including previous versions)

By implications, uniquely identifiable and fully controlled

ISO 9001 compliance is an advantage

Appropriate change control is needed for intranet solution

10 Tips for Success

1. Ensure senior management involvement

2. Recommend a realistic and useful scope

3. Develop a good risk assessment

4. Promote Active Risk management

5. Interpret the controls for the scope

6. Ensure early Security Forum creation

7. Ensure maximum use of the Statement of Applicability

8. Get internal third parties to sign up

9. Get audits underway to raise assurance

10. Take staff awareness seriously

Homebusiness Ideas

2007-07-31T07:37:00.000-07:00

Evaluating Security

The exact role of internal audit regarding information security varies widely among companies, but it always provides a significant opportunity for internal audit to deliver real value to the board and management. Internal auditors should play an important role in ensuring that information security efforts have a positive effect on an organization and protect the organization from harm.

Why worry so much about information security? Consider some reasons why organizations need to protect their information:

Availability. Can your organization ensure prompt access to information or systems to authorized users? Do you know if your critical information is regularly backed-up and can be easily restored?

Integrity of data and systems. Are your board and audit committee confident they can rest assured that this information has not been altered in an unauthorized manner and that systems are free from unauthorized manipulation that could compromise reliability?
Confidentiality of data. Can you tell your customers and employees that their nonpublic information is safe from unauthorized access, disclosure, or use? This is a significant reputational risk today!

Accountability. If information has been compromised, can you trace actions to their source?
An audit of information security can take many forms. At its simplest, the auditors will review the information security program’s plans, policies, procedures, and key new initiatives, plus hold some interviews with the key stakeholders. At its most complex, a large internal audit team will evaluate almost every aspect of the security program and even do intrusion testing.
This diversity depends on the risks involved, the assurance requirements of the board and executive management, and the skills and abilities of the auditors.

For example, if the organization is undergoing extensive change within its IT application portfolio or IT infrastructure, that would be a great time for a comprehensive assessment of the overall information security program (likely best just before or just after the changes). If last year’s security audit was positive, perhaps a specialized audit of a particular activity or an important e-commerce application would be useful. The audit evaluation can, and most times should, be part of a long-term (read: multi-year) audit assessment of security results.

Homebusiness Ideas

2007-07-25T08:12:00.000-07:00

Security and Compliance (Part II)

BS7799 Contents of Part 1

• Scope
• Terms and definitions
• Security policy
• Security organisation
• Asset classification and control
• Personnel security
• Physical and environmental security
• Communications and operations management
• Access control
• Systems development and maintenance
• Business continuity management
• Compliance

BS7799 Contents of Part 2

• Scope
• Terms and definitions
• Information security management system requirements
• Detailed controls
1. Security policy
2. Security organisation
3. Asset classification and control
4. Personnel security
5. Physical and environmental security
6. Communications and environmental security
7. Communications and operations management
8. Access control
9. System development and maintenance
10. Business continuity management
11. Compliance

Critical Success Factors

• Policies, Objectives and Activities that reflect business objectives
• Appropriate resources
• Consistency with culture
• Visible support and commitment from management
• Clear understanding of the security requirements and risk
• Effective marketing of security to all employees
• Distribution of information to all partners, suppliers, employees and contractors
• Providing appropriate training and education
• Key performance indicators

Selecting Controls

• Identify business objectives
• Identify business strategy
• Identify security strategy
• Identify and implement controls

Key controls

1. Information security policy document
2. Allocation of security responsibilities
3. Information security education and training
4. Reporting of security incidents
5. Virus controls
6. Business continuity planning
7. Control of proprietary software copying
8. Safeguarding of company records
9. Compliance with data protection legislation
10. Compliance with the security policy

Certification requirements for BS7799 /ISO 17799

Organisation shall establish and maintain a document ISMS
• Management framework
1. Risk management approach
2. Identify control objectives and controls
3. Documented evidence: - evidence of the actions undertaken - a summary of the management frame work - the procedures adopted to implement the controls - the procedures covering the management and operation of the ISMS

In 2005 International Organization for Standardization released a specification, ISO 17799 in 2005 which establishes guidelines and general principles for initiating, implementing, maintaining and improving information security in an organization. They intended to be implemented to meet the requirements identified by a risk assessment.

Management frame work

• Define the policy
• Define the scope of the information security management system
1. Characteristics of the organisation
2. Location
3. Assets
4. Technology
• Undertake risk assessment
1. Threats
2. Vulnerabilities
3. Impacts
4. Degree of risk
• Manage the risks
• Select control objectives & controls
• Prepare statement of applicability
1. Selected control objectives and rationale
2. Exclusion of controls and rationale

Applying BS7799/ISO17799

• A Practical Approach
• Gap Analysis
• Action Planning
• Risk Assessment and Treatment
• Developing an improvement programme
• Effective Statement of Applicability
• Planning and Costing a BS7799/ISO17799 project
• ISMS (Information Security Management System)
• Audit

Homebusiness Ideas

2007-07-18T03:53:00.000-07:00

Security and Compliance (Part I)

It is possible to have excellent security and not be compliant, and it is also possible to pass a compliance audit and have a very poor organization security. The illusion that compliance equals security has led organizations to excessively spend on compliance at the detriment of security. There are five principles in balancing compliance with security
• Base your security program on a security framework
• Leverage compliance budgets for information security controls
• Automate policy compliance and auditing
• Be prepared to manage change in threats and regulations
• Create an effective awareness and training program

Different organizations, information security professionals and consulting companies approach security program in different ways. Many organizations follow the ISO 17799 approach (International Organization for Standardization) and a few follow the COBIT standards (Control Objectives for Information and Related Technology) which are both great starting points. But there is another approach called the Sherwood applied Business Security Architecture (SABSA).
The SABSA model uses different roles that work with the following perspective:
• Business owner – Contextual
• Architecture – Conceptual
• Designer – Logical
• Builder – Physical
• Tradesman – Component
• Facilities Manager - Operational

SABSA model slices an enterprise into six different layers so that security can be more focused, it is more business oriented. Although the model is theoretical and academic in nature, once an organization has its security building blocks in place it can evolve past the ISO model and implement the SABSA

Complying with BS7799/ISO 17799

Developing and implementing considerations from Business and Technical Perspective consists of: Part 1
• Code of practice for information security management
Part 2
• Specification for information management systems

Why Implement:
• Helps realise the security policy
• Builds a level of business confidence
• Easy and flexible architecture
• Common standard
• Position of strength
• Ability to leverage business benefits
• Develop best practice • Introduce bench mark standards
•Recognised international standards

The standard was developed from the following legislation:
• Data Protection Act 1984
• Data Protection Act 1988
• Data Protection Act 1998
• Computer Misuse Act 1990
• Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988
• Human Rights Act 2000
• Regulatory Investigatory Powers Act 2000 (RIP Bill)

homebusiness Ideas

2007-07-09T00:42:00.000-07:00

Site Optimization (Homebusiness Ideas)

Rhys is dealing with a problem. For one of his top search terms, he's ranked #1 in MSN, Yahoo, and Alta Vista - yet he's not showing up on Google at all!

Here is Nicoles response, an SEO guru, to give them some answers. I hope her advice helps you, too.Now here's Nicole...Hi Rob, Rhys, and everyone else who's having problems getting listed with Google.
To start, I want to point out that there are two important components to any successful search optimization campaign:
Your on-site optimization efforts -- such as "sprinkling" your best keywords throughout your salescopy (like Rob did)
Your off-site optimization efforts -- such as getting quality inbound links to point to your site You need to focus on both these areas if you want your SEO efforts to pay off.

Now, in terms of how to get Google to give your site a good ranking, there are three specific things you need pay attention to (because they're what the Google spiders pay the most attention to!):
1. Your inbound linksI'll say it before, but I'll say it again because it's just so important: If you want to get a good, solid ranking with Google -- one that won't just disappear overnight -- you need to build a network of high quality inbound links pointing to your site.By high quality I mean, from sites that have a Google PageRank of 4 or more. (You can check out a site's PageRank by downloading the Google Toolbar to your browser.)

The best ways to get these links are to:
Get your site listed with the 'Net's top directories, like Yahoo and DMOZ.org (the Open Directory Project)
List your site on industry-specific directories
Write content-rich articles and submit them to high PageRank article directories
Offer free content to high PageRank sites that target the same market as you (but offer different, complementary products)
Participate in forums that are popular with your target market and be sure to include a link to your site in your signature block Make sure you acquire your inbound links gradually over time, so they look natural.

As I mentioned in last week's newsletter, you can buy links, if you want -- just don't buy a whole bunch at once. Nothing screams "paid advertising" more than 100 links mysteriously pointing to your site overnight!

2. Your anchor tagsIt's not just enough to have any old inbound link pointing to your site... do whatever you can to make sure the anchor tag has your top-performing keywords in it.Google is looking for hyperlinks attached to actual phrases (as opposed to URLs). The idea is, hyperlinked phrases are more likely to lead to a useful reference site.

For example, if you have a dog training site, Google will pay more attention to a hyperlink that's attached to a phrase like, "best dog training tips" than a link that's attached to: http://www.doghouserules.com/.

Here's what the ideal link looks like:keywordphrase

And like I said last week, make sure your anchor tags don't all use the exact same keyword phrase. They should include variations on a number of different keywords. That'll make them look more natural in the eyes of the search engines.

3. Your title tagsDid you know that your title tag is one of the most important tags on your site?It's one of the first things the spiders look at when they arrive on your site.

That's why you absolutely have to make sure you include your top-performing keyword phrase in your title tag.(You can see what your title tag is by looking at the very top of your browser when you're on your homepage. What information appears there? Does it include your top keyword phrases? It should!)

On top of that, your title tag is the text some search engines display in the listings that appear in the search results. So it needs to clearly communicate to your visitors exactly what they'll find when they arrive at your site. And the best way to do that is by including the keyword phrases they typed into the search engine.

Finally, I wanted to point out that you need to have patience. Search engine optimization isn't an overnight cure to your traffic woes. Sometimes it can take up to six months to see the results of your work. But I promise you, the results will be worth it!

2007-06-26T00:54:00.000-07:00

Security Standards (27K)

This is an informational, non-commercial website dedicated to promoting the latest international standards for Information Security Management Systems, the ISO/IEC 27000-family (“ISO27k”). - http://iso27001security.com/

The ISO27k standards provide best practice guidance on protecting the confidentiality, integrity and availability of the information on which we all depend. Three standards in the series are already released and publicly available:
ISO 27001, the Information Security Management System certification standard;
ISO 27002 (previously known as BS 7799-1 and ISO 17799), the code of practice for information security management; and
ISO 27006, a guide to the ISMS certification process for certification bodies.
Several other ISO27k standards are currently in preparation.
More than 3,600 organizations have been certified against ISO 27001 worldwide with many thousands more using ISO 27002 as the basis for their Information Security Management Systems.

To find out more, start here with a summary of the ISO27k family or read our FAQ for an overview of the implementation process

homebusiness Ideas

2007-06-19T03:46:00.000-07:00

What about Biometrics?

While speaking at a conference sponsored by Australia’s national Computer Emergency Response Team (AusCERT), Jesper Johansson, Microsoft’s senior program manager for security policy, suggested IT departments change decades of common policy, and encourage users to write down their passwords. According to Johansson, users required to remember passwords on dozens of separate accounts will often use the same password for all–thus “reducing overall security”.

An average person with at least 15 different accounts, I understand Johansson’s suggestion, but feel it’s just a temporary solution. Encrypted password files and RSA tokens offer higher security than simple passwords, but are also vulnerable to forgetful users.

The question is are you ready for biometric authentication?–thumb prints, iris scans, hand geometry, what ever. Electronic manufacturers could settle on a highly-secure standard and implement that technology across the board–computers, automobiles, ATMs, doors, and so forth. Do you mind pairing your thumb print with a single password or pin.

Having worked with end users for many years, I doubt most will have trouble remembering ONE alphanumeric key. Problems arise when we ask the average person to remember 15 different keys. What is your view?

Homebusiness Ideas

2007-06-12T03:07:00.000-07:00

How to Read Your Web Stats(Homebusiness Ideas)

Do you know how to read your web stats? If not, now's the time to learn!Today I'm going tell you how to analyze your website stats so you can get the full picture on how your visitors are using your site -- where they're coming from, what they're doing on your site, and what you can do to make sure your site is achieving its main objective: converting those visitors into SALES.

(Note: If you don't already have a web analytics program operating on your site, I suggest you get one right away. A great free program is Google Analytics. You can find out more about it here: http://www.google.com/analytics)

The most important thing for you to know is how many people are coming to your site -- and what they're doing there.But discovering this information is trickier than you may think, even when you have a comprehensive stats package like Google Analytics. That's because there are a number of different stats you can look at -- and they all tell you different things.

(Note: I've put stars beside the numbers that are most important.)

Hits: I mention this one mostly so I can tell you to ignore it! Your "hits" count is the LEAST reliable statistic available. Hits occur any time someone downloads a file from the server hosting your website. But most web pages are made up of more than one file. A "hit" could be anything from a banner ad... a graphic... a digital photo... or the web page itself.Some of your web pages might register as two hits. Some might count as twenty! That's why we don't recommend you track your hits. They simply aren't a good way to measure how many people are coming to your site.

Page ViewsPage views: This give you a better idea of the level of activity on your site. They show you how many of your web pages are being viewed by your visitors.However, to make this kind of information meaningful, you have to think of it in terms of relative numbers instead of absolutes. Discovering your site received 20,000 page views in a week doesn't tell you a whole lot.But knowing your site had 4.29 page views per visitor during that week tells you a lot more. You now know that your visitors clicked to four different pages on your site (on average). This gives you an idea of how "sticky" your site is.If your site has a long salesletter on it, you don't want your site to have a high page-view-per-visitor count. That's because you want to keep your visitors glued to your salesletter, not meandering from page to page all over your site.

** Unique visitors, or visits: This stat is most likely to equal a real person on your site. But even it doesn't tell you exactly how many people are coming to your site.For example, let's say a bunch of your visitors are using the same computer in a library or online cafe. Because they're all coming from the same IP address, all those visitors will be counted as one person. Still, it's as accurate a count as you're going to get.New visitorsThese are visitors who have never come to your site before. Or have they?It's possible the same people are coming to your site from different IP addresses, and therefore being counted as "new." Maybe they're using a different computer, or using IP "masking" software that shows them coming from a rotating number of different IP addresses.

** Returning visitors: This is a good number to keep your eye on. It tells you what percentage of your visitors have been to your site before. If they're coming back, it's a good sign that they like what they're finding on your site. So generally speaking, the higher the percentage of returning visitors, the "stickier" your site is.Average time on siteThis shows you how long your visitors tend to stay on your site. If the average time is less than a minute, then clearly your visitors aren't finding what they're looking for on your site. If they stick around for five or more minutes, however, they're obviously finding something to interest them.

** Percentage of opt-ins per visit: This number tells you how many of your visitors are signing up for your opt-in offer. It's one of the most important numbers for you to track. Obviously, you want to keep tweaking your opt-in offer so you get as high a percentage of opt-ins possible!How do you tweak your opt-in offer? Here are some ideas: Try putting it in different places on your site. Tweak the wording of your offer to see if that makes a difference. You may even want to experiment with entirely different opt-in offers, until you find the one that holds the most appeal for your visitors.

**Percentage of sales per visit: When it come to stats, this one is KING. It tells you what percentage of your visitors are actually buying from you. If you only track one number, this is the one to watch. Clearly you want to do whatever you can to make that number go up!

**Referring sites: These numbers show you where your traffic is coming from. This information is essential for your traffic generation strategies.Focus on the traffic sources that are giving you the highest visitor/sales conversion rates. Are they search engines? Affiliates? Article directories?Spend more time getting MORE traffic coming from those places -- and your sales are guaranteed to go up!For example, take a look at your search engine reports.
If you're getting lots of traffic from Google, but it's not converting -- and you're getting just a small amount of traffic from Yahoo, but it is converting really well -- then that's a sign you should be putting some effort into getting more traffic coming to your site from Yahoo.

**Top keywords: Most stats analysis packages will tell you which keywords are generating the highest-converting traffic for you.Be sure to doublecheck them with a keyword research tool like Wordtracker (www.wordtracker.com). You'll want to make sure lots of people are actually doing searches on those keywords. You don't want to waste your time optimizing your site for keywords no one is searching on!So those are the main numbers your stats package will give you.
Depending on your package, you may get access to a lot more information than what I've described here. But if you're just starting out and need to know the basics about your site, this should give you a good start.

2007-06-04T01:33:00.000-07:00

The Theory Of Quantum Relationship(Homebusiness Ideas)

Let's look at some of the laws that exist in the quantum world and personal growth/development.First however please know that when I say personal growth I am also speaking of professional growth as well. They all go hand inhand and the way I see it if you are improvingthe quality of your life then you must beimproving your professional life as well. Now on with the important laws that we must know if we truly want to use the quantum world in our life to live the life we want to live.

The first law of success is the Law ofManifestation: This law demonstrates how something comes into being. It is really that part of creation that says creation is started in the mind first as Robert collier noted when he said: "The primal cause is mind. Everything must start with an idea. Every event, every condition, everything is first an idea in the mind." Wow,that to me is so basic that I think sometimes we forget that our minds are the starting point of all creation. Look around you today and see whatthe mind has done. It has created beautifulhomes, buildings, statues, paintings and it has also created extraordinary businesses, computers,technologies that make our life much more simple and safe. There are many more examples, but I think you get the point.

The second law is the Law of Magnetism: This law states that we attract what we put out. This is seen in emotions when we are affected by other people's emotions or they are affected by ours.What happens when we are around someone who is always complaining about the work they do? It makes you start to focus on all the bad that you experience at work. We also see this when we are around more positive people they begin to rub off on us as we do on them. I like what Ernest Holmes said: "Every person is surrounded by a thought atmosphere and through this power we are either attracting or repelling. Like attracts like and we attract just what we are in mind." Another example is the book As a Man Thinketh by James Allen. He says, "We need to tend the garden ofour mind." The point is that if we are not awareof our thoughts, as many of us are not, we allow the weeds of others thinking to trap us into their way of thinking which is often negative.But, if we tend to the thoughts of our minds we will attract others if the thoughts we think are attractive. Our thinking can truly act as a magnet so if we consciously think attractive thoughts we will attract attractive thinking people.

The next law is the Law of Pure Desire: When weare motivated by pure intention we can be assured of beneficial outcomes. The tip of the tongue phenomenon says that we know what it is we want to say, but we just cannot get it out because weare not able to remember what it is we want to remember. We see this when we are trying to remember a name along with a group. It becomes a competition so we become stressed and when that happens all the blood leaves the brain and goes to the limbs and organs to fight the stress and we cannot think. Then several hours later we all of the sudden remember the name. This happens even if we are not thinking about it because when we ask our mind a question it remembers the question. The reason we remember the name is because we become relaxed, we usually rememberthe name as we are lying in bed or watching TV ordoing something that is relaxing that has allowed the brain to receive blood to be able to think.The point is that when we are relaxed and thinking about pure thoughts we receive pure answers. If we are relaxed and we are thinking about what we want in life we will receive an answer that is of pure desire.

The forth law is the Law of Paradoxical Intent: Desperation pushes away that which one is trying to get. Desperation is negative energy and that negative energy is what creates repulsion. This is why it is called the paradoxical intent, you want something, but because the desire is so intense it becomes a desperate need and in that desperation people will throw off a negative energy that gives others the feeling that something about the person is wrong. In other words the desperation gives you the opposite.This is one of the reasons money is often so elusive. We all want to be rich, to have a life that is filled with luxuries and we often get stuck thinking about having all that stuff and it gets us desperate for having. The truth is wanting to be rich never works, if you ever want to have a lot or an abundance of anything the intent to have it must come from a true desire to help others or give others a better life. Anyonewho says their intent is to be rich never seems to ever get rich, but those who say they are compelled to help others or create things that help others in certain ways are usually the ones who receive abundance.

The fifth law is the Law of Harmony: This law states that we must be in balance. It really is very simple to understand, but for many it is very hard to get. The Pillars of Excellence was created for the purpose of creating harmony in your life. We are all made of the same ingredients, in other words we all have a spiritual nature, physical nature and mental nature. We are also emotional and social beings who want to establish connection with those around themselves and with their environment. We as humans need to know we are giving back in someway so we also have a service need and finally we are all in need of leading. You see this with people wanting to be able to have the ability to make their own choices. The short of it is to be successful in life we must have success in all areas, not just one or two. For example; if you had all the money you could ever spend, but you were so unhealthy you could not go and experience life physically you would not experience life to its fullest. The point here is to get into living a full life that focuses on caring for all parts of life not just those parts that look appealing, sometimes we need to do those things that are notas fun as other activities, but to experience those great desires we must be fit in the not so great parts of life.

The next law is The Law of Right Action: This law says that if we want to experience life in ways that supports value, honor, and dignity we must act in ways that support value, honor and dignity. Here is where I think we find ourselves in terms of who we really are. This is also one of the most difficult areas of life that most people have to deal with. Looking at this from the Law of Harmony we can say that doing activities that are good for us, others and the environment creates harmony, but the only way that this can happen is in right action. We must do right if we want good to come to us. The Lawof Right Action is best applied looking at Seligman's 24 character strengths and virtues. I speak of these in my book and in Soteria. For the sake of understanding this law, just understandthat if we ever want to live life in a way that supports happiness we must make sure we keep a watchful eye on what we think and do and make sure that our thoughts and actions are in line with natural law and principle.

The final law we will seek to understand is theLaw of Expanding Influence: Throughout history those who have succeeded are the ones that could influence others and themselves. The sad truth is that many do not understand the influence they do have in the world. We all have the ability to influence the world in big ways, but it is only those who are bold enough to take a stab at influencing themselves and others that are the ones who will make a difference in the world.Look at the leaders of the world; are they notable to use the power of influence to get others to follow? Natural law says that inside each ofus there are built in laws that make us get along; one of these laws is the law of reciprocation. Here if we are given something or someone helps another in some way they get a feeling, a driving desire or force to reciprocate the favor. This is one of the most powerful laws of human nature.

The Pillars of Excellence: Six Laws of Influence teaches you how to use the 6 natural laws of influence to enhance the quality of your life and the life of others. When you understand how to influence others and the environment you begin to expand the influence you have in life. In other words the more you begin to consciously influence your own world the more influence you have and the more power you create in your own life. When you use influence properly you also begin to expand the number of people you influence and that means you become a driving force in nature where you can really make a difference in the world. Understanding the above laws and implementing them can have extraordinary effects on you and your environment. Remember if you learn anything, but you fail to use what you learn it is as if you never learned the information in the first place. To not use what you learn is one ofthe biggest problems people have in life. We love comfort and change does not feel comfortable. Ialways believe that the level of discomfort you are willing to experience in life is directly proportionate to the level of success you will ever experience as well. In short, the more discomfort you can handle the more success you will experience. Use what you learn and life will give you rewards beyond your wildest dreams. Life is supposed to be adventurous, but no one ever said life was going to be easy. The day I decided to use everything I learned was the day I felt very uncomfortable, but it was also the day that life began rewarding me with the fruits that are waiting for all of us who try new things. Let me know how these 7 Laws work for you and always remember that life is supposed to be an adventure so go out and be a leader of life and experience the fruits that effort provides.

2007-05-28T08:23:00.000-07:00

Online Webdesign Consult(homebusiness Ideas)

One of the questions we often hear from our Advanced Mentoring clients is, "How can I build a website? I don't know the first thing about site design!"You don't have to build your own site if you don't want to.

You can always outsource the job to someone else.However, it's a good idea to learn as much about web design as you can. Even if you get someone else to build your site, you should learn enough basic HTML so you can make any necessary changes to your site yourself.It'll save you a lot of time -- and money! -- if you don't have to hire a contractor every single time you want to update your site.The good news is, you don't need to study for weeks on end to learn how to use today's most popular design tools. Lots of them have been built with complete novices in mind and come with great tutorials that walk you through the whole process.And the best thing is, lots of them are really cheap to use -- or even free!Here's a list of the top 20 resources we recommend to our top-paying clients. If you want to learn how to build your own site from scratch -- or want more control over a site that's currently up and running -- be sure to check out them out!

1. Domain toolsYour domain name is your business's "address" on the Internet, so it's crucial you choose the right one. Try to find a domain that gives browsers a hint of what they'll find at your site.Tools to help you get a domain include...
Wordtracker (www.wordtracker.com) -- to locate possible domain names with popular keywords
Nameboy's "Gen" (www.NameBoy.com/gen.php) -- to get more ideas for domain names
Domain tools (www.DomainTools.com) -- to see if a domain name is available
For registering domains: www.GoDaddy.com

2. Website hostingYour web host is responsible for ensuring your web site is always up and running at top speed. If you site is always down... or if it takes ages to load... you're going to lose money. So it's essential you choose a host you can trust!Here's our favorite hosting solution: www.1and1.com

3. Basic HTML tutorialsThere's plenty of software you can use to build a site without knowing any code at all. But it's actually helpful if you at least understand the basics of HTML. For some good free HTML tutorials, check out these sites:
www.Davesite.com/webstation/html
www.HTMLgoodies.com
www.PageTutor.com
http://www.webreference.com/authoring/design/tutorials.html

4. Design tips & resourcesFor some great tools and information on simple, effective design, check out these sites:
SitePoint: www.sitepoint.com
Builder.com: http://builder.com
Useit.com: www.useit.com

5. HTML editors"HTML editors" are software programs that allow you to design a webpage with little knowledge of HTML -- and they're as easy to use as any basic word processor.
Nvu (www.nvu.com): Anyone can use this free tool to create and manage a website -- even if they have no technical expertise or knowledge of HTML. (In fact, I'm using Nvu to write this article right now!)
Dreamweaver (www.dreamweaver.com): This is a tool that's very popular at IMC. It's good if you're willing to spend some money to get additional features not available on the free HTML editors out there.

6. "All-in-one" website buildersIf you're a bit intimidated by technology, you may want to consider an all-in-one website builder, where a company provides you with all the tools you need to quickly piece together a site.Go here to find our favorite: www.MarketingTips.com/allinone

7. Resources for designing your web siteFor good articles and resources on developing effective navigation and a simple, user-friendly site architecture, check out these sites:
Webmonkey: www.webmonkey.com
AnyBrowser.com: www.anybrowser.com
WebDeveloper.com: www.webdeveloper.com
Web Page Analyzer: www.websiteoptimization.com/services/analyze
NetMechanic: www.netmechanic.com

8. Adding "extras" to your siteYou may want your site to go beyond basic HTML, especially when it comes to automating chores and making it more interactive for visitors. You can find "extras" -- like forums, content management systems, and shopping carts -- at these websites:
www.HotScripts.com
www.cgi.ResourceIndex.com
http://ScriptSearch.com

9. Hiring a designerIf you can afford it, it's a good idea to hire a web designer to build the initial "template" for your website. Typically, this should include a logo, navigation menu, and the overall "look" for your homepage. Then, you can make tweaks as necessary later on.For a good, affordable designer, try: www.eLance.comSo, those are the tools we most often recommend to people. What are YOUR favorite design tools? Are there any that aren't on this list? Go to Derek's blog and tell us about them! We're always on the lookout for great new resources to share with people.

2007-05-18T10:56:00.000-07:00

Leaving a Legacy (Homebusiness Ideas)

Principles to Live By

I love principles. Yes, actions are great and I talk about them regularly, but the important stuff is what lies underneath--the principles.
Here are what I consider to be the principles that we must commit to if we are to leave the legacy we desire:
1. Life is best lived in service to others. This doesn't mean that we do not strive for the best for ourselves. It does mean that in all things we serve other people, including our family, co-workers and friends.

2. Consider others' interests as important as your own. Much of the world suffers simply because people consider only their own interests. People are looking out for number one, but the way to leave a legacy is to also look out for others.

3. Love your neighbor even if you don't like him. It is interesting that Jesus told us to love others. But he never tells us to like them. Liking people has to do with emotions. Loving people has to do with actions. And what you will find is that when you love them and do good by them, you will more often than not begin to like them.

4. Maintain integrity at all costs. There are very few things you take to the grave with you. The number one thing is your reputation and good name. When people remember you, you want them to think, "She was the most honest person I knew. What integrity." There are always going to be temptations to cut corners and break your integrity. Do not do it. Do what is right all of the time, no matter what the cost.

5. You must risk in order to gain. In just about every area of life you must risk in order to gain the reward. In love, you must risk rejection in order to ask that person out for the first time. In investing you must place your capital at risk in the market in order to receive the prize of a growing bank account. When we risk, we gain. And when we gain, we have more to leave for others.

6. You reap what you sow. In fact, you always reap more than you sow--you plant a seed and reap a bushel. What you give you get. What you put into the ground then grows out of the ground. If you give love you will receive love. If you give time, you will gain time. It is one of the truest laws of the universe. Decide what you want out of life and then begin to sow it.

7. Hard work is never a waste. No one will say, "It is too bad he was such a good, hard worker." But if you aren't they will surely say, "It's too bad he was so lazy - he could have been so much more!" Hard work will leave a grand legacy. Give it your all on your trip around the earth. You will do a lot of good and leave a terrific legacy.

8. Don't give up when you fail. Imagine what legacies would have never existed if someone had given up. How many thriving businesses would have been shut down if they quit at their first failure? Everyone fails. It is a fact of life. But those who succeed are those who do not give up when they fail. They keep going and build a successful life - and a legacy.

9. Don't ever stop in your pursuit of a legacy. Many people have accomplished tremendous things later on in life. There is never a time to stop in your pursuit of a legacy. Sometimes older people will say, "I am 65. I'll never change." That won't build a great life! No, there is always time to do more and achieve more, to help more and serve more, to teach more and to learn more. Keep going and growing that legacy!

These are core principles to live by if you want to become the kind of person who leaves a lasting legacy.

2007-05-09T07:27:00.000-07:00

EBay Secrets (Homebusiness Ideas)

The first thing people ask eBay mentor is, "Can you really make a living selling on eBay?"The answer to that is a definite YES!In fact, thanks to the great research tools available, you can discover exactly what products are hot-sellers on eBay -- and find cheap sources of those products -- so you can set up your own profitable eBay business in less than a week!

Here's how to do it:
Step #1: Brainstorm possible research topicsBrainstorm a list of your skills and interests. What topics are you most interested in? What skills have you picked up on the job or in your personal life? Any one of these could be the basis of a highly profitable eBay business.

Step #2: Choose a topic to explore furtherNarrow your list down to your top 5 choices. Now pick one to research further. It should be something you could see yourself basing a business on. For example, maybe you're a high school basketball coach, or a huge NBA fan. One of the topics you'd probably want to explore further is basketball.

Step #3: Use Terapeak to discover what people are buying on eBayTerapeak is hands-down my favorite research tool. It costs only $16.95 a month to use and shows you exactly what products people are buying on eBay. It shows you the exact search terms people are using to look for products on eBay.... how much the products are selling for... and who the competition is.In short, it tells you absolutely everything you need to know to determine what products to sell -- and how much to sell them for -- in order to make a profit on eBay.Let's go back to the basketball example. Terapeak can tell you exactly how many people are buying basketball-related items on eBay. Then you could drill down deeper to discover exactly what those basketball-related items are.Plus, it'll tell you the exact keyword terms people are using when they search for those items on eBay!You could even discover what percentage of items actually got sold -- so you'd know how successful your listings are likely to be, before you even post them.Say you discovered that Nike "Air Force S.T.A.T." basketball shoes were selling on eBay for an average price of $79.99 -- and that 60% of all listings for those shoes received bids. That means for every 10 listings you post, you'll successfully sell six pairs of shoes.

Step #4: Calculate your profit marginAs you probably know, eBay charges you money for every listing you post. How much you pay depends on how much your starting price is, how much the final sale price is, and how fancy your listing is. (For example, how many pictures you include.)You need to figure out these costs, so you know exactly how much of your profits will end up in eBay's pocket. Once you know that, you'll know how much you have to charge in order to make more money than you spend.

Step #5: Find a reliable drop-shipperDrop shipping is an arrangement in which a manufacturer or distributor ships products to your customers on your behalf. You do all the selling and the drop shipper is responsible for product development and order fulfillment.Drop shipping is a great way to start making money FAST on eBay because it allows you to auction new products almost instantly. You don't have to build up your own inventory. And you don't have to worry about leftover stock.All you have to do is use Terapeak to figure out what you want to sell -- then find a drop shipper who supplies that product, sign up for their program, and you're in business.The downside to drop shipping is, you won't make as much money as you would if you were selling your own products.Also -- due to the growing popularity of drop shipping, there are a lot of scammers out there selling fake lists of drop shippers for hundreds of dollars online. There are also middlemen posing as drop shippers who'll charge you much more for merchandise than you should be paying.Don't let these scammers scare you away. Just be aware they exist and always look twice at any company before agreeing to enter into a business arrangement with them.Here are two drop shipping resources that offer reliable information and have a good reputation:

Worldwide Brands offers a directory of legitimate drop shippers with excellent reputations. Worldwide Brands is also the ONLY directory publisher of drop ship and wholesale product sourcing information on the Internet that is certified by eBay.
Doba allows you to source products that you can drop ship to your buyers. You can browse product categories or search for specific keywords, and then buy the ones you want to sell, or use the "Push to Marketplace" feature to list them on eBay immediately.

Step #6: Write your own listings -- and make sure they stand out from the crowd!Here's a trick that'll have you making more money than your competitors who also sell drop ship products: WRITE YOUR OWN LISTINGS!The vast majority of people who sell products through drop shipping use the product listings they're given by the drop shipper. That means shoppers see the exact same salescopy for every product they click on!Make sure YOUR listing stands out from the crowd by writing it yourself -- and including the keywords you found during your Terapeak research. These are the exact words and phrases people are using when searching for products on eBay. Place them prominently throughout your copy -- and you'll have a listing that catches people's attention because it speaks directly to their needs.

Step #7: Start selling!That's it! As you can see, by using a research tool like Terapeak and a product sourcing tool like Doba or Worldwide Brands, you can set up a profitable eBay business in well under a week. Best of all, you can guarantee it's successful before you even set up your first auction.

Happy eBay selling!