Fun With Google Juice

An interesting article about Google's juice, er...ranking by Leslie Walker, the technology columnist over at The Washington Post... via my writing colleague, Marshall Sponder. We all seem to be having fun with search engine optimization of our websites for the Google search engine. Take for instance, the famous keyword "failure". Go ahead, Google the word and see what turns up...and the second website that coincidentally shows up is Michael Moore's site. Funny. In all seriousness, though, you should check out Marshall's website, WebMetricsGuru, because he shares some great resources that will help you with your search engine optimizing initiatives. The consensus still remains that you should definitely get as many links to your site as possible and have relevant content with targeted keywords on your website.

Take Your Child To Work Day: Adam's Day At Work

It's take your child to work day, but what if you're a parent who works at home? Adam shares his experience today and learns quite a bit for a six year old. Certainly more than I ever knew at the age of six! Read more....Manage to Change: Adam's Day At Work

Inspirational Quote of the Day

"Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work." --Thomas Edison inventor and businessman

The One Marketing Principle That Can Help Your Business

Michel Fortin tells a story of how his big clients haven't paid their bills, but looks at the big picture and realizes that there is a lesson to be learned: "Call it 'karmic marketing' or 'marketing karma.' The concept is, what you give out will come back to you. And often, it multiplies along the way. So if you're generous with your time, energy and of course money, it will be paid back to you. Often, in spades. Everything, including the good stuff, teaches you somehow -- and will come back to you when you grasp this amazing concept. From giving great service, teaching and helping others, and bending over backwards, to processing refunds when asked, paying bills quickly, and above all, accepting that good work is worth every penny." So, whatever business you are in, whether online or offline, be generous with your services and share your knowledge. Whatever energy you put out there will come back to you tenfold. Believe me, it does.

Tips On Tackling Online Projects

Jon of the Super Affiliate Marketing Blog offers a great tip when working on an online project: K.I.S.S. He also offers a great step-by-step plan for creating a constant stream of income from your websites. I also agree with Jon when he says this: "I know a lot of you have no intentions of launching massive projects, but there really isn’t any reason why you shouldn’t, or even can’t. Maybe you’re thinking “well, I just don’t have the time to do it” — yeah, that’s a load of crap and you know it. If you have time to run one site, then you have time to run one hundred. Or maybe you’re saying “I don’t make enough off of my first site to make more”. Wrong again sherlock. You don’t have to have a lot of money to make sites, that’s the beauty of the internet. Things can be made in large quantities for so little. Hell, as long as you have access to some type of hosting, whether it’s free, shared or dedicated, you can do this. If cash is not something you have a lot of on hand at the moment, all you really need is the cash to buy a domain name." I love that you can make money on the internet with virtually no cash up front! It's a wonder why everybody isn't doing it. I certainly love to make money in my sleep, don't you? Read the rest of Jon's post here...

"How To Use SEO To Make More Money" Teleseminar

Learn how to improve your web site's search engine positioning, get more search engine traffic and make more money online during this one hour teleseminar. On April 27th, at 2pm Eastern time, Biana Babinsky will present one hour "How To Use SEO To Make More Money" teleseminar. Learn how to optimize your web site, and get it noticed by search engines. Biana Babinsky is the online business expert, consultant and author. She is the author of "Step by Step Search Engine Optimization" special report, and she has taught many online business owners how to increase their search engine rankings, and get more traffic from search engines. During this teleclass Biana will share SEO tips and ideas that she and her clients use. There will be no tech-talk during this teleclass - Biana explains all the concepts in plain English. Biana also doesn't like fluff - during this teleseminar you will get search engine optimization tips that you will be able to apply to your business immediately. Here are just some of the things you will learn: How search engines work, explained in plain English Why choosing the right keywords is extremely important for your business, and what tools to use to find these keywords How to find your current search engine rankings, and how to improve them You might already have the perfect keywords for your web site - and I will tell you where to find them Which elements of your web site might be working against getting better search engine rankings, and how to fix them How link exchanges can help you get better search engine rankings Why writing articles is the best thing you can do to get more search engine traffic Register for How To Use SEO To Make More Money Teleseminar Now

Are You Building Relationships Online?

by Douglas Titchmarsh How's your relationship? I'm not prying into your personal life, so no need to worry. it's just that lately I've noticed something about most network marketers which got me thinking. Let me start with some background on these thoughts I had. One of the reasons an internet business seems so attractive is because of the ease with which you can communicate. This lends itself well to marketing, and in particular network marketing. With me so far? So we all jump into network marketing and mlm style business opportunities online to seek our fortunes, but this is where it all seems to go wrong. The thing I've noticed myself and a lot of others doing online is just promoting our businesses. We don't build relationships. Network marketing is about networking with others, and I have heard it referred to as relationship marketing. But are we doing enough to build those relationships? A recent example was a new style messaging system I was introduced to at http://www.profitmessaging.com/invite.php?f006bcd3bb . There you can invite "buddies" to message you, and add other buddies from the system to your buddies list. Then you can send them all a message safely from within the system. An Ideal opportunity to build a relationship or two. Instead of getting to know each other, almost everybody jumped in and sent each other an advert for their business. The result? No one reads any messages. No new relationships are formed. It becomes another wasted opportunity to form relationships. There were one or two more savvy marketers who attempted to build relationships, but their efforts got lost in among the hundreds of "make more money than you can spend" ads. In our personal lives we create many relationships, but for some reason once we start an online business, we forget to speak to people and instead send ads through the machine. We stop building relationships with people. This has got me thinking, and I am going to try to break some habits, and start marketing myself, instead of the opportunities I am involved in. I'm going to start building relationships. It won't be easy, almost every other article, or ebook seems to be about how to promote your website, or your business, but rarely how to promote relationships. But it is possible, and we have all the tools to start building relationships. For starters, we all have email addresses whhich could be used to start a conversation with someone. We have instant messengers, Yahoo, MSN and AOL to name a few, you can even use the software from Imvite http://www.imvite.com/dougyt which has a payment plan built in and can access most of the other networks anyway. And then there's Skype http://www.skype.com for voice chat which is as clear as a telephone, and free to download. So we have the tools to form relationships, lets start doing it. It can only be good for business to get to know each other and form friendships, partnerships, and trust. In the offline world you wouldn't dream of greeting a new potential customer by saying "Earn Millions Today" so lets stop doing it online. Doug TitchmarshOnline marketer, and real life person. Doug Titchmarsh runs several sites including http://www.cashinonline.info and http://www.titchmarsh.com He also publishes an e-zine for marketers online and off which you can get by sending an email to douglastitchmarsh@getresponse.com

Build Your Internet Business For Success

by James Little It has arrived! Millions of people are tapping into the internet era to do business; some are even generating good earning and live by it. If you are looking to kick off your internet home business, well, you’ll need to build a website that would entice and secure your visitors’ loyalty, turn them into paying customers and keep coming back. Good understanding of what works and what’s not will help you build a lucrative income generating internet home business. Researches show the most critical area is the fact that you have only 10 seconds or less to quickly grab your visitor's attention, and make them wanting to stay on your site longer. This should be the root factor in designing your internet business website unless you are simply doing for fun or leisure where you are not looking to earn money from it. For you internet based business, you need to have a clear understanding as to the fact that you are not simply just selling some product, but you are consuming people time! This is one of the most forgotten issues. In actual fact, visitors are allocating their time to you when they are viewing your website. So make sure your site do what it is expected in return for their precious time. Once you have a website that’s able to draw customer’s interest into paying customer for your internet based business, you then need to further structure up the process so that you got the final “Yes” click thru. Whether the desired click is the "Order" or "Subscribe Now" button, you would definitely want to lead your customer to that perform that action. In order to get to that goal, start creating the website from customers or visitors view point. In this aspect, your view point as seller does not count. It is really up to the visitor’s decision whether or not they would like to award you with business. When you build and create website for your internet business, you are actually creating an environment that provides the kind of expected benefits for the visitors when they drop by the site. They need to be clearly shown that your business website is able to provide for what they are looking for. Commonly, customers want to avoid risk, save money, get tools that help them and more. In that aspect, your business website need to show visitors what is in it for them when they arrive at your site. In return, they will become your paying customer when they are satisfied with the service your business able to offer. The key point in building up your internet business, and effective money generating business website is to know who are your potential consumers, or will be; to clearly understand their needs, and turn them into loyal and paying customers who provide the basis of your business survival, let alone thriving. Do spend time to do researches in order to find out more information about your targeted potential customer; in fact the more detailed the better. You need to know clearly of what types of people will be patronizing your internet business, what they like to have…etc. The more you know and understand about your potential customers, the more you are to focus in building your business website to cater for their needs, thus the more successful your business as it goes in the long run. Get Your Business listed in Biz Network Directory for business leads. Network sites consist Web Resources Search and Business Leads Center are also business platforms.

Free Blogging Software

For those of you that want to start a blog, but don't want to pay a montly fee, I might recommend using Blogger.com. This blog is actually hosted by Blogger and I haven't had any real issues with them. I only wish that there was a feature that allows you to categorize your posts. Right now Blogger only has an archives feature, but it makes it easier for your readers to find information easily if there was a way to organize posts by topic. Well, you get what you pay for... So, if you want free blogging software, then Blogger is the way to go. It's a great place to start if you're just starting out. However, Sixapart, who owns TypePad, MovableType, and LiveJournal, is having a free 30 day trial on their blogging software. I use MovableType for a few of my blogs. If you're an advanced blogger like me, then you may want to try Sixapart's products. The software has many features including the ability to categorize your post by topic, you can send and receive trackback posts -which makes it easier to network with other bloggers, and you can set up to publish your posts at a later point in time. Try TypePad now to get a hosted blog with powerful features

Seth Godin Offers A Website Vocabulary Lesson

This is dedicated to newbie website owners/designers... Seth Godin, one of my favorite authors and bloggers, has given us a definition of "landing page" at his blog. Seth's definition: "A landing page is the first page a visitor to your site sees." He then points out your landing page causes one of five actions: Get a visitor to click (to go to another page, on your site or someone else's) Get a visitor to buy Get a visitor to give permission for you to follow up (by email, phone, etc.). This includes registration of course. Get a visitor to tell a friend (and the more subtle) Get a visitor to learn something, which could even include posting a comment or giving you some sort of feedback Read more...

Challenges of Having A Blog About Online Business

I'm beginning to realize that there is quite a bit of information out there about online businesses. Because of the competition, many blog writers like myself are facing the challenge of getting traffic to a blog about online business, so I have to rethink my strategy for this blog. Yes, I do want to help people with all aspects of building an online business, but I do think that I should narrow my focus and perhaps find a niche market that is under-represented. Finding a niche market is actually one of the first steps in starting a business, which I seemed to have overlooked in this case. There are so many aspects of an online business and I do want to cover everything, but somehow I don't want to spread myself too thin. If there's some information that you need in starting an online business, but can't seem to find it anywhere, please let me know and I'll be sure to post my thoughts on it here. To Our Success!

Tips on Website Layout

I've added a couple more blogs to the roster at my Bloglines account. You can check them out in the "Blogroll" section of this blog. One of the new blogs is by Matt DeAngelis of affiliateblog.com. (Yesterday I posted an article he wrote). In today's post he gives us some great tips on website layout which I've outlined here: 1. Start with a goal or goals. 2. Plan for the ideas and concepts that support the goal(s). 3. Sketch out the central idea for each page and how it fits into the hierarchy of the site. 4. Profile your visitor 5. Code the pages 6. Go through the site yourself and see where the weaknesses lie. 7. Do some QA. (Quality Assurance) 8. Obsessively study the site logs. Read more...

Here's My Best FREE Traffic Builder

By Matt DeAngelis So…I’m looking through my awstats like I do at least once a day. I have always found server logs to be full of useful information, and it’s important to try to glean as much as you can about your visitors from reading them. Last week there was a very interesting spike in the number of visitors that came to this website. One day my traffic was more than double the average, even considering how traffic has been going up like crazy since I revived this domain last month. I figured it might be the articles I have been writing and distributing. I have seen my byline all over the Internet lately, which I think is terrific. That day a new article appeared on a bunch of new sites, so maybe that was it. I went over to Isnare to take a look. Isnare is the foundation of my article distribution service –they’re good and they’re inexpensive. I’m a good author (says me), but I had only been viewed 39 times, so that wasn’t the source. Even my email messages from people who had visited the site had increased. When I replied to one of the emails (I try to respond to all of them), I asked the person how he had come to the web site. He responded that he had seen my signature in a sitepoint.com post. Sure enough, right up near the top of referring URLs was the SitePoint script that spits out the forum posts. Awesome. Want to see my signature? Here it is: ___________________ affiliateblog.com Pretty fancy, huh? By the way, I posted because someone asked a very good basic question that no one was answering. I didn’t want to leave him hanging, so I answered it. That’s all. And I got a ton of traffic. I even got a private message from someone asking me if the domain was for sale. The bonus is that the post is also good for my Google pagerank, as the forum’s PR was way higher than mine (which isn’t difficult these days). I also noticed that a lot of the Sitepoint people were checking out affiliateblog.com using whois and SEO tools, just to find out more about me. I guess that is the Internet equivalent of dogs sniffing eachother (I won’t say where). So go out there and find a forum or two that fits the theme of your site, and then go bail someone out who needs a question answered. Here are two forum directories for your posting pleasure: InvisionFree Big Boards Matt DeAngelis runs AffiliateBlog.com. Matt is the former CTO of Modem Media, a pioneer in the Internet ad space. As a foot soldier in the Internet revolution, Matt devised the technology behind many of the most successful ad campaigns of the time. AffiliateBlog is his latest venture, and was started as a resource to help site owners and bloggers get more revenue from their sites.

A Blogging Tip From From Mike Seddon

I subscribe to Mike Seddon's daily blogging tips and I received one today that I wanted to share with you: Tip: Provide Good Navigation to Popular Pages Have you ever become frustrated trying to find your way around someone else's blog or web site? It happens all the time. Make your reader's day! Provide good navigation links to help the reader easily find key pages. Their visit will be a much more enjoyable experience. This is something I've tried to implement at my jewelry website, but as for some of my blogs, it's hard to provide good navigational links because Blogger doesn't offer the feature of being able to categorize your posts. Anyhow, Mike Seddon also has a book called "How To Build a Money Making Blog" If you've read the book, I'd be interested in what you thought about it! Leave your comments...

Focus On Your Ranking In the Search Engines

More and more consumers are going online these days to shop, and most of them are using the search engines to find what they're looking for. The Small Business Online Blog gives this advice for online entrepreneurs: " Small business websites should focus on where the customers are... Clearly, if you own a website, you need to be reaching the consumers who are using the search engines... So don't overlook these other engines when you are optimizing your site and implementing your internet marketing strategy." Lately, I've noticed quite a bit of traffic to my art and jewelry website coming from the search engines, mainly from MSN and Yahoo. One of the reasons for this is that I've been exchanging links with higher ranking websites. When you exchange links with high ranking websites that are related to your business, your ranking in the search engines increase as well. For Google I'm on the second or third page for "handcrafted beaded jewelry" somedays and other days I'm somewhere else (haven't had time to look through all the pages). I find that soon after I update my website my ranking increases. So, you definitely need to update your website consistently to achieve a high ranking with Google.

Many Resources on Blogging

If you haven't started blogging about your business, you're missing out on great advertising! My colleague over at KnowMoreMedia.com, Easton Ellsworth, shares a wealth of blogging resources: AdvancedBusinessBlogging BetterBusiness Blogging Blog Tips Central Register Blogger Legal Guide BloggerForum Blogging Tips Series BusinessBlogConsulting Business Blogging Resources CorporateBlogging.info Entrepreneurs Journey ProBlogger RSS Applied Successful Blog YourWeblog.Blogspot.com Thanks, Easton!

Lessons I've Learned As An Entrepreneur

So, it's about five years now that I've started my venture on the internet. Boy, have I come a long way! Through the ups and downs of it all, I remained sane and learned so much. I continue to learn even more as more people join the online world to contribute their talents and wisdom. These are a few things I've learned about being an entrepreneur: Patience - owning a business is a lifelong process. When I first started out I wanted to "get rich quick" and focused too much on the future and didn't have any fun. Work should be fun! The money will come in due time. And it has :) Business may seem slow at first, but as you gain more knowledge and skills about your business, you'll begin to see your income grow. Perserverance - there will be the good times and the bad times in business (as with life). I've learned how to pick myself up when I made mistakes and just keep moving forward. The mistakes were there to help me make better decisions in the future. Stay Positive - the more positive you are about life, the more positive things will begin to show up in your life. People love positive energy and will go out of their ways to help you in your business. Be Giving - I'm learning to share my knowledge with others show that they can be successful online entrepreneurs as well. The more I share, the more I get back. You know that saying - "What goes around, comes around". What have you learned?

Squidoo Lens Updated

I've updated my Squidoo lens and would like your opinion of it. Visit the lens and don't forget to give it a rating. I appreciate your feedback :) http://www.squidoo.com/onlinebusiness/

5 Of The Most Powerful Ways To Market Your Online Business

by Xavier Nelson Getting the word out about your online business can eat a large piece of your marketing budget, especially in the beginning, when you are first starting you. Luckily, there a number of ways you can get your name, offer or website in front of your potential customer that don't have to cost a fortune. Here are 5 very effective ways you can draw more traffic to your website, but not just any traffic, qualified and targeted traffic that is interested in what you have to say and offer them. After all what good is all the traffic in the world, if they don't care about what you are selling? 1. Specialize. Find Your Niche. Identify Your Target Market. If you had access to the budgets of some of the giant corporations, then you could just toss around a handful of cash and be able to get some people to visit you and purchase from you. As an internet marketer you are better off tailoring your offer to a specialized group of prospects, your niche. By narrowing the focus of your campaign, you can get in touch with the right people without having to spend millions on your marketing. You will also find that your conversions will increase by focusing your marketing on a specific market, allowing you to sell more without spending more. The beauty of focusing on a niche is that you can identify a specific problem or concern, create a site and offer to address it, help solve it and start driving targeted traffic to it. Once you have a steady stream of traffic on autopilot, you can then head out and find the next niche who needs your help. 2. Trade Links With Other Websites - Before you run off, to find link partners, a word of caution. Don't just trade links with any site out there. Try to stick with websites that offer similar products and services. Better yet, find sites with complimentary topics that don't directly compete with you. Quite a few search engines consider not just the amount of links you have pointing to your website, but also the quality and relevance of the links pointing back to you as very important. 3. Articles, Articles, Articles... One of the best methods, period.It's true, writing and distributing articles is one of the most powerful and effective ways you can market your business. Write a useful article about the topic you are focused on, include an author's or resource box at the end and invite readers to visit your website. Once you distribute your new article to the article directories or offer it to newsletter and ezine publishers or webmasters with permission to reprint it, you will find that you will not only begin to receive a steady stream of targeted traffic back to your website and offer, but it will also help your search engine rankings and result in extra traffic coming from there as well. 4. Viral Reports and Ebooks - One awesome tool you can use is to create a special report or even write your own eBook and give it away at no charge. Even better, you could allow those that give it away to add their name and website information, giving them permission to rebrand it and then give it away. This method is so effective, some webmasters have literally seen thousands of new visitors within a couple of days from launching. An easy and quick way to create a special report for example could be to use articles you have written in the past on one particular topic and put them together as a special report. 5. Forums and Bulletin Boards - There are forums and bulletin boards for any topic you can imagine, including your target audience. By offering advice and help to the visitors of these sites, you can also help yourself, with your signature. Most forums allow you to include a small signature at the end of your post, giving you an opportunity to spread the word about your offer or website at no cost. Be careful to follow the rules and guidelines of each forum, they can vary greatly and you don't want to be accused of posting inappropriate content. Head over to your favorite search engine and try searching for your topic and adding the word 'forum' or the phrase 'bulletin board' and go take a look around. Familiarize with the postings and the general tone of the board before you start to post and you will find that you can draw a steady stream of targeted traffic. Many of these boards are also indexed by the search engines, which of course will just, again, help to increase your link popularity and the extra traffic from their visitors. There are so many different ways you can drive highly qualified and targeted traffic to your website that won't cost you an arm and a leg and we've now covered the basics of only 5 of them. But now it's up to you to get out there and use them. Start with a few methods at a time and really make them work for you, then focus on the next few methods. You will be surprised how easy it really is and how fast the word about your new offer and website can spread across the internet and bring you visitors and buyers without you having to do anything or spend any money. Xavier Nelson is an Entrepreneurial Consultant dedicated to your success. Stop by http://special.businessinformationconnection.com/traffic and find out the top methods and most effective ways to increase targeted, qualified traffic to your website, to grow your list and to sell more products.