:Forest Folk

I nearly panicked recently! Well, maybe a slight exaggeration but here was a situation I had not been in for some time. The freezer had broken down and the dilemma I faced was - a speedy solution was necessary BUT I did not know anybody who repairs freezers. For the first time in some years I nearly reached for the Yellow Pages - a pristine copy that never sees the light of day - but sense prevailed and I consulted my wife. She rang her friend who works in a local hospital. They have an internal communication system for the employees to ask questions or post messages and within 30 minutes we had the choice of three prospective service engineers and one name had been suggested by three separate people. The choice was simple and - yes Mr Freezerman turned up and was superb!

The point is that we prefer to buy from traders who have been recommended and preferably from people we know and trust. Business networking is all about trying to address this situation by ensuring that business owners meet each other frequently and build relationships and trust first, long before any deals are struck. Networking is fast becoming the primary way of sourcing new business, but and this is a big BUT - you have to go about networking with the right attitude or it will not work for you.

I have been a member of BNI (Business Networking International) for nearly three years and know first hand that it can work for you as I have had many thousands of pounds worth of business as a direct result of being a member. And yet I did not get one meaningful referral for the first few months and was about to give it up as a bad job. I have also seen many new members give up in the early days saying it wasn’t for them. The thing is that we were all making the same fundamental mistake - we were too concerned with what was in it for us - and not thinking how can we help our fellow members.

The strapline of BNI is ‘givers gain’ and the moment I adopted that as my focus everything changed. If I give business to you will want to give me business to me is the message, but the emphasis is on the giving. Referrals are the currency and actively seeking help and support for fellow members becomes second nature after a time. It’s simple - it works.

Now, BNI is not for everyone and I can understand some of the reasons. The procedures are quite rigid and attendance and time keeping are essential. How many times have I heard new members say it is like being back at school. The vast majority though accept and understand why this disciplined approach works.

A newer breed of virtual networking is emerging on the Internet and although there are quite a few large networks, Ecademy is emerging as one of the best business to business websites. It is even more important that the right attitude and approach is adopted if you want to achieve anything for your business through using Ecademy.

Ecademy members are encouraged to put 50 keywords describing themselves, write a profile and to submit a photo. The mistake many make when they first join is to use their keywords and profile simply as an advert for their business. The successful networkers have interesting profiles about themselves, their interests, travels, family and amusing anecdotes. Are they missing out by not pushing their business interests? Not a bit of it as there is a link to their website - what is the point of another sales pitch. People buy from people they like and trust and the social side of the Ecademy is the important additional ingredient on offer.

Within Ecademy there are hundreds of special interest clubs and regionally based groups that give the opportunity for physical meetings to be arranged. It is incredible to be able to go to a meeting with people that you already know a great deal about before you actually meet them. It all leads to a much more honest and open relationship from the off.

I can’t see how the Yellow Pages can survive in the long run. Give me referred, trusted traders any day. Networking rules - and works.

Keith Watson has been designing websites for nearly 11 years and is the founder of Creative Eye - http://www.creativeeye.co.uk

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You are working hard creating good and quality content for your Google AdSense web site. You carefully plan a good link building strategy for your Google AdSense web site. You distribute your articles through article distribution channels regularly. You submit your Google AdSense web site to web directories and you have done basic search engine optimization on all of your AdSense pages. You work extremely hard to get as much traffic as possible to your Google AdSense web site.

One day, you receive an email from a webmaster who owns a huge mailing list informing you that your site will be featured in his newsletter. You are happy that someone likes your Google AdSense web site and he will promote your web site for free. You start receiving huge amount of referral traffic from his newsletter. Instead of getting 2000 hits per day, you are getting 200,000 hits per day now. This sudden traffic surge boosts the number of clicks on your Google AdSense ads. Your Google AdSense earning is increased by a few folds.

Before you know it, you receive an email from Google saying that your account is suspended due to “invalid clicks”. You did not click on your Google AdSense ad intentionally or accidentally. Everything you did so far does not violate the Google AdSense terms and conditions. You could not figure what went wrong and why your Google AdSense account is suspended.

Sudden Jump in Google Earnings Triggers Red Flag

The sudden jump in your Google earnings has alerted the Google AdSense team and the result is the suspension of your Google AdSense account. In fact, this happened to a dozen of Internet Marketers. However they managed to get their Google AdSense account fully reinstate using the right strategy.
If your AdSense account is suspended because of the sudden jump of your Google AdSense earning, you should stay calm and plan the right strategy before you talk to Google. You should be patient when dealing with Google. You should be polite when communicate with them and take initiative to provide them with all the documents they may need. You should not argue with them why they have suspended your account unfairly. After all, your main purpose is to get your Google AdSense Account reinstated.

Jason has written General Guideline for AdSense Reinstatement. This is a detail guideline on how to get your Google AdSense account reinstated if you have not violated Google AdSense terms and conditions. He also provides a few examples of correspondence he was using to get his account reinstated.

In conclusion, to avoid any disruption to your Google AdSense business, it may be a good idea to alert Google AdSense team about the possible surge of traffic that your Google AdSense web site may receive.

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Another big pitfall of using free software that you may become a victim of all kinds of scams which Internet has become full of. There are tens, if not hundreds anti-spyware applications which destroy your PC security once you double-click on an executable file. They keep reporting of successful scans, deleted spyware, and online guards, while secretly doing evil things you may not be aware about. Besides producing a negative impact on relations with you child this also makes it harder for your offspring to compete with other children as the Internet these days gives certain social and academic advantages.

When using your computer it is important to use virus protection, anti-spyware programs and other techniques to keep prying eyes off of your computer. But make sure you do not download or buy any program without checking its authenticity, at least now onwards. Spyware removal software can also be a part of anti-spyware programs. Data loggers, key loggers are just a few programs which harvest info from your computer. Winclear is the only program created specially to auto remove such spywares. AccSent monitors account access attempts and issues a one-time PIN challenge to those coming from IP address ranges or browsers that differ from the last authorized account access. That is why every computer owner needs winclear.

Protect With Winclear :Case History Addresses Internet Smith Thomas Minor
Basically, a computer spy software works like a personal private investigator inside your computer. It will provide you regular reports on all websites and programs accessed by your children, your workers or your spouses. This computer monitoring software can even tell you the time and content of all messages and e-mails sent using the computer you are monitoring. Some computer spy software even provides you all log in names and passwords entered by your spouse, children, or employees in the computer. Winclear is the only software which is capable of removing keylogger programs. However if malware or spyware is installed on your computer it may be possible for it to access those cookies and start retrieving your login email and personal information and sending it back to whomever installed the spyware. Winclear has been the industry leader in fighting keyloggers for the last 8 years.

Winclear:
Phishers are getting smarter. That is the reason why you need Winclear installed onto your computer. Pop up ads are the obvious forms of spyware. Protect your computer security by using Winclear! More about Winclear here: Winclear Reviews.

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I attended a presentation a couple of weeks ago given by Internet marketer, Michael Green. Michael runs the ‘How To Corp’ and has created numerous information products covering a wide range of topics.

There were a number of very interesting points that came out of the presentation but I wanted to ’steal’ one of them as the topic of this newsletter. I am sure Michael won’t mind

The point in question is a simple one but one which is regularly overlooked by people just starting out in Internet marketing and that is to get into affiliate marketing later rather than sooner.

Many people jump at the chance of selling someone else’s product as an affiliate as there are many obvious advantages:

No need to create a product of your own
No involvement in the delivery or support of the product
Minimal contact with customers
No need to have your own website

At first glance, affiliate marketing can appear to be the ideal business opportunity and in many ways, it is. However, if you are new to Internet marketing and have no website, no email list and no traffic, affiliate marketing will almost certainly be a lot of hard work.

The key to being a successful affiliate is to be able to drive reasonable levels of traffic to a sales page that is relevant to the traffic in question. If you don’t have any existing traffic or a mailing list, the chances are that you are going to have to pay for this traffic (at least initially). Whilst this can be very effective, it can also take time to get right and will be costing money in the process.

Therefore, to go back to the original statement, getting involved in affiliate marketing is definitely a good idea but if you start to work as an affiliate once you have built up your own website, traffic and mailing list, you will find that it is far more rewarding.

To illustrate this further, when I first started writing this newsletter, I would often throw in the odd affiliate link but they rarely resulted in any sales. The reason for this was simple - I hardly had any subscribers on the mailing list! Over the years, as my list has grown and as subscribers have ‘got to know me’ and I have gained more trust, my affiliate sales have increased.

Looking at it from another angle, I find that my most successful affiliates are those that have an established website or mailing list. Of course, this makes perfect sense since there is already existing traffic to sell to and often no effort is required other than adding a hyperlink to a web page or giving a product a mention in mailshot.

Once you have an existing website and customers/subscribers, you will also start to build credibility in your chosen field/industry. This means that your customers are more likely to trust your recommendations and actually purchase something if you promote it as being a great product.

In the early days of my Internet marketing career, I would regularly try and promote products that were about making money online. I wasn’t very successful with these promotions and one of the main reasons was that I wasn’t personally making much money online. Once I started to become more successful and my customers/subscribers were able to see that I did actually know what I was talking about, they were far more willing to purchase these types of products from me or on my recommendation.

Therefore, in summary, get your own website/product/newsletter/whatever up and running first and then concentrate on adding additional value to your product range by promoting relevant affiliate products.

If you choose to go down the road of only selling products as an affiliate, remember that this is perfectly possible to do but it will take time, hard work and a fair bit of patience.

Of course, the other benefit in selling your own product is that you don’t have to share the sales proceeds

Copyright 2005 Richard Grady

Richard Grady has been helping ordinary people earn online since 1998. He writes a free newsletter which is published every two weeks. To subscribe (and claim your free gifts), visit: http://www.thetraderonline.com/newsletter.html

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Copyright 2005 Keith Gloster

Could you sell your products or services without using graphics in your ad copy?

Chances are that you could. But because the internet is a visual medium by which information is transmitted and we live in a society where “seeing is believing”, I doubt that you’d generate very many sales without graphics.

So how can you write ad copy that sells your products and services even when you don’t have graphics? Here are 10 sizzling tips to help you improve your odds:

1. You could decrease or increase the length of your ad copy. There is no rule on how long your ad copy should be unless space is a consideration. The ad should be long enough to sell your product.

2. You could add some sub headlines on your ad copy. Sub headlines act just like headlines; they grab the readers attention. They’ll keep the readers interested as they continue to read your ad.

3. You could ask your reader questions through out the ad copy. They will answer the questions in their own head as they read your ad copy. The questions you ask should persuade the reader into buying.

4. You could highlight keywords through out your ad copy. The keywords should be attractive to your target audience. You could highlight them with color, underlines, italics,
etc.

5. You could bullet or indent your benefits on your ad copy. Most people won’t read a whole ad copy, so make your products benefits standout and you won’t lose the sales from all the skimmers..

6. You could change the size of your text on your ad copy. You want to make your text large enough so it’s not hard to read. You also want your headline and major points to be larger so they will standout.

7. You could raise or lower the price on your ad copy. A higher price could increase the perceived value of your product and a lower price could lesson your product’s value.

8. You could add proof of results on your ad copy. You should include testimonials, endorsements, and factual statistics to prove your product’s claims.

9. You could add special offers on your ad copy. It’s usually easier to sell the offer than the product. You could use discounts, free bonuses, volume sales, etc.

10. You could eliminate the hard-to-understand jargon on your ad copy. Unless your product calls for technical words, you want your ad to be read without people pulling out a dictionary.

About the author:

Keith Gloster provides advice on effective traffic and lead generation tools and techniques. For the creative edge on permission email marketing, traffic and lead generation, and to claim some valuable bonuses, you can subscribe to his popular newsletter at:
http://www.free-mlm-leads-generator.com

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Some years ago, a prominent Australian hi-tech company launched a product called Maestro that bundles community-building features like chat rooms, file sharing and instant messaging into one application.

The company envisaged smaller Internet service providers (ISP’s) as their main target market for the software. The company president contracted with a sales/marketing person to handle the ISP market. He personally trained the candidate for two weeks, emphasizing all the while that the ISP market is one that needs to be gently handled.

“Don’t worry,” the salesperson apparently reassured his unsuspecting boss. “I know some great ways of doing marketing.”

At the end of the two weeks, the contractor sought out a number of email discussion groups and online message boards frequented specifically by ISP owners.

He created two false identities, and struck up “conversations” between the two ID’s. The subject of these chats? You’ve guessed it - what a wonderful product Maestro is!

Before very long, our crack salesperson got embroiled in an argument with another poster on one of the lists. Others became curious and discovered that just one IP address was used
with the two IDs. This meant that the two “people” were actually just one person.

When he realized that his newly-revealed antics didn’t sit so well, to say the least, with the boss, he readily handed in his resignation. All the same, he didn’t really understand
what the fuss was about.

“This is the way the game is played,” the president quoted him as saying. After all, he had not misrepresented the product or the company in the postings. All he had said was the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth!

So what’s the problem, then?

Shaking your head?

Are you shaking your head in disbelief? Well, that’s an encouraging sign!

But you must know - such deception abounds. Many apparently respectable people would write here: “deception” (in inverted commas). I mean, we’re not talking here about anything really CROOKED, are we?

I wouldn’t bank on it. If something’s not crooked, it must, by definition, be straight.

When I look around the Internet - never mind the brick-and-mortar world - I don’t need a
builder’s plumb line to tell that an awful lot’s going on out there that’s not straight! But who cares, anyways?

In the case we just described, the company president received a number of emails supporting his former salesperson’s actions.

“Most of them took the stance of “The high road is a bad
road,” confessed the president. “I don’t agree with them,” he said, “but I can see their point.”

The same news source that reported this incident, also cited a story about a leading entertainment company that recently attracted a lot of embarrassing press - and imminent
legal action.

Two very enterprising advertising reps had created a fictitious film critic, who most obligingly wrote up some rave reviews for the company’s promotions.

Eleventh Commandment

The ruse was discovered and the two hapless advertising people suspended. But I think it’s reasonable to assume that these two are far outnumbered by colleagues who are a little more adept at fulfilling the Eleventh Commandment: “Thou Shalt Not Get Caught!”

We could go on and on.

We could talk about the authors who encourage their friends to post glowing reviews on Amazon.com, even when they haven’t read the books they refer to. Curiously - or perhaps, typically - this practice is apparently cited with admiration in a recent book on online promotional methods. (Well, if you produce a product and I’m your
friend, it MUST be a great product, right?)

Should we talk about the well-known writer who received an email with the subject line “RE: Your Story Proposal”?

Thinking it must be from an editor to whom he had submitted a proposal that he had forgotten about, he opened it immediately. The message was a blatant ad for a new piece of
software. (Big deal! All they stole was a couple of minutes of his time, right?)

Or what about the marketers who urge you to take advantage of a time-sensitive special offer that expires on June 30? (”Yes, we should have added which YEAR, but typos do happen!”)
When your order, don’t forget to claim your free Exclusive Report - a $29 value. (”Yes, you can get it free from Acme even WITHOUT an order, but are you telling me I don’t know the value of my own merchandise?”)

Inverted commas?

And you still want to talk about “deception” in inverted commas?

Is the high road a bad road? Maybe. Maybe not. I don’t know.

But I do know one thing. If you’re a merchant and I don’t trust you, you went get far on any road.

And if the consumer body, collectively, loses trust in the collective community of merchants, who will there be to trade with at all?

Good road, bad road, what’s the difference? As far as I can see, the high road is the ONLY road.

Let me know what you think.

Azriel Winnett is creator of Hodu.com - Your Communication Skills Portal. This popular website helps you improve your communication and relationship skills in your business or professional life, in the family unit and on the social scene. New articles added almost daily.

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Have you ever felt disappointment and dismay when trying a new marketing approach because it didn’t generate the response you expected? If so, you are certainly not alone. Perhaps in our impatience and high hopes to succeed we’ve forgotten the old saying, “If at first you don’t succeed, try, try again.” In fact repetition is the secret to visibility and attention. Whether it’s a sales letter, press release or copy in your direct mailings, the strategies you choose often take trial and error efforts to find the one that works best.

Getting Attention Requires Repetition!

Think about the many times you’ve seen something and considered its potential but did nothing about it. Then you saw it again and gave it another thought but you still didn’t act upon it. And finally after the third time, you decided to give it a try. That’s exactly how it works with any marketing material, press release, advertisement, article or sales letter. The people who receive or see your information need time to digest and ponder the idea of your product or service. The more they see it, the more inclined they’ll be to buy. In fact, repetition helps to build trust, therefore repetitive promotion of your product or service should be viewed as an investment and not as wasted expenditure.

Are They Really Mistakes?

Unfortunately or fortunately depending upon how you look at it, being in any type of business requires experimentation either with time or money. No matter how many so-called experts we follow, sometimes an endeavor will work immediately yet at other times very little seems to happen. That is the nature of the beast, and for most legitimate business ventures it is a necessary evil. The interpretation of these trial and error efforts may be considered as mistakes, but rather than viewing your attempts as mistakes, why not perceive them for what they really are? They’re opportunities to find what works and what doesn’t. When you reflect on the great geniuses and inventors of our time and how many efforts it took for these amazing discoveries to come to fruition, you have to recognize you’re in good company. These impressive geniuses kept trying until they hit on just the right niche or formula.

Believe in Your Product or Service!

As hard as it may seem at times, if you believe in your product or service you have to keep trying. When the article pulls visitors and finally draws tons of new clientele, the effort and attempts will be well worth it. And when the press release is acknowledged and you do start receiving many hits to your site you’ll be glad for all your efforts. Remember, just because the article didn’t get published today, doesn’t mean it won’t appear tomorrow. And just because the press release didn’t bring you thousands of hits to your web site, doesn’t mean it wasn’t a good press release. It may just mean it needs another avenue for presentation.

Don’t Stop Short of Success!

Did you know that it could take up to five or seven repeats of exposure before someone responds to your communication? Whether you’re sending out introductory sales letters, or submitting a press release, often several tries are required before any acknowledgment is received. Just keep on going until you find the one method that works. Things may not always turn out exactly as you expected the first time around, but if your product or business has merit, repetition is the secret to visibility and attention.

Copyright 2005

Charlene Rashkow brings 15 years of experience as a Writing Stylist and Author to her creative efforts as a freelance business writer/consultant. To learn what her clients have to say about her go to http://www.allyourwritingneeds.com/clients.html

Charlene has successfully helped companies and individuals reach their objectives by writing outstanding web site content, press releases, bios, articles of interest, business plans, resumes and all other forms of marketing material. To learn more about Charlene you may visit her at http://www.allyourwritingneeds.com

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When you have a new website, or an older one that is stuck in a rut in terms of traffic, you really would love to bring the site to a higher page rank of four and above, lifting the site into more of an authority site category.

These sites gain more traffic, and therefore more profits for you.

How do you do this, you might be asking yourself?

The answer is, using the power of press releases. Whether you have heard of this method before or not, press releases are an incredibly powerful way of achieving a high page rank in very little time. And this in turn makes your site considered an authority site, on whatever theme the site is about, by the search engines.

Which then means more traffic, which is what we all want, right?

This is how you do it.

Firstly, you write the press release. It should not be too long. Three hundred words is a good length. It should not sound like a sales pitch. Because why would anybody pick up a blatant advertisement?

Make the headline catchy and draw the interest of the reader.

Make sure you have your keywords in the title and body of the release.

Ask the why, where, what and how.

Now read your press release and ask someone else you know to read it too, to get their opinion. It should flow and not read in a choppy way.

Finally comes the time to submit your press release.

You can submit it for free, however the maxim, you get what you pay for, as always applies. If you submit a free release, you will only get a tiny amount of traffic and fairly poor back links to your website, often irrelevant links too. For example, your site is about cars, and a website concerning cold cream links back to you. Not good.

I know. Because I have tried free submits in the past, and this is what happened to me.

Unless the press release is about something incredible, which spreads via word of mouth, do not expect much in the way of results.

In order to get the page rank of four or five you need to be in the first ten positions, and submit two or three times in a few weeks.

The cost would probably be several hundred dollars, depending upon how high you paid for. Sounds like a lot, I know. But getting a quick high page rank, and therefore high future earnings from the website is worth the short term cost.

If this is too much, pay what you can afford. The higher your position, the more traffic you are likely to have.

The biggest press site is called PR Web. Do a search for it.

Now get going, and submit a press release and watch your visitor count soar.

Copyright Gary Martin 2006 All Rights Reserved

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