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(12-18) 04:00 PDT Seoul -- Choi Yeon-sung avoids going out most days, and when he's on the street, he puts his head down -- to dodge the whispers, the stares and the pleas for autographs.
[Podcast: Video gamers gain fame and fortune in South Korea. ]
Such are the hardships of a celebrity video game player in South Korea.
Choi has 90,000 members in his fan club. He pulls down $190,000 a year in salary and winnings combined, in a country where the average annual income is $16,291. At 23, the boyish-looking professional gamer has achieved a level of fame bestowed elsewhere on movie idols, soccer stars and Olympic champions.
Video game competitions draw hundreds of thousands of avid fans who watch on massive indoor screens, or on one of two game-only cable channels broadcasting 24 hours a day. An estimated 18 million South Koreans, more than one-third of the country's 48 million people, play video games online. That adds up to an $8.7 billion industry, with the government spending more than $100 million each year to promote, research and develop the market.
The pinnacle for professionals like Choi is the annual World Cyber Games, which was founded in South Korea in 2000. And this year Choi won a gold medal in the game he plays almost exclusively -- StarCraft, developed by Blizzard Entertainment of Irvine.
The games, held in Monza, Italy, in October, saw 700 competitors from 70 countries, competing for $462,000 in cash and prizes. South Korea won the Grand Champion title followed by teams from Russia and Germany, with the U.S. tied for fourth.
What accounts for the success of pros like Choi?
"In Korea, many people study so much, spending 10 to 12 hours each day studying for the college entrance examination," said Kim Hyun Seok, chief executive of International Cyber Marketing in Seoul, which produces the World Cyber Games. "That's the kind of attitude they're accustomed to. So they can practice games for 12 hours a day."
South Korea's broadband
The players also represent a country whose premier position in the gaming world is due in large part to the advances it has made in technology. South Korea has the world's highest rate of broadband penetration -- a must for online video gamers -- with over 80 percent of households hooked up to high-speed connections, compared to over 40 percent in the United States, according to Point Topic, a technology research firm in the United Kingdom.
It is also home to cutting-edge global companies like Samsung Electronics -- maker of mobile phones, digital televisions and other electronic devices -- and a prime sponsor of professional video game competitions here. Backed by sponsors like Samsung, SK Telecom, and shipbuilders STX Co., the pros specialize in a variety of games, notably FIFA Soccer, published by Electronic Arts in Redwood City, and WarCraft, also developed by Blizzard Entertainment.
But by far the most popular is StarCraft an intergalactic war game that has millions of fans in South Korea, including Choi, who started playing the game seven years ago. In 2000, Choi was picked up by SK Telecom, which sponsors T1, one of 11 teams that make up a professional league that focuses on StarCraft.
Choi lives alone in his condo in Seoul, but most of the players in the 17-member T1 team stay together year-round in the SK Telecom training camp, in two adjacent apartments in a prosperous neighborhood south of the Han River.
A silver team van parked outside the camp on a bright, chilly autumn day was covered with phone numbers and scrawled statements such as "Lim Yo-Hwan, I'm yours, I belong to you," and "Marry me, Lim Yo-Hwan." Lim, a teammate of Choi's and a legend among gamers, recently entered the military, a heartbreaking development for hundreds of thousands of young South Korean women.
The team's regimen
Inside the camp, a house mother does all the laundry and cooking for players -- all male -- ranging from teens to early 20s. They sleep two or three to a room, surrounded by trophies, stuffed animals and team photos.
The players start practicing after lunch of homey Korean dishes such as fried tofu. They break for dinner and a trip to the gym to lift weights and do aerobic exercise before heading back to the training camp, where they practice until 2 a.m.
The regimen is rigorous because there are up to three competitions per week, in individual and team events. Many of the players are enrolled in a cyber-university where they major in game-planning and other high-tech subjects. It also postpones mandatory military service.
In the team practice area, rows of computers line the walls and spill into the kitchen of an apartment. The players, clad in socks, sweats and track pants and T-shirts, wear headphones and stare at the screens, the fingers of their left hands flying in a blur while their right hands jerk the mouse back and forth. They play against themselves, and others online. Mugs of tea and bottles of vitamins sit beside the terminals.
"In the beginning, while playing the game, I am kind of sober," said Choi, who is tall and muscled. "By the middle of the game, I almost black out. There's nothing in my brain. My fingers move faster than my brain orders."
But along with such 21st-century skills, players must maintain old-fashioned decorum. They cannot swear or get angry, or get drunk, whether they are competing or not, said Je Hun-ho, director of the Korea e-Sports Association, founded in 2003, which certifies each pro gamer.
"We make them gentleman," Je said.
T1's head coach, Ju Hoon, 33, handsome with a mischievous smile and a following of his own, said the team's training includes learning to express themselves when they win and to deal with fans.
Many players are shy and show little emotion, win or lose, he said. But when one player crowed too much, such outward expressions were banned as "inconsiderate." It puzzled fans because they could not tell who won.
"Now they train [to be] happy when they win a game," said Ju, a graduate of Seoul National University, one of the country's most prestigious schools.
As popular as video gaming has become, it's still not what most parents dream of for their children.
Ju said he kept his profession a secret from his parents until they saw him coaching on television.
"I could not tell my parents they spent their money for this," he said, with a laugh. "It was so unexpected to find their son doing this. But now they're supporting me."
'It's OK now'
Likewise, SK Telecom teammate Park Yong Wook, 23, hid his talents from his parents. Without telling them, he moved to Seoul from Busan, South Korea's largest port city -- for a shot at going pro.
"Later, when I got older, and I became better, I wanted to show myself. It's OK now," said Park, whose spiky hair and glowing skin have won him a bevy of female fans who ply him with cuddly toys and other gifts. "I personally don't think I'm that sexy or good-looking. I try not to focus on that. I try to give them my ability. That is more important."
An hour before a recent StarCraft match, fans began gathering at the MBC Hero Studio. Built specifically to televise competitions, it is located deep within an enormous underground shopping mall in Seoul, called COEX. Many fans were teenagers or in their 20s, evenly split between men and women, clad in jeans and sweaters and stylish miniskirts and knee-high boots.
About 100 fans packed the benches, waving white banners emblazoned with a cartoon of Park -- depicting him with his glasses, headphones, wings, and a pointed tail, and the cryptic words "Kingdom Devil Toss Run." ("Kingdom" is Park's online handle. "Devil Toss" is his nickname, because fans say his style is like that of the devil against his enemies.)
Park and his opponent, both wearing sneakers and color-coordinated uniforms, faced off behind a glass wall while the audience followed the action on overhead screens, along with a non-stop analysis by three commentators sporting skinny ties.
"He should have attacked! This is not a time to defend," shouted one.
Adoring fans
Although gaming is primarily a male pursuit, more women have become spectators.
Im Su Jeong, 27, was introduced to video games by her brother. Now she plays. And she adores another professional, Jeon Sang Wook, because "he's very cute, handsome, and he's very good at it. He likes the attack. Now he has become more defensive, but still has more strategy."
Kim Bo Ram, 16, attends live matches twice a week, to learn strategy and meet with other enthusiasts. She wants to be a pro gamer, in a sport that so far has few female professionals.
"I am very proud Korea has professional players," said Kim, who wore glasses and a baggy Mickey Mouse sweatshirt. "This is an opportunity to introduce Korea to the world. I hope it can be even bigger in the future."
Many players hone their skills in the country's more than 22,000 PC-bangs, or computer lounges outfitted with comfy chairs and fast Internet connections that cost about $1 per hour.
On a Friday night, the smoky basement-level lounge at Interizone, one of Seoul's largest PC-bangs with 98 computers, was filled with the tinny din of cheers, music and other sound effects from strategy, poker and shooting games.
Lee Young Jin, 21, spent the last six months living here, practicing Counter-Strike, a video shooting game. He plays on a team of five and hopes to land sponsorship soon.
He naps at the PC-bang, going home only to shower and change his clothes. He doesn't have much time for his friends anymore, said Lee, pale, his long hair tied into a ponytail. The fashion design major is taking a break from college, to the distress of his parents.
"I have big expectations, because being pro gamer is like being a movie star," Lee said. "I can be on television and earn a lot of money and earn popularity and have a scheduled life. Better than this."
With his $170,000 salary, plus winnings, Choi has bought a new house for his parents and his own apartment in an upscale, modern neighborhood in Seoul, and is putting his older brother through law school.
But it's not all fun and games.
"The happiest thing is I earn money," Choi said. "But I don't feel freedom. I am the person that everyone recognizes."
BAY AREA / Firms benefit from growth of gaming
Bay Area tech companies are getting into the game in South Korea.
Developers, chipmakers and other high-tech businesses here and across the United States are sponsoring gaming competitions and players, launching new products and forming partnerships with South Korean companies.
"Korea is very wired, the population is tech savvy and people are very passionate about gaming," said Tammy Schachter, a spokeswoman for Electronic Arts Inc. in Redwood City, the world's biggest video game publisher.
In the United States and Europe, most consumers buy games to play at home on computers or video consoles, like Xbox or PlayStation.
In South Korea, most gamers play for free online, but will pay for extras, a model U.S. game developers are looking at.
In June, Electronic Arts' FIFA online soccer game in South Korea drew 100,000 concurrent players. Users pay for energy drinks, better coaches and other content in the game, spending $7.31 on average in October.
"Korea is a very important market to us," said Paul Sams, chief operating officer for Blizzard Entertainment of Irvine, which developed the massively popular StarCraft video game. "Korea has been at the forefront of this relatively new form of sport and entertainment."
Sams also said that "competitive gaming continues to expand in other parts of Asia and the rest of the world."
South Korea's games craze has also attracted chipmakers AMD Inc. in Sunnyvale and Intel Corp. in Santa Clara, and tech industry giant Microsoft Corp., all sponsors of the country's World Cyber Games.
"We're trying to win the hearts of gamers as they learn about gaming in Internet cafes, so when they decide to purchase their own computers, they'll have a preference for Intel's technology," said Randy Stude, director of Intel's worldwide gaming program office, formed in August.
In addition to South Korea, Intel also sponsors professional video game teams in the United States, and Europe, he said.
Nvidia Corp., the Santa Clara maker of computer graphic chips, also sponsors pro-video game players.
"To be prominent in Korea is great for us strategically," Nvidia spokeswoman Sheryl Huang said. "This is a snapshot of what it can be in the future, where competitive sports can go. We see where it's going with young adult males. It's a highly coveted demographic."
UNITED STATES / Day jobs are the norm for pro gamers in U.S.
In the United States, professional gaming is growing, but is far from the level of popularity it enjoys in South Korea. Some players get money from team sponsors, such as Santa Clara-based Nvidia Corp., and from winnings. But most keep a day job.
Major League Gaming, a video game console-based league, has approximately 150 players, said spokeswoman Amy Janzen. Only the "very top" -- a small handful of players -- make the kind of money the better-known Korean gamers earn.
Janzen said the league aims to boost the take of players, "to give an aspirational focus. It's an important part of growing the sport and taking it to the mainstream."
The Cyberathlete Professional League, which focuses on PC-based games, has a roster of more than 500 pro gamers, said Angel Munoz, founder and president -- but they've yet to be treated like rock stars.
"The U.S. will get there, but it will be years until we get that kind of mass appeal," Munoz said. "It's like the early stages of baseball, when there was public interest but not enough money to sustain the sport. Players had to supplement their income."
In October, Wesley Cwiklo won a gold at the World Cyber Games in the Project Gotham Racing 3 event, the sole medal winner for the United States at this year's competition.
SOUTH KOREA / Addicted to gaming, players disappear, die
South Korea's computer lounges, known as PC-bangs, are places where addicts feed their demons.
More than a million South Koreans were estimated to be addicted to video games in 2005, according to government figures.
Some died from excess, such as the 28-year man who suffered heart failure brought on by dehydration and exhaustion, after playing for 50 hours straight.
And there was the businessman in his late 20s who disappeared into a PC-bang for three months, tracked down only after he withdrew money from his father's account, said Kim Mi-Hwa, a counselor at the government's Center for Internet Addiction Prevention and Counseling.
"The problem is not the Internet, but something basic in life is wrong," said Kim, whose clients typically visit her once a week for six months. "Even after the treatment, they need to use the Internet. It's necessary in Korea. But they have to learn how to manage their time and how to control themselves."
The percentage of addicts has declined from 3.3 to 2.4 percent of the population, from 2004 to 2005, after a government public education campaign and the expansion of its treatment centers, which are administered under the government's Korea Agency for Digital Opportunity & Promotion.
On the Web
The professional pursuit of computer gaming is an international phenomenon. To watch a video clip of competitor Choi Yeon-sung (handle: 'Ilove OOv'), go to: tinyurl.com/yz2b9r
Credit card debt is the number one financial problem of Americans today. The average household has a credit card balance of about US$8,000 over multiple credit cards and store cards. This balance is at its highest after the holidays, when most of us have racked up major credit card bills on gifts. If you are carrying one too many big balances, there are some things you can do to lower your debt. Be sure to consult our Sound Money Tips Guide to Credit Cards for answers to all your credit card queries.
Meantime, the most common form of credit card debt consolidation is to transfer the balance of all your credit cards onto one card with the lowest interest rate. This can save you thousands because APRs (Annual Percentage Rates) that are 12%-24% can get reduced to 10%, 8%, 6% or even 0% - and consolidating has the added bonus of combining all your payments into one easy, fixed monthly sum. Still, there are lots of “fine print” traps. Look out for these top tricks of the credit card consolidation trade:
1. Balance-transfer Fees – Some issuers charge transaction fees as high as 4 percent for balance transfers so that the higher the balance, the higher the transaction fee. Other credit card companies cap transfer fees at $25-50. Still other cards only waive fees for "initial balance transfers," then treat every subsequent balance transfer as a cash advance and charge the greater of $2.50 or 2.5% of the transaction amount as a fee.
2. Teaser Rates - Be sure to ask how long the introductory rate lasts, and find out what the card's annual percentage rate is after that teaser rate expires. If possible, it’s best to focus on paying down the transferred balance before the teaser rate expires. Does the teaser rate apply to transferred balances or new purchases or both? And last but not least, do you qualify for the super low-rate? While an offer may boast a 3.9 percent teaser rate that bumps up to 17 percent after six months, a person may only qualify for a card with 7.9 percent teaser and a regular annual percentage rate of 21 percent.
3. Late Payment Problems – It may only take one slip-up for that super-low rate to disappear. For example, you may start with a 9.99 APR, but one tardy payment bumps the rate up to 21.99. What about late fees and over-the-limit fees? Does that card have an annual fee?
4. Double Check - The new card company may send a notice saying the balance transfer is complete. But be sure to call the old card company to verify this. The old company should send a billing statement with a zero balance. If they don’t, request it.
5. Cancel Old Card(s) - First off, plenty of people out there have trouble avoiding the temptation of an open credit line. Second, too many open lines of credit can affect a person's ability to qualify for a mortgage or a car loan. Lenders view any open credit lines on all unused credit cards sitting in a consumer's wallet as potential outstanding debt.
6. Stick With It - Consumer experts urge people who transfer balances to a low-rate card to stick around for a year or more. If you jump from card to card you can’t build a credit history, and that can really damage your credit.
You can make your trade show experience much easier by using a portable exhibit. Since you control everything related to transporting it and setting it up, you won't have to hire firms to for those things for you.
In contrast, a large exhibit requires you to rely on others to ship it and set it up - during which any number of problems can arise. For example, your exhibit could arrive late at the trade show, or not arrive at all.
But by transporting your portable trade show exhibit yourself, you avoid the need to deal with a freight company and keep track of bills of lading so you can trace your shipment or make a loss claim on a missing display.
Instead, you can simply bring your portable trade show exhibit right along with you, knowing where it is at all times, and bring it into the expo hall yourself when you arrive.
Your portable trade show booth is also safer from damage than larger displays, which may be punctured, scratched, or torn by machinery during transport and drayage. And although your booth repair kit may enable you to fix up minor scratches and dents yourself, how can you repair a forklift puncture hole in your display? Having portable displays that you can bring by yourself alleviates the possibility of this type of expo disaster.
Another advantage of a portable booth is that you can set it up by yourself fairly easily - which eliminates the potential headache of having a hired crew set up your display. A large display would require you to direct each crew member's part in setting it up and taking it down.
But your portable trade show exhibit can be put up by you alone, or by you with one assistant. Portable booth setup is quick and easy, and you can handle the whole procedure yourself. And taking down your booth after the expo is just as efficient when you're operating alone or with just one other person.
Although standard booths are beneficial in many ways, they don't necessarily bring any better trade show results than portable booths. And as far as preventing booth transportation and setup nightmares, nothing can beat a portable trade show exhibit.by trade-show-booth-display.com
RIVERSIDE - A jury ruled Monday morning on behalf of a Dallas man who sued Ford Motor Company Inc. in a lemon-law case in Riverside County Superior Court.
The man, Tim Ferraro, bought a Lincoln Town Car at a Corona company that was later dropped from the lawsuit.
The jury awarded Ferraro's company $500,000 in damages in a case tried in Judge Dallas Holmes' courtroom. Ferraro bought the car in 1998 in Corona for about $60,000. It was for a limousine service he started with his wife. But Ferraro said he spent thousands of dollars in repair bills for electrical woes and suspension problems. He tried to sell it, but nobody wanted it after discovering its repair history.
"I'm extremely happy for my clients," said Robert Francis Brennan, a La Crescenta attorney specializing in lemon-law cases. "They went through six years of torment. This car was a piece of junk."
An attorney representing Ford, Robert McPhail of Bowman & Brooke in Torrance, did not return a call for comment.
Brennan said the jury could consider up to three times the total sum of the car's worth, money spent in repairs and the Ferraros' lost fares in making its monetary decision. by brennanlaw.com
By:Kevin Bauer
Most Forex Trading Software suggests the right time to buy or sell and helps the trader or investor to make the maximum profit.
Forex Trading Software is of great use to those who are speculators in the forex trading field. Several forex trading software programs are available in the market and the forex trader can pick and choose whichever one he wants. In fact, many traders are offered software for free or as part of their trading account by their forex brokers or agents. These complimentary packages are usually very elementary models - offering more features available only through extra payment.
One may also wish to try various demos so as to choose which software is most suitable for them, and download it accordingly. The software packages you are provided can be a vital factor in choosing a broker as the software does play a significant role.
The types of Forex Trading software:
The software programs are generally of two types- web based and desktop based, and it is up to the user to choose whichever one is easier for him to handle, and
which ever he likes more. However, in choosing the software, the Internet speed is a major factor, and it is advised that if possible then one should go for
broadband, as delay in acquiring the information can bring one’s world crashing down.
One also requires to have the most up-to-date information as possible as the Forex world is forever changing. Another consideration is that of security
and it is said that a web-based software is more secure than a desktop based software.
Information on desktop based software.
Where a desktop based software package is concerned, the data is stored on the desktop hard drive - making it is susceptible to viruses contamination and other
security issues. If, unfortunately, the computer crashes, then all the vital information can get lost forever, not to mention what will happen if unauthorised people go through your personal files.
However, the risks taken can be reduced by either devoting a single computer for the forex trading or by using one of those specially made forex computers, albeit it might be a little expensive. However certain other steps can be taken, such as installing a password to guard your private data, making regular backups of the essential information, updating an anti-virus program and updating the trading software regularly.
These may seem elementary precautions but our email inbox overflows with queries of how to recover damaged or lost information. (Do you protect or backup your information?)
Information on web-based software.
Where web-based software is concerned, the security is taken care of by the provider. It is usually low-maintenance and secure. If the forex systems are online, they are hosted on secure servers, like the ones where credit card processing is handled and backups of your account data are made by your software provider. it can also be more convenient in as much that there is no software to download as the software
runs in the net browser and the newest of features and versions are available.
Also, while traveling you can log in from any computer, which simply has an Internet connection.
Both the desktop based and web based forex trading softwares have their own advantages, and are helpful to the user, and the user should certainly make use of any of the two-whichever he is more comfortable with.
Most Forex Trading Software suggests the right time to buy or sell and helps the trader or investor to make the maximum profit.
Forex Trading Software is of great use to those who are speculators in the forex trading field. Several forex trading software programs are available in the market and the forex trader can pick and choose whichever one he wants. In fact, many traders are offered software for free or as part of their trading account by their forex brokers or agents. These complimentary packages are usually very elementary models - offering more features available only through extra payment.
One may also wish to try various demos so as to choose which software is most suitable for them, and download it accordingly. The software packages you are provided can be a vital factor in choosing a broker as the software does play a significant role.
The types of Forex Trading software:
The software programs are generally of two types- web based and desktop based, and it is up to the user to choose whichever one is easier for him to handle, and
which ever he likes more. However, in choosing the software, the Internet speed is a major factor, and it is advised that if possible then one should go for
broadband, as delay in acquiring the information can bring one’s world crashing down.
One also requires to have the most up-to-date information as possible as the Forex world is forever changing. Another consideration is that of security
and it is said that a web-based software is more secure than a desktop based software.
Information on desktop based software.
Where a desktop based software package is concerned, the data is stored on the desktop hard drive - making it is susceptible to viruses contamination and other
security issues. If, unfortunately, the computer crashes, then all the vital information can get lost forever, not to mention what will happen if unauthorised people go through your personal files.
However, the risks taken can be reduced by either devoting a single computer for the forex trading or by using one of those specially made forex computers, albeit it might be a little expensive. However certain other steps can be taken, such as installing a password to guard your private data, making regular backups of the essential information, updating an anti-virus program and updating the trading software regularly.
These may seem elementary precautions but our email inbox overflows with queries of how to recover damaged or lost information. (Do you protect or backup your information?)
Information on web-based software.
Where web-based software is concerned, the security is taken care of by the provider. It is usually low-maintenance and secure. If the forex systems are online, they are hosted on secure servers, like the ones where credit card processing is handled and backups of your account data are made by your software provider. it can also be more convenient in as much that there is no software to download as the software
runs in the net browser and the newest of features and versions are available.
Also, while traveling you can log in from any computer, which simply has an Internet connection.
Both the desktop based and web based forex trading softwares have their own advantages, and are helpful to the user, and the user should certainly make use of any of the two-whichever he is more comfortable with.
Source: http://www.redsofts.com
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by: Tabitha Palmer
Here's my response, along with some information on what it takes to be successful as an affiliate marketer and tips on how to make affiliate marketing work for you as an online home business. You may not think that having a home business provides as much security, but you won't get laid off and you won't be called back into the office, and you should almost always get along with the Boss. In my mind, all of this makes the idea of starting a home business all the more appealing. There are thousands of work at home jobs and home business opportunities on the Internet. After a LOT of research, as well as plenty of trial and error, I have learned some very important things to look for in home businesses, work at home jobs, affiliate programs and all the other types of work at home business opportunities. My preferred niche is in affiliate marketing, this vs. traditional marketing is by far easier and more lucrative in the long run. You can build a higher residual and passive income this way. My opinion, of course, but try it out for yourself and see that I know what I am talking about. Useful Tips 1) Starting a successful online business begins with research. Look into every aspect of your business, Are you going to need inventory, storage, up front money? Websites, domains, and hosts are very important factors in research! The wrong web host and you are doomed from the beginning*. Write it all down so you can look back from time to time. Research your niche, by that I mean what kind of business would best suit you and your needs. What are you good at? Think about this question before you go any further and write down your answers so you can research them. 2) Websites, domains, and web hosts are crucial in your success. Like I said above*, Most Internet businesses, that have a drive to succeed, focus all of their time and resources on building a great site, and then trying to drive tons of traffic to that site. I recommend staying away from Free web hosting for a business , Most free hosting has drawbacks such as they reserve the right to place ads of all kinds on your site, this looks very unprofessional and will make you lose business in the long run, so beware, free isn’t always good. Check out reviews on the host of your choice to make sure they have good credibility standards on the internet. I personally recommend Host 4 Profit as they have always had great customer service, and they, to my knowledge, are rarely if ever down like some hosts I’ve ran across in the past. Anyway, research this one immensely. 3) One of the biggest key factors in building a successful online business is traffic. Only after you have chosen the right name and host for your business should you move to this step. There are many Free ways to get traffic on the web; Articles, blogs, free advertising sites there are plenty of, traffic exchanges like Traffic Swarm, Traffic G, etc. Making sure you get enough backlinks to your site makes the Big difference. Search engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN will not pick you up if they can’t find you. Make your website available to be found by getting your link on everything you can, but always staying within the rules of advertising, otherwise you do more damage than good to your business. If you have NO traffic, you have NO sales. No sales equals No Business. You see the effect here. 4) Perseverance, it’s not something you can find online it’s something you have to find within. I know you’re thinking now why did I put that in there. Perseverance is what you will need most when you start and try to maintain an affiliate marketing online business. When you work at home you get to set your own hours and granted you can even work while still in your PJ’s but at home there are constant distractions to stop you from staying on task. Someone will stop by, the kids will start fighting, emergencies arise, the phone never stops ringing, etc… You name it, it will be sure to happen. This is why perseverance is in my top 10 tips to maintain a successful online business. You must make it a point every night before going to bed to make a ‘to do’ list for the next day concerning your business. This strategy has helped me most of all and it keeps me on task. Quote of the Day: "Any Statement made after the phrase 'I AM' has power, whether positive or negative, it will have power" To Your Success and Happiness In your NEW Life!
by: Peter V. Ruble
For college students and other people who feel burned out trying to balance paying the bills and living at the same time, ads like these can prove to be irresistible. Many of them make perfect sense and easily hook you based on good concepts. Unfortunately, many times the product or service does not match the brilliance of a great idea for making money from home or through the Internet. As I’ve learned myself, the further you go down this road, the more excited you get. You basically get hooked, and if you aren’t careful, you will end up working hard and falling further into debt than you can imagine. Much like gambling, the lure of easy money and independence can make just about anyone fall prey to work at home scams that feed off your dreams to get to your wallet so they can go on to the next victim. Hopefully, you will never fall victim to these scam artists. However, the fact of the matter is that these scammers would not be wasting their time if they were not making any money. And as long as people continue to get mixed up in this business, these scammers are going to stick around to trick more and more people. The best way to keep a scammer’s claws away from your credit card is to do thorough research on each opportunity that you are considering. This means doing much more than simply reading a bit about it online. In my personal experience, I have been taken by companies who were savvy enough to pollute the Internet with staged testimonials, guarantees, questionable references to big name endorsements, and even appearances in the Better Business Bureau. A colleague of mine who invested in vending machine placement services even went so far as to physically go to the manufacturing plant to tour the warehouse as well as contact the Better Business Bureau of that state. What he received, in return, were twenty malfunctioning candy machines with a list of local businesses who had apparently agreed to receive them. Not only did none of these businesses know what he was talking about, many of them were hostile when he showed up to place them. What you want to do is check message boards such as the ASK section of Yahoo.com. Another simple method of weeding out the scams from the genuine opportunities is to go to a search engine and simply type in the company name followed by the word “scam”. If you do this, and you are barraged by an endless list of complaints, you my friend have found a nugget of gold in a sea of mud. In terms of the Better Business Bureau, it is best to contact them directly to ask about any complaints, and also find out how long a company has been listed. The Better Business Bureau operates state by state. They will be able to tell you if they have any complaints on file. If they do, you will want to avoid the opportunity at all costs. But if it appears that a company is doing business the right way, you can continue your own research. Being in the Business Bureau is not necessarily that hard to accomplish. Many scammers can use their money and connections to set up a front to initially qualify for the Better Business Bureau just long enough for them to collect their cash from unsuspecting victims, close shop, create a new identity and start again. Before you decide to do anything, attempt to get in touch with the company that you are interested in. Can you get a human being on the phone? Do they have an actually physical address? How long does it take them to respond to your e-mails, if at all? If you cannot even talk to the company before you start, there is not chance that they will be around when you really need them. I once made quite a bit of money selling vacation vouchers on auction sites. The marketing plan was sound, and the money saving vouchers was a hit. Only problem was, I could never get in touch with their customer service department to handle my customer inquiries and complaints once I realized that the promises that existed in writing on the vouchers were misleading at best. This proved to be such a problem that it took me over a year to recover from the negative publicity on my auction site. Of course, there are legitimate home based businesses out there. With the Internet and all the low cost, web producing tools available, there seems to be a renaissance in entrepreneurship. Basically, just find a product or service you can market online, and do your research. Sell on EBay if you don’t want to build your own website. You can have a website their and all search engine marketing is already done by EBay. The Small Business Association has an office in downtown Tacoma and contains invaluable information on their website http://www.sba.com. Since small business is the backbone of our country economically, sources such as these are eager to help you create a plan with realistic expectations. However, like anything else worthwhile, you have to do your homework and work hard at it. The problem is that too many people make you think you can practically go online and make money just clicking on a mouse. You want to steer clear of any business that asks to you to pay for their “Top Secret” e-book that will teach you how to make an automated income.” Think about it, if you are in dire need of cash, can you imagine any other situation in which you would not only work for free, but pay for the privilege to work. There are no magic formals or secrets worth paying for. All of the information in these e-books can be found for free through your own research if you have common internet skills. If you don’t want to work hard and just make a few easy extra bucks without donating your blood or volunteering to be a guinea pig, it is possible to make some good extra money filling out online surveys or through mystery shopping. There are real opportunities out there which require no fee to get started. Not only that, several of them will even give you a $5 bonus just for signing up. If a company such as this is legitimate, they would be making lots of money through the success of its members. Companies that require that $49.97 start up fee only make money through the fee and only want to teach you how to get other people to do the same. The products are all useless lists and general information that anyone with a functioning mind could figure out on their own, or get for free by doing their own research. In 12 years of trying to make a living on the Internet, the following are the best companies I have ever encountered for making a few extra bucks filling out surveys, playing games and mystery shopping. They probably won’t pay the rent, but if you’re interested in making an extra $400 or $500 a month or eating out at nice restaurants and going to movies for free, you may want to check these out: Mystery Shopping Providers Association: ." target=new>http://www.mysteryshop.org/shoppers/">. This site contains all the information you will ever need on starting up as a mystery shopper. It is also a portal for the best sites to go to for mystery shopping jobs online, and they don’t require that you invest a penny. InboxDollars.com. (you can sign up for free and get $5 just for signing up. You can make a few hundred dollars in one day, theoretically, if you are willing to use a credit card to sign up for free or paid trials. Just make sure you have the patience to fill out the long surveys and keep detailed records so you can remember to cancel your free trials before you get charged. Also, you can fill out surveys to make a dollar or two which are completely free. I’ve made about $400 with this site.
Submitted By: Russell Blanc
Your web site is the public face of your business online. Many people will make a decision about whether to do business with you solely on the strength of your web site. When they click on a link to your site or type in your URL and get a "Page Not Found" error, many people will leave in disappointment. Yahoo Small Business understands the importance of keeping your web site online and showing your public face.
Reliability is the most important factor in choosing a web host, and Yahoo Web Hosting meets the challenge of keeping your website thriving. The professionals at Yahoo Small Business web hosting spend time thinking about "what could possibly go wrong" and working to make sure that it doesn't. On those infrequent occasions when something does go wrong or an issue arises, the tech support staff at Yahoo Small Business are available to resolve it as quickly as possible.
When it comes to reliability and sheer strength of reputation, it's hard to find a more dependable company than Yahoo Small Business. When you set up your Yahoo web site, you're allowing Yahoo web hosting to care for your site the way you care for it. Yahoo Small Business web hosting is designed especially for small businesses and webmasters who need the best, most reliable hosting at a price they can afford.
Also, Yahoo web hosting could not be easier to work with. If you need to design your Yahoo web site, you'll find free design tools, including a checklist to help you put together an incredible site, and professionally designed templates you can customize to fit your needs.
Even with the most reliable web hosting, you're going to have questions and issues that come up. The one thing that really sets Yahoo Small Business web hosting apart from the crowd is the quality of tech support available around the clock to answer your questions and resolve your issues as quickly as possible. You cannot afford to shut down your business just because tech support is unavailable. With Yahoo web hosting, tech support is always available.
Yahoo Small Business's reliability and support are matched only by the value of unlimited Yahoo web hosting. Making content available to your customers is the point of having a web site, and with your Yahoo web site you can offer as much content, including audios, videos, graphics and PDF files, as you need. When your site starts attracting more visitors, you can rest assured that you have unlimited bandwidth to deliver your content. You'll never find your site down because you've had too many visitors. And you'll have unlimited storage for email so you can keep in touch with your customers and store all your communications on Yahoo web hosting's super-reliable servers.
You might expect hosting as reliable as Yahoo Small Business to cost far more than the "budget" hosts with storage quotas, but in fact, Yahoo web hosting is quite affordable. Yahoo Small Business hosting does not charge a setup fee, and rates start at under $9 a month for the first three months.
Yahoo web hosting is an affordable, reliable solution for creating and hosting your web site.
Getting the right AdSense keyword is the most important part of Google AdSense site development if your ultimate goal is to drive targeted search engine traffic to your site. Good AdSense keyword selections are the basis on which your search engine traffic will come from. This is how you should do your AdSense keyword research.Seek help from forums:Forums are good places where you find the right answer for your questions.Expand Your AdSense Keyword: Once you get some keywords, you can expand your AdSense keyword into a list of AdSense key phrase. You can use keyword suggestion tools to help you on this. Here is list of keyword suggestion tools:- Digitalpoint Keyword Suggestion Tool (http://www.digitalpoint.com/tools/suggestion) - free keyword research tool that will show you the results of your query from both Wordtracker and Overture for determining which phrases are searched most often. - Wordtracker (http://www.wordtracker.com) - online keyword research toll with free trial version- Overtune Keyword Suggestion Tool (http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion) - Free online toolChoose the Right AdSense Keyword or Key Phrases to Start With: You have now built a list of keywords and key phrases for your AdSense site. How many AdSense keywords or key phrases should you start with? Or which AdSense keywords or AdSense key phrases are right for? You can start with five to ten AdSense keywords or key phrases. It is much easier to achieve high search engine position for the less popular terms than those very popular search terms as the competition for the less popular terms is lesser. You should get good result from the less search for terms and perhaps it is a good idea that you start with them first. (Source: ppcdollar.com)
Google may be sticking its toes into Affiliate Programs. They apparently are calling these CPA (Cost Per Action) ads, but what that means is that publishers get paid not for clicks but for some specific action at an advertiser's site: buying something, providing information, whatever. That's an Affiliate Program, Google is just naming it something else.
Interestingly, this comes at the same time that eBay is murmuring about its own affiliate style thingy. What they intend to do is let sites like this run ads pointing at appropriate auctions. For example, we might run ads for auctions related to computer hardware, and would get paid if someone reading here clicked through and won the auction (or purchased a Buy It Now item).
Hate these ads?
Well, heck, I though that might be interesting, so I moseyed over and tried to sign up. Turns out eBay intends to use Commission Junction as their processing arm for this. That caused me to scowl a bit: CJ has a bit of a negative connotation in my mind because of earlier experiences. I had a CJ account once but let it lapse because, well, because the programs offered were too slimy and hucksterish for my taste.
Long story short, the folks at CJ, master marketers that they are, won't let me sign up because I canned the program I originally signed up for. This is what they said, honest:
As stated in the Publisher Service Agreement, if any of our Publishers do not generate revenue for more than 6 months, we automatically deactivate them. This policy ensures that our network is efficient and beneficial to our Advertisers and Publishers. Since your account is no longer active in our network, your page will register as "expired" among the advertisers with whom you were previously affiliated. Unfortunately, deactivated accounts are not eligible for reactivation.
Isn't that brilliant? They go on to say that I can "sign up for another account using an alternate e-mail address". Oh, I see: I'm rotten meat as publisher because YOUR program wasn't any good, but I should feel free to use another email address to get back in good graces. That's like telling the guy who mugged you last night that he can do it again if he will just wear a different mask. Except I didn't mug them; they mugged me. Yeah, I know: bad analogy.
Anyway, I bet that just the use of CJ alone will turn off more than a few publishers who might otherwise have been interested. What's up with that, E-Bay? Surely you could handle your own affiliate program - why did you bring these guys into it? Especially since Google is the 800 pound gorilla likely to turn CJ into a a quivering pile of mush. What was eBay thinking?
I'm thinking the heck with eBay, and I'm looking forward to Google's CPA ads, that's what I'm thinking.
CPM and CPC advertising has been paying less and less, no doubt because of the tremendous amount of click fraud: it just makes sense for advertisers to lower their bids to compensate. But CPA is an entirely different story. For example, I run ads advertising Kerio products. I pay Google 75 cents or less per click, but I'd pay a heck of a lot more for anything that actually turned into a sale - or even a legitimate prospect. I'd love to be able to do CPA ads with Google on that. And on the other side, I'd like to run appropriate and relevant CPA ads here, too.
Well, the program isn't public yet, so we'll have to wait for details. And who knows, maybe eBay will wake up and realize CJ is a lousy partner for their venture into advertising affiliate programs.by aplawrence.com
Yahoo Domain Names are becoming better popular. This is a good alternative if you don't know a lot about web hosting and domain names. In fact, if you buy one of their hosting packages, you can get a free domain.
A website is a good way to get more business. In today's age, a website is becoming more and more important for business owners. But a website without a domain name is nothing. A domain name is the virtual real state.
How to Choose A Good Domain Name
What you need to do for you domain is look for a good keyword related to what your business is about. Look for a good keyword that has low competition and high search volume. A domain name has to be easy to remember for the people. It has to be short and sharp and has to transmit a message to your visitors.
A good reason to use Yahoo domain names is because they offer a domain locking system. And this process is very simple. When people look for information about your domain name they will see that it says "Registra-Lock".
Yahoo also offers a private domain name registration. This helps you keep your contact information private. This feature is very important because it keeps you away from spam email and identity theft.
Yahoo also offers 24/7 technical support. For many webmasters, technical support is a must have when managing domain names. If you have any problem with the site, you just call them and they can help you fix the problem right away.
In conclusion, if you are having trouble on deciding where to host your website and where to get your domain name, you can consider using Yahoo Domain names since they are easy to use, offer security, and they offer a domain locking system. Besides the packages are very affordable and trustworthy.
Now that the tech industry has had some time to digest the blockbuster ad deal that Yahoo signed with Google, numerous commentators have declared it a death knell for Yahoo's search-ad business.
The charge was that by giving Google a portion of its search ads, Yahoo was essentially admitting defeat, heading down a slippery slope that would see Google increasingly overtake its business.
But some say Google had already won the search game. Jim Lanzone, the former chief executive of Ask.com, argued that no industry realignment could break Google's commanding hold on the search market — so this deal doesn't do much to tilt the balance in its favor.
Instead, he thinks that this deal will give Yahoo some extra money to focus on building its audience without significantly eroding its own advertising business.
"The fears of mass loss of advertising by Yahoo is a little fear mongering," Lanzone said on a conference with J.P. Morgan analyst Imran Khan. "Sure, some advertisers will migrate away, but the ones that they have are there for a reason to start with."
Those are the advertisers with deep pockets, who Lanzone said will continue to make independent buys on the search pages of Google and Yahoo.
"Yahoo does very well with those advertisers," he said. "It's worth it to them to set up a campaign on both Yahoo and Google."
According to Lanzone, the real value of the deal for Yahoo is that it can still sell its own ads through the Panama platform, but then turn to Google for higher-yield ads or to backfill unsold inventory.
Yahoo expects the deal to produce $250 million to $450 million in operating cash flow in the first year.
"This to me is free money to Yahoo," Lanzone said.
On the publisher side, Lanzone declared there was a "zero percent chance" of the deal eroding the network of sites where Yahoo syndicates ads.
"I don't see this giving Google that much more power than it already has," he said.
In search advertising, volume is the differentiator. More advertisers vying for the same keywords drives up the bidding auctions, and Lanzone estimated that Google's network contained "a number in the hundreds of thousands" more than Yahoo's.
Yahoo's search engine, which comScore credits with a 20.4 percent market share, is driven largely by what Lanzone called "convenience search" because Yahoo places its search box atop each of its content pages.
Google, without the benefit of a content portal like Yahoo's, has 61.6 percent of the search market, according to comScore.
Lanzone said that the extra money Yahoo gains from the deal would be well spent building out its content network to increase its audience. Then, because of the deal's flexible structure, it will be able to shift its ad sales back to its own network if the numbers looked right.
"Yahoo gives up almost nothing," he said.
So to Lanzone, Yahoo is sitting pretty with a flexible ad deal that will provide it the extra money to build out its content network, which in turn could help strengthen its own search ad business.
But what about its former suitor, Microsoft, which had sought to beef up its own search ad prospects through a full or partial purchase of Yahoo?
"This is all about query volume, and they [Microsoft] don't have it," Lanzone said, calling Microsoft's road to a competitive search business "exponentially harder" than Yahoo's.
"They have a tough fight — a very, very tough fight," he added.
This article by Kenneth Corbin
Oscommerce And Making A Million
Submitted By: Myles O'Reilly
Okay, so maybe not a “million” – at least not immediately. Even if you have the “vision”, the product or service and the time, it’s not enough to just throw together a website and go “live.” With the endless possibilities online for e-commerce opportunities it means that anyone can make their dream a reality, but it also means that competition can be cutthroat.
You can spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars a year hiring a company to create and manage your website and online shopping cart. As a start-up business, you may not have the money to do this. Even if you’re not a start-up business, you might not want to spend the money to do this. The great news is that you don’t need to spend this money to have a website that looks like a million dollars. With a little insight and some hard work, you can create your online cart to help your business be a successful online entity – and osCommerce is just the community to help you do so. How and why?
Collaboration and Contribution
First of all, osCommerce is based on the concept of open source software. This means that the software, codes and everything you need to set up your website and online cart is shared right on the site.
There is a section on the site called contribution. In this section, people who have designed codes to do various things on their websites “contribute” the code to the group so that others who use osCommerce can use it for their sites as well. There are thousands of contributions already on the site ranging from themes and packages to images, checkout modules and shipping modules.
It doesn’t stop there, however. The beauty of the contribution network is that people can take the codes that people have posted and tweak or alter them just enough to meet their individual needs. Rather than having a designer who sells a set code that the consumers cannot alter, the idea behind open source code allows each individual to alter the code to meet their needs which ultimately results in constant improvements in the developed code.
Community
osCommerce would not succeed without the sense of community involved in it. Along with the contributions, osCommerce has an active forum where members can ask and give advice as needed with other members. For example, if someone has designed their site but don’t seem to be getting the business, they can post a request for feedback on their site. Members of the forum then look at the site and give suggestions for improvement. Additionally, when someone is trying to set up a specific feature on their site, they can go to the forum to see if anyone has done so previously. That way they don’t have to necessarily start from scratch when it comes to designing the code for the features they want on their osCommerce site.
Customization
It is possible to take the osCommerce template, add in your product or service descriptions, set up your payment options and go live. It’s quick and easy and will get your site running in no time and it will look okay.
Anyone who has had a e-commerce site, however, will tell you that you’ll need to go a step further to make your website look great and be successful. The osCommerce templates are customizable so that your site looks like your site. You can change the images, colors, borders… whatever you need to change to make the theme of the site match what you’re selling. So, when you sign on to osCommerce to be your online shopping cart, your signing on to have a site that fits your style, not just a cookie-cutter type site that easily and quickly fills in your product or service without consideration of “what” you’re actually selling.
Customer Service
osCommerce is also already set up to give you the tools you need to have an e-store with great customer service. You can choose which features to include on your site, but you don’t have to design the features from scratch which is a great benefit if you don’t have the technological background to build an e-commerce site from nothing. Some of these features include the ability to set up customer accounts which allows your customers to keep track of their orders, save their shopping carts, receive emails notifications about their orders, browse best seller lists and find out what customers doing similar searches have purchased.
Carts and Gateways
osCommerce also supports ten gateways for accepting payment which will allow your site to be versatile and open to a wider range of customers. So, even if you’re a small business and don’t have your own credit card accounts you can still accept payment from a variety of gateways allowing you to compete with “the big guys”.
Even if your business isn’t worth a million (yet) you don’t have to let your customers know that. You can make your site look like a million with the features found on osCommerce.
About the Author
Myles O'Reilly is the author of the Programmers' Guide to osCommerce and is owner of The osCommerce Cafe at http://www.oscommercecafe.com which provides osCommerce templates to hundreds of web designers worldwide.
Business Blogs, Should Your Company Sell Advertising On The Blog Pages?
Submitted By: Chuck Crawford
Today one of my clients asked me the million dollar question about whether or not he should sell advertising on his company blog.
My answer, every time a client asks me this, is…
Hmmm.
The reason I always stop to think about my answer to the blog advertisement question is that it’s different for each client, different for each blog. Because each blog has different goals and different reasons for their existence.
And each client is different. Knowing this particular client is a big fan of contextual advertising (Adsense, Yahoo Publisher, etc) I had to hesitate a bit before I answered him. Because in this case, contextual advertising would hurt the client much more than it would help him.
The reason why is because this particular client offers a service in which he receives a large payment should his users decide to contract him. Several thousand dollars for each new client.
But stop and think about what he receives if they come to his site and click one of those contextually targeted links. You guessed it, they are going to click on one of his COMPETITORS links being served on his website. It’s not a long stretch to come to the conclusion that he just sold a client that might have paid him several thousand dollars for a couple of bucks. Maybe less, maybe a couple of pennies.
The reason advertisers use contextual networks like Adsense is because they work. It’s cheap advertising that can effectively steal clients from their competition. For a few cents a click they might just nab one of your clients right off your website and pull down the sale you could have had if you had not served up the ads.
Yes, there are ways to configure your Adsense ads to exclude specific websites, but bet your bottom dollar that some of your competitors are going to target your site, somehow, someway. If you are offering them the doorway for a small price, they are going to pay it and see if they can convert your users.
A better plan for service oriented sites such as the client in question is to optimize the site and work on the sales approach. Simply speaking, to CLOSE THE SALE with the users you have. Not to look for pennies when you could be making dollars.
If you can’t convert the traffic you have, then a couple of different things could be wrong.
* You could have really low traffic* You could have the wrong traffic* Or your content is not capable of SELLING what you are offering
All three issues can be solved with some optimizing, with some strategy. But you need to know which it is first. To fix a problem, you need to first pin down what the problem is.
So be objective. If your sales text sucks, recognize that it sucks, move on, and FIX IT.
Set the goal in your mind to make your site a success. Then take action to get it done. You can be at the top. All it takes is a little elbow grease.
About the Author
Chuck Crawford is an established e-biz expert. Founder and CEO of Crawford Business Development L.L.C., & helping countless people achieve online success spanning his 13 yr career. Clients include fortune 500 firms & personal startups. visit Business Blogs Optimized or Texas SEO Expert or call (559) 761-0910
Understanding Organic SEO
Submitted By: Moe Tamani
In the old days of the Internet, there were no SEO Consultants, automated systems, or all that high technology stuff. A few years ago, in fact, the term “Search Engine Optimization” did not even exist! Website owners struggled with ways and means to get the much-needed hits to their website (never mind if it was not targeted) to hopefully generate the needed revenues. Those were the days of IBM (or “It’s Best done Manually) and Organic SEO.
Organic SEO still refers to the processes and strategies that are undertaken to optimize a website so that it gets good relevance ratings based on the keywords that the site is responsive to. The only difference between Organic SEO and the SEO we now know is that Organic SEO is a manual process vs. the current automated processes of page submission and alteration that characterizes “modern” SEO. Organic SEO focuses on promoting websites on the Natural search engine results also known as organic results in contrast with sponsored links (Pay-Per-Click/PPC). Organic SEO, if you really think about is a “purist” approach to website optimization because nothing is a “black box”. As an expert in Organic SEO, you know optimization; you don’t just blindly trust it.
Organic SEO is based on a clear understanding of fundamental concepts, including:
• Search engines and how they work
Obviously, you cannot practice Organic SEO if you don’t even know how the first two letters of SEO (i.e., Search Engine) works. A search engine is a web site that provides the visitor a list of recommended websites to go to, based on a specific keyword or keywords. The rank of a website is statistically determined by what is termed as “key word density” or the ratio of keywords to the total number of words of content in a website. Inbound links and their relevance is another factor that determines your rankings. The gatherer of this statistical data is what is called a “spider” or “spider bot”, which is a program whose function is to count the number of times a keyword appears in a website through a process called “crawling”.
• Search Engine Optimization
You can’t have Organic SEO without the SEO part, which stands what Search Engine Optimization. SEO’s main goal is simple: bring as many visitors to your website as possible by exerting influence on the search engine to position your website as close to the top of the list as possible. As a result of having more visitors, it is hoped that your website will generate business for you. This result is every Organic SEO practitioner’s clear measure of success.
• Viral Marketing
This is an important concept to understand if you are serious about becoming a good Organic SEO expert. Viral Marketing is a strategy to exponentially increase the number of visitors to your website from a small base that you have developed from your initial Organic SEO strategy. An example of Viral Marketing is to offer visitors to your website an opportunity to generate income from their own website by simply putting in your website’s link on theirs so that when people visit their website, then there is a good chance that they will visit yours. This strategy is certainly a handy component of the arsenal of a practitioner of Organic SEO.
• Optimized Domain Names
One of the simplest concepts to understand, yet also one that is not as easy to implement. Getting a keyword-rich domain name is every Organic SEO consultant’s dream because it carries so much weight in the relevance scale. If you domain name is exactly what you are selling, you will be able to smoothly sail on without much of a problem in the rankings. The problem, of course, is that there is a very high likelihood that the “good” domain names already belong to someone, and this makes an Organic SEO specialist life more difficult.
• Keyword Research
This is the first step on the list of to-dos for an Organic SEO practitioner because it plays a major role in determining your optimization strategy. Since it takes months for any optimization strategy to take effect, an Organic SEO expert’s efforts will be wasted if he makes the mistake of optimizing a website based on keywords that are not as popular as he assumed.
Becoming an Organic SEO specialist is not an easy task at all because it requires a deep understanding of the fundamentals that those utilizing automated systems take for granted. There is a major advantage, however, of Organic SEO vs. the “lazy man’s” SEO: A clear understanding of the concepts allows you to analyze SEO situations more accurately and come up with strategies that are more appropriate and responsive to your website’s needs.
About the Author
Moe Tamani is a Marketing expert with the leading SEO Company specializing in organic SEO.
Writers Make Money Online
Submitted By: Jason Parker
When you think of making money writing, you often think of freelance writing, ghost writing, and writing novels... all of which you can do on the internet. However, I'm wanting to talk about the hidden opportunities for good writers in internet marketing (no, forget blogging).
Information is the key to the internet, whether selling tangible or digital goods. To answer your question, yes, people buy ebooks all the time. They don't even mind paying for those physical books bound together by a wire. This is because it's all about information. People are starving for it.
If you can write well, you can make money online. As for internet marketers, the way we run our entire operation is with the written word. We set up our websites with content, we drive traffic to our websites by submitting our articles in mass, and we write sales copy for our products and reviews for other hot products. We even write series of e-mails that are automatically sent via an auto-responder.
The big hype over the past few years has been on blogging. Writers are slaving away at their blogs as we speak, as 1 is created every second according to Technorati. Truth is very few bloggers are making any kind of serious money while many internet marketers who can write are banking. Instead of slaving away at blogs, most of us write articles and submit them massively throughout the web for backlinks.
If you're not a great writer, however, you should take up blogging while at the same time studying internet marketing, so you can hone your craft. If you have writing skills, immediately begin IM. I suggest diving in at the forum that's been online since 1997, WarriorForum.com.
For the rest of this article I want to reveal 5 things you can do with writing skills to make money online just to prove my point.
#1.
Write a review of a product, join the maker's affiliate program in order to earn commissions, buy webspace and PHP redirect using your affiliate link, spin your review article, and submit the spun versions to various ezine directories on the net while using your link to your website in the resource boxes.
#2.
Buy private label rights material on a hot subject, edit it completely and create an ebook with it inserting an affiliate link within, create a website to promote your ebook, use some of your PLR to write articles then massively submit them to ezines.
#3.
Buy webhosting and a short punchy .com domain name, find a free template by searching Google, buy 25 PLR articles and rewrite them to make them unique, put the articles on your site, and sell the website along with its contents at Sedo.
#4.
Write content, put it in a zip file, and sell private label rights to your content at your website over and over using PayPal.
#5.
Write an ebook, create a squeeze page at your site, register your ebook at ClickBank, drive traffic to your sales page and squeeze page with articles and affiliates, market your ebook through a series of emails via an auto-responder.
About the Author
Jason Parker is the webmaster at WriteNiche Writing Community.
Practical Tips For A Good Website
Submitted By: Benedict Smythe
Online businesses abounds the World Wide Web these days. Some who are very successful easily realize 6 figure profits while other are just managing to barely exist. One would wonder what could have caused this situation. Success of an online business could be attributed to the business acumen of the owner. But it is undeniable that other factors could have caused these circumstances.
The website design could be one of these factors. A carefully designed website is essential to the success of an online business. It should be able to give a lasting favorable impression to the visitor. “First impression is lasting” may be a cliché but it is undeniable that websites that have made an impression would cause customers to revisit. Every time these visitors would need products or information, they would return to the website time and again.
So what then should a webmaster do to be able to build the ideal website? First and foremost is to look for website creation programs. This is most useful for novice webmasters as this would make the creation of the website easier and faster. The use of HTML (Hyper Text Markup Language) would facilitate the building of a website since it is considered as the building block for all website structures.
The content of the website is an equally important factor that would entice customers to stay. A well-put website text would give the impression of being professional. To achieve this, you must ensure that the website is “airy” –meaning there’s a lot of white spaces in between text for easy reading. Proper page layout should also be considered. The width of the text column should be proportionate to the body text. Remember that wider columns are harder to read. Along with the right font size, the proper page layout, the correct grammar used will contribute to the professional look of a website.
The inclusion of the About Us page is important for the growth of an online business. The About Us page would give information about the company, the year and place of establishment; the growth as well as the base of operation. The Contact Us page is where you give your email address so that customers will be able to contact you whenever they want your service or they would want some points to be clarified. The Contact Us page will also serve as a suggestion box where you get to know the feedback of the customers about your online business.
Site navigation is another vital factor to the creation of a good website. To entice visitors to stay, they should be afforded with easy navigation tools. Placing relevant links to your website will be useful to the readers who are searching for information.
All these practical tips to make a good website are useless if the customers or readers will not be enticed to stay because the page is slow loading. Most website owners are taking this factor for granted. They have made attractive and colorful websites with all the graphics, banners and animations not knowing that this could cause a browser to crash or for the page to load slowly. In this instance creating the best website will be futile as this would defeat the purpose of attracting visitors.
About the Author
Dolphin Promotions are a web design and SEO company based in Blackpool in the UK.
How To Make Money On A Music Website Through Pay-Per-Click?
Submitted By: Jeff Schuman II
Interested in making money while you’re asleep, or making moneywhile you’re not even on the computer? Well here is a way thatyou can do that, clicks!! Once you have gone throughgodaddy.com and purchased your domain name for a cheap $9.20 peryear, and found a hosting company such as GoDaddy.com for $3.95per month, you are set to begin building your website and makingmoney. It is possible to make money by joining affiliateprograms and selling companies’ products as mentioned in myprevious article, How to Make Money on a Music Website throughAffiliate Programs found at:
http://www.best-mp3-music-downloads.com/articles/article13.html
Now how exactly do you make money through people clicking onyour website and links on your website? The first step is toget a FREE affiliate account with 7search at 7search.com. Whatthis will allow you to do is place 7search ads and otherwebsites dealing with your topic, in this case music, on yourwebsite.
On the 7search affiliate page you will be able to manage youraccount viewing how many clicks a day you are getting and howmuch money you are making. How you make money is by placingpay-per-text links on your website. Through 7search you willwant to go to:
http://www.best-mp3-music-downloads.com/7searchkeyword.html
This will allow you to look at the price you will make fordifferent keywords that you use. The difference between musicand free music for example, results in a change of cost thatwebsites are paying to get their website higher on the searchengine.
When creating your pay-per-text once you have come up with akeyword that you want to use, come up with a short sentence orphrase to let people know what they are clicking on. Forexample, use Top 10 music websites or Best free music websites,to reel them in to see what the top 10 music websites are. Youwill also be able to choose how many sites you want to come upon your list, from 1 to all that are available. You will wantto keep it at 10 or under as the lower down the list the siteis, the less you get paid each time a surfer clicks on the link.
As you create this pay-per-text, 7search will give you a codethat you place in your web panel creating a link. The greatthing about 7search is that there is NO limit to how manypay-per-text links you place on your website, so you can haveone on each page of your website or more. It is recommendedhowever, that you don’t place more then a couple per page as itwill begin to appear cluttered with pay-per-texts. Once youplace the pay-per-text links on your website, you are set tobegin making money 24/7.
Now that you have a way to make money by people clicking onlinks on your website, how do you get people to come to yourwebsite? You want to get your website out on the internet andget it known. You can run ads through other peoples’ websitesor on various companies’ websites, but this will cost you moneyvarying from website to website. If you want to make moneywithout spending too much money, the way is by exchanging linkswith other people.
Exchanging links with other people allows you to get yourwebsite out on other peoples’ website so that when surfers go onto their website, they may see your website and be intrigued. Byexchanging links, you are giving your website to someone else tohave them place it on their website and in return, you placetheir website on your website.
The two link exchange companies that I use are infowizards.comand linkmarket.net. Infowizards is free to join and allows youto trade multiple links with people in all categories with nolimit. You will want to keep your link exchanges as close toyour topic as possible. For example, don’t trade links withsomeone that has a website based on relationships if you have amusic website.
The other link exchange company that I use, linkmarket.net, isfree to a limit. You may only request 5 links per day for free,or you may request unlimited links per day at the cost of $18.85a year, which is highly recommended. The linkmarket.net websiteoffers far more links than the infowizards website, and is mucheasier to maintain and keep track.
Another good way to get traffic to your website is by writingarticles on various topics relating to your topic in some way.You then submit your article to as many places as possible suchas goarticles.com, article-emporium.com, or ideamarketers.com.If you can submit your articles to 30-50 places, you will createtraffic to your website in a hurry. Now you know what to do andthe places to join to get money flowing if off of your musicwebsite while you aren’t even working on it.
About the Author
Jeff Schuman is the creator of Best-MP3-Music-Downloads.com where you can buy CD’s and find all of the best free music downloads. http://www.best-mp3-music-downloads.com
How To Sell In Your Article Without Selling
Submitted By: Peter Coughlin
Ok, so you're passionate about your website, you love talking about your subject and you're excited to share your knowledge, information, and maybe your products and services with the world. But how do you share your enthusiasm with your readers without coming across like you're making a pitch? How do you sell your products or services without 'selling' them.
No one likes a sales pitch and as soon as a reader senses they're being 'sold' they're likely to click away from your article. Yet quite often, in order to motivate your reader to be inspired enough to visit your website, you need to give them a bit of a pitch. Here's how to motivate a reader to action, without selling them.
The best way to motivate your reader is to provide them with a benefit. One of the reasons tips and how to articles are so popular is that they offer a reader an immediate benefit. Ten tips to make more money today. 3 steps to looking ten years younger. The secret to retiring early. These are all examples of article headlines that promise a benefit. When your article offers content that follows through on your promise, readers are going to be hungry for more information. You've kept your end of the bargain in your article, they'll trust you to provide more benefit on your website.
Tap into your readers' desires. We all desire to be more attractive, wealthier, smarter, happier, more respected etc…when you tap into these desires in your article you immediately have your reader's attention. How does the content of your article help solve their problems and attain their desires?
For example, if your product is an accounting software program and your article is about how to balance your checkbook, you could tap into your reader's desire to be wealthier by keeping track of their money or tap into their desire to be respected or smarter by having their finances at the tips of their fingertips. The headline might look something like this, "Ten Tips to Give You Control Over Your Finances, and more money in your wallet.
When you tap into your reader's desires and offer them a way to attain them, you're a virtual hero and your readers will be excited to visit your website and learn more from you.
Don't give your reader the whole story. Write an article about 3 ways to do something and then in the last sentence of your article tell them this isn't the whole story. Tell your reader if they want to learn more about your article's topic, they can visit your website and learn the whole story. Note that if you are publishing your article in an article submission site, they may not allow you to plug your website in the body of your article. If this is the case, you can plug it in your author's resource box. However, if you're publishing the article in an e-zine or on another website, this is a great way to draw traffic to your site.
Selling in your article copy is as easy as offering valuable content and solving people's problems. This approach also makes it easy to write copy. Tips and how to articles are amongst the easiest types of article content to write. Get writing!
About the Author
To find out more about writing effective articles and how to use them to attract visitors to your website, visit http://WinWithArticles.com
How To Design A Website For Your Online Business
Submitted By: Darlene Ciarcia
Whether you choose to design a website from scratch or use a free Web template to design a website for your online business, there are many things to ask yourself before you get started:
1. Do you plan on selling products on your website? Will you need a shopping cart to collect payments?
2. Do you plan on displaying articles or having a blog?
3. Do you plan on having advertising on your website?
4. Does the website design need to be interactive for site visitors?
5. Do you want to run your website through a content management system (CMS)?
6. Does the website need to include an audio or video player?
7. Would your target market appreciate a flashy design, or something simple?
Once you’ve answered those questions, it’s time to design a website for your online business. There are a few general options to consider when deciding how to design a website:
1. Hire a professional Web designer and/or Web programmer to create a custom Web design and backend system or e-commerce solution, including any necessary tools. You can find great programmers and designers at websites such as http://Elance.com and http://RentACoder.com. When you post a project on either of these services be sure not to choose a bidder just because they are the cheapest. Choose someone with a very long history of positive feedback.
2. Design a website yourself if you already have the Web design and coding skills (or take the time to learn HMTL/XHTML/CSS/PHP etc.). I only recommend this option if you are very technical and very quick. Your time is best spent on building your business not learning the details of web design -- unless, of course, you want to get into the business of web design.
3. Use a pre-designed Web template from free Web template providers, or purchase a Website template. You can use Web templates as-is, or customize them to fit your needs. A great source for templates is http://TemplateMonster.com.
4. If you don't have any experience with creating websites and you do not want to hire a designer then there is still an option for you. I like to refer to this option as a Website-In-A-Box or a Store-In-A-Box. Basically the service gives you everything you need to get your website online quickly and easily. Yes, you have to pay a little more for these services and some of them even take a percentage of every sale but your website design will not stand between you and your ultimate goal -- making money online. Some examples of these services are Yahoo Small Business (http://store.yahoo.com), http://SiteBuilder.com, and http://Web.com.
No matter how you decide to design a website for your online business, make sure that the website design serves the needs of both your online business and its customers or target visitors.
About the Author
For free answers to your internet business questions visit http://www.InternetBusinessAnswers.com
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