Jane says…..

Are you going global in your home based business? Opportunity knocked and you responded, but now you’re wondering about some new problems rearing their potentially ugly heads. Take spam laws, for instance. You have legitimate intentions, but how do you remain legal and legit?

Everybody hates spam. You really don’t want your hosting service provider to discontinue your website because they received spamming complaints, much less get into trouble with the trade commissions. But the structure of your business requires you to rely on a certain percentage of “hits” in response to your emails. What to do to stay in touch… all over the world?

In Europe and the UK, an EU “opt-in” directive is now in place and being upheld for international Internet marketers. Those who send commercial emails and mobile SMS messages without permission can now be fined thousands of dollars.

Countering the EU antispam legislation is the “CAN-SPAM Act,” passed in the United States in 2003. In case you’re wondering, the anagram stands for Controlling the Assault of Non-Solicited Pornography And Marketing Act of 2003. Known as the “opt-out” directive, this little number allows virtual spamming by placing the responsibility on the recipient to opt-out by replying to unsolicited commercial emails with a message to unsubscribe.

Yes, you read that right. Spamming is by no means illegal, provided you play by the rules. But the advice is to watch it, especially if you are in the business of global marketing via the Internet. Theoretically, U.S. citizens who break EU and UK antispam laws may be extradited, heavily fined and tried. And the possible prison penalties that came in the wake of the new Act in the U.S. aren’t anything to thumb your nose at either.

Take heed, global marketers, the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003 is only the prelude. You don’t have to be an expert to predict that regulation for unsolicited email will continue to grow in future.

So you should build your opt-in lists while you can, and as fast as possible, but do see it as your duty to use your lists responsibly, as your trusting subscribers so rightly deserve.

Now let’s take a look at what you, a legitimate non-spamming Internet marketer, can do to stay out of trouble as you continue to grow your mailing list:

1. Use only email addresses that you obtained legitimately.

2. Consider using double opt-in lists.

3. If you want to play it completely safe, avoid purchasing leads altogether.

4. Keep any records that you have of your opt-in subscribers as proof (name, email address, IP address, date & time stamp etc.).

5. Never use anonymous remailers.

6. Clearly label your email as being a commercial message that “may contain advertising or solicitation”.

7. Never use misleading subject lines.

8. Always provide a real reply-to email address.

9. Always provide a postal address (a PO Box is always a good idea - you really don’t want to go public with your home address).

10. Always provide a working unsubscribe option.

This is by no means legal advice or intended as such — only your personal lawyer can provide you with that. Take notice of the above tips, think before you press “Send” and you will have a good chance of being left alone to do your thing by the spam police.

May you continue to have a smooth ride on the information superhighway and may your journey be a safe, enjoyable and fruitful one!

Chonticha Marijne runs several Internet ventures, including http://www.e-AbundanceTools.com and http://www.e-AbundanceSystem.com. For free tools and resources, visit her blog at http://InternetMarketingBlogger.com . This article is copyright © 2006 by Chonticha Marijne and may be reprinted in its entirety as long as both byline and copyright statement are included.

Blog advertising, Blog, home, hosting, internet, legal, marketing, personal, public, spam, time, tips

Virus infection on your computer may cause a very serious damage and even loss on your business. You can just imagine it may wreck your system registry or your entire computer (with all your receivables data on it!) or all your HTML programs! It will come to total black out screen, it will not boot at all. But that is actually the worse scenario that may happen. Are you going to wait for this worse scenario in your life to happen? I guess NOT, right?

Here are the 10 smart ways that I personally do to protect my computers against viruses, malicious dialers and spywares.

(1)If you are using Windows XP, always turn on the firewall.

(2)Always run all necessary latest updates & service packs (all windows! including all your programs & software!—keep them updated)

(3)Run your anti-virus program everyday (some do it every week) There are many virus programs that you can get for free scanning.

(4)Run your anti-spyware/adaware once a week (I run Spybot Search & Destroy & Lavasoft Adware Personal — they are shareware, meaning it’s free!). What I do is that, I run the Lavasoft Adware first, then run the Spybot Search and Destroy (I also run it with “immunize” tool). These two tools are always on top of my desktop for easy access.

(5)Turn on the pop-up blocker - this feature is available on Windows XP (you can see this under tools>Internet Options >Privacy>click Block Pop Ups. In addition to this, I also download another pop up blocker, the Google Toolbar. I find their pop up blocker the most effective in blocking pop ups.

(6)Never open mails that are suspicious to you or not known to you. If they are in your bulk mail, send it back to your provider as “spam”! I never enable my bulk mail. I automatically delete emails from my bulk mail.

(7)When using messenger (IM) services, be very careful with files being sent through instant messenger. Rather choose to have it emailed it to you. Most of email services now has virus check and clears it if the file has virus or not.

(8)Be very careful when downloading files or any programs from the internet, pay attention on the instructions while downloading it. Downloading may sometimes cause error on the system registry or the entire computer system (one example, my nephew got his computer badly infected with viruses because of heavy downloading of games and music! - I guess!)

(9)Be careful with files that come from a floppy disk or any other external storage when you open it in your CD ROM of floppy drive. You should know its source, or better yet, when you insert it, have it scanned with your anti-virus program before you open the files.

(10)Run defragmentation, disk clean up, registry scanner at least once a week. You can find defragmentation by simply pointing your mouse on drive C: (which is usually the hard disk main logical drive)> right click the mouse>click on properties>click on tools>click on defragment now!

There are so many shareware on the internet that you can get for free! (that is the reason it is a shareware!). Keeping your computer healthy can make you more productive (if you have a business!) or it will make you enjoy more surfing and browsing the internet!

Ms. Mcbanon is an experienced Medical Biller and Coder based in New York. A graduate of Bachelor Science in Computer Engineering. A Medical Practice Billing Consultant.

Blog car, care, computer, games, health, internet, medical, music, personal, science, software, spam, time

It makes no difference if you are thinking about starting a business, shopping or just looking for a new job online, you can protect yourself from some of the cleverest scams online if you just follow the simple steps below.

(1) You can always find out information on a company or person by doing a quick search online. Go to Goggle or Yahoo and type in the company or person name and then type in the word scam after. Follow all leads. If no leads show up, then that is a good thing. It means there are no complaints on them online.

(2) Check with the state’s Attorney General’s Office to see if the company or person have received a series of complaints.

(3) Check with the National Fraud Information Center at: www.fraud.org to see if the company or person is listed. They provide a lot of information about telephone, mail, and online scams.

(4) Make sure the company or person you plan to do business with have a phone number and physical address. Call the company or person to see if the phone number actually belongs to them.

(5) Always make sure that you get a guarantee. Ask the company what will happen if you want to return the product or what do you need to do if you want a refund.

(6) Be cautious of companies who ask for your bank account info, or ask permission to deposit money into your bank account.

(7) Try to use your credit card instead of cash if you buy a product or invest in a business opportunity. That way if you do get ripped off, it may be easier to dispute the charges with your credit card company.

(8) Never do business with anyone in the country of Nigeria. If you do, you are fair game. The Nigerian Government is in on most of the scams from that country. This is just too large a business for Nigeria to crack down on. It would be like Nevada trying to close the casinos in Las Vegas. There have been numerous reports of high-level officials of the Nigerian government and the Central Bank of Nigeria personally participating in some scams.

(9) Don’t reply to bulk email. You don’t won’t to do business with someone who likes to spam people. Why? If they are bold enough to spam you, then they are bold enough to ripping you off!

(10) Never buy a product or business opportunity with out getting a receipt or confirmation number. If you don’t get one or the other, then it’s your word against theirs. With out proof, you will loose every time.

(11) Use common sense! If it sound too good to be true! Guess what? It’s a scam!

Don’t Become Their Next Victim.

© Copy right 2005-06 by Table Top Cash Inc. Randy McClurkin is the owner and founder of http://www.tabletopcash.com which is a website devoted to information regarding scams.

Blog car, credit, fund, home, internet, invest, personal, spam, time

Word processing and spreadsheets were the first of the killer apps for home computers when PCs first started to propagate to the millions of households out there. Then, there were Internet Browsers that took everyone by storm. So what are the hot categories and hot products now? There are more products then ever out there for the home shopper and many of them not that good. We looked over many, many different products and product categories to find the best home products, the hot home product categories, and the best software products period. The list is neither exhaustive nor scientific, but the products listed here are definitely great! If you have a computer at home, take a look at these products!

The Hot Product Categories

When searching reviews and products out there on the web some of these categories were not the top on my list, but nevertheless, they are not only out there, but getting a lot of attention. Here are ten top selling software categories for the home computer:

* Home design and gardening software
* Spyware and Adware
* Family Tree Legends
* Video Sharing
* Website builders
* Speech to text conversion
* Parental control and Internet filtering
* Disk-imaging utilities
* Spam Blockers
* Internet Security

Top 10 Best Software Products

The home software market has never had so many choices and for the categories listed above there are too many products to mention. Below are ten standout products for each of these areas.

* Home design and gardening software - Home Designer Pro 7.0
* Spyware and Adware - CounterSpy 1.5
* Family Tree Legends - Family Tree Legend 5.0
* Video Sharing - Grouper
* Website builders - SiteMaker
* Speech to text conversion - Dragon Naturally Speaking 8
* Parental control and Internet filtering - ContentProtect 2.0
* Disk-imaging utility - Acronis True Image
* Spam - Cloudmark Desktop
* Internet Security - ZoneAlarm Internet Security Suite 6

The information about Home Software Programs presented here will do one of two things: either it will reinforce what you know about Home Software Programs or it will teach you something new. Both are good outcomes.

For each of these products there are additional information in the following articles. Take a look at these home software products!

Below are some things to watch for in 2006, some of them are good and, unfortunately, some aren’t.

First the good news:

- We are getting a lot more serious about our security. This has a lot of reasons behind it. For example, new privacy laws are mandating organizations to tighten their security. Look to see more consumer privacy laws passed in the coming year and more tightening of security systems.

- Authentication requirements are increasing. This is closing in large security holes. Corporations are requiring a great deal more of authentication to get into secure systems (this also is on the bad news side)

- There is a plethora of sophisticated programs to help us be more secure and they will continue to get better. Competition right now is strong in the security industry sparking a lot of innovation.

- ISPs are now taking on the responsibility to help us with our security. Take AOL’s recent commercials as a good sign that others will follow the trend.

Now the bad news:

- Securing our networks is costing us. Most companies are globalizing their organizations and making them secure costs a lot of money. It will get worse before it gets better.

- Authentication requirements are increasing. This is getting claustrophobic. Corporations are requiring a great deal more authentication to get into secure systems (This is also on the good news side) Unfortunately, for the end user, it is one more thing to be unhappy about, not unlike airport security lines.

- Hackers are getting more sophisticated. For example, Botnets are becoming more complex and harder and harder to catch and stop. Do a search on botnets on the Internet. They really are causing a whole lot of problems, but it does not stop there. The number of viruses and malware out there is staggering.

- Spammers keep finding more creative ways to fill our email boxes. Don’t look for this trend to stop anytime soon.

So now you know a little bit about Home Software Programs. Even if you don’t know everything, you’ve done something worthwhile: you’ve expanded your knowledge.

Dina Fedorova, finding a Home Business that’s Right for You.Visit my site and download “Dotcomology:The Science of Making Money online”. Absolutely Free at: http://www.Net-Plus-Profit.com 3 Easy Steps to Make money Online: http://www.Net-Plus-Profit.com/pips.htmlFor more information please visit : http://successuniversity.com.

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A forum is sort of a gathering place for like minded individuals with whom you can communicate about your niche. Other names a forum is commonly referred to are message boards, electronic discussion boards, bulletin boards, discussion forums and discussion groups. Every niche has hundred of Forums to choose from. The great thing about forums is that you can target a certain group of people that fit the demographics you are looking for.

Forum marketing is what this article is all about. Forum Marketing is basically the methods and techniques one uses on a forum in order to legally drive free website traffic to your site without violating the forums Terms of Service. In other words, what can you do to drive traffic to your site without breaking any of the rules of the forum?

There are anonymous forums allowing for full anonymity that allow post without registering. Then there are the forums that require that one register with a login name and a password before being allowed to participate in any discussions. A majority of member only forums are moderated to ensure that the content one posts is appropriate for that niche topic as well as to prevent spam. Participants are identified by unique usernames and graphical avatars. Forum marketing works in all sorts of forums.

It can be a huge benefit and asset to driving free traffic to your website if only you will participate in the ongoing discussions in a forum. Every time you enter a post, whether you initiated it or not enables you to place a copy of your website link at the bottom. Considering that forums are usually high traffic sites, most of the popular ones have a high Page Rank. When you place your link on the forum, it is crawled as a backlink to your website from a high page rand site which carries a great deal of weight in where your site will end up in the search engines. Joining more then one forum: the more backlinks you are able to obtain, the better the chance you have of ranking very high up (maybe even the first page) of the search engines for your various keywords.

Often times anonymity plays an important role for the forum participant. You will find that people on forums are more apt to discuss even topics they would never consider discussing in person with others. They will talk about anything and everything online.

By visiting forums and taking note of what people are most concerned about you can search the Internet for products and services that will help them solve those problems. Gather the information about the topic. Write or have written for you articles about the topic. In this way you can find a topic and build a content-rich website for niche marketing that helps with the problem you have identified and that will serve the needs of people. This is a neat way to satisfy the need to know what the problem is before you put out the product solution to the problem. Most writers, especially newbie’s, will put together a product before identifying their marketing, kind of like putting the cart before the horse.. By paying attention to the concerns of people on your niche forums, you are approaching the idea of product development in the correct way kind of like putting the horse before the cart, which is, of course, where the horse is supposed to be.

In applying the concept above, you will also be quite successful in identifying great niche marketing websites you can build. A unique way of expanding on your new website idea is to pose various questions on the forums you have joined and elicit multiple answers on major issues of concern. Post a question that will produce many responses and use those responses to write an e-book on the topic. The fact is that many people will buy an e-book that is filled with information they could actually gather for themselves. They will also purchase e-books that will tell them what other people with the same problem they have think about or are doing about their common problem.

Look for Part 2 In This Directory

Jimmy Oakley-©-2007- Jimmy is an Internet Marketer who markets a variety of the best Email and Internet learning systems offered online. Today you can learn his secret weapon to getting tons of quality, 1 way links to my brand new websites in less than a 2-4 weeks with very little effort! Increase your Google ranking by easily using this new software program that is being secretly used by top ranked websites in Google, Yahoo, and MSN! I think you’ll be surprised when you visit the website and watch the demo video and read all of the user comments… Visit http://www.jimmyoakley.com/ArticleSubmitter.html

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Email is to process … what the internet is to information and business… Too Much!

On any given day when I start work, I can look forward to my morning ritual of sifting through one or 500 email spams I get due to my e-address being harvested from articles I write that find their way out onto the net. Most of the spam I receive are from caring individuals genuinely concerned about helping me with a serious problem I didn’t even know I had - I think you know what I mean.

To be fair, I should point out that surprisingly, my wife also receives similar emails from people just as concerned about her ‘appendage’ [one she and I have yet to locate] but one, nonetheless, our internet friends are quite convinced they can help her improve-upon if and when we ever find it!

People from Nigeria too, it seems, really need my help. It’s true! They sound so regal, being that approximately 110% of them are members of real Nigerian royalty and all. And I believe them! They say they want to give me money. How nice. In their unmitigated benevolence - rivaled, I’m sure, only by that of Mother Teresa’s - they want to put one or [insert Mike Meyers Dr Evil accent here] four-hundred-million-dollars - give or take, - into my personal bank account… for a price of course. And there are women, each morning, I don’t know and have never met who feel the need to E-communicate with me using opening lines like “Hello my dearest darling”… where were they when I was dating?

It’s not that I don’t have adequate spam protection software to filter out the three legitimate emails I wanted to receive from the hundreds obsessed with my ability to…ah… ‘maintain’… I do. The problem however, is simply that anti-spam software needs ongoing education and re-education, but even with that, often legitimate email inadvertently falls into the ‘Spam’ or ‘Spam Suspects’ folder requiring people like me, with absolutely no problem at all - honestly! - to take the valuable time to go through all the spam. What a pain.

Everyone knows how frustrating and how much time is wasted in our lives everyday dealing with unwanted emails, never mind the vigilance required to ensure we do not make the dreaded mistake of opening that one email, perhaps the one that appears so benign and legit - “Hello my dearest darling” comes to mind - but is neither. The virus or worm I’m talking about is malevolent and infectious. And that is when the real waste of time begins, sometimes lasting for days, as you scramble to rehabilitate your computer, if, in fact, that option still even exists. Sometimes it does not and data is lost forever!

Like it or not, email and the internet have changed us and at times, they are no friend to business. Email has become the ‘medium of choice’ for avoiding simple human interactivity. Inside the office, now vast amounts of information is sent and received by way of e-blasts that require no human-to-human contact but nevertheless, demands no small price in wasted productivity, time and profitability by workers, required to view and/or even respond to them. For example, is there someone in your office [more often in management] who, despite their sincere altruistic intentions, nonetheless, waste so much valuable corporate time because they feel compelled to share motivational stories, sayings and pictures they come across, with the rest of the company? Nearly ever office has one. Get back to work!

It is true, if you are not at your desk, the boss assumes you are not working. On the other hand, plunking away at your keyboard is not quite so obvious, is it? Think about how much corporate time is wasted these days by employees who believe they are masters at multi-tasking. You know who they are. They surf the net, send copious personal emails both in and outside the company - on company time - in addition to the text-messageing and ongoing MSN chats that sit open all day on their desktop, beside the work the company is paying them good money to get done. Sadly, there is nothing funny about that.

If you are still sitting on the fence about the seriousness of this issue, here are some interesting, recent stats to consider:

Internet Usage Statistics - Workplace Source: http://www.netarmorsolutions.com/Info_Inet_Stats_WORK.htm

· More than 60% of companies have disciplined - and more than 30% have terminated - employees for inappropriate use of the Internet. (Source: The Center for Internet Studies)

· 27% of Fortune 500 companies have battled sexual harassment claims stemming from employee misuse and abuse of corporate e-mail and Internet systems. (Source: American Management Association)

· 70% of employees admit to viewing or sending adult-oriented personal e-mail at work. (Source: NFO Worldwide)

· One research firm, International Data, estimates the 30 to 40% of employee Internet use is not work related. (Source: International Data Corp.)

· Dow Chemical Co. fired 50 employees and disciplined 200 others after an e-mail investigation turned up hard-core pornography and violent subject matter. (Source: Associated Press)

· 25% of employees said they spent 10 to 30 minutes a day surfing non-related work sites, 22%, said they spent 30 minutes to an hour, 12% said they spent one to two hours online, while 13% admitted to spending more than two hours a day. (Source: Vault.com)

· Of more than 3,400 executives surveyed, 64.1 percent said that their companies have a formal office policy in place to help manage employee use of the Internet. (Source: Management Recruiters International)

· 37% of employees report that they search for jobs, 45% make travel arrangements, and 11% play online games while at work. (Source: Vault.com)

· 46% of online holiday shopping is happening at work. (Source: Nielsen//NetRatings)

Bottom Line:

Long after the humor subsides from emails that imbue circumspection for one’s athletic performance or lack thereof - and - long before that Nigerian cheque ever arrives in the mail, the gravity of the potential dangers email and the internet bring to bear on business, must be taken seriously. The fact is, the internet is a double edged sword. One side cuts though the competitive forces helping companies realize success, profitability and peak performance.The other, has the potential to cut a company right off at its knees. On a lighter note, as sure as you can be that Bill Gates is not going to send you five bucks, you can take what I’m saying, to the bank… just not a Nigerian one! lol

——————————————————————————–

Paul Shearstone is an International Keynote Speaker and Author. He specializes in Motivation, Selling and corporate Resilience Training. For more information on Paul’s keynotes and seminars, or to invite him to speak at your next successful event, we invite you to contact him directly:

Blog car, computer, dating, education, games, human, humor, internet, invest, management, personal, profit, sex, skin, software, spam, success, time, travel, women

It’s not hard to find Frontpage Web Hosting. Just do a google search and you’re likely to find hundreds of sites that provide it. But there are some things that you’ll want to look for and consider.

1) What version of Frontpage are you using? This is important because Frontpage features are implemented through the use of Frontpage Extensions and those extensions are different between each version. So you’ll need to make sure that the Frontpage Host you select supports the Frontpage extensions for your particular version.

2) Do you really need a site that supports Frontpage extensions? This may seem strange, but you’ll find that there are two primary hosting types; Linux based and Windows based. The Linux based hosts are generally a bit cheaper than Windows based hosting. If you have no plans to take advantage of Frontpage extensions, and you’re only using Frontpage to create HTML documents, then regular Linux hosting will do fine.

3) Don’t use Frontpage Extensions if you really don’t have to. These extensions will give you the ability to do creative things (flashing text, calanders, etc) that don’t really add value to your website. Consider this risk… as Microsoft updates its software, they may change a Frontpage extension in such a way that your websites may not work. If this happens, you would have to rewrite your web page with updated references to extensions to make it work again.

4) Is the host reliable? There are literally THOUSANDS of Frontpage Web Hosting providers on the market. All you need to set up a web host business is a Windows based server and an Internet connection. You, the home users, really have no idea if the host is reliable or not. For this reason, it’s a good idea to check Frontpage hosting providers ratings before making a selection. Use a service like:

http://www.webhostingratings.com/ or http://www.hostcompare.com/showcases/frontpage.html

5) How long do they want you to sign up for? Typically, a web host will have a monthly contract with price breaks if you prepay for longer terms. You don’t have to be crazy and buy 5 years. 1 year will do. Also, along with your Frontpage hosting account, you’re going to have to purchase a domain name. Generally, I do this through the same company, but you don’t have to do it this way. For example, on occasion, a domain name registrar called RegisterFly will offer .info domains for as little as .60 per year. Normally you would expect to pay about $5.00 per year, so this is a great discount. I’ve purchased hundreds of domains through RegisterFly and am very happy with them.

6) Does your Frontpage Web Host have a simple to use web front end for administering your site? This makes things much easier. You will undoubtedly be creating a directory structure, uploading files, changing file permissions, etc, while you develop your site. Having a convenient web based portal for administering these changes makes things nice.

7) How many e-mail accounts will your Frontpage Web Host provide? Normally this is a non-issue, but if you’re setting up a website for a business and they need e-mail addresses to go along with their web hosting service, then you’ll want to confirm that enough e-mail addresses are provided by the host. Lately, I’ve noticed this number going up and up and up. A few years ago, 5 e-mail addresses was normal. Now, I’ll get hundreds per domain (which I never use).

How much space will your Frontpage Web Host provide? Again, this number is going up and up and up. But don’t be caught off guard. Make sure they will provide enough space for your needs. Typically, you’ll see 100 MB or so for cheaper accounts. Unless you have a vast database that will be part of your site, this is generally more than enough.

9) Will your Frontpage Web Host put a cap on the amount of bandwidth you can consume? If you expect to get lots of visitors to your website, make sure your hosting provide will supply the bandwidth. I recently ran into a problem with on of my accounts because a graphics intensive page was referenced by a very popular authority site, I consumed my allotted bandwidth for the month, in 2 days. They kept my account operations, but I had to pay extra for the bandwidth consumption. Other sites have been turned off due to excessive bandwidth consumption.

10) Finally, will your Frontpage Web Host allow you to register domain names privately? This is a feature of Domain Registration where your private information remains private. When someone performs a “Whois” on your domain, they would see the contact information for the web host. This is nice if you plan to put up many, many sites and want to avoid any spam.

I would say that choosing a Frontpage Web Host is only slightly more difficult than choosing a Linux Host. If you check some of those review sites that I mentioned above, you can be confident that you’ll find a Frontpage host that will provide excellent service to you. You can find out more about Frontpage Web Hosting here -> http://www.frontpagewebhosting-site.info

Charles Waters has been developing web sites for several years as part of his Affiliate Marketing strategy. In the beginning, he used Frontpage extensively, but over the last few years has migrated to the cheaper, more ubiquitous Linux hosting. See http://www.frontpagewebhosting-site.info for more information.

Blog creative, domains, happy, home, hosting, internet, marketing, review, software, spam

Have you ever considered ezine advertising for your home based business? If not, you’re truly missing out on some valuable exposure to your business. Ezine advertising can be a powerful tool if you follow the right guidelines and you will be successful.

Always include quantifiable benefits when writing an ezine advertisement - and actually tell the truth. For instance, if you say “lose 5 pounds in 5 days,” people will actually be interested in that and believe it is possible at the same time. Distorting the benefits wont help at all; it will make the advertisement look like a scam more than anything else.

When creating a solo advertisement, alter the copy so that it specifically portrays the product as a solution to a specific problem. Purchase several solo advertisements to test how well this version converts when compared to other versions. Testing is vital if you want to continually improve the conversion rate of your advertisements.

This is very vital for ezine advertising members to realize. Always look for word of mouth referrals for ezine before you place advertisements. In many cases, no matter how good your copy is, you will find that certain ezine simply will not be responsive to your email. This might be because the ezine isn’t actually as big as the owner claims it is - and it might also be because the owner hasn’t promoted the list in a year.

Think on a professional level. Make sure you format your ezine advertisement correctly before you send in to a publisher. In most cases, you will have to format your advertisement to 60 - 65 words; and you may even want to perform a spam check. If the text isn’t formatted properly, lines will be broken and wrapped unprofessionally; and if you don’t perform a spam check, it may never even go through in the first place.

When creating a top sponsor advertisement, avoid making an attempt to sell anyone on anything. Instead, give something away completely free that will up sell the reader later, such as a subscription or a special report. Additionally, make sure you clearly communicate that nothing is for sale - and that you simply want them to take action for free.

Become a software application provider for ezine owners. Ask ezine owners what software applications they need - and then hire someone to create an application for you. Distribute this software to all of the ezine owners who have a use for it. Make sure there is some back-end component build in that will drive users to your site.

Now, moving from our last point about ezine advertising we will now discuss when outsourcing any work you are doing as part of an ezine marketing campaign, remember to carefully check for plagiarism and theft. This is definitely an unpleasant thought, but plagiarism has become quite rampant on freelancing sites. If you own several websites, you can use Copyscape to do this for you; however, each site will be limited to 20 scans.

Willie DeJarnette

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Using press releases for marketing purposes for promoting anything from new web sites to new product announcements have become increasingly popular lately as business owners learn the powerful benefits of using press releases.

Press releases have been used over the past few years by quite a few smart business owners and marketers that have seen first hand how they can help their business get the recognition they need in marketing new products or services both offline and online.

But a lot of businesses have been reluctant in using press releases as they were unsure of how to properly construct a simple press release or how to distribute them for maximum effectiveness.

Using press releases can be a very effective marketing tool and seo strategy if constructed and implemented properly.

Learning to write a powerful optimized press release can often drive tons of targeted traffic to your web site while providing multiple back links that can lead to increased page rank and numerous top ten search engine rankings for your targeted keywords.

The real secret behind writing any effective press release and to gain maximum exposure for your new product or service is to plan your release out carefully even before publishing it.

A poorly constructed or planned press release is just a waste of your time and resources. You want to target the message of your press release for the purpose it was meant for.

So, the first thing you must do before writing is to figure out just what do you want to accomplish with your press release?

– Do you want to create some brand awareness for your web site or products?

– Do you want to add additional subscribers to your newsletter or ezine?

– Or are you trying to promote a new product or service you have developed or are marketing?

Once you’ve decided what the most compelling reason is for your press release, you can then get down to the business of writing it.

The first thing you may want to do is sketch out a rough draft of your press release to see how it flows. Does it provide the needed information to get the word out and has it been properly formatted?

Most press releases have a certain format that they follow. If you’re unsure of how to format your press release correctly you can view a sample press release template here at http://www.prweb.com/pressreleasetips.php#template .

The number one most important aspect of your press release is your headline.

Get it wrong and you will limit the effectiveness of your release.

Your headline is what the search engines are going to pick up on first. The headline is what normally gets listed first once indexed so make sure you use it advantageously. List any key points here, using your keywords or a catchy headline so that it will grab your reader’s attention.

Also try to keep your headline as short as possible as Google gives more weight to keywords if not surrounded by irrelevant words. Again planning is essential.

If promoting a new site include the URL in the headline. If promoting a product or service then include some keywords in the headline.

Some press release services use a summary box. I normally write a catchy one-paragraph recap of my press release using some of my targeted keywords.

Without being spammy, I will normally optimize my press release by using some of my targeted keywords in the first and last paragraph. I will also include some of them throughout the release for a keyword exposure of approximately 2-5% saturation.

Tip: if you’re promoting a web site, I will normally mention my URL around three times within the release for the maximum benefit.

One of the first questions I had when I first started writing press releases was what was considered a great release? What did it consist of and how was it constructed?

Being curious, I emailed my contact at http://www.prweb.com/ and asked them if they could show me a few press releases that they considered as excellent examples.

These releases have received their editorial scores of 5 on their scale of 1 to 5; with five being the highest.

They sent me three of them for review and you can see each one of them here:

http://prweb.com/releases/2005/2/prweb136748.htm

http://prweb.com/releases/2005/2/prweb149213.htm

http://prweb.com/releases/2005/2/prweb203448.htm

Study each one of these against the press release template to see what is required for an effective release.

Note: to get additional exposure for your press release via www.emediawire.com you have to have an editorial score of 4 or higher. So it is to your benefit to write the best release you can the first time around.

Once you have studied the examples and want to try submitting you own press release you need to know which ones are the most popular ones being used.

Here are some of the press release services I have used and found to be effective:

http://prweb.com/

http://www.pressbox.co.uk/index.html

http://www.webwire.com/default.asp

http://www.24-7pressrelease.com/

With most of press release services you can submit your press release for free or via paid inclusion. Paying for inclusion gives you the benefit of faster indexing into the search engine news services and natural search engine result pages.

Normally your release will be picked up by Google news within a few hours after its release. From there it will normally show up in the natural search results within a few days or a week.

I have used both of these services in the past but have found that paying them at least the minimum amount for their distribution services will allow you to view your stats online. It will also allow you to choose different categories for my press release to be displayed in, giving your release a chance for wider coverage.

So using press releases can and is a very effective marketing tool that you can use for promoting your web site or affiliate products if done correctly.

By using press releases, I have been able to create a steady flow of targeted visitors to my web site and affiliate programs while generating dozens of back links to my web site.

Even though the effects of each individual press release may be short lived, they still have provided me with both free and inexpensive ways for getting hundreds of new visitors to my site and quite a few top ten positions in Google for my targeted keywords.

So isn’t worth while to at least check out the benefits of using press releases in your marketing methods? A little work now could reap amazing results.

Ted Kushner writes about consumer interest stories dealing with health, business and finances. See how you too can get multiple top ten positions in Google, Yahoo adn MSN using press releases at: http://www.affiliaterevenuesources.com/press-release-secrets.htm

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An opt in email list is a must have if you want to make money online. It has been proven time and again that a well nurtured opt-in email list makes a world of difference and adds that much needed extra income to your bank balance. It is presently difficult to find online a business that does not have a mailing list of sorts.

Having an opt in email list allows you or your company to promote your website via emails. Simply by building a permission based email list you can keep in regular contact with your customers and subscribers through an informative newsletter.

The way permission based email marketing works is that you send emails to the people on your list and it will not be considered spam because the recipient has given their consent. You can be rest assured that the response to your emails will be a lot better than if you sent your information to a list of people who have not given you their permission to send them information.

It is very important you understand that only a small percentage of the visitors to your website will become subscribers to your list. Provide the right material and rather than annoy people you will see your opt in email list grow. You will also get these same people returning to your website repeatedly.

The amount of money you make online in a year is dependent on the number of responsive subscribers you have on your opt in email list.

Here are 4 Steps To Help Churn out Money from Your Opt In Email List

1. Place advertisements on your lists. There are businesses willing to pay you to advertise their adverts and banners to a list of potential buyers. Think of those AdSense adverts you have seen on websites you have visited. Each of your newsletters can have several advertisements with each one making you money.

2. Do joint ventures with other businesses somewhat similar to your but not in direct competition with it. You can agree to put a link to their website to your list and your joint venture partner can do the same. This arrangement is usually best where your list demographics are similar.

3. Sign up to pay per action businesses. You will have to direct your list traffic to the company’s products. The beauty of it all is that each time your list decides to buy a product, you will be paid compensation.

4. Sell a compilation of your written articles or even e-books to the people on your list. How-to articles, eBooks and manuals are very high in demand and people online are willing to pay money to get the knowledge about a subject or topic of their interest. With the gained trust of your list, you could offer an eBook for a price or free.

Are you really serious about building your very own opt in list?

Sign Up For a FREE eCourse at: http://www.List-Building-Success.com

Grab your free List Building Tips at http://www.ListBuildingMission.com

This is your opportunity to build a responsive and profitable email list.

Will DeMarro is an expert author and marketer specialising in opt in list building and pre qualified traffic generation techniques.

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