Build a Drupal Membership Site in Minutes

If you're looking to design your very own membership site but are still using WordPress as your content management system its about time you look into Drupal. Drupal is a more robust CMS that allows you to put together a content rich website in ways an individual could only dream of doing with WordPress. So let's take a look at everything we'll need to get started, shall we?

In WordPress you have what are called plugins. These are additional addons to the core system that allow it to do extra tasks. Drupal refers to plugins as modules. The majority of the modules available can be found on the Drupal website. So the two main modules you need on any Drupal installation are CCK and Views. CCK allows you to create additional content types well above and beyond the usual posts and pages. You can create elaborate profile pages for yourself and members or even put together a simple form consisting of a title and body that only certain users have access to on your website. The views module allows you to put together lists, display names of members, show your most popular products and much more.

Now that we have the Views and CCK modules it's time to grab the bread and butter for our membership site: Ubercart, Role Expire, and Node Privacy by Role. Ubercart is the shopping cart system that allows you to process credit card orders from your potential customers. It integrates with PayPal, Google Checkout and a variety of other popular online merchants. Role expire allows you to create a specific role in your system that will expire after a predetermined length of time. This length of time can be in days, months or even years.

Once you have your role created and your permissions have been set accordingly you can create your new product. If you are setting up a Silver Membership, then that would be the name of your product. Set your product to be associated with the new role you created. Whenever someone orders your Silver Membership they will automatically be given a role on your site, a unique username and password to log in, and a count down clock until they have to renew.

Now you can begin creating content for your members only section using the Node Privacy by Role module. Any piece of content can now have permissions set to only allow a specific role access to the content. You can go even further creating a new CCK type or by setting permissions on specific CCK fields that only your members can see. This can be useful if you want to create a teaser for non members, to give them a taste of what they can expect if they upgrade their membership.

Drupal is a very powerful CMS and can be used for a variety of projects. Give it a try on your next project and see if it meets your needs as an internet marketer.

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Choosing the Best CMS for Business

The most effectively practiced recently in terms of delivering online business communications is the Content Management Systems. It enables non-technical administrators to deal with a variety of online contents easily and eradicates common concerns with ad hoc direction of online capacity and manually developed web pages. Enterprise content management solutions are material techniques required in communicating and dealing with clients, personnel and providers.

An excellent CMS can de-scramble the technical infrastructure which may be embedded in the profusion of business diligence. It can furnish a program as a benchmark in designing the business applications for everyday usage and incorporate them into more practicable and user friendly portals for personnel, client and providers, which is made accessible anywhere and from any devices as long as with Internet access.

Often, contouring administration processes would eventually lead to an efficiency increment. Opting to an appropriate CMS for your business will be cost-effective from the commencement, leading to an increased adaptability, perfectly created solutions even with the extremely complex business prerequisites.

Here are some of the requisites in a content management system:

You will greatly appreciate the essence of the system because it is intensely practicable in any business type. You will eventually be getting what you truly need in a system, but first, there is a need for you to specify your needs. You can even employ futuristic projections in the intention to expand and may opt to establish your own management systems.

The real beauty of such systems is that they're extremely adaptable for any type of business. What you need, in this case, is what you'll get. All you need to do is define the needs. You can even project ahead for expansion, and create your own management system.

Like for instance, you may consider engaging in e-commerce, use the system to track orders, to have a reporting system, to have the system to market our products, you may need forms for proper accounting and tracking of your business efficiency and profitability, management capacity and many more. These potentialities are just some of the many standards of the best quality CMS. These are exactly what you will need in the event you decide to streamline and mange a full service and operative system.

An instinctual combination - Content Management Systems and best practice

The best business practice is a vague concept and often relative. Some of the critical factors are being efficient and access. A good content management system often directs to best practice. As defined, the integration of content management is inclined to cater the entire business undertakings, from clients surfing the site to accounting.

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Advantages Using CMS - What Are the Advantages Using Content Management Systems?

Advantages Using CMS - Content Management Systems.

If you are thinking of creating and hosting your very own website, then you need to give a great deal of consideration as to just how you will be creating your website. The problem with web development and design is that it is an extremely intricate and technically complex process and one that has a very steep learning curve associated with it indeed. Even the slightest error in your code will create a legion of problems ranging from graphics not rendering properly, your website not loading for the users and in worst case scenarios, leaving a hole in your security network. Indeed, sloppily written code is the number one exploit that hackers use when trying to infiltrate a website.

If your web coding skills are a little lacking, then you may want to make use of a content management system also known as CMS in order to provide you with a convenient starting point from which you can launch your website and get a better idea of the format you want your site to take.

There are many suppliers of content management system and so this means that you can freely choose between a commercially licensed one (these cost money) and a CMS which is "open source" (free for download and commercial usage). The benefit of a content management system is that they provide the website owner with a pre-created and compiled package, in other words, a website in a box which requires no more technical expertise than mere installation.

Because all aspects of a content management system has been vetted by experts, this means that they are especially favored by technically challenged website owners who are keen to branch out on their own. Indeed, all a user needs is a passing familiarity with word processing applications such as Microsoft Word in order to edit and update the material contained within the CMS.

Security is a top priority within a CMS and this is clearly evidenced by virtue of the fact that any and all users who happen to use and access the CMS will be accorded user privileges of varying degrees. What this means then is that there are areas that will be cordoned off to different users thereby preventing unauthorized amendments, deletion, or theft of material.

Another remarkable aspect of a CMS is its portable nature and as such, the CMS can be scaled down and then replicated on a number of different platforms including PDF, web browser, WPA and other digital devices.

Content management systems are often perceived as being fairly static entities, the reality is that they are in actual fact dynamic and this is evidenced by virtue of the fact that the navigation systems contained within the system will be contingent upon the database contained within the system. Because of this, you are guaranteed to never have to contend yourself with the issue of dead links and broken navigation options, because if it does not exist in the menu it does not exist period.

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WordPress - Content Management System

WordPress is an open source Content Management System (CMS) widely used as a blog publishing application. It is the most popular Content Management System being used nowadays. Content Management Systems store the content separate from the interface of the web site while maintaining a neat look.

It can be used as a complete Content Management System. It allows a simple and easy way of writing and editing posts as well as adding pages. This feature allows you to set up the look and feel of the web site and add multiple web pages as and when needed. It also allows you to set up any page as the home page and rest of the blog inside the web site. WordPress has a rich plug-in architecture which allows companies to extend its functionality beyond the features that come as part of the base install.

Featured articles can be stored on the front page with latest news listed chronologically on another part of the page. You can also set up separate pages for different categories such as Fashion or Sport. More robust and feature-filled Content Management Systems tend to be weak in user-friendliness and high on complexity. WordPress is a Content Management System that offers free themes and templates in terms of both quality and quantity.

Another great advantage of it is its excellent back up and support facilities. It offers a huge knowledge base that stores information on everything from installation to upgrades. It also has an active community of users who post to the blog. Users from this community provide instant help on any thing that is not found on the blog.

WordPress can run on your web hosting service. It is used extensively by companies in software. It is very secure and reliable because of its large user base and development back up. Your site can grow at a very fast pace. Many organizations that are into offshore software development provide WordPress based web design solution to there clients.

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Factors Influencing Your CMS Web Design Cost

Developing a CMS website is in trend these days, and why not? This implementation makes the task of website maintenance easier when it comes to editing, organizing, archiving, creating and searching content on the website. Today, an increasing number of non-techies want to set up and manage their ecommerce sites on their own and CMS integration is offering them this facility, with the help of which they can easily handle multiple sites on their own.

With the increasing demands of CMS solutions each day, the number of vendors offering CMS web design is also increasing rapidly. However, handing your CMS web development project to someone capable and experienced could be not so difficult for you. But if you are going to get your CMS web design project for the first time, you may not figure out the right price they should be charging from you and you may end up paying high for a small job of alteration done in your CMS project. So, it is always better to quote a price to your vendor and decide upon the expected budget before commencing the project is required. Here are the few tips given to you so that you can get your CMS web design completed within your budget without compromising on the quality;

Paying little Extra for Quality

You want a quality product when you buy something for you and you don't mind spending few bucks extra on it. Same goes with the CMS solutions as well. Paying little more for quality gives you value for money spent. Establishing a design budget by analyzing prices involved will keep you at bay from troublesome situations. A good service provider offers various flexible packages to suite your budget and requirements or you can ask for customized packages as well. But make sure that in an attempt to keep the budget extremely low for your project, you end up with a downtrodden one that fails to perform.

Expertise they Have and Technology to Use

It depends upon the type of vendor you are dealing with because if he/she is a free lancer, they might cost little less. And if you are hiring services from a well known reputed IT company, you will have to pay comparatively high. But a free lancer's service may not be as good as what you get from the old established firm. Moreover, a reputed firm assures you of completing the project within deadline and you don't have to bother about its maintenance issues. Nonetheless, hiring a free lancer can be a better alternative if you are looking for cost effective solution, provided you are okay with the technological knowledge and expertise they have by asking them or checking out their portfolio.

Added Functionality

The cost appearing on your project also depends upon the number of functionality you have asked your developer to integrate into your CMS web design. The overall price is directly proportional to the number of functions added into your project. CMS development process can not be completed in just one go, it goes step by step and takes time to accomplish a user friendly fully functional website.

The above features related to your CMS web design project accounted for the price you pay to your web developer to get a best solution. Getting a CMS web design is useful for upliftment of your online business which is easy to handle, update and manage website on your own.

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Types of Content Management Systems

Today there are thousands of content management systems available on the Internet. Each serves different users by offering unique features according to their actual needs. However they all work under the same standard.

There are four main types of CMS (content management systems) in which we could cover most of which exist. These four types are:

1) Custom made (in house)
2) Commercial
3) High-end
4) Open source

Tailored
They are content management systems created within a company. Are developed by staff from the same organization. You could say that "no two are alike." As a result, all aspects of the system serving the specific needs of the company. The main theme is the development lies with the internal staff to correct the mistakes and create patches.

Commercial
Is offering content management systems is the widest since there are plenty of options either in prices, plans and features. Unlike custom-made (in house) these are rarely personalized. It is also difficult to determine the functionality of the software initially as the company has what they want you to see.

High Range
Of the thousands of systems of content available on the market only a few of them might fall into this category. One of its main features is the reliability that you have to get a robust and quality. Unfortunately this is also reflected in their high prices, since they tend to be very expensive.

Open Source
This essentially means that the software or content management system is available for anyone in the world for free. The main advantages seem obvious but the price is free! And these systems are completely customizable from its source code open. They say many disadvantages of these systems, however, strongly believe and advocate these software. For me the best that exist.

While once we know the major groups of content management systems that exist. The decision to acquire one or the other depends on your needs. If you are a company and have information technology staff, it is worth thinking about developing a house or invest in a high range.

On the other hand, if you do not have qualified personnel and the price can be an obstacle would be worth purchasing one of open source.

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WordPress Themes Explained

WordPress Themes essentially are website templates designed specifically for the WP CMS. Each theme is made of up files which are called "template files". Themes include image files (*.jpg, *.gif), custom-made template files, custom pages, style sheets (*.css) and any needed code files (*.php). The "Wordpress Theme Directory" is the official site for WP Themes.

Initially, Wordpress supplies two themes for every new installation. Using the WP admin panel you can switch between the two templates. Some popular free Wordpress Templates are Ahimsa, Blue Diffusion, and Black Brown. There are also many Premium WP themes avalible for purchase. The average cost of a premium WP template is around $60 so they are very affordable. A major advantage of premium themes is that they look better and have more features than the free templates. An example of features found in most premium themes are; custom widgets, multiple color schemes, template options panel, and custom navigation.

Here are some tips on how to add new themes to your WP installation:

• Download the new theme and extract all the files. Always follow the instructions provided by the template author.
• You'll then access the host web server using an FTP client. Generate a Directory to contain the Theme as wp-content/themes/joy. Here Theme name is joy.
• As a third step, on your host server, upload the Theme files to the new directory.
• The last step is to log in to the Administration Panel and activate the new theme.

"Liteblog" is a popular free Wordpress Theme. It has a modern feel and works on IE7, IE8, Safari, Chrome, Opera etc. It's also an easily customizable theme. "Unread" is another free template that is widget ready and advertisement ready with a rotationg Freatured Image section on the home page.

Centizero, Sintagma, Blue Company, and SOFA One Page Folio are some examples of popular premium themes. eQuator is a good premium theme for anyone who desires to start a personal blog. My WordPress is a premium theme with features like page-navigation ready, ad optimization ready, and is very SEO friendly.

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Enterprise Content Management Service to Ease the Process of Information Compilation

Enterprise content management (ECM) system includes those special strategies, methods and tools used for storing, compiling and preserving an organization's important documents and other content. These strategies are used throughout the life-cycle of the content. This system includes various types of document management processes for covering the management of information within the entire scope of an enterprise. Information may be in any form either paper document, a database print stream, an electronic file, or an email. Enterprises have to handle an amount of unstructured data, frequently stored in repositories, in an efficient manner.

Usually, the internal structure of files and other documents is not as standard so that employees have to face some problems. It is also a time taking process to put all documents in an order as per the information retrieval and reusability. In many cases it is found that more than 85 percent of business data are stored unstructured so there is much possibility of the misplaced information. The introduction of enterprise content management services has given a good help to such organizations for improving their business efficiency.

Content management service providers are equipped with the modern and advanced technologies that are needed for the improvement of business process. For example, electronic document management service can adequately compile and put all document in order online. It has further increased the requirement of managing information of unstructured nature. Nowadays, the volume of information in almost every organization has been rapidly increasing so over a period of time it might become unmanageable. So the services of enterprise content management can handle business information efficiently in a highly competitive environment.

The experts working for content management are able to improve the ways of storing, analyzing, retrieving and further reusing the unstructured information. Their efforts aim to develop a meaningful and secured internal structure which can easily accommodate unstructured data for the whole life-cycle of content. In other words, they can convert unstructured data into semi-structured data with the help of advanced methodologies and modern strategies. Enterprise content management systems also offer several features including indexing for search, a content cleansing to minimize risk, security and metadata. You can easily hire such services from the official websites of ECM at a very reasonable cost.

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Finding The Right CMS For Your Website

Choosing the right vendor to execute the integration of right CMS solutions into your website could be a mind boggling job. However, if you know which CMS solution will work best for your business, finding the right developer may not be as daunting task as you think.

So, before you make any informed decision about what type of CMS solution will be right for your business, make sure what is the objective, purpose, and working pattern of your business so that you can accomplish what you are looking forward to.

Website content management system is the most sought after open source solution for small and medium scale businesses. The reason for this could be that it is simple and easy to use and painless to integrate. And this is why increasing number of business owners are looking for this cost effective yet great CMS solutions to cut down their cost of maintenance by doing things on their own.

How you can keep yourself updated with CMS solutions?

It is quite obvious to say that a website that has used CMS solutions in its development is most up-to-date than others without having CMS. Nevertheless, availability of hundreds of options in CMS like WordPress, Drupal, etc., to power a website makes the task to take an informed decision even more difficult.

The right CMS solution offers a flexible mode to create, edit, organize, archive and search content on a website. We know that creating the right CMS requires significant experience and needs to know at least one programming language, say PHP, and of course, a good amount of time. Therefore, inexperienced people make use of ready made product that not necessarily prove good for their website.

Take a look at the types of CMSs available for you!

General Website CMS

Self-hosted Solutions
Hosted Solutions
Integrated Solutions
Flat File CMSs

The Blogging CMS - WordPress that has two versions -

Hosted version at wordpress.com
Full code version at wordpress.org

The eCommerce CMS - Used as the basis for an ecommerce website

Popularly known as Shopping Cart software, which is a complete system for selling products online.

The Forum CMS

These include phpBB, Phorum, Vanilla and Simple Machines, and the commercial one is vBulletin.

Others, such as Wikis, Image Galleries, Gaming and Learning Management systems-

The only popular site using Wiki is Wikipedia, the online encyclopedia, which is built on MediaWiki.

The Content Management System is supported by a broad range of developers who make it suitable for all business types by integrating the websites with the right solution. Its installation is easy and the features that have made it so popular among small and medium scale businesses are its ability to extend and availability of several templates. This gets you a huge number of plug-ins that transforms your website the way you want it to be. So selecting the right one for you is very very important. Here are the few suggestions for you that would make your task pretty easier;

If you want a blog, go for WordPress without wasting a sec on thinking. If you have a general website, go for its counter partners, Drupal or MODx. If you want to increase your control on your site, Look at Unify or Perch, or the easier one - CushyCMS. For shopping Carts, go with hosted solutions like Foxycart or Shopify. Like these, the list goes on. All the Best!

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Comparing WordPress to Joomla

There are many differences and similarities between WordPress and Joomla. One major difference is that WordPress is a blog style content management system while Joomla is a portal or community type CMS. A major similarity is that both WordPress and Joomla are open source (free to use) CMS. To work with both WordPress and Joomla you to need have basic knowledge of PHP.

With the release of WordPress 3.0, more users prefer WordPress than Joomla due to features like custom menu, multi-site features etc. The elementary and flexible menu process is easy to generate, edit, re-arrange menus using categories, pages etc. Also, with just one installation of WordPress a user has the ability to manage multiple websites.

Both Joomla and WordPress have an immense user base with a lively community. In the net tool section, most hosting providers have WordPress and Joomla as an option. Both WP and Joomla can be setup in a fast manner and rank quickly in the search engines.

The precursor to WordPress is b2 or cafelog. Joomla is feature rich and complicated but it lacks in interface design decisions. A couple disadvantages of WordPress are:

• Knowledge of WP scripting is necessary for adding or removing post dates and need to be changed in design mode.
• Customizing the look and feel of the site requires knowledge of CSS, the style sheet language.

In short, both Joomla and WordPress have their advantages and disadvantages. Compared with Joomla, WordPress is more elementary, faster and user-friendly. This is a major reason why more people are choosing WordPress over Joomla for their Content Managements Systems.

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Making Money Through Blogging - Keyword Research

There are literally thousands of ways to make money on the internet. Countless small online businesses are run out of garages and basements all across America. However, these require a great deal of investment and resources. Such businesses require a high monetary investment and may not be successful. There is an easier way to start making money today, and it requires almost no investment of funds. Blogging for profit is fun and easy if you know how to get started. The revenue may not be huge, but in time you could end up with a small and steady income. This article will teach you how to select the right subject to blog about. Choosing the correct topics or keywords will make or break your monetized blog.

Step one to setting up a blog for money, or a "monetized blog" is finding the right subject matter. Some topics that are near and dear to your heart might be perfect blog material. However, more often than not, most topics are far too competitive to ever make you real money. Furthermore, some topics are just too obscure and would not generate sufficient internet traffic. The key is finding a subject for which thousands of people search the internet, but has not been exploited by millions of other bloggers. If you can get hundreds of visitors to your website every day, the potential for making money is huge.

To find the right blog topic, one will need to do some research. There are several services that provide "keyword research tools" but I find the best to be the Google Keyword Tool. A simple internet search will lead you right to it. The tool allows bloggers to scan through search terms and analyze how competitive they are compared to the amount of traffic they generate. Your goal will be to find a keyword that generates over 1,000 searches a month with relatively low competition. In essence, you need to find a subject for which you can quickly rank on the first page of search engines. For example, if you enjoy blogging about the sport of baseball, the keyword "baseball" will be far too competitive to ever generate the type of traffic that you need to make money. However, the search term "autographed baseball gloves" might generate a few thousand searches a month, but will be much less competitive.

Once you have selected a keyword that has low competition and high traffic, go ahead and start blogging. The more content that your website contains, the better chance people will be able to find your website through search engines. Remember, generating traffic is key to making money online. Once you have solid traffic flowing into your site you can consider how you will start turning clicks into money!

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Why You Should Get Your Free Blog

One of the unfortunate developments in the blog sphere is that blog sites appear to be "free". This has created an impression of low worth for blogs in general to the point that even the word "blog" is not really fashionable. In fact when we use fancy terms like "web presence" or "Internet strategy" the word "blog" is not at the top of the discussion points. Those of us who have been in the industry a while know this is totally wrong and that your blog should really form the center point of your web presence or Internet strategy.

For those advance-thinking companies, their blog is now seen as the replacement for the passive website. We all know that having a "web presence" means absolutely nothing if is the best kept secret on the planet. We have all been through the phase of feeling good when our website was launched and we sat back waiting for the clients to run us down. In many cases the silence was deafening after paying small fortunes for that beautiful website. The fact is, it is not how good it looks that is important; it is how much traffic it generates.

This is where your blog plays an important role:

Higher Google Rankings

One of the most recognized ways of creating traffic is to maintain a higher ranking on Google. Around 85% of all purchases on the Internet start with a Google search so it is important to participate in that traffic. To get the higher ranking, Google expects your site to have relevant content. Blogs fill this role admirably. Not only are they full of information, they should contain links to and from other sites. As blogs typically contain more text than websites, the productive use of search keywords is much easier.

Instant Visitor Feedback

Blogs should be designed to solicit feedback from its visitors in the form of "comments". It can create a dialog not only between the visitors and the blog owner but even between visitors themselves. This allows you to get information that you might never have received. All of this interaction also happens to increase your Google rankings. It is also a place where you can capture information from your visitors such as names an email addresses so you can keep in contact. This is often done by offering something in exchange for the information such as a free report.

So let's return to the subject of the "Free Blog". It is true that the blog can be acquired for nothing. There will be a hosting fee, which is typically less than $10/year. But then the work starts. Setting up the blog to make it look professional, making sure it will achieve high rankings on Google and keeping it active with several well-written, relevant articles each month all costs time and money. This is why we recommend companies and small businesses outsource this work to an expert. It could be a lot cheaper than your webmaster and will achieve much better results. For a few hundred dollars per month you could have a web presence that far outperforms any website you might have and could even replace it.

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The Argument Against Frequent Blog Posting

Discussions are ongoing concerning the pros and cons of frequent versus infrequent blog posting. Top bloggers do a little too convincingly put this discussion to rest since it seems they have experienced success using both approaches. The reasoning behind publishing content frequently on your site is to give readers more to view and to also ping the search engines more often. There is little argument that this line of thinking is valid however building blog traffic and popularity with a less frequent posting has also been proven to be effective.

Let us examine 3 legitimate arguments against publishing content frequently on your site as it concerns not only the reader but the blogger as well!

You Can Overwhelm Readers

Since most people follow their favorite blogging sites with the use of RSS feeds, by frequently publishing content you can 'overload' their feeds. Considering that many may not check their feed but perhaps weekly and that they have subscribed to other sites as well, you can easily present them with a formidable back log! Think what most people, yourself included, tend to do when they look at a full email in-box? That is right, they delete everything in sight and after a while they even unsubscribed when it is allowed.

You Can 'Wear Down' Your Quality

Many of the top bloggers only post when they have something worthwhile to post for their readers which is another way of saying creating great content frequently is difficult. A frequent posting schedule will tend to 'drain' you of ideas or motivation or both and this is only naturally. Now many will update their sites with information of little or no quality due to this 'posting fatigue' and after a while readers will decide to quit returning. On the other hand by updating less frequently with only quality content, you allow readers more 'breathing' space while also making their visits more worth their while as well. This does not seem like a bad way for building blog traffic and it is easier on both the blogger and subscriber!

You Can Set Up a Unrealistic Precedent

Everybody has heard the tale of the race between the tortoise and the rabbit! The rabbit starts out like a house on fire while the tortoise slowly makes his/her way to the finish line. Well as everybody is aware the rabbit ends up burning itself out and is overtaken by the tortoise at the finish line. Much can be said for trying to post like a 'maniac' on an ultra-frequent basis. This strategy is effective and somewhat necessary when you first launch your site for building blog traffic, but how long can you expect to maintain this pace?

There is little doubt that your blog posting is the most important component of the site being this is what visitors come to see. Debates continue as to whether publishing content frequently or infrequently is the best strategy for building blog traffic and loyalty. Looking to many of the top bloggers in their respective fields shows that many have experienced much success with an infrequent posting schedule. In fact the discussion above reviews 3 legitimate arguments that favor infrequent updates but it appears the choice will be up to the individual since both strategies tend to be effective.

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Make Money Online: The Ghost Writer's Story

For me, life and occupation is a famous show on TV. Let's admit it, finding a job nowadays is like getting the lucky ticket; we don't always have the lucky lottery ticket that makes us instant millionaires and if I were a cast on "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory" I might not get the golden ticket either. In reality, was I sad about it and have to procure a fake ticket to get by? No, I explored other options, used the things that are available right here right now and invested on things that will help me improve.

What am I talking about? I'm not muttering nonsense - I'm talking about one ghost writer's story and how he was able to make money online. Now, let me tell you his amazing story.

There was a guy who just graduated from a 5-year course, let us call him by the name "Lester", after a month of searching for employment unfortunately there was no vacancy. It was as if a young adult was deprived of his dream of becoming successful in life. After two months, still no return calls and so his adventure to sending his resume to a number of companies starts all over again. It was a drastic time for Lester and he did not want to ask financial help from his parents since he was already of age.

"Whatever am I going to do?" asked Lester. He is 21 years old; he still lives in his parents' house and still waits for his next monthly allowance to arrive. He scanned his room like an owl with a wide degree of view and saw the computer of which he played games for months and months now. "Wait a minute," Lester said excitedly, "I have a computer, I have internet, and I was a former Editor-in-Chief in our college school paper. I should make something of these and make money online!" And so he did, he got his stock of self-written articles and searched the internet for several article directories and submitted all that he could possibly submit and waited for the next days to come.

After a day, he viewed the stats on his articles and received nice comments even though he was only a ghost writer and nobody knew him. On the second day, around fifty people viewed his articles without even promoting it on other websites. On the third day, he received a comment asking if he was interested to become a full time writer for this certain online company. Upon reading this, Lester became ecstatic and without hesitation answered "Yes" to the offer.

After receiving the offer, he was no longer the "unknown" at the resource box below his every article. He is already the "Lester" that has a stable job that allows him to make money online and support himself and help his parents pay the bills and get to enjoy the results of his hard work. It just might be his lucky lottery ticket or his golden ticket after all; I guess it just needed the right time to show up and change Lester's life forever!

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5 WordPress SEO Tips

WordPress is a low-cost, highly effective publishing tool to use for internet marketing. In a matter of minutes, you can have a fully functioning website without knowing HTML. To get the most out of WordPress, it's best to spend some time optimizing your content for the search engines. Here are a few ways to improve the SEO for your WordPress blog.

1. Permalinks

WordPress will automatically create permalinks (URLs) for your posts that contain numbers and question marks. Search engines have a hard time categorizing these types of URLs. As a result, this will prolong the indexing of your website. If your site's not indexed, your information is basically invisible to the search engines. Therefore, it's best to create a custom URL structure for your pages through your Administration panel. For example, a structure of /%postname%/ will use the post title in the permalink. This is great for search engine optimization especially when you include keywords in your titles.

2. Page Titles

The page title in WordPress will appear at the top of your browser window. Pages in WordPress house your static content. FAQ, contact, and about information are commonly published as pages. Including these types of pages on you website are good for SEO because they add to your credibility as a legit online publisher. Even so, you can further optimize these pages when naming them. Instead of your contact page simply having the page title of "contact", you might include a keyword phrase reflecting your expertise. A good example would be "contact SEO writer".

3. Post Titles

Post titles should include your keywords whenever possible. However this is not a reason to stuff titles with keywords that do not read well. Remember post titles are listed in the search results. So you not only want them to attract the search engines, but the attention of web searchers as well. Also use the slug feature of WordPress to optimize your keywords in the URLs and to eliminate unnecessary words such as "and", "the", and "to".

4. Tags

Although not absolutely necessary, tags are an added benefit for SEO. Tags help search engines and readers to navigate through your site easier. They allow you to use detailed phrases to identify content without creating hundreds of categories. So if you write a post about baking sourdough bread to be listed under your cooking category, you can also add the tags baking and sourdough. Now readers can quickly scan your tag cloud for the information they want without needing to scroll through posts. Plus if you use a tag cloud plugin on your site, then all your tags will be visually displayed and easily accessible in the sidebar of your front page.

5. Google Sitemaps

Adding a sitemap to your website also improves SEO. A sitemap is exactly what it sounds like a map on a single page that displays the structure of your content. Google Sitemaps is a free tool that will create a sitemap for you. Another SEO benefit of sitemaps is your ability to tell Google which pages are the most important.

SEO for WordPress is simple when you know how to do it correctly. These five tips provide a good starting place and will better your chances of higher search engine rankings.

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Work at Home Business: Curtains Unveiled

Enjoying the Pleasure of Work at Home Business

People always perceived that work at home business is just for people who were not able to find a job outside the real world. Well that is really a common misconception! Actually, working at home is a great option for you to make money online while being able to spend quality time with your family or being able to pursue other dreams like making your hobby as a source of income.

Work at home business has a very easy concept; know what things you're actually good at or the things you are very willing to learn and know the steps that you will need to do, sounds very easy right? If you're still not convinced then let me explain work at home business bits by bits.

The Nitty-Gritty on Work at Home Business

Just imagine this; it is a Monday morning, you woke up from a beautiful dream and you still feel the warm sunshine on your face from the healthy rays of the sun that passed your window. With a smile on your lips, you stood up and watched yourself in front of the mirror. You saw a yellow, square sticky note on the mirror that says, "Don't miss the bus for work!" You took the note, crumpled it and threw it inside the trash bin. Why? Because you don't have to miss the bus or anything for that matter! In fact, you don't need to leave your home!

Such a great way to wake up on a Monday morning, am I right? *wink* No crammed reports, no traffic, no hindrances such as snow piling on your door, no time slots! Very inviting as I might say and indeed it is, that is why I got into work at home business in the first place!

Let's continue the story. After arising from bed, you went to the kitchen and prepared yourself a nice and warm cup of hot cocoa (yum!) while eating your toasted bread; you opened your laptop to check your e-mail and said, "Oh! I got a new task today!" Now that's a great mind setting technique so that you'll get your head in the game - after reviewing your tasks you took a nice, long shower and started brainstorming on all the things that you'll do with today's project. Yes, I believe that all the good ideas come when you're in the shower.

See, work at home business is such a great way to have time for yourself and your family while earning! After your very relaxing shower, you jotted down the ideas you had on your handy-dandy notebook so you won't forget every nice idea you got! You got dressed (or even work in your pajamas like I sometimes do), sat in front of the computer and you're ready to go to work at your own "office" which is your living room or any favorite room that you prefer!

At the middle of the day when you've got a few errands to do, you could simply do your chores and get back to your work at home business as soon as you're finished with other things. It's as simple as that! You can do other things as long as you finish your tasks for the day at your own convenient time! Just make sure to pass on certain due dates though *wink*. After finishing your task, you'll have time to play with your kids, cook dinner, go to the mall and chat with friends, or any activity you'd like to do on your free time! When night comes, you can send in your daily report to your employer, prepare yourself early for bed and sleep with a smile on your face knowing that tomorrow will be as fun as today.

Hope you are convinced now that work at home business is surely a pleasurable experience! Especially when you enjoy the things you do!

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Using the Proper Etiquette When Dining With Social Media

If there is anyone out there who is trying to understand the social media world, don't fret you're in luck! It has come to my attention that in order to utilize such social media sites most efficiently, there is a proper etiquette in engaging in it.

An artist who wishes to market their music may advertise free music samples, offer concert dates, or constantly send messages to their followers to ensure that they are connected to their targeted audience. However, this same game plan may not be the proper way to go about marketing when you are, for example, a company selling electronic products. While new artists must make "loud noise" to get noticed, companies who are already established don't need to be so "loud" without annoying consumers. It is well established that nobody likes telemarketers and nobody enjoys a door-to-door salesman, so why would anyone want an inter-marketer (Get it, inter like tele?)? Facebook and MySpace have become such a social phenomenon because these sites give people a sanctuary where they can relax and be themselves. You cannot take a social Internet hotspot and turn it into a business opportunity without expecting many disgruntled participants.

For example, I have a friend who works for Apple and all she ever does is talk about Apple. She is does not work in the Sales or even the Marketing department but she advocates for the brand as if it were running for President. To be honest, it's quite annoying. I don't like feeling like someone is trying to sell me on something, especially when I am not in buying mode! It comes back to the idea that when you know you're being marketed to it makes you less inclined to partake in it. I am certain that I am more influenced by nonbiased parties (family members who are not affiliated with Apple but have bought their products) because Uncle Wally has no incentive and because.. I trust him. CEOs, this is the objective: find a person, with no bias, whom your targeted audience already trusts and find out what he or she is saying. And lucky for them, there are services that provide that. Then, once you've found your "influencers," the next question is: what do you want them to say? Then, the fun really begins.

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Time Management Tips When Blogging

Most avid bloggers can use any sort of time management tips they can find since blog posting alone can take hours! Because content creation is so crucial to your success it is important to make the best use of time when developing and posting your writing ideas.

Here are 3 simple tips you can use to better coordinate your efforts and increase your blog posting efficiency! while minimizing how long it takes you to do so!

Stockpile Ideas

Instead of sitting in front of your computer trying to create new writing ideas for your posting, capture ideas as they come to you throughout the course of your day. In this way you will not be trying to 'force' yourself to be creative thereby making the content creation process longer and more frustrating! You will be amazed at how many ideas come to you if you pay attention and are prepared to take note of them when you are engaged in other activities! Now you can simply pull from any ideas you have previously 'stockpiled' enabling you to make the best use of time when you sit down at your keyboard and prepare to write.

Plan Your Post

Avoid when you can, being impulsive as to when you decide to either compose your updates or post them to your site. These are two completely different processes, one being creative and the other involves editing and formatting, but both can be time consuming. By separating these tasks you will find yourself 'fresher' and less stressed or frustrated which will result in you being more efficient and productive. By doing both, but separately, on a planned schedule you will know better what to expect when you sit down to complete these tasks allowing you to better manage them!

Stage Your Post

Instead of sitting down to post your updates to your blog in one session, allow yourself the opportunity to simply 'save' your update without actually publishing it live. Do this before you intend to publish it so that when you do, you can review it one last time, and without haste, to make any corrections or add any links.

What you are doing here is breaking down the entire process, starting with developing new writing ideas, into smaller and more manageable tasks allowing you to make better use of time. Trying to pull the entire process together in one sitting opens the door for too many last minute and unexpected snafus. This will only increase the time invested and your frustration as well!

Any time management tips that focus on the content creation process will offer the biggest benefits to any blogger in terms of them making the best use of time. Quite simply blog posting is critical to the success of the site. Finding and developing new writing ideas is therefore ongoing and can take hours but it must be done. The 3 tips offered above focus on this very important aspect of blogging and serve to help you learn to simply better coordinate your efforts. In doing so you can save yourself hours along with the frustration and stress that sometimes accompany maintaining your blog posting schedule!

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The Secret About Consumers: They Want to Be Influenced

Being able to influence consumer behavior is a very powerful asset one can bring to their business. But what does it mean to influence consumer behavior? Does it simply mean to get Billy to buy Snickers over Twix, or does it mean to get Billy to buy the Snickers and then encourage him to run and tell his friends how amazing his experience was? Or more importantly, how can you get him to purchase Snickers to begin with?

Unless the consumer is already a loyal customer, there must some sort of incentive to trigger him or her. These types of incentives often consist of coupons, buy one get one free sales, or some way in which the consumer is saving a nickel. But does this type of influence last?

The enormous growth of technology has allowed businesses to have access to outlets that facilitate social influence. Further, it has allowed consumers to avail themselves to be influenced, as well as influence.Social influence is dominating the marketing world because of the desire of people, alone, who want to be influenced, who want to gain knowledge and people who WANT to feel connected to brands and businesses. This is the best kind of influence: the type that is already created by the consumers themselves. The trick now is to keep them influenced, not only for an instance or two, but for as long as your company remains intact.

In order to create long last influence, you must make long last impressions. And knowing who you are up against helps you in refining the game plan.

As Jim Weldon mentioned, "Without key knowledge of who your competitors are, you are automatically reduced to "guess-marketing" If Twix is already giving away coupons, then you know you have to surpass that competitor by using a stronger tactic to influence your audience. Not only stronger, but one that can endure the rocky roads of the business world over a wide span of time.

You have to create a long lasting influence and what better time to do so than when you already have consumers availing themselves to you. The time is of the essence, and as fast as technology is moving, I wouldn't wait another minute.

READ MORE - The Secret About Consumers: They Want to Be Influenced

Getting Your Message Across Quickly and Effectively

Finding who it is that influences your brand may be a hard task, but defining one's brand may be the most difficult part of all. You could finally get everyone's attention, but if you don't grasp it right away, you have lost your opportunity. And we all know, second chances are hard to come by. That is why it essential that businesses adequately define themselves and then take that definition and spread it in the universe... the social media universe. And this is especially true when using social websites to market your brand.

The reason behind it is that when people go into a store, they are already in "buy" mode; their mind is in the right place and your main goal at that point is to hook them on a specific product. Unfortunately it is not that simple in the social media world. The online community is an abstract place, and the players in it are more abstract that the playing field. When trying to target a specific audience on Facebook, you are starting from ground up. For starters, most people who are on Facebook are not there to do online shopping; they are there to socialize with friends or satisfy some social need they have. The odds are already working against you. This is why having a clear idea of how you want others to perceive your brand name is so important. You need to able to relay the message to them quickly and effectively. If you want people to believe in your product they must feel that YOU believe in it, and you must convince them of that. Finding influencers is one thing, but it becomes purposeless if you cannot utilize them to the best capacity possible. And the best capacity is by feeding the influencers with your goal, your message and making sure what you fed them is what you were in fact cooking in the kitchen.

Now that you everyone looking at you, what is that you want them to see?

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Advertising With Banners - Add to Your Online Promotion Process

One of the most powerful and useful tools for promotion, banners, are extensively used on the Internet by a lot of people. These tiny creative pieces of animated graphical elements and text amazingly look appealing to the human eyes when seen on the Web. These probably could be said are the components that add to the look of various sites else they would be so dull and boring! Just because they are quite interesting is the reason that people like to watch them and this is what is needed for your website since every business owner desires seeing good level traffic at his particular site. Especially, in terms of promotional activities carried out on the Web, this has fetched commendable results for many traders and users.

This form of advertising is a well-liked method utilized by many and is used to generate income for their organizations. These ads appear on diverse locations on websites and spaces where the visibility is maximum which is so that highest number of users is able to see them. There is as well a huge variety in the types where many could be static whilst some are animated. Different sizes, presentation, layout, all designs differ on various planes. Animated and dynamic text and elements make the sites interactive which is a major factor that diverts traffic to sites.

It has been observed that more than any other advertising means used on the Net this is the one that gets the fastest results in terms of generating traffic. However all this depends upon how well designed pattern is endorsed by a firm. A mismatch of graphics, hues, or other components could crush the chances of getting good outcome of the marketing campaign. Even if you need paying for posting your banner ads, it would be better since you would get quality traffic. On top of that, if you decide paying then you could choose a right place where you want to see the ad on the page. You could negotiate the bandwidth so that a regular and good volume of visitors see your advertisement. This campaign has been found quite rewarding by many.

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Online Banner Ads - 5 Tips to Make Your Banner Ads More Effective for Your Small Business

As more and more software companies make well designed banner ads easily affordable or within the reach of the marketing budgets of many small business owners, it's a good idea to keep these general rules in mind when designing your banner ad in order to gain effective results for your banner ad campaign.

1) Choose colors for your ad that get attention and will contrast to the background color of your website or landing page. Keep the design simple. Try to use relevant pictures associated with your small business. Many small business owners often make the mistake of emphasizing their logo instead of using pictures that immediately associate their banner ad with their business. For example, if you are a coffee shop owner, include a picture of your fantastic coffee drink with your offer. If you are a realtor, include a picture of a house and a small picture of yourself, something that will immediately associate your ad with the type of business you are in. As a general rule, only large well known companies who have spent enormous amounts of money in branding ad campaigns can afford to include solely their logos into their banner ads.

2) Stick to brief, concise content when designing your ads. Think snack sized content and make sure you provide a strong call- to-action. Try to emphasize one benefit and one call-to-action per banner ad. If you include too many call- to-actions then you stand a greater chance of confusing your prospective lead and your click-thru rate will suffer. Remember, the effectiveness of your click-thru rate will rely on the message that you are conveying. Attractive graphic design is secondary to professional copywriting. While the graphic design may attract their attention, it's the strong message that is communicated that will improve your banner ad's effectiveness.

3) Since the area of a banner ad is small make sure that you use legible text. Verdana and Arial are very popular fonts for the web because they are easy to read. Stay away from script fonts unless you are designing a larger banner ad. Keep in mind you want your prospective lead to read your message and ideally act on it. Don't make this process difficult by using hard to read fonts.

4) Provide interactivity to improve customer interaction and click-thru rate. Make sure the content you include asks your prospective lead to fill out a survey, answer a question, or participate in a poll. Studies have shown that some type of interaction in your banner ads will improve click-thru rate. However, keep the interaction relevant to its purpose.

5) Make sure that you do not include animation for animation's sake. The novelty of dancing monkeys, twirling circles, shooting stars, etc. without any tie-in to your ad has disappeared. While they were barely tolerable in the wild, early days of the internet, with so many well designed banner ads on the web competing for an internet user's attention, they are not now. This gratuitous type of design in your banner ad will only diminish its click-thru rate and will ruin the overall appeal or message you are trying to make.

READ MORE - Online Banner Ads - 5 Tips to Make Your Banner Ads More Effective for Your Small Business

How to Motivate Your Affiliates

Maintaining affiliate programs with a software is quiet easy but when it comes to finding the right affiliates and selling your products you might feel a little uncomfortable. If your business relies solely upon the performance of your affiliates then you must be able to provide them with the right resources and tools so that they are able to complete the job successfully.

If you have already setup and affiliate program to promote your services, then you must know that a lot of people who join your program have never heard about it. You can remain in touch with the affiliates that are productive by maintaining a regular contact with them.

Keep them informed about their username and passwords; send them emails to check their stats or new ways of promoting the products regularly. Always remind them about any changes in the policy or services that you offer.

You must always make sure that you stay in touch with your quality sellers. Pay attention to any of their queries and provide them with resources or information for marketing you products. This will help them stay motivated and work more harder.

The fact behind most affiliates not performing well is that they do not get a good guidance to go in the right direction. You should try to offer them with a marketing course with no charge and you could even sell it to the non-affiliates.

You must regularly provide new pieces of strategic techniques to your affiliates to encourage them. Just throwing them with a simple text link and a banner will not create any kind of enthusiasm at all.

You should offer them with good banners, ads, reviews and something more creative which they could use for further promotion. You must always make sure that your affiliates are aware about the materials that you provide them with.

You should try to have virtual meeting with the affiliates. Build chat rooms so that your affiliates could have weekly virtual meetings. You must answer whatever the questions affiliates ask and have good speakers who could handle the task successfully.

Giving credits to the deserving affiliates is also an important factor. You must reward the best performers each month with a small bonus. You can also setup a payment structure for those with higher volumes of sales.

You should ensure that your affiliates are able to generate more sales and make money from your program. As if they are earning a good income - then you are making a better income.

READ MORE - How to Motivate Your Affiliates

Diversity in Banners Used in Advertising

There could be no best means of advertising than the Internet and this is the reason that a majority of advertisers have been promoting their products via this medium. The dynamic targeting skill and vastness containing in the Web domain is what compels all advertisers to make use of it and market their services. The one kind of promotion here is by making use of banners. It is easy on pocket and results could be fetched in real time. So you get more by giving less.

It is across the Internet and on various sites that ad campaigns are placed for marketing of a certain product. The method is quite interactive in nature which attracts people's attention and this subsequently proves beneficial because the ultimate goal of increasing the traffic volume is achieved. Also, maximum level exposure is received by the product that is being promoted via such campaigns. There are numerous formats from which you could pick the one that suits the best.

It is as per the products and services that a format should be chosen. Many banner makers that are available could make the task easy for you. The dimension of such advertisements is calculated in pixels. The one type is a skyscraper ad with these formats like Wide Skyscraper in (160x600 pixels) or (120x600 pixels). Apart from this are, Super Skyscraper or Ad that is meant to consume half portion on a page. Then there are some with buttons, again measured in pixels with a variety like (120x90) and (120x60). Many other types in this category are too present such as Micro buttons or square buttons. These are used in a majority of promotions over the Web.

How about a rectangular shaped ad? Many promotions do make use of this format too where there are Medium rectangle, Square Pop up and Vertical, Large and Plane rectangle formats as well used by many. There is no doubt these look good and unique in their individual ways. However some people stick with the traditional types using advertisement that covers the entire page. Being innovative-rich, ads like these are capable in leaving a positive impression upon the populace and no wonder they have gained such popularity in the present time.

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Fantastic Free Banner Creator

Are you looking for an easier way of online advertisement for your products and company? Our banner creator is exactly that you need.

Does this sound familiar: You have just set up your business and are eagerly looking for new customers. You can convey your message by driving consumers to your website. But how do you attract new visitors to your website? Do people even know that your website exists? When looking for new business, professional SEO (though a good option), may not be ideal to pick since it is time consuming and exorbitant.

If web advertising sounds like a solution to you, then creating a banner and attracting through it millions of internet users daily may be a great option. They are always able to gain your attention at the time you are browsing through your favourite sites but the question is from where should you take a start? How is it possible for someone like you, who has limited knowledge and experience in the web industry, to be able to create a banner that looks good and is catchy?

Hiring an experienced flash developer as an option is not a good idea since the hourly rate is so high that it will destroy all your budget and there are so many other ways of advertisements that you would want to try out too. In addition to this, learning industry jargon can also be very difficult - such as, flash, action script and html. You do not have enough time to comprehend their meanings, your only concern is getting your business up and running!

Type the words, 'banner creator', into your search engine and imagine finding a site that you would never want to lose. This site provides an easy way of creating your banner - all you need to do is to upload your image and enter your text.

What if I tell you that this site has an existence and even a name - does this arouse your curiosity?

I think I should not be wasting anymore of your precious time - LiquidBanners is where you can go and find a number of free banners, ready to download. There is absolutely nothing more affordable than this. Not only do you get a free good looking and attractive banner for your business but you even learn how to follow steps for creating great banners. And to give you peace of mind, let me tell you that these banners have been created by industry professionals.

If you think our banner creator process and our banners were not up to the mark, you can send us your feedback - we will use it to improve our services.

Still waiting?...What for? Did I still miss out on telling you something? Start using our flash banner creator and attract millions of consumers today!

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Email Automation - 3 Ways To Automate Email Marketing Using Autoresponders

Do you spend a lot of time replying to e-mails?

Do you follow-up on your customers?

Are you tracking your success?

If you are solo entrepreneur running an online business you need to do a lot of activities yourself because you can't afford to hire staff or don't want to. One of these activities is e-mail marketing. If you're not building a list and marketing your products to this list you're leaving a lot of money on the table. E-mail automation can be accomplished using autoresponders. They allow you to automate list building, customer follow-up and track how many people open your e-mails and/or click on your links.

3 Ways Autoresponders Help With Email Automation

1. List building

Most professional autoresponder services provide the HTML code to place on your website or squeeze page. A squeeze page consists of a sign-up form, a free offer and several bullet points outlining the benefits of signing up to receive the offer. Typically there will be no other links on the squeeze page so the reader does not get distracted by clicking elsewhere on the page. You want them to focus on one thing and that is to fill in and submit the form so you can capture their contact information and store it in the autoresponder database. Your number of subscribers will increase in proportion to the amount of traffic you drive to your squeeze page. If you do this frequently and consistently you'll build a large list over time.

2. Follow-up marketing

More sales are generated in the follow-up process than those prospects who only get exposed to your product once. Prospects easily get distracted and soon forget about your free offer. To cut through all their distractions you need to send them a series of e-mail reminders using autoresponders. If they are reminded to check out your product every couple of days for several weeks you have a better chance of making a sale than if they only saw it one time. Make sure you don't just pitch your product in every e-mail but include great content. The more informed they are about your product the better your chances of making a sale.

3. Monitoring your success

If you don't know how many people are reading your newsletters or clicking on the links in your content you won't know if you're making progress. For example if you have a list of 5000 subscribers and only 1% read your newsletter it means you're only reaching 50 people. Test and track different components of your e-mail marketing system to improve your readership. When setting up your HTML e-mail templates for your newsletters make sure you enable tracking before sending them out.

Autoresponders are like having virtual employees who work 24 hours a day, 7 days a week without complaining how hard they have to work.

READ MORE - Email Automation - 3 Ways To Automate Email Marketing Using Autoresponders

Autoresponder List - What's the Best Way to Build a Relationship With Your List?

List building gurus often pride themselves with having a large autoresponder list however if only a few respond to their offers the large numbers don't mean much. It's the same with people who boast about their large number of Twitter or Facebook followers. The numbers may look good but the quality of the relationships with their followers may be lacking. Even a small list with a high response rate is better than a large list that gets little or no response.

5 ways to build a relationship with your autoresponder list

1. Treat each person as a friend

It's easy to view your autoresponder list as a numbers game. You figure the more subscribers you get the more money you will make. This can be compared to throwing mud at a wall. If you throw enough of it at the wall some of it will stick. Try to view each subscriber as a living, breathing human being instead of an object. Relate to each person as if you are sitting across the table from them. Instead of seeing them from your own viewpoint try to place yourself in their shoes. It will help you to be more objective.

2. Personalize your e-mail messages

A personalized message beginning with your own name is more powerful than using a generic name such as "Dear subscriber." Most autoresponder services allow you to create a number of fields for your opt in form. Make sure you at least include the name and e-mail address fields. Send an e-mail message to yourself first before sending it to your whole list. It will help you catch obvious errors.

3. Tell prospects what they'll be receiving

Tell your prospects ahead of time what they can expect to receive. For instance it could be a free report, an e-course or a video. Don't start sending a series of follow-up messages every few days if they did not request them. It will only irritate your prospects and cause them to unsubscribe from your autoresponder list.

Your first follow-up message should thank them for subscribing and give a summary what content to expect in subsequent e-mails. This will help them look forward to receiving your next email. At the top of each message remind your prospect why they subscribed. At the bottom provide a teaser sentence about the next message they'll be receiving.

4. Provide great content

If you come across as a salesman just trying to pitch your products in every message you'll lose your prospects. Don't make each follow-up message a sales pitch. Instead try to answer their most frequently asked questions. If you don't know what they are send them a survey for feedback. Try a variety of formats for the content to see which works best e.g. reports, audios, videos, webinars, etc.

5. Frequency of delivery

Create at least 7 follow-up e-mail messages to load into your autoresponder. Your first message should be sent immediately after they have submitted the sign-up form on your landing page. Your next 6 messages should be sent to 2 or 3 days apart from each other. Don't forget about your prospects after they've completed your autoresponder sequence. Continue to follow-up on them by sending more great content each week or every 2 weeks. Sometimes a prospect will buy a product after one year because you offered something they needed.

READ MORE - Autoresponder List - What's the Best Way to Build a Relationship With Your List?

Autoresponder Follow-Up - Top 3 Reasons to Follow-Up on Your Customers

Recently I asked a contractor to give me a free estimate for some work to be done on the house. He said he would stop by the following weekend so I canceled all my appointments so I would be home when he arrived. To my disappointment he didn't show up and wasted my time. If he had kept his appointment he may have got the job. This has already happened several times before with different contractors. The one who follows up on potential customers often gets the business. One of the main success strategies for creating and maintaining a business is to relentlessly follow-up on your customers.

Top 3 reasons to follow-up on your customers

1. Stand out from the crowd

Most people don't follow-up on potential clients because it requires a little extra effort. If you are the one that implements this strategy in your business you will stand out from the crowd.

2. Generate more sales

Only a small percentage will purchase your product the first time they see it. These are usually impulse buyers or someone who knows exactly what they want.

Some of the reasons not to buy may include:

• not interested
• distracted by other activities
• product doesn't meet their needs at this time
• intend to purchase it later
• want to think about it

Many times a potential customer is not in the correct frame of mind to purchase right away. They may need more time to research the product. Even though customers may intend to return to your sales page most forget about it and never return. This is why you need to create a follow-up system to remind them about your product. One of the best ways to automate this process is to use an autoresponder system. It will enable you to automatically build a list of potential clients and follow-up with them by sending a series of pre-scheduled messages.

3. Build lifelong relationships

Most business owners concentrate on front end sales. They could make more sales from repeat customers. To get repeat customers you need to build a relationship with them. To build this relationship you have to stay in touch with them. To maintain the relationship they need to understand the benefits. This can be accomplished by offering discounts, coupons, tips and the latest news about your products. Follow-up communication can be achieved with your autoresponder. For instance you could send a new coupon every week for 52 weeks via your follow-up autoresponder. Once it's set up you can forget about it. It's like having a virtual employee who works for you 24 hours a day 7 days a week and never complains.

READ MORE - Autoresponder Follow-Up - Top 3 Reasons to Follow-Up on Your Customers

How to Build Your Autoresponder List Writing Articles

Most marketers know "the money is in your list" however building your list takes time. One of the best strategies is to write articles then submit them all over the Web. The more articles you write the faster your list will grow.

Let's look at some of the benefits of article writing

• get recognized as an expert in the field
• work for you 24/7
• generate long-term traffic
• build links
• can be repurposed
• makes you a better writer

How to write articles to build your autoresponder list

The main purpose of your article is to provide answers to questions people have about your niche. If you provide solid information that captivates visitors they'll look forward to reading more of your articles. Try to place yourself in your customers shoes instead of thinking from your own viewpoint. This will help you have a more objective approach when writing your content.

1. Create a captivating headline

Test different headlines to see which one works best. Often starting with a question will make your visitor want to read the rest of the content.

2. Introductory paragraph

This should be an outline of the main problem your customer is facing and provide a summary what to expect throughout the rest of your article.

3. Article body

Create a list of tips then write a paragraph on each tip to complete the body of your article. Keep your paragraphs to 5 to 10 lines. Use sub headlines and bullet points so your content is easy to read.

4. Concluding paragraph

Summarize what you already said in the article body but use different words. This helps reinforce the main point(s) of your article so it will stick in the mind of your visitor.

5. Resource box

This is the only place you're allowed to promote your product or service. In order to get people to visit your landing page create an irresistible offer such as a free report that's related to the content of the article. Include a link to the landing page containing your free report. The landing page should include an opt in form (name and email address) and several bullet points outlining the benefits of your report. After your visitor has submitted the opt in form they'll be added to your autoresponder list which will automatically follow-up on them.

6. Article distribution

To drive traffic to your landing page submit your article to the top article directories on the web such as EzineArticles. Ezine publishers and website owners often pick up these articles to place in their ezines or on their websites. If your article gets published in a large ezine or in multiple newsletters your list will grow very quickly. Look for other online publications related to your niche which allow article submissions. This will increase your audience.

7. Repurpose your articles

Some people prefer to watch and listen to content rather than read. Convert your content into video and submit it to multiple video sharing websites such as YouTube. Make sure you include a link to your landing page to redirect visitors after watching your video.

READ MORE - How to Build Your Autoresponder List Writing Articles

Internet Marketing Tools - Risks of Using Free E-Mail Autoresponders

Today I want to emphasise why you mustn't rely on a free autoresponder. Yes, I know it may be too early for you to sign up for an autoresponder service, but because the risks of using a free autoresponder can be so high, I wanted to make you aware of them asap.

Let's face it. Most Internet Marketers, especially those who are just building a presence, are cheap. They don't want to spend one dime more than they must. So, it isn't surprising that when they hear "the money is in the list" they start looking for a free way to handle their list.

They go on a hunt for a free autoresponder service, instead of forking over the twenty bucks a month or so it would take to use a professional alternative. That's a big mistake. There are several good reasons to avoid a free service such as:

1) Delivery - The freebies are often used by spammers and other unsavory characters. As a result, email services are more likely to catch even legitimate mailings in a spam filter. There's no money in a list if your list doesn't get the message!

2) Competition - Most free services are funded by placing additional advertising within your message. You want to control your emails and you don't want your readers to click away to some third party site in which you have no interest.

3) Flexibility - Most free autoresponders are subject to a tremendous number of limitations. They just don't offer the flexibility you need in the long term to deliver value to your list on a regular way and on autopilot.

4) Legality- Those that use free software are often are unaware of some of the legal issues surrounding the sending of emails. Using a service incorrectly can lead to you being banned from your ISP, having your domain black-listed and having to face legal penalties.

5) Reputation - A quality autoresponder says a lot about who you are to those that receive your emails. People clue in quickly these days to spam machines and are turned off by those that use the same methods. Respect your list and gain their respect with a quality service.

6) Transfer - Those that begin with free autoresponders generally find that they need a quality service to grow their business. This means transferring their lists and messages to another service and asking that list to confirm they still wish to receive your emails.

Take a look at all the work that goes into building a list and an e-mail autoresponder series. Then ask yourself if you really want to take the chance on having to move it or start it all over again fresh. The bottom line: Don't mess around with free autoresponder providers.

Personally, I recommend only one autoresponder provider at this time. That provider is AWeber. They are highly regarded in the Internet Marketing world for their integrity and outstanding customer service. You deserve the best and so does your list.

Gary Baker is an internet marketing specialist who is passionate about teaching people how to market themselves and their business on the internet to maximise sales with minimum outlay. This former aerospace engineer has launched a new mission to empower 100 people to earn 100K before 2012 by mastering the most powerful marketing medium on the planet.

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Educate The Students With Audio Books

There are different types of medias that can help us in learning. One of these medias comes in the form of audio books. These materials are gaining popularity year after year. These are books that are recorded to heard not to be read. The benefits of learning through these materials is that you can listen to it anytime and anywhere you want.

There are a lot of advantages on learning through these materials. Generally it is cheaper to have a copy of an audio book rather than buying it's printed version. A lot of money could be saved using these materials. You do not need to buy audio books for the whole class. One to five copies of these can accommodate the whole class. While the whole class is listening to the book being played, the teacher could focus on another task. The problems of printed books are that most copies are rare and hard to find. Publishers often makes small copies because of low demands. However with audio books it is easy to find copies. With the use of Internet with audio books, you can find free and downloadable copies. The great thing about these medias is that, it is either cheap or free.

Studies shows that more and more children finds it more interesting to learn through listening to audio books rather than reading. Listening to these materials makes it more interactive. Research shows that 85% of our learning or gaining knowledge comes from listening and comprehension skills. We are compelled to listen attentively, especially to the topics that interests us. Students could learn how to pronounce certain words, and could master it perfectly with the help of an audio book.

Others may say that listening to much could hinder our reading skills. However that isn't true. Our vocabulary and pronunciation skills could be widen. By listening to the audio book and at the same time reading the written copy. Another important advantage it has over other medias, are that audio books are not confined to the classroom. You can listen to these materials while you commute to school, cooking, gardening, having your exercise or waiting for your doctor.

It is very important for students to be exposed to literatures and history. Through reading, students could see it boring. Reading through a large and heavy books may disinterest students. However with audio books the rate of students getting bored is minimal. Other sound and effects may be added for additional enjoyment. It let them be in the story it self, promoting role playing in the process. It widens there range of imagination, it forces them to think outside the box. Instead of being bored to sleep with reading, listening could make it more fun and enjoyable.

Still learning through other medias could be great for you. Listening through this kind of materials are just another way to learn. With these kind of materials you can multi-task, it is cheaper than buying a book, it is very convenient and easy to have access. Through time it may be the best way to learn anything that you want. Still learning is not limited through listening, there are still a lot of ways on how to learn.

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Audio Books for Enthusiasts

When we look back at history, books are the friends of the people who want to learn something new. For ages people consider books are there friends, opening up new opportunities and learn new knowledge. Mostly importantly expanding their understanding of the world. For a number of years books has been developed in many ways. Making it more and more interesting. However nowadays it's enthusiasts have less and less time to read. Making it hard to learn something new. With the audio books version however, it became a popular alternative for book lovers and enthusiasts alike. The number one reason that it is more sought after by readers is that it brings the ultimate convenience for readers.

One of the best thing that audio books brings it that, it is readily available to the public. You can easily gain access to it. With an Internet access, you can simply listen or download a copy of your favorite audio book. In the fast-paced of the world today, people can't find enough time to read and learn something new. Thus hindering the process of learning, especially in the field of literature. However with a MP3 player, iPod, iPhones or even portable CD or DVD players you can listen to you favorite novels or stories anywhere and anytime that you want. You can download copies of your favorite audio book on the Internet. The good thing about this is that, audio books sometimes comes free. You can listen to your favorite being read to you while you eat, cook, on the garden, running, or commuting to work. People can engage in any activities that they love, while taking advantage of the audio books.

New websites that sells audio books online are just popping up each day. This continues to expand up until now. No matter you want to learn about history, literature, negotiation skills, new language or you just want to be entertained, the choices are unlimited and you can find audio books on any topic there is. These kind of materials are not merely for entertainment, it is a way to learn something new. Another great thing about these materials is that it would be a great way for blind people to learn. They won't have to read through Brailled books. They can simply listen to it.

It is quite clear that more and more people enjoys listening to audio books. These materials brings the ultimate convenience to all book lovers. More are more people each days succumbs to the beauty of these materials. It is even gaining popularity through publishers. The fact that it is cheaper to publish, it is also very easy to reproduce. More importantly it takes a little amount of time to create a large amount of copies.

In the era that we are in now. The advancement of technology is on a fast phase. Eventually printed books would be overtaken by the audio book version. The importance of these materials are undeniable. Enthusiasts are captivated by the beauty of it. They can learn more with perfect convenience. It is more fun, exciting and interactive. It keeps you from getting bored.

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Technologies That Can Play Audio Books

The most perfect attribute of an audio books is that it comes on different kind of formats. Whether it is recorded on tape, CD, DVD or even in MP3 formats. The great thing about this is that it can be played on various types of players. From portable cassette players, CD/DVD players, iPod's or MP3's. For those who loves to listen on these kinds of books it gives them a lot of choices. It does not forces them to adapt to just one choice, they can definitely have a lot of options for listening on these kind of materials.

If you love to listen to your favorite novels or stories while you sit or lie on your back. Then listening to your audio books being played on a cassette player would be a perfect choice. However these materials recorded on cassette tapes are old and outdated. Only a few owns an audio book on cassette tape. Cassette tapes are slowly replaced by CD's and DVD's. It can store a lot of audio books on a single CD or DVD. Unlike a cassette tape it can only store from one audio book. In CD or DVD formats you could play them on a desktop, laptop, and CD/DVD players. It gives you the edge to control the settings even though your far away from the player. Except for computers of course (well if you have a remote control for your PC then that's an exception). It is more convenient than a cassette tape player.

If you love to listen to your audio books while doing chores, while your in the garden, commuting to work, waiting in line to see your dentist or even doing your exercise. Then portable CD/DVD, MP3 players or iPods would be a great fit for that. Portable CD/DVD players allows you to carry it anywhere you like. Thus it lets you listen to your favorite books anywhere and anytime you love.

Audio books in MP3 formats are more common nowadays. When the time it was made, only a desktop or laptop could play it. But now with the increasing popularity or MP3 players and iPods. It gives you a portable device that can play any these materials on that kind of format. Even high end phones could be able to play these materials in a MP3 format. It is more comfortable to use. Even though you could carry portable CD/DVD players, they are still big. You cannot simply put it in your pocket. Unlike MP3 players and iPods they are relatively small and can be put in your pocket. They are so small and very light weight. The clear advantage over these kind of materials on a MP3 format over CD/DVD format is that it is more cheaper. Another great thing is that buying MP3 formats of these materials could be done online. Transactions through Internet is very common nowadays. With just a click of a mouse you can buy your favorite audio books. There are even free audio books online.

The choices are very wide and it gives you flexibility. With all these being said, it will all come down to personal preferences. The choice is up to you. You're the only one who can decide on what kind of audio books you will buy and what device you will use to play them. Just remember that there are a lot of choices to choose from.

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Audio Books - A New Way To Learn

There are many forms of teaching or information. A new found way to learn something new is through listening to an audio book. It is a different from its printed cousin. Through audio books you can learn a lot of stuffs. It is much more exciting and fun to learn from these materials. It is more convenient than reading through the whole book. It takes a little amount of time to finish a book.

A lot of readers now a days, finds it hard to spare some time for their hobbies. In the fast-pace of today's society, people doesn't have enough time to do anything that they want. A lot of readers sees the benefits that an audio book brings. A printed book can offer you a lot of stuffs. However reading through them takes a lot of time and concentration. The most obvious disadvantage of a printed book, is that it doesn't allow you to multi-task. With audio books, it allows you to do a lot of things. You can listen to it while you take a shower, commute to work, wait in line to see your doctor or dentist, while shopping, gardening, cooking, even while you have your exercise. It allows you to focus on other stuffs, while you learn something new. It is perfect for people who have a very busy life. Long gone is the time that you can't read a book or two. It doesn't takes a lot of your time because it involves listening to a voice, not reading. It is read in a loud and clear manner so that it would be understandable.

It would be also a great learning experience for the children. Students now a days finds reading a book boring and time consuming. For them to think reading a book is a very boring situation. But with audio books it is a different matter. It allows them to interact, and has a good feel about the situation. Listening allows them to be creative and allows them to put there selves on the story. The convenience that it brings, attracts more and more avid fans to these kind of materials. Some sees these as a lazy way to learn, that it degrades the pronunciation skills of the students. That is totally wrong. With a copy of its printed version. Students can listen and read at the same time the printed copy to hone their vocabulary and pronunciation skills. With a push of a button, they can pause and listen to the word that they find it hard to pronounce. It' makes it easy to master the pronunciation of a certain word. Another great thing about this is that it cost less. Rather buying the whole class of books, just one to five audio books would be enough to cater the whole class.

Overall the importance of an audio book is very undeniable. It will soon be replacing books in the near future. Though we cannot also deny that printed books are very important. However it will just be for achieving purposes. With the way our society is going. This will be the case. You can learn a lot from audio books, with less time consumed. It will be a much more different experience than reading through the whole copy. It is much more convenient and much more interesting. Learning will be never a boring process anymore. Given much time, everybody will love audio books, and see it as a new war to learn something new.

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Using Videos In Your Website

Using videos on your website will help consumers understand what they are buying or how something works. The advantage of this is that the user can vividly see what your product or service is about and they don't have to use their own imagination. The next few paragraphs will discuss about this.

You have certainly three options. The first option is to upload your video into a site like YouTube then copy the embed code and place it on our web site or blog. You can find a button under each YouTube video that says, "Embed video," click on the button to bring up a menu that has the embed HTML code. Copy this code and paste it on the source codes of your site. There are also some sizing options below the video window with the default size at 560 x 340. There are also options like changing the skin of the video player; you can make it go with the design of your site although the skins are limited.

The advantage of using video hosts like YouTube is "it's so easy to do" as long as you have an account. Another thing is that it is for free so you don't have to fret about getting a large bandwidth bill in case your video is viewed by a lot of users. YouTube also has the broadest search engine next to Google which means your video can be found easily. This will eventually draw more people to your site. The downside of using this video host is the design limitation and the link. They do not only draw traffic to your site but also from it. Users have the option of viewing the video on YouTube.

Another alternative is to utilize an open-source flash player. You can download this from the Internet at no cost and add it to your site's code. This player can run any video you choose. You can find these downloadable players from a large number of sites. The good thing about them is you can easily change the skins to match your site design. Of course, you have to pay for the bandwidth costs yourself.

Your last option would be to employ the services of a company that produces video. They can make your video as well as host it. The video player would be sure to match the branding and design of your site. This is the best option you have but the downside is the cost. With professional design comes expensive fees but you can be assured that it is all worth it.

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