E-zines have been available on the Internet for quite sometime. They can take the form of scientific journals or newsletters, which organizations hand out to their supporters or subscribers, sometimes free of charge.

The most common e-zines, however, contain articles written on a wide variety of topics tailored to fit the information needs of a general audience. Some articles will contain a resource box, where a few lines of text will tell readers who the author is, what his or her research interests are, and where he or she can be contacted.

Such articles and their attached resource boxes can be referred to as article marketing, and such an advertising strategy is beloved by search engines. The changing content of e-zines makes them current and updated, and their varied selection of keywords and articles can make them useful for anyone doing research. Thus, articles can be viewed by a good number of people from all over the world.

Are you good at a craft? Do you know more than anyone about a certain subject? Have you been actively involved in research? Then get the word out on yourself! Article marketing is the best way to get future writing, research, and even speaking gigs; advertise your home based business and get paid after more and more people learn about you; and, of course, earn money!

Now imagine if you could write dozens and dozens of articles! Article marketing is a lucrative business if you do it right.

Put article marketing on steroids, and you might have for yourself a very productive cash cow.

Now how to milk the cash cow? Follow the Top Ten Rules for Article Marketing faithfully, and you could find yourself a Net Celebrity in no time.

1. Follow submission guidelines, such as when you should submit your article, in what format you should send it, and if you should provide the publishers a copy of your resume. If you don’t follow the rules at the onset, publishers will not trust you for future work, and your article will be deleted even before it’s been read.

2. Format your article properly. Use a text editor to write your article, such as Note Pad. This will allow publishers to copy and paste your article directly to a web page if they like it. Remember: make your bosses’ lives easier and you will be rewarded.

3. The article is the star, not you. Although your first motive is to advertise yourself, remember that the means to that advertisement is a skillfully written, informative article.

Your byline should be no more than five or six lines, and should contain the most vital information about you. This will include your name, profession, e-mail address, and web address, if you have one.

4. Start your article off invitingly, with a descriptive, intriguing title, and an attention-catching first paragraph. Readers will take 15 seconds or less to determine whether they should go on and read your article to the end, so catch them first hand.

Remember, your byline is at the end of the article, so lead your readers there!

5. Check your grammar and spelling! Don’t be sloppy with your words. If your rhetoric can’t hold water, how do you expect publishers to trust you with facts? It may seem petty, but your grammar and spelling matter, so use spell check, and edit your article.

6. Publishers are after quality content, so write your article with the sincere desire to inform. Don’t write a sales letter, or you will turn both publishers and readers away. Make your language simple: readers don’t want to read the next James Joyce or Norman Mailer. They simply want to do their research, so help them out.

7. Avoid referring to an affiliate website. Your article will appear biased, and you will appear as though you know nothing about your topic.

8. Keep your paragraphs down to two or three short sentences, so that there are more empty spaces for your readers’ eyes to rest. Use techniques, such as bulleting or numbering, to separate your facts.

9. Keep it short and sweet. Your article should be between 500-750 words, with lots of whitespace.

10. Promote it! Once you’ve edited your article and made it e-friendly and brain-feeding, look for publishers who might be interested in it. You can post your articles on your website, or submit them to article announcement groups online.

Now imagine how many 750-word articles you can write. Practice your craft. Do a little more research. Get the word out on yourself!

Pump your writing with steroids and watch your bylines storm the search engines - your abilities, after all, deserve the fame.

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As the admin of Ebay-Guides, I frequently get emails from readers asking me for what has become the Holy Grail of eBay selling; where are powersellers getting their merchandise. Surprisingly, even I had to spend several hours researching sellers and merchandise before I was able to track down a definitive answer.

While there are literally thousands of wholesalers and dropshippers doing business on the internet, I was very surprised to find that the vast majority of auction goods were being funneled through a single company. Delving further into the mystery of why, with all the choices out there, this mystery company had developed such a lock on the auction supply market, I finally found my answer. Buried on a developer page on eBay’s site was a listing of a select few companies that eBay had chosen to partner up with. Ebay calls this program, the “Certified Provider Program” and imposes strict rules for all participants. Getting into the program is a long, involved process, and the list of companies that have successfully applied to, and been accepted into the program is a short one.

According to eBay: “The eBay Certified Provider Program was established to recognize the best-of-breed eBay Platform innovators who are helping eBay users grow their businesses through services, including technology or data licensing services.”

In retrospect it should have been no surprise that the company with the lion’s share of the dropshipping market would be an eBay partner. Corporate America has always been about one company scratching the back of another.

After learning just who this company was, I took a stroll through their website. Not surprisingly, I found somewhere in the neighborhood of 500,000 products available for dropshipping; anything from a toaster to a 60 inch flatscreen TV. Prices and selection were good, but this hardly explained the overwhelming share of business the company was getting, even with eBay’s help.

A few more minutes of scanning their site, and I found my answer; integrated software. Reading over the companies service FAQ, I noticed that they were in the unique position of having authored software in conjunction with eBay. What does it do? Quite a bit really. With a few clicks of a button completed auctions could be created and uploaded directly into eBay’s auction platform. Mystery solved.

No wonder the major eBay powersellers don’t want this information getting out. With a 2-3 hour per day time investment, someone with even limited computer skills could create several thousand auctions offering just about any product under the sun, and place them on eBay for sale.

If you’ve read my prior articles on how dropshipping works, you would know exactly why this is a major money maker. Assuming everyone is a first time reader however, I will briefly explain the business model.

Dropshipping works very simply; you as the seller offer goods for sale which you do not own, and only pay for once you have received payment. This means you have zero inventory costs, zero warehousing costs, and no shipping hassles. You are quite literally just an advertiser.

I’ve written several free guides about how to effectively make use of dropshippers, and how to limit costs when listing auctions on eBay which can be found on various sites across the web, or on my own.

So who is this mystery company eBay has partnered up with? The powersellers certainly do not want you to know, and thus far they’ve been successful in keeping people misinformed. Will they continue to succeed? Quite possibly.

If you’d like to get more information on just who these companies are, simply visit Ebay Guides for the complete list and links, or try a search on eBay’s site for “Certified Provider Program”.

The simple fact is, the easiest way to make money on a site like eBay, is to work with the same companies they are. While there is no doubt that eBay is making money in some form from these companies, there is little doubt that they are receiving “special” treatment. In my experience, the easiest way to make money is to take the path of least resistance. In this case, eBay is basically telling powersellers who they want them to do business with. Unfortunately, unless you are a major powerseller, they don’t seem to be volunteering that information.

Chris Yarbrough writes for Ebay Guides, a free resource site with hundreds of articles and guides. You can view his guides at http://www.ebay-guides.com.

If you’re anything like most small business owners, you probably think that web site design is expensive - possibly too expensive for you to justify the expense. If that’s the case, then it can be tempting to just design your small business web site yourself. You have a computer, complete with Microsoft Frontpage, you have a copy of Photoshop - why pay a web designer when you could just do it yourself?

Well, here are a few reasons why a DIY website may not be the best possible solution for your small business:

1. An amateur web design = an amateur small business

You may think you’re pretty handy with the old Frontpage, but the truth is that an amateur web design is pretty easy to spot - although sometimes that’s not clear to the person who designed it! Think about it, though: you’ve invested in stock, equipment, advertising, marketing for your small business - why not invest on your web design too? An amateur web site will make your business look amateur - which means that all of that other investment will go to waste.

2. Do you know how to optimise your small business web site for search engines?

The type of web design you go for will have a huge impact on whether or not your small business shows up on search engines. There are a lot of different factors to take into account here: meta tags, keywords and content to name just a few. WYSIWYG editors like Frontpage also add a lot of unnecessary code to your design, which increases your file size and confuses the search engines - as does invalid code. If you didn’t understand any of that, you’d be better off leaving it to the experts!

3. Do you know how to make your small business web design accessible?

Your web site design will look different on different browsers - unless you know how to make sure it doesn’t! For example, the site you designed that looks fine on Internet Explorer could look completely different on Firefox, and vice versa. You’ll also need to consider accessibility for people who are visually impaired: certain colour schemes are more difficult to read than others, and people who are colourblind may not be able to view certain graphics or coloured text. Are you confident that you can design a website that will be accessible to all? If not, leave it to the experts!

4. What do you really want to get out of your small business web design?

Stop for a moment and think about what you hope to achieve from having a small business web site. Do you want to increase your sales, boost your profile, or just advertise your services? Are you confident you can create the best possible web design to do that? If not… well, you fill in the blanks!

But I can’t afford a professional! They charge too much!

Well, some of them do. Not all web site design is expensive, though. First of all, ask yourself what a good web site design is worth to your small business. If it’s worth having a website, it’s worth having a good one - and you may find that it’s not quite as expensive as you might think.

Amber McNaught is co-owner of Hot Igloo Productions Ltd. - the small business specialists. Hot Igloo offer a range of services to businesses, including website design, public relations, internet marketing, copywriting and more. Visit their website at: http://www.hotigloo.co.uk

On-page search engine optimization is definitely one of the key methods if a website owner would like to improve the results for his or her website’s searchability. However, on-page SEO often entails technical skills. Why? Not a lot of people are HTML enthusiasts. This is often what needs to be tweaked to do an excellent job in optimizing web pages.

What if a geek friend already did the on-page optimization and now you want to know how you can contribute to the “search engine goodness” of your website? Off-page optimization is the next step. And the results you will have to pine for are one-way backlinks. Why? This is how many of the major search engines such Google, Yahoo! and MSN rank websites. The more backlinks from relevant sites with good page rank, the merrier.

So how exactly do you gather backlinks? It’s not an easy task but it’s definitely less nerve-wracking than HTML if you are not the techie type. Here are some off-page SEO tips:

1. Article Marketing

Quality content has been discovered to be real king. Everyone is hungry for fresh and quality info and providing it will make backlinks go pouring in. It helps a lot to be a keen writer to be successful on this endeavor. Also, practise the proper way of using a resource box. It should only include a website that contains information relevant to the article you submit to article directories.

2. Forum Participation

Look for forums that are relevant to your website’s content and keep on sharing information that will be indispensable for the members of the forums. Your signature or that tag-along message at the last part of each of your posts is what will work for your off-page SEO campaign. Keep it simple and make sure that it conveys something about your website. Learn how to hyperlink to make it easy for the people who want to visit your site.

3. Blogging

Blogs or web logs are now the most popular weapons of SEO experts. Aside from being easy-to-update, they don’t require a too formal tone, which is what many readers are into. Informal dialog which can be accomplished through readers leaving comments and the blog author replying to the comments is what also keeps blogs fresh and search engine friendly. Maintaining a blog that’s again relevant to your website’s content will keep the search engines in touch with your site. Don’t forget to have a link on your main website from your blog.

The secret to be successful in carrying out these off-page SEO methods is to be consistent. Submitting quality articles to websites at least two to three times a week and regularly producing content for your personalized blog is a surefire way to make your website stand out. Forum participation should also be something done more frequently since it will not only help you up your website’s popularity with the search engines but also make you learn new stuff from other forum members’ participation. Also, if you discover that you don’t enjoy these stuff, there’s always a plan B - hire someone to do them for you!

Note: This article may be freely reproduced as long as the AUTHOR’S resource box at the bottom of this article is included and all links must be Active/Linkable with no syntax changes.

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Informal SEO is the way to go: Isulong SEOPH

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Last year, trillions of dollars transferred hands on the internet with regard to sales, or as the internet wishes to call it, eCommerce. The internet is becoming an increasingly complex manipulation of do’s and don’ts. However, one thing I am sure of is, what are you doing? The cliche says, “Either get in the game, or sit and watch from the sidelines.” I’ve been sitting around long enough and recently took bold steps to leap into eCommerce.

If you are reading this article and are an owner of an internet business, I implore you to at least check out our site, www.storesonline.com/site/onlinemarketmall. If you do not have a business, I would like you to consider the several advantages to having a business online.

One, you are able to go beyond the regional, or community area. Two, you can strengthen your business base by being able to advertise across a broad swath of companion businesses, or markets. Third, if you do not have a business in your home town, the money you save that you would normally put out in a store front, hiring of employees, insurance, taxes, etc. could enable you to start a business online with so many advantages. Fourth, you have an opportunity to supplement, if not outright replace your current income.

I decided to start an online market mall wherein you can explore hundreds of stores in one easy to click shopping site. You may have other ideas for an online business, and I encourage each of you who have gotten to this point in the article to heavily consider looking into getting an online business. The company I went through is called storesonline.com, but there are several others that could get you started. So, are you on the sidelines, or are you the kind to want to get in on the action. All I can conclude with is, do the research, consider the possibilities, and good luck.

S.A. Reighard is a high school teacher, coach, and member of the U.S. Navy Reserves. He has written many articles for newpaper and literary magazine businesses. He is also the author of a novel and several short stories. He lives with his wife and two kids in Virginia.

Many online entrepreneurs focus their efforts on their own websites exclusively. Others may also utilize affiliate programs, ezines, and other tactics to increase online business. Those who want to make a living online, however, should never forget to try to find a component of their overall strategy that can be conducted via eBay.

No other online marketplace compares to eBay in terms of size and scope. It is a market that simply cannot be overlooked. The sheer number of potential customers that can be reached via eBay cannot be matched by any other site or service. Any online seller wants to get his or her product or service in front of as many prospects as possible. Ebay is a great way to do just that. The level of potential exposure is beyond compare.

Additionally, eBay has developed so as to allow sellers to list products in a variety of niche categories, allowing for great prospect targeting. Those who want to find the kind of thing one is selling will find it. Meanwhile, the seller is not required to pay for views by people who have no potential interest in their offerings. Targeted marketing is a key to success and few buying venues allow for the level of targeting provided by eBay.

Everyone is familiar with eBay on some level. Its huge member base and remarkable influence have made it instantly recognizable to millions of people. With that level of awareness also comes a level of trust. Many people who would be reluctant to spend anything at an unknown website are more than willing to make purchases through eBay as a byproduct of their familiarity with the site.

Many of those who use eBay tend to rely on it almost exclusively for online purchases. The ease of the site’s use and its popularity has created an entire marketplace of people who are eBay-only buyers. Those who fail to sell on eBay never have an opportunity to access this potential market.

When one considers the ease of use involved in selling on eBay all of these advantages are multiplied. Setting up a seller’s account is incredibly simple and does not require a great deal of time or effort. The price of listing auctions on eBay is also quite limited. This makes use of the system even more attractive.

Those who are involved in online business must consider eBay when concocting their sales and marketing strategies. To overlook this giant is an error of the largest magnitude. There are few other ways to have such potential reach available for such a low cost so quickly. Many who never felt their efforts would translate effectively into the eBay marketplace have been pleasantly surprised at its strength as a revenue producing component of their business. If you have something to sell online, you simply cannot afford to leave eBay out of your overall marketing and business strategy.

Copyright 2006 John Thornhill

John Thornhill is an eBay powerseller and trades on eBay under the username planetsms. If you really want to succeed on eBay with information products visit http://www.planetsms.co.uk/member_offer.htm.

Like any investment, your website must start turning a profit as early as possible, and pulling the search engines is a critical component. There are several tools your site can use to get these rankings.

· Search-engine optimized text
· Fresh content frequently
· Links to your site from high-profile websites
· Traffic to and from your site

The first two are all about how you put your web site together and subsequently work with it. The last one - quality inbound links - has nothing at all to do with your site, and if you work it properly, can give you both great rankings and pull in a surprising amount of traffic from sites other than search engines.

Once you start building up your traffic, your search engine ratings will stabilize, and your site will slowly grow. It’s a lot like starting a car - it takes a lot of energy to get it going, but once it’s running it only takes maintenance energy.

Article Submissions Services: Getting Those Inbound Links

Most people don’t know where to start with inbound links. Do you just email webmasters and ask? Buy advertising? Or do you offer your own site up as a link farm, encouraging your hard-won customers to visit someone else?

None of these are the best bet (though emailing webmasters, over time, is a good additional strategy). The best way you can get great inbound links is by using an article submission service.

These services use article directories, large online repositories of articles donated by webmasters like you, to build backlinks to your site. Each article you donate contains a resource box that points back to your website, in whatever format you desire. And you can donate the same article to hundreds of article directories.

You can do this yourself. But article submissions services know how to find the best directories, and have specialists who can enter your information in the often-tedious and time-consuming directories forms. It may be a better expenditure of your time to focus on that great content and building your business in other ways, while leaving the submissions to experts who can do it cheaply, efficiently, and properly.

Article submissions services understand the search engines and how they examine links, and can use this knowledge to benefit you. And because you can expect the search engines to change their methodology about every four to six months, with major changes every year and a half to a year, these services will always have the most up-to-date information on the best way to use links to enhance your placement.

While you may be able to build your website ranking yourself, it’s often better to seek help from people who have done it for years, at least the first few times you submit a site. Article submission services are your perfect ally when you’re chasing search engine rankings.

Appropriate Linking

There are only so many directories you can submit to, of course. Once you have maxed out your directory submissions, you can start looking for webmasters to trade links with. There are a few things you should seek out in this case. Your link partners should be suitable for you, and you should be right for them as well. You should trade up as much as you can; look for pages with good rankings themselves. Don’t trade with a competitor; if you sell similar merchandise or if you’re both close together using the same keyword phrase, you should trade with someone else.

But link trading only works once your site has been built up in the search engines. Few webmasters are willing to trade links with a low-ranking site (would you?). For the quickest rankings boost, and for a great foundation that you can really start to work from, use mass articles submissions. It will set you apart and above your competition.

RcpLinks.com provides manual one way link building through article Submission and directory submission services.

Introduction

It is widely recognised that Email and the Internet is here to stay! Both mediums have become a vital part of business and personal communication in a world that increasingly relies on technology. We understand its benefits and sometimes berate its downsides; too much email, lack of personal communication, spam, the risk of employees accessing inappropriate material and using employer resources for personal gain.

This gain in technology has not come without cost as increasingly employers and employees are being bought to task over breaches of copyright, confidentiality, privacy, discrimination and harassment and in some instances criminal offences (pornography, obscene and threatening material).

This fact sheet examines ways of measures you can take to greatly reduce and protect your business from legal and other risks.

Recently Monash University reported that email abuse had significantly increased as employees seek to avoid personal confrontation by sending abusive e-mails to those they had targeted or are angry with instead of speaking to them face to face.

This type of behaviour places employers at risk of claims of workplace harassment and discrimination and it is important that you take measures to ensure that this type of activity is clearly communicated as unacceptable to your employees.

By way of example, Biz Momentum undertook a sexual harassment investigation for an employer after an employee complained of sexual harassment by a work colleague. Biz Momentum found that the work colleague had unlawfully accessed 500 different pornographic web-sites over a period of 6 months and at the expense of the employer. The employer took appropriate action.

What should I include in my electronic mail & Internet policy

Biz Momentum recommends that you implement E-mail and Internet policies that includes the following key elements

1. Computer Policies and Procedures

2. E-mail and Internet for Business & Private Use

3. Audit

1. Policies and Procedures

Ensure that you have comprehensive computer policies and procedures relating to defined boundaries that protect you from legal risk for using your E-mail and Internet facilities.

Communicate these policies and procedures to your employees and new starts - ensure that they sign off on these policies. This cannot be understated in the event of a dispute and is best practice management in protecting your business interests.

2. Email for Business & Private Use

a. Be upfront - use of E-mail and the Internet is primarily for business use. If you allow reasonable private use, specify when (lunchbreak) and the type of mail employees may compose (electronic banking, child-care arrangements etc)

b. Be specific on what an employee may not access or use E-mail or the Internet for (breach of copyright, spam, masquerading, personal business gain, acts that incite hatred, discrimination to name a few).

3. Audit

Your policies and procedures should inform employees that you conduct regular computer audits in line with the law. This is not an invasive procedure but is designed to protect your business.

No matter what the size of your business, wether you have stand-alone computers or you are networked ensure that your computer logs are audited on a frequent basis.

However a word of caution! Be careful! There are various laws (Privacy Act) that define what you may or may not do when viewing computer logs and this can include not opening and reading employee E-mail or Internet sites. However by viewing the computer logs you can gain a reasonable understanding from where the traffic is directed. In most cases it is obvious if a breach of your policies and procedures has occurred.

You may find other useful small business guides at Biz Momentum (www.biz-momentum.com). You need to treat this information sensitively and take further advice from your practitioner before taking further action.

Ensure you business is protected.

Philip Lye is Managing Director of Biz Momentum providing professional services in employee relations (HR / IR Matters), training your people to work with you and not against you’, ‘coaching you’ to be a better executive and review of commercial documentation, leases and agreements.

Phil holds qualifications in Accounting, Leadership, Human Resource Management & Industrial Relations and is a qualified accountant.

Phil started his working career as the ‘postage clerk’ in banking and finance rising through various business opportunities to CEO and CFO of two companies before leaving to start his own business in 2002.

For further information

Web: http://www.biz-momentum.com

There’s an old adage that asks, “How do you get to Carnegie Hall?” The answer is of course, “practice, practice, practice.”

Honing and sharpening your skills is always an important step in any field. Perhaps nowhere is this more true than in the realm of online marketing.

Content is always king

Getting your information on the page in a format that is easy to read and easy to understand will help you dramatically. There are lots of people who believe that marketing their product using flashy colors and sharp graphics will create the free online traffic and revenue streams that they want. But it’s not true.

Get worded content on your page, include the keywords that the page is optimized for. When you do this, you will be guaranteed at least some traffic. Beyond that, you will want to learn from valuable sources of marketing information.

What kinds of information?

The three online newsletters that follow are filled with information that anyone venturing into the field of Internet Marketing should plan on reading on a daily/weekly basis.

· HighRankings Newsletter

Jill Whalen is my hero. She is an internet marketing genius, who has been at the Internet marketing game for a long time. Her understanding of what’s going on online, her connections to the people that are inside the loop, and her no nonsense approach to providing people with good content really make her weekly newsletter an Internet marketing paradise.

· SiteProNews Newsletter

The SiteProNews newsletter touts itself as the Net’s foremost Webmaster ezine. This may or may not be true, but this daily online/enewsletter is jam packed with tools, tips, and tricks for you to improve your web presence and help yourself have online marketing success. They also offer SEO-News, which is a weekly ezine for do-it-yourself website optimizers.

· SearchEngineWatch Newsletter

Danny Sullivan knows what’s up when it comes to search. Looking for a polk-a-dotted, shiny, margarita-flavored, scratch-’n'-sniff sticker? Well Danny Sullivan’s newsletter will teach you how to use the latest Internet tools to find out if it exists online (or in the real world for that matter). How can these tools help you when you’re marketing online? It’s quite simple really. By using the search tools, you can get a better feel of the obscure and popular items people are looking for, what tools are being used to find them, and how you can place yourself in the middle.

There are, of course, other newsletters. Many of these will help you begin your online marketing efforts, but these three are the ones most beneficial to overall success and income producing efforts within the online marketing industry.

Make it a habit to read these newsletters on a daily or weekly basis, put the principles into action, and you can’t help but have success with your Internet marketing efforts.

Jonathan Kraft has been an online marketer for many years and helps others with affiliate programs at http://www.affiliateadvice.us Most recently, he has helped people find the best phone and calling card affiliate programs at http://www.affiliateadvice.us/phone-calling-card-affiliate-programs.html

It is an undeniable fact that not everybody is keen and knowledgeable to create an above average looking website. It is also true that it is something learnable, but it might take a certain learning time span in order to grasp the minimum ability to create an over than average website. Everybody from any field, regardless of their objectives, realizes that a website presence is extremely essential for a bigger exposure, and pretty much common to see buyers chasing after the cheapest and the least time consuming offers.

For Internet Entrepreneurs in particular, website expansion is particularly essential. Full time internet business people who relies on their online income to support their livelihood need to expand their income generating sources constantly to multiply and preserve their constant flow of earning potentials.

Everybody agrees that a website regardless of quality and richness of content is totally useless if nobody actually visits it, giving all of us more reason why we should spend more of our time marketing our websites rather than worrying too much about the design. In this world of diversity, specialization is inevitable. Let the experts do what they know and care most. If you think web designing is slowing you down, get the right people and let them cover up the time you need to spend designing your own website.

You might argue that hiring a web designer might be costly most of the time. Analyzing at this issue thoroughly, prices can be either low or high looking at the different ways how the services are delivered. For example, hiring a web designer to deliver a full webdesign solution from scratch to completion, is definitely more costly compared to a web designer providing ready made quality web templates.

Not only you don’t have to worry about quality issues, web templates provide you with the flexibility for you to expand your ideas like never before, especially if they’re designed specifically for your online business needs. Looking at the bigger picture, we can’t possibly argue that time is in fact the most important element which everybody wants to have most. It’s always a big step for any online enthusiasts to have their time spent on something they don’t like doing reduced, and at the same time, get more of your favorite result oriented work done.

Looking at the current development trend, one of the biggest market to venture in are the niche markets. The earning possibilities from such a huge diversed market are by all means, unlimited, which also means that you have to create practically a huge number of websites to cater at least a small portion of it. Nobody wants to be left out of any hot rising niche market.

With the constant evolution of current world trends, niche markets are something which will not cease to expand. The faster you push yourself to stay in tune with this fast evolving market, the better the results you will achieve in the long run.

To know more about specific niche web templating services, drop by at http://www.whereismysite.com

About the Author

John Teh is a web design enthusiast, who hopes his work will help millions of online entrepreneurs to expand their long term vision.

http://www.whereismysite.com

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Wow, we`ve already taken a domain and chosen a web host. Great job ! Now it`s time for something special: making your own website. You could`ve completed this step before, but at the time you`d had finished it, the domain name could`ve been taken. We don`t want any complications right ?

You have 2 possible routes now (..as it is in the life right..) :

1. To learn HTML and other “programming” languages of the world wide web …or..
2. To buy a specialized software which makes creating websites a piece of cake.

The first one, learning HTML, the “programming” language of the WWW, and all of the “add-on” languages such as Javascript, PHP, ASP… is more rewarding in longterm, but it takes a lot more time to set your site up and going. It takes about 3-6 months just to master the standard HTML, but longterm, you could become a website programmer and gain reputation. Not to mention that you`ll have unlimited possibilities of designing your websites.

Personally, I`ve taken this path. It important to mention though: It won`t, under any circumstances, affect your website traffic or income. You see, how the website looks like really doesn`t matter much. We will cover that aspect later.

Here are some of the top HTML tutorials that will teach you how to make your own website from scratch. Zero knowledge required (.. you do know how to open notepad, or any other text editor, don`t you.. ).

w3schools.com
HTMLgoodies.com
Webdiner.com

The second one, buying a specialized website building software, will make building a website a lot more pleasant experience (.. who wants to learn coding and programming these days ). It`ll also make it a lot shorter one.

Generally, I think this is a better option. To attract website traffic and generate income, you don`t have to know programming. All you have to know is to draw tables and write text. Your website design will be a little bit limited with the exceptions of software like Macromedia Dreamweaver or Microsoft Frontpage (..although they do require some skills..) .

However, there is a software called Site Build It! that I honestly recommend, Not only it`s an outstanding website building tool, it also helps you in marketing it. You could call it an “ultimate package”. I`ve tried it, and it really works. It will save you a lot of time. The interface is nice-looking too.

There is also a website building software called xSitePro, wich is also a great option. It can build a fully functional search engine optimized website for you in less than 60 minutes. I haven`t tried it personally, but I noticed that people on various forums speak great words for this software. You might check it out.

Ok, now that you know where to learn how to make your own website, here are some useful tips on how to actually design it:

• The looks of a website is much less important than the actual content. There is a phrase: “content is the king” which applies to SEO (Search engine optimization). You`ll learn about SEO in the upcoming articles. It`s very important to have a good unique content that is updated REGULARY. Fresh and unique content brings back the old and keeps the new visitors coming.
Hot Tip! Cheap website design has several characteristics starting with bad code. One of the best ways to spot bad code in a cheap website design is by right clicking on your mouse and then clicking the “View Source” link.
• Look at this website, Construct-a-site.com. Admit it, it`s not too atractive. Well, I didn`t even want it to be. I put the content in the first plan. In the upcoming articles you`ll learn that search engines ( .. you know.. like Google..) can read only the content, and you`ll find out that you get around 70-80 % of free traffic from search engines.
• Sidenote: I advise you not to start your first website until the next article which will be “What topic should your website be about”.. You`ll learn how to target a profitable topic.. i`ll also point how you should write about it..

Keep your website small. There is nothing more frustrating than loading a website. Make your website load longer than 5 seconds, and it`s a good chance that the majority of frustrated visitors will leave. Prevent that by not putting too many images on your website.

Navigation. Make your navigation clear and visible. It pains me even to see how the “big websites” deal with this issue. Their navigation is totally unclear, and they even sometimes mix it with advertisements. I`d just click “back” on my browser (.. which is Firefox .. :)) ) and never visit that site again. Keep the navigation clear and visible.

Hot Tip! When a business seeks out a website design company, they usually do so with the larger, more general problem in mind (and rightfully so). A business should be more concerned with meeting the goals and needs of the business than with the ins and outs of website design.
• Don`t put banner-ads on your site. Banners and images are history, text links are the modern type of advertising. Banners just take up your space and slow the “page loading” process.
• Well, these are general tips on how to make your own website and improve its design. You`ll learn more advanced techniques to boost your traffic and generate more income in the following articles.

As always, if you liked the article, feel free to distribute it on your website or newsletter, just please keep the links as they are and give link-back to Cosntruct-a-site.com

You can visit my site at http://www.construct-a-site.com to learn how to make your own fully functional, money making website. You can also read interesting articles that contain website design and marketing tips and find out about hundreds of webmaster resources..Site is updated daily..Oh, I almost forgot: I`m only 16 y.o and still, I managed to succeed on internet…I metioned that just to inform you that this is not some scammy guru site, because I don`t sell anything that`s not worth of your money..

Having a successful business means also having a good working relationship with your employees, and nothing more makes it sour than having problems with the payroll. You can’t expect them to work gratis, employees expect to be paid and compensated fairly. If this is done, the working environment will be pleasant and the employees will be more productive. Many company’s experience labor problems because they don’t have a smooth payroll system. If that is the case, many complaints will arise. Salary is a form of payment for the services rendered provided by the employer to the employee for a certain period of time. This payment should be in accordance to what has been agreed upon by both parties prior to the start of work provided.

Different companies and different businesses have different forms of payment. Some give it by cash, some by checks, while some have them electronically deposited to their bank accounts through direct deposit. Aside from the payment, employees are also provided with payroll check stubs or payroll forms. There the employees will sign their names to prove that they have indeed received their salary and have found them to be at the right amount. This is imperative so as to avoid confusion later on. This means that the given salary is in the correct amount and both parties adhere to it. With that, there will be harmony and satisfaction between the employer and employee resulting to a better business.

So what is the payroll form? In the payroll form you will see how many hours the person worked for the specified period of time. You will also see the rate the person is provided. Then all of these shall be calculated for the gross pay a person shall receive. There are many different kinds of payroll forms since monetary compensation can be done in different manner of specified period of compensation. Some does it quarterly or every week, others bi-monthly while some do it monthly. In each different case, there is a different type of payroll form. Other payroll forms are provided individually which contains all the details of the worked hours and also the employees name and employee’s number and other details pertaining to his or her employment, such as the designation and which department they work. Other payroll forms are for groups, which mean a number of persons can be detailed in only one payroll form. This will also include all the details of the number of hours they work but won’t be as detailed as the individual payroll forms.

If you don’t have any payroll forms yet or just want to see one for you to base your own personal payroll form then you’re in luck. The internet is flowing with such payroll forms and they are for free. These free payroll forms are there to be downloaded to b e used as reference or to be used as is with a slight alteration to make it personal. You can just search them from any search engine and download them. If you get this free payroll forms you’ll have an easier time keeping record of the salaries of your employees. The free payroll forms are just there waiting to be downloaded. Try them out and see how easy it can be. The internet has worked wonders and with the free payroll forms they can help you immensely. With these free payroll forms both you and your employees will have peace of mind.

Online entrepreneur Sara Jenkins, is dedicated to helping others and their needs to succeed in life by offering free payroll tips everyday. To learn more about her free payroll program, and to sign up for her FREE Payroll articles and FREE bonus how-to books and resources, visit http://www.PayrollXpert.com

Pretty sites do not rank pretty well in search engines

It is a great idea to wish to make your web site pleasing to look at. After all, a thing of beauty is joy for all. Unfortunately this holds good only till the beauty is not the cause of woes and worries. This is especially true when it comes to designing a web site, and more so when your web site is meant to be a facilitating means to your business.

Here the idea of looks or beauty of a site is not to be discarded out rightly. Generally it has been seen that new comers or relatively less experienced web designers tend to place excessive emphasis on the appearance of the site knowing little about its ramifications. The wholesale use of images, graphics, animation, often mindless and hardly required, hampers the usability of a site, sometimes severely, albeit the site appears to be fairly good to look at.

It is prudent to look beyond looks of your site

The salvation of a web site lies in all those features that support and enhance its usability. Only then one can look forward to get more traffic, and can give a boost to one’s business prospects. The online behavior of users suggests that your site should be designed in such a way that users are able to fulfill their needs with ease and convenience.

Amongst the features that add to the usability of your site are plain looks with user enabling characteristics, a good navigation system, fresh and informative content, search engine friendly design that enhances the visibility of your site on the web.

Here are a few considerations on the usability of a web site.

Usability is nothing but user friendly features on your site

The less a visitor seems to face hiccups on your site while browsing for a particular purpose, the more your site is said to be usable. Essentially, a web site caters to two needs, broadly, of users: either it helps them get certain information or ideas, or helps them to buy a specific product or avail a particular service. What ever be your objectives, your site must facilitate a smooth completion of such users’ tasks at hand without any annoying hassles.

By annoying hassles I precisely assume all those features which are not well received by the users. Rather such features turn them off and scare them away to another site causing you considerable losses. Say for instance, when you use lots of animations and graphics on your site, the load time of the site increases and users prefer to switch over to another site.

Other hassle could be the lack of information which the users expect the site to contain. Take for example, if the site intends to sell products or services, it must display all the relevant and sufficient information which a buyer might need to make a well informed decision.

Yet another hassle could be in terms of finding the desired information. The information which can not be found with ease on the site tantamount to conspicuous absence of the same altogether. Hence the usability of the site not only lies in the availability of certain information but also in its easy accessibility.

Moreover, users find it difficult to handle the hassle of mobility within a particular web site if it is not logically and conveniently structured. If the visitor of your site gets confused and disappointingly lost in search of what he or she is looking for, it does not auger well for you as well.

A site can never be high on usability scores unless due consideration is given to its navigation system, and it is made user friendly in the process.

Enhancing the usability of the site through an easy navigation system

A good navigation system helps users to go from one section of the site to another with direction and ease. Even if one has invested tremendous amount of money and efforts on optimizing one’s site in the search engine, it is not going to do any good so far as the site lacks easy navigability. Hence the traffic gained the hard way does not translate into tangible benefits due to a thing which is so easy to manage.

Here are some tips for a sound navigation system.

Use a navigation bar or panel on all the pages of your site in a similar or corresponding place.

Think of a navigation plan from a user perspective. This will make you feel the need to provide short cuts from one significant page to its most logical sequence. Clearly, these short cuts are over and above the navigation bar or panel you employ. Remember that these short cuts will save the users from going necessarily to home page or site map to move around.

If your site happens to be large enough, what you require is a site search engine for enhanced usability.

A site map is what you need for sure if your site exceeds a few pages. The crucial advantage of using a site map is that it help search engine to access all the pages of the site. Thus, it goes well with the search engine listing.

It is not advisable that your navigation menu is dependent on a particular browser. In case you prefer to zero in on a specific browser, make it sure that you include alternate facility that is compatible with other browsers too.

Search engine visibility is not a phenomenon in isolation

Search engine optimization ensures that your site gets a good ranking in the search engine pages. A lot of efforts and relevant considerations are required over time for making a page or a web site optimized in search results.

Once a web site enjoys a good visibility in the search engines, any attempt to change or modify the web design may have corresponding effect on the visibility of the site. The changes that have favorable impact on the search engine friendliness are welcome, but certain changes can play havoc with the ranking.

These changes are found to be made by web developer, amateur or not having real insights into mechanics of search engine visibility, quite oblivious of consequences.

Like for example, if a web developer replaces the existing navigation menu and all links with a JavaScript enabled ones, it will definitely dive down on the search results. Whatever purpose JavaScript might serve, it does not help the spiders read all the pages. Consequently, only home page gets indexed, and hence a drop in the ranking is on the anvil.

Key to sustainable visibility

Toward the end of this article, what I wish to stress upon is the fact that getting listed in the search engines is only a beginning. It requires consistent search engine readiness, and more usability features to sustain or improve upon search engine visibility.

Deepak Sharma is a Web Designer at BlueApple, a Web Design and Development Company with a well connected development infrastructure in India having a strong portfolio with global clientele and offering superior web services and solutions at competitive costs.

One of the most powerful marketing tools used on the Internet is the ezine. An ezine, also known as an email magazine, online publication or electronic newsletter is simply a newsletter available via email and/or online. There are hundreds of thousands of ezines on various subjects available on the Internet free of charge.

Publishing an ezine is a great way to build an opt-in list of potential customers. Not only will it enable you to share your expertise, but it will also build your credibility. Developing a trusting relationship with your subscribers is the key to your ezine’s success. You must have a sincere desire to assist your subscribers to the best of your ability. Provide them with helpful information that will teach and inform in regard to the subject matter.

Although offering your ezine to your subscribers free of charge may seem to be a waste of time, you have to look at the entire picture. This publication will enable you to have a direct line of communication with your subscribers. Your subscribers are not just subscribers — they’re actually targeted potential customers. When they subscribed to your publication, they were letting you know they have an interest in your ezine’s focus. This provides you with the opportunity to advertise your products or services, and provide them with recommendations.

Once you’ve developed a trusting relationship, your recommendations will be very effective. However, you must only recommend a product or service that you truly believe in, as your professional reputation is on the line.

If you’ve been marketing on the Internet, then you know it may take several contacts with a prospective customer before closing a sale. What better way to make those contacts. In addition, you can eventually make a nice income selling sponsor advertising and classified ads.

If you’re not publishing an ezine, you really should be. The Internet offers a wealth of quality information and resources to assist you.

Tutorials:

Learn everything you’ll need to know in order to begin publishing your ezine.

How to Publish an Ezine
http://www.thewritemarket.com/ezine.shtml

The Handbook of Ezine Publishing
http://www.e-zinez.com/handbook/index.html

A Beginner’s Guide to Ezine Publishing
http://www.epdigest.com/beginner/

Ezine Tips
http://ezine-tips.com/

If you’d like a head start in writing your ezine, the following sites will provide you with some ezine templates:

How to Use A Template to Create Your E-Zine
http://www.e-zinez.com/handbook/template.html

Ezine Success
http://www.websuccesscentral.com/ezinesuccess/part1.html

You can publish your ezine completely free. Free list hosts will provide complete email list subscription management including list hosting, subscribes, unsubscribes, mailings and more. They will place a small ad within each message sent to your group. This is a small price to pay and well worth the great service they provide.

Free List Hosts:

Yahoo! Groups - http://groups.yahoo.com/

Topica - http://www.topica.com/

Smart Groups - http://www.smartgroups.com/

Fee based mailing list hosts provide complete email list subscription management including list hosting, subscribes, unsubscribes, mailings and more for a fee.

Fee Based Mailing List Hosts:

SparkList - http://sparklist.com/

Email Factory - http://www.emailfactory.com/

Lyris - http://www.lyris.com/

L-Soft - http://www.lsoft.com/

If you’d rather take care of your own list, there are a couple of different options:

• Use a software program that resides on your computer

• Use a script that resides on your server

Mailing List Software:

Mailloop
This outstanding program will enable you to have complete control over your lists including:

• Automatically filters your email

• Completely run your newsletters

• Import your leads or orders into a database

• Automatically email your personalized customer database

• Send out an unlimited amount of autoresponses

• and more.

Group Mail
Another outstanding software that will enable you to send highly professional formatted messages that are personalized for each of your recipients. You can manage an unlimited number of lists with an unlimited number of recipients in each and much more.

If you’re using a software program like Group Mail, you’ll also need a good form processing script to enable your visitors to subscribe:

Master Form
This form will enable you to have the results of your form emailed to you or to a specified address. It can write your information to a database file and you can even have a personalized thank you page. In addition, you can even have multi-page forms with no limit on the number of pages.
Cost - $35.00

Alien Form
This powerful script will enable you to have the results of your form emailed to you and any additional addresses you specify. It can write directly to files, allowing you to log every time the form is submitted, or to store order or subscription details securely on your server.

Mailing list scripts will enable you to run your mailing list completely online via your web browser.

Mailing List Scripts:

1-2-All Broadcast
http://www.12all.com
A complete list management system including HTML or plain text newsletters, MySQL database, personalization features, automatic removal links and more.

AutoResponse Plus:
Complete list management including unlimited lists, HTML or plain text mailings, MySQL database, customizable auto-personalization of messages, automatic removal links, unlimited follow-up autoresponses and more.

Although a quality ezine should contain some original content, it is completely acceptable to use articles written by other authors.

Free Content:

Article Announce Groups - Articles that may be freely published delivered to your email each day.
http://www.web-source.net/articlesub.htm

Ezine Articles - Article Directory
http://ezinearticles.com/

Marketing Seek - Article and Ezine Directory
http://www.marketing-seek.com/

Idea Marketers - Article Directory
http://www.ideamarketers.com/

Author Connection - Article Directory
http://www.authorconnection.com/

Internet Wire - Offers broad, real-time dissemination of company press releases and material news.
http://www1.internetwire.com/iwire/home

If you’re not collecting your visitor’s email addresses, don’t wait another day to start. Opt-in lists are one of the most powerful marketing tools on the Internet.

Copyright © Shelley Lowery

About the Author:

Shelley Lowery is the author of the acclaimed web design course, “Web Design Mastery” (www.webdesignmastery.com) and “eBook Starter - Give Your eBooks the look and feel of a REAL book” (www.ebookstarter.com)

Visit www.Web-Source.net to sign up for a complimentary subscription to eTips and receive a copy of Shelley’s acclaimed ebook, “Killer Internet Marketing Strategies.”

You have permission to publish this article electronically, in print, in your ebook, or on your web site, free of charge, as long as the author bylines are included.

In any business, taking the time to research the market environment before committing resources is imperative. You must commit your time and attention to getting very familiar with the latest sales stats as well as sizing up your competition before diving in. eBay’s Completed Listings search feature is perfect for this.

Do You Know How Lucky We Are..?

No other market has it this good! We can literally pull up a “snapshot” of the last 30 days which, in most cases, is more than enough information to make solid business decisions.

Most new sellers know to look for how much similar products have sold for over the last 30 days, but that’s not all you can learn from the Completed Listings. You can literally critique the actual ads that sold and will be selling right next to you. See what’s working for other sellers and, more importantly; what’s not working.

Take specific notice of the “search result” view of each ad that does well. This will give you a clear understanding as to how the winners, if there are a few, are getting the majority of this product’s traffic or target market.

You can’t sell someone that doesn’t see your ad, so this is always the first step. Getting the lion’s share of the traffic!

Now, how about the actual ad? Are the one’s that are selling using traditional ad copy techniques or are they just using copies of the manufacturer’s ads? You’ll find this a lot on eBay. Frankly, I get excited when I see that the top seller I’m researching is not utilizing common psychological sales skills. This leaves a BIG space for me to sell in and usually means that I quickly take control of that market.

Moral of this issue; don’t just brush over the completed listings and act as if you’ve done the research. There is plenty of information to be had here and all of it WILL help you succeed or overt a possible financial disaster.

Respectfully,

Chuck Mullaney
www.iauctionsuccess.com
http://www.pajamaexecutive.com

Chuck Mullaney, aka. the original “Pajama Executive”, is a High Level eBay Powerseller with 100% positive feedback and has generated close to ½ a million dollars online, in the past 10 months. Chuck is an eBay trained Education Specialist, currently ranked number 1 out of the 583 eBay certified trainers worldwide. Chuck has zero employees, and as the founder of PajamaExecutive.com, you can actually find him working at home, alone, in his pajamas.

Two of the most important contributing factors to Chuck’s average annual net-generated income of more that $300,000 per year are networking and powerful, almost obsessive, customer service. Chuck’s commitment to his clients and their important feedback has created a cult-like following among his customer base. Daily Chuck is asked for more help, and he constantly finds new and innovative ways to over-deliver.