2peer.com 
How To Make Your Website More Successful? (Part II)
In part I of our series of how to make your website more successful we already showed you some important tricks to build a more successful website. This time we are going to expand the scope a little to further improve your website and to make it work harder for you on the Internet.
Outbound links: Search engines love to see outbound links every once in a while. It proves to a search engine that your website is related to a certain topic and industry. Make sure you use a keyword for the link and not just the plain URL. Linking to http://www.webhostingresourcekit.com is less valuable than linking to the same site as "Web Hosting Help" (with the same link underneath of course). The keywords here are "Web Hosting Help".
Insite Cross Links: We're not done with linking to other places yet. Insite Cross inks (links from one page of your website to another web page of your website) will be an important part of the future of your website. Imagine article "A" getting high feedback and many external people linking to it. This article page will receive a higher page rank than other pages of your website. This cross link will now share the page rank out to other web pages of your website and therefore eventually boosting the page rank of the page linked to.
Submit to Search Engines: You've built your website and are ready to go live. How will search engines find your new website? Unless you link to the new website from an existing website you will have to let search engines know about it. Submit the homepage to: Google, Altavista, WiseNut, DirectHit, and Hotbot (and all the others you know). Also submit the website to DMOZ. I'd personally stay away from paid listings unless you think it is needed. Anyway - now comes the tough part - forget about the submissions. It might take a few weeks or months for a site to be spidered.
Web Server Logging / Website Tracking: To be able to work properly with your website you will need good logging tools. You want to know how many website visitors you get, where they come from, what pages they look at and how long they stay. A counter on your website does not do it. You need tools like Webalizer, AWStats, Urchin or Webtrends. If your web host does not provide any of the first 3 options (Webtrends is fee-based) you should move to a new web host. Proper log file analysis is important to your success.
This article can be published by anyone as long as a live back link to http://www.smallbusinessland.com is provided. (this note can then be removed)
About The Author
Christoph Puetz is a successful small business owner (Net Services USA LLC) and international author.
Guides, Tutorials, and Articles for small businesses - http://www.smallbusinessland.com
This article was posted on February 14, 2005
How To Make Your Website More Successful? (Part I)
Building a website and getting it online is easy. Driving visitors to it is the more difficult part. Most people are not patient enough when it comes to build up traffic. They expect thousands of visitors a week after they go live with their website. But that is not how it works. We share some secrets of how to make your website more successful.
Provide content: Search engines love content. As more content you can provide as better off you are. Don't put all the content on one page. Build many pages with content. The reason for this is that every page gets spidered separately by Google and other search engines. Each page of yours in their index is an additional chance that your link gets mentioned in somebody else search results. Quality content is more valuable to search engines as they want to provide real information to visitors. Search engines do not want to refer to link farms or redirects. If they can refer a customer directly to the most valuable content the better for the search engine. Search engines live of providing good results.
Domain Name: Do not use a domain name like www.freewebpages.com/~yourname - search engines don't like those. It also prevents you from building a brand name (your ultimate goal should be building a brand). Spend the $9.00 per year for your own domain name. It's money spend well worth.
Your website design: The simpler the better. Here is a rule of thumb: text content should outweigh the html content. The pages should be W3 validated and work in Internet Explorer as well as Mozilla's Firefox. If you go too fancy with stuff some search engine spiders might not be able to read your pages. Look at Google, eBay or Yahoo themself - simple design, easy to navigate and people are flocking to it. If you use sub-directories the directory names should be descriptive (i.e. "steel-products" or "paper-clips"). The same is true for you pages. If you are able to give pages a descriptive name as better you are off in the long run. Website performance is critical. If your pages load too slow you will punished. Make sure the website sits on a fast webserver and that the page sizes are 20K or less. If you can keep page sizes to 15K or less you are ahead of the curve.
Build one content page per day or at least 3-4 per week. You may think you do not have that many products. But establish yourself as a source of product or industry related information. If customers can learn from the content you provide they respect you and your business and this will lead them to use your services and products, too. Pages with 300-600 words should be more than sufficient.
Keywords: Make sure you use important keywords in the title of each topic and through-out the text without looking like a SPAMMER (meaning: do not go overboard using the keywords). Find out what important keywords for your business are.
This article can be published by anyone as long as a live back link to http://www.smallbusinessland.com is provided. (this note can then be removed)
About The Author
Christoph Puetz is a successful small business owner (Net Services USA LLC) and international author.
Guides, Tutorials, and Articles for small businesses - http://www.smallbusinessland.com
This article was posted on February 14, 2005
What Company Does Your Business Keep?
A man is known by the company he keeps. We have heard that phrase so many times. Our folks have cautioned us often with that in our silly childhood.
Do we heed to that advice in our business? Where do you hang out? What is your business surrounded by?
Have you heard about Christian Huygens?
This genius of early 17th century did something awesome. He discovered a law of resonance. A law which was well accepted in physics later and is now being applied to brain science.
Huygens kept few pendulum clocks on the wall of his room with each clock swinging independently. He discovered that after few cycles of independent cycling all the clocks started swinging precisely synchronized rhythm.
And he gave the world a law that seems inherent law of the nature.
He summarized that waves from clocks produced vibrations in the wall which in response produced waves that synchronized the rhythm of all clocks.
Scientists have now extended that law to working of brain waves and results are very -very promising.
Have you ever wondered that successful peoples are surrounded by similar ones? Is it a coincidence that when like minded people are at work the success is more likely!
Let us use this phenomenon to bring success to your business. It may be a home based business, online business or for that matter any venture.
To succeed in your business
Avoid Naysayers
Surround yourself with who have done or believe this can be done.
This is a much overlooked aspect of business. Your company definitely determines the outcome of your business dream.
Naysayers send you negative vibrations like This cant be done, You cant do this, Oh! It is impossible!
Your mind reacts to them like walls did to the clock and produces similar waves. Before you realize you already have lost faith in your dream. Naysayers will rotten your business. Keep as much away as possible. Realize your own vibrations and vibrate with belief.
Hang out with the other type, the positive ones. Believe in your business and converse with similar minds. You will be amazed with the difference it makes.
Your mind is the workshop of your success. Every business is first borne in the mind before the mind takes action to shape its vision.
Your mind is the powerhouse of ideas which will make your business a success.
Your mind is the source of your strength that enables you to carry the burden in difficult times.
Feed your mind the good food. Avoid stuffing in the junk food.
When you fall it is important to know and believe that many others have fallen and rose again. That is the attitude which will determine success. One must develop that attitude.
If you hang around with naysayers you will drown further because your own mind refuses to provide the necessary strength.
Success might be on the next turn waiting for you.
If you are negative in your approach you are sure to stop before that turn arrives.
So set your clocks again. It is time to vibrate with right frequency.
Copyright 2005 Arun Pal Singh
About The Author
Arun Pal Singh, a successful marketer and writer offers a unique and duplicable business opportunity at http://www.homeforprofits.com. To avail his free Income Course send a mail to homeforprofits@getresponse.com with subject subscribe.
This article was posted on February 14, 2005
The Simplest, Easiest Way to Create Your Own Product
Having trouble coming up with product ideas? Did you know that there is a product that you can create in as little as one afternoon?
An interview is the easiest way to create a new product for you to sell online or off. By far! Let's talk about it.
There are generally three ways to conduct an interview:
In person (face-to-face interview)
By telephone
By email
In this article I will be focusing on the "telephone" interview.
Many beginners find interviewing a daunting experience and avoid doing interviews even when it could benefit a project they're working on or be a new product in itself.
Tip: To overcome your nervousness practice, and then practice some more, on your family and friends before ever requesting your first "phone" interview.
Here's a few tips for when the day arrives and you need to conduct the interview.
Things you'll need:
Cassette Recorder or
Online Seminar Service (with recording capability)
Notebook and Pen
Do background research on the person before doing the interview. This could involve search engines, the library, the who's who directory etc.
Having some background knowledge will give you greater self-confidence and will help you to ask more interesting questions.
Interviews can be 10 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour or over the course of a month or more depending on the subject and the focus of the interview.
When you make a time for the interview propose to take at least 30 to 45 minutes.
Suggest to the interviewee that they find the most comfortable place in their home or office to do the interview. Being comfortable and in their own environment will put them at ease and make the interview process much simpler.
Preparing Questions:
Don't ask stupid questions... ask questions based on the research you performed and on items of interest brought up during the interview.
Prepare your list of questions in advance jotting down the questions and points you want to ask in brief heading form (they should be used only as a point of reference during the interview).
Listen carefully and establish a relaxed style of questioning. Listening is one of the most important skills of a great interviewer.
Allow the questions to flow according to the context, glancing at your list to refresh your memory or fill a long pause in the conversation.
Be open to new questions and new points raised during the interview. Flexibility in your interviewing style will allow you to pursue interesting or relevant sidelines as they come up.
Don't worry about ending up with more information than you expected. If it's valuable information it will only make your product more valuable.
If you are planning to use a cassette recorder, make sure you check the batteries, cassette tape and volume before you begin the interview.
Always ask permission to record before the interview starts, and then get started on the interview. Few people object to being recorded but if they do, just use your notebook.
There are very inexpensive cassette recorders that will hook directly up to your telephone and create a very good quality sound. There are also services on the Internet that will record the interview digitally which will save you time and expense in the end.
Be careful when recording that you don't lose concentration as this will "deaden" an interview.
Listen carefully to what is being said and be sure to understand the answers to your questions. If you don't understand an answer ask your interviewee to clarify their answer.
If a person is evasive to a question or doesn't give an answer, ask the question in a different way and at another point in your interview.
If someone gives "off the record information" turn the recorder off. Respect their right of privacy.
Always guide the interview process, but don't dominate it. If the person strays too far from the subject at hand, then quickly guide them back.
Always keep the recording on file in case someone should ever claim they have been misquoted. If the interview is likely to be in any way contentious the recording should remain in your file for at least a year or two.
Using photographs of the interviewee:
There are times when you may want to use a photograph of the person for the project you are working on. Photos of the person being interviewed make your sales page (if you are planning on writing a sales page for the Internet) much more personal.
TIP: If you use photographs, always get a signed agreement before using them and as a safeguard for yourself have them sign a Model Release Consent form. There have been cases when a person's photo has been used without his/her prior consent and the person has sued for modeling fees, invasion of privacy, or for various other reasons.
Note: For a variety of personal reasons some people may not want their picture to be used on the Internet. Always respect their request if this is the case.
Ask open-ended questions:
Asking open-ended questions instead of ones that invite a yes or no answer will give more interesting responses.
These questions usually begin with who, what, when, where and how, and cannot be answered with a straight yes or no.
Example: "When did you get into writing?" "what made you decide on this particular area of writing"? etc.
This type of questioning sets the framework of the interview and is a useful tool when digging for significant information. (also you will have plenty of useable material at the end of the interview).
Write up any information within hours of the interview if possible or at least within a day or so. You want to have the interview fresh in your mind.
As a courtesy, offer to send the person you have just interviewed a copy of your article or the url to your web site and send them a free copy of your finished ebook or recording.
An excellent resource for learning to do successful telephone interviews and profiting from them is "Other People's Info", by Jimmy Brown and Ryan Deiss. You can read more about it at http://www.nichexplosion.com.
Copyright 2005 Robert Kleine
About The Author
Robert Kleine has been marketing online for over 5 years and is owner and webmaster of OpportunityKnoxx http://www.opportunityknoxx.com and NichExplosion http://www.nichexplosion.com
This article was posted on February 13, 2005
Many times as I listen to people tell me why they think that network marketing, affiliate programs, and multilevel marketing is not for them, I am amazed at how little time these people have actually spent comparing the traditional job with those untraditional methods of earning a living.
I mention this because if you take a serious look at it, it appears to me that many so called regular jobs are a lot more restricting in respect to the ability of their employees to make money.
Lets compare the normal set-up of a traditional job versus the untraditional way of making a living.
In a traditional job, you get paid a set amount of money for performing a certain task over a set amount of time.
In untraditional work, you get paid a certain amount per sale and can make as many sales as you want during a set period of time.
In a traditional job, you increase your pay by getting a promotion to the next level in the hierarchy, which is determined by someone in the hierarchy above you saying that it is ok because you are qualified.
In untraditional work, you increase your pay by increasing the amount of sales you make, whether this is through your personal sales or through the collective sales of a team that you have put together. There is no pre-qualification screening.
In a traditional job, you are limited to when you receive an increase in pay by the number of available positions in the hierarchy above you. You have no control over this.
In untraditional work, your level of pay is directly tied to the amount of sales made by you and your team. You can increase your pay at anytime by increasing the amount of sales made by you and your team.
As I listen to these people explain to me why the untraditional way of earning a living doesnt work for them, I realize that what they are really saying to me is that they prefer comfort over control.
You see, with a job you know exactly how much youre going to be paid, and when.
The problem with this is that this amount cannot be increased until someone else says that it is ok and there is nothing that you can do to change that fact.
In the end , what it really comes down to is control.
With a traditional job, someone else has control and in the untraditional arena, you have control.
In either case, its still a matter of individual choice.
Apparently, network marketing, affiliate program, and multilevel marketing businesses have chosen to be in control.
About The Author
Nathaniel Balcom is the director of NVB and Associates, a home business association that assist its members in building and expanding their home business ventures. You can learn more about NVB and Associates by visiting http://www.myofc.org.
This article may be reproduced provided that this resource box is included as a part of the article and the article is reproduced in its entirety.
webmaster@myofc.org
This article was posted on February 12, 2005
Virus Nightmare..Lessons Learned
I got a virus the other day, Thursday I believe and since then I have been making FRANTIC efforts to save all my info.
The most important thing for me to save are my Outlook Express emails and my Roboform passwords. That way I can at least access all the places I need, to download and re-install all the software I use.
Thankfully I was able to still access my Laptop and very, very slowly (the system was painfully slow because of the damge done by the virus) start a process of trying to save my system without having to reformat the whole disk. I say thankfully because after a virus attack not everyone is able to even access the system.
I tried anti-virus software, I attempted to fix things using the various "malicious advertising" expulsion applications (Ad-aware, Spybot etc.). All to no avail. After almost three days I resigned myself to the fact that it would have to be a re-format which means restoring my Laptop to factory settings. What a nightmare!
First of all I made a backup of my Outlook express email software, emails, account settings etc. For this I downloaded a great little free trial software application called Outlook Express Back Up Wizard, a free trial can be downloaded here:
http://www.outlook-express-backup.com/ This software met by needs better than others I tried.
If you don't use Outlook Express then you can download others by searching here:
http://www.google.com/search?sourceid=navclient&ie=UTF-8&rls=RNWE,RNWE:2004-35,RNWE:en&q=email+backup+free+downloads
The I did a search for some backup software to back up the files that I could and also to use for future occasions. After trying a few that either wouldn't work on my system, or didn't back up to the medium that I wanted (CD Rom Discs) I found a great tool that just did the trick and in fact I plan to buy as soon as the free trial is up. The software is called "NTI Backup Now 4 Deluxe Suite" and it is so straightforward that even a tech dummy like me found it simple.
Again you can use the full version for 30 days free:
http://www.ntius.com/
I added my Roboform (www.roboform.com) passwords, my Internet Explorer favourites, my Outlook Express backup, my Microsoft Money backup files (For accounting purposes), as many software installation files as I had and most of the files and folders that I have used recently.
Of course what I also ralised is that I have not kept the Install files of loads of the software that I have on my Laptop. Bad mistake! This means that I will have to go search for these again to download to my reformatted system.
What I will do in future is save every Install file in it's own folder with passwords, serial numbers and any other useful info in a notepad file alongside them.
The hard lesson I have learned is to make sure in future I do frequent backups of my system. I have been online since 1998 and never had any major problems. This is the first and I foolishly underestimated the damage a virus could do.
My next step is to get an external drive to use as a backup and as I mentioned to use it frequently.
I hope this has given you some food for thought. As I sign off here I am going to insert my Toshiba Product Recovery CD-Rom.
If I had taken the necessary precautions I wouldn't have just lost three days of my time. Three days I could have been putting to better use.
Ah well, there is positive in every bad situation. Or at least that's what I keep telling myself:-).
Copyright 2005 http://www.conceiveandbelieve.com
About The Author
Mal Keenan is publisher and editor of Home Business Tips Newsletter:
http://www.home-business-tips-newsletter.com/
Visit His Home Business/Internet Marketing Training Site Below: http://www.pluginprofitstraining.com/
This article was posted on February 13, 2005
Stop trying to SELL and Start trying to HELP!
A New Mindset to Starting and Building a Home Based Business
One fatal flaw that I see when people begin a network marketing business is that their thoughts often focus on two concepts:
Who can I get to join my business?
Who can I get to buy my products?
Right from the start these people come across as being in a defensive and persuasive mode trying to get people to try their products and join their company. I know because when I first started my business I did the same thing! After a while I found that this method simply did not work, so after extensive research and experimenting I made a decision to change my thought process from a selling perspective to a teaching and educating perspective.
What am I teaching and educating you may ask?
I mentor and teach my team and prospects skills such as:
How to develop time and financial freedom.
How to set goals and achieve them.
How to successfully be the CEO of their own business from home.
How to become a successful business mentor to others.
How to easily spread the word about our company and its products.
You can see how people would be more responsive to what you have to say when they are not being sold something, but rather they are being shown how they will be mentored and helped in building a successful business.
I am going to help you vs. I am going to sell this to you. Which one would you be more comfortable with?
I have the vehicle for the success of hundreds and thousands of people worldwide who are looking for something better. I have the ability and tools to educate and mentor people to success that they never dreamed possible.
Stop trying to persuade people to join your company, teach them how you will help them succeed with their goals, and by doing so, YOU will be on your way to all of your goals!
About The Author
Do you need someone to mentor you in business success? Corey Bachmeier is looking to work with a group of motivated individuals who are interested in building a successful home based business. For a free introduction to his company check out his web site at: http://www.BodyExtreme2005.com, or he can be contacted by phone at 612-325-7773.
bachc1@earthlink.net
This article was posted on February 13, 2005
Getting Approved by Adsense in a Jiffy
I dont understand why everyone makes Adsense out to sound like some kind of devil. So far, I have a 100% approval rate for my consulting clients. You would think that we spend months developing the site to submit for approval but to be honest; I spend less than a day (if that!)
What we found is that Google is not nearly as picky as they make themselves sound to be. The trick is to make your site in such a way that you are just providing content; we have found that the less selling you do on your approval site, the better.
Dont worry, once youre approved you can use that code wherever you want so put it on other sites that sell later. But for the purposes of getting approved, try to limit to just content, content and more content!
Now, for the disclaimer before we start talking about how to get your site approved for Google Adsense. I am not a member of Google at all, everything I am about to say is all speculation and experience. I have helped over 50 clients get approved for Google Adsense without having even 1 of them not get approved we have 100% approval rate on FIRST try.
All I am going to teach you is exactly what I do for them.
There are three main elements that I focus on when getting a client approved:
Site look and feel Not that Google wants a $10,000 professionally designed website, but they also dont want some piece of junk. Make sure to at LEAST have a presentable website even if it is just a few tables and a solid background color. Avoid using tacky backgrounds or unprofessional color contrasts.
Content The most important Google believes in content. If you try to get a website with just a few pages approved, I dont think you will have any luck. You need to have at least 15-20 pages, preferably, 15-20 pages of articles/resources, a.k.a. content.
Traffic Many experts say that Google looks to see what kind of traffic you have and that they do not approve new sites with no traffic. My experience says that these experts are FULL of it. BUT, just to be safe, before you submit your site for approval try to get your site some traffic.
Here are useful tips you need to make the entire approval process easier and quicker:
Get content from article directories like www.goarticles.com just put those articles in your site, getting 15-20 is easy.
Before you submit your site for approval, post at some forums with your websites link in the signature file this will help you get some immediate traffic.
Make a very simple website with 15-20 articles, a contact us page, a privacy policy and the typical disclaimer.
Thats it youre ready to get approved for Google Adsense. I know I made it sound too easy, but honestly, we have a track record that proves it. And remember, if you do not get approved, you can always fix things and try again.
So, stop waiting apply now Google Adsense is a great source of income.
Copyright 2005 Anik Singal
About The Author
This article is written by Anik Singal, founder of AffiliateClassroom.com. Anik Singal has developed his own affiliate system that helped him earn well over $10,000 in just 60 days. Now, he's looking for a few students to train one step at a time.
http://www.AffiliateClassroom.com
This article was posted on February 13, 2005
Being organised is a major step to success and the most important things to organise are YOURSELF and your PLAN.
What do you want to accomplish? Is it a new home or to fund your children's further education, or a million and one other things I am sure you can think of. You can have whatever you want.
However, this will only happen however, if you want it enough. Are you willing to do what has to be done in order to get it? When you set your goals, write them down and set a target date for reaching them. You need to set both short term reachable goals and long term higher goals, yet don't set them too high. You will become discouraged if you do not achieve them.
Work CONSISTENTLY towards accomplishing your goals each day, each week and each month until you reach your short-term goals. Once you have attained your short-term goals, set them a little higher each time. This will ultimately lead to achieving your long-term goals. Goal setting is necessary in every area of life.
Another must do is SELF-DISCIPLINE! Just simple things like making sure you get up early each day, get ready for your job as if you were working outside your home. Make a "to do" list of all the things you want to accomplish during the day. This helps to give you an organised approach to each day. You will be amazed how much you can get done using a "To Do" list.
You need to be self motivated so set up a schedule and stick to it. Be ENTHUSIASTIC, as enthusiasm generates its own energy. Energy and good health are synonymous with motivated, happy people, otherwise known as achievers.
The key to your success is to have plenty of P.M.A., Positive Mental Attitude. The one person you have to convince that you can succeed at whatever you desire is YOURSELF. Why? Because you can. Success is 90 percent attitude and 10 percent aptitude. Learn the art of positive thinking. You can do whatever you put your mind to. It's mind over matter. Literally, if your mind is positive, your body follows suit and does all the things that a successful person will do. Your attitude will either guarantee your success or guarantee your failure. The only time you are a failure is if you give up.
Never allow yourself to become discouraged. Just remember... The more "NO's" you get, the closer to a "YES" you come. You must go through the NOs to get to the YESs.
Scheduling your time so that you use it wisely is your roadmap to success. If you dont have direction, you'll travel in circles and ultimately never reach your goals. Plan your work then work your plan.
Like most direct marketers you are most likely to work from your own home, but it is still essential to set up a specified work area. Take pride in your business to ensure your success.
A fool and his money are soon parted so make sure you set up a written budget. You MUST set aside a percentage of your business income to re-invest in your business. Failure to reinvest your money will result in the failure of your business.
Look after No one, YOURSELF! Make sure you get plenty of sleep, eat right and take some time out to take in the scenery.
If nothing else take this away with you:
BE PERSISTENT, it pays off
DO NOT GIVE UP! Its a known fact that most Businesses fail just when they are about To SUCCEED...
Copyright 2005 Michael Morris
About The Author
Mike Morris publishes, Make your home business work, a fresh and informative newsletter dedicated to supporting people like you! To find out the best in online business opportunities, plus free business tools, Visit http://www.r-u-making-a-profit.com.
This article was posted on March 04, 2005