9/29/2005 06:54:00 PM|W|P|Jeff Casmer|W|P|10 High Powered Ways To Increase Your Traffic Visit our sponsor: ------------------------------------------------------- *COMPLETE* Money Making Site Setup FREE! http://www.24hourwealth.com/pips.html ------------------------------------------------------- 1. Trade links with other web sites. They should be related to the subject of your web site. Instead of trading links, you could also trade banner ads, half page ads, classified ads, etc. 2. Start an e-zine for your web site. When people read each issue they'll be reminded to revisit your web site. They'll see your product ad more than just once which will increase your orders. 3. Form an online community. It could be an online message board, e-mail discussion list or chat room. When people get involved in your community they will regularly return to communicate with others. 4. Write articles and submit them to e-zines, web sites and magazines that accept article submissions. Include your business information and web address at the end of the article. 5. Give away an electronic freebie with your ad on it. Allow your visitors to also give the freebie away. This'll increase your ad exposure and attract people to your web site at the same time. 6. Combine your products or services into one big package deal with other businesses offerings. You could share a web site and advertise the package deal; which means double the traffic. 7. Submit your freebie to the online directories that list your particular item or service for free. If you're offering a free e-zine, submit it to all the free e-zine directories on the internet. 8. Participate on message boards. Post answers to other people's questions, ask questions and post appropriate information. Include your signature file at the end of all your postings. 9. Exchange classified or sponsor ads with other free e-zine publishers. If there is a huge subscriber difference between e-zines, one can run more ads to make up for it. 10. Post your ad on free advertising areas on the internet. You can post it on free classified ad sites, free for all links sites, newsgroups that allow ads, free yellow page directories, etc. Quote of the Day: "Hope is a waking dream." -- Aristotle|W|P|112804542451827680|W|P||W|P|webmaster@24hourwealth.com9/27/2005 09:00:00 PM|W|P|Jeff Casmer|W|P|10 Effective Ways To Reduce Your Business Costs Visit our sponsor: ------------------------------------------------------- 3 Easy Steps To Make Money Online http://www.24hourwealth.com ------------------------------------------------------- 1. Barter If you have a business you should be bartering goods and services with other businesses. You should try to trade for something before you buy it. Barter deals usually require little or no money. 2. Network Try networking your business with other businesses. You could trade leads or mailing lists. This will cut down on your marketing and advertising costs. You may also try bartering goods and services with them. 3. Wholesale/Bulk You'll save money buying your business supplies in bulk quantities. You could get a membership at a wholesale warehouse or buy them through a mail order wholesaler. Buy the supplies you are always running out of. 4. Free Stuff You should try visiting the thousands of freebie sites on the internet before buying your business supplies. You can find free software, graphics, backgrounds, online business services etc. 5. Borrow/Rent Have you ever purchased business equipment you only needed for a small period of time? You could have just borrowed the equipment from someone else or rented the equipment from a "rent-all" store. 6. Online/Offline Auctions You can find lower prices on business supplies and equipment at online and offline auctions. I'm not saying all the time, but before you go pay retail for these items try bidding on them first. 7. Plan Ahead Make a list of business supplies or equipment you'll need in the future. Keep an eye out for stores that have big sales. Purchase the supplies when they go on sale before you need them. 8. Used Stuff If your business equipment and supplies don't need to be new, buy them used. You can find used items at yard and garage sales, used stores, used stuff for sale message boards and newsgroups etc. 9. Negotiate You should always try negotiate a lower price for any business equipment or supplies. It doesn't hurt to try. Pretend you are talking to a salesman at a car lot. 10. Search You can always be searching for new suppliers for your business supplies and equipment. Look for suppliers with lower prices and better quality. Don't just be satisfied with a few. Quote of the Day: "It is courage, courage, courage, that raises the blood of life to crimson splendor. Live bravely and present a brave front to adversity." -- Horace|W|P|112788062811929947|W|P||W|P|webmaster@24hourwealth.com9/26/2005 06:47:00 PM|W|P|Jeff Casmer|W|P|Today's feature article is: 10 Cool Ways To Attract People To Your Web Site 1. Give people a free subscription to your e-zine. Almost everyone is publishing a e-zine nowadays so it's important to give something extra with the free subscription. You could offer a free gift or advertising when people subscribe. 2. Provide your visitors with free content. Your content will be more attractive to your visitors if it's up-to-date or original. You could also offer people the option to reprint the content in their e-zine or web site. 3. Offer a free online directory. The directory could be full of interesting ebooks, e-zines, web sites etc. If people find your directory to be a valuable resource they will visit it over and over. 4. Give your visitors a free ebook. You could also include your own ad in the ebook and allow other people to give it away. If you don't want to take the time to write one, you could ask other writers permission to use their articles. 5. Hold free online classes or seminars. They could be held in your web site's chat room. The idea of "live" information will definitely entice people to visit your web site. You will become known as an expert on the topic. 6. Give visitors a free entry into your contest or sweepstakes. The prizes should be something of interest or value to your visitors. Most people who enter will continually revisit your web site to get the results. 7. Let visitors download free software. It could be freeware, shareware, demos etc. You could even turn part of your site into a free software directory. If you created the software, include your ad inside and let other people give it away. 8. Offer free online services or utilities from your web site. They could be search engine submitting,copy writing proofreading etc. The service or utility should be helpful to your target audience. 9. Give free consulting to people who visit your web site. You could offer your knowledge via e-mail or by telephone. People will consider this a huge value because consulting fees can be very expensive. 10. Give your visitors a free membership to your online club. People want to belong to something, why not your online club. You could also give away a free e-zine for club members only. Quote of the Day: "Forget the resolutions. Forget control and discipline...too much work. Instead try experimenting. Go in search of something to fall in love with...something about yourself, your career, your spouse." -- Dale Dauten 3 Easy Steps To Make Money Online www.24hourwealth.com/pips|W|P|112778574195948701|W|P||W|P|webmaster@24hourwealth.com9/24/2005 01:52:00 PM|W|P|Jeff Casmer|W|P|Hi folks, Have you read my "work at home ideas" articles I posted? Why not? Yes...I should be ashamed of myself for not allowing my journal to give the proper guidance on my journey to financial security or give you a blue print of how to make money online in the new century. But, that is changing as of today, this very minute, etc. I owe it to all my students and downline members in my programs to step up to the plate and give my readers information that is power packed and not just for one day but consistently day in and day out. This blog is designed to help you find the right "work at home ideas" you are looking for to begin your journey of working from home and getting rid of that full time job. I am not here to promote my website www.24hourwealth.com ....lol......like I just did but to help others do what I am doing day in and day out.... Get ready because here it comes...... Hold on for a wild ride... Get back to my previous posts and read all of those articles....print them, use them (keeping author resources box intact) but please utilize them to help you get your business off the ground......till next time....|W|P|112759518000814108|W|P||W|P|webmaster@24hourwealth.com9/23/2005 12:09:00 PM|W|P|Jeff Casmer|W|P|Hi, My name is Jeff Casmer and I have been an entreprenuer for over 10 years in many different opportunities. I tried anything from no money down real estate to placing small ads in newspapers. I was desperate to make extra money instead of working for someone else all of my life. I have 3 kids (my son AJ has autism) who depend on their father for financial support not only emotional and physical so I was determined to make it "on my own" in business. This journal is about that journey as you see how I now make over $5500 every month and growing fast. I will take you step by step on my journey in the hopes that I help just one person. Thats all I desire. My goal is to earn $10,000 monthly by the end of the summer and I want to share that journey with you and help you achieve these goals as well. I am no genious. I know. Everyone says that. For me, before I take you on this journey I need to let you know where I have been. I have been in online businesses for over 10 years. Around October 2002 I found SFI (www.moreinfo247.com/7594444/SIM) and decided to join since it was FREE. I figured lets see what this program is all about and decided to confirm my affiliate status which means that I get a bunch of websites already made for me to promote several products that SFI has to offer. I figured what a great training ground to improve my knowledge. Couldnt hurt??? As I was doing alot of research with the training ground they provided I came across a service called "PIPS" (www.24hourwealth.com/pips). This guy who came up with this concept I remembered seeing on the leaderboard of SFI for always having the most sales each month and bringing in the most new affiliates (an important concept when dealing with affiliate programs). So I decided to give it a try. I didnt have the knowledge to build my own website and this guy (Stone Evans) said he would build me a website that included several affiliate programs (including SFI) and I had the ability to make changes. That was important so if my business changed I could change the website with it. The only charge I had to pay was to host my new website on Host4Profit (http://www.host4profit.com/cgi-bin/home.cgi?33829 $24.95 monthly which I could easily recoup by referring a couple of people to PIPS which earns you $10 per month every month! Refer 10 people thats an extra $100 per month for doing almost nothing. Within 24 hours Stone had my very own personal website ready to pull orders and make some cash! Dada!!! www.24hourwealth.com I was so excited I couldnt believe it. My own money making website that could earn me money 24 hours a day 365 days a week! A day I wont forget...... Till next time.... Jeff Casmer|W|P|112750266741457048|W|P||W|P|webmaster@24hourwealth.com9/21/2005 10:45:00 AM|W|P|Jeff Casmer|W|P|The Benefits of a Home Based Business Copyright © Jeff Casmer, The Wealth Guy http://www.24hourwealth.com 3 Easy Steps To Create Money Online http://www.24hourwealth.com/pips Taking advantage of a home-based business opportunity can afford you many benefits. There are not only the monetary benefits, but lifestyle benefits as well. Whether lifestyle or monetary, these benefits can be far greater than the benefits you receive working for an employer. If you are already working in your own home-based business or just entertaining the idea, be sure to evaluate your options and consider the value of the benefits you will receive. Home-based business opportunities can provide you with independence and financial freedom if you make smart decisions. It is not always money that motivates people to start a home-based business. Sometimes the intangible benefits are more important factors when considering home-based business opportunities. One of the more powerful draws to working from home is the sense of freedom you gain. You can set your own schedule, work the hours that are most convenient for you, and have time available for family obligations and leisure activities. Parents with children in school often think about what home-based business opportunities may be available to them. Teacher conferences, after school activities and the ability to be home when the children are out of school are strong motivators in making the decision to start a home-based business. Working from home gives you the benefit of flexible hours and the freedom to adjust your schedule according to the needs of your family. Stress reduction is another benefit of operating a home-based business. Any business will likely produce its own kind of stress, but certain stressful factors can be avoided when you take advantage of the more promising home business opportunities that are available to you. You will have no daily commute, you will save money on gas and automobile expenses, and you will have the extra time in the morning and evening to relax and interact with your family instead of spending that time getting to and from work. If you plan properly and budget your time wisely, being your own boss can reduce the stress you feel due to constant demands and co-worker interruptions. A home-based business opportunity cannot only give you the benefit of earning money while working from your home it can give you many other benefits as well. A home-based business is the perfect chance for you to attain financial and personal freedom. There are numerous home-based business opportunities available to you. Research each one carefully and make sure you are willing to put forth the effort that will be required in order to succeed. About The Author: -------------------------------------------------- Jeff Casmer Will Help Build A Money Making Website Just For You That's 100% Ready To Take Orders And Pull In Massive Residual Profits Today! Get All The Exciting Details And Signup Now At: http://www.24hourwealth.com -------------------------------------------------- NOTE: You have full permission to reprint this article within your website or newsletter as long as you leave the article fully intact and include the "About The Author" resource box. Thanks! :-)|W|P|112732505432516718|W|P||W|P|webmaster@24hourwealth.com9/20/2005 11:35:00 AM|W|P|Jeff Casmer|W|P|Starting an Online Business - Affiliate Programs Make it Easy Copyright © Jeff Casmer, The Wealth Guy http://www.24hourwealth.com If you have been longing to start a business online you may be coming across terms you've never heard before. You may also have found the opportunities available are overwhelming. Where do you begin? AFFILIATE PROGRAMS - EASY START Affiliate programs may be the easiest online business to start running. Why? With any online business you must have a product or service to sell. First you must create this product or service and then you must be able to fill orders. Selling your own product or service also means creating a website, learning how to write ad copy, setting up a marketing plan, being able to accept payments online and obviously doing the work. If you're selling a physical product then you will need to make or buy the item, package it and pay for shipping costs. If you provide a service than you will likely have to start by doing free jobs to build your credibility and then when you are charging for your service you are still limited by how much work you can actually handle. THE MAGIC OF AFFILIATE PROGRAMS Affiliate programs are a great way to get started in an online business. In fact there are even some 'Super Affiliates' who are making fabulous incomes from affiliate programs. So, what ARE affiliate programs? Affiliate programs allow you to sell another company's service or product and make a commission on every sale or lead. You do not even need to build a website or handle the transaction. Your job is to drive traffic (customers) to your affiliate link. An affiliate link is a special URL code that will identify customers coming to the company's site from your advertising. It will likely be the website address with a code attached to the end. Some affiliate programs also have tiers. That means if someone who is interested in SELLING the product comes through your link and signs up you will also get a small percentage of THEIR earnings. HOW DO I CHOOSE A PROGRAM? You should research the popularity of some of your interests. Try to determine if people are buying that product or service online. There are many sources for finding that information including free ones such as the Overture keyword tool. When you have found an area that is popular then type the subject along with 'affiliate program' into your search engine and see which programs have services or products for that area. You can also use an affiliate program directory. When you have found a program that looks interesting you should read the terms of the program. Make sure that payouts are not based on a high commission earning or you may never see your money. Also try to choose programs with high commission rates. Often you will find ebooks and downloadable software has the highest rates as there is no physical product to make or ship. If you are satisfied with the terms then you need to sign up - usually a simple process. START MARKETING The reason affiliate programs are so great for beginners is that you only need to focus on marketing - not making - your product. Many affiliate programs have information on how to market and give you tools such as banners, product feeds and more. You can also look for other information on marketing including writing articles, creating pay-per-click campaigns, commenting in online forums etc. As you gain experience marketing you will make adjustments to your selling and start creating a wonderful income! About The Author: -------------------------------------------------- Jeff Casmer Will Help Build A Money Making Website Just For You That's 100% Ready To Take Orders And Pull In Massive Residual Profits Today! Get All The Exciting Details And Signup Now At: http://www.24hourwealth.com -------------------------------------------------- NOTE: You have full permission to reprint this article within your website or newsletter as long as you leave the article fully intact and include the "About The Author" resource box. Thanks! :-)|W|P|112724134446232410|W|P||W|P|webmaster@24hourwealth.com9/20/2005 11:34:00 AM|W|P|Jeff Casmer|W|P|How to Make Your eZine Work for You Long After It's Published Copyright © Jeff Casmer, The Wealth Guy http://www.24hourwealth.com If you publish an email newsletter, do you convert the issues to HTML and archive them on your website? If you haven't been doing so, you should start now, today. "But the free mailing service I use already archives them." you say. That's great! That means the search engines will find that many more links to your site online. But it is worth the effort to put them on your website also. You can do it simply and quickly. First, here are three good reasons why you should take the time out of your busy schedule: 1) It shows your subscribers and potential subscribers that your newsletter is a vital part of your service to them. Isn't it worth preserving for posterity? 2) Your newsletter will contain many keywords -- those subjects for which people and consequently search engines often search. If you submit them to the search engines, they'll draw traffic to your website. You can create an index page for them and put them all in their own directory, or even put them on their own domain, and submit it to the search engines and directories as a stand-alone online business resource. 3) Advertisers love the fact that their ads will live on. Statistics show that website visitors read archived newsletters fairly regularly. That is especially true if you add a search function to your site so that your archives may be searched by subject. Here's how to do it: It should take you at the most about 15 minutes to convert your newsletter from text to HTML. Most of that time is spent in coding the many URLs to make them clickable. There are many text editing software programs that will convert text to HTML quickly. Some HTML editing software programs will do it also, with a single copy/paste action. One great and free text editor is NoteTab Light. If you don't have it, you are missing a great resource. It works with text and HTML both, does almost everything but slice bread, and it's free! No ads and no nags. (There is a low-priced Pro version that does even more!) Here's where to get it: www.notetab.com We'll use NoteTab Light for our illustration. Got it installed now? Okay, open up your newsletter in NoteTab Light. On the toolbar at the top, click on "Modify." On the drop-down menu, choose "Document to HTML," and on the menu that pops out, choose "With Paragraph Tags." Save the resulting document with a .htm or .html extension. If you want the page width to conform to the reader's web browser size, click search and remove all the BREAK tags. Add a title, meta tag description and keywords, and upload it. Now you have a resource for your visitors and a draw for the search engines, and all for only a few minutes' work. Stick some Google Adsense or your own ads on the page, and you also have a money maker! About The Author: -------------------------------------------------- Jeff Casmer Will Help Build A Money Making Website Just For You That's 100% Ready To Take Orders And Pull In Massive Residual Profits Today! Get All The Exciting Details And Signup Now At: http://www.24hourwealth.com -------------------------------------------------- NOTE: You have full permission to reprint this article within your website or newsletter as long as you leave the article fully intact and include the "About The Author" resource box. Thanks! :-)|W|P|112724126986360985|W|P||W|P|webmaster@24hourwealth.com9/20/2005 11:33:00 AM|W|P|Jeff Casmer|W|P|Find Your Niche - the Internet Marketer's Goldmine Copyright © Jeff Casmer, The Wealth Guy http://www.24hourwealth.com If you haven't heard the word 'niche' being batted around by Internet Marketers then you haven't been listening. Finding a niche has become the antidote to competing in overly saturated online markets. What is a niche? According to Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary a niche is described as "a place, employment, status, or activity for which a person or thing is best fitted... a specialized market". Have you noticed that despite the closing of many businesses in these harsh economic times, the local hobby train store is still around? That the 'hole-in-the-wall' eatery is thriving? Or that trends such as scrapbooking can start with a bang and still close within a year when four similar businesses start up in the same area? The online business world reflects the same trends as experienced in the offline world - often with faster turnover and startup rates. Those who promote a product or site that targets a small, select audience can tap into a market that is otherwise not being served. Despite the limitations of the client base, the targeted nature of the business creates a devoted and active market - the aim of any business. HOW DO I FIND A NICHE? Finding a niche requires diligent research. Whether you have access to software that harvests and sorts information or you take a manual approach you must first start with ideas. With a pen and paper (or computer, if that's more comfortable) brainstorm a list of businesses, products and industries. Create a list of keywords and phrases you think would be used by individuals looking for these items online. Use a software program such as Wordtracker or a free resource such as the Overture Keyword Selector Tool to find keywords for your niche that have a high amount of traffic. Although a program like Wordtracker makes it easy to find details such as how many sites compete for that market, you can also do your own research. Concentrate your attention on question phrases such as "how do I..." or "where can I...". These questions will clue you into potential markets that need servicing. Next, look in Google Answers. Type one of your keywords into the search area. What questions are being asked and how much are people willing to pay for answers? If you find a group of keywords with a high number of questions then enter these words in your browser's search engine. What sites come up? Do they provide answers or solutions to the problem? How are they making money? Can you see an opportunity to service these individuals? Finding a niche can open the door to a profitable online business. Research the market and be certain that your product or service is valuable to this group. Find forums or groups that target this audience and pay close attention to their concerns. If you can help these people you WILL make money. The best of both worlds! About The Author: -------------------------------------------------- Jeff Casmer Will Help Build A Money Making Website Just For You That's 100% Ready To Take Orders And Pull In Massive Residual Profits Today! Get All The Exciting Details And Signup Now At: http://www.24hourwealth.com -------------------------------------------------- NOTE: You have full permission to reprint this article within your website or newsletter as long as you leave the article fully intact and include the "About The Author" resource box. Thanks! :-)|W|P|112724123194018409|W|P||W|P|webmaster@24hourwealth.com9/20/2005 11:33:00 AM|W|P|Jeff Casmer|W|P|5 Surefire Ways to Increase Sales Copyright © Jeff Casmer, The Wealth Guy http://www.24hourwealth.com The Internet has changed how people do their business. Even small business owners are able to reach global market inexpensively nowadays, selling anything from apparel, collectibles, to computer software, service and coaching. The core of every business is sales. Many of the strategies to increase sales offline are applicable online, but not all of them. On the Internet, everybody can effort to fail fast and learn from it. Better still, after years of testing and tracking what works online, people can just learn from other people's experience and cut the learning curve tremendously. Here are 5 of the surefire ways to increase sales: 1. Establish a sound affiliate program If it is just another affiliate program, then don't expect to have different results. Focus on building a sound affiliate program, with the tools and materials to support affiliates to promote a program easily. After all, affiliates work like clockwork and should be seen as a team. Provide them with the right promotion tools and they will more likely promote the program. Give the customers an option to join the affiliate program after purchase. Satisfied customers are one of the best marketing for any business. Spread the good words through word of mouth. Best of all, they are paid just for doing that. 2. Follow-up after first purchase The hardest task in any business is acquiring the first sale. Make sure that capturing customers' name and email addresses are the least information gathered from a sale. With that information in hand, follow-up with existing customers, probably through an automated mechanism like timely autoresponder. This effort has been proven to decrease refund on products and increase customers' satisfaction. Every once in a while, mention a related product that might be of interest to the customers. Write a review and provide real results. Such promotion is extremely inexpensive, but very effective in practice. The product can be anything, including an affiliate program. 3. Use up-sell technique Just before a customer check out to the payment gateway, prompt for optional upgrade to the better, bigger, or nicer product for a fairly steep discount, preferably not available elsewhere. A certain number of customers will choose the option, which translates into additional sales, almost without additional effort. 4. Provide discount coupons Coupons urge customers to come back and shop. Promotional coupons work for both advertising and some forms of joint venture. Customers love to know that they get lower price for what they buy. Coupons make it so real and tangible. 5. Cross-promote with other related products There is no limit as to how this could be accomplished. Joint venture with other business or even competitors is feasible as long as it brings a win-win situation. One example would be to give away sample of other product or service as part of the whole package. As long as the sample is relevant to the customer, this promotion could only be seen as an added value instead of pure advertising. There are many other tactics to increase sales but above tips have been proven to work again and again. Choose one at a time and take action. Good luck About The Author: -------------------------------------------------- Jeff Casmer Will Help Build A Money Making Website Just For You That's 100% Ready To Take Orders And Pull In Massive Residual Profits Today! Get All The Exciting Details And Signup Now At: http://www.24hourwealth.com -------------------------------------------------- NOTE: You have full permission to reprint this article within your website or newsletter as long as you leave the article fully intact and include the "About The Author" resource box. Thanks! :-)|W|P|112724120231055111|W|P||W|P|webmaster@24hourwealth.com9/20/2005 11:32:00 AM|W|P|Jeff Casmer|W|P|10 Costly Search Engine Mistakes to Avoid Copyright © Jeff Casmer, The Wealth Guy http://www.24hourwealth.com If you have a website then you already know the importance of traffic. Traffic is to Internet marketing as location is to real estate. It's the only thing that really matters. If you cannot generate targeted visitors to your site, you will not make any sales. Usually the owner or designer of the website is the person designated to drive traffic to the site. The chief ingredient in generating traffic is the search engine. Of coarse, you can use advertising, but it's going to cost you. Using the search engines to generate targeted (interested in your product) traffic is the least expensive method known. Unfortunately, many website owners do not understand the importance of search engine visibility, which leads to traffic. They place more importance on producing a "pretty" website. Not that this is bad, but it is really secondary to search engine placement. Hopefully, the following list of common mistakes, made by many website owners, will help you generate more targeted traffic to your site...after all, isn't that what you want. 1. Not using keywords effectively. This is probably one of the most critical area of site design. Choose the right keywords and potential customers will find your site. Use the wrong ones and your site will see little, if any, traffic. 2. Repeating the same keywords. When you use the same keywords over and over again (called keyword stacking) the search engines may downgrade (or skip) the page or site. 3. Robbing pages from other websites. How many times have you heard or read that "this is the Internet and it's ok" to steal icons and text from websites to use on your site. Don't do it. Its one thing to learn from others who have been there and another to outright copy their work. The search engines are very smart and usually detect page duplication. They may even prevent you from ever being listed by them. 4. Using keywords that are not related to your website. Many unethical website owners try to gain search engine visibility by using keywords that have nothing at all to do with their website. They place unrelated keywords in a page (such as "sex", the name of a known celebrity, the hot search topic of the day, etc.) inside a meta tag for a page. The keyword doesn't have anything to do with the page topic. However, since the keyword is popular, they think this will boost their visibility. This technique is considered spam by the search engines and may cause the page (or sometimes the whole site) to be removed from the search engine listing. 5. Keyword stuffing. Somewhat like keyword stacking listed above, this means to assign multiple keywords to the description of a graphic or layer that appears on your website by using the "alt=" HTML parameter. If the search engines find that this text does not really describe the graphic or layer it will be considered spam. 6. Relying on hidden text. You might be inclined to think that if you cannot see it, it doesn't hurt. Wrong.... Do not try to hide your keywords or keyword phrases by making them invisible. For example, some unethical designers my set the keywords to the same color as the background of the web page; thereby, making it invisible. 7. Relying on tiny text. This is another version of the item above (relying on hidden text). Do not try to hide your keywords or keyword phrases by making them tiny. Setting the text size of the keywords so small that it can barely be seen does this. 8. Assuming all search engines are the same. Many people assume that each search engine plays by the same rules. This is not so. Each has their own rule base and is subject to change anytime they so desire. Make it a point to learn what each major search engine requires for high visibility. 9. Using free web hosting. Do not use free web hosting if you are really serious about increasing site traffic via search engine visibility. Many times the search engines will eliminate content from these free hosts. 10. Forgetting to check for missing web page elements. Make sure to check every page in your website for completeness, like missing links, graphics, etc. There are sites on the web that will do this for free. This is just a few of the methods and techniques that you should avoid. Do not give in to the temptation that these methods will work for you. They will do more harm than good for your website. Not only will you spend weeks of wasted effort, you may have your site banned from the search engines forever. Invest a little time to learn the proper techniques for increasing search engine visibility and your net traffic will increase. About The Author: -------------------------------------------------- Jeff Casmer Will Help Build A Money Making Website Just For You That's 100% Ready To Take Orders And Pull In Massive Residual Profits Today! Get All The Exciting Details And Signup Now At: http://www.24hourwealth.com -------------------------------------------------- NOTE: You have full permission to reprint this article within your website or newsletter as long as you leave the article fully intact and include the "About The Author" resource box. Thanks! :-)|W|P|112724116402633240|W|P||W|P|webmaster@24hourwealth.com9/20/2005 11:31:00 AM|W|P|Jeff Casmer|W|P|Your Home Business: Turning Pennies into Dollars Copyright © Jeff Casmer, The Wealth Guy http://www.24hourwealth.com Henry Ford taught us that to simplify the manufacture of automobiles, that the best way to do so was to install the assembly line. That one change revolutionized the auto manufacturing industry permitting the industry to build cars at a cost whereas the average person could afford to buy one. The lesson we should take from this is that having the ability to improve the process of getting the job quicker and cheaper, without compromising the quality of the job being done, will help catapult the person who simplified the process to the top of his/her field. Pennies saved in your home business can turn into dollars at the end of the day, and dollars can quickly multiply into hundreds or thousands of dollars over time. Doubt me if you will, but let me ask you a question. Do you think a saving of two fifths of a penny could make any real difference in the profit margin of a home business? Of course the right answer is "it depends on how many transactions are done in a year, utilizing the savings of the two fifths of one penny." You only have to think back a couple of decades to really appreciate this question. Do you remember the nut that lived and died in a Las Vegas hotel room? You know the one who was a billionaire, and was so worried about germs that he died of starvation? If you guessed Howard Hughes (1905-76), pat yourself on the back. Now Howard did not make all of his money on his two fifths of one penny. He did however make a ton of money from his two fifths of one penny. It seems Howard owned a can manufacturing company. And one day, Howard's team figured out how they could make one minor change in the design of their food can to reduce the amount of tin necessary to make a single can. As the story goes --- if my memory serves me correctly --- the reduction in tin usage equaled a saving of two fifths of one penny per can. Howard --- being the really smart businessman that he was --- decided that he would not be so greedy as to keep all of the savings for himself. What Mr. Hughes did do was to keep half of the savings for himself, and give the other half to his customers. The incredible thing about Mr. Hughes decision is that by saving his customers an extra one fifths of one cent per can, he managed to take more market share away from his competition --- netting his company an additional and substantial portion of the total market share in the canning industry. Let us return our thoughts to your home business. Have you ever gotten the feeling of excitement --- when you read something or thought of something --- that you could not wait to implement this new idea? This could be one of those moments... In every home business, there are certain processes that we do over and again. Sometimes it may be possible to trim the time or expense of a process which in turn will add pennies or dollars to your bottom line. If it is a process that you do hundreds or thousands of times per month, then your savings will multiply into hundreds or thousands of dollars in monthly savings. Imagine what running a home business was like BEFORE the computer... Before the personal computer, we had to hand type all letters and invoices. Now, we can setup a letter or invoice that we send out quite often, and we can save it in our word processor so that when we need to use it again, we can print it quickly and efficiently. There is no longer a need to type the document again from scratch. The computer has simplified our business communications and has provided us the opportunity to reduce our costs of doing business. Think about all of the other processes that the computer has enabled us to do for far less expense than what we could in the past. In this case, the computer is a tool that permits us to save time and money. So, my challenge to you is to begin examining the processes in your own home business and look for ways in which you can save yourself time and money. It is far better for you to contemplate on this matter than it is for me to do so for you. Simply put, you know your business better than anyone on the planet does. Therefore, you are in a better position than anyone to find those extra dollars that will decrease your costs and increase your profits. The extra pennies and dollars you could extract from your business could spell the difference between success and failure for your home business enterprise. About The Author: -------------------------------------------------- Jeff Casmer Will Help Build A Money Making Website Just For You That's 100% Ready To Take Orders And Pull In Massive Residual Profits Today! Get All The Exciting Details And Signup Now At: http://www.24hourwealth.com -------------------------------------------------- NOTE: You have full permission to reprint this article within your website or newsletter as long as you leave the article fully intact and include the "About The Author" resource box. Thanks! :-)|W|P|112724109803195241|W|P||W|P|webmaster@24hourwealth.com9/20/2005 11:29:00 AM|W|P|Jeff Casmer|W|P|Understanding the Different Methods of Online Promotion Copyright © Jeff Casmer, The Wealth Guy http://www.24hourwealth.com Did you realize there are only three types of online promotion?... This statement may seem odd and even untrue in your mind, but I am speaking in more general terms than you might be thinking. Let me explain. The three types of promotion are Junk, Active and Passive promotions. JUNK PROMOTIONS ARE MONEY PITS Junk promotions are those that seem to produce results, but by their very nature are really only illusionary promotions. For example, let me begin with FFA (Free For All) pages. You might find yourself subscribing to a submission program that tricks you into believing you are submitting your links to tens of thousands search engines. Yes, you can submit your URL to a FFA page, but FFA’s usually only permit 100 or 1000 links on their page at any one time. So, if ten thousand people are submitting a link to an FFA page on a daily basis, then the average life of your link is between seven minutes and 144 minutes. I suspect the actual number of submitters is much higher and the results are much worse. Given that few people surf FFA pages, the chances of your submission being of any real value is practically nothing! Most of the people telling you that you can submit your site to tens of thousands of search engines are truly only submitting your site to FFA pages! Beware of the false promises. Another junk promotion method is Safe Lists. A safe list is a mailing group that is signed up to be received by people who want to submit their own ads. Now, most safe lists have thousands of subscribers who are able to submit their ads daily or weekly. The person signed up to receive the list will receive anywhere from twenty to 140+ messages a day from the list. These messages will be received by people only interested in promoting their own thing who do not have the right motivation to open, let alone read Your Advertising. As a result, thousands of messages go out daily or weekly that will never be seen by anyone but the sender of the ad. Where is the value in that? There is none. ACTIVE PROMOTIONS Active promotions are the type that require you to go out on a daily basis or a weekly basis and put out your advertisements. With active promotions, you will either place your advertising or you will not sell your products or services. Your choice is simple --- work or starve. Examples of active promotions include Pay Per Click Search Engines (PPCSE’s), Direct Email, Ezine Advertising, Solo Ezine Ads, Newsletter Publishing, Ezine Ad Swaps, Classified Ads, Auctions, Site Sponsorship and Banner Ads. Some people are able to utilize these methods very productively, while others are destined to drop their money into the bottomless pit of failed Internet promotions. PASSIVE PROMOTIONS Passive promotions are those promotions that can continue to provide results for you long after you have invested the work to make them available to the Internet community. Examples of passive promotions include: Link Exchanges, Articles, Ebooks, Content Exchanges and Writing Testimonials for others. Let’s look at articles as a solid example of my point. You are reading an article that I have written to promote my own business. This article is timeless and therefore could have been written five years ago and still have been as valuable as it is today. Due to the fact that the article is timeless, it can and will be placed in newsletters/ezines and their accompanying online archives, on websites and in ebooks for many more years to come. As a result, this article will continue to serve me well beyond the time in which I wrote it and submitted it to publishers and webmasters for public consumption and publication. This is the best example I can give you of an excellent passive promotional method. AVOID THE MONEY PITS Many try and even fewer succeed to conquer the Internet and to produce their dreams of online wealth. My hope is that you will be one of the people who conquer the challenges before you and to make a nice living while working online. It will take drive, determination, study plus trial and error, but you can make it work for you. Please continue to educate yourself so that you can avoid the money pits - instead, strive to find the money barrels. It can be done. I am living proof. About The Author: -------------------------------------------------- Jeff Casmer Will Help Build A Money Making Website Just For You That's 100% Ready To Take Orders And Pull In Massive Residual Profits Today! Get All The Exciting Details And Signup Now At: http://www.24hourwealth.com -------------------------------------------------- NOTE: You have full permission to reprint this article within your website or newsletter as long as you leave the article fully intact and include the "About The Author" resource box. Thanks! :-)|W|P|112724095667158887|W|P||W|P|webmaster@24hourwealth.com9/20/2005 11:27:00 AM|W|P|Jeff Casmer|W|P|Understanding the Difference Between Marketing and Promotion Copyright © Jeff Casmer, The Wealth Guy http://www.24hourwealth.com Are you an online marketer? Or do you simply promote affiliate programs? Marketing is truly the most misunderstood word in use today on the Internet. Let me see if I can clarify this issue just a bit. In Marketing 101 at your local university, marketing is actually the process of Product, Place, Price and Promotion. PRODUCT No business can exist without a product or service to sell. In a nutshell, entrepreneurs are the people who believe in a product, service or idea, so much that they are willing to invest their lives into the development of their dream. Historically, every major corporation in the world was started by an entrepreneur with a dream and the drive to make it a reality. However, there comes a time in the life of every corporation when those who fear the gambling nature of their founder, squash the entrepreneurial drive that made the company a viable concern in the first place. The entrepreneur will either submit to the careful nature of the stockholders, or he will be forced to leave the company he created. The only entrepreneurs who withstand the pressure to move more carefully are those who have maintained majority control over their companies. PLACE In the offline world, place is defined by location. On the Internet, place is defined by domain name and the web hosting service chosen. Both online and offline, place can make or break a company without respect to the quality and value of the product, service or idea. PRICE Selecting a price is determined first on a basis of whether the company wants to be seen as a discount or a value company. Take for example Wal-Mart and Staples. Wal-Mart is the lead discounter in the marketplace. Staples on the other hand is the specialist in office supplies. Both sell a significant number of office supplies despite the fact that the lowest price can usually be found at Wal-Mart. As a value dealer, Staples can afford to charge more for their products than Wal-Mart. So the question for you is whether you want to position your company as a discount or value company. Testing has shown that products and services can be sold at any number of prices and still reach a significant number of people. The challenge of selecting the best price for your product or service will require a certain amount of testing. UNDERSTANDING THE PRICING EQUATION Let's assume we are selling a product. Let us also assume that we know that the product can be sold for $10 or $50. Let us also assume that if the price dips below $10 or rises above $50, then the product sales fall off significantly. Our challenge is to determine the best rate at which to sell our product. Testing has shown us that we can sell 1000 items a week at $10. Testing has also shown that we can sell 500 items per week at $50. And testing has shown that we can sell 650 items per week at $45. At $10, our projected weekly earnings are $10,000. When we sell the product at $50, we know that we can earn $25,000 per week. Most importantly, we know that we can earn $29,250 when our product is priced at $45. With the imaginary testing we have done on our imaginary product, we can easily see that selling our product at $45 per item will earn us more money over the long haul. Thus, when we make the decision for a national rollout of our product, then we will price our product at $45. Of course, this is a very simplistic analysis of the point I am trying to make. Though simple, I believe this analogy will help you understand the methods of developing a product's prices. PROMOTION Promotion, on the other hand, is the process of notifying the consumers for your product or service of your availability to serve them. Methods of promotion vary distinctly and should be arranged to meet very specific goals. As with product, place and price, promotion should not be left to chance. You should test every ad, every media, and every price point to determine the best bang for your promotional dollars. HEADS UP! If you are an online promoter or marketer, please factor in the most important element concerning the cost of your promotions. What element is that? Your time! Value your time at a certain dollar amount, and figure in your time into the cost of your promotional accounting. I say this because too many online promoters lose sight of this concept and spend 20 hours to generate one sale while using free advertising. Even if you rate your time at the federal minimum wage, then you will have invested $105 of your time for one sale that might only net you a gross sale of $45! ARE YOU TRULY A MARKETER OR ARE YOU JUST A PROMOTER? Most people who run a business on the Internet call themselves marketers. Yet, most of these same people are really just promoters wrapped in the label of a marketer. True marketers do not promote without a lot of advance work. They spend time planning, testing and measuring their actions and results to get the most out of every dollar spent and earned. Entrepreneurs finesse the art of marketing as they build their company into a major enterprise. If you are a promoter who does not keep an eye on the total marketing equation, then you are bound to fail. If you do call yourself a marketer, then do what a professional marketer does. Make sure that every dollar spent is spent well. Make sure that every dollar earned is put to good use. Market well so that when the people of the next generation look at your life, they will see a fine example of a successful entrepreneur that they will strive to emulate. About The Author: -------------------------------------------------- Jeff Casmer Will Help Build A Money Making Website Just For You That's 100% Ready To Take Orders And Pull In Massive Residual Profits Today! Get All The Exciting Details And Signup Now At: http://www.24hourwealth.com -------------------------------------------------- NOTE: You have full permission to reprint this article within your website or newsletter as long as you leave the article fully intact and include the "About The Author" resource box. Thanks! :-)|W|P|112724090995128891|W|P||W|P|webmaster@24hourwealth.com9/20/2005 11:22:00 AM|W|P|Jeff Casmer|W|P|Tracking Offline Advertising Success by Measuring ROI Copyright © Jeff Casmer, The Wealth Guy http://www.24hourwealth.com The great promise of online advertising has always been that advertisers will now be able to effectively track the successes and failures of their online advertising efforts. This promise has been met. Yet, for those of us who still employ offline promotions and advertising methods, we must consider the various ways in which we can effectively track our results in the old-world media. TRACKING RESULTS BEFORE THE INTERNET AGE How long has it been? Ten Years? Believe it or not, it has been less than ten years since the Internet went mainstream. Companies still utilize the same methods to track results as they did before we laid our hopes on the Digital Superhighway. TV advertisers ask you to call extension X. Radio advertisers offer you additional savings if you tell them you heard it on XYZ radio station. In newspapers and magazines, advertisers suggest you clip the attached coupons. Why do you think advertisers employ these tactics? Simple. They need to know what advertising is bringing customers in the front door and to their cash register. By understanding what advertisers are bringing them customers and dollars, they have a better understanding of where to spend their next wave of advertising dollars. Additionally, they can do a side-by-side comparison of their Advertising Return on Investment (ROI) to determine which method brings them the most percentage of return per dollar spent. UNDERSTANDING HOW WE SHOULD MEASURE The truth is that we really do need to know how people are deciding to visit and buy from our business establishment. Some consider this idea silly or even a waste of their valuable time. Far too many people, who think of tracking in this fashion, end up searching for a job at some point in their future. Unless pure dumb luck is on the side of the business owner, a business simply cannot survive if it does not track the effectiveness of its advertising. Somehow, some way, a business owner or his marketing staff must look at their advertising and promotion budgets, and look at their advertising mediums and find a way to know which is doing the job for them and which is not. DISCOVERING WHAT MOTIVATES OUR CUSTOMERS Somehow, we must get our customers to tell us how they found us and what ad motivated them to come in and purchase our product or service. Everyday, businesses motivate their customers to tell them how they learned of them by having the customer call a certain extension, offer them an additional discount to tell them which advertisement they had heard, or to offer them a coupon to use. Others motivate their customers to tell them how they had learned of their business by offering a very specific product in their advertising. They know that if someone shows up at their business to buy a certain product, then they will know how the person had heard of their business. This is why you should make your radio advertising focus on a different promotion than your newspaper advertising. Different mediums should focus on different leader pieces so that you can see which medium provides the best results. UNDERSTANDING WHY WE SHOULD MEASURE RESULTS We measure advertising results so that we can learn how to not waste our money and to learn how to get the most bang for our advertising dollar. Return On Investment or ROI is the key measurement utilized to determine the value of our advertising. It is best to show in an example how ROI is measured. Cost of Newspaper Advertising: $150 Number of Items Sold As a Result: 60 Retail Price of Individual Item: $ 10 Profit on Individual Item: $ 3 Gross Income on Items Sold: $600 Gross Profit on Items Sold: $180 In this example, you have spent $150 to make $180. Your ROI is 120%. Cost of Radio Advertising: $ 300 Number of Items Sold As a Result: 50 Retail Price of Individual Item: $ 20 Profit on Individual Item: $ 6 Gross Income on Items Sold: $1000 Gross Profit on Items Sold: $ 300 In this example, you have spent $300 to make $300. Your ROI is 100%. Utilizing these two examples, you can quickly discern why and how we are calculating ROI. Now, some people would consider both to be good investments of their advertising dollars. In fact, many believe that so long as their advertising generates enough sales to break even as the radio example did, then they consider the investment to have been in their future rather than their present. So long as you do not lose money on the transaction, then you should at least be willing to continue with the advertising medium that was used. However, over time, you might find that the newspaper advertising will continue to provide the 120% ROI. If that is the case, then your newspaper advertising should take more of a center stage in your advertising efforts so that you can develop more profits which can be used to increase your dollar investment into your advertising. WELCOME TO THE WORLD OF TRACKING YOUR OFFLINE PROMOTIONS With this introduction, you should now have available to you the knowledge necessary to introduce tracking into your marketing efforts. Those who take the time and effort to advertise and track their results will benefit more than you can imagine. Truth be known, a single person with a dream today started every big corporation in the world many years ago. Each of these corporations grew from a fledgling operation to a economic powerhouse by tracking and tweaking their Advertising ROI. Every corporation and small business who will remain in business through the long term will be tracking their advertising and promotional efforts today. It is an investment into their future success. If you make the same kind of investment of time and cash resources, you too will be making an investment in your future success. About The Author: -------------------------------------------------- Jeff Casmer Will Help Build A Money Making Website Just For You That's 100% Ready To Take Orders And Pull In Massive Residual Profits Today! Get All The Exciting Details And Signup Now At: http://www.24hourwealth.com -------------------------------------------------- NOTE: You have full permission to reprint this article within your website or newsletter as long as you leave the article fully intact and include the "About The Author" resource box. Thanks! :-)|W|P|112724077635924760|W|P||W|P|webmaster@24hourwealth.com9/20/2005 11:20:00 AM|W|P|Jeff Casmer|W|P|Starting Your Home Based Business on a Shoestring Budget Copyright © Jeff Casmer, The Wealth Guy http://www.24hourwealth.com Whether seeking a supplemental income or a full-time income, many folks have undertaken the task to discover a viable home based business solution to meet their personal needs. For most folks who contemplate a home business, a low-cost or no-cost solution is not only nice, but also very necessary. Many also seek to find a home business that will permit them to maintain their regular day job in order to protect their base income. Taking the cautious approach to a home based business and keeping one's job during the start-up period is often a very good decision. By maintaining one's job, one can maintain the health of their personal finances while permitting their home business grow healthy and strong. Fortunately, most home based businesses can be started with little or no cash, can be maintained on a shoestring budget, and can be operated successfully with only a part-time investment. One day, the business will be strong enough to support itself and its owner. When that time comes, it will make good sense for the business owner to leave his or her outside job to dedicate more time to growing and maintaining their new thriving home based business. You will know when that time has finally arrived. The nature of a home based business makes it easy and very realistic for most folks to take the plunge into home business ownership. Yet, many folks put off starting their own home based business, because they have the misconception that they will have to risk thousands of their own hard-earned dollars at start-up. Then later, if their business fails, they fear they may be forced to take out a second mortgage on their house just to stay out of bankruptcy. Are you one of these folks? Do you let your fears of failure keep you from reaching for your dreams? If so, then allow me to introduce you to a few home business ideas that you can start for less than $100 and can be started and operated very profitably as a part-time business. THE LIFEBLOOD OF ALL SUCCESSFUL BUSINESSES First of all, let me advise you to search out a business model that will deliver steady and repeat business. It is the one thing --- above all others --- that will assure that your company can survive the test of time. HOME-BASED MAIL ORDER: Home-based mail order is a good example of how one can quickly grow a home business income. Mail order is a low cost start-up business that can be launched for around $100 USD. With proper planning, your home-based mail order business will not require up-front inventory purchases. In the mail order business, it is not uncommon to rely upon drop-shippers for product fulfillment services. By utilizing drop-shippers, we can sell the products, collect the money and then purchase the products from the wholesale outlet. The wholesale outlet will then put a return address for your company on the product packaging and deliver the product directly to your customer. Your primary expense in the mail-order business is advertising. Classified advertising tends to be a relatively inexpensive form of advertising with thousands of outlets available to the small business owner. WHOLESALE BUSINESS: Buy low --- sell high. You can acquire high quality, top-of-the-line merchandise for a fraction of the retail cost. Starting a wholesale business would require a Wholesale Dealers Directory as your source for merchandise. You can find a Wholesale Deales Directory by using any search engine to look up the term. AUCTIONS: Auctions can be an excellent source for buying cheap and selling high. Both government auctions and Internet auctions can lead to some excellent profit opportunities. Auctions are an excellent tool for both acquiring and selling merchandise. MAKE AND SELL YOUR CRAFTS: Crafts are a hot seller at country fairs, swap meets or anyplace where people gather. Make your own crafts and sell them for a tidy profit! SELLING INFORMATION: Selling information by mail is another good example of an inexpensive home based business start-up. One can gain the resale rights to information for usually about $50 USD. Other costs will include printer cartridges, paper and postage. There are plenty of free classifieds sites on the Internet, in which to successfully advertise your information. WRITE INFORMATIONAL BOOKLETS: Write and publish your own informational booklets; sell them at a high price! All you need is a little know-how, a printer, paper and stamps. This is a GREAT home business idea! You can also sell the resale rights to others, for extra profits. In this age of the Internet, you may also take advantage of the fact that selling information is one of the most profitable endeavors one can pursue online. OFFICE SERVICES: Offer office services for hire in your local paper. You'll be surprised at the amount of regular office business that can be gleaned from one little classified ad. Word processing, typing, accounting, data entry, proofreading, transcription, promotional letters and newsletters. All these tasks can be accomplished right from your own home office. AVON REPRESENTATIVE: Yes, Avon's been around for eternity, hasn't it? Then it's not such a bad prospect as a home based business, is it? I once knew a woman who did so much business as an Avon rep. that she had people calling her and knocking at her door wanting to order products at all hours of the day and night! Once you are an established Avon representative, you, too, will turn a good profit. CONCLUSION: On your search for the ideal home based business, try not to get caught up in any scams that will run off with your money. There are thousands of scam artists out there just waiting for the next sucker to come along. Remember, if it sounds too good to be true, then it probably is. Just use your good judgement and invest wisely in proven methods of earning extra income. About The Author: -------------------------------------------------- Jeff Casmer Will Help Build A Money Making Website Just For You That's 100% Ready To Take Orders And Pull In Massive Residual Profits Today! Get All The Exciting Details And Signup Now At: http://www.24hourwealth.com -------------------------------------------------- NOTE: You have full permission to reprint this article within your website or newsletter as long as you leave the article fully intact and include the "About The Author" resource box. Thanks! :-)|W|P|112724045029484969|W|P||W|P|webmaster@24hourwealth.com9/20/2005 11:19:00 AM|W|P|Jeff Casmer|W|P|Promoting Your Business with Copper Wire? Think Again! Copyright © Jeff Casmer, The Wealth Guy http://www.24hourwealth.com So many people launch their first or second business with the misconception that they can survive without advertising. It is their fear of failure that almost single-handedly assures their failure. They fear spending the money that they need to get and keep their business running during those early years of their operation. Let’s face it, when you start in business, money is usually pretty darn tight. So, you must figure out how to get off the ground without throwing your money down the drain. Every single red cent is important enough to hang onto with a tight fist. NOW IS NOT THE TIME TO REINVENT COPPER WIRE I am reminded of an old joke a friend used to tell about himself. My friend had always told me that both he and his brother were the inventers of copper wire. He insisted that the two of them were fighting over a penny one day and managed to stretch it out into the first strand of copper wire known to mankind. Indeed, now is not the time to try to reinvent copper wire. ADVERTISING IS A NECESSARY COMPONENT OF A SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS The point of advertising is to notify your customers of the existence of your business. It is necessary to tell people that you are in business and to tell them what products and services you are offering. Unless people know that you are offering a certain product or service at a certain price, no one will knock upon your door to buy your wares. If you fail to attract customers and dollars, your business will die. Therefore, advertising is a must for the success of your business. Sure, word of mouth can take you places, but it can only take you so far. Advertising is designed to pick up where word of mouth leaves off. ATTRITION IS A DEFINITE FACTOR TO CONSIDER Attrition is a factor in all businesses. A business is able to pick up so many customers and dollars on every advertising or promotion venture. Yet, a certain portion of your old and new customers and dollars will drop off over time. You simply cannot rest on your laurels. You must continue to generate new business and new dollars or your business will die. EZINE PUBLISHING DELIVERS A GOOD EXAMPLE OF COMMERCIAL ATTRITION If you have ever published an online ezine, then you will have seen attrition first hand. You can spend all week advertising your ezine and note that your efforts have generated for example 500 new subscribers. Yet, by the end of the week, your subscriber base has only climbed by 250 subscribers. What went wrong? Well, this is how it works. Keep in mind this is only an example to make my point, but if you have ever published an ezine, then you will know I am right on the money with this observation. In one week: · 500 people sign up for the first time. · 40 of those people unsubscribe after the very first issue because they do not like the content. · 30 people quit after the first issue because their only purpose in subscribing in the first place was to get the freebie you had offered to new subscribers. · 30 of those people unsubscribe because they do not remember subscribing to the ezine in the first place. · 80 email addresses bounce due to ISP email filters. · 20 people bounce because they did not pay their Internet bill. · 35 people have simply changed their email addresses without submitting a change of address to you. · 15 people have quit the Internet altogether. In the final analysis, 100 of your new subscribers, or 20% of your newcomers are gone after one week. Another 150 subscribers were long-time subscribers who are gone for other reasons. If you make the mistake of stopping your advertising, your ezine list will eventually wind down to one subscriber --- you. In our example, 150 long-time subscribers disappear every week, and there is nothing you can do to stop it. You must absolutely keep a fresh flow of new subscribers coming into the ezine in order to stay ahead of the attrition curve. STAYING AHEAD OF THE ATTRITION CURVE An ezine or a business, what is the difference? Not much. Your business will suffer the same fate as the ezine if you do not advertise. I don’t know how to make it any more clear than this. Yes, you must be careful not to throw your money away on advertising that does not generate results. But you cannot afford to throw the baby out with the bath water. Carefully, pick your advertising, study your results, and put your money back into what is working for you. In conclusion, you must decide. Do you want to advertise your business, or do you want to watch your business die? The decision is yours and yours alone. Well, what are you going to do? About The Author: -------------------------------------------------- Jeff Casmer Will Help Build A Money Making Website Just For You That's 100% Ready To Take Orders And Pull In Massive Residual Profits Today! Get All The Exciting Details And Signup Now At: http://www.24hourwealth.com -------------------------------------------------- NOTE: You have full permission to reprint this article within your website or newsletter as long as you leave the article fully intact and include the "About The Author" resource box. Thanks! :-)|W|P|112724038803054926|W|P||W|P|webmaster@24hourwealth.com9/20/2005 11:17:00 AM|W|P|Jeff Casmer|W|P|Networking Your Home Business within Circles of Influence Copyright © Jeff Casmer, The Wealth Guy http://www.24hourwealth.com When you need an auto mechanic or an air conditioning repairman, where do you turn for help? Sure, some people turn to the yellow pages. But most will turn to friends and family and ask if they know of anyone who can do the work. The best place for your business to be positioned is to be the business on the tips of the tongues of the people asked to make the referral. THE 300 RULE Preachers, funeral directors and people in a few other professions have learned "the 300 rule" through their own personal experience. "The 300 rule" states that the average person knows 300 people on a friendly level. Wedding planners tend to make reservations for 300 guests. Funeral directors tend to need to make room for 300 mourners. You get the idea. DOODLING WITH CIRCLES OF INFLUENCE Imagine your circle of friends, family and acquaintances, a.k.a. your circle of influence. Now, draw your circle of influence as a circle on a blank piece of paper. Next, contemplate the people in your parents' circle of influence. Some people who know your parents also know you. Therefore, you will share some influence with the people your folks know. Now draw your parents' circle of influence on your piece of paper. Your circle and your parents' circle will intersect in one area, although the larger majority of the two circles will not intersect. If you are like most people, the two circles on your page at this point looks very similar to the MasterCard logo. Now imagine drawing a page full of intersecting circles, each circle representing the circle of influence of the people who are within your own circle of influence. Imagine trying to encapsulate an accurate rendering of where your circle and the circle of your friends will actually intersect. Some circles will share a large area of space, while others will barely cover one another. Actually, you can only imagine at this point what your piece of paper will look like. The actual layout of the circles imagined in this analogy is simply too overwhelming for the mind to comprehend. THE BIG PICTURE 300 multiplied by 300 equals 90,000. By using the analogy of doodles in the previous section, the average person can actually network with up to 90,000 people! Even factoring in the overlap, one can still probably network with 50,000 people through their own circle of influence! Simply amazing, isn't it? HERE IS THE SECRET TO YOUR SUCCESS There are 300 people on this planet whom you have a reasonable amount of influence. Take advantage of this fact. Make darn sure that every person within your own circle of influence KNOWS that you are in business for yourself, and make sure they understand what your business offers. When your friend is asked to make a referral, they will recommend you. PASSIVE VERSUS ACTIVE REFERRAL NETWORKING When people ask your friends for a referral and your friend mentions your business, that is passive referral networking. Active referral networking is when you can get your friends go directly to their friends and say "Hey, I have a friend who just started a business. If you are in need of what he offers or you know someone who will need his services, would you please give my friend a call or make the referral to his business?" If you can get even a portion of the people in your own circle of influence to actively refer your business, then you have built the foundation to build an advertising campaign even more effective than the average local television advertising campaign. Think about that for a moment. Most people only dream of reaching 50,000 potential customers with their television advertising dollars. You now have the knowledge to reach 50,000 people without spending a single penny. About The Author: -------------------------------------------------- Jeff Casmer Will Help Build A Money Making Website Just For You That's 100% Ready To Take Orders And Pull In Massive Residual Profits Today! Get All The Exciting Details And Signup Now At: http://www.24hourwealth.com -------------------------------------------------- NOTE: You have full permission to reprint this article within your website or newsletter as long as you leave the article fully intact and include the "About The Author" resource box. Thanks! :-)|W|P|112724027297136566|W|P||W|P|webmaster@24hourwealth.com9/20/2005 11:09:00 AM|W|P|Jeff Casmer|W|P|Keeping Your Email Box Organized & Ready for Business Copyright © Jeff Casmer, The Wealth Guy http://www.24hourwealth.com Learning how to get the most organization from your email software is very likely the most important skill you can learn to conduct a successful online home business. There are three primary email applications on the market that folks use to manage their incoming POP3 email. Those three are: · Microsoft Outlook Express · Eudora · Netscape Mail In order to get the most from your email software, there are three key processes that you should learn. These processes are concerned with data organization, saving time and email database management. SET UP EMAIL FOLDERS Organization is key to any emails that you intend to save. Having 2000 emails in one folder is a sure-fire road map to confusion and lost communications and information. You are the best judge as to how to organize your email into topics that provide an easy method of retrieval of the information when you need it most. Fortunately, the primary email browsers make it easy to organize your information. By allowing you to create folders within your email software, you can file specific emails into folders dedicated to the topic of the email. To create new folders: OUTLOOK EXPRESS: 1. Click File - Folders - New --- alternatively, you may also right click an item in the Folder window --- and then type in the name of your new folder. Highlight the folder above where you would like your new folder to be placed, and then click OK. EUDORA: Click on Mailbox - New --- or right click on Eudora in the folders window and then click on New. When the window opens, type in the name of your new mailbox and click OK. If you want to create a folder to place other mailboxes into, click the checkbox before clicking OK. NETSCAPE MAIL: Click File - New Folder. Then from the drop-down menu, select the folder that you wish to be the folder directly above your new folder, before clicking OK. FILTERING EMAIL Email filters are a tool to help you save time and frustration. Have you ever lost an incoming email under the deluge of email coming into your mailbox? With filters, you can direct the important email or not-so-important email into certain pre-ordained folders. As part of the war against spam, most ISP's use filters every day in an attempt to keep the spam out of your mailbox. In fact, I even use filters to sort my incoming mail trying to catch the spam my ISP missed. Don’t be fooled into thinking you need some special software to filter your email. Setting up filters is actually quite easy. To setup email filters: OUTLOOK EXPRESS: Click on Tools - Message Rules - Mail. A wizard will open to help you create your new email filters. Just follow the instructions provided to direct mail based on certain criteria into certain folders. EUDORA: Click on Special - Make Filter. Once again, just follow the instructions in the Filter wizard. NETSCAPE MAIL: Click on Edit - Mail Filters. Then click on New in the wizard. Once you click on New, you will be taken to a new wizard window. Follow the instructions here, then when you are done, click on OK. This will return you to the first window where you will set up the sorting order of your filter. CLEANING AND COMPRESSING YOUR MAIL DATA This is an important part of your email management. When you no longer need an email, it should be deleted. When you first delete an email, your software will send the email to the Trash Bin. Your email is not actually deleted until you first empty your trash bin. Emptying your trash bin compresses the mailboxes from where the email was originally filed. This is absolutely paramount to the protection of your email data. If you go too long between compressing your email data, then your email data could become corrupted and you might need assistance in recovering your email data. Even after you have emptied your trash, Compressing Folders is a recommended step to prevent other data corruption. Once you understand that an email does not actually move from one folder to another until the folder is compressed, then you can better appreciate this advice. As an example, when Email A comes into your main Inbox, the data connected to Email A appears in two files. One file contains the header and body of the email. The other file contains only the email header information. When an email is moved from one folder to the other, only the header information is actually moved. The body information will not be deleted from the original folder until which time the original folder is compressed. This explains the purpose of emptying the trash AND compressing folders. If the email was simply moved from the Inbox to another folder, then emptying the trash is not enough. The original placement of the email is not actually removed from the file that contains the body information until the message has been designated for compression. To empty your trash: OUTLOOK EXPRESS: Click on Edit - Empty 'Deleted Items' Folder. To compress the remaining folders, click on Tools - Options, then click on the tab for Maintenance. Then click the button that says, "Clean Up Now". Once the compression is completed, click OK. EUDORA: Click Special - Empty Trash. To compress the remaining items that need compression, then click on Special - Compact Mailboxes. NETSCAPE MAIL: Click on File - Empty Trash Folder. To compress the mailboxes, click on File - Compress Folders. I cannot stress enough how important it is that you utilize the tools for emptying the trash and compressing the mail folders. Protecting your email data on a regular basis is good practice for avoiding disaster in your mailbox. So many of us rely upon our email software to keep our online business running smoothly. Once you master the tools provided in your email software, your online business will run smoothly also. Let me share one important lesson I l've learned about computer software. One should never be afraid to try new things. Learning how to get the most out of your software relies upon your willingness to dig in and learn how to use it. Once you learn how to use your software to its full potential, then your life will be greatly simplified and your effectiveness will be dramatically improved. About The Author: -------------------------------------------------- Jeff Casmer Will Help Build A Money Making Website Just For You That's 100% Ready To Take Orders And Pull In Massive Residual Profits Today! Get All The Exciting Details And Signup Now At: http://www.24hourwealth.com NOTE: You have full permission to reprint this article within your website or newsletter as long as you leave the article fully intact and include the "About The Author" resource box. Thanks! :-)|W|P|112723976004094135|W|P||W|P|webmaster@24hourwealth.com9/20/2005 11:08:00 AM|W|P|Jeff Casmer|W|P|Is a Home Business Right for You? Copyright © Jeff Casmer, The Wealth Guy http://www.24hourwealth.com Every morning as people wake up and make the commute to work, many dream of the day when they will finally work for themselves. Every time the boss lets someone know that they must give up their weekend plans for the good of the company, people contemplate the benefits of being the owner of their own business. Are you one of these people? If you are, it is important to ask yourself some very important questions before you make the uncertain leap into self-employment. Many dream of the benefits of home business ownership, but few take into account the sacrifices that must be made to bring the dream to fruition. Please don't make this mistake yourself. You must approach home business ownership with your eyes wide open. Ask yourself the important questions, and more importantly, answer your own questions openly and honestly. AN IMPORTANT CONSIDERATION Are you the type of person who relishes every chance to gather around the water cooler for social interaction? If so, then home business ownership may not be the right decision for you. Instead, if you feel that you can be quite content sitting alone at your desk; speaking only to clients and really minding your own home business, then you might have what it takes to succeed as a home business entrepreneur. If you feel at ease with your own company and don't need a dozen coworkers milling around your desk, then you, too, could savor the freedoms that will allow you and your family, to live the lifestyle you know you want and deserve. THE KEY TO HOME BUSINESS SUCCESS Self-motivation is the key to success when you start a home-based business. You need to possess the ability to push yourself ahead. Your drive and determination will be reinforced with every new sale. The level of success that you will achieve greatly depends on the time and effort you are willing to plow into your new home business. Your organization, planning and marketing skills, will all be put into practice when you embark on your liberating journey from employee, to being your own boss. In fact, you will be the wearer of many hats and gain a wealth of business experience along the way, when you finally make that commitment to work at home. YOUR SUCCESS RESTS ENTIRELY UPON YOUR OWN SHOULDERS You will now be the boss. Are you truly able to work independently? Do you have the drive; the tenacity, to persevere with your home based business? Will you be able to invest the necessary time to nurture it, to watch it grow and see it through, from germination to full, glorious bloom? When you're the boss, you are responsible for the success of your home business, from A to Z, from disappointments to victory. When you work at home, it will empower you to achieve many things you were unable to do when you were stuck working for that tyrant boss. Remember him? He's the guy that wouldn't let you take time off when your baby was sick...the same guy that called you in to work on Thanksgiving Day. A home business means that you can take good care of your family and make money from home, simultaneously. You will have the best of both worlds! Just think--no more dirty laundry piling up--you can do it while you work. No more scurrying around at the last minute searching for a babysitter either. And no more worrying about getting fired; you'll be the boss! IN CONCLUSION... Stay positive and focused on your home based business, even if, when sales aren't up to par, you get occasional negative remarks or derogatory comments from people with stuffy, dead-end jobs. Ignore their cutting words and bear in mind that success is the best revenge! Keep your admirable, positive attitude at the forefront and show them what you're made of! About The Author: -------------------------------------------------- Jeff Casmer Will Help Build A Money Making Website Just For You That's 100% Ready To Take Orders And Pull In Massive Residual Profits Today! Get All The Exciting Details And Signup Now At: http://www.24hourwealth.com -------------------------------------------------- NOTE: You have full permission to reprint this article within your website or newsletter as long as you leave the article fully intact and include the "About The Author" resource box. Thanks! :-)|W|P|112723970438637040|W|P||W|P|webmaster@24hourwealth.com9/20/2005 11:07:00 AM|W|P|Jeff Casmer|W|P|How to Win the Advertising and Promotion Game Copyright © Jeff Casmer, The Wealth Guy http://www.24hourwealth.com I am certain that, as a business owner, you have often entertained the question as to how much to spend and where to spend your advertising dollars. For most small business owners, these questions can add to the headaches suffered in the course of normal everyday operations of their business. THERE ARE NO SIMPLE ANSWERS The how much to spend and where to spend it questions have no easy answers. Depending on your type of business, many people suggest that the *how much* should be equal to anywhere from 4% to 10% of your gross receipts. The quandary is that a business cannot survive without a fresh flow of incoming customers. But, a business can seldom generate a fresh stream of customers without spending money to get the word out about their business. THE CHALLENGE OF DEVELOPING EFFECTIVE ADVERTISING Have you ever paid for advertising and sat back to await the fresh flow of customers, only to find yourself sitting and sitting and then sitting some more? Don’t feel bad about that. It has happened to many of us before. See, knowing where to spend the advertising money is not enough to get the job done. Where to spend the money only begins to highlight the other issues connected with advertising: · Marketing Plan · Advertising Strategy · Headlines, Ad Copy and Visual Presentation · Tracking the Success of Your Advertising Campaigns THE MARKETING PLAN The Marketing Plan is used primarily to identify your own products and services, costs, strengths, weaknesses and the strengths and weaknesses of your competitors. To learn more about constructing your own marketing plan, visit the Small Business Administration website for a comprehensive study of the elements of a Marketing Plan: http://www.sba.gov ADVERTISING STRATEGY It is important to understand what you expect to gain from your advertising. Do you simply wish to get your name known so that when your customer will need you, they will think of you first? Or, do you wish to get your customers in your front door on Saturday? Do you want your customers to come in and take a look around to discover the next object that they cannot live without? Or, do you want them to come in and buy a specific widget? Do you hope that enough people will come in to buy enough products or services to pay for your single ad? Or, do you expect to gain a lifelong customer who will help pay for your advertising over the course of several years? When you know what you want, then you will better understand just how to do it. HEADLINES, AD COPY AND VISUAL PRESENTATION You might be surprised how many business owners put out advertising without regard for the quality of the sales pitch or presentation. The quality of your distribution outlet or the amount of money you spent to get there will do little for you if the advertising vehicle is a junker. Test all of your advertising materials in smaller markets before blowing your advertising bank roll on it. You must absolutely know the value of your advertising before putting large sums of money behind it. TRACKING THE SUCCESS OF YOUR ADVERTISING CAMPAIGNS Tell your customers to save another 10% when they tell you they heard or saw your ad in such-and-such location. Suggest that they can register to win a free widget if they fill out a form and have them to tell you how they heard of your business. Advertise a specific widget in your ad and track the sales of that widget. It does not matter how you track your advertising --- just make sure you do it! IN SUMMARY The ideal way to spend your advertising budget is to buy a rifle with a high-powered scope and to only shoot your targets in the light of day. If you are not tracking your advertising, then you are shooting a pellet gun without an attached scope, with blinders on, and shooting in the dead darkness of night. Even with a bigger gun, the blinders in the dark constitute the single largest mistake made by advertisers. If you are unable to track your advertising to learn what is working well, what is working somewhat, and what is a money pit, then you are condemned to repeat your mistakes over and again. By relying only on gut instinct, you may be choosing to spend more money in the money pit and to lose all of your money in the process. When you get down to the nuts and bolts of making money from your advertising, you should plan, prepare, track and study your results. You must have factual information on which to base your advertising decisions. When you are making the right advertising decisions, then making money from your business might just come easy. About The Author: -------------------------------------------------- Jeff Casmer Will Help Build A Money Making Website Just For You That's 100% Ready To Take Orders And Pull In Massive Residual Profits Today! Get All The Exciting Details And Signup Now At: http://www.24hourwealth.com -------------------------------------------------- NOTE: You have full permission to reprint this article within your website or newsletter as long as you leave the article fully intact and include the "About The Author" resource box. Thanks! :-)|W|P|112723967512149488|W|P||W|P|webmaster@24hourwealth.com9/20/2005 11:07:00 AM|W|P|Jeff Casmer|W|P|How to Stay Focused on Your Home Business Goals Copyright © Jeff Casmer, The Wealth Guy http://www.24hourwealth.com When you are the owner of a home business, you will find hundreds of distractions that vie for your time, energy and focus. Common distractions include: children, family, friends, neighbors, pets, phone calls, mail, household chores, video games, television, neighborhood children, visitors, and so many more. As an owner of a home based business, you must always remember your purpose in bringing your profession home. What was your reason for wanting to own a home business? Was your goal to work from home so that you can share in the lives of your children? Was your goal to be out from under the rule of a tyrannical boss? Was your goal to have the freedom to work when it is convenient for you? Was your goal to make tons of money working for yourself? Here's a few good tips that will help you stay focused on your home business: TIP #1: Whatever your reason for going out on your own, you must keep your reason in the forefront of your mind. If you forget your reason for starting your own home business, you will not be working for yourself for long. It is far too easy to let circumstance drive your activities --- and when circumstance is in the driver's seat, you are more likely to crash and burn. TIP #2: Remember --- your own business is a lot like a real job. Some people go to work to play, some go to socialize, and others --- most often those who are paid in a commission or tip environment --- go to work to work and to make money. When you work for yourself, your salary is directly proportional to your productivity. Therefore, wouldn't it make sense to stay focused on getting as much done in as short of a period as possible? Go to work to work and to make money. Leave playtime and recreation for when your workday has ended. TIP #3: When you are dealing with family in the course of your workday, it is important to schedule your activities as much as possible. With small children, you must take time when you must, but you should also work hard to make sure you dedicate a specific number of hours to your workday. With older children, it is much easier to tell them that you will be working between the hours of x and y. Your children and your friends must understand that certain hours of your day are devoted to the activities of your business. TIP #4: Don't permit your friends and extended family to run over you. Many people get the blind idea that if one works from home then they are not actually working. Well-meaning people may try to fill your doorway to bring advice about getting a real job. Others may simply believe that if you are at home, then you are fair game for chitchat and socialization. You must stand firm. You must make certain your friends and family understands that when you are working, then you ARE working! If they wish to socialize with you, then they need to do it during the hours that are not dedicated to your home business. You are the only one who can stand up for you. Your friends and family will seldom be able to appreciate your dedication to your home business, unless you make the effort to make sure that they have the same respect for your business that you do. TIP #5: You should allot a certain portion of your day to email and to regular mail. For example, allot one hour in the morning and one hour in the afternoon to handling your written communications. Unless you dedicate certain times to the handling of these communications, you will soon find yourself on the downward slope of decreased productivity. TIP #6: When you find yourself spending too much time doing non-productive activities, then you should seriously consider finding a third-party service provider who will assist you in those non-profitable business activities. As an example, you might be in the mail-order business. You might believe that your time is best spent writing ad copy and setting up your advertising, but you find yourself spending far too much time taking care of your books to take care of your advertising in the manner that you should. In this event, it might make more sense to hire a bookkeeper to handle your financial records for you. CONCLUSION: In the end, the success of your home business is entirely and completely reliant upon you and the decisions that you make. You had your reasons for deciding to start your own home based business. You must always keep your reasons in the forefront of your mind. You must always be able to rely upon your own self and your dedication to the success of your business. Your friends and family might be annoyed that they cannot come visit upon their own whim, but when success comes to you and your business, they will better appreciate you for putting your foot down when necessary. Success is within your reach, if only you can stay focused on your goals. You must decide to reach for your goals, and then, you must have the discipline necessary to reach them. About The Author: -------------------------------------------------- Jeff Casmer Will Help Build A Money Making Website Just For You That's 100% Ready To Take Orders And Pull In Massive Residual Profits Today! Get All The Exciting Details And Signup Now At: http://www.24hourwealth.com -------------------------------------------------- NOTE: You have full permission to reprint this article within your website or newsletter as long as you leave the article fully intact and include the "About The Author" resource box. Thanks! :-)|W|P|112723963927895699|W|P||W|P|webmaster@24hourwealth.com9/20/2005 11:02:00 AM|W|P|Jeff Casmer|W|P|How to Measure Advertising Success Online Copyright © Jeff Casmer, The Wealth Guy http://www.24hourwealth.com It is easy for me to tell you that you need to track the success of your online advertising. It is also easy for me to tell you that you must do so in order to know which of your advertising is helping you to make a profit, to break even, or to break the bank. Far too many advertisers get caught in the online money pits in an effort to develop their online business. DON’T BE AFRAID I also know that when I say these things, some people get spooked. People get spooked because although they might run an online business, they may not understand the technology that keeps their business running. Let’s face it. More people are learning how to design and develop their own web pages. In fact, software has been created to help them do so rather easily. But when it comes down to the more complex technologies such as web logs, database technology, and web programming, most people just freeze up and fail to make an informed decision. Some will turn to a programmer with hopes that a programmer could save their online business, and many will get burned by their personal programmers. When a programmer burns a webmaster, the cost can be very high. And at the end of the day, the programmer may leave the webmaster with a broken web site. The only real choices left to most webmasters is to learn how to install pre-made scripts on their own, or to keep their websites technologically simple. *Technologically simple* often fails to help the webmaster find the success that he or she so fervently desires. UNDERSTANDING THE NATURE OF PRE-MADE SCRIPTS Web software is often very simple in its installation, so the webmaster really should not fear it. All one needs to install their own pre-made web scripts (software) is an online web site file manager or optional FTP software. They will also need the ability to change the *permissions* on the files on their web server. When downloading scripts for installation on your server, the file may come in .zip, .tar, or .gz format. Each of these are variations on the compressed / zipped file format. There are many utilities available for unzipping files. One such utility is WinZip which can be found at: http://www.winzip.com Most scripts, once downloaded and unzipped, may appear in text format with extensions such as .php, .cgi, .pl or .cfg. Most of these files can be read as plain text in an application like NotePad. Occasionally, the file will be in a binary format which cannot be read with a text editor. The files which can be read in a text editor are often written in the Perl or PHP programming languages. While most of the scripting will seem like Chinese to you, you will be able to pick out certain sections that can be read and understood easily. If the application also contains a .cfg file, this is your configuration file that can usually be changed to reflect your own personal needs or desires for the operation of the software. NEXT STEP, UPLOAD THE FILES TO YOUR SERVER Most of these web applications will have a readme.txt file included with it. If it does, please read it. If it does not, don’t worry, this section is for you. You must upload the files to your server as plain text. If you are using FTP to upload the files, then you must tell your software to upload the files in ASCII format. If you are using your web file manager, then the files will automatically upload correctly. Once the file is on your server, then you must change the file permissions. Files with the extensions .php, .cgi, or .pl are executable files and there permissions must be set to 755. Files with the extensions .cfg, .txt, or .html must have their permissions set to 644. Files and folders that will be written to must have their permissions set to 777. Files with no extensions can be classified as any of the above, so check the readme.txt file. 755 defines an executable file. 644 defines a read-only file. And 777 defines a writable file. Once the files are on your server and the permissions are set correctly, the application you have placed on your server should work for you just fine. LOCATING PRE-MADE SITE TRACKING SCRIPTS Probably one of the best resources for locating pre-made scripts is: http://www.cgi-resources.com If after reading this article you still fear the task of installing a pre-made script on your server, then you might seriously consider remotely hosted site tracking software. If you opt for this route, be sure to buy the pro version of the software offered. If you don’t choose the paid version, you might find your own competitors having access to your site tracking data! That should not be an acceptable option to you. THE PURPOSE OF SITE TRACKING With site tracking software running on your server, you can review how many people came to your website and what URL’s they might have used to find your website. You can also see where your visitors have come from, when they came, how long they were on your site, at what page they entered and left your site, and much more. This is the kind of information that will help you to determine with some certainty how effective your advertising is and how profitable your advertising can be. Operating without tracking data is tantamount to operating a business with the intent purpose of failing. I truly want you to succeed with your online business. I know deep down in my heart that the more people who find success online, the greater my own chances for remaining profitable over the long haul. *A rising tide floats all ships.* About The Author: -------------------------------------------------- Jeff Casmer Will Help Build A Money Making Website Just For You That's 100% Ready To Take Orders And Pull In Massive Residual Profits Today! Get All The Exciting Details And Now Today At: http://www.24hourwealth.com -------------------------------------------------- NOTE: You have full permission to reprint this article within your website or newsletter as long as you leave the article fully intact and include the "About The Author" resource box. Thanks! :-)|W|P|112723937599883063|W|P||W|P|webmaster@24hourwealth.com