Setting your Goals Effectively

There is a difference in setting your goals and setting them effectively. Anyone can set a goal, but doing it effectively means that it will actually get done.
There are so many things that you can do to better your life, but if you don’t know how to go about it you are stuck.

The following guidelines will help you to set effective goals and help you manage your time in an efficient manner that will cause those goals to become reality.

State each goal as a positive statement

Express your goals in a positive way. That is a key component to setting goals that you can attain.
How often have you been excited to accomplish a goal that didn’t even sound good when you brought it up? If you are not comfortable or happy with the goals that you have set, the likelihood of you succeeding is pretty low.
If you want to express your goals in a positive way, you simply have to first think of a goal that puts a smile on your face when you imagine it completed. Why would you want to set a goal that made you frown, cringe or cry?
When you are beginning to set your goals it helps when you are talking about them to others in a manner that states your actions as positives because it will have others seeing it as a positive as well.
That will garner you a great deal more support. In the end, don’t we all need a little support when we are trying to do something positive in our lives?

Be precise

Set a precise goal that includes starting dates, times and amounts so that you can properly measure your achievement.  If you do this, you will know exactly when you have achieved the goal, and can take complete satisfaction from having achieved it.

Being precise in setting your goals is no more than setting them with exact details. It is easier this way because then you can follow a step-by-step format. That’s all there is to it.

Set priorities

When you have several goals, give each a specific priority. This helps you to avoid feeling overwhelmed by too many goals, and helps to direct your attention to the most important ones and follow each in succession. Setting priorities will force you into the step-by-step format above. By doing the most important first and moving to the least important in succession, you are enabling each task to be easier than the last. It causes the accomplishment of each task to get easier and easier which will encourage you to complete your goal.

Write goals down

This crystallizes your goals and gives them more force. In writing your goals down, you are better able to keep up with your scheduled tasks for each accomplishment. It also helps you to remember each task that needs to be done and allows you to check them off as they are accomplished.  Basically, you can better keep track of what you are doing so as not to repeat yourself unnecessarily.

Keep operational goals small

Keep the low-level goals you are working towards small and easy to achieve. If a goal is too large, then it can seem that you are not making progress towards it. Keeping goals small and incremental allows you more opportunities for reward. Derive today’s goals from larger ones. It is a great way to accomplish your goals.

Set performance goals, not outcome goals

You should take care to set goals over which you have as much control as possible. There is nothing more dispiriting than failing to achieve a personal goal for reasons that are beyond your control. These could be bad business environments, poor judging, bad weather, injury, or just plain bad luck. If you base your goals on personal your performance, then you can keep control over the achievement of your goals and get satisfaction from achieving them.

Set realistic goals

It is important to set goals that you can achieve. All sorts of people (parents, media, and society) can set unrealistic goals for you which is almost a guarantee of failure. They will often do this in ignorance of your own desires and ambitions or flat out disinterest.
Alternatively you may be naïve in setting very high goals. You might not appreciate either the obstacles in the way, or understand quite how many skills you must master to achieve a particular level of performance. By being realistic you are increasing your chances of success.

Do not set goals too low

Just as it is important not to set goals unrealistically high; do not set them too low. People tend to do this where they are afraid of failure or where they simply don’t want to do anything.  You should set goals so that they are slightly out of your immediate grasp, but not so far that there is no hope of achieving them. No one will put serious effort into achieving a goal that they believe is unattainable.  However, remember that your belief that a goal is unrealistic may be incorrect. If this could be the case, you can to change this belief by using imagery effectively.

Achieving your Goals

When you have achieved a goal, you have to take the time to enjoy the satisfaction of having done so. Absorb the implications of the goal achievement, and observe the progress you have made towards other goals.  If the goal was a significant one, you should reward yourself appropriately. Think of it like this, why would you choose to ignore any accomplishments that you have made?  In doing that, you are downplaying your accomplishment which will convince you that it wasn’t that important in the first place.

With the experience of having achieved each goal, you should next review the rest of your goal plans and see them in the following manner:

• If you achieved the goal too easily, make your next goals harder
• If the goal took a disheartening length of time to achieve, make the next goals a little easier
• If you learned something that would lead you to change other goals, do so
• If while achieving the goal you noticed a certain lacking in your skills, decide which goals to set in order to fix this.

You should keep in mind that failure to meet goals does not matter as long as you learn from it. Feed lessons learned back into your goal-setting program.

You must also remember that your goals will change as you mature. Adjust them regularly to reflect this growth in your personality. If goals no longer hold any attraction for you let them go. Goal setting is your servant, not your master. It should bring you real pleasure, satisfaction and a sense of achievement.

If it stops, there is no longer a point. Let’s look at an example.

The best example of goal setting that you can have is to try setting your own goals. Set aside two hours to think through your lifetime goals in each of the categories. Then work back through the 25-year plan, 5-year plan, 1-year plan, 6-month plan, and a 1-month plan.

Finally draw up a To Do List of jobs to do tomorrow to move towards your goals. When you do, you will soon realize that you will be on your way to using your goals setting on a routine basis.Setting career goals

One of the toughest issues in making a good career choice and career goal setting is identifying what it is that you want. Even when it seems that you know what you want, you may still have doubts on if your career choice is the right one for you.

Reaching clarity in those issues may be the most important thing you can do in your career planning and goal setting. Here are a few career goal setting guidelines that can help.

Most people, even very successful ones, have some periods in their career path when they seem unsure about their career choice and goals. It is totally human to feel that way.
Often, such periods just come and go. For example, they come when you face some overwhelming obstacles on your way. It is all over as soon as you get through these obstacles.

That situation by itself is not a problem of choosing a career, only a test of your perseverance in seeing it through but what if those doubts persist, or if they always live somewhere in the background of your thoughts? If it just does not feel right?

If this is the case, then it is time to look more carefully at your career choice and overall career objectives. Often we choose or are placed in a career because it just seems like the right step to make or that is what your studies have focused on.

The only problem is that sometimes that passion that we once had as a young adult are now gone, or the realism of the job has taken the interest and joy out of it.

That is when it is time to set a new career goal or objective. Choosing the right career goal to sink into requires a great deal of soul searching. You need to ask yourself these questions beforehand:

•  Am I making the kind of money that I want to make?
•  Do I want to make more money?
•  Does money even matter to me?
•  Do I like what I’m doing right now?
•  What am I passionate about?
•  What could I be doing that would make me happier than I am right now?
•  Would I be happier simply switching positions or getting a promotion; or would I be happier changing careers all together?
•  Why am I still working here?
•  What is stopping me from leaving this job or getting that promotion?
•  What is stopping me from leaving this job?

These are all vital questions that you have to ask yourself before deciding what your career goals are going to be. If you are honest with yourself, you will know exactly what direction you should be going in.

Without being honest with yourself you can’t expect to better your life, you can only expect to have to ask yourself these questions all over again until you find happiness.

To your Success, may you reach your goals.
Gary Killops

Pour la creation de sites internet

Copyright © Gary Killops.
All rights reserved.

Nom de domaine

L’enregistrement d’un nom de domaine s’effectue chez un Registrar. Et il en existe des milliers à travers le Net. Les prix des noms de domaine varient du simple au triple. Tout dépend de ce qui vous est offert avec l’achat de votre domaine : création page perso, emails pop3, hébergement, destion DNS, redirection…

Avant d’enregistrer votre nom de domaine, vous devez rigoureusement le choisir. Le mieux serait de sélectionner un qui soit bref mais indicatif sur par rapport au sujet de votre site. Plus il est court, plus il est facilement mémorisable.

Certains Registrars, les sociétés Internet habilitées à vendre des noms de domaine, offrent la possibilité de créer une page perso ou un site gratuit pour tout achat de domaine. Sans aucun frais supplémentaire. Ce qui est plus professionnel qu’un hébergement de site web en sous-domaine. Car, toute activité professionnelle ou commerciale sur le Net mérite d’être crédible et facilement identifiable.

Raisons d’avoir un nom de domaine

- Le domaine vous procure une identité professionnelle sur Internet

- Il protège le nom de votre entreprise sur le Net contre l’usurpation

- Il permet à vos potentiels clients de vous retrouver facilement à partir des moteurs de recherche

- Dans vos moyens de communication, un nom de domaine propre vous donne une allure très professionnelle

- Il vous permet d’avoir des adresses email propres à votre entreprises

Comme vous le constatez, avec un nom de domaine propre, votre entreprise gagne en crédibilité sur Internet. Il faudra donc penser à en déposer avant la création de votre site internet.

Boost Your Business and Personal Success by Creating Your Own Luck!

Jason Zweig wrote a great little article in Money Magazine called “R+U Lucky? Some Guys Do Have All The Luck. Here’s How to Join Them” (Money, August 2003 pp85).

In it he describes the patterns that “lucky” people follow and how to increase your odds of success by basically placing yourself in the “right place at the right time.”

Can you always be in the right place at the right time? Not really, unless you broaden your definition of that phrase a bit, as I have.

MORE…
My Definition of The Right Place at The Right Time: “Putting yourself in every corner of your market niche in some fashion so as to be in front of customers and people who can further your business through partnerships, buyouts, joint ventures and many other opportunities that only come through the luck you *create* by being active and involved in your niche.”

Zweig talks about the fact that some people seem actually “skillful” at being lucky. A British psychologist, Richard Wiseman, even wrote a new book on the subject called “The Luck Factor.” (See www.luckfactor.co.uk)

Wiseman did a study on over 400 people who thought of themselves
as either very lucky or unlucky.

“He found that some are indeed luckier than others, that lucky people share similar attitudes and that many apparently random outcomes can be controlled” says Zweig.

Think of the first person that comes to mind who owns an online business and who you think of as “lucky.” Actually, think of about 5 people. Should be an easy list to make – they are your competition, or business owners you admire, most likely.

Now, what trait would you say your list of 5 lucky people share? I would venture to say they all share the same trait of being, at one point or another, “in the right place at the right time.”

How did they do it? Was it really blind luck? Are the odds dismal? The same as winning your state lottery jackpot?

Not even close! Although there are some people who really cannot explain their luck, and who truly were just “touched by an angel,” most successful people are successful because they are engaged to the hilt in their business. They are active promoters of their businesses in a radical way. They all have a fanatical involvement in networking themselves and their businesses.

The biggest mistake I see people make with their online businesses is that they separate their “self” from their business. They let the products speak for themselves, which is ok as one component of a marketing campaign, but that’s not enough. They also successfully market *themselves* as well as their business. They see themselves as important factors in the success and identity of their business.

“Lucky” people see no separation of the two in fact. Products and services are inanimate “things.” They are nothing really, without the people behind the scenes who put themselves in front of the scenes as much as possible and let others get to know THEM.

Why do you think so many people come back from conferences with stories of how they landed a great partner they never thought they’d even get to answer an email?

Conferences and seminars are the epitome of “creating luck.” The least important thing about them is the formal ceremonies. The good stuff happens at the bar in the hotel after the presentations are over. The “good stuff” is being in the right place at the right time. You are definitely creating luck whenever you network with peers and possible partners.

If you let yourself get lost in the day-to-day operations of your business and you don’t allow yourself time to think about the ways in which you can get your “self” in front of the people who can break you into a whole new league of success for your business, you will be less “lucky” in business.

There are lots of real rags-to-riches stories on the net. People are succeeding and profiting online like never before, but few do it in a vacuum. You will find more often than not that a story of success will begin with a line like “My business REALLY took off when I met…” or “I was talking on the phone one day with…and all the sudden an idea was born.”

Want to create some luck for yourself? Get involved in your business at a level in which you are always in the right place at the right time. Being active in online forums, calling people on the phone rather than using email, meeting people in person who can help you get your products in front of thousands of potential customers, all these practices are used by the ever-lucky, most successful people on the planet.

Put yourself into your business as part of the product. Develop relationships. Run far far away from people who want to sell you on the concept that you can succeed online without having to talk with or meet others. Success has never knocked on the door of people who aren’t open to human contact – that’s a ridiculous and self-defeating practice.

If you are passionate about making money with an online or offline business, good old fashioned networking will always win out over any other method of advertising.

So, now you have the formula for “creating luck.” If you can sit down this weekend and figure out all the ways you can put yourself in the right place at the right time to increase your business – including a powerful linking campaign for your website – you are going to start to see that there is a pattern indeed to creating luck and making things happen for your business.

————————–

Pour la Creation site internet

Evaulating Web Site Performance

Setting up a website is the very first step of an Internet marketing campaign, and the success or failure of your site depends greatly on how specifically you have defined your website goals. If you don’t know what you want your site to accomplish, it will most likely fail to accomplish anything. Without goals to guide you in developing and monitoring your website, all your site will be is an online announcement that you are in business.

If you expect your site to stimulate some form of action, whether it is visitors filling out a form so a representative can contact them, or purchasing a product, there are steps you can take to insure that your website is functioning at peak efficiency. One of the first indicators of how well your site is working for you is finding out the number of visitors in a given period of time. A good baseline measurement is a month in which you haven’t been doing any unusual offline promotional activities.

However, just because hoards of people have passed through your gates does not mean your site is successful. Usually, you want those visitors to actually do something there. It is equally important to monitor the number of visitors to your site who made a purchase. This figure is called the site conversion rate, and it is an essential element of the efficacy of your website. To find the site conversion rate, take the number of visitors per month and figure out the percentage of them that actually performed the action your site is set up for. For example, if you had 2,000 hits to your site, but only 25 of them purchased your product, your site conversion rate equals 1.25%. To get this figure, take your number of visitors and divide that figure by the number of visitors who made a purchase. Then divide that result by 100 (25 ÷ 2000 X 100).

If your website is set-up to get visitors to fill out a form, make sure to then figure out what the difference is between your site conversion rate and your sales conversion rate. This is because not everyone who fills out your form will actually become your customer. However, whether your site is set-up to sell a service or product, or to get the visitor to fill out a form, the site conversion rate will measure the success or failure of your website whenever you make changes to the site.

You may find that you need to implement some additional marketing strategies if you find that traffic to your site is extremely low. There are several effective methods to improve the flow of traffic to your website, particularly launching a search engine optimization campaign. This campaign is targeted at increasing your position in search engine results so that consumers can find your pages faster and easier. You can either research the steps you need to take to improve your search engine rankings, or employ a search engine optimization company to do the work for you. In either case, after your have improved your search engine positions, make sure you keep on top of them by regular monitoring and adjusting of your efforts to maintain high positions.

Another factor to examine is how easy it is for a visitor to your website to accomplish the action the site is set-up for. For example, if your goal is for the visitor to fill out a form, is this form easily accessible, or does the visitor have to go through four levels to get to it? If it’s too difficult to get to, the customer may just throw in the towel and move on to another site. Make sure your buttons are highly visible, and the path to your form or ordering page quickly accessible.

Finally, have a professional evaluate the copy on your website. The goal is, of course, to get your visitor to make a purchase or fill out your form. Website copy must be specifically geared to your online campaign and not just a cut and paste job from your company brochure. The right copy can make the difference between profit and loss in your online campaign.

Michael Rasmussen is a successful Internet Marketing Consultant and author of many top-selling eBooks. Michael has been marketing online since the early days and he knows what it takes to make money and succeed online. Stop by his Web site and subscribe to his Free monthly newsletter full strategies and techniques for successful web site promotions that can help YOU!

creation de site internet

Insight: Failure and Success In Online Business

Creativity and Determination are the KEY ingredients in all online success stories. So many times, as a moderator and participant  in the net’s most active and lauded online marketing forum, The Internet Marketing Warriors, I have heard the same questions repeated by hopeful marketer after hopeful marketer. And mostly they begin with “How do I…?”

Similar questions, in a dead-heat in frequency, vary around a theme such as “What tool should I use to…?”

Know-how and tools. Go to any forum on the net, on almost any subject, and you will find hundreds or even thousands of people exchanging information on know-how and tools. “What is the best way to write copy?” “Which autoresponder script is best for my business?” “What hosting is the best for me?”

Very infrequently will you come upon a marketing discussion that talks about creativity and determination. Even more rare is a successful product that shows people HOW to be creative and determined. This is because tools and know-how are so much easier to write about.

If this, then that. Such a small phrase, yet it is the bulk of what internet marketing training is all about if you have read even a small pile of ebooks geared toward making you a better sales producer.

And the formula sells – bigtime.

But then, why are there so many people failing at marketing their business online? What is IT that separates the masses from the relatively few truly successful online small businesses?

It is this: You cannot teach people creativity very easily. Some would say it’s impossible. Art classes are simply tools to weed out people that don’t have IT so they can get busy pursuing another line of work!

And it is this: Determination (including work ethic, stick-to-it-ivenss, seeing something through to the end) is even harder to simply instill in a person with the written word or teleseminar. You cannot reach through your ebook to slap someone everyday to recapture their focus for them and keep them on-task.

The problem is compounded when you have one of the above and not the other. Creative people very often have no business sense or the drive necessary to acquire it. Determined people fail gloriously in a gallon of sweat at five in the morning without creativity. Nothing is probably more disheartening than having one or the other. It must be like being able to see over the fence, but not have what it takes to climb to the other side.

Tools are tools. We must use them in any profession to the best of our ability. Henry Ford used tools to create Model Ts. But did you ever read a story proclaiming that Ford won the day with his tools? Of course not. The stories are about determination and creativity and that’s it.

You can go out right now and get the best software, the most expensive copywriter, the best programmer, and even the best product since sliced bread. And you can fail. It’s been done more times than success by a long margin throughout history.

This article is not about how to succeed at internet marketing. It is not about tools that will help get you over the fence where the grass is greener.

This article is an observation. An observation that is seeded with clues that only creative and determined people will pick up on. And, despite all the success manuals and training you may have spent hard earned money on, this article contains the answer to why many people fail and some succeed at not only internet marketing, but in anything in life.

Creativity in internet marketing is being able to think beyond what others have accomplished to date. It’s being able to take the pulse of the internet and the human condition and react by putting something together that is needed and desired.

Determination is being able to go out on a limb and work until you succeed despite obstacles and naysayers. It is fueled by belief in yourself and your creative ideas.

Do you have these two key ingredients? Can you see what is possible that thousands of other great minds have overlooked? If so, can you then take that vision and turn it into reality with dogged determination and perhaps the hardest work you have ever done in your life?

If you have “it,” then you can go learn about our trade from the technical (tools) standpoint and you can use them to succeed with your creativity and determination. The tools are worthless by themselves.

I hope one day to see a lot more questions about the creative process as it relates to business and success in forums in the future. I want to see questions (and honest answers!) about how much work it takes to create a profitable business online. Then I will know that a lot more people are on track and are asking the RIGHT questions. Most of all, I hope to see more training materials from experts that deal with not only what tools and systems to use, but with topics on how to think freely, on your own, about how you could make something better or make something new out of the situation at hand.

Finally, when you hear that this business is not for everyone, it means quite specifically that this business is not for people who cannot think outside the norm and work long hours. That’s why businesses that people try to sell you that “do all the work so you don’t even have to think” are so absurd.

No one has ever succeeded at anything without creativity and determination. Unless they have entered a couch potato contest. But even then the most successful people are going to be the ones who think creatively about how to sit on that couch longer than anyone else and watch more TV than was formerly thought humanly possible.

Here is an example using the above: 99% of the people who set out to be the #1 Couch Potato will simply start out by sitting in front of the TV for as long as they can. They think, “I will just out-potato everyone else by doing it 24/7.”

And they will all fail. Because one person is going to think creatively and freely. They are going to buy 5 TVs and plug them all in in front of the couch. They are going to out-potato everyone else by being able to compound the amount of TV they can watch by 5 times the amount of everyone else while doing no more work than the other 99%. Through creativity and determination, the person who wins at anything is going to find ways to succeed that most people never would have thought of.

In the end, if you want to succeed online, you must ask yourself: Do I REALLY have the creativity and determination to turn my current situation into a better one through an online business? Don’t worry about tools and know-how. Those can be learned and used by anyone. But there is no need to commit yourself to a big learning curve if you don’t have what it really takes to succeed in the end.

————————–
Pour la Referencement – optimisation de site (seo)

One Good Link Deserves Another

There is nothing on the web that compares to a good link when you are talking about building steady streams of traffic to your site. Did you know that one good link can bring you more daily traffic than a #1 position on a search engine? It’s true!

Did you also know that there are sites out there, thousands of them, who rely solely on the traffic they get from reciprocal links with other webmasters? There are! I call the webmasters of these sites Link Minded people!

No webmaster in their right mind would argue that links aren’t the lifeblood of the internet. A search engine is only a directory of links. A link directory on your domain is also a search engine when you use the proper technique of creating a “themed category listing.

I think the biggest problem on the net today is that so many webmasters are looking for a Magic Pill that will solve their traffic problems with The Click of a Button. How many times have you seen an ad with those exact words in it? 50? 100 times or more?

Well, I am sorry to tell you, there is no magic pill. That I can absolutely positively guarantee. There is no substitute for plain, old fashioned hard work and dedication to your website and the business you would like to succeed in. The internet offers tons of automation solutions, and even reciprocal linking has had a couple of valiant attempts and even successes at a certain degree of automation.

But exchanging meaningful, traffic-driving links with other webmasters is and always will be a personal, one-on-one thing. It is like a mini joint venture with other webmasters and you have to address them without bulk mail or spamming in order to even have a chance at getting the mother of all links someday!

When you look at reciprocal linking (the oldest original form of advertising since the web began) it is really surprising how few marketing experts deal with the topic. I wrote a book about the whole phenomenon simply because there were so few people looking into the science of link swapping!

And there is a science to it! There are pitfalls. There are plain NO-NOs. There are myriad ways to waste your time chasing after useless links, or worse, links that will get you banned from some search engines! Reciprocal linking is not link farming or posting to 400,000 Free-for-All links pages. (A most detestable practice used for awhile by all newbies, then abandoned after the damage is done.)

In short, you really have few choices on the net better than starting a link directory and asking webmasters with relevant content to your site for a link swap. Unless you have a huge budget and can afford to pay someone to get your site optimized and ranked in the top ten on all the big engines, there aren’t other alternatives.

Banner exchanges suck visitors from your site. Traffic exchanges bring you hits, but totally uninterested visitors. Ezine ads are an important linking strategy, but that is an ongoing process you do to get quick spurts of traffic, not ongoing, steady streams of it. Plus it is hard to know where to get the best ads and usually the best ads are pretty expensive on a small budget.

My recommendation for people who really want their site to be noticed to the tune of 1000 hits a day or more, who are on a budget and are just starting: start a link directory on your site and have clear instructions on how to swap links with you.

Then, search the net for your link partners (relevancy is SO key here, don’t swap links with Victoria’s Secret if you sell fishing line!) send them personalized emails asking for swaps, set up top listings for those willing to be “link partners and keep going until you have at least 100 links to your site! (Verifiable at altavista.com by typing in “Link:yourdomain.com)

Then, stop and take a break and start again. It’s work. Even with automation software. Nothing good comes on the net without work. Did you EVER in your life see a successful business owner who said “It really was easy, no real work at all to get where I am today!?

But the payoff here is guaranteed: Reciprocal links will bring you traffic and increase your site’s link popularity and ranking on the search engines. Any webmaster willing to do what it takes to succeed should be willing to work their fingers to the bone to get a huge amount of traffic through link swapping!

————————–
Pour la Creation sites internet

Business Tips To Help You Succeed

GENERAL IDEAS

Never let a day pass without engaging in at least one marketing activity.
Determine a percentage of gross income to spend annually on marketing.
Set specific marketing goals every year; review and adjust quarterly.
Maintain a tickler file of ideas for later use.
Carry business cards with you (all day, every day).
Create a personal nametag or pin with your company name and logo on it and wear it at high visibility meetings.TARGET MARKET

Stay alert to trends that might impact your target market, product or promotion strategy.
Read market research studies about your profession, industry, product, target market groups, etc.
Collect competitors’ ads and literature; study them for information about strategy, product features and benefits, etc.
Ask clients why they hired you and solicit suggestions for improvement.
Ask former clients why they left you.
Identify a new market.
Join a list-serve (email list) related to your profession.
Subscribe to an Internet usenet newsgroup or a list-serve that serves your target market.

PRODUCT DEVELOPMENT

Create a new service, technique or product.
Offer a simpler/cheaper/smaller version of your (or another existing) product or service.
Offer a fancier/more expensive/faster/bigger version of your (or another existing) product or service.
Update your services.

EDUCATION, RESOURCES AND INFORMATION

Establish a marketing and public relations advisory and referral team composed of your colleagues and/or neighboring business owners to share ideas and referrals and to discuss community issues.
Meet quarterly for breakfast.
Create a suggestion box for employees.
Attend a marketing seminar.
Read a marketing book.
Subscribe to a marketing newsletter or other publication.
Subscribe to a marketing list-serve on the Internet.
Subscribe to a marketing usenet newsgroup on the Internet.
Train your staff, clients and colleagues to promote referrals.
Hold a monthly marketing meeting with employees or associates to discuss strategy, status and to solicit marketing ideas.
Join an association or organization related to your profession.
Get a marketing intern to take you on as a client; it will give the intern experience and you some free marketing help.
Maintain a consultant card file for finding designers, writers and other marketing professionals.
Hire a marketing consultant to brainstorm with.
Take a “creative journey” to another progressive city or country to observe and learn from marketing techniques used there. 
 
PRICING AND PAYMENT

Analyze your fee structure; look for areas requiring modifications or adjustments.
Establish a credit card payment option for clients.
Give regular clients a discount.
Learn to barter; offer discounts to members of certain clubs/professional groups/organizations in exchange for promotions in their publications.
Give “quick pay” or cash discounts.
Offer financing or installment plans. 

 MARKETING COMMUNICATIONS

Publish a newsletter for customers and prospects. (It doesn’t have to be fancy or expensive.)
Develop a brochure of services.
Include a postage-paid survey card with your brochures and other company literature. Include check-off boxes or other items that will involve the reader and provide valuable feedback to you.
Remember, business cards aren’t working for you if they’re in the box. Pass them out! Give prospects two business cards and brochures — one to keep and one to pass along.
Produce separate business cards/sales literature for each of your target market segments (e.g. government and commercial, and/or business and consumer).
Create a poster or calendar to give away to customers and prospects.
Print a slogan and/or one-sentence description of your business on letterhead, fax cover sheets and invoices.
Develop a site on the World Wide Web.
Create a “signature file” to be used for all your e-mail messages. It should contain contact details including your Web site address and key information about your company that will make the reader want to contact you.
Include “testimonials” from customers in your literature.
Test a new mailing list. If it produces results, add it to your current direct mail lists or consider replacing a list that’s not performing up to expectations.
Use colored or oversized envelopes for your direct mailings. Or send direct mail in plain white envelopes to pique recipients’ curiosity.
Announce free or special offers in your direct response pieces. (Direct responses may be direct mail, broadcast fax, or e-mail messages.) Include the offer in the beginning of the message and also on the outside of the envelope for direct mail. 

 MEDIA RELATIONS

Update your media list often so that press releases are sent to the right media outlet and person.
Write a column for the local newspaper, local business journal or trade publication.
Publish an article and circulate reprints.
Send timely and newsworthy press releases as often as needed.
Publicize your 500th client of the year (or other notable milestone).
Create an annual award and publicize it as an outstanding employee of the year.
Get public relations and media training or read up on it.
Appear on a radio or TV talk show.
Create your own TV program on your industry or your specialty. Market the show to your local cable station or public broadcasting station as a regular program. Or, see if you can air your show on an open access cable channel.
Write a letter to the editor of your local newspaper or to a trade magazine editor.
Take an editor to lunch.
Get a publicity photo taken and enclose with press releases.
Consistently review newspapers and magazines for possible PR opportunities.
Submit “tip” articles to newsletters and newspapers.
Conduct industry research and develop a press release or article to announce an important discovery in your field.
Create a press kit and keep its contents current. 

 CUSTOMER SERVICE AND CUSTOMER RELATIONS

Ask your clients to come back again.
Return phone calls promptly.
Set up a fax-on-demand or email system to easily respond to customer inquiries.
Use an answering machine or voice mail system to catch after-hours phone calls. Include basic information in your outgoing message such a business hours, location, etc.
Record a memorable message or “tip of the day” on your outgoing answering machine or voice mail message.
Ask clients what you can do the help them.
Take clients out to a ball game, a show or another special event just send them two tickets with a note.
Hold a seminar at your office for clients and prospects.
Send hand-written thank-you notes.
Send birthday cards and appropriate seasonal greetings.
Photocopy interesting articles and send them to clients and prospects with a hand-written “FYI” note and your business card.
Send a book of interest or other appropriate business gift to a client with a handwritten note.
Create an area on your Web site specifically for your customers.
Redecorate your office or location where you meet with your clients. 

 NETWORKING AND WORD OF MOUTH

Join a Chamber of Commerce or other organization.
Join or organize a breakfast club with other professionals (not in your field) to discuss business and network referrals.
Mail a brochure to members of organizations to which you belong.
Serve on a city board or commission.
Host a holiday party.
Hold an open house.
Send letters to attendees after you attend a conference.
Join a community list-serve (email list) on the Internet. 

 ADVERTISING

Advertise during peak seasons for your business.
Get a memorable phone number, such as “1-800-WIDGETS.”
Obtain a memorable URL and email address and include them on all marketing materials.
Provide Rolodex® cards or phone stickers pre-printed with your business contact information.
Promote your business jointly with other professionals via cooperative direct mail.
Advertise in a specialty directory or in the Yellow Pages.
Write an ad in another language to reach a non-English-speaking market. Place the ad in a publication that market reads, such as a Hispanic newspaper.
Distribute advertising specialty products such as pens, mouse pads or mugs.
Mail “bumps,” photos, samples and other innovative items to your prospect list. (A bump is simply anything that makes the mailing envelope bulge and makes the recipient curious about what’s in the envelope!)
Create a direct mail list of “hot prospects.”
Consider non-traditional tactics such as bus backs, billboards and popular Web sites.
Project a message on the sidewalk in front of your place of business using a light directed through words etched in a glass window.
Consider placing ads in your newspaper’s classified section.
Consider a vanity automobile tag with your company name.
Create a friendly bumper sticker for your car.
Code your ads and keep records of results.
Improve your building signage and directional signs inside and out.
Invest in a neon sign to make your office or storefront window visible at night.
Create a new or improved company logo or “recolor” the traditional logo.
Sponsor and promote a contest or sweepstakes. 

 SPECIAL EVENTS AND OUTREACH

Get a booth at a fair/trade show attended by your target market.
Sponsor or host a special event or open house at your business location in cooperation with a local non-profit organization, such as a women’s business center. Describe how the organization helped you.
Give a speech or volunteer for a career day at a high school.
Teach a class or seminar at a local college or adult education center.
Sponsor an “Adopt-a-Road” area in your community to keep roads litter-free. People that pass by the area will see your name on the sign announcing your sponsorship.
Volunteer your time to a charity or non-profit organization.
Donate your product or service to a charity auction.
Appear on a panel at a professional seminar.
Write a “How To” pamphlet or article for publishing.
Produce and distribute an educational CD-ROM, audio or video tape.
Publish a book. 

 SALES IDEAS

Start every day with two cold calls.
Read newspapers, business journals and trade publications for new business openings and for personnel appointment and promotion announcements made by companies. Send your business literature to appropriate individuals and firms.
Give your sales literature to your lawyer, accountant, printer, banker, temp agency, office supply salesperson, advertising agency, etc. (Expand your sales force for free!)
Put your fax number on order forms for easy submission.
Set up a fax-on-demand or email system to easily distribute responses to company or product inquiries.
Follow up on your direct mailings, email messages and broadcast faxes with a friendly telephone call.
Try using the broadcast fax or email delivery methods instead of direct mail. (Broadcast fax and email allows you to send the same message to many locations at once.)
Using broadcast fax or email messages to notify your customers of product service updates.
Extend your hours of operation.
Reduce response/turnaround time. Make reordering easy reminders. Provide pre-addressed envelopes.
Display product and service samples at your office.
Remind clients of the products and services you provide that they aren’t currently buying.
Call and/or send mail to former clients to try to reactivate them.
Take sales orders over the Internet.

————————–
Pour la Creation sites internet

(Adsense) The #1 Biggest Mistake That People Make With Adsense

It’s very easy to make a lot of money with AdSense. I know it’s easy because in a short space of time, I’ve managed to turn the sort of AdSense revenues that wouldn’t keep me in candy into the kind of income that pays the mortgage on a large suburban house, makes the payments on a family car and does a whole lot more besides.

But that doesn’t mean there aren’t any number of mistakes that you can make when trying to increase your AdSense income – and any one of those mistakes can keep you earning candy money instead of earning the sort of cash that can pay for your home.

There is one mistake though that will totally destroy your chances of earning a decent AdSense income before you’ve even started.

That mistake is making your ad look like an ad.

No one wants to click on an ad. Your users don’t come to your site looking for advertisements. They come looking for content and their first instinct is to ignore everything else. And they’ve grown better and better at doing just that. Today’s Internet users know exactly what a banner ad looks like. They know what it means, where to expect it – and they know exactly how to ignore it. In fact most Internet users don’t even see the banners at the top of the Web pages they’re reading or the skyscrapers running up the side.

But when you first open an AdSense account, the format and layout of the ads you receive will have been designed to look just like ads. That’s the default setting for AdSense – and that’s the setting that you have to work hard to change.

That’s where AdSense gets interesting. There are dozens of different strategies that smart AdSense account holders can use to stop their ads looking like ads – and make them look attractive to users. They include choosing the right formats for your ad, placing them in the most effective spots on the page, putting together the best combination of ad units, enhancing your site with the best keywords, selecting the most ideal colors for the font and the background, and a whole lot more besides.

The biggest AdSense mistake you can make is leaving your AdSense units looking like ads.

The second biggest mistake you can make is to not know the best strategies to change them.

Copyright © 2005 Joel Comm. All rights reserved

---

Joel Comm is Dr. AdSense, an Internet entrepreneur who has been online for more than 20 years. Joel is co-creator of ClassicGames.com, now known as Yahoo! Games and is the author of the web’s best-selling AdSense ebook, “Google AdSense Secrets (Or What Google Never Told You About Making Money With Adsense)”.

Pour la creation de site internet, cliquez sur ce lien

Making Public Service Ads Serve You

Making huge sums of money with AdSense isn’t brain surgery. You simply have to know what you’re doing. If you know which types of ads to choose, where to place them on the page and how to use Google’s options to design them so that they get the maximum number of click-throughs, you should find your site earning heaps of money very quickly.

But things can go wrong. Revenues can be disappointing, clicks non-existent and pages designed to put off users instead of encourage them to check out your advertisers. You know when one of the worst things possible has gone wrong when, instead of seeing ads on your page, you get public service ads. These turn up when Google doesn’t recognize your keywords or can’t find a suitable ad to put on your Web page. Instead of showing a blank box, it puts up ads for all sorts of charities, none of which you choose – and none of which earn you revenue.

You might like the idea of your site working for charity. But you might like it better if your site worked for you and you decided how much of that revenue to give to the charities you choose. That’s why smart AdSense subscribers – the ones who understand how AdSense works and make giant revenues from it – make sure that they have alternatives set up to stop their sites being used to advertise Google’s favorite charities.

There are lots of different ways you can do that. For example, you could create your own pseudo-AdSense ads and use those as alternate URLs to promote your other sites. Or you could use one of the several companies that will use that space to give you targeted paying ads.

There’s nothing mean about using these strategies. The fact that Google makes it possible to use them shows that they understand that your space is for you not for them – and that you should earn from it.

With a little bit of reading, you’ll find that it’s easy to create a website that always serves high-paying AdSense ads. But even the smartest AdSense users make sure that they’ve got insurance should something go wrong. It’s easy to do and your revenues deserve it.

Pour la Creation sites internet

Copyright © 2005 Joel Comm. All rights reserved

Pour la Creation site internet

How to get 1 Million Hits Without the Search Engines

I  love to show people how they can actually get up to 1 million hits per month using reciprocal links. People are doing it right now all over the web and have the live server log files to prove it. And you probably are thinking, “Yeah they are on top of the search engine lists! Actually, top listing on the search engines is not the cause of their hits! It’s a side-effect.

Reciprocal links alone put them in the Million-a-Month Club. Reciprocal links, good ones, can do much more for you than any search engine ever will.

Wow Jack, that’s a bold statement, got anything to back that up?

How about the server logs of people getting over a million hits per month who did nothing more than seek out link partners and ONLY submitted to each major search engine ONCE? Would that convince you?

Well check it out. Here are two sites that use reciprocal linking almost exclusively with all other forms of advertising bringing in a relatively negligible amount of traffic. When looking at their live server log files, pay attention to the following things:

1.) Qualified traffic from reciprocal links.

Look at the Refers Report and check the section labeled ‘/’. Underneath you will find which links and search engines are sending these websites traffic.) Search engine traffic to the sites’ Link Directory pages.

In the Refers Report, find the headings that start with /links/, with the name of the Link Directory pages directory after. Search engines send lots of traffic to these pages. These pages were never submitted to the search engines!

Example 1: CTEX CD Replication holds the number one keyword placement on Yahoo for “CD replication.” How did they get there? Link popularity! Check out their live server log files at: http://www.ctexinc.com/stats/index.html

Example 2: Toolady.com is a website that has been using reciprocal links for a long time and her web site traffic was generated completely reciprocal links! In four months it became one of the most heavily trafficked bird web sites on the internet. No other form of marketing was done. Check out her server log files here:

http://toolady.com/reports/log_bird.html

So you tell me, are search engines the almighty savior you thought they were a minute ago?

Relevance of Your Links

Relevance has a lot to do with how a search engine robot will treat you nowadays. That’s why I always talk about the importance of building a link list or “theme index” for your site (call it a reciprocal link exchange) that closely resembles the topics or products you deal with in your site. (But not those, of course, in direct competition to you.)

Now the FFA and Link Farm people are going to be mad at me, but this is the truth!

Here’s a test. If I fail it you may publicly scorn me!

Go to any FFA page on the web and look for Yahoo.com. Try Amazon.com, or CocaCola.com… There must be TONS of their links on FFA pages – EVERYBODY knows those guys! Go ahead and check it out, I’ll be here when you get back!

Glad you’re back – how many links did you find? None? Yikes!

Now go to Altavista.com and type link:yahoo.com in the search window. What happened? Well, I just did it and it said: We found 6,670,578 results. (By the way, don’t you love how the search engine will report millions of links just like it reports none? Doesn’t it seem like they would be like “WOW, six million links!!!”)

That’s 6,670,578 links pointing to Yahoo.com!!

And not a single one from a link farm. Now don’t go getting ideas in your head about getting 6 million links. You don’t need that many to flood your site with enough traffic to keep you selling widgets, or informing the public on the effects on the ozone layer from methane gas produced by cattle. (What? hey its late, that was the best example I could come up with! How do I know what you’re into?)

No, you need far fewer links than that to get 1,000,000 hits a month. And, with a million hits a month, how many methane gas-to-oxygen converters do you think you could sell to farmers to mount on the backs of their cows to protect the ozone layer? I’d say at least a whole heap!

There is automation software out there that people are using to drastically optimize their link lists and I highly recommend checking them out. The best and first of its kind can be found at webmastertraffictools.com.

This software has a fully functioning demo that will spider the web, set up your link directory, AND upload it to your server. It also does a mail-merge function to personalize all your link requests to other webmasters and mails for you. All in the DEMO version!

You CAN do all this manually, but it is highly recommended that you at least check out the automation software demo above to see what the best of the best webmasters are using to get those million hits per month.

(Author’s note: It has not yet been proven whether methane produced by cow emissions affects the ozone layer. Example above is fictional.)

————————–
Jack Humphrey is the Author of “Power linking 2: Evolution”
which hit the net this week to rave reviews. Grab your copy
before your competition does at http://power-linking-profits.com

Pour la Creation de sites internet