Gene Minor's Blog

Copyright © 2009 Titus Hoskins

Next year may just prove to be one of the most challenging times for pursuing online or Internet marketing on the web. It may just be a watershed moment for many marketers struggling to keep abreast of all the different factors which have come into play in recent months. Most of these changes will stem from two main sources for potential upheaval: the first being the New FTC (Federal Trade Commission) Guidelines regarding Testimonials and Endorsements and the second being “ALL” the recent changes within Google.

Actually, we already have the new FTC Guidelines which came into effect on Dec. 1st of 2009, but how these new rules are enforced will play out in the coming year as test-cases are brought to court. Basically, these new rules call for absolute disclosure and full transparency regarding Testimonials and Endorsements when a product or service is being offered for sale. Any business (monetary) relationship between the endorser and the company must be made known to the potential buyer. Obviously for those in online or affiliate marketing this could have a great impact if these new rules are strictly enforced. Just imagine all the website owners and bloggers who slap a few banners or affiliate links on their sites to cover hosting or operating costs… will they now have to disclose all these business arrangements?

For professional affiliate marketers and the companies/products they’re promoting, these new guidelines could cause potential headaches and/or legal ramifications since a general blanket disclaimer on their sites will no longer be suffice. To help solve this problem, many of the major companies are now placing an “affiliate” tag on all their banners and making it obvious a business relationship exists with its affiliates. In addition, many online marketers are placing additional disclaimers, affiliate seals and in other ways making it known certain links are indeed affiliate links and a relationship does exist with the product and/or services being promoted.

With these new guidelines, another big issue is email marketing, one of the major marketing techniques of most online marketers. Will a full disclosure be necessary for every email sales pitch? Savvy web marketers know the key to increased sales is in the “follow-up” and the “cookie-ing” of potential buyers; how will the new Guidelines affect this very effective marketing practice? How all these new rules or guidelines play out will make next year a very interesting one for marketing on the web.

Despite this, perhaps the greatest cause for upheaval in the coming year will be Google. There are countless reasons why Google will be a major game changer in 2010 for online marketing. Ever since Bing and more recently the potential Bing/Yahoo competition, Google has gone into complete overdrive, implementing new changes and debuting new programs like there was no tomorrow.

First, we have Google Caffeine which Google is introducing (full force) early in the new year. Google Caffeine, which is a major overhaul of its search engine, will no doubt cause many a marketer some sleepless nights as the total fall-out becomes evident. Other Google updates in the past (Florida Update comes readily to mind) have wrecked havoc on many top ranking sites, but this time Google is doing things a little different and have even given webmasters a beta version of the new search engine. Still, rightly or wrongly, many online marketers are bracing themselves for the full impact of Caffeine, will it mean smooth sailing or a stomach sickening roller-coaster ride for marketers and webmasters?

Second, we have the introduction of “Real Time” search which will be featured in Google’s SERPs. This will make the social media sites like Twitter, FaceBook, MySpace… much more important. Again, the implications for online marketers could be enormous since many can now reach the first page through a different route. Will it also mean more “Real Time” spam? But more importantly, will it mean a greater marketing opportunity for the online marketer who exploits it?

Third, we are seeing Google moving more and more towards “Visual Search” with the introduction of Google Goggles for mobile phones. Just take a picture and you get the Google results instantly – no typing, just point and click. Just envision countless clueless teenagers or more importantly helpless shoppers suddenly being empowered with knowledge and wisdom. Could do more for education since the invention of the printed word and the info-commercial combined. Talk about scary! But will the implications for web marketing be just as revolutionary and enlightening?

Fourth, Google has made it known through its spokesperson Matt Cutts, that site-loading times will be a ranking factor in the new improved Google. Also, proper and correct page coding will also be more important if you want your site to be at full advantage. Broken links will be a big “No-No”, while linking out to important related sites a big plus. All this is only logical, Google’s main product is and has always been its search results, anything which improves those results and provides a more pleasing experience for the Google user should be front and center. Obviously, one way for Google to stay on top, is to provide the best search results to its users.

Fifth<, in order to please the end-user, Google is also moving more towards "Personalized Search" which will make SEO and ranking in the top spot for your chosen keywords a total nightmare for many professional SEOs and online marketers. If everyone can choose their own top results, isn't SEO more or less, a lame duck? Again, the ramifications of personalized search will further play out in 2010, but will professional marketers like what they see?

Finally, while no one would argue Google is King of the Hill when it comes to online search, will all these new changes strengthen or weaken Google’s grip? Will the combined Bing/Yahoo be able to give this giant some much needed competition? Or will Google’s main competition come from an unlikely source, such as big name multi-national corporations who are moving their operations online. Can these big-name keyworded domains start directly pulling in the majority of the web’s traffic, making all search engines secondary? As people become more web savvy, will they go directly to what they’re looking for on the web, bypassing the search engines altogether – including the mighty Google? Such a scenario could have greater consequences for the affiliate marketer since a direct line to a company’s site or product will obviously mean less sales for the online marketer, who really works in coordination with the search engines, either through organic search or PPC (Pay Per Click) advertising in these same search engines.

Overall, the new FTC Guidelines and recent changes to Google, will make next year one of the most interesting times to be pitching anything online. Throw into this the full effect what a combined Bing/Yahoo might bring to the table, and you have the recipe for a tumultuous white knuckle ride, until the dust finally settles and marketers make adjustments like they always do. Until then, hold on because things will probably get a little hectic for many web marketers before we see the light at the end of the tunnel.

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The author is a full time online affiliate marketer. His livelihood is derived from & depended upon search engine marketing & daily monitoring of targeted keywords, mainly within Google. He runs numerous sites, including: Internet Marketing & Internet Marketing Tools Titus Hoskins 2009. This article may be freely distributed with box.

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It used to be a purse joined a network marketing opportunity based on a recommendation from a relative or friend. This is partly what contributed to the high attrition rate.

Today the Internet is helping improve the success rate. Let’s take a look at what you should focus on when choosing a network marketing opportunity to get involved with.

1. Will you use the product even if you are not a distributor? I think this is probably the most important thing for people to consider.

If you are a large Internet marketer the product becomes less important because you already have a huge email list and a website with traffic. Many people who join a network marketing business do not have these two things.

If you choose to join in MLM business based on the product you personally use you will stick with it even when you are not making money. Not only that, but so will a greater percentage of your downline.

This means do you do not have to enroll as many new distributors to replace the ones that are quitting. When you promote a product you like you will do a better job of selling it and get that point across to new prospects as well.

2. Can you buy the same product at Wal-Mart for 30%-50% less? You reach a time where it is difficult to convince people about the quality of your product if it is grossly over priced.

Certainly your product is a high-quality one or you wouldn’t be using. But if your prospects, or even people in your downline, can go to Wal-Mart and buy a similar product for less some of them will.

People who are not making money in their business generally quit using the product based on price and believability in it. Plus many people shop at Wal-Mart and it’s just more convenient to pick it up than it is to wait on it to be shipped.

3. Does the compensation plan have fast pay retail bonuses and the ability to create reason to link them? I see it all the time where a person drops out of network marketing because they’re not making money quick enough.

It is very exciting to receive even a small check right away and that’s what your network marketing company should provide you. More people will retail products when they know they are going to get paid the following week. This is good for their excitement level and for their cash flow.

Of course residual income is what many network marketers want. You can create an excellent residual income if you pay plan rewards you in the future for work you are doing today. This makes it more likely you will choose that specific network marketing opportunity over another one.

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If you enjoyed this article, you might also enjoy my network marketing website with JV With Jeff free internet marketing help and additional articles how to make money online.

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Copyright © 2009 Riley West

Affiliate marketers need to have certain things. I consider it important to have a web page where you can put your offers and content.

Then you can just get down to driving traffic to your site, making sales, and earning money.

Still, the beginning affiliate marketer and perhaps even some intermediates, would like it to be low priced and more straightforward than the typical setup.

Take as an example the mass of web pages called Squidoo.

It’s really just another website except for it’s size and variety of content. It’s VERY well known at Google.

Last I heard there were about 900,000 individual pages on this huge website and those pages are called “lenses” by the “Squids.”

Here are 5 good reasons to use Squidoo as an affiliate marketer.

The first reason is your cost for the hosting space. It’s zero.

The second reason is the cost of registering a domain name. It’s zero too!

Squidoo loks good because it’s practically effortless, AND it’s very low cost, especially when compared to the typical cost of hosting and domain at about $100 to $130 per year.

That doesn’t sound like much, and it isn’t if your site is making money or if you just have plenty of it. But for affiliates who are just starting and a lot of intermediates too, it’s just perfect.

The third reason, and one of big importance to affiliates, is that it is relatively easy to get indexed by Google for your lens. Really it’s a web page. But Google seems to like them.

If you pick your domain name with a keyword relevant to your sites content, that you can easily rank for, and you put it at the beginning of your domain name, you will be started off really well.

Doing a good job optimizing your page (lens) for your relevant keyword, is the best way to get your site to come up on the search results page in Google. Google page one for almost ANY keyword will result in some kind of traffic.

The fourth reason to go with Squidoo is that you are not alone. There is lots of assistance.

This would have really helped me when I was getting started because it seemed like, for me, everything new wasn’t just new…it seemed wierd…alien even. I didn’t “get it.”

Squdoo helps you in a dozen ways and you can see for yourself by just going there and looking around.

In addition, there is a forum where you can go and ask questions and get answers. Maybe later you can even answer some questions.

The fifth reason to use these pages (lenses) is because they work!

By work I mean that you can make them look like a great web page. You can also get them to have a good bit of traffic. And you can engage in direct sales right there.

If you’d like a landing page, this is it!

And that’s not all. You will learn a lot!

Many of the stumbling blocks a typical newcomer or even intermediate affiliate marketer will run into are completely eliminated by this alternative. The first reason that comes to mind is the FREE domain name and hosting.

Go there, join up and start your first lens. Start fooling around with it. Learn how to do a few of the things you need to get a halfway decent site up. There’s going to be plenty of assistance if you get stuck.

In a week to two weeks you could have an affiliate site up, indexed, and getting traffic.

Watch out because IF you do this, the next thing that will happen is that you will get a sale. A sale that didn’t cost you anything but your time and effort.

Only now you’ll know how to repeat it and increase your income.

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Riley West has been spreading the idea of Simplified Affiliate Marketing for a couple of years. The formula is Webpage + Offer + Traffic = Sales. See this explained simply at Targeted Traffic and, while you are there, don’t miss out on the demonstration of a sure-fire, simplified affiliate marketing plan at One Week Marketing.

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People use Google SEO Company as a search term but in actual fact there is no such type of company in the way that there are Google Adwords Certified Companies who have passed Google Exams. However it is a very popular search term and that is the foundations of a good SEO campaign. The mindset of the people searching is more than likely that they wish to find a company who can get great results for them on Google with it being the biggest and most important search engine for the moment.

The subject of SEO is highly documented on the web and contains plenty of good information but also plenty of mis-information. This leads to it being more difficult to understand for some business owners who let’s face it are busy running their business!

To understand SEO the first step is to think like a search engine. Search engines are continually refining their processes in order to give their customers a better experience. This means that SEO which has been done to try to fool the search engines will sooner or later be no use. For example Google’s evaluation of links has become stricter and will continue to do so.

Think about times when you have searched for something and some of the results were not what you were looking for then you were not as satisfied a search engine customer as you could have been. As a search engine customer you want to find a selection of the most highly relevant websites on your first search without trawling down lots of pages. This is what the search engines want to deliver also.

From an SEO point of view this means that websites should deliver to both search engines customers’ expectations and also to the technical necessities of the search engines. To achieve this requires good old fashioned hard work, technical knowledge and creativity. For websites who wish to achieve important Google SEO rankings a combination of specialist, excellent content on their website and evidence of other good websites giving votes of confidence (links) is what works over time.

Google has no way to check out your shop/website except for the technical messages you give to it and then other reputable websites feeling it is important enough to link to it. Before the internet if someone was to recommend a business they would have physically met the people involved and seen the office or shop. Google and the search engines have to evaluate your business on the votes of others from their websites.

So Google is checking out the company you keep. They won’t penalize you if someone links to your website if they feel they are not reputable, they could however if you link to a website which becomes blacklisted by them. It is important not to get over excited with promises of thousands of links as there is a good chance that they may not translate into much quality.

Another way to look at Google SEO is like a new TV series. See your website as a TV Series that you will release and wish it to be popular. Naturally you will make sure that the production is as good as possible and that you have a cast of talented actors. This is like the onsite optimisation.

Plan your website like a new TV series, you have the big plot and the sub plots. You will want the information to be expert and ideally have something different to offer, but ideas also for future episodes. This means at the beginning of the website you must have all your products/services/keywords covered and plenty of information for a good customer experience. Yet you should have areas of expertise that you can drill down into and expand out into really specific specialist pages.

You know the kind of buzz that has been created by some new TV Series, so if a buzz can be created by your website to some extent on the internet some of the most important SEO work is in place for good Google SEO rankings. If this work is done especially well links will come naturally over time, however building links is one of the most important parts of SEO and a creative, clever link building campaign should go hand in hand with the onsite optimisation.

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Jackie de Burca is co-owner of CWA Europe which is a search marketing agency. CWA Europe specialise in being this type of creative Google SEO company and are also a Google Adwords Certified company.

http://www.cwa-europe.com/search-engine-optimisation/google-seo-company/80-10.html

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If you’re currently in an MLM business, chances are you’re constantly utilizing various tools to build your success. It might be Facebook, MySpace or other social networking platforms, but meeting new people is one of your main goals. Another great way to do this is utilizing Twitter .

Even though it is considered a social networking platform, it’s a lot different than all of those other places. However, you’re still able to contact people and meet new friends, prospects, and associates.

One of the first benefits you will notice is the ability to “micro-blog.” These are tiny little blurbs that are equivalent to the “what’s on your mind” over at Facebook. It’s no longer than 140 characters, so the idea is to keep short and collective “tweet.”

In the MLM world, tweets are extremely beneficial because you can literally reach thousands of individuals all in about 1 or 2 minutes. Whether you’re letting people in on what you’re doing today, creating curosity, or just thinking out loud, millions of people do it at Twitter. So your first tweet might say something like; “Wow! Great day ahead! I just published a new article to my blog.” After it you would simply add your link.

Basically this is a way to create a positive feeling. When all of your Twitter followers get a glimpse at your message, you’ve created interest, sparked their curosity, and brought a personal branding to yourself. After awhile your followers will start to feel as though you really present information with value. Over time this creates a buzz and several new opportunities for you. In the end, Twitter is a fantastic recruiting tool.

You will also find that it is helpful to follow other MLMers out there. If you start following them they will follow you back and allow each of you to learn from each other. Granted, it’s not a face to face interaction, but with an added photo to your profile it definitely makes it feel like it. Everytime you send out a tweet it will show up on their feed. This means others will be able to see it and eventually come your way as well. It’s a great innovation that allows connections to be made that wouldn’t normally be possible.

Another beneficial area is if you are a proud owner of a blog. When you are set up with Twitter you can connect to your blog directly and every social networking account you own. So everytime you utilize Twitter as your main page, your “tweet” will go out to all the social networks you’re a part of online. This means your MySpace and Facebook friends will all see these updates. In the MLM world its all about contact and utilizing your time. When you use Twitter as a blasting area for the other sites it definitely saves tons of time. However, you can also do this the other way and publish something to your blog that shoots out to Twitter and Facebook.

Even though it sounds simple, you can utilize a few tricks to get you going. We understand that you want to tweet about your MLM business, but don’t let that be the only thing you tweet about there. Bring out a side of you most people haven’t seen. Be friendly, tell jokes, or just personal life everyday stuff. When people get a better feel for you, they will most likely follow you more often.

So just add a few tweets like this: Whew! Ran 2 milles and feeling the fat burning off my body! Then again it might be something like; Just watched V…That show rocks! You get the idea? Don’t just be a business person. The more of a friend you become to everyone else, the easier it will be to get them interested in your business.

Oh, and just because you’re tweeting doesn’t mean you should pass up everyone else’s. Add a little “good morning” or other tweet to something they tweeted about on their page. Then of course you can always utilize the message area if you need to get things going.

If you remember in the beginning, Twitter got a lot of bad press thinking it would never last. Amazingly enough, this social networking platform proved all the “nay-sayers” wrong ten fold. Nowadays you can find your next door neighbor tweeting with music artists, sports figures, and movie stars. It’s just become an unbelievable way to get to know others around the world no matter what type of status they own. In the end just get your name and face out there. Once you start connecting with everyone you will see how beneficial this can be for your MLM business.

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Javier Salces is an experienced network marketer and list building expert. To discover what the Top MLMers are doing online to build a five or six figure a month business from the comfort of home visit MLMTacticsBlog.com

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There have been complete books written about ways to be successful with marketing on the internet. In this article we will cover a few tips that can possibly make a difference for you.

Since being successful with internet marketing is such a numbers game you will need to ensure your voice is being heard by as many people as possible, you must be consistently driving traffic to your site. If 100 viewers per day nets you $30, what can 1000 people net you?

- To do this correctly you need to take advantage of the social networks available.

Utilize the many and varied free internet resources to drive traffic to your site. Facebook and Twitter, Blogger and YouTube, Yahoo Answers and MySpace are all good options to post content to. These have gotten huge and many people now have thousands of followers.

However your content must contain some value and interest to the reader. If all you’re doing on these social networking sites is sending out links to products and are only trying to sell stuff you’re using them incorrectly and losing readers quickly.

To properly use them (and still sell stuff) do this. Attempt to share some important information that is intriguing to your followers. Perhaps it’s a hot news story or a tip that can be useful to others. Include a little about yourself.

Make sure you’re providing value and interest before promoting your products which can be done at the end. You can add to that by following up with people’s problems and questions.

By following this model, you will gain and maintain quite a following and people will still see the potential of your affiliates and marketing programs without feeling beat over the head.

As for promoting your products here are some tips:

- Your content must be good in order for potential customers to see that your products are worth it to them.

- The timing on when to release certain mnarketing promotions can be vital to your success. Study the successful marketers and see what they’re doing.

- Offering variety in your strategies keeps things interesting and unique. Include things like backlinking and viral marketing.

A final tip: understand your competition. This can be somewhat of a shortcut to internet marketing success. Think “Coke vs. Pepsi” or “Burger King vs. McDonalds.” It is critical you know what your competition is up to and what’s working for them.

Check out their websites. Which ones do you like? If you like them others probably will to. Can you duplicate them in certain ways to make yours better?

What products are they soon launching and which ones are selling well for them? There is nothing wrong from learning from the competition and doing the same that’s working for them. You can use their ideas to help you create your own.

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Cynthia Minnaar invites you to generate income online with legitimate online business ideas and opportunities she will share with you. Her website offers free useful Internet marketing training that can work for you.

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People looking to make money online can find a lot of opportunities on the Internet. Making money online is for all sorts of people – young professionals, students, retirees, even moms.

There are plenty of opportunities online that will enable you to make money fast. There are some simple and a few very specific methods for you to make money online. Many Internet Marketing Gurus are using these methods to make money online.

First off, you have to know your niche. It is absolutely vital that you pick your target audience with care because this will significantly impact how much and how fast you make money. If you pick a broad audience, there will be too much competition for you. You should consider a niche you’re familiar and comfortable with.

Choose your product well. If you want to make money online, start by selling other peoples products. This is called affiliate marketing and allows you to make money fast.

Later on, after you’ve prepared everything and know the dos and don’ts, you can continue developing your own product. Be present online. Have a blog site or website created. You need one if you want to make money online.

Establishing an online presence will make you more credible. Blog sites are easier to set up but if you’re thinking long term results, I suggest having a website instead.

Build an audience, Add people to your mailing list, start a forum online and enable interaction. Building an interactive relationship with your target audience is how you will eventually begin to make money online. If you’re selling affiliate products, you’ll want to develop value and trust. You can do this by offering free original and significant content. This will also get search engines to notice you and draw more visitors to your website and email list.

You really should provide an opportunity to your visitor that will entice them to give you their email address. You can then establish a relationship with them by providing relevant and worthwhile content.

This is a powerful tool that you can use to consistently make money online. Aside from offering free and highly relevant content, your automated emails can sell your products. You should set up an Auto responder series that automatically keeps you in contact with your visitors. You don’t want to abuse your visitors by spamming them but you do want to gain their trust. Your audience will be more likely to trust your suggestions if you have been providing them with valuable information.

Practice these methods on affiliate products and once you’ve mastered them, you can develop and sell your own product. Perfecting these guidelines will allow you to make money online.

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Read more about the possibilities to make money online by visiting my free information website http://www.easycash4life.com/ Arthor: Annette Lode Marketing Advisor

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You have a lot of choices these days if you’re looking for a work from home job online. With the lack of traditional job available the timing couldn’t be better.

In this article we’ll give you a few ideas on how to work from home. Better yet is many of these require no experience or very little experience. Many of these online jobs can be completed around your schedule without taking a lot of time.

However, if you don’t feel you can discipline yourself to treat internet jobs seriously and give them the time they deserve, working from home may not be for you.

Many companies are outsourcing their data entry jobs to help lower their overhead. If you have typing speed and accuracy and don’t mind sitting at your computer for some time, these types of jobs are available.

You’ll more than likely need to be able to promote yourself and prove that you meet their criteria.

There are also companies always needing surveys done. These companies are paying top-dollar to have users like you try their products and services for free. You simply complete free offers, submit surveys and get paid without spending a dime.

As with all types of internet jobs you do need to be careful of scams. If you’re asked to pay up front for your services you should beware. It doesn’t necessarily mean that these aren’t legitimate but you do need to research them and weigh the reviews.

If you have good writing abilities you can make money submitting articles written by you on a variety of different topics. EZine and Associated Content are a couple of article directories to consider.

Blog and website owners are always looking for fresh content to help their sites rank high on the search engines. Many of them don’t have the time or skill to write articles themselves so will pay others for them.

If you can meet their schedules, many companies now have customer service jobs and telesales jobs available. The benefit to these is that they are typically more like a traditional job. This means that the hours and pay may be more consistent.

The downside though, is that you might not necessarily have the flexibility in the schedule that other internet jobs offer.

As with anything, the more you can become an expert at what you do, the better you can brand yourself. This is known as attraction marketing and will help you get more work and better quality work than your competition.

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Steve Lauri is a business coach and mentor, based out of Laguna Beach, California, that assists serious entrepreneurs in building a profitable online business with multiple income streams. Steve and his team have assisted hundreds of people in generating profits that exceed six figures in their first year. For more information visit: http://www.SteveLauri.net

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If you have an Internet business consider yourself extremely lucky. I should say consider yourself lucky if you are running it like a real business. Sadly most people are not.

Here are a few tips to follow if you want to have a real business and not a hobby.

1. Real businesses do whatever it takes to keep their doors open. Let me give you an example.

I recently ran an offer to enroll some new distributors into my network marketing business. This was a special offer I chose to run exclusively for new people who were not already in my business.

I simply wanted to help my wife and I get to the next level in the compensation plan. We offered to help any new person get paid members in the following month so the actual cost of opening their own network marketing business would quickly be recouped.

We did this to entice new people to get off the fence and join us. Real businesses run special offers all of the time to increase sales.

I was surprised that I had existing distributors email me and complain that the same offer wasn’t available to them. Some of them had even joined our mlm business five months ago and never enrolled even one person into their own business.

If you went and bought a big screen TV three months ago for certain price, and the retail outlet now had it on sale for a lower price today, you would not be able to call them and complain about the price you paid.

A real business runs specials at different time of the year for their own reasons. The same thing should be true for your online business.

2. Real businesses budget a certain percentage of their gross for advertising and marketing. Most online business owners cut corners on Internet promotion and many hope to be successful by doing nothing more than 100% free advertising.

This may have worked in the past, but today there are too many competitors in each niche to expect to run a profitable online business without spending any money on advertising. If you are not spending money on marketing your online business you can expect it to fail.

3. Real businesses have set hours that their front doors are open and they work hard to run a profitable business. Most Internet business owners work whenever they feel like it and often times they do not even work when they think they are working.

It’s very easy to fall in the trap of being online and thinking you are working when in reality you are not. Surfing the Internet, downloading iTunes, looking for new opportunities, changing the color of your website, and so on, is not really working your business.

In the end only you can decide if you want to run your Internet business like a real business. The profits for an Internet business are many, but only for those who decide to treat their online business seriously.

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Jeff Schuman invites you to visit his make money online website, for paid survey training with a free survey list to join and take your first survey in 5 minutes or less, to see the top network marketing business with vertical acceleration, and to order articles from his content writer service.

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The Advantages And Disadvantages Of Using Twitter Hashtags

Twitter is a free social networking and micro-blogging service that was originally launched in March of 2006 and has since grown into a real-time short messaging service that works over multiple networks and devices. Twitter enables users to stay in touch and share information with each other in real time. Users can use a maximum of 140 characters per message or “tweet” as they are called. You can tweet as little or as often as you want, as long as each individual tweet does not exceed 140 characters.

Once you have joined Twitter, you can use their search tool to find specific people, companies, and their tweets. Hashtags are an effective method of allowing users to sort topics into useful categories to revisit later. Hashtags are a community-driven convention for users to provide add additional context and other relevant info to their tweets. The basic structure of a hashtag is simple: it’s the pound sign (#) followed by an acronym or word.

Twitter didn’t itself create hashtags; they were borrowed from IRCs (i.e. Internet Relay Channels such as chat rooms). Rather, the Twitter community adopted them as a means of creating “groupings” on the service without having to alter the basic service itself.

The Twitter community uses a hashtag in front of frequently used terms in order to categorize them for searches and filtering. So, when talking about an iPod for example, people might also reference “#Apple.” If you’re looking for company specific news that’s happened recently or what’s being said about a company’s product, the hashtags can be very helpful.

Using hashtags to search Twitter for specific information is now even easier since the company purchased the search engine Summize in July of 2008. Twitter can now track hashtags itself at search.twitter.com. The engine tracks keywords too, which makes hashtags not quite as necessary for trend tracking as they were in the past. Nonetheless, they still possess unique advantages. For example, you know that anyone tagging their tweet with one of these acronyms means for it to get categorized within that topic. It also serves as a visual indicator to others following their Twitter stream that they’re tweeting about a particular subject.

One of the potential disadvantages of hashtags is their very popularity. Hashtags are so prevalent on Twitter these days that it can be hard to keep track of them all as well as what they mean. However, there is a resource available that can assist with this as well. Tagalus is a service that acts like a dictionary for hashtags. Tagalus enables users vote on definitions for tags if there’s more than one version. The definition with the most votes will be the one that defines the tag. If you invent any new tags or just want to help build the resource, you can send a tweet to @tagalus to suggest a meaning for a tag. The format for doing so is as follows:

@tagalus define mynewtag as a new tag that describes everything about me

You can also use Tagalus to provide you with a meaning for an already existing tag. The format for this is @tagalus define ____ (fill in the tag that you want the definition for).

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Cory Threlfall is the Editor and Publisher of a online web development publication called… The Web Development Central BLOG, where you’ll receive via the Web, Mobile or RSS syndication Expert Articles, Video’s, Product Reviews, HOT Tips, Resources and More on how to Promote and Build your business(es) online. Visit ==> Web Development

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