So you have your product, concept and a terrific looking website up and running. Now you’re looking to drive more web site traffic to your page. There’s a lot of competition out there and you know you’ve got to stand out in order to be successful. An abundance of the right keywords in your meta tags and solid, informative content will certainly help. You need every boost you can think of to steer your site to success. One of the keys to your ultimate success is knowing how to create a newsletter.

No matter what your product or service, if you take the time to learn how to create a newsletter, your chances of success are automatically increased.

Many people discount the value of a newsletter and thus make a big mistake in their overall marketing plan. It’s not good enough to just show up on the net. Just having a website does not constitute a presence. If you know how to create a newsletter and put your ezine out there, you’ll gain exposure in ways that pay dividends in traffic that a simple website cannot achieve. Read the rest of this entry

Online marketing is all about the traffic you get to your web site. If your traffic is not target traffic you will have a hard time making any worthwhile money but shift that traffic into the target group and you will see how target traffic makes a difference to your bottom-line.

Social bookmarking and social networking is an excellent way to increase your web site traffic so allow me to share a few of the social networks or bookmarking sites that I use to get more target focused web site traffic.

My StumbleUpon Page

StumbleUpon is one of my favorite bookmarking networks because it helps me share and discover great web sites. Use StumbleUpon to find random sites based on your preferences. I have found so many cool sites that are right up my alley this way. You can also help to promote other great sites by Stumbling them so that others can benefit from them just like you do. Read the rest of this entry

The 4-Hour Work Week: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich

This book is about how to live to work not work to live. It is full of ways to manage your work time to be able to make money and enjoy life. It shows you how to outsource your work for a better return for you.

If you spend hours at an outside job or at an at home business you need to read this book. I work from my home. I wanted to be able to spend more time with my family. It just wasn’t happening for me. I couldn’t seem to get it together enough to pull myself away from work. No matter what I did I couldn’t get my work done and have time left in the day to enjoy.

Thanks to this book now I can. This book is full of advice on how to change your life so you can enjoy both work and play. It’s not a get rich quick type of book. It’s a guide on how you can be your own boss on the Internet and still have time for you and yours.

If your like me every time you sit down to the computer the first thing you do is check that dreaded email. I don’t anymore. Because of this book I now only check my email first thing in the morning and at night when I’m ready to walk away from the computer for the day. Believe it or not it works.

This book also showed me ideas on how to start my own business. Plus it helped me along the way with ideas, hopes, helpful suggestions and way to outsource my workload. I still make money but have a shorter workday.

The biggest thing to remember about this book is that there are many ideas in it and you have to read the book to find the right ones for you. I read it over and over and applied this concept and that concept until I found the right ones for my life and me. Now I work, play and enjoy everyday to the fullest.

It even tells you how you can travel and save money. The ideas of living and traveling for free that are in the book will amaze you. It did me and I am willing to try it to see how well it works.

I think everyone should read this book. It is easy to read, understand and follow. If you only walk away with 1 idea you are better off than you were before you read it.

Criticism: There are a few places in the book I wish the author had gone into more depth. Of course a 4-hour Work Week Part 2 would be the perfect way to go.

The 4-Hour Work Week: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich

If you create a blog or a web site what do you need so people can view it? A Web Hosting Provider, we all need that if we own domains. I personally enjoy hosting many of my domains and those of my clients with HostGator, and trouble free I might add.

It’s true that there is a lot of competition for just about anything “internet-related” these days, but if you have a built-in market of people interested in starting an online business, you may do very well as a web hosting provider.

Many web host companies allow you to become a reseller, enabling you to start your own web hosting business under your own name, without having to deal with the equipment, space, or technical issues.

In most cases, you would pay the web hosting company a flat rate, which will vary from company to company and be based on the amount of disk space you purchase. In this example, we’ll say that you pay $25 a month for your reseller account. Read the rest of this entry

Traveling outside our country can be a bit of a pain these days but I won’t let that stop me from traveling to Australia for the next great IM seminar. Instead I do my homework to make our travels so much more enjoyable.

It really doesn’t matter how much money I make online I still like a great deal on accommodations. If the truth were known I really prefer to spend my money on my hobbies and money making ventures.

I may know my way around my home city but I certainly don’t know how to get around Sydney, Melbourne or Brisbane so finding a place to stay while in Australia will be most important to make our trip worth remembering for all the right reasons.

Be sure to check out these pages if you like to get a good deal:

Sydney Hotels : Melbourne Hotels : Brisbane Hotels

You may not be familiar with the term “virtual assistant,” but it is actually a very popular online profession.  Similar to an administrative assistant you would find in a brick and mortar building, a virtual assistant supports and helps their employer grow their business.

A virtual assistant, also known as a VA, may handle the following types of tasks: answering email or data entry, website maintenance, internet research, and affiliate management, which could include finding affiliate programs for their clients to promote or assisting affiliates and recruiting new affiliates for their client’s own affiliate program, as well as marketing, writing, transcription and even web design.

With so many options available to them, it is not uncommon for a virtual assistant to specialize in one or two types of tasks.  Instead of calling themselves “virtual assistants” they may go by a title more suitable to their specialty, such as “internet marketing assistant” or “affiliate manager.” Read the rest of this entry

Man I have to remember to tell Grace about Coupon Chief’s web site. I have a good friend that is a pastor, actually he has been a mentor for many years now but I didn’t want to talk about him, instead let’s talk about his wife. She is the champion of coupons I am sure. It may seem like a trivial task to collect coupons but she magically makes their shopping experience very lucrative with these coupons and they spend half of what you and I spend on food as well as other necessary things.

I came across a web site called Coupon Chief where I get online coupons and coupon codes for free. I am all in for saving money on purchases. I used to think it was only worth it if the coupon was on a big dollar item but that was not exactly true. All coupons that will decrease the amount you need to fork out in actually cash is a savings and worth taking the time to use a coupon or two.

Our next purchase will be two laptop computers, one for myself and the second for my wife. We both work online but are ready for retirement and world-wide travel so we need laptops to maintain our online business. I imagine I will spend at least $5000.00 so why not save some money, right.

We haven’t made a commitment to a brand yet, but we are looking hard at DELL but also HP is in our sites as well.

Before you make you next purchase, I don’t care how small, you need to check out Coupon Chief and save yourself some bucks. There are times I have been able to upgrade to something better because the coupons saved me enough to do so.

Advertising your business online is more than just throwing up a website. It also doesn’t matter if you want to run a business strictly online or if you’re bringing your brick and mortar business online. Both types will benefit by doing the same type of advertising online.

Many people want to put their offline business on the Internet but don’t know how to go about getting people, outside of their current local customers, to visit their site. This is basically the same with those starting a business strictly online. You want your site to get noticed by people all over the world, not just those you’ve told “Hey, we’ve got a website now.”

Here are just a few ways you can advertise your business online.

1. Networking with like minded business owners.
2. Advertise on other sites who attract your target customers.
3. Visit forums and blogs that your target customers would frequent. Comment and lend your expertise and advice in your field.
4. Don’t SPAM anywhere.
5. Learn search engine optimization (SEO) and apply it to your website as you build it.
6. Write press releases and submit them to various sites that accept press release submissions.
7. Create Google AdWords campaigns.
8. Continually add quality, relevant content to your site that your visitors would be interested in.
9. Write articles and submit them to article directories.

These are only a few of the ways to help get people visiting your site, but remember that you can’t possibly get the word out with just one form of advertising, so broaden your horizons, don’t be afraid to learn something new. If you don’t have the time to do all these things yourself, find someone who specializes in the areas you aren’t as strong in. Some examples of this are search engine optimization and press release writing. There are lots of qualified individuals who do those things for a living and would be more than happy to help you get the exposure your business deserves.

There are a number of voip deals available to suit everyone today. The craze of internet phones has gripped the entire nation, which explains the upward surge in voip software sales. Companies like vonage are having the time of their life. Right now everyone is going voip com.

John Reese has created a very simple, powerful and explosive new blog link exchange he named ‘BlogRush’.

The process for joining BlogRush is simple and took me only a minute or two to complete.

Once I confirmed my free membership I was given a widget to put on my blog which only took me a couple of minutes as well and I was done. All in all it took me about 5 minutes from the time I started signing up and completion. There was even a video available to help if I didn’t know what I was doing.

You can see I have become a member of BlogRush and have installed my BlogRush widget to the left.

Now, what is BlogRush?

As a link exchange you and your visitors will see other blogger headlines as an RSS feed on your blog and in exchange others will see your headline on their blog. Every page view on your blog earns you page view credits. The credits are used to get your blog headlines displayed in the same widget on other people’s blogs.

I like the fact you can filter the blog headlines that appear in your BlogRush widget by keyword and URL. This allows you to exclude your competitors and any keywords you don’t want appearing. This is powerful and gives you control over who and what appears in your widget, very powerful.

Through the BlogRush tracking system you earn credits for page views by your downline members’ blogs. When you refer new members to BlogRush you will earn credits for page views on your blog as well as on the blogs of your downline members.

It gets really excited very fast, so for more details visit BlogRush.com. Start your very own BlogRush account today and start enjoying more traffic to your blogs.

I got up this morning and as soon as my bare feet hit the floor I knew summer was almost over. Brrrrr

It’s Sunday morning again and Fall is definitely on our door step. Each morning is getting a little cooler and closer to freezing. The leaves have already started to lose their green and are showing some beautiful reds and oranges making my early morning walks a delight. In another week all the leaves will have changed. I will try to remember my camera so I can post a picture or two in the next few weeks.

Create A Better Blog.

I really think it’s okay to talk to your readers and give them an idea of what goes on in your world. Sharing your world is a great way to get closer with your readers, in small doses, but try to stay on topic.

My business days include visiting other blogs looking for new and exciting things that make the blogging world so much fun and so lucrative, but in my travels I see so many blogs that can’t seem to stay on topic.

Are You An Expert In Anything?

When I read content that is way off topic it makes me wonder about the expertise of the blog owner. Why would they dilute their web site content with keyword phrases that are outside their theme just for the sake of more content.

Show that you are an expert, or better yet don’t prove that you aren’t an expert, keep your blog posts as close to the topic or theme of your blog as you can. That way your readers know what to expect when they arrive and are more likely to stay longer and even return again and again.

Are You Willing To Learn To Earn?

We did this for a few niches that we thought we had an interest in so we started blogging about what we were learning as we learned new things. So you don’t have to be an expert, yet. Even experts had to start learning and then at some point they knew more than most in their niche.

Learning is the first step and I know all too well that’s true because I thought I could just do marketing when I started and it took quite some time to admit to myself I didn’t have a clue what I was doing. Learn first.

Staying on topic when you’re blogging comes with practice and knowledge of your niche. If you don’t know enough you may try to add a few other things to take up the slack but that’s not a good move. It’s not about how much content you have as much as the consistent focus on your niche.

The site my wife and I started had content added as we learned about what we were doing. The longer we worked at learning our new skill the more we could talk about on our blog and yet stay on topic. We are still learning and our site is 2 years old now.