Actual for You - Internet and Businesses Online

Going Back To Get Ahead
Have you ever run DOWN an escalator that was going UP? Well, I did at the Tampa Airport last week. Here's what happened:Last Wednesday I was scheduled to fly from Tampa through Dallas to Phoenix on American Airlines. I just got back from Chicago the day before. It was a very busy week for me.Usually I fly United Airlines but I just fired them. I'm not a spoiled brat or upper crust in any way. But I do like to treat myself and upgrade to first class once in a Blue Moon.United Airlines has managed to p_ _ _ off most of their Executive Premier status flyers with the introduction of "Ted," and the elimination first-class upgrades when flying from Tampa.Back to the story. I'm chec

loss product. I went through all the "short" and "easy to remember" names I could think of, but they all were taken! I then came up with the domain name NoDiet4Me.com. It made perfect sense to me! I went to have a magnetic sign made for my car, and the lady read it this way..."No die t-4-me?" and shook her head with a confused look on her face! The site worked fine and got a lot of traffic and made me a lot of money, but now I wonder if I lost any traffic because of my domain name.

6. To dash or not to dash. There have been a lot of discussions about whether to put a hyphen in the domain name. I can't honestly answer based on my own experie

Storytelling - A Leadership Development Tool
As the waiters cleared the dessert plates from the banquet tables, Joanne, the VP of Sales, stepped to the podium and began the annual meeting. The CEO, Jeff Carlson, could feel the heat building under his collar. He wiped his sweaty palms on the linen napkin and took another sip of water to wet his cottonmouth lips.Joanne welcomed everyone with charm and candor. She got a few laughs with a short story about the Region Three delivery truck that was impounded for parking illegally. Then came the moment when she introduced Jeff.As he moved toward the podium, he felt time stand still. The room was dark except for the spotlight, which felt to Jeff like a heat lamp beaming on his face. He glanced down

Whether for business or personal use, before there can be a website, there must be a domain name, and one of the most important steps of a search engine optimization plan is to pick the right one.

So what IS a domain name? A domain name is that thing that people give you when you ask for their website. TexasToyota.com, for example, is a domain name. (That's a plug, by the way. They really treated me nice when I bought my car from them, so I thought I would pay them back a little. If you don't believe me, look for an article I wrote titled "If Michael Is Selling, I'm Buying".)

Some things to consider in choosing a domain name are:

1. Keep it short and simple. If your website is for your business, a short domain name has its advantages. Whether you want to print it on business cards or display it on a billboard, making the domain too long or too complicated may make it too hard for potential customers to catch in one reading or recall later, if they did not have a chance to write it down. An exception to this is if you can get a phrase which will be remembered into the domain name (Example: buytwogetonefree.com) ...which leads us to point number two.

2. Make it easy to remember. Your customer won't always have a pen with them, or maybe they won't even think about your domain name or website until later. Short, simple, and easy to remember can be important, but you normally shouldn't just opt for something like qdipe.com, and we are about to tell you why.

3. Relate it to your business or organization. If you sell bicycle parts, try to put "bicycle parts" in the domain name. This is not only for the eyes of internet surfers, but for the search engines as well. They use various factors to rank the pages they visit, and sometimes the words used in the domain can increase the rank of the page. This brings up another point.

4. Think about keywords. Although we are not going to get into Meta tags in this article, keywords are important. Even if hardly any search engines look at the "keyword" Meta tag any more, they are still searching the content of your site for keywords found within the text of the body, "alt" tags on the images, and "title" tags on anchor text and other links. Taking number 3 and number 4 together, the best of both worlds is to have a business name that is a keyword or phrase relevant to the business and use that as the domain name.

5. Cute's nice, but...! Some people try to make their domain name memorable by using puns, jokes, wordplay, or number combinations. Just be careful. A few years ago I needed a domain name for a weight loss product. I went through all the "short" and "easy to remember" names I could think of, but they all were taken! I then came up with the domain name NoDiet4Me.com. It made perfect sense to me! I went to have a magnetic sign made for my car, and the lady read it this way..."No die t-4-me?" and shook her head with a confused look on her face! The site worked fine and got a lot of traffic and made me a lot of money, but now I wonder if I lost any traffic because of my domain name.

6. To dash or not to dash. There have been a lot of discussions about whether to put a hyphen in the domain name. I can't honestly answer based on my own experie

Business Questions Your Performance Measures Should Answer
You can't make informed decisions if the information you're using can't answer your questions.INTRODUCTIONThe report design working group sat around the table, sifting through the draft strategic performance report to suggest how to make it more useful. Measure by measure they chatted and suggested and critiqued and debated: "this one would look better if it was a bar chart", "yeah, I like the three-dimensional bar charts", "we should add another line to this chart because it would be interesting to show", "it's pretty easy to get Excel to turn this one into a stacked bar chart, that way we could get more information onto it". Then someone asked: "hang on, what questions are we trying to answer w

Keep it short and simple. If your website is for your business, a short domain name has its advantages. Whether you want to print it on business cards or display it on a billboard, making the domain too long or too complicated may make it too hard for potential customers to catch in one reading or recall later, if they did not have a chance to write it down. An exception to this is if you can get a phrase which will be remembered into the domain name (Example: buytwogetonefree.com) ...which leads us to point number two.

6. To dash or not to dash. There have been a lot of discussions about whether to put a hyphen in the domain name. I can't honestly answer based on my own experie

Thousands of Hits on Your Website Mean Nothing
You’ve built your website, you’ve done great search engine optimisation, great offline marketing, your products are ready, you’re ready, bring em on.You look at your web statistics and they are way better than you thought they would be. You are getting thousands of hits (hits by the way really aren’t what you should be looking at, they really are not much use to you except when bragging to people who don’t understand what you are talking about) and visitors every day. That’s fantastic right?Well maybe not. When it comes to internet marketing that age old adage applies just as much if not more. “Quality not Quantity “. Look a little deeper at your stats. If 90% of your visitors are arriving and le

in name or website until later. Short, simple, and easy to remember can be important, but you normally shouldn't just opt for something like qdipe.com, and we are about to tell you why.

6. To dash or not to dash. There have been a lot of discussions about whether to put a hyphen in the domain name. I can't honestly answer based on my own experie

Productive Affiliate Marketing – What You Need to Know about Affiliate Marketing
Would you want to earn more without thinking about after sales service, the hassle of delivering products and handling customer complains? Then, affiliate marketing could be the best option for you. Though you might already be earning from your own business, you can still earn more. With putting in affiliate marketing advertisements, you will be maximizing the opportunity for more profit as well as saving yourself from stresses of doing business.If you are worried on how you will be paid, then you have to read on what I am about to tell you. With affiliate marketing, they have a system that would track all your commissions. You would be given your own URL that you can to direct your visitors to the merc

e, keywords are important. Even if hardly any search engines look at the "keyword" Meta tag any more, they are still searching the content of your site for keywords found within the text of the body, "alt" tags on the images, and "title" tags on anchor text and other links. Taking number 3 and number 4 together, the best of both worlds is to have a business name that is a keyword or phrase relevant to the business and use that as the domain name.

6. To dash or not to dash. There have been a lot of discussions about whether to put a hyphen in the domain name. I can't honestly answer based on my own experie

Affiliate Marketing - How Can Affiliate Marketing Help You?
The internet has created lots and lots of new avenues for making money. You simply need to understand how marketing on the internet works. If you can grasp the online marketing needs, you can find some really good opportunities of making money in the online world. One such opportunity is working with the affiliate programmes. Affiliate programs are being used as a tool of internet marketing by many companies. To promote their websites and businesses they need people to join their task force. People make a lot of money by joining such programmes. If you want to make some money through affiliate marketing programmes and other such online activities you need to be careful about certain aspects. This will ensure t

6. To dash or not to dash. There have been a lot of discussions about whether to put a hyphen in the domain name. I can't honestly answer based on my own experiences, as I use both, but the consensus seems to be from my research that it is easier for a search engine to categorize and rank a site that has a hyphen than one where the words are run together. Example: chickensoup vs. chicken-soup.

There is one danger to be recognized if you choose to use the hyphen. You must make sure it is clearly shown in any printed advertising or representations, and if giving the domain name verbally, go to great lengths to make sure that your listener understands the hyphens MUST be inserted. Many people are not that internet savvy and will hear "bobs dash bicycles" and still type in "bobsbicycles".

7. Alphabet soup. Ever wonder what's best? Should you get a .com or .net? Will it be okay to get a .biz or .us? What the heck do those things mean anyways and does it matter? Well, in today's world, most people entering the internet world are familiar with .com and .net. After that, they tend to get confused. I will not get into country specific top level domains at the moment, as this article is primarily directed at those either doing business in the U.S. or those doing business worldwide with a generic type product where a country-specific domain name would not matter. So, in most cases, .tv, .ws, or .org will not matter one way or another. By the way, .tv is the top level domain for the Pacific island nation of Tuvalu and .ws is the top level domain for Samoa.

Just to continue this discussion on extensions for a moment. When passing someone your domain name whether verbally or in writing, make sure they see or hear the extension. To use my earlier example, simply saying, "My website is bobsbicycles", will probably cause people just to type in the .com on the end as that is what they are most used to hearing.

8. Branding. In some cases, a domain name may be associated with an easily recognized, or branded, product. Wal-Mart and Ford do not have to worry THAT much about such niceties as keyword density or "easy to remember" names. However, if you are working with a product or company which has or is in the process of branding itself, some of the information given above about selecting domain names might not be relevant.

I am going to assume that most people who read this little article are probably trying to do some SEO (search engine optimization) themselves, and one of the best places to start is with the domain name itself.

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If you are looking for a way to protect your income potential in virtually any economy, you have to know that there is one career that, if mastered, is economy proof.

Harvard University has issued a report calling for the increasing integration of public speaking into its undergraduate curriculum, and I applaud this initiative. Public speaking skills can make a career. Lacking these skills can break one.

Many, if not most, paid survey offers do not deliver the rewards they promise. There are a number of ways that paid surveys mislead or inconvenience participants.

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