Finding Your "Niche" Market by Accident

by Sarah J. Doyle

How can you possibly find a niche market by accident, you ask?

Think about it. When was the last time you needed or wanted something and couldn't find it? I can guarantee that if YOU are looking for something and can't find it, there are many others looking for a similar item as well!

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Will Spam-Blogging Be The Death Of Blogging?

by Priya Shah

Technorati reports that 30,000 - 40,000 new blogs are being created each day.

According to David Sifry, part of the growth of new blogs created each day is due to an increase in spam blogs.

What are spam blogs? They are fake blogs that are created by robots in order to foster link farms, attempted search engine optimization, or drive traffic through to advertising or affiliate sites.

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Details of Getting a Blog

by Daniel Punch

Blogs, the abbreviation of Web Logs (online journals), are becoming more and more popular all the time. People are starting new blogs at an astounding rate so it’s safe to assume that there are constantly people out there who want to know how to get a blog going. Despite personal feelings about the actual quality of the majority of blogs out there on the Internet, that’s what I hope to be able to help you do with this article.

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Search Engine Optimization for RSS Feeds

by Sharon Housley

Tips for Helping Your RSS Feed Perform! In some ways RSS is very similar to HTML, the language commonly used to create websites. Just as with HTML, webmasters using traditional search engine optimization tactics when creating an RSS feed will find that their RSS feed receives additional exposure and interest.

Simple steps to optimize an RSS feed for search engines:

1.) The title should contain important search terms.

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Selling Your Way to Success

by Geoff Payne

Sales. I wonder when we decided to become a sales person. I know when I was at school all I ever wanted to do was join the Navy and see the world. My best mate wanted to be a truck driver or Fireman, Policeman, Soldier, Banker, Doctor, Pop star, Football player and so the list went on.

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Marketing Yourself, Your Writing

by Pam White

Last week I was invited to a Women in Business workshop at the local community college. The topic of that evening's seminar was marketing, a topic I am familiar with yet always seeking more input on. We started the evening by introducing ourselves, sharing what our business was and telling each other what benefit we could provide the other businesswomen.

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It Takes Two - How to Cultivate Profitable Alliances
by Heidi Richards, MS

Cross promoting with other businesses can give you a significant advantage over the competition, with many benefits and cost savings.” -Heidi Richards-

More and more competition in the marketplace is making it necessary for companies to find creative ways to connect with customers and prospects, to enhance brand identity and attract top-notch employees. In order to enhance competitiveness in today’s marketplace, more and more companies are forming strategic alliances. Strategic alliances can maximize your position in the marketplace. When you learn how to leverage partnerships you increase your market share. It is also a very smart way to grow a small business. Cross promoting with other businesses can give you a significant advantage over the competition with many benefits and cost savings. [Read More!]

Simple Syndication (RSS) -- Where's The Payoff?
By Scott Frangos

How RSS really does pay off...

Have you heard of RSS (Really Simple Syndication)? Did you know you can syndicate your news stories from your website? You probably have seen some orange buttons around the web with the letters "RSS" on them. They allow other websites to link to your news stories with just a click. Simple. Syndicate.

Ok. Now, you know about Really Simple Syndication... but where's the payoff? Let's look at the ways that RSS can pay off for you. And, pay off, it does -- when you use this emerging technology effectively.Now by "emerging technology," we mean it is relatively new, and people are still learning about it. But already many savvy webmasters are "aggregating" RSS feeds -- pulling common topic feeds together at their websites. And, big players like Yahoo, and Amazon are offering up RSS solutions. You can "subscribe" to a selection of news feeds on your personalized home page at Yahoo, for example.

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Why You're Missing Out on Hundreds of Visitors If You Aren't Doing This

by Tinu AbayomiPaul

our tip today starts with my own shocking secret - I used to HATE listening to audio online. I'd still rather pay to download a transcript. I'm just a print-oriented person.

But I’m an oddball- that’s why you need to remember this one very important fact:

Almost everyone in the online world would rather listen than read if they can.

(And people like me will buy your audio if you let them - I’ve paid for free audio streamed seminars to be sent to me on a CD.)

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The WRONG Way To WRITE Articles

by Steve Shaw

As you no doubt already know, writing articles is probably the most effective way to promote your web site. It's a very simple principle - publishers want a vast quantity of good quality content that they do not have to pay for; you provide that content, with the proviso that at the bottom of your article, they include your resource box with a link to your web site. It's a win-win situation. With your article published on heaps of web sites, and in several ezines, it's enough to set your traffic counter spinning.

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5 Marketing Mistakes You Can’t Afford To Make

by Debbie Allen

In virtually every area of business, there will be pitfalls along the way. Marketing is no exception. Time and time again, retail stores of all sizes make the same costly mistakes. But knowing how to avoid these mistakes can save you energy, disappointment – and money.

Mistake #1: Eliminating marketing efforts when times get tight.

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Cookie Monster
By Jim Meskauskas

The cookie has been a subject of debate from the moment of its inception and throughout most of the life of the commercial Web. From the time the first crumb of a cookie allowed for tracking of actions taken by a particular individual surfing the Web, marketers and advertisers grew excited by the prospects. Tracking media consumption at a user level foretold of great things to come in marketing.
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Innovative Business Use of RSS as a Technology

by Sharon Housley

RSS, or Really Simple Syndication, is a new way to broadcast corporate news and structured information. RSS offers a quick, easy corporate communication channel. The RSS contents are published as a feed and the feed's content keep customers, partners and journalists abreast of corporate news and information. The RSS feeds are read using a tool referred to as a news aggregator, or an RSS reader. The aggregator periodically checks to see if the RSS feed has been updated. As the feed is updated, new information will automatically appear in the RSS reader.

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It Takes Two - How to Cultivate Profitable Alliances
by Heidi Richards, MS

“Cross promoting with other businesses can give you a significant advantage over the competition, with many benefits and cost savings.” -Heidi Richards-

More and more competition in the marketplace is making it necessary for companies to find creative ways to connect with customers and prospects, to enhance brand identity and attract top-notch employees. In order to enhance competitiveness in today’s marketplace, more and more companies are forming strategic alliances. Strategic alliances can maximize your position in the marketplace. When you learn how to leverage partnerships you increase your market share. It is also a very smart way to grow a small business. Cross promoting with other businesses can give you a significant advantage over the competition with many benefits and cost savings.

[Read More!]

Build It And They Will Come. True or False? Why So Many Online Businesses Fail.

by Jill St. Claire

Build it and they will come! Well . . . sometimes. If you're real lucky, and I mean REALLY lucky.

Now you have your beautiful website boasting your amazing products or services. It's out there, just waiting for people who want what you have to offer. You're going to dazzle them with your dynamic website and the sales are going to come flooding in. Wrong. The dream is over. It's time to come back to reality.

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Increase Traffic to Your Blog from Search Engines - The Top 5 Tips

by Tinu AbayomiPaul

Your favorite thing about having a blog may soon be this - they naturally attract search engine traffic.

Blogs already have optimized site architecture. Most are set up with a clear navigation, where every page is set up to link back to the other main pages.

They also have the inherent potential to be well-linked.

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How Podcasting is Used

by Sharon Housley

Although podcasting is new, it is well on its way to becoming a mainstream communication medium. Podcasting, simply put, is audio files that are delivered via RSS. Many people believe that podcasting is solely for the distribution of music files, but really, nothing could be further from the truth. This emerging method of audio file distribution has opened an array of marketing and communication opportunities to businesses. Currently, most who are familiar with podcasting are technically savvy, but it is clear that podcasting will be more than a passing fad as many businesses are adopting podcasting and employing it in unusual yet powerful ways. Podcasting can be used for talk shows, tutorials, music demos, educational training, stories, comedy clips, debates or even foreign language tutorials.

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What Can Napoleon Teach You About Building Business Empires?

by Ankesh Kothari

Napoleon Bonaparte has carved his name in the history books. Some say he was a masterful soldier. Some say he was a very charismatic statesman. Others say he was the best strategist who ever lived. Yes, he was all of that. But he dominated the world only because of one of his tactics. He created and ruled an empire only because of one secret.

He gave away baubles.

What are baubles you ask?

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Throw Out Your "Selling" Language - Unlock Your Natural Voice

by Ari Galper

I was sitting at my desk last week when my phone rang. I picked it up and said, 'This is Ari with Unlock The Game.' The woman on the other end of the phone said, 'Hi, my name is Julie Jackson, I'm with XYZ company and we are a...and we offer...'. As she continued to speak, I stopped her in mid-sentence and said, 'Hi, Julie.'

There was dead silence on the phone.

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Blogs And Your Work From Home Internet Business
By Tom Worsley

As a work from home internet business entrepreneur you have several really good tools on the internet you can take advantage of in order to build your work from home business. A blog is just one of those tools that you can use and should be taking advantage of.
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Hot Publicity Techniques That Are 100% Legitimate!

by Paul Hartunian

As in any business, once you've been the publicity business for a while you start to discover those little insider secrets that make life so much easier. Those little tricks of the trade that typically give the old pros an unfair advantage. That's what this article is about. We try to cover some of the little know facts of the publicity game that might make your life a bit easier. I'm going to cover some of the little know facts of the publicity game that can make your life a lot easier.

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The 3 Cs of Effective Marketing

by Julie Chance

Complicated definitions of marketing abound. However, when you think about what you are trying to achieve through your marketing activities, it is simply changing and then maintaining the behavior of your target market. You want to change their behavior from not buying your product or service to buying it and then you want to maintain that behavior.


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Fallacies Regarding Online Home Based Businesses

by Kirk Bannerman

In the course of my home business coaching activities, I have often found that people head into the startup of their online home based businesses with a wildly unrealistic mindset.

Many have been told that they can sign up for a few programs, build a website around them, add a bunch of banners and links onto their site, then sit back and watch the money roll in and never have to work again.

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3 Strategies to Market Your Business Even When There's No Money

by Kathleen Gage

Many small and home based businesses know they need to market and yet, have little or no money to do so. Sadly, many use this as a reason not to market. Even on a limited budget you can promote and gain visibility for you and your business.

The following three strategies have proven extremely effective for countless businesses as they can for you.

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Top Five 2005 Required Marketing Tips Needed to Succeed

by Catherine Franz

When marketing your practice, as well as designing your brochure, web site, business card, flier, advertisement, or other marketing effort, we recommend investing the time and effort needed to effectively address all these tips. Not one of them can be omitted.

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7 Reasons to Switch to FireFox

by John Gergye

The Firefox browser has exploded on the scene. At the time of this writing there have been 23 million downloads of this innovative competitor to Internet Explorer. Minor drawbacks aside, most who use it love it – myself included.

One stand out feature is the customizable search bar that’s built into the Firefox menu bar. As a long time AOL user I had 10 hot keys set up for sites I visited all the time. With Firefox all I did was set the search bar up with those very same links. Suddenly what seemed like a reason to mourn the loss of AOL vanished.

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Top 10 Blog Writing Tips

by Patsi Krakoff

Most of the 'rules' about writing for ezines and newsletters apply to writing posts for your blog, but there are some important differences. Keep these 10 tips in mind and you'll be publishing great blog content that attracts prospects and clients in your niche market.

1. Write with the reader in mind. Remember WIIFM? It's marketing jargon for What's In It For Me? That's what you should be keeping in mind. Your reader will read your post looking for what's in it for them.

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RSS: News You Choose
by Sharon Housley

Why is RSS So Magical? The answer is simple: RSS is news you choose.

How Does it Work?
Publishers and webmasters provide content and news in an RSS feed. Users view the content of interest in an RSS reader or news aggregator. The aggregator or reader contains the collection of feeds that are of interest to the user. As the RSS feed is updated the content in the reader or aggregator updates with the new information. At any point, users can remove a feed from their aggregator or reader and no longer receive information from that source. Ultimately, the user is choosing the news and content they wish to view. [Read More!]

Tips for Better Blogging - Promote any Product or Service
By John Barbour

People start blogs for all kinds of reasons. Ego. Political comment or agenda. Staying in touch with family and friends. Marketing. Why did you start your blog?

If you want your blog to get read, and your readers to be loyal followers, you had better structure it to their liking. Here are some tips for better blogging and basic blogging advice for anyone who wants to promote a product or service using blogs and RSS.

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