Packing aids were made to save your sanity. How many times have you gotten to the hotel and had to shower and dress immediately for a meeting? How frustrating was it when you couldn’t find your socks, and your tie is somewhere else, oh and where are the shoes? It can be a nightmare especially if you are experiencing jet leg or had any motion sickness. There are products that can help you organize your suitcase more efficiently where you will have a place for everything and everything in its place. You can choose a product from Eagle Creek called Pack-It Double Cube Packing Aid. It is relatively inexpensive. It has a mesh top so you can see easily into it and can fit into a 20″ bag. You can easily pack shirts and trousers with socks and a tie, so your outfit will be ready to put on as soon as you get out of the shower. A wonderful travel aid you won’t want to be without is the Eagle Creek Pack-It Packing Folder. This folder can hold as many as 15 items depending upon the model you buy. It prevents wrinkling, comes with a folding board and instructions and helps to keep your luggage organized. It also has a water repellent and stain resistant Silver Lining. This is great to pack sports jackets, trousers and dresses. The Packet Compressor comes in medium and large and it allows you to get rid of any excess air that may be hiding in your bulky clothes and can save as much as 80% of the volume. It’s a wonderful way to get your dirty clothes home without having to contaminate clean clothes or go to any lengths to separate them. It is inexpensive and it just might become your favorite packing accessory. For all those businessmen who are tired of wearing wrinkled ties to the meeting, or are trying to get their ironing back on time to get there, will love the Travelon Tri-Fold Tie Case. It holds three ties with elastic webbing and keeps wrinkling to a minimum. You can hang the case in a closet, or on the back of any door. It also has a zippered front pocket and folds nicely and compactly into your luggage. Ladies who worry what to do with their jewelry will enjoy the Travelon Jewelry Roll. It has three zippered compartments to keep all your jewelry organized. You can roll it to fit in your purse or lay it flat in your briefcase or carry on luggage. No more searching for the earrings to match this necklace, it will all be right at your fingertips. You can find so many travel accessories for every part of your trip when you search online. Planning for a vacation is just as much fun as taking it, so go have some fun and see if you can find some new ways that will make packing a lighter load for you on your next trip.

Having a website will give you or your business an online presence on the world wide web. The first step in creating your own website would be to register a domain name. A domain name should be chosen well for such can determine the website’s success and effectiveness including the traffic to be generated by your website. There are certain considerations to bear in mind when registering a domain name. The extension of your domain name is one important consideration. Common would be .com but other extension like .net, .org, etc. are also being used. A .com for your chosen domain name would be better than the other extensions especially for a business website. With a domain for example like http://shoes.net, you may be sharing traffic with http://shoes.com. It would be for the best if you don’t register your domain name with your host. Splitting them up from the start would help you avoid headaches in the future should you reach a decision of parting ways with your web host. Registering your domain name with a reputable company would generally have a charge of between a dollar to ten dollars depending on length of time being signed up for and the extension used. As much as possible a shorter domain name would be much easier to remember than a long one. It should be easy to spell especially for your customers who should be able to spell it right the first time. Browsers don’t like remembering and typing long domain names. There are likely more typing errors, the longer the name. Also, do not use copyrights and trademarks of other companies on your domain name so do your research to avoid getting involved with legal battles. While others may not ask for damages under such conditions the worse that they would do would be to take back your domain name. A good domain name is hard to come by. If you have a great idea for a domain name, you could always reserve it in advance. Domain names come cheap these days. Having a good domain name makes it much easier for you to resell in the future should you decide to. If possible your domain name should be your business name. Having a different domain name and a business name would be difficult to market and difficult for customers who have to take note of two different names. Protect you domain from hijack by ensuring that your name and contact info is registered as the technical contact of the domain name and in Whois as the owner of the domain name and website.

Blogging as we all know has become an outlet allowing most people to express, unwind and unleash the things that goes around in a persons mind for everyone to see. While not most people would appreciate it, this form of activity makes a person expand his knowledge and entertain new insights coming from current events, personal interaction and actual experiences. Most people of today will not waste their time reading what a person blogs or writes but for sure many would be surprised at how informative such composed blogs contain and how people can be able to express their grief or joy from everyday endeavors. As I have said before, blogging is a therapeutic form of rehabilitation. It allows a sigh of relief in most cases, allowing people to get a load of their shoulders. Blogging has been limited to people who are Internet exposed people, most of which are the yuppies of tomorrow. Some professionals, particularly in the great areas of the United States and Europe have taken this up and most of them have two things on their mind: for personal distinction (fame) or as another source of income (fortune). Many have claimed that people are earning millions by the day from blogging alone. Some are just in it to gain the exposure they are longing for, something that they fail to achieve in the competitive world of today, particularly in journalism and article writing tasks. It is not hard to distinguish which blogs or compositions are authentic and the purpose of which is to spread information and become sources for future people who blog. It is the content, hence why people say “Content is King”. If it is just money for the sake of placing keywords in a particular article, then writers and bloggers may as well be given a negative attention towards people who search the web for quality written content or blogs. This is a rarity today, the reason being, all they want is to attract people to visit their sites and raise their page ranks as analyzed by Google which will raise the stakes for possible pay per click advertisements. This gives article and content writing a bad name. It deprives the people who really pour out their heart and minds towards sharing towards people what their opinions really are. Blogging should not be treated solely for making money, it should be about a person’s viewpoint, something that is surely different from that of others. For fame itself, people who love to read what a person writes is more than enough to give due recognition to the author. Quality should never be sacrificed for keyword density as they say. It is not easy to spot a poorly written article. Repetitiveness of words, and totally out of sync compositions are the immediate noticeable marks. So the next time you see such things, expect the blog or composition to be full of non-sense and just go back to the previous page and look for that quality written composition that is worth the time reading. Besides, everyone values their time, hence make good use of it and spot the low quality content right away.

Truth or Fiction? Was this yet another lender who showed up to the Credit Orgy invite that went bad? Recently posted articles and blog comments about First Magnus Financial Corporation, relay the plight of another lender gone bad…closes its doors, almost all of its 6,000 employees out of a job, and First Magnus officials say a bankruptcy filing is possible. What is most interesting about this lender is that the corporation decided to point fingers at all parties except themselves…and ruined the lives of many by doing so. This author has received many calls and emails from former First Magnus employees that detail internal underwriting tactics that would make the hair on the back of your neck rise. There are also factual instances of aggressive underwriting such as exposing a risk of $640,517 to the Federal Housing Administration’s insurance fund (See: Inspector General Arizona Audit Report No. 2006-LA-1018). Additional lawsuits and fines involving First Magnus can be viewed at http://www.TalkingPanther.com blog. First Magnus in one specific instance lent almost $1.8 Million dollars to just one person in less than 30 days so that he could buy 6 properties in Las Vegas. On information and belief, this buyer submitted a stated income loan, which in the credit orgy days of 2003-2006, meant that if you had a pulse, you can get a loan. Imagine being able to get $1.8 Million of start up capital to start a real business that would do good for the economy, employ people and create a product! This author, Maria Gudelis has been named in a slanderous lawsuit filed by First Magnus that caused severe damage to reputation and business. The lawsuit is filled with utter viciousness and oozes witch hunt all over. Over a hundred pages of allegations and interpretations that will curl your toes. One will question, as our attorney did, how did they come up with such fiction? Even a Hollywood screen writer could not have done a better job. It is interested to note that the week we are filing a $50 Million counter suit, that First Magnus will most likely file bankruptcy.

The saying, “don’t put all your eggs in one basket” is applicable to many aspects in one’s life but more so in business. There are a lot of uncertainties in business that the saying is indeed a sound advice to spread any possible losses, but then it could also mean less profit in case the initial major investment hits it big. The main problem is how, when and where to put your “eggs”. In business, diversification is equivalent to the saying “don’t put all your eggs in one basket”. Business growth is the main reason for most of the changes in business like diversification so it must be based on thorough study because there are risks involved. Diversification can be in the following ways: * Introducing new but related products or services to the existing market This gives more choices to the existing customers, like new flavors, new styles of the existing products. May result to more customers like those who did not patronize the product or service before because they preferred something else. * Expanding the market reach of the present product or services lines. This is the expected move if the present market is already near its saturation point. Reaching out for a wider market is bound to increase sales volume. * Introducing new products for a new market This is the combination of the first two ways of diversification. The recommended move if it comes out through research that new products are needed in a new market. When to Diversify Diversification carries a lot of risks so a thorough study should precede any move. The decision to diversify maybe based on any one or all of the following: * Thorough and reliable research on the potential market and potential customers of the products or services to be offered. The result could help guide any possible modifications on the product or services to make them more matched with the customers. * Effective product development. Any new products or services should be tested and modified accordingly based on the test result. Business is not guess work. * Availability of resources to carry out the necessary research, product development and product /market testing. Lack of resources could delay the completion of the product or services to its marketable level * Availability of resources to cope with the results of diversification. Hopefully, the resources needed are for the increase of demands for the products or services as a consequent of diversification. There is no single rule in diversification. When, how where to diversify depends on a lot of factors that come out of a though research and careful analysis of data. Diversification is supposed to reduce the risks in investment, if the proper steps mentioned above have been taken. Copyright © 2007

Let’s get one thing straight, Search Engine Optimization (SEO), can be taught to the masses, but very few individuals are willing to methodically go through the steps, on a consistent basis, to achieve and maintain the ultimate ranking for their website. This article is designed to simply touch on the cycle of event required to raise your current website’s ranking in the search engines and then maintain those levels for the long haul. The 10 Steps needed for proper SEO are outlined below follow by a very brief description. There are many tools available which enable you to perform the analysis required producing key data. This data is needed in order for you to effectively optimize your website. 1.Identify Your Competition Run analysis on what you figure to be the most common keywords searched for your site. Take a look at the websites that rank above you in the search engine results, this is your competition. Create a list of the top five websites and move on to step 2. 2.Quality Link Building Find out who do your competitor’s link partner with? Make every attempt to link partner with high quality websites. There is tremendous value in linking to high quality websites. Find out who your competition has link to it. Take the highest ranking (quality) websites they are linked to, contact these websites, and set up a link partnership. 3.Perform a Keyword Analysis on the Competition This allows you optimize your website for the same keywords. You’ll want to check out your competition’s website and optimize the content on your site for these particular keywords more effectively than the competition. Keyword Density, how often a particular keyword appears in your website, is paramount for achieving high rankings in the search engines. 4.Rinse and Repeat Steps 1-3 are the foundation for search engine optimization. What you are doing is building both a highly tuned website and search engine strategy enabling you to beat your competition both with your website and your website’s exposure on the search engines. Repeat steps 1-3 for as many keywords/phrases as you feel create the greatest exposure for your website. 5.Your Keywords Create a list of keywords/phrases that you may not have come across from your evaluations and find out what the popularity is of these keywords/phrases. You may find a niche that your competition does not have, therefore creating more exposure for your website. You would obviously want to inject and of these keywords/phrases into your website. 6.Let’s Go Under The Hood It’s not nearly enough to have the competition’ keywords and link partners, you need to tinker behind the scenes, “Under The Hood” of your website to really soup it up! Take your main keywords/phrases and very efficiently place them into your Page Title and Meta description of your website. This is absolutely necessary in order to help bring everything together if you want to rank high in the search engines. 7.Keyword Density (Keyword/Total Words) Quite simply, use, but don’t overuse, your main keywords that appear in your Page Title and your Meta Description. You want these keywords to appear as early as possible on your page, but in a grammar friendly format. Listing keywords/phrases randomly on the page is a “No No”. The text content should read well with a good flow. The more keywords you can place in your content, the higher the Keyword Density. Alt Tags and Header Tags increase your Keyword Density. 8.Submit Your Website Your website needs to be submitted to the major search engines in order for it to be seen in a timely manner. Google, MSN, & Yahoo, along with other major websites, make it available to you to submit your website for review. It is suggested to only submit a few pages a day to a couple of the major search engines. You do not want to perform this daily. Over submitting is a bad thing in the search engine world. Submit our pages a few times a week until you know you have been indexed. 9.Check Your Indexing Go to the search engine of your choice, type in the keyword/phrase you are interested in, and see if your site has been indexed. You may have to run through a number of pages to find your URL. Once you find your URL, you then know that you have been indexed. You may want to give this a few weeks in order to be indexed. 10. Continue to Refine Your SEO work is never complete. Getting ranked in the search engines is only the beginning. The on going work required to successfully rank high in the search engines never ends. It’s because of the grueling, never ending, process that most people fail at SEO. We wish you the best of luck with your optimization.

Automobile manufacturers have automobile dealerships to sell their cars. When you walk on to a car lot to buy a car, you expect it to be full of cars of a particular make, or maybe two makes, but you have a fairly good idea of what will be available. So you are neither surprised not offended when all the cars offered to you come from one or two manufacturers. A franchise broker markets the franchises of a specific group of companies. Like a car salesperson, a franchise broker gets a commission for every successful franchise sale. If you are seriously looking for your own franchise, you will eventually encounter a franchise broker. Broker Vs. Consultant A franchise broker will be able to offer you a treasure trove of information regarding those franchise companies he or she represents. This information will probably not be available from anywhere else, including a franchising consultant. A good franchise broker will be able to confirm or contradict the accuracy of what your franchising consultant has told you, but only as it applies to the companies whose franchises he or she brokers. As with an automobile dealership and its cars, a franchise broker will represent only a small percentage of the franchise opportunities currently available. You may be qualified to become a franchisee of far more companies than the broker to whom you are speaking represents, but the broker will only receive a commission if you sign up with one of his or her companies. So don’t expect to get anything resembling a full picture of the franchises available in your area and financial range. Another thing to remember is that the majority of franchisors do not work with a franchise broker, further limiting the pool of franchises to which a franchise broker can introduce you. For more info see http://www.startfranchisehelp.com/Franchise_Broker on Franchise Broker. Verify, Verify, Verify It will cost you nothing to consult with a franchise broker, just as it costs you nothing to visit a car dealership. Franchise brokers can be a very valuable source of information, but never forget that they are highly motivated to have you sign on the dotted line. If a franchise broker seems to be pressuring you into committing to a specific franchise opportunity, it could be because he or she genuinely believes you are an ideal candidate for that franchise. But before you rush ahead, take the time to investigate all the other similar franchises in your area, and see if there is one which works better for you. Your money and future are on the line, and you are far more qualified than the best franchise broker in the world to know where they will be best spent!

It is unbelievable but true, the amazing things the Inbound Links do for you. Inbound Links are often associated with traffic but how many of us give serious thought to the fact that these links play a major role in projecting you as an Expert, Creating Awareness for your Products, Generating Revenue, Increasing Link Popularity and helping your website to attain a Top Place in the Search Engine results. Let us explore the Amazing Benefits they generate for you. 1. Link Popularity and Page Rank: Search Engines consider link popularity as a crucial factor in measuring the page rank of a website. Link Popularity is a measure of the number of inbound links of quality and relevance that point to your website. The more number of such links the more popular your website will be and the more popular it is the higher the page rank it will attain. Search Engines especially Google consider such sites as important and place them at the top of their search results for their respective keywords. Google is today by far the most popular search engine and who wants to be left out by Google? 2. Traffic: Not all websites can appear at the top of the search results for their keywords. Hence the traffic from the search engines can be minimal for most sites. The savior for such websites is the inbound links that bring traffic they desperately need. The more number of these links you have the more traffic you can expect. Thus the links that point to your site from Directories, Reciprocal links, Resource Boxes, Forums and Testimonials play a very significant role in driving traffic to your website. 3. Product Awareness: The visitors who visit your website via the inbound links do so for various reasons and one of these is to learn more about the products you have to offer. Irrespective of whether they purchase a product or not, you are creating a great awareness for your product in the Internet world with the help of these links. 4. Generating Revenue: The targeted traffic that comes to your site through the inbound links is all potential customers. If they are impressed with the genuineness of the website and content, some of them are bound to become your customers either immediately or at a subsequent stage thus generating revenue. 5. Expert Author: Writing quality articles and publishing them in Article Directories with your URL in the Resource Box not only brings in traffic but also projects your image to the Internet community as an authority in your field of expertise. These one-way inbound links are highly valued and they multiply virally as other webmasters begin to publish your article thus bringing fame to you as an Expert Author. 6. Anchor Text Boost: The URL of your site in the inbound link does not indicate to the search engine what your site is all about. Having a keyword embedded Anchor Text in the link will help the search engine to identify your site easily. Correct use of the Anchor Text will help you show the relevancy of your web page to search engines to help them boost your rank for the required keyword. 7. Authority Site: Once you have several pages of excellent unique content, other sites will link to your site with the idea of providing good content to their visitors, while certain other high ranking websites would want to be your link partners. Before long Search Engines will accept yours as an authority site and you will rank high in the search results enjoying enormous benefits such as high page rank and huge traffic. Conclusion: Inbound Links play a dominant and dynamic role in the success of a website. The Amazing benefits they generate for you are enormous. Webmasters who have realized the significance and value of these links are certainly enjoying the amazing benefits these incredible links bestow upon them

An affiliate marketer is one who sells products through his website without actually owning the product. Therefore, there is no cost for buying products, maintaining inventory, or shipping. An affiliate marketer has only one responsibility that is to complete the desired transaction be it selling or lead generation. They are mostly paid by commission for every sale that could be as little as a few percent or a set dollar amount per transaction. What is an affiliate program? It would be difficult to imagine e-commerce without affiliate programs. Online businesses hope to increase revenue through their affiliate programs. An affiliate program is an opportunity for the advertiser, and the publisher. The advertiser is the company with a product to sell. The publisher is driving traffic to the advertiser’s website making money on commission. Real world example: Let’s say you have a mortgage business and you want to generate leads through your brand new website. The website looks great, your online lead generation form works like a charm, except you have no visitors. You could create an affiliate program and pay your affiliates for each lead. In essence, you have created a win-win situation for your business and your affiliates. You only pay for leads not promises, and you have created a profitable opportunity for content publishers. How do I find good affiliate programs? You can profit from affiliate programs, even if you don’t have a product to sell. You could become an affiliate for other businesses. If you enjoy writing, you could start a blog and earn affiliate revenue. Make sure you only enter into partnership with reputable companies. If an affiliate program sounds too good to be true, you can bet your boots that it is. The products you market should have a proven track record for being successfully marketed and sold online. The best part about affiliate programs is that they don’t require any financial investment on your part. If you are asked to send money to join an affiliate program,, you should walk. It is a sign of bad things to happen. Finding affiliate programs is easy. There are several reputable affiliate directories.

Pay Per Click (PPC) marketing has long been a popular way of both generating traffic to websites/blogs as well as generating income through having visitors either purchase your affiliate products or enter their details into a Cost Per Action program. The concept of PPC marketing seems simple enough – purchase some keywords in the major search engines: Google, Yahoo and MSN, and get your advertisement in front of millions of people searching every day. Whilst it seems simple enough, the reality is its anything but simple and thousands of people who try it quickly find that they are paying more for their ads than they are making back in commissions. However, there are those that are making a lot of money through PPC marketing, and I mean a LOT of money. Some of the experts claim commissions in the six figure range on a weekly or even daily basis. These are the experts that have perfected systems of PPC marketing that are setting their ads above the rest. These are the experts that you need to learn from and replicate what they do in order to make sure that you become part of the 20% that are making 80% of the profits. One of the best known PPC marketing experts is a guy by the name of Gauher Chaudry. Gauher has been involved in PPC marketing for a number of years and in that time, he has learned a lot and perfected a system of PPC marketing that has him earning copious amounts of profit. Right now, using his formula, he is aiming to earn $US1million in one month and he is well on the way of doing that. Gauher has put together a comprehensive training program for anyone wanting to learn all about how he makes his millions of dollars through PPC. The program is called PPC Formula and you get everything you need to know and use in order to perfect your PPC marketing and have you dominating the major search engines: Google, Yahoo and MSN. I signed up for Gauher’s program not too long ago and I was very impressed by what you receive which includes workbooks, CD Rom tutorials, videos and software that which teach you everything from woah to go in order to become a PPC expert. Gauher also runs a support forum and I have found him to be very responsive to my questions even if I just email him directly. He’s also the kind of guy that has his head screwed on straight, and he treasures his time with his family and encourages all to do the same. This is pretty unique from an internet marketer – many of the so-called experts will do anything to prise dollars away from you. I’ve learned a great deal for his course and I am still learning. There are many success stories found in his forums and the community that is there is very open to helping you and discussing how you are going. If you’re interested in perfecting your PPC skills and generating huge amounts of commissions, then I definitely recommend you check PPC Formula out for yourself. The initial price might seem high, but let me assure you what you get is worth so much more.

If you are looking to get rich or just to make some extra money you may want to look into buying digital products with resell rights. You may be thinking to yourself you should have said selling instead of buying? Well that is the next step. You see when you buy a digital product and it has resell rights you can resell that item many times over and generate a profit by doing this. That is why I said you should look into buying digital products with resell rights, not selling digital products with resell rights. You first have to purchase such items and then you can sell them. In this article you will find out more about buying digital products with resell rights and whether or not you may want to get into this sort of business that is making many a lot of money. First you might be asking yourself well what are digital products? Digital products are products such as e-books, software, e-courses, learning programs, tutorial, consultation, multimedia, and many, many other digital products are available to sell as well. So you may be asking yourself why would I want to sell digital products? Well that is a great question that I will answer for you. You see most of these digital products are all about information and information is what people search for most when they get on the internet. So selling digital products on the internet is the way to go because people want to learn and they crave information. People for example are looking for ways to get out of there dead end jobs, and selling digital products are a good way to do just that. Now you may be asking yourself well what are resell rights? Well let me break it down for you. You see when you buy digital products with resell rights. You are not only buying a digital product, but you are buying a product that has resell rights, or a product that you can resell for profit. How cool is that. It is even cooler that you can buy these digital products with resell rights and you do not have to pay a royalty or a commission to anyone. You buy it once and you can sell it as much as you can. There are very little expenses in this business except for buying it the first time. For example you can buy a digital resell product for twenty dollars and you can sell it just once for 20 dollars and you have made your money back. But you sell it 10 more times and you have just raked in two hundred dollars straight profit. Sell just twenty five and you rake in five hundred dollars. You see if you were doing this part time you could earn serious cash and finally pay off those bills that have been sitting on the table piling up. This is why at the beginning of this article I said buy instead of sell. You see you have to first buy it and then you can sell it for profit. This is such a cool concept it is important for people to check into it. Why not all you have to learn how to do is sell these products on e-bay or if you already have your own web site then you can market your digital products that way. Remember at the beginning of this article I said we will discuss whether or not you may want to get into this type of business. Well that is completely up to you. You can basically run this business for free and with very little time all you have to do is be able to market a product. So check out buying digital products with resell rights and start making money today.

Something every parent does when handed their newborn is took them over from top to bottom with amazement and joy, making sure everything is A-Okay. They run down the checklist mentally as they cry and embrace their new child. Two feet? Check. Ten Toes? Check. Two Hands? Check. Ten Fingers? Check. Now thanks to a number of researchers and growing understanding of language development those two hands may not be silent long. Advocates are raving about new products which exist to teach babies sign language. Never Too Young To Learn Gone are the days when all an infant had to do was look cute and eat what was given. Now as a child eats, drinks or needs a diaper change, sign language is also being communicated. Studies show while thinking skills develop rapidly, language skills do not. Teaching your infant signs is one way to create a meaningful communication before the language process takes hold. Parents have been teaching babies with signs for eating of momma for years by repeated hand motions for certain events. The book Baby Signs: How To Talk With Your Baby Before Your Baby Can Talk by Linda Acredolo contains the proper sign for daily activities so your communication can take hold from the beginning. Never Too Old To Learn One of great thing about all the baby sign language products and procedures is the parents get to learn a new language too. The caregiver/nurturing bond is even further established as you learn together with your new baby. The folks at the website http://thesigningbaby.com have a whole line of flashcards, music CD’s and ASL (American Sign Language) kits for parents to learn as they teach their child. Every parent loves the joy of hearing the first time their baby says “Momma” or “Daddy” but imagine the joy of seeing them sign it to you so much sooner and knowing you both acquired this skill together. As communication abilities in the infant grow the parents can also learn what it is they need or want without having to do all the guess work of figuring out what a pouty face or foot stomp indicates. Parents can learn from their child first hand and not run through all the guess work of care giving. Creative Communication Research over the last few years on infants and children who are taught to sign have been conclusive that signing children tend to have higher IQ scores, a larger vocabulary when they do learn to talk a capacity for dual languages and throw fewer tantrums. This last benefit seems to be because the child is not frustrated by their inability to communicate needs, wants and feelings. An entire line of baby DVD’s called “Signing Time!” available on http://Amazon.com extends the range of learning from infancy through toddler age. The signs, combined with music work to build great communication and brain development. So now when parents are counting up hands and feet, they can also be preparing their own hands to get ready to do some talking.

Businesses don’t want you! Well, most businesses don’t. Sure, they want your money, they will take your orders and they would love your referrals, but they don’t want YOU. Wanting to take care of you and your needs as a customer rather than just your order involves time, follow up, research and money. What takes a business from good to great is an investment in you, their customer. It is my opinion that it is this extra stretch of time and effort that often takes the true success stores in business and makes them something worth talking about. So how do you become one of the exceptions in business and push yourself beyond your competitors? In concept it is simple–focus on meeting and exceeding your customer’s needs. In practice it takes work; let’s take a closer look at how you can create something worth talking about in your business by focusing on the concepts of Y.O.U. Your customer is your life-blood. Let’s face it, without customers you would be done, right? Do your customers know that? They should! Think of ways to tell them how important they are, everyone likes to feel important, appreciated and needed. Here are some examples of ways that you can make sure your customers know they are appreciated: – On the phone–after they call for information or to place an order or to complain about a problem, always end the call with your appreciation for their business and support. – With their order—include a note of thanks and an offer to contact you if there is anything more you can do to help. – On your website or in your store—post a visual sign thanking them for their business. – With follow-up–provide a follow up call or send a postcard or email shortly after they give you their business thanking them. Others decide how good you are. Sure you love your company and are convinced that you offer the best service or products. However, people don’t care nearly as much about what you think of your business as what their friends have to say about it. Focus on each and every customer, viewing them as a friend and working to gain their satisfaction and support. Ask them for feedback and implement their suggestions. If you get lazy in this area it will show. Letting just a few unhappy customers leave your store can also quickly unravel all that you have worked to build up in the way of a good reputation. This is where the hard, consistent work of making every customer a satisfied one will come to reward you. Until you sacrifice, you will not succeed. I believe that true customer service is really about sacrifice. You must be willing to sacrifice in a few key areas: Time-it takes time to respond to each email, phone call or complaint personally, promptly and with sincerity—do it! Your customers will notice the difference and appreciate your efforts. Go out of your way to exceed their expectations. If you don’t have the product they need, help them find it form someone else. If they don’t understand something, offer to walk them through it. If they need something quickly, offer more than one option to get it to them on time. This kind of sacrifice will leave an indelible mark in their minds and over time can create a fierce loyalty to your company. Money-you must be wiling to sacrifice some of your immediate profits to make customers happy. Offer a refund if they are not satisfied, a discount if you make a mistake and give gift certificates toward future orders to keep them coming back for more. The profits you will “lose” by doing this is simply an investment in the long term health and growth of your business. If you are trying to make each dollar count, wait to upgrade your printer or fax machine. Customer service is NOT the area to pinch pennies. The beauty of offering great customer service is that you have a built in guide to help you—yourself! I encourage you to take some time to view your business from an outsider’s perspective. View yourself as the customer and meticulously scrutinize each area of your experience as a customer with your business. Look for ways to improve what you already have in place and implement things that you are currently overlooking. I am convinced that if you truly focus on the concepts of Y.O.U., everything will benefit and you will have a business that YOU would want to support!

How much did you spend on your last car? $15,000? $20,000? Maybe even $30,000? Did you know that you can start your own franchise business for just a fraction of this cost? That’s right. While franchises have the reputation of carrying a high price tag – some as high as several hundred thousand dollars – many franchise opportunities are available to entrepreneurs looking to start their own businesses without spending a fortune. If this describes you, then read on, and discover ten franchise businesses that can be yours for only $10,000. POSIGRIP This turnkey franchise specializes in safety and injury prevention by providing floor and shower treatments that help prevent slips and falls. Businesses, in particular, present a growing market for slip-prevention technology as the costs of injury lawsuits and liability insurance are on the rise. As the owner of a PosiGrip franchise, you can help protect people from injury while servicing the safety needs of small companies and large corporations. The start-up investment for a PosiGrip franchise is just $8,000-$10,000, and training and support are provided. THE DRUG TEST CONSULTANT Maybe your dream is not only to own your own business but also to make a difference in society. It’s an sad fact that drug use is a serious problem today, but did you know that you can have a positive impact in this arena through joining this exciting franchise opportunity? The Drug Test Consultant (DTC) helps companies and parents know if a drug problem exists, and, if one is found to exist, DTC provides vital help and support in addressing the problem. Services offered by DTC include drug detection assessments, home and workplace drug testing, instant drug test supply distribution, and background checks. And the investment for this unique opportunity to make a difference is just $7,995-$9,995. VENDSTAR You’ll find them in schools, colleges, airports, train stations, office building, and malls. In fact, nearly every public building has one. What is it? A vending machine. And for each vending machine you see, there is someone earning a profit based on every sale. For a minimum investment of $9,995, you can become that someone. Vendstar machines offer candy, gum, and nuts to consumers whose demand has proven to be steady regardless of the economy. As a Vendstar franchise owner, you benefit from a business that works even when you are sleeping, spending time with your family, or even on the golf course. If you want a low-cost franchise, be sure to check out this sweet opportunity. TINI TOYS, INC. For the kid in all of us, Tini Toys is a franchise opportunity that allows you to be around toys all the time, day in and day out! As a Tini Toys distributor, you service toy displays in retail locations on a monthly basis. For every toy sold, you get paid. And displays aren’t limited to toy stores.
With a capital investment of just $10,000, this opportunity’s products and price tag will bring out the kid in everyone. SEAMASTER CRUISES A cruise itself may cost upwards of $5,000, but imagine owning your own cruising franchise for a total capital investment of only $9,500. With SeaMaster Cruises, you can make this happen. SeaMaster Cruises is a home-based cruise distribution system that allows you to tap into a growing and profitable industry. SeaMaster Cruises offers training and support as well as marketing assistance, all for an investment of under $10,000. ROTOBRUSH® With the growing public focus on health and wellness over the past several years, individuals have become more and more aware of the quality of air that they breath. Rotobrush International, LLC meets this growing demand for clean air by providing professional air duct cleaning services. By completing as few as one to three jobs per week, you can earn anywhere from $25,000 to $75,000 per year. And your start-up investment is only $10,000. Although not officially a franchise, Rotobrush nevertheless offers the same support and training at little or no cost to you. To capitalize on this exciting business opportunity, simply click the link above and submit the information request form. IPSMARX TECHNOLOGY, INC. Telecommunications is a multi-billion dollar industry, and now with a minimum investment of just $8,000, you can capitalize on the profits of this booming market. IPsmarx is a voice over IP (VoIP) provider franchise that allows you to earn an income while offering comprehensive VoIP services. And to help you succeed, IPsmarx offers training and support as well as marketing materials to assist you in growing your business. BRAZILIAN SPRINGS What better way to succeed in business than to provide a product hat everyone in the world needs: water! As a Brazilian Springs distributor, you have the benefit of training, support, and help with business plan development. In addition, financial assistance is available to help you get your business off the ground. And if this is not enough to convince you to check out this franchise opportunity, consider this: Brazilian Springs donates 10% of total gross sales to assist the preservation of endangered rain forests in Brazil, the source of this purest of waters. You can earn a living and help protect the environment by becoming a part of the Brazilian Springs franchise team. THE BACK RUBBER Have you ever just needed a back massage? If you’ve ever experienced this feeling, then you will appreciate the relief that you can bring to people by buying a Back Rubber franchise. With a total capital investment of just $7,495, you can become a distributor of relaxing Back Rubber massage chairs. The market for these chairs is vast, from beauty salons and country clubs to malls and airports. And as an added bonus, if you prefer not to do any face-to-face selling, you can opt to have a locator place your massage chairs for you. This franchise is a winner for budding entrepreneurs looking for a great opportunity at a low cost. CADDY CARD If you would like to trade business for leisure, then why not make leisure your business? Caddy Card is the must-have golf course guide book that is small enough to fit into your pocket but that still includes a scorecard and training aid. Caddy Card franchise owners earn an income by placing Caddy Cards in golf courses and by selling advertising space for the Caddy Cards. Design and production are handled by the parent company, allowing franchisees to focus their efforts on the activities that bring in revenue. The total capital investment is just $11,800. So are you ready to hit the green? Both in golf and in profits? Check out Caddy Card today. As you can see, franchise opportunities are not just for the rich. And with an investment of as little as $10,000, you, too, can be on your way to becoming a successful franchise owner.

When you’re down and out and undeniably broke, there’s nowhere else to turn to. You can humble yourself and ask for help from friends and family. You can take on a second, even a third, job. Or you can take stock of the properties you own and realize that they may just save your life. Mortgage Refinancing may be the last resort. The question is, is it the best? Could there be a better way? Seeking debt relief? Dealing with long term mortgage refinancing is no walk in the park. The prudent thing to do when you opt for mortgage refinancing is to compare costs of your current loan with the new mortgage over a given time. If the results show that the new loan gives a lower cost, then get mortgage refinancing. Most people overlook this precaution and jump eagerly into the bandwagon, only to later regret their hasty decision. Instead of getting some relief from their financial responsibilities, they find themselves sinking deeper into debt. The Internet is your friend at this time of need. With all the mortgage refinancing websites available online, you can take a peek at your options without having to deal with pesky salespeople that are likely to talk you into making a bad decision in pursuit of the almighty dollar. If you are seeking debt relief through mortgage refinancing, use the online calculator available on all mortgage refinancing sites. The results will show how much you will be paying in a given period. You can compare results of the minimum loan period on the new loan to make refinancing profitable. If you see that the break-even period pays, then get mortgage refinancing. Understanding mortgage refinancing calculators The calculator will require you to enter your loan balance amount, the interest, and the number of months to pay the loan. The calculator will then segment the costs into three divisions: upfront cost (new and old loan), monthly payments of principal and interest on the new and old loan, and the lost interest on both loans. Calculation will also factor cost offsets like tax savings on interests and points and show the break-even period. The results may show savings of thousands of dollars on the new loan. For the average person, the online mortgage refinancing calculator is a life-saving device. They can immediately see the monthly payments they will make for a period of time, and the money they can save. The information they get will greatly help them in arriving at a decision. Lock or float? Lending institutions make money out of loans by charging interests. Your payment will go to the interests for the first few years. When you get a mortgage, you will be given the option to lock in or float your interest rates. In street parlance, you have a chance to decide on a fixed rate. This is an advantage for you when interest rates go up. You are safely locked in your going rate. When interest rates go down, you still stay fixed in your locked rate, which is a disadvantage. The same goes for those who prefer to float their interest rates. When interest rates go down for several months, they can save a lot of money – but when these rates stay up and go higher, they have to shell out more than the usual amount. Either way there are advantages and disadvantages. Do you really need mortgage refinancing assistance? Your existing loan is drying up your resources and a second mortgage is tempting. Don’t fall into the temptation. The interest rates in second mortgages are prohibitive and can even be thrice as high as the initial mortgage. Instead of the second mortgage, get refinancing. If you have a pressing reason to get refinancing, by all means, go ahead. But if it is only to indulge yourself in luxury, forget it. You must not trade your house for an expensive car. In the long run, as interest rates are escalating, you might lose that car and everything else. Mortgage refinancing may or may not get you out of debt. It will all depend on you. If you are committed to stick to your budget and spend years paying off the loan, then you are a good candidate. Tread carefully when you are getting mortgage refinancing to pay off your debts. You never know what you’ll step on.

Presenting players with an excellent combination of skill and luck, backgammon is fast on its way towards becoming the next big thing after online poker. Yes, that’s right, backgammon is a predominantly skill-based game, where luck plays a part in the big picture as well. Online backgammon rooms take a rake similar to the poker rake , so the two games are rather alike in that respect, too. In order to beat your opponent, you need to learn the game itself and its strategic aspects well, or at least better than your opponent. There are backgammon computer programs out there, you can use to play against and learn. The more like a computer you play, obviously, the better results you’ll have against human opponents. Beating a human, is fortunately much easier than beating a computer. Human players will have flaws in their strategy and they’ll make mistakes in their play. All you need to do, is exploit those mistakes. Much like in online poker, most of the money is not made playing against really skilled, almost computer-like human opponents, but against those “fish” who have but a few clues about how they should play the game. Flexibility is a very important issue in this respect. Even though, playing like a computer will most probably beat weak opponents, whenever you notice a flaw in their play, you have to adapt and change your game to best take advantage of these flaws. On the other hand, you have to be aware of the fact that whenever you change your play to adapt to a weaker opponent, you’re virtually sinking to his/her level. This means that you won’t be playing your best in that game, and playing your best is something you should always strive for. There’s quite a bit of a contradiction here, but the bottom line is, you have to try to adapt, while still bringing your “A-game”. An example in this sense would be when you notice your opponent is shy about giving the cube. In this situation, you may want to be a bit more aggressive on your checker play. If he is lose on dropping the cube, you may want to step up your giving the cube, because this might provide you some serious advantages. Likewise, if you feel he’s a weak checker player avoid straight-up confrontations. Look for more complex situations where his weak checker play will become a bigger liability. On one hand, you have to work on showcasing your strengths as much as you can, and creating situations when your strengths can really kick in, on the other hand, you have to do the same for your opponent’s weaknesses. By simply sticking to good play and ignoring his weaknesses you only complete half the job. The basic idea is that you have to go out there and actively force your opponent into making even more mistakes, while keeping your own game as strong as ever. This aspect is also reminiscent of poker. There too, good things might come to those who wait, but the best things come to those who go and fetch them. Backgammon opening strategy is a lot like blackjack basic strategy: experts have put together a list of moves you can make for different dice-combinations. Do not assume you can think of something better than what they recommend. Just learn these moves and learn to apply them under different circumstances. Of course, you have to view the game as a whole. There’s no reason to believe the opening moves are worth a wooden nickel, unless you play the whole game right. Good news is though, that there are tips and strategy pointers out there, for every single stage of a backgammon match. Make sure you read up on all of them.

Improved search engine rank is difficult enough to obtain without you having to trawl through all that has been written about Google Page Rank in order to find the truth. There are many misconceptions about Page Rank, and Part 2 of this article dispels the most common of them, the first being that Yahoo and MSN have their own version. In fact this is not so. Yahoo had a beta version of a ‘Web Rank’ visible for a while, ranking complete websites, but it is now offline. MSN has no equivalent as far I can ascertain. The term ‘PageRank’ is a trade mark of Google, which is why I refer to it as Page Rank and not PageRank. A small difference, but a significant one. If you are one of those that believe that the more links you can get to your website the better, then you are wrong. When Google started the Page Rank frenzy by putting that little green bar on their toolbar, they didn’t realize the consequences of what they were doing. People fought to get as many links to their website as possible, irrespective of the nature of the websites to which they were linking. That is misconception Number 2. You do not link to websites, you link to web pages, or should I say, you get links back from web pages, not websites. It is, after all, the link back that counts isn’t it? The link away from your site doesn’t count. Wrong! Misconception Number 3. The link to your web page counts no more than the link away from your web page. In fact, it could count less. You could lose out in the reciprocal linking stakes if your web page is worth more than the other person’s. Let’s dispel that misconception right now. When you receive a link from a web page (not web site) you get a proportion of the Google Page Rank of that web page that depends on the total number of links leaving that page. When you provide a link to another web page, you give away a proportion of your Page Rank that depends on the number of other links leaving your web page. The Page Rank of the website you get a link from is irrelevant, since that is generally the rank of the Home Page. You will likely find that all these great links you think you have from PR 7 or 8 websites are from a links page that has a PR of ZERO! So you get zilch for the deal. If you are providing them with a link from a page on your site even of PR 1, then you lose! Most people fail to understand that. No incoming link can have a negative effect on your PR. It can have a zero effect, but not negative. However, if you have an incoming link with zero effect, and an outgoing reciprocal link with a positive effect to the target page, then you will effectively lose PR through the deal. Every web page starts with a PR of 1, and so has that single PR to share amongst other pages to which it is linked. The more incoming links it has, the higher PR it can have to share out. If your page has a PR of 4 and has three links leaving it, each gets twice the number of PR votes than if 6 links leave it. Your page with a PR of 4 has to get a similar number of PR votes incoming as it gives away to retain its PR. In simple terms, if your PR 4 page is getting links from a PR 8 page with 20 links leaving it, you lose out big time! It’s simple maths. No page ever gives away all of its PR. There is a factor in Google’s calculation that reduces this to below 100% of the total PR of any page. However, that is roughly how it works. You don’t get a proportion of the whole website ranking; you only get part of the ranking of the page on which your link is placed. Since most ‘Links Pages’ tend to be full of other outgoing links, then you won’t get much, and will likely get zero. That is why automated reciprocal linking software is often a waste of time. If you want to make the best of linking arrangements, then agree with the other webmaster that you will provide each other with a link from equally ranked pages. That way both of you will gain, and neither loses. Some software allows you to make these arrangements. Another misconception is that only links from external web pages count. In fact, links between your own web pages can be arranged to provide one page with most of the page rank available. Every page has a start PR of 1, so the more pages you have on your site then the more PR you have to play with and distribute to pages on your website of your choice. Search engine rank can be improved by intelligent use of links, both external and internal, but Google Page Rank does not have the profound effect on your search engine listing that many have led you to believe. Good onsite SEO usually wins so keep that in mind when designing your website.