LifeSiren

Breaking News – Keyword Academy Prices Slashed

LifeSiren — Fri, 23 Jul 2010 11:42:31 +0000

For many of you who want to start making money online, the key thing is to do it – at least intially – without having to spend a lot of money. The thing is, if you don’t invest any money at all, you probably won’t make very much. After all, even the blackhat marketers spend a little money on the tools of their trade. So shunning the “dark side” and doing proper worthwhile marketing that provides valuable information for internet users, while at the same time providing a decent income for us, requires a small financial outlay too. It is just like investing, or starting a small business – if you’ve ever started up a small “bricks and mortar” business, you will know how expensive the early stages can be!

The best program I have found is the Keyword Academy, and I have written about it several times on this blog already (eg my Keyword Academy review). Because the vast majority of people flounder when it comes to making online income, using the information provided by Court and Mark is worth the $1 it costs to get started. And let’s face it, many will still flounder, even after joining the Keyword Academy, because as with any other money making venture (eg a job) you have to work at it. For example the latest “challenge” at TKA is a Summer Rush word challenge, where I am aiming for 300K to 500K words in 90 days. That’s a lot of online content!

Back in March the price went up from $33 to $67 for the usual monthly subscription, and frankly, for what you get, the price could even be higher than that. However, because of what I mentioned above, many beginners were put off. And with all the tools available at TKA and access to advice, tips and ideas from high earning professional marketers in the members’ forums, a 1 month $1 trial is not long enough to gauge the real value of TKA. In any case, Court and Mark have relented, and the monthly subs have been slashed in half, so after your $1 trial month, everyone can take advantage – and make money themselves – by paying the original $33 sub. That is fantastic value, I have to admit, because in the last year, there have been so many awesome tools developed and released to members for no extra charge. In other communities you’d be paying over $33 for each of these “free” tools we get as part of our ongoing memberships at TKA.

At the moment, there is a tool called Niche Refinery which allows a quick and automatic assessment of thousands of potential keywords, and boils them down to a list of targets, which have decent earning potentials combined with low competition from other sites. There is the Post Runner system, which allows members to find suitable blogs to approach for guest posting opportunities. The latest tool was the Project Management Spreadsheet, which allows users to keep tabs on all their URLs and keywords, and what needs doing next to build a fledgling site into a successful money maker. This is a simple Excel spreadsheet at the moment, but in due course (ETA September) it will be rolled out as a new sleek online application.

So if you want to check it out for yourself, you can read my review on it, or have a dig around the Keyword Academy Membership site, and sign up for a dollar for the first month. If you’re not impressed, simply cancel your subs through your Paypal account, and you won’t be charged another dime. (I wasn’t expecting to be impressed, and I’m still there 10 months later and making a load of money every month, which more than pays for the monthly subs!) And with the price getting cut in half, these tools are now more accessible than ever to those of you who worry about having to stump up some cash to make money online!

Suggestions On Making The Most Of Your Business Card

GuestPoster — Thu, 22 Jul 2010 18:54:14 +0000

The wise businessperson makes an effort to realize the full benefits of his or her business card. Whether you own embossed business cards or any unique business cards, if you want to be making the most out of them, then you should read and study the advice presented below.

First, make certain to include on your card all the important information. No longer can a useful card contain only an address and a phone number. It should also give the web address for the business. If the business owner has a twitter account, then all the information related to that account should go on each of the small, printed cards.

Next, never leave the house with out having put a small group of cards on your person. You can never know when you might get asked for that small piece of thin cardboard. Maybe you will get talking to a business owner, and he or she will want to keep in touch. They deserve the gift of something that contains your contact information.

Maybe you will discover a place that has a jar that accepts business cards. Such jars are appearing in a growing number of locations. This writer found one at the post office close to LAX. Once you have made your way to such a site, you ought to be ready to take full advantage of any extra promotions that you can gain from your visit there.

Maybe you will discover a bulletin board on which you could pin a card. It might be in a grocery store, in a retail establishment that caters to home based businesses or even in a House of Worship. You never know who might happen to spend time reviewing all the material on that same bulletin board. It might be someone who needs the product or service that you stand ready to offer.

Holding Presentations With A DVI D Splitter Cable

GuestPoster — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 14:36:01 +0000

The technical delivery is probably the most difficult challenge that presenters must face in the real business world. Using a one centered screen has been found to be insufficient in large audience halls. The presenter has the task of finding a method that will help him or her get their message to each side in the conference room without diminishing angle, perspective, and quality.

A well created presentation should permit sufficient visuals for each seat in the conference room. Connecting two projectors with one DVI-D splitter is probably the simplest way of addressing this problem. The splitter cable can simplify the progression of transmitting the same signals to two different displays.

The option of mounting projection screens on two separate ends of a room can enhance and raise the presentation’s quality in a huge presentation hall. The visibility for the screen’s presentation is important to the one giving the presentation. This can turn out to be a make or break situation. There are a few scenarios where a mirrored image will not work. The use of an extended desktop should then come into play. This is the best solution for presentations as duplication is the primary goal. Attempting to duplicate any image on two displays will lie beyond reach of the popular DVI-D splitter cable.

Functional splitters are simplistic in construction and basic in implementation. Many basic cables use one DVI output and splits it with the Y-adapter. Both leads direct the signal to similar DVI ends. The most difficult part lies in trying to figure out if the specifications of the equipment suitable for your task. The output adapter should be able to handle dual link signals. The output displays must also have the same type of signal. This could be digital or analog. You may have to switch to a high quality converter if any of the qualifiers will not do the job. This will be better than resorting to cable.

Equipment For Outside Sales Reps

GuestPoster — Sun, 11 Jul 2010 18:46:00 +0000

Being an outside sales rep these days can be tough. People aren’t as used to salesmen coming by their offices and homes anymore. There is an air of distrust in the air that makes it hard for field sales reps to make a living.

In such a competitive climate, reps need tools to help them become more efficient with their time and to help them communicate better with clients and colleagues. The following are a few pieces of equipment and technologies that will help you become more productive in the field in an outside sales job.

iPhone and Other Smart Phones

Having a smart phone with a data plan is a must these days for anyone who works out of their office. It helps them keep connected to the central office as well as their clients. It used to be that clients had to leave messages on your voicemail or even email and it would take hours or even a day to get a response.

With things like the iPhone, you can respond almost instantly while you are driving, waiting for your next appointment or having lunch. You are no longer bound by a desktop computer and landline to communicate anymore.

Smart phones also have other powerful capacities like getting you on the internet for directions to your next appointment, traffic reports, weather reports, booking hotel and airlines, and many other functions that you need to do on the internet. Now you can do it all in the field without having to find a computer.

Portable Printer and Scanner

You should also get a portable printer and scanner. This would be helpful in printing contracts and other business forms. Especially if you do something like insurance sales where you might need to print out informational material on the spot, you will want to have your own printer.

Also, outside sales reps tend to accumulate a lot of paper and it can be hard to have a filing system in your car. If you have a scanner, you can simply file it on to your computer and throw the hard copy away.

Why UK Web Hosting Is An Essential Tool For US Based Marketers

LifeSiren — Sat, 03 Jul 2010 20:09:46 +0000

These days there is a huge number of different providers of web hosting, and it can be a real headache to try and figure out which one to choose when it comes to setting up your websites. It is very likely that if you are living in the USA, you will probably sign up for a hosting account with one of the giant American companies. If you are still without a hosting provider and need a tip, I use Hostgator for my American hosting and have had absolutely no problems whatsoever with this no nonsense provider – so feel free to give Hostgator a go (that is my affiliate link by the way, so I’ll get a few bucks if you sign up via my recommendation. Shameless of me, I know!)

Similarly if you are based in the UK, you may well have used a British firm to host your websites. I also have a UK web hosting account, and apart from a few minor outages, they have been great, and have awesome customer service. On the odd occasion when my sites have gone down, a simple ticket to Technical Support got the problem sorted out really fast.

There is an obvious question here though. Does it really matter where I get my websites hosted? Some people are only going to set up a single blog, so they can let everybody know about their new kittens, or about a bunch of their favorite recipes or whatever. They will probably want to get their site up quickly, and feel secure working in their own currency, so they’ll be more likely to choose web hosting in the UK if that’s where they live; or maybe a different provider if they live in the USA or in France or Australia, or whatever is local for them.

The thing is, these days it isn’t any more difficult buying a web hosting account anywhere in the world, because often you can pay using Paypal, and they’ll do the currency conversion for you. So it doesn’t really matter.

For people who make a living online, internet marketers and the like, having different hosting accounts in different countries is often considered to be a great advantage. Many marketers are looking to build multiple websites, and they might choose to start a blog about a very specific topic, so that they can monetize it in some way – using Adsense or Amazon ads or Commission Junction affiliate ads perhaps. It is very beneficial to know how to pick the correct topics so that you are not fighting a losing battle against powerful competition in the search engines, and so that you will make a decent amount of money (to learn more, read my post on the Keyword Academy review).

The problems start when you begin to realise you have found a great keyword with very low competition and it looks like you might be able to make some decent money out of it. Let’s say you are US based. You have found a nice keyword, but it turns out that nobody in America has any real interest in it. Think football (aka soccer) or cricket, or products like bumbags (aka fanny packs), or nappies (aka diapers), or taps (aka faucets). The more you think about it, the more examples you can probably come up with where words for things in America are completely different in Britain. They might still be great keywords though, and you will obviously want to take advantage of them.

Enter a UK based web hosting account. Webmasters will often want to increase their chances of their sites doing well in the search engines, using the results served up by UK datacenters. It’s pointless getting to number 1 in the SERPs on an American datacenter for a keyword nobody in America is ever going to search for; while wallowing down on page 100 in the equivalent UK search results. So to try and bring relevant content to the UK’s potential market, it is important to think about some of the things that may help your site geographically. Perhaps setting up your new site on a co.uk domain name instead of a dotcom. Then there are schools of thought that say you should have your sites hosted in the UK also.

There is no question that for a British audience searching for information that you are dying to provide them, a UK web host will be faster. I have seen this myself as I am based in the UK and have both US and UK hosting. This is one of the best things you can ever do to make money online – have a site that doesn’t take an hour to load! People have short attention spans and if your US based site serves its information to Brits too slowly, they hit the back button before they even saw your ads. (Incidentally this works both ways, which is why I have hosting for both countries.)

So what are the best UK web hosting companies? I can’t answer that. I have only used one, and they suit my purposes fine, which is why I have stuck with them well into my second year. If you want to try them out they are WebhostingUK (again, another shameless affiliate link that drops a few quid in my pocket if you are happy to accept my recommendation; and I advise you to set up affiliate accounts with whoever you eventually get hosting from, as it can offset your own web hosting costs after a while!)

There is a saying in some affiliate marketing circles that “Brits don’t click”. It’s not strictly true, but many are terrified of scams and think they’ll be ripped off somehow; a case of national paranoia. However, as a US based internet marketer, you really need to know that Brits certainly will not click if your site is too slow, and with rumblings that Google’s algorithm may be set to include SERPs penalties for slow loading sites, it does make sense to at least investigate the possibility of getting yourself a fast UK web hosting account if you are picking keywords with a British flavor to them!