Posted by admin on May 25, 2010 in
webhosting Many of us are familiar with Abraham Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs. A renowned researcher and psychologist, Maslow proposed a “hierarchy of needs” that demonstrates the human needs we are most motivated to satisfy. The base of the motivational order begins with the fundamentals of life. These fundamental, life-sustaining needs must be met before the higher needs can be targeted. When lower needs are not met, the higher needs become less urgent or persuaded.
• Self-actualization needs: realizing one’s own talents, gifts and potential
• Ego needs: respect, status and recognition
• Social needs: affection, companionship and inclusion
• Safety needs: protection from physical harm
• Physiological needs: food, sleep and safety
As the more basic needs are fulfilled, they lose their motivating power. We then have to work up the hierarchy and target needs in other areas. For example, if running water is something we take for granted, then a glass of tap water is unlikely to spur us on to action. Conversely, if we can’t meet this month’s rent, then we most likely are not thinking too much about fulfilling our self-actualization needs. As Sigmund Freud said, “A man with a toothache cannot be in love.” To motivate effectively, be sure you address your prospect’s lowest unmet need in the hierarchy and then offer opportunities for those needs to be met.
Gentle Motivation vs. Brutal Force—The First Step to Motivating Others
The first place to start mastering motivation is within yourself. If you can’t motivate yourself, how are you going to motivate others? As this chapter unfolds, you will learn ways to motivate those people you are trying to persuade, but first you will learn how to apply these motivational skills to yourself. Before you begin, figure out what motivates you. You must first understand your own motives and desires before you can be motivated by someone else.
How to Persuade the Lazy Person—Fulfilling Needs and Wants
Motivation is based on the finding and fulfilling of unmet needs and wants. We all have universal human needs and wants that require fulfillment in the same way. Of course, we all have different needs and wants as well. Two of the major keys to motivation are knowing what a person’s needs and wants are and figuring out how to fulfill them.
Posted by admin on May 18, 2010 in
Uncategorized If you’re blogging on the Wordpress platform, I’ll bet my entire life savings that the first thing you ever did was try to install a new Wordpress theme. I’ll bet my future earnings that even today you’re still occasionally changing themes and wasting a lot of time doing minor modifications that when summed up merely distracts you from blogging itself.
Yet, it’s easy to understand why themes beg for so much attention. With the correct theme, you can accommodate all the nifty little widgets and codes, and may also mean better search engine rankings and tons of fresh traffic every day.
So what factors do you need to consider to make this whole theme-hunting business easier? Here are five important ones:
1) Theme Width and Columns
Typically, Wordpress themes come in 2-column or 3-column formats, with widths ranging from 500 pixels to 960 pixels wide. If you’re blogging for non-profit purposes, a 2-column theme can look more compact and reader-friendly. Since you have less images of products or links to other sites to display, you can focus exclusively on the content without leading readers away from your site.
On the other hand, if you’re blogging for profit, you may want to consider a 3-column Wordpress theme that will be able to accommodate your Google Adsense, Chitika and Text Link Ads codes comfortably without squeezing everything in the content area. 3-column themes allow room for expansion, but in the event that you’ve filled up all available space with ads, then it’s time you removed the non-performers and use only the advertising services that work for that particular blog.
2) Use of Images and Icons
A theme with images and icons can look good, but it rarely increases your web traffic or subscriber base. In fact, most “A-list” bloggers have plain vanilla themes with a simple logo on top. Reducing the amount of images also means faster loading time and less stress on your servers. This vital aspect of server load become apparent only if you have tens of thousands of visitors a day, but it’s worth designing for the future.
A image-laden theme also distracts readers from the content itself. This is the reason why blogs like Engadget and Tech Crunch use images intensively in the content areas to add value to a post, but the theme itself is simple and rather minimalist.
Ideally, a theme should allow you to use your own header image for stronger branding purposes, yet replace images and icons with links and text, or just not use them at all unless absolutely necessary.
3) Compatibility with Plugins
Another time-sucking activity is installing plugins that improve the functionality of your site. There’s a plugin out there for almost everything you want to do with your blog, but while most of them are free and easily obtainable, it’s not always easy to install the plugins and insert the codes into your Wordpress theme.
If your theme is too complicated, it may be a headache to even insert that one line of code you need to make a plugin work. This is often the case with advanced AJAX-based Wordpress themes that have too many files and heavy coding. I’ve always preferred a simpler themes that stick to the default Wordpress theme as much as possible, so I can cut back on the learning curve and just get on with my life.
Remember that the purpose of your blog is to deliver timely, relevant content to your readers, Any theme that preserves or improves the reader experience is good, any theme that subtracts from the experience is bad.
4) Search Engine Optimization
A lot can be said about search engine optimization, but at the end of the day if you have content worth reading eventually you’ll get the rankings you deserve. However, that doesn’t mean that you don’t need SEO; it merely means that as far as optimization is concerned all you really need to do is to make sure:
(a) Your tags are formatted properly, with the name of the post first followed by the name of the blog – some themes can do this automatically without modification to the code or use of a plugin
(b) All your blog content titles use the H1 tag, with the main keywords used instead of non-descriptive text for better SEO relevance
(b) Your theme has clean source codes, and if possible all formatting is linked to an external CSS file which you can edit independently
5) Plug-And-Play Ease of Use
Can the theme be installed easily on an existing blog without having to move things around? Can the same theme be used and customized easily on your other blogs? These are some additional things you may want to consider when theme-shopping, especially if every minute of downtime on your blog may mean lost revenue.
While it’s hard to make comparisons due to the sheer amount of free and paid themes out there, it’s still a good idea to have a test blog site. Test any theme you plan on using, and make sure your test blog is also fitted with all the plugins and miscellaneous widgets used on your real blog. The last thing you want is for your readers start seeing weird error messages on your blog.
At the end of the day, a theme is just a theme. Instead of spending your time installing them, it may be wiser to outsource the task and focus more on your readers. Alternatively, you may also want to consider buying “plug-and-play” themes for a reasonable price. Dennis De’ Bernardy of ProWordpress.com has probably one of the best themes around, but if you’re short on cash there are certainly cheaper alternatives.
Posted by admin on May 18, 2010 in
Uncategorized Don’t be terrified by the following statistics: 1. 95% of network marketers never make it past the 1st year. 2. 3 out of 4 distributors quit within their first 90 days. This high percentage of failure applies to every aspect of human life – no more than 5% of human beings could achieve real success. The majority of the online business owners fail because they ignore or forget to lay a solid foundation. A house build on sand can never stand long.
It is true that online business offers many advantages. There is no inventory expense, no worry about management and employee relationship, no hassle with payroll, refunds or product returns and no headache over 9 to 5 routine and work burnout. You are your own boss and you work at your favorite pace in the comfort of your own home. You can make a fortune over a shorter period of time once you are in the right track.
However, as long as it’s defined as business, home based online marketing business can not go far beyond the basic requirements for a business. There is no shortcut in building up any business. How many beginners, blinded by the “get-rich-fast” schemes, were misled by the little work and 5 or 6 digit income promise that floods the internet business world? Just look at the fast-changing internet marketing business world, what are left behind are those products or services that sustains the basic demands of the market while the crazy money making Hypes vanish soon like bubbles. The following are 5 essential components to lay solid foundation and achieve success in your home business.
1. Do Your Homework.
Before you plunge into any online business, do research on the programs and products available on the internet markets. Choose your niche market and product. Exam your attitude, availability and capability. Find something that you are really interested in, which will inspire you later when you feel discouraged. This mind-set period is extremely important, which is the first cornerstone to build your mansion of business. Your ability is what you are capable of doing, your motivation determines what you do and your attitude or your mind-set determines how well you do it.
2. Create Your Business Plan
It would be much easier for any business to be on the right track with the guideline or roadmap of a business plan. Your business plan defines your target audience, your budget and advertising, the ways to reach your prospects and build up your opt-in lists and strategies to turn your prospects into customers. It guides you to attain your short and long term goals. Give yourself at least 3 to 6 months to learn the basics of your business.
3. Select Carefully Your Sponsor and Program
Like any business, online marketing business has its unique marketing tools and strategies. As a beginner, you must learn how to use these tools and where to find the marketing strategies. Finding the sponsor/program that can teach you these secrets makes the difference between success and failure. Choose the business model with proven records of success and the one who can provide you with detailed and systematical training after you sign up. “Opportunity dances with those already on the dance floor.” The value of a right program and guiding sponsor is priceless, which means half success of your future business.
4. Duplicate What You Have Learned
Once you find the sponsor/program that works for you, follow orders and repeat what your sponsor has done to make his/her business successful. Apply the principles and rules you are taught. Nothing but action brings your business to a new stage. After you have commended these strategies and mastered the secret weapons, you can start your own program or other programs by duplicating what you have learned during this apprenticeship. You business grow s in the process of your learning and taking actions.
5. Be Persistent
No one can run before learning to walk. The above four essentials are the basic steps to build up your business. As far as your final success is concerned, perseverance counts. Always remember: “Genius is 1 percent inspiration, 99 percent perspiration.” – Thomas Edison. Focus and patience help you win the race.
Posted by admin on May 18, 2010 in
Uncategorized Mistakes aren’t necessarily a bad thing, but if you can learn from other people’s mistakes it can save you from having to deal with them yourself. When it comes to web hosting, there are basically two kinds of mistakes – technical and general business.
Technical mistakes usually come up because of a misunderstanding of the internet and how it actually works. The first mistake many people make when creating a website is to cram as much information, photographs, images, etc. on each page as possible.
This makes the site take longer to download, leading to many visitors just moving on and never actually looking at the site. It also makes it more difficult to find what they’re looking for if the page is unorganized.
Another common error is creating a web site that isn’t search engine friendly. If the search engines can’t determine what your site is about, they aren’t going to be able to send you people who are searching for what you offer.
A mistake that many people make when starting out is to choose a host solely based on price. This is obviously an important factor, especially in the beginning, but if you choose the cheapest host you may be limited in your scalability as the website grows in popularity and traffic.
On the business side of things, the most common mistake is trying to be everything to everyone. You should have a plan for your website – a purpose for its existence – and build according to that plan.
Choose your target market and stick with it. Advertise in places they would see. Market in ways that would be of interest to them. Resist the urge to branch out into other areas just because something catches your eye. A site that tries to do everything usually ends up achieving nothing.
Another common business mistake is following the competition’s lead. You’ll obviously want to keep an eye on them to see what they’re up to, but if you copy everything they do you’ll always be one step behind.
Use your creativity and come up with unique ways to stand out from the rest of the websites in your market.
Posted by admin on May 18, 2010 in
Uncategorized What’s a Feed?
Feeds are a way of sharing content. When you make material from your web site, like articles and blogs, available for publishing on other sites, you have to provide them with a code that lets them post those things. There are different kinds of code — XML, RSS, Atom, etc. — but essentially, they’re all just different ways of accessing a feed.
According to Internet expert Sydney Johnston, of http://Auction-Genius-Course.com, “The great thing about a feed is everybody wins.” The article writer gains exposure, the reader learns about something valuable or interesting, and the online seller gets an endless source of pertinent content for their web site.
What Can a Feed Do for My Online Business?
Feeds are useful in a number of different ways:
• They Eliminate Spam Filters.
They’re 100% opt-in, so readers can subscribe and unsubscribe at will. Feeds are delivered directly to your subscribers, so you don’t have to contend with filters knocking you out of your customers’ inboxes.
• They Provide Free Content.
One of the best ways to differentiate your site is with quality content. Supply readers with interesting material; educate them on topics relating to the product you’re selling. If you sell preschool toys, you may not want to study child development and write numerous articles on the subject — so find someone else who’s already done that and make their feed available to your customers. The constantly updating, applicable subject matter gives your visitors a reason to come back again and again.
• They Can Improve Your Search Engine Rankings.
In the past, search engines were unable to read feeds, but software is now available to translate them into live links the engines can see (check out http://CyberWS.com). Search engines love fresh, dynamic content, so feeds are ideal. They provide relevant information that updates automatically. Not only do your customers get the facts they’re looking for, but the search engines like your site and give it better positioning.
• For Affiliate Marketers, They’re an Alternative to Banners.
You not only give your customer valuable knowledge, but if they click through and purchase something, you get credit. And unlike with banners, you don’t look like you’re putting up junk ads or spam.
• They Can Increase Your Traffic.
Anything you write, you should make available as a feed. When other sites pick it up, it’s free advertising for you. All their traffic is able to click through the feed to your site, so you gain new potential customers you wouldn’t have otherwise.
Feeds on any subject are easy to find. There’s a whole collection of search engines created just for feeds, like http://Plazoo.com and http://Feedster.com. Says Johnston, “The future of the Internet for entrepreneurs is feeds. If people don’t master them, they’re going to get left behind. Period.”