Retiring In Paradise

I have to admit that I’m starting to slow down a bit. I am definitely in my final career – and quite comfortable working a 40 hour schedule. I even take a day off here and there to golf/ bike/ ski, although I’m thinking of selling my windsurfing equipment .

For the past two years I have been looking for a spot in paradise to retire to in five years or so - and I think I found it!

I have been traveling all over the Western US looking for the perfect spot to retire. But my idea of retiring is not the same as my Dad’s - and then again, maybe it is. Let me explain.

My Dad had a pre-WWII high school education. He worked in government service for 30 years. He grumbled about his job the whole time – that is until the last few years. In his last assignment, he finally found a role that made him happy.

He was mentoring a group of programmers as they built a new system for the state of Pennsylvania. They were clueless about Health and Human Services. They really needed somebody that new how the system should work – he loved it. Then he hit mandatory retirement age and they kicked him out.

My Dad wasn’t a dummy. He knew that he had a good deal, but he really missed his job.

He never moved from Harrisburg, PA. For years, he made a monthly visit to his old department, to visit the folks he trained.

Now - I never did anything the same way as my Dad. I went to Carnegie Mellon. I spent some time as an over educated ski bum and I traveled a lot before I settled down. As a management consultant, I worked all over the world. I moved from company to company and even started a few, but I made a mountain top on the coast of California my home base.

But, guess what? My dad and I ended up in just about the same place after all.

I now own my own business and I work with a solid network of business professional. I spend most of my time mentoring and consulting with entrepreneurs and business owners. My role is remarkably similar to my Dads – but there is nobody that can kick me out.

I just returned from two weeks in Kauai. My bride and I had a great time in one of the loveliest places in the world. But toward the end, I was really ready to get back to my office. Unlike my Dad – I am looking forward to my working retirement in paradise – doing more of the same that is.

Own Affiliate Website

Here is a free 10 step program that will guide you through the steps to build and publish your own website.

Follow these easy 10 steps, and grab your part of the $54 million dollar internet boom. You can own an

incredible affiliate website of your own, and take advantage of the many outstanding money making

opportunities on the internet.

What is an Affiliate?

An affiliate promotes products and services on their website for a commission. They choose

merchants that fit within the context of their site's offerings. If you have a website devoted to

automobiles, for example, you would select merchants that sell automotive products. You can build

websites that specialize in anything you prefer, such as travel, shopping, automotive, sports, gifts,

food, gambling, casinos, and just about anything you are interested in.

Affiliates enter into an agreement to place links on their websites that lead to the merchant, for the

purpose of promoting goods and services. In return, affiliates can earn commissions on click-through

leads, or purchases made through their sites

10 Steps To Becoming A Successful Affiliate

Affiliate websites are both challenging, and profitable. If you are willing to devote some time and energy into creating, and promoting your own website, it can be very rewarding. It takes time, and a lot of hard work to develop a successful affiliate website, but the rewards are phenomenal. Thousands of Merchants have realized the tremendous value of having affiliates sell their products, and are actively seeking new ones. It does not cost anything to become an affiliate, but some merchant programs are better than others. Can you trust them to track your commissions correctly, and pay on time? Do they offer dynamic, current, and proven sales aids to help you make sales? If you are going through all the work to create a dynamic and appealing website, to attract customers and make sales, than you need to know that you can trust them to hold up their end of the bargain. This is after all, a partnership between you and the merchant, and you need to work well together. It's not enough however, just to sign up as an affiliate with a merchant. You need to build a website that will create sales, and know how to promote your website so customers will visit it. I have created a 10-step program for the novice that will take you from the beginning research phase, to optimizing your finished site for maximum exposure. I cannot guarantee you will be successful, only you can determine that. I can assure you however, that if you follow this 10 step program, you can build (without any previous experience), an affiliate website that will make you a lot of money

#1 Website Marketing

Before you do anything else, get yourself some good books on Web Site Marketing. There are a lot of good ones available on the Internet. Most are not very expensive, and many are free. You can find a list of free and inexpensive eBooks you can download (here). You can find more if you like, by searching on one of the search engines like Google, or Alta Vista. It's important that you do this first, because you will save yourself a lot of time and aggravation if you learn from the experts what you should be doing, before you build your website

#2 Build Your Website

It is best to build your own website. Most hosting sites have a built in website builder that you can use free. Read step #3 (Web Hosting Companies), to learn more about these options. If you prefer to purchase your own website building program, Dreamweaver and Front Page are probably the most popular programs available. They both offer free 30 day trials, and can be downloaded at Macromedia Dreamweaver MX 2004 and Microsoft Front Page 2003. This Site Building Tools page, will help you find a variety of tools and software to help you build and customize your website. You will soon find out that building your own website can be interesting, exciting, and challenging. It really is not all that difficult, and if you apply yourself, before long you can become an accomplished Webmaster.There are many prebuilt sites available, but you are somewhat limited in what you can do with them. They are not very expensive, so if you tried one to get your feet wet, and practiced promoting it, the experience can't hurt you. The problem with most of the prebuilt sites is that, what is on them, is what you’re stuck with. A good website should always be improving. Click on Prebuilt Websites for a list of sites you can purchase

#3 Web Hosting Companies

Find a good web hosting company. There are an awful lot of web hosting companies competing for your business, and you should spend a little time researching some of them. Print a list of each sites feature, and compare them. Web site statistics are a must. It enables you to see where your traffic is coming from, and which ads are drawing in customers. Technical support that is open 24/7 is also very important. If you plan on using your hosting companies website builder, you will want to check it out to see if you feel comfortable with it.I use ixwebhosting.com, and have always been satisfied with them. Site Build 1.6 software, which is easy to use, and produces a very professional looking site, is included in their package. Click on (Web Hosting) for my list of recommended Web Hosting Companies

#4 Get Your Own Domain Name

You will need your own domain name. There are hundreds of companies that will help you select a domain name, and register it, for a nominal fee. Check with your web host first. Most offer to register your domain name for you with their package. You should always own your own domain name. Do not use a free domain name. Many sites such as Geocities, or Yahoo will offer you a free domain name, but it does not belong to you. It just doesn't make any sense to spend months or even years building name recognition for your site, only to lose the domain name if the company who owns it changes policy, or goes out of business. You can register a domain name for as little as $8.88 per year. Domain names need to be reregistered every year

#5 Content for your Website

Content is King. Remember this when building your site. People browse the net for information, and you must have good content to attract and keep the attention of people visiting your site. Fill your pages with interesting content about your websites subject. If your website is about shopping, than write about things that pertain to shopping. You can get free articles to paste on your site from a variety of places. Click on Content Sources, for a list of free articles that you can use on your site. You can also get much of the content you need from your merchants, or you can write your own. Use link text and articles to link to your merchants, as much as possible. Banner ads are very good, but you should try to limit the number on each page. A page full of mostly banners can be annoying, and will chase potential customers away.

#6 Sign Up For Affiliate Programs

Once you have your website built, its easy to get merchants that will pay you a commission on sales referred to them through your website. Affiliate programs are available from individual merchants, and from Affiliate Program Companies, that offer a variety of merchant affiliate programs on one site. They supply you with, banners, text, and advertising information that you can use on your site. Many of them offer tutorials, website building tips, and marketing advise to help make you successful. Just click on my Affiliate Programs, and select the merchants you would like to sign up with. They will guide you through the signup process

#7 Site Promotions

Promoting your site is the one of the most important parts of owning a website. A website without any visitors is useless. Once you've built and published your site, you need to promote it properly to attract a steady flow of traffic. There are a lot of Enzines (internet Magazines) and inexpensive or free classified Internet ads that work very well. Most Affiliate programs will offer advise on promoting your site, and they can be a great source for information and advise. Take all the advice you can get. The best I have found, and the one I use the most is Adland Pro, and I would check them out when your looking.

#8 Optimize and Submit Your Site

Next, but by far the most important, you need to optimize your website and submit it to the search engines. There are a lot of services available that you can purchase, that will optimize your site, and offer to get you rated on the search engines. Be careful when looking at one of these services, and remember, if it sounds to good to be true, it probably is. There are also software programs you can buy for a lot less money, and do it yourself. I definitely recommend buying your own software. It will cost you a lot less money in the long run, especially if you start building more websites, which most of us do.Click on (Website Optimizers) for the latest list of the best and easiest to use software available.

#9 Link to Other Sites

There are a lot of ways to get good ratings on search engines, and you should read everything you can find to get advise, but the most important thing to remember is you need to link to other websites. I can't stress this point enough. The search engine robots place a lot of importance on how many links you have coming into your website. You can make your own link directory, but it is difficult, and you’re a lot better off with a professionally made one. One of the best on the market is Zeus. It’s the one I use, so you can look at my link directory at http://www.budsbestbuys.com to check it out. You can get the basic one free, and it may be all you will need. I recommend you get the free one first. You can always upgrade later if you think you will need the extra features of the pro model.

ARELIS.COM

ARELIS is a top rated software program that helps you to build a powerful business network quickly and easily. Reciprocal links add value to your web site, and you'll get targeted traffic from clicks on your links at other web sites.

ZEUS.COM

Zeus creates traffic to your web site in numbers beyond your wildest dreams and will give you TOP positions in all the Search Engines like Google, Yahoo, MSN and AltaVista.

Paid Placement

Campaign strategy for Paid placement:

A Paid Marketing campaigns provides immediate search engines rankings for your most important keywords. It doesn’t determine weather it is a dynamic, static or flash based website. A paid PPC Marketing campaign should be well versed and knowledgeable based marketing that fits your requirements. Your PPC campaign should be unique and designed to your company’s marketing objectives.

Understanding the objective of your Pay per click campaign management should be your first goals. During that state you should determine which PPC search network is a best suit for your which return maximum cost-per-click for your selected key words and key phrases and aim at getting maximum return on investment (ROI)

Goals for PPC Marketing campaign Strategy:

1) Your first goal is to generate leads, increase sales and signup for your businesses.

2) What is the rate of clicks you receive per day per week and per month from what search network and also from which keyword phrases?

3) How does it cost for you per lead from the clicks?

4) What is your cost per acquisition per click?

5) How many order do you receive from your PPC Marketing campaign?

6) What is the conversion rate per click?

7) How good is your profit for PPC Bid campaign and how much is the margin

8) Who are your competing websites?

9) Cross check your campaign with other PPC campaign if you are running one.

The bottom-line is monitor your PPC campaign which is key for a successful pay per click search engine marketing.

Web Stats Analyzer

In order to be successful with an online business, one must pay attention to important data such as website traffic. There are tools that website owners can use to make changes or assess the statistics on their site in order to remain visible on the search engines. If you are new to internet marketing, then this might sound complicated but you should be pleased to know that you can find user-friendly web stats analyzer tools to easily perform this task.
These web stats are becoming popular nowadays, as increasingly more people are utilizing them to get data for website performance. Since there are many options on the market, it might be difficult to find the most effective program so ensure that you compare the different features. Remember it is your decision to make the right choice for your website statistics management, so conduct a bit of research when selecting your free web stats software.
You can find free software to quickly evaluate all the information on any number of websites and get valuable data automatically in excel format. When you know the statistics for your competitors this will help you to put together a successful strategy. Any action that you take from the information gathered from the present web stats will certainly have a significant net impact on your website and this should boost page views; the time visitors spend on the different pages and eventually the profits and revenue that the site yields.
In case you're not receiving the data to know where you are getting the most web traffic; what keywords are searched for on the search engines; the most popular pages and the average time period visitors spend on each page. Well, this is a good indication that you need to make use of the available tools to monitor traffic. Always remember that if you are selecting a tool that is not delivering quick results, then find an effective one to utilize on your website.

Start-Up Marketing Hacks

You know the expression, "You can't have your cake and eat it too?" It is absolutely terrible. Do you want to know why? Because it is an excuse that subtly lets you off the hook. It lets you stop thinking and problem solving. Whether you choose to believe it or not, you actually can quite often find a win-win and have your cake and eat it - all it takes is the right attitude and determination. Take a look at this:
The cake - Looking like a bigger, well-established, very capable, and highly-professional company.
Eating it too - Not needing to spend a bunch of money or hire unnecessary employees while maintaining the above perception.
In marketing perception is everything. Companies will spend big dollars on their image. So how do you do it with less? Here are a few methods that are so simple they may shock you.
1. Looking big and reputable - In regards to web presence this one is simple. On you internet storefront, in the contact area, offer several email addresses such as sales, marketing, or accounting at your-url.com and have them all filter to your primary email account (joe@joescompany.com). You can setup all of these features easily through your web hosting service.
Why is this a great idea? It gives the perception of a small business having departments and employees without the high costs of having them
Next question - is it unethical? Let me ask you another question. Is advertising a 3% discount on cash sales unethical? Think about it. It isn't really a discount, but rather a backwards way of accounting for the processing costs of credit cards which is generally between 2-3%. It's a matter of perception, and retailers do this to you every day. They will first raise their prices and then issue a sale bringing the product back to nearly the same price. Perception is ridiculously important in marketing.
Bonus: Another way to look bigger? Get several authors for your content. The bigger the names you can get, the better.
2. Fax number - While I would argue that faxes are becoming outdated and inefficient, having a fax number still gives off an air of professionalism. The solution to having a physical machine and fax line? An absolutely free fax number that requires only your email address. The online service, eFax, offers such a great service with a couple small stipulations; you can only receive faxes, and you cannot choose the number, which is all you really need to satisfy your perception needs.
How does it work? When a company sends a fax to your "number" it is immediately forwarded to your email account where you can open it with the free software given to you.
Now you are probably wondering what exactly do you do if the company needs documents from you. Simple - you tell them that email is the easiest, most confidential and secure way to go about it, or suggest one of the many other online methods of collaboration and voila! You have a professional appearance and a more efficient paperless system for your business. Or if you are hard-up for sending a fax, there are many free, granted highly limited, fax services easily found through Google or Yahoo!
3. One number to rule them all - Google Voice (GV) has recently released yet another fantastic feature for its users. By obtaining a completely free GV phone number (which can be a number from anywhere in the U.S.) a user has access to a ton of helpful features that can easily add to your professional repertoire. Some of these features are as follows
One number - probably the best feature, GV gives you a separate number, which for our purposes can be your business number, and lets you forward your calls to as many of your phones as you want. Or if you want to be more technological you can even customize where it rings and doesn't ring depending on who is calling. Conference calls - Want to do a five-way conference call on Monday? You can do it easily with Google voice. Pair it with a Skype number for even easier access. Just give your callers your number and a time and you are good to go. Personalized greetings - GV allows you to organize your contacts into groups, and you can give each group (or individual) a personalized meeting. Want to make that big client of yours feel special? Customize their voicemail. Contact management - get rid of your Rolodex. Enter it into Google and access it from anywhere in the world. You can even do searches on your contacts (or the notes you have for them - helpful for salespeople) to save large amounts of time. Voicemail transcription - Along with being able to customize your greetings, google will also do a great job of transcribing your voicemails and forwarding them on to your email or cell phone for quick, easy access. Call recording - Need to record that meeting regarding the year's new sales contract? No problem. Just be sure to adhere to Google's rules and restrictions for legality sake. International calling - Google offers very competitive rates in the 10¢/minute and under range. SMS - Google does texting! No support for media texts as of yet. Screen or block callers - want to focus your time? Screen your calls, or better yet just block those numbers that you know won't benefit you. Mobile App - Take GV with you anywhere. It fits your hectic lifestyle. Use it in conjunction with an 800 number - and save your clients some money.
Google voice is so versatile it can make any small business person seem more professional. Sometimes it is just hard to believe what Google offers us for free.
4. Professional Looking Photos - There are two great resources for this one. One is free and the other affordable. Both are royalty-free. Pick your poison. First up is Stock.XCHNG. Stock.XCHNG is a free stock photography site offering thousands upon thousands of high quality work. iStockphoto is its big brother and will deliver even better photography for reasonable prices. Forget hiring professional photographers. They are right at your fingertips!
Man, having your cake AND eating? Feels pretty good if you ask me. If you want to look like you are beyond just being one of the million start-ups out there today as you strive for success, use these three tools to change the look and feel of your business and meet your bootstrapping goals.
Shawn is an internet marketing and personal finance specialist, and co-founder of BeUnemployable.com, a site designed to challenge people to think less like "employees" and more like those who can change the world around them for the better. Along with his business partner, Ben, the Unemployable Brothers seek to educate others in entrepreneurship, personal finance, travel and lifestyle design. Redefine Normal - Be Unemployable.

Increase Sales

If you're running an online shop or are involved into an affiliate program, then you must already know about various means of advertising and increasing your sales. You can use paid and free advertising, you can advertise by writing articles or blog posts about your products or services, or you can exchange links with other websites.
There is, however, one more way to increase your sales - by using games. Video games are extremely popular now, there are lots of developing companies around the world, so you can order a unique game that will answer your specific needs and bring you more customers.
Let's see how a game can help you increase sales.
1. In-game ads
Any game can contain direct ads of your products or services. They can be incorporated into the game setting, or just pop up at the loading screens. Even the easiest flash game has plenty of opportunities of inserting ads, and professional developers will surely find the best way to do it without annoying players.
2. Including your products or services into a game
Products that you sell can be a part of a game also. They can be just placed around on key positions or even be interacted with. For example, if you sell jewelery, you can order a flash game about collecting treasures and gems, or finding matching jewelery for different outfits. The main thing is to create a game where the products or services that you sell will be shown in a good, attractive atmosphere.
3. Including the process of creating your goods into a game
A game can be based on a process of making your goods or providing your services. This process may be included either to the main game, or to some mini-game within it. This will help you to spark players' interest in your products or services, and once again demonstrate them from a good side.
4. Education and information
A game is a fine way to let people know more about your goods or services. Many games inform people of various things, and then allow them to apply the new knowledge and receive an in-game reward for it. This is much easier than reading texts and memorizing facts from them, and much more engaging than simply watching videos. Information can be delivered to the player in several ways, depending on what you're selling. A specialist from a game developing company will most surely find the best way to do it.
5. Humor
You don't have to always be totally serious about your products or services. Sometimes a good joke, gag or a funny in-game situation will be remembered for years and shared with many people, so don't be afraid to introduce some jokes about your business.
Even though casual and flash games are quite affordable today, it will be wise to order them from professionals. Otherwise they may end up to be not that effective as you expected, and you will lose your trust in this modern sand very effective advertising tool.

Content Syndication

Building your internet marketing resources is vital, particularly while attempting to steer more traffic to your blogs, boost your newsletter subscribers and also increase your earnings. Among your best marketing tactics ought to now be content syndication.This could be a novel concept to you, but now is without doubt the time for you to discover and develop the power of content syndication.

Syndication benefits both the website pages providing information as well as other websites featuring it. With the receiving site, content syndication is an effective way of adding increased depth and relevancy of information to its web pages, which makes it more attractive to visitors. For the transmitting site, syndication drives publicity across many online platforms. This activates additional traffic for the transmitting site - thereby making syndication essentially a free and easy form of advertisement.

Content syndication is in actual fact a clever web advertising strategy because you grant permission for your copyrighted content to be posted on other people's sites. One of the most commonly used measures for content syndication on the web is by means of article directories. There you are likely to submit your article which has a link or two to your site in it. Others who are trying to find good content for their own site can utilize that article provided that they leave your link within it.

One more approach to content syndication is to establish accounts with the assorted Web 2.0 sites and post your material to them. This process, though, can be quite time consuming if you are looking to post your material on more than a few websites. One may outsource it, obviously, however if you happen to pay by the hour, it may become fairly expensive because it will likely be simply as time consuming for the employee you hire.

The benefits of content syndication to your site are great, however. You can efficiently increase your visitors to your website; improve the number of subscribers to your list; improve your sales and profit; boost your presence, authority and name; and raise your rankings in the search engines. Content syndication is effective to help you achieve your advertising objectives.

Content syndication will no doubt boost your traffic by extending the reach of your content. After they notice and benefit from your work elsewhere, they will obviously want to examine more of what you have to say and therefore will click through the link to go to your website. Whilst they are there, they will see more of your excellent material that will lead to an expansion in subscribers and then sales.

Naturally, with each piece of content syndicated, you gain an additional backlink to your site. These backlinks are like votes, telling the search engines that visitors like your blog. This leads to increasing your search engine rankings and also, because of the content you have out there, you earn credibility and authority in the eyes of the visitor.

If you like the concept of content syndication as a web advertising strategy, you will be delighted to know that now the entire process can be automated, thereby making your website creation a more time- efficient and successful exercise.