Is Painkiller A Headache Poem?

What is the first thing you do when you sense...
Life is short, drink wine and don't be sorry!
And the scent of the sense of presence
Is just soldier of both sides of worry.

Are Your Painkillers Giving You A Headache?

What is the first thing you do when you sense an impending headache? If you are like the majority of Americans, you reach for the closest bottle of over the counter or prescription pain killers and bolt some down automatically. Sometimes you may even be taking a pain killer in advance frequently or even daily, in order to stave off chronic headaches or because you are anticipating a stressful situation ahead.

Did you see yourself in of those descriptions? Then take a minute and think about your headaches. Is there a pattern? Do seem to have become more frequent and more intense with time, requiring medication more often than before? If yes, then most likely you are suffering from what are called rebound headaches, which are simply medication overuse headaches.

Coffee drinkers experience something similar. That first shot of coffee heads off the niggling beginnings of a headache. Each day you need that shot of coffee a bit earlier and perhaps then you need another one later in the day, until eventually, passing up that cup of coffee results in a headache. With time, the frequency of the headaches increases and so does your requirement for coffee. And you perpetuate the vicious rebound headache cycle. Although the caffeine is the culprit here, pain killers work the same way.

What happens is this. When you start taking pain killers more often than what the doctor prescribed or the label recommends, your body kind of adapts to the medication. The result is that each successive time you need a higher dose to combat headaches. And as you up the dose, the frequency and intensity of your headaches increases, so much so that headaches become a daily phenomenon. Some headache sufferers even find wake up with a dull headache that never really goes away.

Most people do not realize that over-the-counter pain killers are meant to give quick relief from occasional headaches. They were never intended for daily routine use recurring headaches because of the potential for causing rebound headaches. Once the rebound headache cycle has been triggered, the only way to stop it, is to stop taking the drug that triggered it. Period. But, although the task is simple, it is not always easy. Especially in the case of opium drugs, withdrawal must be closely medically supervised, because it is potentially dangerous.

For further rebound headache information, see Total Headache Relief or consult your doctor. Seek medical help if you:

• have a headache more than 3 times a week
  
• are regularly on pain killers
  
• your headaches seem to be getting worse despite medication and rest
  

If rebound headaches are diagnosed, your physician will recommend the best way to stop taking the drug that is causing the problem and supervise if necessary. Your headaches may become worse before get better because of medication withdrawal symptoms, but if you persist, you can successfully break the rebound cycle.

Rebound headaches are usually accompanied by restlessness and irritability. Rebound headaches can be triggered by overused pain killer, however, some pain killers are more likely to do so. Common over-the-counter medications that contribute to rebound headaches are aspirin, ibuprofen, acetaminophen, more so if come in combination with caffeine. Rx drug culprits include most migraine medicines, opium-based medications, and those containing butalbital (Esgic, Fioricet, & Fiorinal). Get the details on your pain killer here.

Most importantly, preventing kind of headache from occurring often is the best solution, so it is worth while to try out most natural headache therapies as prevention is their focus. This requires a conscious effort on your part and can be achieved by identifying and avoiding things that trigger headaches for you. Alternative therapies like meditation and yoga teach you to relax and develop a positive attitude towards life. Also, making small lifestyle changes like getting sufficient sleep, eating meals in time, exercising regularly and quitting smoking can go a long way in preventing nagging headaches.

AUTHOR: Renee Morales.

Press Release On Time Serenade

Bearing in mind the wide range of news
I need a job with better pay...
In mind for change of little blues
The horses whickered from where they lay.

You might announce and the wide range...
But a listenable rhyme contributes a smile
I love to eat an orange
That upon a fortnight could bring a pile

Time Your News Release For Maximum Publicity

"Cindy, where's that story? I need it yesterday!"

"Coming right up, boss. I'll have it to you soon," Cindy shouted back.

"Yesterday isn't soon enough!"

Cindy clicked on her screen. "You have mail." She looked at the messages. "Three news releases," she murmured. "I don't have time for this now." [delete] [delete] [delete]

Stop! Was that your news release Cindy just deleted? Too bad you sent it to her at the wrong time. You may have heard that "timing is everything" and that is even more true in a newsroom. But how do you know when is the best time to send a news release?

Media relations is an art more than a science, so there is no single rule. If there was, everyone would be a media star. Here are a few guidelines to help you zoom ahead of your competition for the media's attention:

Each type of media and each type of journalist is different. Here are just a few of the variables:

National or local media

TV, newspaper, radio or magazine

News reporter, features reporter or columnist

Consumer magazine or trade journal

Daily, weekly or monthly publication

Print or electronic

Each company or organization is different, as is its news. Here are just a few of the variables:

Local, national or international operations

Pre-scheduled news release, or last-minute reaction to today's news.

Product announcement, policy announcement, financial announcement

Bearing in mind the wide range of news you might announce and the wide range of media targets, 9:30 to 11:00 a.m. tends to be the best time of day to release news. You want to give the assignment editor time to send them out to cover your news. If you hope to get into the noon news, you don't want to go too late, because you run into TV deadlines. Early afternoon is a second-best time, but if you get much past 2:30, you will catch Cindy's [delete] button at most daily newspapers and television stations.

I have been asked about the best day of the week to send out a news release. There isn't one. I have seen plenty of debates on this. From personal experience, the only difference I ever noticed is when I could pick a slow news day. For instance, if in your city the daily newspaper can be reached on Sunday and not too much tends to happen that day in your subject area, you may find it easier to get into Monday's newspaper than if you try later in the week. But on average, there is not much difference.

Best time of month, year, etc? Again, there is no single best time. There is one golden rule. Do not send out a release when the world is wrapped up in some all-consuming event like the death of Princess Diana or the attack on the World Trade Center. Remember how much TV airtime and newspaper print space were devoted to those events? The media and its audiences had other things on their minds than your news. You can't control events, but you can control the timing of your release (most of the time).

How far in advance should you send out your release? Some book reviewers usually need several months. Others don't want to see your release until the book is on the store shelves. Many consumer magazines have a six-month editorial preview. Features editors often run several weeks ahead of time, but sometimes squeeze things in on short notice. News departments want only breaking news. Yesterday's news is ... well, yesterday's news. Your release is already forgotten.

Does all this sound confusing. It is. The bottom line in any marketing is to know your target market and give it what it wants. Same with the media. The guidelines above give a very abbreviated list of what you need to consider. If you are still unsure, a media coach might be a good investment. But be forewarned – find someone with enough experience and success to coach you in the right direction.

After a decade and a half as one of Canada's top consumer advocates, often conducting over 600 media interviews each year, David Leonhardt is sharing his knowledge with others. Pick up a copy of his special report "Get In The News!" at http://www.TheHappyGuy.com/PR.html.. Home page is http://www.TheHappyGuy.com

amabaie@phastnet.com.

More and Better Marketing Verse

Many sales problems can be solved
By sickly sweet smell of lost touch as they have...
Reality through the brain is the world involved
floating in the quiet ecstasy of cobalt wave.

Does Your Company Need More Marketing? Or Just Better Marketing?

Many sales problems can be solved by improved marketing. Selling harder is often not the solution. More . . . or just better . . . marketing may be what's needed. Marketing presents a special problem for any company that has not yet developed a professionally staffed marketing department. This article looks at the various marketing functions. It describes some successful approaches to determining when to add "more" marketing to your company.
In The Beginning
Most successful companies grow from a small enterprise based on the founder's idea or vision. In the early stages, the founder usually plays many roles. It's common to see a founder handling engineering and/or sales roles. As the company succeeds and grows, many of these tasks are delegated to others.
The one area most often key to the long term success of the company is the function of marketing. This article covers:

• The marketing functions
  
• The problems they can prevent or solve
  
• The contributions you can expect from marketing
  

Marketing: The Difference Between Buying And Selling

The definition of marketing has been attempted by many authors. It is commonly referred to as the process of relating the potential customers' needs and wants to the company, and then addressing the company's solutions to meet those needs and wants back to the marketplace.

We have described marketing as the process of focusing on Who the customer really is, and What the customer is actually buying from you . . . rather than what you're selling. What customers can buy from your firm . . . that they cannot buy from another . . . is the real reason they do business with you.

The marketing functions within your company that support this work can be divided into product marketing and marketing services to support demand creation and sales. Both functions are necessary to have an effective marketing effort. However, they are distinct. How much of each you need . . . and who should perform these duties . . . are important issues.

What Is Product Marketing?

The classic definition of product marketing includes the issues of product, price, promotion, and sales channel (place). The concept of product marketing holds true whether your company is a "product" or a "service" company. In the case of a service company, your "product" is the service provided.

To succeed, these product marketing issues (product, price, promotion, and place) must be handled so they are effective from the customer's point of view. In the beginning, these issues are usually a key part of the founder's vision. When the company succeeds, they often become too complex . . . and too important . . . to be handled part-time, by the chief executive.

Product marketing works over two different frameworks, each important, and fundamentally very different. These two areas are strategic and tactical.

Strategic Marketing

Strategic product marketing is the future component of the marketing problem. Strategic issues include:

• What business is your company in?
  
• What business should you be in?
  
• What products or services should be designed and offered?
  
• What technical capabilities need to be developed within the company or acquired from outside the company?
  

Other related strategic issues include:

• Marketing channel strategies (How do you reach your customers, then sell and deliver the goods?)
  
• Competitive positioning (What sets your company apart in the minds of your customers?)
  
• A complete understanding of, and ability to communicate to customers, What they can buy from your company that they cannot buy from any other company.
  

The strategic role requires a person who is a generalist, with a broad view of the market, the industry, and the company. This is the role most usually maintained by the founder/CEO. Portions of this strategic function may be provided by a senior marketing manager or by outside consultants.

Tactical Marketing

Tactical product marketing deals with issues that relate to the success of current products or services. These include:

• New products or services introductions
  
• Promotion of existing products
  
• Development of marketing programs and literature that are effective in reaching the customer
  
• Communicating the unique position that separates your company from your competitors
  
• Ensuring that the sales channels are being used effectively to reach customers
  

The development of tactical plans is a product marketing function. The execution of some of these tactical items may be accomplished by marketing services, as described next.

The tactical role requires a person with the desire and skills to "get it done." Both tactical and strategic roles require great communications skills, and the ability to deal successfully with a wide range of peo-ple, both inside and outside your company.

What Are Marketing Services?

Marketing Services executes tactical marketing programs. This may include sales contests, public relations, advertising, trade shows, dealer programs, direct mail campaigns, etc. This function manages or provides the creative, and produces items such as brochures, advertisements, press releases, trade shows, etc.

There is obviously an overlap between tactical marketing and marketing services in the area of defining and planning these programs. A senior, experienced, marketing services professional may be able to perform some of the functions of tactical marketing. Unfortunately, many times we place an excellent marketing services person in a position which really is tactical marketing . . . and the results are not satisfactory.

Marketing Services' function is to create and manage the tools, support materials, and collateral that tactical marketing has determined necessary to effectively implement the programs designed to achieve the strategy.

Skilled marketing services professionals have excellent input regarding these tools and materials to assure effective results. Asking them to perform the tactical product marketing function is quite another thing!

What Do Marketing Problems Look Like?

Sometimes it's easy to see a marketing problem. One example of this is a stalled product.

You've spent many months developing a new product and feel sure of its merits in the marketplace. You've introduced the product, but it seems to be going nowhere. What do you need to do to take advantage of your investment and ensure the success of the new product (and perhaps your company)?

• Should you lower the price?
  
• Should you raise the price?
  
• Do you need to spend money on advertising?
  
• Do you need to kick off a public relations campaign?
  
• Do you need new sales channels, or do you need a program to "kick start" your existing channels?
  

Obviously some of these issues are tactical product marketing. Some may involve marketing services, or the problem may be fundamentally strategic.

Possibly, you have an unneeded or unwanted product or service. Maybe you have not fully determined what the differences are your product or service provides which are valuable to potential customers.

Another example of a potential marketing challenge is an important new product introduction.

• How do you ensure that you get the best press coverage?
  
• Should you introduce the product at a trade show? Or with a press conference? Or with a press tour?
  
• What literature and sales tools will you need?
  
• Does this new product (or service) fit your existing sales channel?
  
• What is the competitive environment in which this product will be introduced?
  
• How should the product be priced and positioned to take maximum advantage of the competitive situation
  
• What do your prospective customers think of the new product?
  

Again, some of these problems are tactical and some are Marketing Services. Executing an effective new product launch by relegating the planning and execution to Marketing Services, or worse, to your advertising agency, is a mistake. Given that 90% of new product introductions fail to achieve their sales goals, perhaps it's time to consider that the execution may not be the problem. Perhaps there was never a viable plan.

Sometimes it's more difficult to recognize the problem as belonging to marketing. It can still clearly be rooted there however. An example of this is the conflict between sales and the factory. Often the conflict looks like this:

The salespeople are frustrated. They see opportunity they can't turn into business, and they blame the factory for not listening to them, and for being unresponsive.

The sales person says, "Why don't they hear what I am telling them?" The factory staff in this case is often frustrated with field sales. "Why can't they just sell what we have?", is a common question from the factory.

Are the salespeople just complaining, so you should disregard them? Are the factory people being too "hardheaded?" Or is it possible that a marketing job, clearly defining the position of the product and communication of this to sales, has not been done?

If sales does not know the positioning, you will be getting inconsistent results and information from them. Has this happened to you?

Some marketing problems are easier to identify. You have an idea for a wonderful new product. But,

• What features should it have?
  
• What is the importance to your customers of each feature?
  
• Is there something else even more important about which you are unaware?
  
• How do you tell the story of the product so that you can get your sales people excited, and your customers to buy?
  

To answer these questions, what do you do? Do you conduct a focus group? Or a user survey? By phone, or letter, or face-to-face interviews? Or just design it, release it, and hope you were right?

The bottomline is that all of the above scenarios describe marketing problems which can be solved with the right marketing talent. Whether that expertise is full-time or a part-time, on-staff or from outside services are trade-offs you make to get the best solution your budget can afford.

Final Thoughts

The key to marketing is to see your company as you are seen by your customers. If you're satisfied with your company's results and feel that the future of your company is secure, then you may have all the marketing you need.

If you feel better results are needed, that you should be selling more, or your profits should be higher, or you should be doing a better job of satisfying your customers . . . then you should seriously consider adding marketing talent to your team.

(c) 1991, 2002 Customer Manufacturing Group

Author, Mitchell Gooze, is the president and founder of Customer Manufacturing Group. For a free subscription to Customer Manufacturing Updates, e-mail us at info@customermfg.com, call (800) 947-0140 or visit the company website at www.customermanufacturing.com.

Forgotten Marketing Opus

Tactical marketing processes are once again -
It's probably pining for the fiords.
They are been hunting grandmas pain:
A terrible tastless seemless word.

Forget Conventional Marketing - Embrace the Web!

Tactical marketing processes are once again undergoing fundamental shifts from traditional to web-based processes. Many traditional marketing firms/agencies are still touting the tried and true to their clients; i.e. Tradeshow attendance, Print, Traditional PR, TV and Radio. However, these conventional marketing processes work best for broad market awareness and/or branding, especially for a Fortune 1K company with significant resources to spend on demographic analysis, test marketing and more test marketing. It's much more difficult for a smaller company (startup to $50M per annum) to leverage the economies of scale that are typically available for a larger company for the media buy and operational efficiencies.

It's obvious that lifestyle and business processes are shifting towards a much greater dependence on digital media - people are traveling less due to cost issues and the ever-increasing speed of business is underscoring the usage of the Internet for information and research. If you're a small to medium sized business the chances are that you've probably cut your marketing budget significantly - by eliminating or scaling back tradeshow attendance, trade magazine advertising and/or direct mail in favor of response driven marketing on the web that can be deployed faster and more cost-effectively than traditional marketing methods.

Capturing leads from a web site generated by opt-in e-mail, newsletter inserts, text link advertising and/or other forms of pay per click marketing is still the absolute best way to generate leads that are quantifiable as soon as they are generated. You have the ability to easily track where the lead came from and via what interactive advertising process; assuming this has been setup for you by your interactive ad agency or with the online publisher. And, there are typically no lead times like more traditional marketing processes - we've created and deployed campaigns (creative, media buy, testing, ROI analysis, etc.) for our clients in 3-5 working days in some cases.

There are some pitfalls to web-based lead generation and follow through that you need to be aware of as you deploy an interactive campaign. Here are five of the most important "gotchas" that you need to think about as you build an interactive lead generation program around your web site:

1) Don't make it difficult for people to contact your company - make sure your web site really communicates with your prospects - by "communicating" I mean by providing telephone contacts, e-mail address and/or a lead capture form that is short. Note: this form has to be supported by a published Privacy Policy ("we won't divulge your info to a third party under any circumstances") and it absolutely must be short; i.e. don't request any more than baseline information, name, phone, e-mail and address, augmented with a comment box.

2) Your marketing objectives have to be supported by your sales team - the sales team has to be incentivized to respond to inbound e-mails and requests for information via a contact form in a timely manner, within 24 hours or sooner. If you have a geographically dispersed sales team then make this clear on the web site by providing specific contact points for states, regions and countries.

3) Make sure you IT person/department attends your marketing planning meetings with your sales team - your web site will need some type of a lead capture setup that redistributes leads based on function and/or geographical responsibility. Your IT staff has to create a database solution that captures, stores and distributes leads - this does not need to be done in-house, products like Act (the market leader in contact management software) are now web-enabled, you can capture leads via a web server and share leads with others via a browser and very inexpensively.

4) We don't advocate popup advertising for most of our client's advertising campaigns. But, we have "crossed over to the other side" and we do (highly) recommend using popups on our clients' web sites to present opportunities that in turn capture leads. Studies have shown effective popup lead captures increase lead generation by 40-85% depending on the market segment. Popups can be set so they only launch on a frequency basis per session (visit to a web site) or a number of times for a specific visitor - they don't have to setup so they are intrusive and annoying.

5) Last but not least (drum roll) - make the customer's usability experience the most important aspect of your web site. Create a user interface ("experience") that is pleasant for your visitors; i.e. use standard universal (top of page and local page left) menus, utilize 2-3 sentence paragraphs with lots of white space, don't overload your pages with graphics that slow down load times and make sure your contact points (phone, e-mail) are readily available from every page.

So, to summarize; advertising is shifting from traditional to web-based or interactive if you will - so, to get on board this tsunami build a web site that communicates with your prospects/customers, provide contact points via telephone and e-mail via the site, involve your IT and Sales staff with the lead capture process so they are all stakeholders and utilize popups to accelerate your lead capturing.

Author, Philippa Gamse, CyberSpeaker, is an internationally recognized e-business strategist. Check out her free tipsheet "Beyond the Search Engines" for 17 ideas to promote your Website: http://www.CyberSpeaker.com/tipsheet.html. Philippa can be reached at (831) 465-0317 or mailto:pgamse@CyberSpeaker.com.

E-Mail Marketing Real Ode

Spam e-mail is no longer the mild
Of all aspirations like fish on the bank.
But how could I I'm just a child!
But hey, the fish out of water stank!

New Realities for E-Mail Marketing

Spam e-mail is no longer the mild irritant it once was - it's clogging corporate networks and ISP mail servers and has become a real productivity drain, forcing corporate and consumer e-mail users to spend 20-30 minutes a day dealing with this deluge of junk! According to recent figures, unsolicited bulk e-mail now makes up to 36% of all e-mail, up from under 8% just over a year ago. And, what's worse, more and more legitimate e-mail is not getting through to recipients due to Spam filtering taking place via ISPs and/or corporate networks.

Opt-in E-Mail Marketing 30K foot Picture

Opt-in e-mail marketing is clearly losing some of its effectiveness as a viable marketing tool much to the consternation of those of us who have been advocating its effectiveness for years! This is not to say opt-in e-mail isn't a viable way to market goods and services - but ROI (read response rates) is heading south quickly and needs to be considered when assessing the viability of this marketing process, as response rates have dropped on average from 10-20% to 3-10%.

However, opt-in e-mail is not disappearing off the marketing horizons - Forrester forecasts spending on e-mail marketing will grow from $1.3B (USD) in 2001 to $6.8B in 2006 and Jupiter Media Metrix is even more optimistic, forecasting growth rates from $1B in 2001 to $9.4B in 2006. But, there is a dark undercurrent to these numbers that is fueling the market growth and driving down response rates - some opt-in agencies, brokers and media representatives are "flogging" lists by overselling them - so caveat emptor.

Five Offsetting Marketing Strategies

1) Deploy opt-in e-mail campaigns very selectively (!) - buy opt-in e-mail lists from legitimate top-tier broker/list managers who are well established, are not "over-sending" messages to list subscribers and who are constantly refreshing their list quality by adding new subscribers. Critical questions to ask brokers include: how many messages ("frequency" in ad speak) are sent to each list recipient per month, how are new subscribers added and what is the percentage of new members added per month, are they using "third party" (someone else's list) lists to augment their own, are their lists "double opt in" (meaning, you sign up and then must reply to a signup confirmation to be added to a list) and last but not least, what is their privacy policy and how strictly do they adhere to published industry standards.

2) Utilize plain vanilla text link advertising - find web sites or portals that have traffic that is comprised of customers who are in your market segment. Then, add a text link (banner ad or graphic button if you will) to a page or pages and negotiate a media buy that is based upon a "cost per click" basis; i.e. paying only for traffic that clicks through to your web site.

3) Creating and deploying a "link strategy" campaign (i.e. getting a site listed via other web sites) is one of the best self-sustaining interactive marketing processes available to any company seeking to drive qualified traffic to a web site. This process is not based upon the more traditional "reciprocal links" procedure but incorporates some web-based competitive analysis. You start by analyzing the links that are pointing back to your top 3-5 competitors' web sites and then establish relationships with these sites and also submit your site to top and second tier directories to augment the number of links.

4) Newsletter insert advertising used to be considered rather mundane and not very effective. But, if you contrast the effectiveness of this process versus the new opt-in e-mail response rates the heretofore-lowly newsletter advertising has new and vastly improved luster! Also, in the past it was difficult to track when and if people clicked on a text link ad in a newsletter - but new technology enables virtually any publisher to provide you with this information, enabling you to track your ROI for the media buy. Finally, the real beauty of newsletter text advertising is that it is very targeted and people want to receive the information so you can be confident your ad will at least be viewed by some finite number of prospects.

5) Search Engine Ranking has come of age in the last 12-24 months - you can now easily create and deploy a traditional (title, description, keywords inserts in content, submissions and optimization) search engine ranking process that is augmented with a pay per click ("PPC") process. Deploying both ensures you derive long term (traditional rankings) and short term (pay per click) results, with the latter being driven by the amount of funds you have in your marketing budget.

Author, Lee Traupel, has 20 plus years of marketing experience - he is the founder of Intelective Communications, Inc. http://www.intelective.com a marketing services company which provides strategic and tactical marketing services exclusively to small to medium sized companies. Lee@intelective.com Reprinted with permission from Intelective Communications - this article may be reprinted freely, provided this attribution box remains intact. (c) by Intelective Communications, Inc.
Lee@intelective.com.

Competitive Traffic Serenade

Need more traffic? There's a lot you can
Searching they are... for a bit of thrill-age?
As when they ponder iced tea and a fan
With mouths that chew tasty sausage...

What Your Competition Knows About Traffic

Need more traffic? There's a lot you can learn from spying on your competition. Your competition has traffic sources that you can easily swipe by following these steps.

Step One: Who should you spy on? You probably can name six to thirty online competitors. If not, you need to go through Google and Yahoo with the key terms you target. Who comes up? Write down everyone who has a business similar to yours, even if they aren't identical.

Now you need to figure out who you should spy on first. Begin with the most successful websites. How do you find them? It's easy with a couple tools.

The Google toolbar (toolbar.google.com) is essential for spying. The Google toolbar features a little bar labeled "PageRank." Depending on each site, this bar may be gray, white, or (usually) a combination of green and white. The more green, the higher Google ranks that page. To get an exact PageRank, put your cursor over the PageRank graph and hold it there. Your competitors with the highest PageRank are the ones you want to look at very closely.

You also want to spy on the competitors with the most traffic. To figure out the relative traffic position of your competition (compared to all web sites), go to alexa.com and download their toolbar. The Alexa toolbar will display a number for each website ­ it?s traffic rank. The lower the number, the higher the traffic. (For example, Yahoo?s Alexa rank is 1, while Blockbuster?s is 2,220.)

Step two: Snoop through your competitor's log files to see which sites and search terms send them the most traffic. Is there a public stats tracker on your competitor's site? If so, check it out. If not, try typing in your competitor's URL with /stats.html and /stats/ on the end of it. Often times, web hosts put statistics here - without password protection. Still can't find your competitor's stats? Try Googling their URL and "statistics." It's a long shot, but sometimes statistics pages will turn up this way.

Step three: Look at who is linking to your competitor. The easiest way to do this is to run a backward link search in Google and Altavista. Simply type in link:http://www.yourcompetition.com (using your competitor's URL). You'll find most of the pages that link to your competitor this way. How do you know which links are the best? By using the Google toolbar. The pages linking to your competitor with the highest PageRank are the ones you should look to for links of your own.

To steal those links, email all the webmasters that are linking to your competitor without getting a link back in return. Figure out why they link to your competitor (good free content, subject fits site, etc), and give them a better reason to link to you. Chances are, most of these webmasters will give you a link as well.

Once you have these new sites linking to yours, positive changes in your Google ranking are likely. You may even overtake your competitor for your targeted search terms ­ especially if you get links from spying on multiple sites. All from a little reconnaissance work and some emailing!

Author, Kari Freckleton, aka Greedy Girl, shares her unconventional ideas for free at http://www.greedygirl.com.. Ready to smoke the competition? Email Kari at girl@greedygirl.com to join her Too Good To Publish marketing club.

Ticket Speeding Ode

Have you noticed more autos on the side
Where mad creation is your friend?
Iron horse is weird back you ride
When all turtles had come to living end!

The True Cost of a Speeding Ticket

Have you noticed more autos on the side of the road with an officer issuing the driver a speeding ticket? Have you seen more trucks surrounded by DOT transport police? I sure have. There are several reasons for this increased activity.

One is that after 9/11 many departments have increased patrols. The additional police presence is to assure the public that efforts are being taken to prevent terrorist attacks like the recent sniper killings. The other reason is that cities and states are faced with budget deficits in these tough economic times. Since traffic tickets are a politically correct form of taxation, many jurisdictions are increasing fines as a means of balancing the books.

A traffic officer will cost his department the average of $75,000 per year while he can be expected to issue between $150,000 to $200,000 in speeding ticket citations. There are few businesses that can equal that rate of return. Some towns like New Rome, Ohio and Waldo, Florida take in over 70% of their entire town budget through speeding tickets.

What does this mean to you, the safe driver who has not received a traffic citation in years? It means that you are now more likely than ever to see those dreaded blue lights flashing in your rear view. If that does happen you need to know that the true cost of a speeding ticket has changed drastically in the last few years.

Consider Mary, a successful sales representative who enjoys the perk of a company car. She travels extensively and has received four speeding tickets in the last three years. She considers herself a safe driver and in each instance was traveling with the flow of traffic on the interstate. She has 9 out of the 12 points on her driver’s license. Imagine her surprise when her company’s insurance carrier refused to allow Mary to drive a company car. The company obtained supplemental insurance but Mary had to pay the extra $1600.

Then there is Jeffrey, a CDL truck driver from Ohio who is an independent operator and owns his own truck. He drives 150,000 miles per year and has five tickets on his record, none a serious violation. He is unable to obtain insurance that he can afford. He is in the process of losing his truck to the finance company and does not know how he will support his family.

Families with teenagers may face an economic disaster if the teen driver receives a citation. One traffic ticket for rolling through a stop sign could cost as much as $3000 in increased premiums over the three years it remains on their record. The insurance industry considers young adults as teenagers until the age of 23.

The purpose of relating Mary and Jeffrey’s stories is not for you to feel sorry for them. It is to impress upon you the severe consequences that may result from a traffic ticket. It is important to obey all traffic laws, not just for your physical protection but also for the health of your pocketbook. I have found that many people are more concerned about their pocketbook than their personal safety.

What should you do if you receive a citation? Never just pay a speeding ticket. Check with the clerk of court to see if you are eligible for traffic school, even if it is an out-of-state citation. Many states now accept online traffic school. Check to see if this is available in your state at http://www.trafficschoolonline.com/?lcode=4013

If traffic school is not available then you or your attorney need to appear in court to contest the speeding ticket. Hiring an attorney may be your cheapest option when you consider the additional cost of you insurance. Check with your insurance agent to find out the consequences of the original charge being entered on your driving record. The American Bar Association says: "The best way for the majority of Americans to be able to assure themselves of legal assistance when they need it... is through a prepaid legal plan." For nationwide legal services contact http://www.prepaidlegal.com/info/carolynpatterson

Drive safe and stay out of the "No Zone." Remember if you got it a truck brought it.

The author is not an attorney and this is not legal advice.

If you need legal assistance consult an attorney.

Author, Wayne Patterson, owns two successful construction companies and has been featured in the national Constructor magazine. Visit http://www.speedingticketcentral.comand receive your copy of his ebook "The Bluelight Special".

Email Writing Poem

Related Themes: Essay, Essay Writing, Writing Job, Writing Short Story, Freelance Writing, Freelance Writing Job, Internet Job, Writing Job Description, Work At Home, Extra Income, Technical Writing Job, Poetry Contest, Short Story Contest, Songwriting, Songwriting Contest, Writing Lesson, Writing Software, Writing Skill, Writing Fiction, Writing Contest, Effective Writing

Sometimes email messages can get quite long,
And you can soar as the sun will rise:
It dressed up like crazy ping-pong
Player that gives us all a big surprise!

Writing Effective Emails

Sometimes email messages can get quite long, especially when you quote much of the material that has been sent in previous emails. Also, emails often get long if you have a lot to say or you need to give a comprehensive overview of a particular business situation.

Most people tend to find that the letters and emails they receive that are short are the ones they responded to most positively and had the best feelings about. Long letters do get a positive response — however, almost invariably, long communications are only given a positive rating if we have a very close and warm relationship with the person who has written to us. We rarely feel positive towards acquaintances and people we do not know, who send us long letters or emails. This has important implications for people using email in business. The vast majority of your emails at work are going to be sent to people you do not know or have only the slimmest of relationships with. Hence anything other than a short email is likely to lead towards a negative feeling in your reader. Play safe; keep it short!

This is all very well in theory, of course, but in practice, particularly at work, you need to include a lot of material. The answer is to treat the email as though it were a covering letter. Then attach the main text as a separate word processor document. All email programs can attach files to them, yet vast numbers of emails are sent without using this facility. The advantage of putting your main material in an attachment is that your recipient immediately views your message in a positive light because it is short and to the point. You should summarise the content of the attachment in a sentence or two — in that way your reader can gain all they need to know, without having to open the attached file. However, if they need more depth you have provided it for them.

One technique you can use for shortening your email is to write the main message in your word processing software, with all the detail you need. Then take a break, do something else and later on, read through your text. Now try to summarise it in a few sentences – that summary should be the main part of your email. Trying to summarise something you have just written is difficult as all the detail will still be in your mind. That’s why taking a break can help you as you leave your mind uncluttered and make summary writing much easier. Your summary email, together with the word processor document as an attachment is much more likely to please your recipient. This means there is considerable value in taking time to construct your email properly, rather than just dashing something off.

Another way in which you can be sure of keeping emails short is to avoid ‘quoting’ vast amounts of previous emails. One of the benefits of the ‘reply’ button on email programs is that you can quote the previous email. In this way the recipient can easily see what you are responding to. However, since many emails go back and forth between various people, the message can quickly become very long indeed — even though most of it is material from previous messages. The answer to solving this is to only quote what you need to send someone in order to make your reply understandable. By all means, press the ‘reply’ button to quote the original email, but then go through the quoted text and delete everything that is irrelevant to what you are going to write about. Doing so is seeing the message from your reader’s viewpoint — they don’t want to wade through the original text (their own!) just to see which point you are commenting on. It is much easier from their viewpoint if your reply is clear. In other words, only use selective quoting — not wholesale quoting of emails as is the most common practice.

An additional reason why some emails are so long is because the author is trying to cover various topics. They are almost ‘brain dumping’ everything they can think of that is important or relevant to the reader. Meanwhile, the poor recipient has to work their way through this mess to try and find out what is important. Good communication, particularly to people we don’t know, is focused communication. That means, in essence, that each email should be about one topic and one topic only. A hint to this is given in the email software itself where you have to type a ‘subject’ for your email.

If your emails are about more than one subject – stop! Each email should only be about one subject. Your recipient will react far more positively if you sent four separate short emails about four subjects than trying to cram all the material into one, inevitably longer message. Also, when these separate messages get replied to, the quoted material is shorter. Hence, think always, one message — one email.

Writting by Graham Jones, author of Effective Email an e-book priced at Ј9.99. For more details or to download a copy now go to http://www.effective-email.biz.

Web Search Serenade

For the uninitiated, searching for web pages
This is due to possibility of ignorant aim...
Has seen whirlwhind of mirrors and cages
And yet their habbits named same.

Top Things You Must Realize When Searching

For the uninitiated, searching for web pages can seem a slow, obscure process. Unless you have a high-speed Internet connection, web pages may seem to take days to load. And the searching itself – you have to admit it looks weird typing in bunches of plus signs, asterisks, parenthesis, and other funny symbols and operators to find what you want.

To help you in this process and show that you are not, I’ve compiled a top five list of things you must realize when searching the web for information. No pencils will fly, no drums will roll, but you just might learn something.

5. Search Engines Have to Make Money

Before you grumble over the growing number of advertisements and sponsored links that appear in search engine results page, remember that most search engines are free. You’re not paying anything for a very costly service. Thus, these sites have to earn income somehow to stay afloat (computing power and bandwidth isn’t cheap!) So, to put it bluntly… live with it.

(Yes, I know some types of advertising are much more obtrusive than others. Popup ads, dancing animations, and other larger advertisements may make it harder to use some search engines that support these types of ads. If you don’t like it, vote with your mouse clicks and move to another search engine).

4. Sites Go Down

Worse yet, you’ve entered in your perfect search query, looked at the results page, and the first site you see no longer exists!

The Internet changes all the time. Unfortunately, search engines and directories are not able to constantly query every site on the Internet to see if they are still online. Occasionally (in other words, probably frequently) you will find links to web sites that no longer exist. It is just a part of life. Especially with the dot-com bust, many web site owners can no longer afford to host free resources. If they could not convert their traffic to paying customers, they just took their sites down

So when you find a link that is dead, don’t pump your fist in anger … just go back to the results page and move along. Or, better yet, if you’re using a search engine that caches pages, such as Google, just look at the cached version of the now defunct pages and find the information contained therein. It’s like stepping through a time machine!

3. Your Web Browser Will Crash

On a related note, not only do web sites go down – but so may your web browser. Sometimes it will be due to visiting a multimedia-intensive web site. Sometimes it will seem to happen for no reason. But it will happen, and when it does, don’t go blaming yourself saying that you did something wrong.

Web browsers, like just about any other type of computer software program available on the market, are not infallible. They can and usually do contain bugs. These may predictably rear their ugly heads when visiting sites containing a lot of multimedia and advanced interactive elements, or they may appear completely at random.

If your web browser crashes, do what I do. Just restart it. Don’t say you did something wrong. Don’t think that you must be so bad with computers that you crashed the Internet. Just restart your browser, and if you have to restart your computer to do so, then do it as well. Most likely the crash is not your fault.

2. The Internet Can Be Slow

No matter how fast your on-ramp to the Internet may be, there will be times where it seems to take forever to load a web page. This is just the nature of the beast.

As the Internet is a loosely connected network, if certain connections go down, computers may not always be able to route information via other networks. Thus access speed will suffer and your web browser will start to crawl. If this seems to be happening often, step away from the computer, go outside and take a nice, long walk (unless it’s 30 degrees below). You can run your search another time when the speed is back to normal.

And the #1 thing you must realize when searching…

1. The Best Result Just May Be On Page 10

Most people only look through the first page of search engine or directory results, usually the top ten listings. Others may visit the second page, but relatively very few people venture to the higher numbered pages.

This is a shame – sometimes the best results to a search engine query are not in the first ten listings as they may only contain links to commercially driven sites or sites run by web owners who know how to manipulate listings. In some cases web sites containing perfectly good information may not be listed in the top 10, 20, 50, or even top 100 results.

Obviously searching through the many pages and pages of resulting sites will take extra time, especially if you do not have a high-speed connection to the Internet. But, this time spent may well be worth it if you find some gems in the rough! So if you have the time, speed, and patience, browse through the deeper results pages. You never know what you may find!

And that’s it – my top five list of things you must realize when searching. This covers slow access time, results not on page 1, browser bugs, web sites popping up and down and changing management, and the need for sites to make money, causing advertisements to become more obtrusive. Gosh, that just makes you want to go out and search right now, doesn’t it? .

Written by Andrew Malek, Internet Search Guru and author of Find Stuff On the Net, an e-book that can show even beginning computer users how to navigate the Internet without fear. Gain confidence using your web browser. Master search engines. And more! For further information and free snippets of the book, visit http://www.findstuffonthenet.com.

SEO Opus

These days with millions of websites out there,
Oh god, do they smell!
All of them are almost bare,
Considering all sides of bell...

Top 5 Qualities to Look for in a Search Engine Optimization Program for your Website

These days with millions of websites out there, you need a way to get noticed. When your company website is ranked highly in the major search engines, customers from all over the world can find your front door. suddenly, your virtual storefront becomes prime business property and you are making sales 24/7.

What can a web site owner do to make sure your site appears in the top 2 pages in any given search engine? You could buy some submission software, read some books and try it yourself. But what if you miss something and find your site’s not positioned, or worse, banned. The only other option is to hire a search engine specialist.

There are alot of self-proclaimed, "SEO specialists" and "search engine submission" companies, so you need to know what to look for in the positioning program they offer.

Here are my top five things to look for in a Search Engine position program:

1. SE Optimization (SEO) – The pages on your site are checked for the percentage of keywords you want to target, and the quality of the content on the page. Your SEO consultant should make recommendations regarding your site content to improve it in the eye of the Search Engines.

Key search engines like MSN and AOL Search still rely on metatags or html code that include keywords related to your site. A good SEO optimization of your metatags can mean the difference of a #40 ranking vs. a Top 20 ranking.

2. Pay per click (PPC) – PPC search engines like Overture (formerly Goto.com) and Findwhat can get you targeted, fast traffic while you are patiently watching the other search engines to rank your site. Recently, Overture’s top 3 keywords results show up at the top of searches on Yahoo! above the Yahoo! paid sites. For some keywords, paying for a top 3 position can be very expensive, but with careful research you can find some keywords available for 5 cents per click.

3. Regular monitoring - You should get an initial report in 4-6 weeks and then preferably a monthly report. Your SEO consultant should provide ideas on achieving better rankings for keywords that are not doing as well as you’d like to see. While a Top 10 ranking is the ideal, some Top 20 rankings are realistic.

4. Inclusion in select pay for inclusion SE indexes and directories – Inclusions in fee based can be useful if you want to target specific search engines or directories like Looksmart and Yahoo! Depending on your budget, you may want to purchase inclusion right away or hold off until the other Search Engines pick you up first. Your SEO consultant should provide the option to help you get into fee-based inclusions, and be able to explain the benefits and differences of each one.

5. Submission to key SE directories – To rank well on Google and in turn, Yahoo! web pages, you need to be listed in the Open Directory Project directory. Directories like ODP are human edited and depending on the category, it can take from 3 weeks to 2 months to get accepted.

Yahoo! is another key directory, and you MIGHT be able to get your site in for free still, if it’s non-commercial or a very localized business to a specific city or region. Your SEO consultant should submit your site to ODP and monitor it to make sure it’s accepted, and depending on the extent of your program, offer to submit your site to the Yahoo! free submit, if it’s appropriate.

Written by Jim Lisi, Website Consultant. From 1996 - 1999 Jim Lisi worked in the web-hosting services industry at Concentric Network, which was bought out by XO Communications. In 1999, Jim was offered the position of Director of Sales at TopTenRanking Inc, a top web promotion company in LA, California. Starting in 2000, Jim Lisi formed his own web promotion company, http://www.ezrankings.com, utilizing some of the best website promotion specialists in the industry today.

Use Affiliates for Selling Ode

How selling through Affiliates works...
You peer into brain and defile mind troll,
Then pull out the heart bottle's cork -
Crazy potato heads, where're the fish rolls?

Don't Overpay for Selling your Products. Use Affiliates

How selling through Affiliates works...

I bet that if you aren't yet into selling your products through Affiliates it's because you didn't look for the benefits. And I can also bet that when you are thinking about doing more sales, you are thinking about hiring a new Sales Manager or paying for some advertisements.

No secret that the newly hired Sales will spend about 6 months trying to understand your products and the market (but, well, he gets paid even if he makes no sales in the learning time) and even when he starts selling it will still take 6 months to get him up to speed. About the advertisements, they are a sure cost and a not so sure result.

If you have been there and have done that (or just thinking on doing it) what about hiring not one but 1000 sales people (and promote your products widely) only paying a commission from sales made? If that sounds good, then you are already thinking to sell your products through affiliates - the pay per performance model.

I'm not sure if you know how selling through Affiliates works. Keeping the explanation on the most basic level, it's about Affiliates (webmasters, companies or individuals) that pre-sale your products on their sites and get rewarded for every successful sale. They promote your products on their sites, and should get a commission from the sales they generate. Each one is a Salesman for your products.

Now, let's talk about the benefits:

• It's cost effective

You don't have to pay 1000 sales people, you don't even have to pay a single one. You don't have to pay for advertisements. You only pay a commission for successful sales. Think about affiliates as "external sales forces".

• It's the best way to penetrate new markets

No matter what products you have on sale, selling in Asia would be completely different from selling in USA. Selling in USA will be completely different from selling in Europe. How many sales people you need to target each market and each country? Well you only need affiliates. They know the niche markets and know how to promote your products there. It's like having a local sales force. Which you only pay on results!

• Have a niche product?

No problem, Affiliates are niche marketers. Actually the best practices in affiliate marketing point that you should follow a niche and get the best Search Engine position for it. That means the affiliate will get a good Search Engine position for your niche product - could help for your position in front of the competition.

• Increase your sales

If you are in the race of increasing sales, the affiliates do just that: they bring multiple sales from multiple sources. And actually, these sales will be made through your site or payment solution. With Affiliates, sales can only go up.

• Increase the awareness of your products

What would you say if your products will be listed, mentioned or at least linked from thousands of sites? Not so bad. It's called Affiliate Marketing.

• Create Added value to your products

Some of your affiliates might be experts in your field, and with a genuine interest in testing and evaluating your products. You don't have to pay for it, because they expect to be paid a commission from sales.

Still not convinced? Amazon is doing it (and thousands others) so they must be doing something right.

This article was written by Cristian Dorobantescu, Affiliate Network Coordinator at Avangate B.V. Avangate is a complete ecommerce provider for shareware sales incorporating an easy to use and secure online payment system plus additional software marketing services and sales tools:
http://www.avangate.com. Copyright © 2007.

Consumers Complain Poem

At some point in time you will be faced
When green pointy thingies they've had to fill...
Misery comes to them singing songs of youth misplaced,
Disgustingly drunk, don't die, save soul, leave will.

Make Your Complaint Heard & Get Results

At some point in time you will be faced with the need to register a complaint because of a poor product or poor service, or maybe even both !

Here are some tips to make sure that your complaint is NOT ignored.

Keep Your Cool

It’s difficult to do this when you are “mad as all get out” but it’s a key step to making sure you’re complaint gets heard. Act reasonably and politely.

Make the person on the other end of your complaint WANT to help you. Losing your temper can cause the other person to become “defensive” instead of cooperative and helpful.

Identify Yourself

Don’t start out with “what” you are - “I’m a lawyer”, “I’m a doctor”, “I’m a trash collector”. Start out with “who” you are - “My name is Jim”. You want them to see you as a person, not just another problem.

Give them your name and telephone number. This allows the other person to respond more effectively and follow-up with results. Remaining anonymous doesn’t establish the one-on-one relationship you need in order to have your problem resolved.

Be Precise

Have receipts and other records available to assist you in giving an accurate account of your complaint. Give them as many details as you can - the date you made the purchase, the store where you made the purchase orencountered the problem, the name of the salesperson you were working with, etc.

Keep a record of the date, time and name of any person you speak with about your complaint. If they are unable to resolve your complaint immediately, ask when you can reasonably expect a follow-up phone call.

Thank You

End your conversation by thanking them for their help. If you have the person’s name you are speaking with, address them by name, “thank you Angela”.

When the problem is resolved to your satisfaction, you may even want to write a simple thank you note. People who work in customer service appreciate this more than you might know.

Use these steps “to your credit” the next time you have a complaint, and you’ll have greater success and results.

Author: James H. Dimmitt. Get your FREE credit report online now and subscribe to our FREE weekly newsletter “TO YOUR CREDIT”. Visit http://www.yourfreecreditreportnow.com for more information.

Will I Have Opus

Want them to never speak to each other again?
Iron roaches that's been in the minds finally died -
Although it's fun, they must abstain
Crying out loud when wet horror been dried.

Five Reasons Why I don't Have a Will

One: I hate my children and want them to never speak to each other again after the battle over my estate.

Two: I hate my spouse and want him or her to suffer the agony of attempting to probate my estate without a will.

Three: I think foster care is great and I want my minor children placed there while a court decides which greedy relative will get custody.

Four: My family doesn't need the money so I want the government to take as much of my estate for taxes as possible.

Five: I have reliable information that I am never going to die.

Of course the above is written tongue in cheek. However the tragedy of the Twin Towers, the battle over freezing Ted Williams body, and now the sniper shootings in the D.C. area are bringing to more Americans a deeper realization of their own mortality and that of their loved ones. The American Bar Association estimates that 70% of Americans do not have a will. The median age of those killed in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center was 39 and over two thirds of those killed were men. This is the age group least likely to have a will and the court battles will last for many years after the physical scars are erased.

A case in point is the story of a young lady from Atlanta, Georgia. Her parents divorced when she was a baby and her mother died several years later. Her aunt took in the child and worked two jobs so the niece could graduate from college. The young lady was ambitious and bright. After college she excelled in her job and which allowed her to buy a house and a new car. Eventually the aunt became disabled and was taken in and cared for by her niece. One foggy morning a crash on an Atlanta freeway ended the young lady's life. Without a will her entire estate; home, car and bank account; was awarded by the court to two half-sisters that she had met only briefly at her father's funeral. The aunt was forced to enter a nursing home. Unfortunately what is fair is not always what is legal. My wife Carolyn is currently involved in a court battle over her mother's estate. A family member confiscated the will and has refused to provide any information in defiance of a court order. It has been over a year and the estate is still in limbo. Much of the emotional stress and most of the legal bills would have been avoided if an attorney had been in possession of a copy of her will.

Review the five reasons not to have a will and ask yourself which one applies to you. I will also be glad to add any new reasons to the list. One that is not acceptable is that it costs too much.

Nolo's Willmaker software is available online at a cost of approximately $40.00. Pre-Paid Legal Services http://www.prepaidlegal.com/info/carolynpatterson will prepare a will for you and your spouse without extra charge with a membership and offers reduced rates on trusts and other estate legal issues. An attorney that specializes in estates can be located through your state's Bar Association. Whatever route you chose, don't leave your final arrangements to the whim of a judge.

Author, Wayne Patterson owns two successful construction companies and has been featured in the national Constructor magazine: http://www.solidgoldhomebusiness.com.

Singing Signing Will Verse

Signing and witnessing is critical to the legal
Days that break with hands and bowl of surreal.
Reality is murderer, looks like an eagle,
And morning sun looks like drop of oatmeal.

Signing And Witnessing Your Will

Signing and witnessing is critical to the legal validity of your Will and requirements differ from province to province.

Witnesses

You and your two witnesses sign the document in each other's presence and also initial each page.

Neither your beneficiaries (someone who benefits from your Will) nor their spouses should be witnesses.

As one or both witnesses may be called upon to give evidence as to the execution of your Will, they should be residents of Canada. It is recommended that your witnesses be younger in age than you.

In addition, a document required for the "probate" of the Will (called an affidavit of execution) should be signed and sworn by one of the witnesses, shortly after the Will is signed.

A Regular Review

Once you have drafted your Will, don't allow it to become outdated. A Will drafted a few years ago reflects your thinking and lifestyle at that time. Consider what may have changed:

* Tax laws - your Will should reflect the latest tax saving strategies.
* Family circumstances - a birth, a death, or a move to a new province may indicate the need for a revision to your Will. Marriage necessitates a new Will.
* Your investments - your stocks have increased (or decreased) in value. You have purchased property, acquired a work of art or started a small business.
* Your wishes - you may now want to add a new beneficiary, change your Executor, or increase your support to organizations

If you do not have a Will, or if your Will has not been updated recently, perhaps it is time to meet with a lawyer and get the job done. Take the first step; call Ontario March of Dimes toll-free at 1-800-263-3463 x 383 for a free copy of 'My Personal Organizer' - a handy estate planning tool.

News Canada provides a wide selection of current, ready-to-use copyright free news stories and ideas for Television, Print, Radio, and the Web.

Affiliate Earnings Poem

Affiliate marketing is one of the most popular ways
That finally were able to get out of sack for
The Yellow as the sun and The Bright as the day:
They gave of the flower and said it was ours.

Affiliate Marketing - The Truth About Earnings

Affiliate marketing is one of the most popular ways of earning money on the Internet. It offers a lot of advantages over other methods of sales, including the fact that you don't actually have to stock any inventory to make sales. As an affiliate, you only need to advertise a product and direct the customer to the sales page for the product itself, which is usually run by the retailer or creator of that product. If the customer buys, you receive a portion of the sales price, even though you didn't actually engage in a transaction or hand over product. What could be easier than that?

While the concept may be easy, most people are lured into affiliate marketing because of promises of making lots of money, rather than making money easily. You don't have to search too long on the Internet to come across a page that tells you that you can earn thousands of dollars per day as an affiliate. While the mechanism is simple, it's actually the promise of a huge volume of cash that tends to attract people to this type of business. Many people are blinded by the big numbers, however, and fail to realize how unusual it is to make huge money as an affiliate right off the bat.

You can certainly earn money as an affiliate, but those who earn the six figure incomes often have something going for them that most people do not - a huge mailing list. Having a large group of customers at the ready when a new product comes along is a large part of making a lot of money in marketing. Those who have spent years developing a large mailing list with ten thousand, twenty thousand or one hundred thousand names can often make thousands of dollars just by sending out a single e-mail advertisement. Such success is possible, but it comes as the result of years of hard work. Advertisements along the lines of "I made $30,000 in a week advertising product X" may technically be true, but they often hide the unspoken "by sending e-mail to the 250,000 people on my list!"

Building a mailing list takes time. It isn't particularly hard, but it is a vital component of making money through affiliate marketing. With a large mailing list, you have a loyal, proven group of customers who are eager to buy from you. This is far better than randomly trying to get strangers to buy whatever it is you are promoting. Anyone who is interested in trying affiliate marketing needs to take the promises of huge, six figure incomes with a grain of salt and understand that such results are not typical. That doesn't mean you can't make money, it only means that you need to have realistic expectations of how much you can earn right away. As long as you understand that you can't get rich overnight, you will be OK.

Written by Charles Essmeier, owner of http://www.retro-marketing.com, a site devoted to affiliate marketing, and http://www.affiliatemarketingmall.com, a site that lists the Top Ten Affiliate Marketing Programs.

Five Filmmaking Producers' Skulls Serenade

You may believe a thorough knowledge of filmmaking:
Everyone think this is all very cool!
Be up in blue sky on delicate wings shaking,
Darkness eyes stave the banished carcass full...

Filmmaking - Five Good Producer Skills

You may believe a thorough knowledge of filmmaking and the entertainment industry is enough to make you a good movie producer. While it certainly helps to know the nuts and bolts of movie production, and even the details of financing and marketing a movie, that knowledge is not enough to create a good producer. It might make for a good studio executive, or other job out of the fray, but you need to develop specific skills, to help you make an independent film.

The first and most important skill you need is organization. If you were the kid who kept the minutes of the club meetings, edited the yearbook, or organized the prop-closet by era, you already have this skill. It is something that is hard to teach, but you can certainly learn it, to become more organized.

If you are the person who can’t find his keys and has no idea how much is in your checking account, you need help. Get organized. There is simply no substitute for it.

Buy a book about getting organized. I recommend “How to Get Organized When You Don’t Have The Time,” by Stephanie Culp. http://snurl.com/gqg5

Or take a Franklin - Covey course. Do whatever you have to do, but get organized.

Second, you need to be able to make decisions quickly. Despite the best planning, things change moment-to-moment during production. You will have to decide right now whether to set up the next shot despite the looming storm clouds, or to move on to another location, completely disrupting the schedule.

The best way to develop this skill is to completely bury your doubt. Know that you are in charge, any mistakes to be made are yours to make and you will suffer the consequences of bad decisions. If you act decisively, and accept blame when necessary, your cast and crew will accept your decisions unquestioningly.

Third, you must be a good negotiator. You will have to make deals for every single thing on the set - the equipment, the sets, the crew, the film stock, everything. Even if you’re borrowing your mom’s station wagon, you will have to convince her you will take good care of it, and return it washed, and with a full tank of gas. Everything will have to be negotiated.

When negotiating rates, know the maximum you can pay for any one line item on your budget and try to shave 20 or 30 percent off of it. If they negotiate up, you may still save 15 percent or so off what you expected to pay.

There is one thing you need to know when negotiating: You can always say no. If you can’t get the deal you want, just say no. Practice it. No. There is no need to be a jerk, just make it clear that you will take your business or offer elsewhere. If a crew member doesn’t want to accept your day rate, he doesn’t have to. You will find someone else (assuming you set your rate at a reasonable low-budget level).

Fourth, a producer also needs diplomacy. It’s surprising how often a film shoot devolves into a third-grade playground. In just a few short weeks, cliques form, rumors start and friendships are formed and ruined. Crew members and actors will, believe it or not, come tattle to you. Sometimes you will have to intercede in petty squabbles and personality conflicts. The trick is to smooth ruffled feathers while not making one combatant feel like you’ve taken another’s side. That will only set factions against you, and that’s the last thing you want on your set.

And fifth, of course, you will need energy. Lots and lots of energy. Caffeine helps to get you started after only a few hours sleep, but it is no substitute for real, healthy human energy. One of the things you must do during pre-production is get yourself in shape for the rigorous weeks of shooting. You’re in training, not for a sprint, but for a marathon.

Working on lower budgets, independent films often have a much tighter schedule, making for longer days and fewer days off. Take it seriously beforehand, and train like a champion. Exercise, eat healthy, and take vitamins and supplements to build your energy stores, so you can get through it.

After you have these five basic producer skills down, you will be ready to develop your knowledge of the filmmaking process and the entertainment industry, by producing a successful independent film.

Written by Angela Taylor, Hollywood producer, and a seven-time Telly Award winner. She teaches Independent Producing at http://hollywoodseminars.com.

Old Guitar Skeleton Opus

The guitar is one of the most familiar
One that lets you find yourself at bottom of lake...
Things are always just big liars
So just let 'em convert to cornflakes!

The Guitar: Its History and Construction

The guitar is one of the most familiar and common instruments the world over. It is descended from other stringed instruments that were common in Greece, in India, in Mexico and in Africa - in fact, throughout the known world. It's descended from such instruments as the sitar, said to be sacred to the Hindo goddess Saraswati, and the lute, which Greek mythology claims was invented by the god Apollo himself.

It's no wonder that the guitar has a history of association with the divine. The range and styles of music that can be played on the classic stringed instrument is incredible.

From the intricate fire and beauty of classical Spanish and flamenco guitar to the down-home country sounds of good finger-pickin', the guitar is a versatile and beautiful instrument.

Modern-day guitars have a hollow or solid body, a neck with frets, and a tuning mechanism that is called the machine head. They may be acoustic, or electric, and are one of the most popular instruments in the world.

Guitar bodies for acoustic guitars are made of wood, often spruce, red cedar or maple. The face of the guitar, or top, is one of the most important factors in its sound quality.

It is carefully engineered to a precise thickness, and braced by a variety of materials.

The most important piece of the guitar is the face, or top.

Its composition, shape and engineering will determine the final sound of the guitar. The back and sides also make a difference, but not so much, and often, luthiers will choose the wood for the sides and back with an eye to appearance rather than sound quality.

Electric guitars are solid, though they are rarely made of a single solid piece of wood. Instead, most are created of many layers of different kinds of wood laminated together.

This gives the guitar both strength and sound quality that wouldn't be possible in a single piece of wood. Often, the electric guitar is made of a 'good sounding' wood like ash or poplar, with a laminated top of a more attractive wood for appearance.

It's hard to believe that the same instrument is capable of creating such wide and varied styles of music. It's even harder to believe that only a few hundred years ago, the guitar was considered the instrument of peasants, lesser than the noble violin and organ. It was considered so much lesser that across the United States, older generations boycotted Catholic churches that used guitars to celebrate faith in folk Masses.

Nowhere else will you find the variety of guitars that you find in a typical Mexican mariachi band. A typical mariachi band will include at least three kinds of guitar - a classical guitar, a vihuela and a guitarron, a large guitar that is nearly the size of a cello.

Mastering the guitar, however, takes years of practice. The difference between a three-chord strummed song and the intricate finger picking and speed of a flamenco guitarist is unmistakable.

From divine beginnings, though its history as the music of peasants to its elevation again as the king of instruments, the guitar has been a beloved instrument of people the world over. If you choose to learn only one instrument, the guitar is the perfect choice.

Courtney Pancost is the owner of DAL Guitar which is a popular resource with extensive information about guitars. For lots of info, go to http://www.dalguitar.com.


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