See real-time weather on a Google map

Weather junkies, your site has come in. Weather Bonk gives you not only the local forecast, but also traffic webcams, monthly averages and live conditions overlaid on a Google map.

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How to Create a Strong Password

Need ideas on how to come up with your new password? Check out this article from Gwen Nicodemus!

How to Create a Strong Password

How To Unlock Your Cell Phone

Do you have your eye on a new cell phone, but it's with a different carrier? Have you ever wondered how cell phones get "unlocked"? PC Magazine demystifies the process and gives resources on how to unlock your phone!

PC Magazine Special Report: How To Unlock Your Phone

Top 10 Reasons Santa needs a Virtual Assistant

Top 10 Reasons Santa needs a Virtual Assistant!


10. He could use help making those lists!

9. His VA can take on the time-consuming task of checking it twice…

8. Who else is going to read through all the letters from children?

7. A VA will have that trip around the world planned in no time!

6. His VA could ship all those toys directly to the children’s homes…

5. Santa’s so busy, he needs a reminder to get Mrs. Claus a gift.

4. He could have his VA drop-ship reindeer food along the travel route.

3. The VA can easily manage all those Elves and their many projects!

2. A VA will organize his calendar of speaking engagements.

…And the #1 reason Santa needs a VA:

1. The world has gone electronic and Santa needs a website!


Happy Holidays!

~Cindy

I Could Have Hired a VA

One of my local colleagues and the President of the International Virtual Assistants Association, was interviewed for a great article about hiring a Virtual Assistant - check it out! I Could Have Hired a VA

Top 10 Ways to Make Your Website Sell 24/7

I know - I've been neglecting this blog way too long! My early New Year's resolution is to keep you informed and updated on business at least once a week, if not more often. Starting now!

Cindy


Top 10 Ways to Make Your Website Sell 24/7

I've spent more hours that I care to count attending networking functions, and I continue to be amazed at all the people I meet who don't have a website. Many entrepreneurs love what they do but hate marketing and selling themselves. A well-written website is one of the most effective tools at your disposal that will sell for you 24/7, provided you have written compelling copy for the site.

Here are ten ways to make your website your unpaid sales force:

1. Networking
A website permits you to pass out your business card to thousands of potential clients and lets them know how to reach you and what you sell. If, in your sales copy, you tell your story of why you're in your business, write a bio that accurately reflects your voice and style for your site, and upload your photo, your potential customers will begin to get to know you, without having to meet them one-on-one. Nothing is more amazing to me that to walk into a networking event and have total strangers come up and begin a conversation with me as though we were long-lost friends. They think we are. Why? Because they've visited my website or read my email newsletter or blog to the extent they have begun to get to know me, like me, and respect me.

2. Make Business Information Available
Help your customers find out more about you. What are your hours? What methods of payment do you accept? Where are you located? Being the "Internet snob" that I am, I go online first to check out a business before deciding to do business with them. Sometimes it's to check the menu, if it's a restaurant. Sometimes it's to see if they offer a discount coupon. Other times I just need to find their hours of operation or driving directions. If I can't find their website, I'm apt to find their competitor's site that contains precisely the info that I'm seeking.

3. Better Serve Your Customers
Make doing business with you as easy and effortless as possible. With an online presence, you could make forms available to pre-qualify clients for loans if you're a mortgage broker, enable your clients to upload their files for typesetting and printing if you're a professional printer, or allow your customer to see if the coat he wants is in stock if you're a clothing store. My sister is a "shoes horse" and desperately wanted a particular pair of shoes from a nationally-known department store in Houston. She checked their website to see if the shoes were in stock in her size at the store closest to her. She discovered they weren't, but was able to find another branch that did have them in stock and was able to swing by and pick them up. When your clients are over-committed and trying to squeeze another hour out of the day, how much more will they appreciate your online presence if you can help them save one of their most valuable assets -- their time?

4. Release Time-Sensitive Materials
You may have a service business that relies on appointments to make your money, like a hair salon or a chiropractor's office. You walk in on Monday morning and discover that only about half of your appointments are taken for the week. Do you decide to take part of the week off? You could, if you needed a vacation. Or, you could email the customer list you've built through your website and let them know that you're taking appointments at a special discounted rate this week only, or on certain days of this week, or that they'll get a free widget if they book an appointment by a certain date or time. How quickly do you think your customers would take advantage of this time-sensitive offer?

5. Be Open All Night, 365 Days of the Year

Internet surfers don't go online to buy--they go online to find free information. However, we live in an immediate gratification society. If you have a product for sale that fulfills a need to a particular problem, you can add a shopping cart with credit card purchasing ability to your online product catalog and enable someone to buy something from you at 2 AM, for example, when most of us are in bed. If your shopping cart permits immediate delivery of an electronic item, like an ebook or audio file, all the better, as your customer can have the information he has ordered within minutes after purchase. How many sales are you losing because your prospective customer has to fax or phone in an order or wait for your office to open to talk to you? Your e-commerce-enabled website can be your 24-hour automated salesperson.

6. Make Pictures and Sound Files Available
What if your widget is great, but people want to see it in action? Your website permits you to add sound, static images, and video to better explain who you are and what you sell, or to demonstrate use of your product or service. No brochure will do that. Additionally, audio and video testimonials from enthusiastic customers are now becoming more commonplace on websites. If you hate to sell, have a happy customer tell your website visitors how wonderful you are and how well you solved his problem. People believe enthusiastic testimonials from others who've successfully used your product or service.

7. Answer FAQ's (Frequently Asked Questions)
Every business has questions that customers ask again and again. Do you have the staff, or want to dedicate staff time, to answering these questions? Instead, post the questions and answers to your website and remove another barrier to doing business with you. Or, if you have the staff to do so, install a "live help" program on your website so that your site visitors can click and log-in to ask their questions right away while the question is fresh on their mind.

8. Offer Special Membership Access for Current Customers
If you're selling a service on your site, you may want your current paying clients to have access to certain information that is generally not available to the public. With your website, you can create a password-protected, clients-only section, or special membership section, for certain groups of clients. And, as website visitors are always curious and will try to get into private areas for additional information, you can use the "authorization required" page as another opportunity to tell them about the benefits of your product and service and how their lives will be better and richer for purchasing it. And, upon purchase, they will then become a member of this "special clients" club and have all the information and privileges associated with that membership. American Express is right -- membership has its privileges!

9. Open to National or International Markets
For most of my adult life, I've lived in parts of the country that have never recovered from the mid-1980's recession. Because I've had a virtual business with a website, I've never had to rely on the local economy to make a living. If you have a product or service that won't sell locally, or you have a brick and mortar operation and are trying to break into new markets, a website can help you open up a dialogue with nationwide or even international markets as easily as with the company across the street. Can you stand to make more money in your business?

10. Test-Market New Services and Products
Got an idea for another line of products for your business, or an additional service you'd like to add? Create a special page on your website and see how your current customers like the new offering. Ask them about price, appearance, and usability. They will let you know what they think faster and easier than any other market you may reach. Take their feedback, make necessary changes, and then roll it out to a larger market.

If you don't currently have a website for your business, get one! If your website only serves as a pretty brochure instead of bringing you qualified customers or sales, perhaps it's time to hire an expert to bring it to the next level. What difference would it make for you to get 95% of your clients online?I bet that would make your marketing efforts much more streamlined, and who doesn't want to make more profit in less time?

(c) 2006 Donna Gunter

Online Business Resource Queen (TM) and Business Coach Donna Gunter helps self-employed service professionals learn how to automate their businesses, leverage their expertise on the Internet, and get more clients online. To sign up for more FREE tips like these and claim your FREE gift, TurboCharge Your Online Marketing Toolkit, visit her site at http://www.GetMoreClientsOnline.com. Read about running an online biz at our blog, http://www.getmoreclientsonlineblog.com.

12 Free SEO Tools You Must Use

12 Free SEO Tools you Must Use
by Christos Varsamis

Effective SEO strategies require a lot of effort and time. Although in the search engines market exist very advanced tools that cost a lot, there are many free SEO tools which can help the novice and advanced SEO marketer to save valuable time.

Here is a list of free and proven for their effectiveness SEO online instruments:

1) Alexa Ranking . It displays multiple domains instead of one. Therefore, you can have instant traffic results from Alexa Rankings instead of typing and search each time separately.

2) XML Sitemaps . Sitemaps are extremely important for websites because they help search engines crawl and index them. This is a free xml sitemap generator.

3) Directory Manager . You can track your submissions to various web directories and you can also visit regularly to see new directories added to the list. You just tick the appropriate submission boxes when you submitted your website. It's very easy to use it.

4) 123 Promotion Keyword Research Tool. This is a very powerful tool. It displays, based on the Overture and Wordtracker keyword search tools, similar data, including search figures from the previous month. It also adds statistics for average searches per hour, day, week, projected figures for the next 12 months and then also a figure to see how searches may look in 3 years from now.

5) Keyword Density Checker . This keyword density tool is useful for helping webmasters/SEO's achieve their optimum keyword density for a set of key terms/keywords. This tool will analyze your chosen URL and return a table of keyword density values for one, two, or three word key terms.

6) McDar Pagerank and Backlink Checker . This is another Excellent Resource. When you enter the appropriate URL and keyword, it will display Pagerank and Back links pages for the Top 10 websites.

7) Robots.txt Generator You can create a free robots.txt file with this resource. So, you will be able to direct the search engines to follow the pages structure of your website and also direct the search engines not to follow and crawl specific web pages of your website you don't want to be crawled.All you have to do is filling the fields and when the robots.txt file is created you upload it to your root of your web server.

8) Nichebot . This website displays keyword data using Wordtracker and Google search results. You just enter the keyword and press the button.

9) Domain Stats . You Enter the domain and get: domain age, number of pages indexed, and number of backlinks. The statistics include Alexa Taffic Rank, Age of the domains, Yahoo WebRank, Dmoz listings, count of backlinks and number of pages indexed in Search Engines like Google, Yahoo, Msn etc. It will help you figure out why some of your competitors are ranking better than you.

10) Compare Search Engines . Shows top results from 3 search engines. This tool helps you get all kind of statistics of your competitor's domains.

11) Verify Result . This verification tool checks to see if your site is in the top three pages of a search engine result for a specific keyword. You enter your URL/Keyword and it displays top 30 for 11 Search Engines.

12) Related Keywords. This tool generates a list of possible keyword combinations based on lists of keywords that you provide.You enter a list of terms, one per line or separated by commas. This is very effective for Google Adwords and Overture.

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About This Author
Christos Varsamis is Internet & Affiliate Marketing Specialist. Get your Free Reports “Internet Marketing Myths Exposed” & “How to Generate Revenue from Your Sites” http://www.fastprofitbiz.com/Reports/Report.html