Effective SEO Comes Cheap
Copyright © Greg Chadwick
http://www.Home-Business-ABCs.com

Search engine optimization or SEO is the hottest way to drive targeted traffic to your website. Maximizing the benefits of a well optimized website will yield lots of earnings for the marketer. However, optimizing your site might cost you thousands of dollars if you are not skilled in this area.

But to tell you the truth, you can essentially get information on low cost SEO anywhere in the Internet. But only several really show you how to work out an affordable search engine optimization endeavor. And those few that really inform include this article.

1. Link exchanges : One cheap SEO method that can get you best results is through link exchanges or linking to and from other web sites. Depending on the websites that you would like to exchange links with, this tool could even cost you nothing at all. Contact the author or owner of the web site you want to have a link exchange with. You will be surprised with the eventual spiking up of your page ranking using this means of getting your website optimized.

2. Write or acquire key word rich articles : Writing truly informative and keyword-rich articles is one surefire way to make your Internet business more visible than ever. It's either you write your own articles or you get them from article directories that allow you to post these articles on your website as long as you keep the resource box or the author's byline in tact. Just don't stuff your articles with keywords that even idiots would get bore of reading them. The readability and freshness of your articles will still be the basis of whether your writers will keep on coming back to your website or not.

3. Catchy Domain Name : What better will make your target visitors remember your website but with a very easy-to-recall domain name. Something sweet and short will prove to be very invaluable. Registering your domain name is not for free. But creativity is.

4. Organize your site navigation : Providing easy steps in navigating your site is one way to make your visitors become at ease with your site. This, in turn, will improve the flow of traffic to your website.

Low cost SEO is always evolving like any other approach in information technology. There are many methods that can very well land you on the top ten rankings of Google or on any other search engines. Some may cost a lot but there are methods that can give you the same results at a low price or you can even do on your own such as those mentioned above.

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Maximum Exposure on Low Cost Internet Ad
Copyright © Greg Chadwick
http://www.Home-Business-ABCs.com

(Make the most of a low cost Internet advertising method)

Advertising had long since been a major determinant of a business' success. This would include the presentation of the product / service to the consumers. What really matters is how it is presented to the target market to be able to capture it.

Whatever the package, the ad media also plays a great role in determining the success of the product or service awareness.

What may be its advantages over other proven medium like the best-selling TV ads?

Advantages:

1. Low Cost : Eventhough the Internet ad might be viewed as "classy" or far-reaching, as compared to other medium, this is far cheaper than most. Internet Ad Packages are offered for as low as $29.99 for a one-month run-time period.

2. Capture market : Should your product / service aim to cater to the younger generation or the corporate-oriented ones, Internet ad would be best since they would always be "hooked-up" into the net surfing sites that might have a link to your very own. Result, a great number of "hits" on your site!

3. Hassle free : All you would ever really need is a PC (and some knowledge and bright ideas in forming your site) wherein you could open your site, search for the best Internet Ad package, and check / update the status of your ad. You may actually never have to leave your home to advertise!

4. Updated ads : Unlike the TV ads that need to be updated on a regular basis, Internet ads may run for quite some time without the need for change. If so, change in the site is very minimal and may be done easily at home.

Disadvantages:

1. Scope : Limited market may be captured if one would solely use the Internet Ad for advertising. Although most people now are into the use of technology, i.e. surfing the Internet, still, majority of the average consumers still relies on the old form of advertising as a means of gathering information about certain products / service.

2. Additional cost : If one would enlist the help of another professional or establishment to produce the site for their product or service, this would entail additional costs on the part of the entrepreneur.

Given the stated list of advantages and disadvantages about low-coast Internet Ad, an entrepreneur may now weigh in its applicability to his / her product or service.

The aim of Internet ad is to offer the widest range or "Maximum Exposure" of the brand at the least possible cost. Now, does that not sound good or what?

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Work at Home Business Tips
Copyright © Greg Chadwick
http://www.Home-Business-ABCs.com

If you have been considering starting a home business you may have heard many different opinions on how to run it. Some will tell you to run it like you would if you were working away from the home. Others may tell you to make your own hours and be flexible. What is the best way to work from home?

One of the primary reasons that people even consider working from home is to some how get a handle on their personal lives. They feel divided leaving every morning and dropping kids off at daycare and school; working all day and then picking, them up to only feed them and put them to bed. One of the advantages to having a home business is that you can set your hours differently that work with your lifestyle.

You want to be careful not to let the chores that need your attention run overtime so that you are doing your home business at night and the weekends. One way to manage this is to rent a post office box where all your deliveries for your business go instead of coming to your home and mixing in with your home mail and lessens the amount of time you are running to the door frequently to sign for packages for the business. Use your day planner and schedule in when you will be doing the daily chores and doing the business. You can utilize your break times to do the dishes and vacuum. You may consider hiring someone to come in and do the little chores for you such as a teenager looking to make a little extra money.

Try and setup your office in a space where it will only be used for business. Make sure you can close it off from the rest of the house so you don't get distracted. You shouldn't have a TV or personal phone in your office. Always get a dedicated phone number for your office. Otherwise you will become distracted and less productive if you are answering personal phone calls throughout the day. Try and establish a routine. Start your work day at a set time and finish at a set time. Break for lunch at a set time. If you are disciplined and stick to your schedule you will accomplish more.


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Network Marketing Versus Pyramid Schemes
Copyright © Greg Chadwick
http://www.Home-Business-ABCs.com

To truly know what network marketing really is you must know exactly was it isn't first. Actually there is nothing illegal or dishonest about network marketing and it is not a pyramid scheme. A pyramid is a program that has people invest large sums of money in the hope that others will too and the money will somehow get back to them and they will get rich. This is just a game played with money that has no real sales value. The products that are so-called being invested in are just the tools to hide the money game. A pyramid scheme is based on taking advantage of people and is very much illegal. For one person to actually make money in this scheme someone else has to lose it. The whole premise is built on a lie and in no way going to make one rich.

Network marketing on the other hand is very much legal and has great potential for those who work hard at it. There are real products or real value to be used to make money. The prices are not in the thousands either. Products are bought based on need and desire, not necessity. There are many people who make really good money in network marketing but it takes a lot of effort and work. One must build an entire organization from scratch based on the legitimate products offered. You will be encouraged to help others succeed so you too can win. It is a form of retailing where you either sell the products from your company to others or sponsor other people who will be using the products for their own use or selling them. In no way are you taking advantage of others in network marketing. Everyone can make money with enough effort. You will not make it rich over night no matter what anyone promises you. But you can live well with enough effort. You will need to follow a specific business dynamic to accomplish this.

Network marketing is a very serious business for highly determined people. The system has been proven and the design, creation, and expense that the corporate team has laid out are what you will follow like a road map to your own success. The big key in network marketing is that it is all about leverage. You work hard to get other people sponsored so you can make a percent off their work as well as your own. The most successful people who build a network do it in a very organized way. They dedicate themselves to it for a designated amount of hours per week to build it slowly over time. Then they sponsor others and train them on the company's product and how to sponsor others. By helping your people get their own sponsors you in essence duplicating yourself. This can lead to getting hundreds and even thousands of people into your network over time. You use your time to train others to be successful and earn income from their efforts.

With network marketing you do not need huge capital requirements and no area restrictions geographically. There are no required quotas you have to sell or purchase or specific educational background needed. All you need to have is drive and time. There is no high cost overhead and you can even qualify for many tax breaks for having the home-based business.

A good example of a very affordable business in the network marketing field is the Plug-In Profit Site. To sign up for the Plug-In Profit Site service, you are required to be a member of our 5 recommended affiliate programs, have your own domain name and a Host4Profit hosting account. If you are not already a member of these programs, you will need to pay $24.95 to join Empowerism and $24.95 to join Host4Profit. If you don't already have your own domain name registered, you will need to do this also. So, if you already have a domain, your total sign up cost is just $49.90.

To maintain your Plug-In Profit Site and affiliate memberships, you will pay $24.95 monthly to Host4Profit and $19.95 monthly to Empowerism. So your required monthly investment to maintain your website is $44.90. There are very few businesses in the world that you can run for less than $50/month but that's all it takes for you to maintain your website and affiliate memberships each month with the Plug-In Profit Site system.


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Keep Your Website Design Simple
Copyright © Greg Chadwick
http://www.Home-Business-ABCs.com

When designing a website many people aren't mindfull of their audience. When you work with a high speed internet connection and all of the latest web browsers and web authoring software it's easy to forget that many people are still using dialup connections to access the internet. Many are using old computers with older web browsers. Your website may look great in the latest version of Netscape or Internet Explorer and look absolutely dreadfull in a version 4.x or 5.x browser.

I like to test my websites with a variety of web browsers. I use 2 versions of the Opera web browser, 3 versions of Netscape (one is 4.8), Internet Explorer and Firefox. You'd be surpised at how different your site may look in these different browsers. You can make adjustments in your code to make your site look better in older web browsers. It's almost impossible to have a website that looks identical in all web browsers but you can make it look fairly close if you try.

The maximum width you should be using is 780 pixels. This will fit perfectly into any monitor using a resolution of 800 x 600. The average screen resolution setting these days is 800 x 600. If you make your website 1024 pixels wide many of your visitors will need to scroll from side to side to see the entire page and this can be very annoying.

Be mindfull of file sizes of your graphics files. Keep in mind that a 100K image is large for a dialup user so don't plaster 10 of them on the same page. Use multiple pages or thumbnails to keep page loading time acceptable. Many new web authors create one very long page for their website, rather than breaking it up into multiple pages that load quickly. If you do find your images are too large try a service like Gif Wizard which can compress gifs and jpgs by as much as 50% without any noticeable loss in quality.

Use external style sheets rather than including all your style tags in the head section of your document. Text takes time to load too. It's much faster if a person's web browser reads all the font styles from an external style sheet. The overall file size of a page should be no more than 40K, not including graphics. Less is better but I like to use 40K as an upper limit. Use your file manager to find out the size of your files.

Although I use a high speed internet connection I also have a dialup connection which I use to see how quickly (or slowly) a site will load for someone using dialup. If you don't have a dialup connection try viewing your website using a friend's computer.

It may be tempting to use "cute animated gifs" but I would avoid doing this at all costs. Surfers have been bombarded with flashing banners, popups, pop unders, animated and spinning text. Keep it simple and readable. Use colors that don't clash. If your site is mostly text use a light background color with dark text so that it's easy to read. Use a font size between 8pt and 10pt for regular text. Any smaller than 8pt and nobody will be able to read it.

If you use a Flash Movie intro, always provide a link to skip the intro. Flash is nice but older browsers can't handle it and the loading time can be lengthy for dialup connections.
These suggestions are extremely important if you are trying to sell a product or service. Today's surfers have a lot of web savvy, and know what they are looking for and don't have much time to do it. You have to grab their attention in the first few seconds or they hit their back button and click the next Google search result. I am a very impatient web surfer as I spend 8 hours a day online. If you don't get my attention right away I'm gone.

Make your point right away and if you are selling a product, make sure you include ordering instructions in a highly visible spot. Always put your most important information "above the fold". This refers to the portion of your website that one can see without scrolling down. I can attest to this. On one site I had a couple of special package deals which weren't selling much. I looked at the page using a resolution of 800 x 600 and I discovered my specials were just barely below the fold. Moving them up a bit higher on the page made a huge difference in sales.

Always think of what you are trying to sell, or promote. Will people get the message, or will they have to look for it? Will they be gone before your page has loaded? Will it look okay in their web browser? Will it be hard on the eyes? Will it be annoying? You must consider all of these things if you are trying to sell something or get a message across. If you do, you will achieve greater success.

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Internet Home Based Business Opportunities
Copyright © Greg Chadwick
http://www.Home-Business-ABCs.com

So you want to start an internet home based business and have your idea and web design accomplished. Now you need to add some content that will get people to visit your website. The best way to fill your site and make it appealing is simplicity. You don't need to have tons of graphics and bright colors plastered all over. The clean simple design is the best and attracts the most people. Too many things going on can be overwhelming to the viewer and drive them away, not get them to stay and come back. Stay away from playing annoying music of any kind on your site. This a sure fire way to drive away business. You also want to stay away from things that require time to load. This slows down the viewer's access to immediate information. Just because you can put it on a site does not mean you have to or should. You want to have value to your site.

What works is good content. This will make the viewer stick around and become more interested in what you have to offer. There are many ways to accomplish this and you'll have to decide what works for you. Pick a few tools of the trade to use and apply them to your site and monitor the response and traffic. If you notice that some are not producing remove them and try something else. You will have to be diligent but remember that simple is better. You don't want to implement every tool at once as it can make your visitors feel uncomfortable so use a few and ditch the rest. Here are just a few possibilities:

1. E-mail lists are great to allow customers to talk about your products and services. Yahoo groups offer this service free. Members can post comments and questions to you or each other and an e-mail is generated to all users. The group can be private, subject to approval, or public. You will want to see daily traffic and post frequently in the beginning to get things going. Eventually your customers will start talking to each other. These lists are a great tool and keep people active and coming back.

2. Polls for viewers to vote on a specific issue related to the site's content. You want to keep people interactive so they don't bored. Writing a poll from scratch can be tricky but they make great templates today that can be of great help. You would fill in the blanks and then copy and paste the code to your site.

3. Weblogs or blogs are like an online journal that is frequently updated. You will add some good links into it help up your business of course. It is also a form of communication that allows people to stay updated on what is going on with your business and what they can expect in the future. Today blogs have taken on a life of their own and are sweeping through cyber land.

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Are Your Affiliate Banners Being Seen?
Copyright © Greg Chadwick
http://www.Home-Business-ABCs.com

If you are an affiliate using banners on your website your banners may not be seen by many visitors. This is due to applications like Symantec's Norton Personal Firewall or Norton Internet Security. By default, these applications have Ad Blocking enabled. This means many of your visitors will not see your banners at all. In this age where people are tired of popups and banners, more and more are using ad blocking and popup blockers.

There are some things you can do about this. There are certain things that tip off ad blockers:

1. Never keep your banners in a sub directory called "banners". This is a dead giveaway. If the ad blocker detects the word "banner" anywhere in your banner url it will be blocked. This also means if you use a banner rotator make sure to call it something OTHER THAN "banners.php" or "banners.cgi".
   

   
   

2. Never include the size of the banner in your code. Ad Blockers look for width=468 height=60 (the standard banner size).
   

   
   

3. Many affiliate programs supply banners called "468x60.gif" or "productname-banner.gif". Again, both of these are tipoffs. It's much better to just rename the banners to something else.
   

   
   

4. The best way to beat ad blockers is to use a JavaScript banner rotator. This uses the same system as Google AdWords, where if you view the source code of the page only the javascript code is visible...all an ad blocker can "see" is some javascript. It won't see any of your banner code. You can grab a free html rotator from FocalMedia.Net that works perfectly.
   

In order to use the above methods you need to host the banners on your own website. So when you are grabbing banner code from an affiliate program, save the banners to your hard drive, rename them, and upload them to your website (remember, NOT to a directory named banners :-). Then modify your banner code so it references the images on your website. Remove the width and height tags in your code. And make sure the alt tags don't have the word banner in them.

If you try all of the techniques above your banners will have a much better chance of being seen. They may not work 100% of the time but they will certainly increase the odds.

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How Much Should Home Business Owners Pay Themselves?
Copyright © Greg Chadwick
http://www.Home-Business-ABCs.com

Every home business owner has to struggle with what they are going to pay themselves. One must note that all profits cannot be used as income and some will need to be recycled right back into your business. There are two things to think about when deciding what to pay yourself and what gets thrown back to increase your business.

• Make sure you pay yourself enough to get by and live comfortably. There is going to be that start up time that you will be in the black zone. Minimize your overhead to lower the amount of capital it will take to make your business awesome. By decreasing your overhead you will be able to decrease your net losses and increase your gains. This will allow you more flexibility financially while your business takes off.
  

  
  

• Always pay yourself what you are worth and never a penny less. Your business plan should be so structured that even when you are in the black zone you survive. Make sure you get enough capital that you can pay yourself well from your profits before starting. This will allow you to always see how you are improving and increasing business when you are drawing in more money. It will allow you to keep operation costs the same but give yourself a raise.
  

Figuring out your net worth is the tough part. You figure out how much you need to survive each month and be realistic. You will need to do some serious planning and use some basic math skills. You will need to know how much you need including overhead, capital, and your monthly expenses during your businesses development. Once you have reached the break even or beyond threshold now you need to consider tax requirements and make sure that you hold out profit to pay in each year. You want to keep what you need to live well and use the rest to improve your business and pay taxes. You will also want to consider creating a savings for your business that just sits and makes interest. You can always take money out when needed to pay for business expenses and taxes when needed.

Once you business is well established and you have a good money flow coming in you will able to give your self more money than during your start up time. If you plan on expanding and/or hiring others you may want to consider leaving your salary alone and saving that money to invest in quality help. With an excellent business plan you can draw out all the dynamics and possibilities that could arise so you are prepared and know what to expect. Make sure you are always grounded and know what things can truly cost so you don’t go into shock when you haven’t saved enough. You want to realistic about what you are doing.

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Overwhelmed By All The Home Business Opportunities?
Copyright © Greg Chadwick
http://www.Home-Business-ABCs.com

There seems to be thousands of home business opportunities
out there these days. How do you know which ones are legit
and which ones are scams? If you're like me you signup for
far too many and then do nothing with them or you run an ad
on your favorite traffic exchange and then aimlessly surf
to build up credits. I've been surfing Traffic Swarm for the
last month and until now, hadn't seen a legitimate home business
opportunity that didn't make any ridiclous claims. You can
always count on the old adage, "If it seems to good to be true
it's probably not worth your time". The claims of "going to bed
poor" and "waking up rich" should tip you off right away.

Let's face it, you didn't really believe you could get rich
in a matter of days did you? Success takes hard work,
especially these days when there are literally thousands
upon thousands of other people just like you and I wanting
to work from home on the internet. What you need to succeed
is a plan, a well thought out plan. I came across an ad on
Traffic Swarm several times but never really bothered to click
on it, or if I did, I only read the first few lines and
throught to myself, "just like all the others". I finally
got tired of seeing this ad come up all the time so I took
a couple of minutes and read what Stone Evans, the
"home biz guy" had to say.

Here was a guy who promised to build me a money making
website within 24 hours that was all ready to take orders
and pull in massive profits. I thought "What do I have to
lose?" The initial cash outlay to get started was very low.
Only one of the programs, Empowerism, cost money to join
and it was only $24.95. The only other expense was registering
a domain name for $9.95 and signing up for Host 4 Profit web
hosting for $24.95. After joining the suggested programs and
submitting my request for my free website I waited. Sure
enough, about 23 hours later I got an email from Stone saying
my site was all setup and ready to go. Unbelievable! And he set
it up at no cost to me.

Not only did I get a free website, it came with an online 30 day
instruction course explaining the steps to take to promote my site
and begin to make money from it. I was up very late that first nite,
completing the first 4 days and then completing more the
next day. It's simple to follow, the instructions are very clear and
detailed.

Finally, a home business program that will teach me how to make
money from home without spending an arm and a leg. Yes, you will
have to work at it, but you'll have 30 days of instruction to guide
you along the road to success. It's really an excellent opportunity
when you consider that the website itself is free and the 30 day
course is also free. Check it out and give it a try. At least read
about it and bookmark it, so you can go back later. It's a very
worthwhile home business opportunity. Click Here To Get Your
FREE Website Setup and 30 Day Home Business Course.

Before you go, today I am offering a FREE download of
"Dotcomology", an ebook written by Stone Evans.
Simply Right-Click Here And "Save Target As..." To Download

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