Internet Business

Ever feel like there is too much information to deal with? Well, it stands to reason. Extrapolate a 2003 study from UC Berkeley and you get a total of 6,917,529,027,641,081,856 bytes of data produced annually in all forms on Earth. That’s almost 7 exabytes - or around a gigabyte for each person on earth every year!

When you look at it this way, it’s not whoever has the most data who wins in this information economy, but whoever can make sense out of their own domain of knowledge in time to move through windows of opportunity or avoid disruptive surprises.

If it were possible to get your arms around just the World Wide Web (800 terabytes or 80 times the size of all print collections in the US Library of Congress,) you might be able to find key indicators that can have powerful positive influence on your day-to-day operations. There are industry events, legal decisions, and regulatory changes dispersed through the web like needles in a gigantic moving haystack. The bookmarks of today are the page-not-founds of tomorrow.

If you spent all day on the web you might get what you need - for today. If you are planning on gathering intellegence about your competitors for Internet Marketing, you may be able to use a little help! Tomorrow morning, your answers may be obsolete, and you’re back to square one. But there is hope, thanks to strategic use of Internet agents.

I define web agents as saved and scheduled queries which compile, sort and send results to you without intervention. They must only be set up once and are consistent in the information they send. They can be your eyes and ears on the web and blogging community, and they work for free.

The most basic type of agent is an email alert. These are old-school in that their delivery depends on it making it to your in-box and through your SPAM filters. Email alerts are available from many sources, such as Reuters and CNN, or even eBay. They are incredibly easy to set up, but can be tricky to stop or change. I find them of limited use, but Google News Alerts does the best job of any I’ve tried.

If you know in advance the URL of information you want, you may want to use a “page monitor.” These “visit” a site on your behalf and send you an email when the contents change. This is very useful for watching your competitions’ websites or press releases. For less predictably-located information you can use an “inverted search engine” such as googlealerts.com or feedster.com. Still, these make their way to you in the mass of other email you read, making them less useful.

Email notification methods are rapidly being overtaken by RSS, which stands for either “Really Simple Syndication” or “Rich Site Summary.” It offers many advantages over email alerts such as privacy and subscription control. To find RSS feeds (sources) you can use a search engine like feedster.com, which has indexed over 150 million RSS items, or look for the orange RSS icons found on many web pages. Feedster.com, in particular, will send alerts of new posts by author, subject, and more, and it will even combine your feed search results into a new “feed-feed” to scan quickly.

Feeds are usually viewed using software called an aggregator. These come in all flavors, including plug-ins for Microsoft Outlook and Eudora, as well as “live bookmarks” in the Firefox browser. Microsoft announced last month that RSS support would be built into the next version of Windows and Macintosh users have enjoyed it for a while.

Subscribing is done via simple click or cut and paste. You can assign expirations to keep your screen clear of old news. In some ways, it’s like a Tivo for business intelligence.

My current favorite combined system is Klipfolio by Serence, a free tool for assembling feeds to meet your own needs. There is a page monitor, feed monitor, and automated Google query system for web or news searches. You can browse an incredible “Klip farm” with thousands of data sources of all types. I have around forty precision feeds, page monitors and news searches, and find it quite manageable for a morning scan, and have never been so well informed.

A warning: Once you start using RSS or Klipfolio you will not be able to live without them. The first time you are able to make a competitive move based on a feed summary sent to your cell phone, you’ll be hooked. You’ll want to install it on your entire staff’s computers, and design queries for each person’s roles. “How’d you know that?” is something I love to hear, especially from a potential customer. “I try stay up to date” is my polite answer. Of course it’s possible to react too quickly or too often, so sometimes you can use multiple feeds to triangulate on the truth and see what’s really going on.

Albert Einstein once said “If I have seen farther than others, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants.” I hope that some of these ideas will help you see a little farther ahead for your own business.

Scott Clark is an Internet Marketing Consultant and Search Engine Optimization expert since 1996. He specializes in critiques of existing sites and strategic marketing plans. Scott Clark can be reached at 888-668-4393 or online at http://www.sitecreations.com

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What do Donald Trump, Oprah Winfrey and Robin Williams have in common? These successful icons never present a watered down version of themselves to the world. So why then do most professionals play it safe and hide their creativity, quirkiness, spirit, spark and passion?

If you are presenting a “diluted” version of yourself to the world, you are literally suffocating your business. If your business doesn’t just die altogether, it will absolutely be stifled and less successful unless you explore and expose what thrills you, irks you, stimulates you, bores you and amuses you!

One of the quickest and easiest ways you can get booked solid with high paying clients is to be the quirky, authentic and confident soul who says it like it is and filters nothing!

Toss out the society-accepted version of you and stop worrying so much about what others will think. Just be the radiant person you are when you are relaxing with the people you love the most.

As soon as you let your authentic side shine, not only will you feel more confident and self-assured but your ideal clients will be immediately attracted to you. As a side benefit, you’ll also send away the not so right people faster so you can spend all your productive hours being exceptional!

TRY THIS EXERCISE ON FOR SIZE:

Who are you when you are at your best living in the moment?

1. _____________________________________________

2. _____________________________________________

3. _____________________________________________

What do you love to talk about some than anything else in the world?

1. _____________________________________________

2. _____________________________________________

3. _____________________________________________

How would your best friends, closest clients and colleagues who really know you describe you?

1. _____________________________________________

2. _____________________________________________

3. _____________________________________________

Are you truly and fully expressing this bold self that you just described above with everyone you come into contact with? As soon as you expose the bright and brilliant you, you’ll be a magnet for new high paying clients!

Stayed tuned for Key #4: Produce A Powerful Personal Brand That Sets You Apart

Copyright 2005 Michael Port & Associates LLC

Michael Port is the President of Michael Port & Associates LLC and is known as the guy to call when you’re tired of thinking small. To spend some more time with Michael and to think bigger about who you are and what you offer the world go to http://www.MichaelPort.com.

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There are so many internet marketing possibilities for promoting
an online business, or even a traditional business. The ability
to engage in internet marketing has truly opened the door for
women in business and has made working from home a lot easier
than it used to be.

Internet marketing can be much less expensive than traditional
marketing and it can reach a huge, precisely targeted audience.
Because there are no geographic barriers in internet marketing,
it is truly possible to do business worldwide and to sell
anything from anywhere, even from the comfort of your own home.

Following is a simple explanation of some of the most common
internet marketing options that you can use to promote your
business.

Article Distribution

Distributing professional articles with a resource box that
directs readers to your website is a very valuable and effective
method of internet marketing. The articles can be given away with
permission to reprint at-will under the terms that the article
content and resource box cannot be changed. Many website
operators will post these articles on their websites which will
direct visitors to your website as well as enhancing your
internet marketing link campaigns.

Directory Listings

Directory listings are a form of internet marketing that can be
very useful. Directories are a lot like search engines, only
listings in the directories are managed and ranked by people
rather than by automated, electronic means. Many directories
accept directory listings free of charge, so they can be an
inexpensive and effective form of internet marketing.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is a viable internet marketing technique that is
very similar to direct mail. Generally, it is best for internet
marketing messages sent via email to be sent to opt-in or
subscriber lists. However, third party lists can be purchased for
the purpose of email marketing.

If using third-party lists, check into how the email addresses
were collected and make sure that they are truly targeted lists
with content gathered from individual who opted to receive
information relevant to what you are sending.

Ezine Advertising

Ezine advertising, as an internet marketing option, is a lot like
advertising in a magazine; only the “magazine” is delivered to
subscribers electronically rather than through the mail.
Companies that distribute online newsletters often sale
advertising in their newsletters as well, and some may even trade
out for an advertisement in your newsletter.

Link Campaigns

Building links to your website from other websites that have
information relevant to your target market should be a part of
your internet marketing plan. Link popularity, the number of
links coming in to your website, and link relevancy, the
relevance of the website that is linking to you, can improve your
website ranking in the search engines as well as directing
targeted traffic to your site.

Pay-Per-Click Search Engine Marketing

Pay-per-click search engine marketing is one of the most
successful forms of internet marketing. Basically, pay-per-click
search engine advertising is a process whereby you bid on
specific keywords that will direct targeted traffic to your
website. You are listed in the search engines based upon the
amount you bid for the keyword. You are charged the bid price
each time a visitor clicks on the search engine listing, through
to your website. This is a good internet marketing option because
you only pay for successful click-throughs which result in
traffic to your website.

Portal Listings

Portals are similar to directories but are generally specific to
a topic or industry. Because visitors to portals have interest in
the topic, getting listed in a portal that is relevant to your
business can be a very effective internet marketing technique for
driving targeted, qualified traffic to your website.

Search Engine Marketing

Search engine marketing is a much preferred internet marketing option because the majority of visitors to just about any website come via the use of a search engine. Search engines use what is
called spiders or crawlers which are really just software
programs that index websites and determine their relevance, based
on the search engine’s rules, to the information a person using
an internet browser is looking for.

There are also meta search engines that draw from the results of
other search engines, and specialty search engines that are
geared to a particular topic or industry. To get listed in search
engines, a website needs to be optimized and submitted to the
search engines. Major search engines include Google, Yahoo!, MSN,
Alta Vista and others.

Copyright Christopher J. Enders. Are you at the end of your rope,
fed up and confused by all the scrambled internet marketing
advice you’re getting? Whether you are new to internet marketing,
or a website owner who wants to make more money from your
website, learn the proven strategies that will sky-rocket your
internet business at http://BiznessTips.com

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