It basically will nickel and dime you to death.

You really can’t get ahead in your business if you have to spend a ton on advertising, especially when you are first starting out.

Wouldn’t it be nice if someone could show you basically step by step how you can build your home business without spending a ton of money while doing it?

Well, there is some good news.

I recently came across something that I think will really help your business as it has mine.

It is a videos series by a guy named Mike Dillard called “Building On A Budget”.

In these videos Mike shows you how to build any home business for $500 or less.

I took these free videos and purchased his ridiculously low priced book, and within two weeks of applying the techniques he teaches and am now getting as many as 10 new qualified prospects per day. 

The best part is that I did not spend much money while doing it.

Now I have the tools to grow my business without getting nickel and dimed to death.

You can get free access to these videos by going here…

http://E2H2.buildingonabudget.com
(copy and paste the link into your browser)

Enjoy your new found wealth,

Emerson

According to Tripwire Magazine, “If your web site front page or landing pages do not convert (visitors take action before leaving the page) you may have lost the money you spent on advertising and the opportunity to get a new customer on board.”  

Here are 10 tips for creating high conversion website front pages:

• Communicate directly to a target market
• Have a simple and powerful statement
• Clearly identify a problem and the benefits of resolving it
• Communicate the solution to the problem effectively
• Be believable
• Do not over sale
• Use video bits
• Use large type
• Select well picked words and images
• Locate action buttons to initiate action

Check out 20 Excellent Web Site Front Pages Designed for High Conversion  for examples of high conversion website front pages.  Here is an example of a political website that uses all of the techniques above and has a high conversion rate.

Salt Lake County Clerk

Image is everything...

Whatever industry, your personal brand is based in knowing how to use social media to increase awareness is important. Social media is an amazing tool that can be used to gain exposure and a loyal following in a few simple steps. Consider these steps below as you use social media to build your brand.

1. Be Friendly & Approachable

Far too often people share overly candid remarks and opinions on the web. Perhaps is the anonymity of cyberspace that feeds their bullying tendencies, or maybe they feel untouchable behind their laptop. Whatever the reason – don’t let yourself become one of those people. Building your personal brand means that you’ll need to show off your amiable side. You’ll attract more flies with honey than vinegar and the great thing about flies is they generate quite a buzz when they’ve found something they like. Put a smile on and get to know that people on the social media platforms that want to support brand.

2. Remember to Share

Here’s a prime opportunity for you to shine. Share what you know or what you do best with others. If you’re an expert in your field, or if you want to become one, using social media to communicate credible and helpful information is one of the best ways to boost your personal brand. Social media is exactly what its name implies – social. People are connecting with others to learn, exchange and network. Reach out to your Twitter followers, Facebook fans and blog readers and supply them with honest to goodness valuable content and information. The more relevant your shared material is the greater the chances are of it being shared with others and the more likely your supporters will stick around for the long haul.

3. Promote Authenticity

Politicians call it ’shaking hands and kissing babies’ but in social media transparency is everything. Be authentic in your conduct and approach. If you’re using social media to rope 10,000 groupies in a single swoop versus the slow build of meaningful interactions with individuals, chances are you’ll be left high and dry in the end. Social media takes time and requires patience, but the end result is well worth the wait. Just remember that people are not sheep. They will not follow for the sake of following. Take a genuine approach to your personal brand and position it as such among your audience. Say what you mean and mean what you say and don’t forget to do it with originality.

4. Don’t Be Everything to Everyone

If only it were so simple to win the hearts and minds of everyone with your personal brand. Sadly, this will never happen. Find your niche and stick with it. Once you’ve figured out who you are and what you stand for you can find your social media audience. For instance, if your personal brand appeals solely to women with a finger on the pulse of technology, you might want connect and network with members of Kirtsy, a social media site for women. Your personal brand should connect with the right people through the right social media channels and not to the world. Streamline your branding efforts to yield better results.

5. Grab Endorsements

Use social media to collect feedback about your personal brand from clients, customers and colleagues. Being able to share reviews and praise demonstrates the integrity and capability of your personal brand. Gathering recommendations and posting them on social media sites like Yelp, Merchants Circle and YellowPages.com will work to build credibility and respect for your personal brand much more quickly than a brand without any.

6. Associate Yourself

Use what you’ve got. If you’ve guest blogged for a well-known blog or if you’re connected to industry experts then leverage those relationships with your personal brand. You’re not bragging, you’re showing networking achievements and accomplishments that can enhance your personal brand. People like to see who you know and what your credentials are. Mentioning some of the more well-known ones can give your personal brand a leg up.

You’ve heard the saying, “You’re not getting older—you’re getting better.” Well maybe so, but employers don’t necessarily think that way when scanning resumes. Unfortunately, many of them shy away from hiring seasoned professionals because these individuals are perceived as inflexible, over-trained, or worst of all, too expensive.

Your resume can overcome this obstacle in subtle ways that establish your capabilities. For instance, to overcome age discrimination, consider limiting the listing of your experience to 15 years for a managerial job, 10 years for a technical job, and five years for a high-tech job. Leave other experiences off your resume or list them without dates.

Your goal is to only use information that is directly relevant to the job you are seeking. This is honest as well as fair to your prospective employer. After all, if you’re a 50-year-old applying for a job in accounting, why would your prospective employer care that you worked as a counselor for five-year-olds at Camp Gichi-Goomi when you were 16 years old? Stick to the facts that matter to give yourself the best chance at being noticed as a stand-out candidate despite your age.

To learn more about how you can make your age and experience a competitive advantage, click the banner below.  You will receive a discount for linking from this post. I did!

Since I do a lot of writing, I am often asked if grammar rules still apply.  My first response is “yes…of course they do.”  But, rules change and the rules of grammar are not impervious to these changes. In fact, all language constantly changes.  Some rules that were being enforced ten years ago are no longer applicable today. There are also words now that have been added to dictionaries that are not used before the same way that there are archaic words that have been deleted from the dictionary because they are not being used anymore.

For example, with the birth of the Internet, words and language have gone into a major change. This is because more and more people are already using the language and most of these people do not know anything about the rules in grammar. They write as they talk and as most editors will tell you, the way we talk is a lot different from the formal rules of writing. In blogs right now, people use language without rules. Some blogs feature grammar that is so atrocious, language professors and grammar experts are lamenting on the degradation of the language. And, the worst thing about this situation is the fact that people don’t care. They do not care how it is written as long as the actual content of the article is interesting.

Some critics believe that blogging, text messaging, and instant messaging is ushering in a different kind of language – one that does not follow any rules.

However, others feel that these blogs will further the field of language because people have started reading again. Here is the argument. Television has allowed people to stop reading. People get their news on TV as opposed to reading it from the newspaper. However, with the Internet, people are starting to read their stuff from the Internet because it is faster.  And, with people reading more now, some people feel that language will benefit greatly.

But this can only happen if what they are reading is the correct form. The problem is that although people are becoming readers through the Internet, what they are reading is not necessarily accurate  content or follow any grammar rules. Over time, this can lead to the birth of a new language and new grammar rules. Spellings are even given different forms. Because of how fast information are being transferred now, spellings of words are written in contracted forms with vowels missing. Words are often spelled according to the way it is pronounced.

Where are we headed?

All is not lost. Attempts are now being made to teach bloggers  the rules of grammar as they will be the next proponents of the language. They are the ones being widely read right now and it is vital that they set a good example for the young on the rules of language. This is why people are starting to also post grammar rules on the internet to cater to this market. These grammar sites are being administered by people who are also experts in their own rights in the language. Some dictionary sites are also adding pages on grammar and the rules of the language. This helps people who want to check on their grammar instantly and to also look at some of the rules that they should be following.

What do you think?  Is a new language being created?  Does it really matter or is this much to do about nothing?

Formerly, going through the Internet and finding content relevant to one’s search was simple; only a few websites were up and running online. These days, however, the Internet is a deluge of content in all shapes and sizes, with people of various age groups, backgrounds, and geographic locations, generating their own online publications and content. Therefore, customers rely greatly on various tools made available to them to simplify their lives.

Search engines are online interfaces used to search for relevant content online based on the keywords entered in the field by the Internet users. Therefore, businesses online must find a way to be prioritized among hundreds and thousands of businesses offering similar or congruent content.

One of these methods designed towards maximizing the potential of the Internet for businesses that rely greatly on generating Internet traffic towards their online website is SEO, or Search Engine Optimization.

Search Engine Optimization is a method used to give a particular website and its content better ranking in a search engine’s query response listings. It usually tries to give websites an edge over others, particularly in those organic or crawler search engines. Organic searches are those listings yielded without payment; crawler search engines simulate the act of crawling through the web and following links through to their respective web pages.

However, like all good things, SEO has come under attack of misuse by people who wanted to take advantage of it. This is the reason why today, SEO is categorized into “white hat SEO”, or SEO legitimately used by consulting agencies to assist clients online, and “black hat SEO”, used to manipulate search engine listings with unethical methods.

While “black hat SEO” makes use of unethical methods to manipulate listings and to deceive others, “white hat SEO” focuses on honest methods of improving a website and its contents in order to promote it in the Internet much better.

Many websites try generating traffic to their website by various methods—pay-per-click advertisings, prepaid advertisements, and organic search listings. SEO is much more interested in increasing profitability through the last method, organic search listings.

Pay-per-click advertising, which entails the advertiser to pay Google or similar agencies only for the number of clicks an online advertisement banner generates and not for ad placement, may ride up costs. This happens when the website tops listings and generates traffic from a huge client base, of which not all of them are interested in purchasing the product or service that will provide the company profit.

Organic search listings, however, display listings of websites regardless of whether or not they are paid. What SEO primarily does in order to maximize the power of organic search listings is concentrating relevant keywords.

“White hat SEO”, because it focuses on improving websites collectively in order to generate genuine rankings in listings, concentrates on better content for the website. Accurate portrayal of a business’s identity is at the core of ethical SEO.

The first way to do it is by making a clean code, which is a significantly simpler code aimed more in delivering content to the users of the website. A cleaner, simpler code, helps crawler search engines decipher the relationships and links between pages and keywords.

The second means is creating beefed up content written in order to provide information and maximum satisfaction to customers. Search engines take into account the ‘satisfaction’ of customers on the basis of relevance of content and even the frequency of visits, usually related to the quality of the content offered by the website. By concentrating on providing quality information and content to customers, the website gains grounding among online visitors.

At the end of the day, by helping the consumers understand and interpret better the content of the website even at the point of indices in search engines, one can best maximize SEO and the rankings of the page in listings. Relevance is key in trying to make sure traffic is directed towards the business’s website; only by providing relevant content can longevity be achieved amidst various trends that claim to provide the business all it needs.

Search engines are internet venues where billions of people congregate to search for information. The most prominent search engine giants are Google, Yahoo, and Bing. The kind of traffic these companies receive per hour is phenomenal.

So naturally, companies would gravitate towards placing their links and sites in an attempt to garner more visits to their web sites.

In order to maximize ranking and placement, companies have used tools such as search engine optimization or SEO. Search engine optimization is the method or process of improving a web site’s ranking in a search engine listing.

Legitimate search engine optimization practices focus on the improvement of a page’s ranking in the search engine list by improving site content, usability and using legitimate methods of promotion through web phenomena such as viral marketing.

Search engines all use complex algorithms in keeping their relevancy in the web and to keep illegal and abusive search engine optimization methods from prospering. However, “black hat” SEO users will always be around so it is expected that search engine giants such as Google, Yahoo, and Bing will continue to make more complex algorithms to filter the garbage out.

Search engines display different kinds of listings on a result page. The more common ones are pay-per-click (PPC), adverts, paid inclusion, and organic listings. Of all these listings, SEO concerns itself foremost with organic listings for a variety of keywords. This can increase the quality and quantity or visitors to a desired web site.

Organic searches are searches conducted by web users in a search engine that is free from solicitations. A study from Jupiter Media stated that 5 out of 6 commercial online purchases came from organic searches versus paid online ads.

This has made SEO much more in demand in creating revenue for companies as SEO is not a paid ad but a method of intrinsically improving content.

Here are a few tips on improving content for a much more improved result in organic searches:

1. Expertise. Follow your strengths. Sites you set up must be on subjects you consider yourself an expert on. People can smell an amateur a mile away.
2. Plan the site. A good layout for the site can improve usability. This in turn will not unnecessarily aggravate the browser.
3. Research. Check out the competition and see what they have set up. See what works and what does not. If possible try to communicate with users in forums and get feedback on what should or can be improved further.
4. Decide on important keywords. Decide on the most important keywords to use for your sight. Include these keywords in the metatags, copy page, page title, and file names.
5. The Search Engine is your friend. Make friends with your search engine and don’t give it a hard time. Being nice and friendly to it will make its job easier to serve your site up to your target audience.
6. Focus. Focus on the topic at hand and nothing else. The rule is one topic per page.
7. Join the directories. Directories are repositories of knowledge done by human hands while search engine are huge databases collected by mostly machine methods. The relevancy of your page when joining the right directory may shoot through the roof. Of course, make sure you know what you are talking about.
8. Start a linking campaign. A most effective SEO method. This is a must to do. Ask your allies, strategic partners, friends and acquaintances to place your site’s URL link on their sites. With a short description this can draw traffic from other sites and increase exposure. Google especially ranks the importance of its sites by the number of sites linked to it.
9. Repetition is the key to victory. Keep repeating the above tips, supporting and increasing what works and killing what does not as fast as possible until the desired result is achieved.

In the world of search engine optimization, content matters a lot. If a site has amateur or worse falsified information, fewer and fewer browsers will want to visit it. They will even spread bad news faster than good news so expect a garbage site to be ignored even in a week’s time.

Get On the Fast-Track to Social Media and Internet Marketing Success

Social Media and Internet Marketing Success Bootcamp 2010 is the event of the year for small business owners and marketers, from beginners to established professionals, who want to accelerate their business to the next level of success.

And much more!

Is the Social Media and Internet Marketing Success Bootcamp 2010 a Fit for You?

If you find yourself in one of the categories below, the Social Media and Internet Marketing Success Bootcamp 2010 is a fit for you:

• The Small Business Owner: You’re just getting underway with social media—likely a business owner, consultant, non-profit executive, writer, blogger, artist or general “gun for hire”—and see the potential of social media, but want to speed your path to success with the least effort and the greatest return.  You’re ready to take your business to a whole new level by improving your productivity, following the proven tactics of marketing pros and leveraging new tools and techniques. Better response. Less work. More profitability.
• The Home-Based Business Entrepreneur: You signed up for a home-based business franchise or network marketing organization only to realize that customers are not falling from the sky as promised.  You believe in your product or service, but realize that there has to be a better way than the company’s “friends and family” approach.  Your reality is that you have to get out and self-promote — quick!  You need to attract and engage quality customers, and quickly grow your business.
• The Non-Profit Community:  Funds are tight.  People want to give but the economy is rough.  You need to expand your donor base, your volunteer base.  You want to connect with people who believe in your cause but may not be familiar with the good work that you do, or that your exists.  While working with reduces staff, your need to hold conversations with lots of people, fast.  You believe social media is a solution but you do not know how to get started or which medium will produce the best results for your unique setting.

If you find yourself in one of the above categories, the Social Media and Internet Marketing Success Bootcamp 2010 is an event you don’t want to miss.

Results-driven Instructional Designer with six years of eLearning experience from working in higher education for Jones International University (JIU) to Fortune 500 companies Sun Microsystems and Cisco Systems. Developed courses from inception to deployment. Experiences have led to remarkable accomplishments including participating in JIU making Internet and education history by becoming the first regionally accredited online university and the eLearning Traction Tool, a project at Cisco that is being patented. Received instructional design degree from Stanford University with an emphasis in human-computer interaction. Other abilities include: