Purely Social

By Terry Leslie

 In order for any online business to reach a level of success, visibility is an absolute must. Without visibility potential clients and associates have no way of knowing that your website exists or that it offers them what they are looking for. One of the most popular ways of gaining a steady stream of traffic that is ready and willing with a credit card in hand is the use of Overture or Yahoo. Yahoo now owns Overture, and thus these two are often referred to as the same thing. For purposes of clarity, I will refer to the system as Overture throughout the article.

Advertising on the internet can be a highly confusing endeavor. There are so many options many small entrepreneurs become terrified of blowing their advertising budget on something ineffective or something with little to no visibility. No visibility means no clientele and certainly no credit cards waiting in the wings. In an effort to present an almost fair playing ground as well as profit themselves, Overture came to be with a highly successful Pay for Performance (P4P) program.

Using indexed keywords, traffic is driven to the site from search engines. As the searches become more complicated with multiple keywords and phrases, the search engines are able to provide more specific findings. The more specific your indexed keywords are, the more qualified traffic you will find charging through your website.

Overture has made the playing field as level as possible by offering the Pay for Performance programs. This allows for those who have an advertising budget to come up with their own unique plan that fits within their budgetary concerns. Of course, since you are paying for performance, it would stand to reason that with a careful selection of keywords and a limited time frame, even those who struggle with their budgetary concerns can find enough qualified traffic to help them reassess their budget after only a few days. It has happened numerous times before.

While many people are familiar with Google search engines and Google Adwords, Overture uses the same principle with a little less work involved. Your keywords may not need to be completely indexed in order for success to occur. In fact, with a highly attuned selection of keywords, you should be able to cut your keyword efforts nearly in half. This is good news for those with limited budgets.

It is important to understand how keywords are catalogued. Websites are not filtered and catalogued by any major search engine. The pages of each individual website are what the search engines pick up on. Thus, if you are selling your water sports equipment and your windsurfers are on the fourth page, so to speak, anyone searching out windsurfing equipment will not be brought to your home page but the fourth page where your windsurfers are catalogued. You can change this by cataloging everything under your home page, but it is more effective overall to allow for a heavy use of multiple phrases for the home page followed by heavy use of numerous phrases that are specified to each page.

Even if you start out small with a tiny budget and can only afford to be in the bottom of the heap, as your business grows, this is one area that you should set aside profits for immediate growth. While Google, Overture, and Yahoo are all very effective, if you want to end up consistently on the first page, it is going to cost you a tidy sum in advertising. You can either work your way up to it or simply plunk it all down at once and grab a top slot for immediate results. If you are a small independent company, remember that you are competing against the big guns out there. You might need to opt for taking a larger risk and sinking all your available funds into search engine results. However, if it didn’t product the results you would need, do you really think all of these companies would continue to pay for those top slots?

Where ever you stand with your advertising budget, what you want to achieve in the next three to six months, and how it all plays together, you can successfully double or triple your current business profits with one good solid marketing plan on Overture.

OR if you would like to succeed immediately to create financial freedom working only 4 hours a week, check out www.secrets2internetfortunes.com

AND receive a limited FREE copy of the amazing 113 page Book “Online Fortunes A Beginners Guide!” which is jam packed with so many ideas you can use to instantly create an automated income for life! That’s my GIFT to you as a way of saying thank you for reading my articles.

Prepare Your Business For Sale at QxBid Business Auctions
By auctionsdir

 When preparing your business for sale, keep the following in mind:

Selling your business is risky, so start the preparations at least one year in advance. You have to tie up all loose ends, make proper inventory of assets before you sell.

Business Auctions

Go through audits and financial statements to chart growth. Ensure the financial records are up to date.

Formalize records and document all business dealings for the convenience of buyers. This will also help avoid confusion when the new management takes over.

Dont keep any pending accounts of a customer open; tie up all loose ends before handing over the company.

Take care of the contract details with suppliers and franchisees. This will eliminate problems for the new management.

Get a proper handbook of company rules and guidelines printed. Unwritten rules are hard to follow.

Review leases and real estate deals. You do not want the location to affect the sale of your business. If the location can be a hindrance to sale, then consider moving to a better location before selling.

Take care of the equipment leases and return equipment once lease period is over.

Make an inventory of all the company assets, moveable as well as immoveable.

Upgrade and modernize software and computer systems. The best software should be installed before you make a sale.

Sell real estate separate from other company assets. Real estate attached to other assets makes the company unwieldy when its time to sell.

Ensure that employees interests are taken care of. Try to retain the good employees during the merger process. If you have to cut down on the number of employees, ensure they still have goodwill for the company.

Have an expert negotiator by your side well before you start negotiating a deal with the other party.

By taking care of your employees interests, and looking out for the new management when selling the business, you will earn a lot of goodwill. You should also put your records in order before selling. By following the guidelines given above, you will be able to avoid the pitfalls of bad business deals.

Article Source : Article King Pro - Free Reprints and Distribution

Auctions
Click here to read more on business auctions.

Your Online Social Directory For The Top Social Networks

Can You Believe It? With the Financial Markets in Turmoil, the Hosting Industry Continues to Thrive!
By David Link

 I am participating in the 4th annual Hosting Transformation Summit in sunny Las Vegas today and have just listened to some heartwarming news from Dan Golding the head of Tier1 Research. Dan kicked off the morning with his Keynote “Managed Hosting and Colocation in 2009 and beyond.”

Dan described the Managed Hosting and colocation sector as “on fire” The sector is humming - incredible growth, outstanding execution, blowing away expectations. I must say, looking back 5 years ago after the tech bubble collapse, I can’t believe how strong the sector bounced back from those very difficult times.

His presentation was focused on a future, and a longer view for the industry. The HTS conference is packed this year with the largest attendance of Data center owners, Managed hosting and colocation companies ever to attend this conference.

Demand steady or increasing in all markets, driven largely by capex constraints and greater awareness and choices. Supply is growing more slowly in the past 18 months as the credit crunch has hurt the ability of providers to expand ( it is very hard to get mortgages, loans only on new data center projects). Expansion build-out of existing shells is occurring, but very little on spec. Demand Growth of 15% in 2008. (Steady and increasing in the out years) However after supply growth peaked at 7.5% in 2007 supply growth now has slowed to 5%

Dan believes that supply growth will pick back up again in 2011. Conclusions - supply is tight, demand is high and growing - this very good news for the industry.

Some other trends:

The green initiatives are more than just a trend as data center owners who don’t figure out how to maximize power efficiency will be painted as villains.

Internet traffic and services consumption are linked as Internet traffic growth has been doubling every year (2005-2007).

Prediction: 2011 - 2012 - internet traffic will get an exaflood - it is coming with a new breed of applications (set to boxes HD Video, games, etc.) that will drive new traffic patterns. Growth driven by consumer broadband + applications (HD video) applications, which in turn will drive demand for Managed Hosting / Colocation Services:

Managed Hosting Services Highlights

Incredibly fast growth 30%+

$10 Billion worldwide revenue by end of 2008

We’ll keep growth pace until at least 2011

Good news, Dan believes that fears about slowdown in growth are wildly overblown.

Why is managed hosting growing so fast?

Demographic shifts - new breed of IT employees that embrace outsourcing

Growth in internet applications (SaaS) The acceptance and growth of browser based applications has been enormous!

Ambiguity between web hosting and managed hosting has turned positive

Dan’s Key success factors managed hosting and services

High margin services - and not too many - it is so tempting in our day to day business when a customer comes along and wants to come and give us money for a unique on-off service - at this point the answer has to be no or do it through a partner.

High level of support delivery is critical - don’t cut pay in support people or outsource support to save a nickel - what you are selling is support. Keep doing this well or you will head into a bad place - just as examples in retail like Home Depot and others who have struggled with customer service challenges - the whole business starts to slide into the toilet - High levels of support delivers a strong word of mouth buying cycle

Final thoughts, the industry is healthy and will continue to thrive. Customers are looking for the one stop shop, one company that is a trusted advisor to the customer. As customers place more eggs in the Managed Service bucket, the industry will need to tighten-up those SLA’s. Today some parts of the industry have been getting away with loose SLA’s - as customers get more sophisticated and have more on the line, they will become more demanding and require robust multi-component SLAs and back-it up.

David Link is president and CEO of ScienceLogic. He and his partners built a thriving company from the ground up by focusing on delivering “products that just work” to the underserved IT infrastructure management marketplace. He has held senior management and corporate officer positions at large public companies.

college social network

You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.