By Arthur Orchid

I've always felt that marketing promotions were broadly applied but not very well thought out. Promotional marketing in some ways is a pretty good idea for a wide variety of things. You can give out pens, calculators, or other little trinkets with your brand name on it. This is a way to spend little money on an advertising campaign that will generate some degree of name recognition. The question of how effective these promotional marketing campaigns are is open, however. If I open my pen drawer, I'll find dozens of promotional pens and erasers in there, but I couldn't name a single brand offhand. Unless you sell something like stationary which people associate with pens, these type of promotional giveaways are nothing but a waste of money.

In my opinion and I always tell my clients this marketing promotions should only be done for special purposes. Guerrilla marketing can work wonderfully depending on what kind of product you sell, but the marketing promotion must be carefully tailored. Just going out into a public square and holding a contest or giving away a product will not generate any business for you at all. You need to think strategically.

One of my favorite places to do marketing promotions is at nightclubs and bars. When people are drinking, they'll do what they can to win anything. Whether you are giving away shot glasses, food, drink mixers, or just T-shirts, people will get excited about your marketing promotion. If they get to come home with a souvenir of their night, they'll forever associate it with the fun of going out drinking with friends. This is what successful marketing promotions aim to do: create those kinds of positive associations around your product or brand name.

Hot summer afternoons are also a great time for marketing promotions. If you're willing to spend a few thousand dollars giving away free drinks in a crowded public thoroughfare, people will absolutely love you. Even if you're giving out something that doesn't strictly go along with the weather such as a salty snack people will still be grateful as long as they get some water with it. If you can catch people at an unguarded moment, you can gain their brand loyalty before they even know what hit them. That is what successful marketing promotions are all about. Leave the brand-name pens at home!

By Arthur Orchid

You see there must be a better alternative to working for someone else. The job politics are weak and hypocritical. The transportation takes you two hours each way. It also cost you some money for the car, the train or any other way you use to go to work. The taxes are so destructive to the net paycheck. And the space for professional, personal development is extremely limited. Let's see in this article the example of working as a freelancer.

The first thing you have to do is access some useful work at home tips, researching even before making a plan. In those work at home tips, you'll probably find some helpful information. Here are a few work at home times I found over the first 2 years of seeking and preparing to work as a freelance writer:

1 - Have a model for inspiration

Study and read about those who dared before you. You could join the growing number of men and women who dare starting their own business. You'll find numerous styles and approaches, with also varied techniques and strategies, as told to you (in newsletters, on websites, in books, on videos, etc.) full of work at home tips. Consider all those informations and wonder which one will work best for you. Which one suits your needs, your desires, and your skills. Then, imitate that model, using similar steps and strategies. Do what works, according to those who have worked it!

2 - Plan everything according to short/medium/long term

Write on a paper realistic goals. List all your goals short-term, medium-term, long term. Make the lists complete with ideal results, and also, include things, people, and events or incidents that should be anticipated… and have a back up plan. For example, it's ideal to calculate your working seven days a week for the first five years, but it's unrealistic and for that reason imperative you plan for life’s interruptions:

• When the power goes out;
• When your pet needs to be rushed to the vet, or worse, dies;
• When the computer crashes;
• When a client cancels an order an hour before deadline;
• When the bank, pharmacy, grocery, or other store do not have what you need, sends you twenty miles out of your way, or is closed….

Try to figure out what tools you will have on hand, what back-up you could put in place!

3 - Have a startup capital

Do not launch without some cash in advance. You can't be sure you'll make a living from the very beginning of your journey as a home-worker. You've got to cover your risks and expenses to get started without stress. Yes, you've wanted to write for a living since you were old enough to know what an adjective clause was. And yes, you knew if you didn't do a kamikaze move, forcing you to work hard enough at freelancing to survive that you would stay at the destructive government job forever…. But if you're smart, and if you take any work at home tips to heart, take this one: have some money in the bank, have a sugar daddy or mama, or work a part-time job that you can endure while your business kicks off. (It takes, on average, 3-5 years to determine if your business will be a winner or a flop.)

4 - Build a work regime

Although one of the absolute favorite wealth to working at home and for yourself is that you don't have to submit to an alarm clock, you still wake up, eat breakfast, brush teeth, and dress (on good days). Normalize your workdays by acting as if… as if you still have to be at your job on time, as if you get regular and regulated breaks, as if you're a professional with clean hair, shiny teeth, and shoes that are on your feet instead of slippers. This will help you to keep focused and motivated on your freelance work.

5 - Be strong enough to stop invasive people

Realize and take into account the fact that you're working a real job, even if it's in in your living room. As soon as possible prepare a room (an unused bedroom for example) to be transformed into a dedicated room for your business work. Convince others in the wrong use of the same: no one is allowed to interrupt you during work hours, just as if you were at a building downtown where they wouldn't be allowed to ask you where the ketchup is, if you would iron a shirt, drive them to the theatre, etc. Discourage aberrant and invasive behavior from family members, roommates, and clients…who will also try to test you as a child does, and not pay, or email you ten times in one hour to ask you how it’s going, or who will try to get you to do unnecessary, extra, revisionary work for free.

And good luck enjoying the freedoms that really do transcend the responsibilities.



Related articles:

• Working from home doing online work
• Working from home
• Working from home online jobs
• Writing newspaper articles from home?
  

By Arthur Orchid

Search Engine Optimization known as SEO is probably the most important part of your success online. If the search engines can't find your site or even worse don't like it you'll have many difficulties to make some benefits... You can hire a company to do all the Search Engine Optimization and spend a lot of money or do it all by yourself at almost no cost. You'll pay in time and efforts. Keep in mind when using a search engine optimization service is that you can do it all yourself. This is the main thing to remember. You're not paying for something that you can put in place yourself as you understood every step after learning from a good mentor.

On the contrary, the principles behind SEO are pretty simple. The thing that you're paying for when you buy affordable search engine optimization is convenience. The best way to get web page optimization is by making your own content yourself, but this is so time consuming that it might not be the most practical solution. When you hire an affordable search engine optimizer, you're paying for convenience. All this may sound obvious, but it does have some ramifications that you may haven't thought about before. The thing is, when you look for affordable search engine optimization, the more convenience, the higher the price. If you only want to buy web site optimization content yourself, for example, and then implement it to increase web traffic, you don't have to pay a lot of money. It can cost less than a hundred dollars a month to get all of the affordable search engine optimization articles that you need.

On the other hand, if you're seeking affordable search engine optimization to manipulate every aspect of your web traffic, you'll have to pay a lot more. This may save you a lot of time, and they may have a better idea of how to take care of SEO optimization than you do, but it will also cost quite a bit. In one way, the limit is your budget! You need to think about how much you need from your affordable search engine optimization service. If you only have to optimize a few websites, you should probably buy the content and do the rest by yourself. The amount of money that it costs to have them optimize web content for you is just too high. If, however, you have a high traffic web design business, it might make sense to hire out all of your affordable search engine optimization needs. Otherwise, you won't have the time to do it all yourself.

The most important thing to remember about affordable search engine optimization is that it's simple to test how good a job the service that you hire is doing. It's easy to monitor your web traffic, as well as your results in Google web searches, right? You should keep track of how well your affordable search engine optimization works. It's crucial to demand results!

To Your Success!

By Arthur Orchid

Starting making money online isn't impossible. It only requires some method, some specific knowledge. There're some rules you can't ignore to succeed. Ignoring them are at least the reason why you delay your first successes or even worse the best recipe for failure.

You need to reach a reasonable 1st goal to be able to reach the 2nd one and so on. Educating yourself may be one of those primary goals.

Today let's only focus on earning cash through Adsense program. I see so many websites and blogs where Adsense is copy pasted without any business model. It's so easy to tell how much they earn from Adsense: nothing.





Let me ask you a few questions:

• Do you struggle to make even $1 per day with Google Adsense?
• Do you want to discover the right locations for your ad blocks?
• Do you use the most efficient colors?
• Have you put in place the best optimization tips?
• Do you build your content including the most targeted keywords relevant to your topic?
• Are serious enough to build from now a profitable Adsense income?

If you answer YES to some of them... for sure you need to grab your

free copy of AdSense Secrets 4

by Joel Comm. For a few days only Joel Comm is giving away his book (the one I paid for a few months ago). With that book you'll get in hands the best Adsense tips. Stop letting money on the table every day!

Ask today your FREE copy of Adsense secrets 4 by Joel Comm before this insane offer closes! Or continue to lose money every single day because you don't know the best Adsense tips.

To get even more from those fresh & Gratis

Adsense tips

I recommend you:

• PLR articles to get optimized keywords articles every month
• My favourite keyword generator
• A method to get Free targeted traffic for your blog
  

Are you going to

stop losing money

every day? For a limited time you can get for FREE the entire 230-page AdSense Secrets 4.0 book, stop wasting time!

To Your Success!

By Arthur Orchid

AdSense Secrets 4 from Joel Comm is an amazing ebook every AdSense publisher should read! If you're interested by the ROI of all your Internet websites and blogs, you already thought about making money from the Google AdSense program, didn't you?

There's no shame on monetizing your blogs: I do it every day...

If you read forums devoted to this subject, you will find many webmasters who complain of making no money from AdSense. Indeed, they don't know how to use AdSense correctly.

AdSense-Secrets 4 revealed for less than $10

I'm talking about making in one single day the amount you previously made in one month or more.

If I share a secret here, one key to your AdSense is testing, tracking and testing again. If you place a few ads and wait for money you're all WRONG!

To understand how AdSense really work, Order today your copy of AdSense Secrets 4 for as little as $9.95.

Other AdSense publishers will envy your results, you'll become popular and will start reinvesting in more products (softwares, coaching,...) to leverage more money. People will want to know from you how to optimize your blog and your websites to get clicks.

Update on 16th September 2008:
From this ebook I learnt a lot reading, testing and thinking out of the box. This not the kind of ebook (235 pages) you'll read in one week-end. I recommend you to read it once, highlighting some sentences and then coming back to those notes and start using the tips. After reading AdSense Secrets 4 you'll get a better overview about:

• diversification (AdSense is not the only way to monetize your blog or website)
• selecting the best sizes and colors for YOUR site
• choosing good keywords
• Google Custom Search Engine (a tool I don't use as I don't like it)
• Creating channels to track and improve your results
• And much more...
  

Indeed, I'll be very surprised if you don't really increase your AdSense incomes after buying AdSense Secrets 4 for less than $10. No more assumptions, just some smart and useful AdSense knowledge!

Feel free to post a comment about this ebook when you read it!





To Your Success!

By Arthur Orchid

There are some tried-and-true methods telling you in details how to promote a website, but I think that people rely on them too much.

Everyone knows some of the standard how to promote website techniques: you want to increase hits, increase visibility, and increase traffic in any way you can.

You can do this by getting a lot of keyword optimized web content, signing up for ad space on various other websites, setting up business referral arrangements etc.
The problem is that everyone uses this approach too.

I know you already guessed there's something else you can do...

There are literally thousands upon thousands of people in whatever area you are involved in doing exactly the same thing.
It's obvious why this is a problem.

If you aren't very good at SEO optimized content and you can't often spend time on updating your pages for the best possible optimization:

You need something more site-specific.

There're only a few websites or blogs who can rank high in any given Google search.
It can be good to learn how to promote a website in this manner, but it can't be your only strategy.

If you're lucky to have a previous experience in promoting an offline business you already know Internet isn't the only way to do it.
Have a somewhat new approach to how to promote a website.

I knew all about how to promote softwares before I even got involved in the Internet.
I've become comfortable with it over the last couple of years, but it's certainly not my background.

In my opinion, the key is promoting a website in the real world.
You see, national coverage and national attention are very difficult to dig but local coverage is comparably easy.

I've many strategies for how to promote a website in a geographic area.
Basically, the key is to include the URL in all of your materials and have a great street team together.

You may also offer a freebie to download online after subscribing your Mailing list.
Having some web-based giveaways is so much the better.

That will get people looking at your website, and once they're looking, you have gone halfway to winning the battle.
I know that these strategies for how to promote a website are not universal.
Many people will tell me and many people already have that my advice doesn't help them in their line of business.

What they don't realize is that that's the whole point.
Everyone knows the universal part of how to promote websites.

It can help to study up on it of course, and to increase and optimize your hits as much as possible, but that will only get you halfway there. The key is to go beyond your competition.
Think out of the box!

Think about what strategies you can employ that other people are not using.
Those are the ones that will pay off most of all.





To Your Success!

By Arthur Orchid

In any business you need some professional organization to manage your time. This is obviously the best way to benefit your working time. It's even more important if you work from home and have spouse and kids...

Let' s see in this article how to get the best of your working time.

Of course, performance management is nothing new. Although the modern understanding of the benefits of time management is a little bit different than as it was originally conceived, the concept still goes back about as far as Henry Ford and the invention of the assembly line. Back then, workers were clocked to see how efficiently they were putting together cars. Various steps were taken to improve the program constantly, resulting in less work for the same product.

The benefits of time management are easy to see on an assembly line. In an office environment, however, time management benefits can be a little bit less apparent. This does not mean that they are not important! The benefits of time management will show up in the books, but it will take a while. After all, the tasks that people have are usually a little bit less concrete. Rather than manufacturing a car, you have to type up financial reports, communicate with clients, and do other similar business tasks.

With so many businesses taking so many drastic cost cutting measures, it's strange to see how few of them really look deeply into the benefits of time management. Effective management of time is like effective management of any other resources – it can save your company a huge amount of money if it's correctly implemented. With the huge cost of outsourcing and moving operations overseas, it seems like every measure should be taken at home to improve efficiency before such a drastic solution is proposed.

Perhaps the greatest benefit of time management is on the individual performance and job satisfaction of any particular worker. Without effective time management training, increased job duties can seem overwhelming. After all, when a worker is used to getting a certain amount accomplished in a single day, adding additional tasks on is never welcome. To do that without giving them training on how to accomplish other tasks is not only unrealistic, it's also unreasonable and unfair. The benefits of time management training is that it allows you to provide a way to ease workers into taking on additional responsibilities. If you provide them with adequate training, they will be able to perform very well. If not, you can often lose some of your best, most seasoned employees to greener fields. No matter what employee benefits you offer, if you stress them out too much, or stretch their time too thin, they will leave for another company.

Train yourself to become super efficient and you'll soon see how much extra work you accomplished during the same day. Remember time is money so your time is very precious!

More resources about Time management at Free Management Library: http://www.managementhelp.org/prsn_prd/time_mng.htm





To Your Success!

By Arthur Orchid

So far you already have a few articles online.
Congrats, this is a good start.

The only problem at the moment is that most of your readers still ignore even your blog's name.

Chosing a meaningful blog's name is also very important.

Let's assume you did it smart & easy to remember.

As an example: 99words.wordpress.com

The problem is still there: except your butcher's wife, your puppy and your very curious colleague nobody heard about smartandeasy.wordpress.com...

From now, on a regular basis, attracting readers without converting this into an obsession should be something to work on.

Indeed, in this post we're talking about one way to build traffic.
Fortunately, this is not the only way.
Unfortunately, you will have to spend time & efforts to complete this task.

Visible results will only appear after a few weeks of work.
That's the price to pay!

In future posts, I will be very happy to share with you more ways to drive traffic to your site. This will come later.

Before revealing 2 tools I really like, we have some things to prepare.

Do you know what a rss link is?

See it as a strong link between your site, your readers and you.
From the technical side, this a link used to tell "I've just updated my blog" using mainly xml.

If you post trough blogger/blogpost or WordPress you already have this link.
I advice you to make it better than it is now.

How could you improve this?

• Subscribing to service like FeedBurner.
• Adding an icon easily visible on your blog.
  

Of course, you could use the Blogger or WordPress default link.

But you will get some benefits using such free services such as:

• Statistics (I'm sure you'd like to know some time to time the number of subscribers you have for your blog).
• Advices & tips (in my opinion any idea is welcome).
• Easier communication with websites or applications requiring your feed.

In the next post, I will show you step by step how to subscribe to FeedBurner and add the very well known orange icon (the same but resized I used at the top of this post).

Good bye Folks, that's all for today!

Until next time: keep working on your content!

AO.

By Arthur Orchid

In any new business, new job there is a part of unknown stuff.

Each time you face something new for you (new business, new opportunity, new job, new position, new company, new family situation, ...) appear some fears and doubts.

In fact, this is very natural, usual and sane.

If you just do things without having a little thought before starting or during the process, you may be in difficulties sometimes.

To go further, you have to imagine yourself when your goal is achieved.

Why do you have to?
Because you must persuade yourself you can do it.

Okay, now you're self-convinced this is possible.
Do you have near to you the guidelines to follow?

Any new adventure hides obstacles on your way.
Indeed obstacles are here to be overcomed testing your motivation.

You have to stay optimistic to climb any mountain you will probably encounter.
Almost nothing is impossible, it takes time, efforts & self-control.

Here are a few ways I recommend:

• strike off the list of actions you have already completed
• join a forum of new entrepreneurs where you can ask some questions, find free tips & advices, obtain prod
• have a rest doing something else for let's say 1 week: when you come back to your current problem it will seem less difficult to solve than before.

It's amazing to notice how you sometimes find a solution without searching it.

It's possible because you're not any more focused on looking for a solution.

You are no more affected by the problem.
You forgot the emotional part of the situation.

It's really a good point for you.
Your brain can work again sanely, even if you're not aware of that for now.

Be conscious of the limits of your positive attitude!

This is not a religion.
Some sects use such tips to recruit you...

It's not necessary to repeat every morning before waking up:
« Every day I feel richer, in one year I will be a millionnaire. »
;o(
This simply doesn't work!

Of course don't buy any method promoting The strength of mind.
This is just a loss of money.

I already told you, you have in yourself everything you need to succeed.

Time for action: Breath Deeply The Positive Attitude!

Until next time:

• Don't save your efforts!
  
• Don't give up now!

Feel free to share your own ways to overcome obstacles adding a comment!

AO.

By Arthur Orchid

It may appear as an elementary advice but you shouldn't spend more money than available to start your business.

You need and wish to make a sane business.
So work at your own pace.

It will be useless & dangerous to go too fast.
You have to build your success step by step.


Before being able to spend more money than today you have 2 solutions :

1. save money
2. earn money either offline or online

Don't start subscribing to Premium services or buying an expensive software.

Don't pay to become affiliate: there are already hundreds of companies offering serious and free affiliation.

No need to pay so far.

To make HTML or PHP, Dreamweaver is not the only good software you can use:
Have a look to Nvu.

It won't be good for your mindset to start with debts.

Remember, there are guidelines to follow to ensure your success achievement...

What should you do now?

1. You have to determine a goal to achieve
2. You have to follow your own step by step guidelines

Stop making excuses and work from now!

I recommend you to start preparing some fresh content for your site.

When you earn some fresh money (say from $100), you will be able to outsource this task.

Until next time, have a nice day!

AO.

By Arthur Orchid

As every blogger, you love posting informations on your space of Freedom.


I assume you're also interested in having more exposure.

According to BlogRush there are already 50 millions blogs on the web.
Let's imagine some of them include a link to yours...

It's no more from your imagination, it's a free service provided by BlogRush.

I highly recommend you to watch the video & make your own opinion.

See you!
AO.

By Arthur Orchid

Save money in less than one single minute.


I was looking for an hosting company for a couple of websites I'm currently working on.

As hosting company I chose this company because of some interesting features they proposed me:

• the possibility to host 20 sites on 1 account
• the price (less than $7 per month)
  
• $120 Advertising Credits (Google Adwords, Yahoo Search Marketing, ...)
  
• unlimited MySQL databases

and also other things I don't need at the moment such as unlimited emails using the domain names I created.

Suscribing I noticed a field called Coupon Code:

Using my favourite tool - Google - I found RetailMeNot.com where tons of coupons to use on the web are available.

Typing my choice of hosting company, I found a 3 months for free coupon (I almost $21 saved in less than 1 minute).

AO.

By Arthur Orchid

Every business starts out small. The people who own chains like Wal-Mart or perhaps Sears did not start out with a series of stores. They started out just like every other business owner out there. Though there're a lot of small businesses that fail, there're some that grow and thrive as if they've taken on a life of their own. When you're starting out you need some really good small business advice to get you going in the right direction. There're many places where you can get this type of advice, and it'll be up to you to decide what advice is good, and what you should ignore.

If you want to get small business advice from someone in your own community, you want to look for a successful business in your area that'll not be in competition with you. Though someone who might be direct competition for you, they may be willing to give you advice, but I wouldn't count on it. You want to ask someone for small business advice if the creation or existence of your business will not threaten his or her own success. That may sound like common sense but there're many who don't take that into consideration.

You may also get small business advice by looking online. For example, visit Business forums and post a question. You may have to weed through hundreds of bad web sites to find a good one, but there's a lot of great advice out there. Much of it's common sense, but there're sometimes when even the smartest people need to have things spelled out for them. Small business advice is mostly common sense, but there're trick and tips that can help a struggling business become a very successful business. Sometimes, it's just a matter of making a few small tweaks in your plan.

There're many books out there that offer small business advice as well. Visit Amazon or Barnes & Noble to check if a book is available for your business. These are often great sources of information. These are written by those who have had great success with a small business, and they're now willing to share what they know with everyone else. This small business advice might be catered to one type of business, but you can always take these tips and apply them to your own endeavor. What works for one business might not work for another, but with a little work and creative thinking, you can find the advice you need.

To Your Success!