Free Glide

The biggest sales meeting of your life lurks. A sales meeting where you’re career may well skyrocket if you close the deal. You’re psyching yourself for the big ‘Sales’ day.

You press your clothes so crisply; you could swear the folds could cut you. When you’re done, you lay in bed rehearsing your day tomorrow. You visualize yourself closing the biggest sale ever. Then after a few minutes, you slowly doze off.

Then you rise early still thinking sales.

You climb in the shower still thinking sales.

You put on your finest clothes, new shoes, spend 20 minutes on your hair and are meticulous about everything looking perfect.

As you grab your folder to head out, you give yourself a quick glance over in the mirror.

You think to yourself, you clean up pretty well. You quickly rehearse a few lines, poses and smiles. A few bursts of your best fragrance and you’re set!

And yes, you’re still thinking sales.

You get to the clients office and are warmly greeted. You take pride they noticed how immaculately groomed you are. They welcome you into their office and gently push the door until it clicks shut.

After a few words and glances around the office, it falls eerily silent.

This is it.

It all boils down to this.

You collect your thoughts, clear your throat, stand, take a deep breath, and look at your client square in the eye and you…

Just stand there. You don’t say a word.

They raise their brows in puzzlement. Then tilt their head inquisitively wondering if you’re ok.

And you just stand there rocking back and forth on the balls of your feet, lips curled inwards but looking great with your new clothes and shoes.

Ok, what does this have to do with your sales materials or website?

TOO MANY SALES MATERIALS AND WEBSITES JUST STAND THERE DECORATED WITH THE MOST AMAZING GRAPHICS, FLASH AND DESIGN BUT DON’T TALK TO THE CLIENT!

Well, you won’t sell a damn thing looking pretty. You must “talk” or you will simply lose the business. Not just any talk. The right talk your clients respond to.

You may think

“Well, I do have content on my site and sales materials so ‘I’m not just standing there, I AM saying something”

Re-imagine the above scenario. But you’re mumbling and the client’s face is squinting in aggravation trying to understand what you’re saying. Or using abrasive language the client doesn’t appreciate. Or present yourself in a way that makes you appear unprofessional, insecure or not confident. You don’t mean to come across that way of course, but you do. Bottom line: You need help.

A professional copywriter will know exactly how to give you the best sales presentation possible for your product/service. They will grab your audience’s attention, hold it and engage their minds towards buying from you. That’s their job. They answer questions, overcome objections, ease fears and strengthen confidence in your business.

Isn’t that a lot more valuable to you than just looking good?

It’s no accident materials professionally written consistently outsell materials written by those who think there’s nothing to it.

There’s plenty to it because the fact you’ve read this far, proves engaging copy does what I claimed in this article!

Sammer Hakim is a Dallas-based copywriter serving clients worldwide and helping them with their sales materials. He can be reached at http://www.marketing-commando.com.

Choosing your domain name is a no-brainer, right? Not so fast. Your domain name, or URL, can have vast consequences in both the online and offline marketing arena. Long or difficult to spell domain names can be the death toll for any website, long before its even been given a chance at success. Short or clever domain names can make people remember where to go more easily, while keyword domain names can often bring in unintentional, yet quality, traffic as people type in whatever.com.

If you already operate a successful business it’s important that you purchase a domain name that will compliment any branding strategy that you have already put in place. The most obvious thing to do is to get your business name as your URL, however if you’re late getting into the game you may find that your business name is already taken by another similarly named business or by a domain name squatter, or possibly a future competitor. Purchasing a business name domain name isn’t always the right way to go, and when left without that option, a keyword domain name might work just as well, if not better.

If you have not yet established your business, you may want to wait on deciding your business name until after you have found an available domain name that is suitable to your marketing efforts. The following are some things that you need to consider in regard to what domain name will best help you achieve your marketing interests.

Build Your Brand

Whether you like it or not, your domain name is an important part of your branding efforts. Your domain name goes on your letterhead, business card, printed materials; it must be spoken verbally over the phone, presented in email communications, and appears in the search results when your site ranks well on important keyword searches. Because of all this, your URL must be able to fit into your long-term branding strategy.

Keep it Short & Memorable: The best domain name is one that is relatively short and memorable. Long domain names or domains with hyphens are often just too cumbersome for someone to remember or even pass along to others. Are you better off telling a potential customer to visit debbies-hair-care-supplies.com or debshaircare.com?

Secure a .com

I strongly recommend purchasing a .com domain name as opposed to a .net, .info, .biz or anything else. If your chosen domain name is not available in a .com, keep looking until you find one that isn’t taken. You’ll find it worth the extra effort as .com domain names are by far the most common and most remembered. When telling a potential customer to go to your website, you may tell them to go to mysite.net, but what they may actually hear is go to mysite.com. If that happens, which is often the case, you’ll be sending someone to a competitor rather than your own site.

Once you secure your .com domain name, you might also consider purchasing the .net and other extensions as well. Securing the alternate extensions, whenever possible, can be a great strategy to keep a competitor from purchasing and building a site with a similar name as yours.

Don’t Hyphenate

Avoid getting stuck with a hyphenated domain name as your main website address. While it may be easier to read in print, it is very difficult to speak it. Try telling someone to go to “window dash coverings dot com” or “window hyphen coverings dot com.” See what I mean? Most of the time people will type in windowcoverings.com which would again direct them to a potential competitor.

Spell Words Properly

It is usually not a good idea to use incorrectly spelled words in your domain name, even if you’ve done that to create a clever business name. The exception to this rule is if you have secured both the correctly spelled and incorrectly spelled URLs. You’ll want to make sure you use proper redirects to send visitors from the correctly spelled URL to your main (misspelled) address.

Here is a quick example. Without using a search engine, find a website which would be verbalized as “On Site Graphics.” Where did you end up? Did you find onsitegrafix.com? Most people probably won’t, which clearly demonstrates why you want to use proper spellings of words in your domain, at the very least as a redirect to your real domain.

Before going out and buying the first domain name that comes to mind, take a step back so you can think it through first. While you can easily change your domain name before your site goes live, once you’ve begun the work of establishing your web presence changing a domain name is not quite a simple. The best possible domain name is one that is both a keyword domain and your business name such as outdoorsportinggoods.com.

Stoney deGeyter is president of Pole Position Marketing, a search engine optimization / marketing firm providing SEO and website marketing services since 1998. Stoney is also a part-time instructor at Truckee Meadows Community College, as well as a moderator in the Small Business Ideas Forum. He is the author of his E-Marketing Performance eBook and contributes daily to the E-Marketing Performance marketing blog. (ez)

Google, being the leader in search engines till now, is placing a high importance on the quality and relevancy of its search engines. Most especially now that the company is public property, Google has became seriously quality conscious regarding the results it displays.

For this same reason, doing the wrong things in the Adsense and other forms of advertisements, whether intentionally or unintentionally, will result in a severe penalty, may even get you banned. Nothing like a good action taken to keep wrongdoers from doing the same things over again.

So for those who are thinking of getting a career in Adsense, do not just think of the strategies you will be using to generate more earnings. Consider some things first before you actually get involved.

Hidden texts. Filling your advertisement page with texts to small to read, has the same color as the background and using css for the sole purpose of loading them with rich keywords content will most probably earn you a penalty

Page cloaking. There is a common practice of using browser and bot sniffers to serve the bots of a different page other than the page your visitors will see. Loading a page with a bot that a human user will never see is a definite no-no. Multiple submissions. Submitting multiple copies of your domain and pages is another thing to stay away from. For example, trying to submit a URL of an Adsense as two separate URL’s is the same as inviting trouble and even termination and because of this you should stay away from auto submitters. Its always better to check first if your domain is submitted already in a certain search engine before you try to submit it again.

Link farms. Be wary of who and what are you linking your Adsense to. The search engines know that you cannot control your links in. But you can certainly control what you link to. Link farming has always been a rotten apple in the eyes of search engines, especially Google. That is reason enough to try and avoid them. Having a link higher than 100 on a single page will classify you as a link farm so try and not to make them higher than that.

Page rank for sale. If you have been online for quite some time, you will notice that there are some sites selling their PR links or trading them with other sites. If you are doing this, expect a ban anytime in the future. It is okay to sell ads or gain the link. But doing it on direct advertisement of your page rank is a way to get on search engines bad side.

Doorways. This is similar to cloaking pages. The common practice of a page loaded with choice keyword ads aimed at redirecting visitors to another “user-friendly” page is a big issue among search engines. There are many seo firms offering this kind of services. Now that you know what they actually are, try to avoid them at all costs.

Multiple domains having the same content. In case you are not aware of it, search engines look at domains IP’s, registry dates and many others. Having multiple domains having the same exact content is not something you can hide from them. The same goes with content multiplied many times on separate pages, sub domains and forwarding multiple domains to the same content.

Many of the above techniques apply to most search engines and is not entirely for Google only. By having a mind set that you are building your Adsense together with your pages for the human users and not for bots, you can be assured of the great things for your ads and sites.

Not to mention avoiding the wrath of the search engines and getting your Adsense and site account terminated altogether.

About the Author: For more Hot tips like this check Kamal’s site
http://www.xrblog.com/adsense

Getting other websites to link to yours is one of the most time-consuming and essential tasks that any Internet marketer must face. Linking campaigns can be boring, repetitive, and, if done correctly, incredibly successful!

Within the Internet marketing world we call these links to our websites “Inbound Links”, and they are important to your website for two reasons:

1. Inbound links bring traffic – whenever a website has a link to yours, a certain percentage of their traffic will visit your website. The amount of traffic each link generates is usually quite small, but as you build more and more links, the number of visitors can become significant.
2. Inbound links increase search engine awareness – the more links the big 3 search engines (Google, Yahoo, and MSN) see pointing to your site on the Internet, the more important they assume your website is. A website that has 10,000 inbound links will typically be ranked higher for it’s keywords than a site with only 20 inbound links.

There are many ways to get inbound links. Some cost money, and some are more effective than others. Following are 4 sure-fire methods of getting zero-cost inbound links. Implementing these will certainly help to improve traffic to your website.

Submit to Website Directories

Whenever I launch a new website, the first thing I do is register it on the web directories. Now, there are thousands of directories on the Internet, but only about 250 actually get traffic and count from a search engine optimization standpoint. Compiling the list was a painstaking process, but now that we have it, we’re able to really boost a new website into Google’s index pretty quickly.

You can submit your website to the free web directories, or you can have a service do it for you for. I will tell you that it is a boring and repetitive process to do yourself, and can take several days to a week to do 250 submissions.

Some web directories will offer enhanced listings for a small fee (usually under $20). These enhancements can be worth the money if you feel pretty sure your website will get valuable exposure or additional ad space included in the deal.

A few good website directories are: http://www.profitchoice.com/webdir (ours), http://www.dmoz.org (open directory project), and http://www.buzzle.com.

Submit Content to Article Directories

If you produce an online newsletter, then a really great way to get more exposure for your website is to submit your articles to online article directories. This process can be monotonous, but well worth the effort. Over time, I have compiled a list of about 100 article directories that do a good job of providing SEO-friendly links and decent turn-around time on their review cycles.

When you write an article for the article directories, you want to make sure that it is informative and newsworthy. Sales pitches are usually discarded before they are published, so make sure your content is valuable to a website publisher before you take the time to submit it. A couple good article directories are http://www.ezinearticles.com and http://www.goarticles.com.

RSS Feeds and Blogs

In addition to submitting your articles to article directories, why not create an RSS feed out of it as well? In addition to article syndication, Blogs are another form of content syndication that uses essentially the same format for distributing your content on other websites.

Once your feed is listed on the distribution sites, they will rescan your feed every few days and update the information in their databases. The beauty of RSS is that you don’t have to resubmit every time you add a new article.

A great piece of software that I use is called Feedforall (http://www.feedforall.com/). It helps you to create your RSS feed. All you have to do is paste your article information into the system, and it generates the XML for you. Last I checked, they have a free trial and the software costs about $40 to buy.

Your RSS feed can be distributed through a number of distribution sites. A few to get you started are: http://www.feedburner.com, http://www.syndic8.com, http://www.completerss.com.

Press Releases

One of my favorite methods of generating traffic to a website is through the use of press releases. Press releases can be free to create and distribute, and if a major media outlet picks them up, you can get a ton of traffic pushed into your site very quickly.

It is not unusual at all for a typical well-written press release to be picked up by hundreds or even thousands of other websites. The trick is to put out press releases regularly and make sure each one is newsworthy.

A great place to start is PRWeb’s website (http://www.prweb.com). They offer a free distribution service, or you can pay extra for their enhanced service that gets you better exposure to the search engines.

Getting Inbound Links Is Easy

In short, getting good quality inbound links to your site is pretty easy to do if you focus your efforts on activities that are most likely to succeed. Submitting your website and article content to directories and syndication services is an easy way to get links placed on thousands of websites very quickly.

To get more in-depth information on these and other Internet marketing techniques, visit http://www.profitchoice.com/7days and download our free online course, “7 Days to Website Success”. The course provides detailed instructions and lists of websites you can use to dramatically improve your online results in just seven days.

Matthew Coers is an Internet marketing expert. His website, ProfitChoice.com contains FREE video tutorials and online courses designed to help entrepreneurs build a website and make money online.

If you are website owner and you have begun exchanging links, you know how time consuming — and time-wasting — it can be. On the other hand, you don’t want to give up on the process because you might actually unearth the occasional valuable link partner.

After all, you know that getting links to your site is important because it brings in traffic, helps you find strategic partners, and enhances your Search Engine rankings. Your objective is to get hundreds of links, and you cannot get the job done unless you have a strategy that works.

First you have to accept that not all links are created equal. And that means that link partners have to be prioritized. Some are worthless because your links end up on pages that nobody looks at and have no PR. But at the other end of the spectrum a few of your link partners will be very valuable because they will give you links on high value, high traffic pages.

Most of the rest of your inbound links will be marginally valuable. How you tell the difference between the valuable ones and the useless ones is the subject of many discussions and articles about search engine optimization and website promotion.

Different types of prospective link partners

One solution is to put prospective link partners into three categories of importance or “levels”. This assumes that you have already rejected those that have negative value — the sites you don’t want to identify with for various reasons — pornography, violence, racism, pharmaceuticals, and so on. Here is a suggestion for three levels of prospective link partners:

Level 1 – Basic Links

Basic links will often be from sites you have not taken a lot of time to study. There is nothing striking about them from your point of view, so they probably do not have significant positive value for your site.

On the other hand they will not have negative value either. Therefore, if exchanging links with these partners can be done efficiently, there is no downside to doing it. These will usually be “reciprocal” partners and can be given links on properly formed “link directory pages”. The more time and effort you put into your directory, the more valuable it will become.

Level 2 – Self-Generated Multi-Links

The second category consists of “multi-links” that you generate yourself. You do this by seeding your articles, forum posts, blog entries and so on, around the web. Many of the strategies used to create these links are discussed in the “Power Linking” section of the Linknet Marketing Resource Library, and in the free linking strategy course, mentioned at the end of this article.

Level 3 – High Value Links

The third and most valuable category consists of “High Value Links” on sites that you specifically target. These include high traffic sites in your area of interest, highly rated directories, and sites where you can get a number of quality links all at once. In some cases these links will bring you lots of traffic. In other cases they will enhance your PR and Search Engine ranking. You need both kinds.

As I mention in other articles and in my free course, there are many strategies to get these “Level 3″ links. For instance,

Write glowing testimonials – Target 10 or 20 high traffic sites in your area of interest, and send your testimonial to the webmaster. Usually they can’t resist publishing it where everybody will see it.

Write positive reviews of sites or products – Target 10 or 20 high traffic sites. Post the reviews on your site or in your blog, and make sure to send a copy to the webmaster of the reviewed site. Again, most webmasters or online entrepreneurs are hungry for this kind of exposure.

You might even create a “review” section on your site to show you are serious. But be honest in your reviews. Do not endorse products you have not actually looked at or tried out. Unfortunately, many affiliate marketers are guilty of this.

Find “volume” link partners – This is the fastest, most direct, and least time-consuming strategy. Find link partners who will either sell or trade text ads on a number of high value pages. Just do a Google search for “buy links” or “exchange links” and you will find many companies and web owners prepared to offer multiple-link packages.

Create a three level strategy to find valuable link partners, and then work the strategy with diligence and persistence. This kind of program is guaranteed to generate quality link partners who will help build the success of your website.

Rick Hendershot publishes numerous websites and blogs, and is a specialist in linking strategies. He offers a free 10 part course called SuperCharge your Website with Powerful Linking Strategies. The Linknet Marketing Network offers a free package of 25 Free Links from 25 Websites.

Success in a company is not about having the best technology or being the smartest or even about having the best customer service (although none of these could hurt). More than ever, success is now measured in speed. Today it is about thriving in an ever-evolving world where everything changes so rapidly – and that applies to any business. Today is a world surrounded by buyers who want it now, want perfection and impeccable service.

In order to succeed online, your business needs to be organized and able to handle the increased business your web site is going to generate. Here are some guidelines for running a business of speed and complete service.

1. Run your business of speed.
It’s a new phenomenon called Internet time; it’s a 24/7 kind of world today. This means if you’re business is not moving ahead 24 hours a day 7 days a week, your business is falling deeply behind. Internet time means not only doing business quickly but doing it anytime the customer wants and for as long as the customer wants it done. This I what the customers demand, and what every company doing business online needs to offer. The end result is a business that is always working, always aware of potential business, one that is always one call, email or fax away from their clients.

2. Having effective meetings means having short meetings.
Meetings are the annoyance of many employees workplace. They involve too little discussion, take up too much time, little gets accomplished, people ramble on too much, and respect and open discussion are often not granted. Meetings though are imperative, but the way in which they are run can definitely be changed for the better. Because the Internet world moves so fast, companies doing business online cannot afford to have unproductive meetings.

First set some genuine detail-oriented goals for the meeting. Let people have the option of attending, especially if the issues discussed have nothing to do with them. Post the meeting summary in a place commonly seen by employees, such as the break room. Start and end your meetings on time, and stay within thirty minutes to one hour. Have two or three shorter meetings through the day, with short goals to be accomplished by the next meeting. Also, don’t bore people with anything not on the agenda. Lastly, make the meetings enjoyable; use skits, slideshows, charts, even puppets to get your point across. These moments will likely stick in employee’s heads over the long, drawn-out boring ones.

3. Email several times a day.
In the Internet world, CEOs and employees alike uses technology to supercharge productivity. With all of the pagers, cell phones, laptops, personal organizers and more, email is definitely the most valuable tool. Set up email power sessions with employees; it allows for communication with many employees at the same time and resolves any issues fast. With an email message, you are ensured your message gets delivered to all the right people exactly how you wanted to say it, without the hassle of applying phone tag with employees or risk miscommunication and misunderstanding. Throughout the work day, make blocks of time strictly to email (sending and receiving) at least three to four times a day too.

4. Brand matters on the Internet.
If your business is going to succeed in the Internet world, you will not only need to capture the market share, but also work on improving customer relationships. Whenever your potential or current customers need your products or services, where will they go online? Which Web site will they choose first? Will it be yours? Some tips to increase your business brand online include discovering a way to position yourself as being unique from your competitors. Create the right image, and be sure you continue to reinforce that brand image in everything your company does online and offline. Increase the number of online visitors to your Web site through a variety of Internet marketing strategies. Even if your business only sells locally, do not be afraid to think and market yourself internationally on the Internet. Advertise, advertise, advertise. Remember the importance of earning your customers trust too.

5. The power of feedback.
Ask your customers for feedback, through emails, surveyed phone calls, feedback forms on your Web site, case studies and letters. Ask for feedback often, whenever you are testing out a new product, reviewing sales on an existing product or service, or simply because you want to know how your customers feel about your company. Don’t neglect receiving feedback from your employees too; they know your business too because they work with you.

6. Most importantly, have fun!
Create a working environment where your employees feel free to mix a little fun into their daily routines and express themselves comfortably. After all, a happy employee is a productive one. Let your employees know they are appreciated and needed too, and they will be proud to come to work with you.

The Internet world is about building a better business environment through increased communication, greater convenience, personal enjoyment and greater access to information. How does your business measure up online?

Wendy Suto is president of Search Circus, a Website marketing firm based in Cleveland, Ohio. She keeps pace with the latest optimization, link building and article submission tactics. Before becoming an SEO consultant, Wendy was a computer instructor for a wide range of businesses, including Gateway Computers. As a certified SEO consultant, she teaches SEO training classes in Cleveland, Ohio.
wendy@searchcircus.com

Maybe you are a Doctor or a lawyer. You’ve built an excellent web site that looks good, has the potential to make huge sales and is well optimised for the search engines. You have arranged a large number of reciprocal links, you have submitted to all the free directories you could find and submitted articles wherever you could. Now it’s time to sit down, relax and wait for the traffic to come flooding in? NO.

As the internet expands it is becoming harder and harder for even the most excellent of web sites to rank well with the search engines. These days it would appear that getting a large number of quality backlinks, with good anchor text, is not a do once and forget operation. Your competitors are out there building links daily so you must keep up.

With the huge and growing number of people online looking for goods and services amongst the mass of related websites, niche directories are coming into play.

Niche directories are usually much smaller and have far fewer listings than regular paid directories and are almost without doubt a lot slimmer than the mass of free directories on the internet. As a webmaster, this is great news as it makes gaining a good, relevant and visible link to your site a lot easier. For visitors, your potential customers, a niche directory offers a handy way of finding what they are looking for quickly and easily.

Although there may be a small cost in submitting to niche directories, their benefit to your site can potentially be huge, offering far greater ROI than, say, a Yellow pages advert or more expensive advertising on a large web site in your genre.

If you feel it is time to gain a Niche Listing for your site then there is a handy categorised list at the author, Lee Munson’s site – Niche Directories

You had better sit down for this one because you are not going to believe it even after you let it sink in. Think about this for a second. Shop all you want and save over $1600. What could you do with an extra $1600? Shop some more?

So what am I talking about you may be asking yourself. Well, consider this before I give you the answer. Let’s say you go shopping twice each week. While you are driving all around town running in and out of all the different stores, you are spending money on gas. Now we all know the price at the pump is growing faster than unwanted weeds in a manicured lawn.

With more and more Americans driving the “luxury” SUV, the gas mileage is less than desirable. So, if you are driving an average of 85 miles while you are shopping, and your SUV gets only 15 miles per gallon, with the cost of a gallon of gas at $2.81 you are spending $15.93 in gasoline. That’s right, almost and extra $16.00 per shopping trip.

Now if you take that $15.93 and multiply it by the two shopping trips each week, you are spending $1656.72 in gas each year just to go shopping. Sure, the amount you are spending on gas will vary depending on how often you actually go shopping as well as the gas mileage you get and the cost of gas. However, as you can see in this example it can be the cost of a great new home theater, or maybe a nice vacation or cruse, or what ever you choose.

So how do you save this $1600 and keep shopping without cutting back on the things you buy? It’s really quite simple, you shop online. The cost of shopping online is zero. You can visit all the stores you want, shop all you want and never crank your car. And one other advantage to shopping online, it is environmental friendly.

Now if you want to save even more, be sure to take advantage of the sites that offer coupons and free shipping. Most of them have a code, which is automatically registered when you check out. This could add up to some great savings to go along with the money you save by shopping online.

Working for 23 years in the industrial distribution industry as sales, and in management, has given me an in-depth knowledge of the sales process as well as customer service. I have always found it to be true that without great customer service, you have no customers, just buyers. Therefore, I always try my best to exceed my customer’s expectations and provide them with only the best.

The same is true when it comes to my online venture providing shoppers a place they can relax, shop and find a great bargain. I offer designer clothing, home & garden items, bedding and more. I invite you to visit me at http://www.ochashomeshop.com.

The headline is the most important element in any sales message your company ever uses. It is the opening sentence you use in any sales letter, brochure, print ad, or on you Web site.

The purpose of a headline is to grab your prospect’s attention. Your headline should zero in on precisely who you want to reach, your target market. For example, if you want to reach homeowners, put the word “homeowners” in the headline.

The headline should serve as the ad for your ad. It should tell the reader immediately and clearly the essence of what you’re trying to say in the body copy. The headline needs to tell people what your big benefit or promise is. Your headline should appeal to the reader or listener’s self-interest.

The two most powerful words you can use in a headline are “free” and “new.” You cannot always use “free”, but you can always use “new”, if you try hard enough. Some other powerful words to put in your headlines are: “last chance”, “revolutionary”, “just arrived”, “easy”, “announcing”, “bargain”, “compare”, “how to”, ‘last chance”, “offer.”

A good headline explains how the reader, viewer or listener can save, gain, or accomplish something beneficial through the use of your product or service. How your product or service will increase his or her financial, social, or physical well-being. Or, if you’re taking the negative track, how your product or service will decrease the prospect or customer’s chances of personal, business, or financial loss.

It is important to remember, that when you’re writing a headline, your prospect is not buying a product or a service. Your prospect is buying the result or benefit that your product or service will provide to him or her. Always focus headlines on the benefit or result that your prospect will be receiving.

A headline is most effective when you speak directly to the reader, one reader at a time. Your message must telegraph the benefits the prospect himself or herself can expect to receive. Your headline should never talk about “we” or “our.” Your headline must be written or expressed with “you”, the individual reader’s direct interests in mind.

Here are few time-tested ideas for creating great headlines:

* Feature a price in your headline.

* Tell a story.

* Feature a free offer.

* Feature a price reduction or a reduced price

* Feature easy or more attractive payment terms.

To find the headline that has the strongest pulling power, you must test them. When you run a display ad, test your headlines against each other with the exact same body copy. You can check your results by using a differently coded coupon for each version of your ad. You can also, tell the prospects in your ad to specify a department number when they call or write. Or, you can ask the prospect where he or she saw or heard about your offer.

You should also keep detailed records of your results. Keep track of every piece of information that you need in your marketing. Be sure to differentiate in your record-keeping between responses and actual sales. Prospects are great, but sales are what you want.

Once you have all the results tabulated and you have one headline that out pulled the other, then test again. This time you use the winning headline against a new headline. Always compare your new headline against your proven winner. By doing this constantly you will always be sure you are getting the optimal return on your ads.

To start writing powerful headlines, you first have to ask yourself, “What is the primary benefit that your product or service provides to a prospect or customer?” Then pick out a few of the power words that I mentioned earlier and add them to the benefit that your product or service produces.

Here are just a few of the best headlines ever written:

* How I Improved My Memory In Just One Evening

* How To Win Friends And Influence People

* You Can Laugh At Money Worries — If You Follow This Simple Plan

* Who Else Wants A Screen Star Figure?

* Is The Life Of A Child Worth $1 To You?

Don’t limit yourself to writing a single headline. Write at least 25 or even 50 different headlines. If you get stuck, ask yourself, “If I were talking to a prospect about this benefit, I would be telling him or her how to . . . . .? Once you’ve written 25 to 50 headlines, pick out what you think are the best five and start testing them to find a winner.

Copyright©2006 by Joe Love and JLM & Associates, Inc. All rights reserved worldwide.

Joe Love draws on his 25 years of experience helping both individuals and companies build their businesses, increase profits, and achieve total success. He is the founder and CEO of JLM & Associates, a consulting and training organization, specializing in personal and business development. Through his seminars and lectures, Joe Love addresses thousands of men and women each year, including the executives and staffs of many of America’s largest corporations, on the subjects of leadership, self-esteem, goals, achievement, and success psychology.

Reach Joe at: joe@jlmandassociates.com

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Be honest- are you one of those people who waits to the very last minute to buy a birthday gift? Me too. Let’s just say that both of our lives are so busy that we usually don’t have time until the last minute to do the shopping that we need to. Fear not: the advent of the internet revolution allows a lot more flexibility and now this isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Ecommerce allows 24 hour real time shopping for your favorite merchandise (including birthday gifts). Here are 3 strategies to getting a great birthday gift at a good price.

1)Comparisons can do you well. Once you settle on a birthday gift, run it through the search engines to make sure you are getting a deal. I’ve literally saved up to 60% on some items just by picking it out from one merchant and then doing a price comparison from other merchants. Not all birthday gifts are priced the same (even if they are identical).

2)Search engines are your friend. All of them. If you are like the majority of the internet crowd (including myself), Google is where you search for everything. And most of the time, it is excellent. However, the merchants optimizing their sites for high Google rankings are numerous and competition is fierce for the top spots. Just because a site has the top spot on Google, doesn’t mean that that is the best website for what you are looking for. Try Yahoo and MSN. On a lot of occasions I’ve found better merchandise (including birthday gifts) on Yahoo and MSN search. I’m not sure why, it just adds to the selection of stuff I’m looking for. You are the birthday gift shopper, look around to all the engines for a variety of results.

3)Know how to look for a unique birthday gift. You can look all you want for birthday gifts, but if yours’ is the same as everyone else’s, you might come out looking a little funny or gasp!…even…uncreative. In fact, points #1 and #2 are completely irrelevant if you end up with the same gift as everyone else. Learn how to look for a unique gift and stand out from the crowd.

Tim Jeffries is author of “Birthday Gift Ideas for the Unique Soul.” Grab your copy at http://www.birthdaygiftland.com.