The Jeffrey And Tracey Info Emporium

Identity theft is the fastest growing crime in America! Over 12.7 percent of Americans reported they were victims of Identity Theft in the last five years! The misuse of existing credit card accounts has increased to over 71 percent in the last two years. Over all, Identity Theft has increased over 41 percent in the same period.

Identity Theft is a massive crime and it is virtually without risk. Unbelievably, only 25 percent of Identity Theft victims report this crime to the police.

In 2002, estimated financial losses to American businesses were over $33 billion dollars. The average victim lost over $10,200.00, and that does not begin to include the cost needed to recover from the abuse. On average a victim needed over 30 hours to recover from the theft. Significantly, the sooner the theft was discovered, the less the monetary damage and the quicker the recovery.

Overall, the amount of time needed for resolution increased as the length of time required for discovery increased. Seventy-six percent of the victims who discovered the theft within one month took less than 10 hours to resolve the issue. When the theft was discovered between one and five months only 59 percent were able to resolve the problem within ten hours. For those that discovered the theft more than six months after the event, less than 20 percent were able to reach a resolution in less than 10 hours.

Clearly, time is a critical component in protecting yourself and recovering from Identity Theft. Quick discovery can help reduce the amount of monetary damage AND the number of problems you may encounter when attempting to clean up the resulting mess!

Identity theft is more like a family of crimes. It takes several different forms.

New Account Fraud -

The most common form of Identity Theft is when the criminal obtains your personal information and uses it to obtain credit in your name.

Existing Account Fraud -

The second category concerns misuse of existing accounts. Again, the same documentation needed to open new accounts can be used to access the victim’s current accounts

Child Identity Fraud -

In this instance, a thief steals the identity of a child. Here is the catch with this one. You or your child may not know about the theft until they grow up and get out on their own! The thief can have almost twenty years to destroy the child’s name. Luckily, this is easy to clean up. Not even your credit company is going to believe a three year old applied for a loan to buy a car!

Deceased Persons Fraud -

This one can be almost as insidious as Child Identity Theft. Why, because who is going to complain! Here the thief steals the identity of a recently deceased person. With no one to complain, how long it can go on.

Work Place Identity Theft -

Here things get a little tricky. This type of identity theft can happen whether or not you know the assailant. In its simplest form, someone at your work steals your personal information and then your identity. That is bad enough, but what about someone stealing the information you entrust with a company?

Immigration Fraud -

Identity Theft is a problem on the immigration front also. Illegal aliens often attempt to use stolen or falsified documentation to enter the country. Your documentation can be used to establish the illegal immigrant’s right to work, in the United States.

Criminal Record Fraud -

The last type of Identity Theft is perhaps the most damaging! In this instance, the thief uses your information to leave you with a criminal record!

Imagine being pulled over for a speeding ticket only to find out you had several warrants out for your arrest!

How do you prevent Identity Theft? You prevent it by being proactive! Check your credit reports at least yearly! Check Equifax, Experian and Trans Union.

Equifax: (800) 525-6285
Experian: (800) 301-7195
Trans Union: (800) 680-7289

Be careful of how you dispose of your old mail. Utility bills Phone bills, school papers and many other items can give an identity thief all the ammunition needed to steal your life.

Pay attention to mail that you receive or do not receive, if you suddenly stop getting your credit card bill call the company and find out why. Your mailing address may have been changed without you knowing about it.

Identity theft can ruin your life if left undiscovered. Counter this by actively monitoring your credit and other accounts. Like other criminals, these thieves look for victims. People who proactively look after themselves and their families are seldom mistaken for victims.

Before you do anything else, call all three of the numbers listed above and order a copy of your credit report. Do it, right now!

Parrott Writing Services, a San Antonio Texas company specializing in web content, ghostwriting, website optimization, online/offline ad copy and technical writing to small businesses.

http://www.rickparrott.com

Very often SPAMMERS take advantage of catch-all email setup on webservers. Every email no matter what the recipients email address is will be caught by the default email account. It is highly recommended not to use catch-all email accounts and to discard SPAM send to non-existing email addresses. SPAM will clog up your SMTP server and consum resources like bandwidth and disk space in mailboxes. In most mail servers and web control panels (like cPanel) the user or admin can decide what will happen to emails with no existing recipient on the server. Refuse to the let emails onto the server and to let the sender’s mail server deal with it (option: “:fail:”) or to accept these incoming messages but then to delete them right away (option: “:blackhole:”.

Our conclusion:

:fail: is the preferred option over :blackhole:.

The :blackhole: option accepts everything sent to the domain mail server and then throws away the email going to a non-existing email account. This option uses the full amount of bandwidth, and also requires that the server be reading and writing messages to disk before they are deleted… multiply this by 1,000 messages a day or so and you can imagine the impact onto your server resources. Imagine your an email address from your domain (a non-existing one) has been spoofed to send out SPAM messages that even carry a virus. Most natural many of these messages will bounce back and hit your mail server. Your web server would have to deal with thousands of attachments at a time. Performance will go down - no matter what.

:fail: stops emails send to invalid recipients from entering the mail server in the first place..Exim will reject each message during the smtp handshake conversation - therefore the actual email message will never make it to your server. It is being refected from entering your system and the sender’s email server has to deal with the stuck message. This option is also the better one for legitimate emails where the sender has actually mis-spelled the recipients email address. He would get a bounce message informing him so that the error can be corrected. Depending on your hardware - a server can handle many more :fails: than it can do :blackholes:.

This article can be published by anyone as long as a live back link to http://www.webhostingresourcekit.com is provided. (this note can be removed as long as a link from the author’s resource box is provided)

Christoph Puetz is a successful small business owner (Net Services USA LLC) and international author.

Guides, Tutorials, and Articles for small businesses - http://www.webhostingresourcekit.com

Get Even! In a 24 hour period starting at 10: A.M. this past
Tuesday, and ending at the same time on Wednesday, I received
1,734 pieces of spam email. Now these were all unique addresses,
and some had 4 or 5 copies.

I have had it with this nonsense. Looking at the email
addresses, it was obvious that mine were being harvested from
the web.

There is software, similar to the protocol used by the search
engines, that allows someone to enter keywords, and it will
search the web for any web site that matches the keywords
entered. It will then capture any email addresses it finds. An
example of such software is “Atomic Harvester”.

I downloaded this software, which is fully functional in its
search capabilities, and is free if that is all you want. You
cannot however, save the addresses it finds unless you pay for
it. Not wishing to harvest any addresses from the web, I chose
the free version, as step one of my devious plan, so I could see
what the spamsters would find when they harvest my site.

Step two was a bit more work. Instead of simply deleting the
spam, I created a filter with my email reader that automatically
sends all spam identified to my trash bin. I use Eudora, which
makes this a rather easy task, but was still time consuming.
While this won’t provide a “spam free” inbox, it will cut down
on the junk one has to wade through. The rest I simply delete,
which also goes to the trash bin.

Now, I have all this spam in once place - my trash bin. But
wait, I said get even. A good friend of mine is proficient in
the “Perl” programming language. He wrote a program that goes
into my trash bin, and extracts all of the “From” email
addresses it finds. Now I have a file of all the return
addresses of anyone who sends me spam.

The majority of the professional spammers use a forged address,
which if you respond to it, is returned as undeliverable. Some
of the naïve newbies use a legitimate address.

I then put all of the addresses in a file on a web page with an
invisible link to it - let’s call it the “Trash Page”. If you
visit my site, you will never see it. But, a spammer using
harvesting software will hit that page. They will harvest each
and every address that I loaded onto that page.

Thinking they hit a bonanza, all those unduplicated addresses
will be captured by them. Now, two things will happen. First,
all the forged addresses on the list that they send to, will be
returned to them as undeliverable, causing them extra work to
clean their lists.

Second, all the spam received from a legitimate address, will be
on the lists of all the spamsters, and they will get their “just
deserts”.

Eventually, the pros will figure out what I have done, and will
block the web page that houses them. But that is not my goal. I
started putting those invisible links to that “Trash Page”, on a
number of my web pages. Now, they can’t just block a particular
page, but will have to block my entire domain. Great - now I
won’t have all the addresses on my site being harvested by these
miscreants.

If this idea snowballs, and I hope it does, a major percentage
of all the email addresses being sold by “email list providers”
will be worthless. You might think about this if you are ever
tempted to purchase their “thousands of email addresses” for
$49.95.

The spam problem is not going to go away in the foreseeable
future. If webmasters took the steps I have taken, it just might
go away sooner. Anyone who sends me an unsolicited email,
advertising their “latest and greatest, will wind up on this
list.

If you want to participate in this project, send an email to
mailto:scambusters@adv-marketing.com - please include the URL
for your web site. (I want to make sure you are legitimate, and
not a spamster on a “fishing expedition”)

Note - to participate, you must be able to upload web pages to
your site.

In today’s online world of high-speed websites and giant portals, every established Internet business boasts of delivering content via RSS.

RSS (Really Simple Syndication or Rich Site Summary), a simple XML based technology allows anyone to easily share content on the web. It’s a brand new way of reaching out to your users and subscribers without the fear of getting flamed or being slammed of illegal mailing.

RSS has almost become like an important accessory for content oriented websites. No wonder it has become one of the fastest growing publishing standards on the web.

Since publishers can easily make their content syndicated through RSS and thus drive more targeted traffic to their website or blog.

Here are the top 7 reasons why your business should use RSS:

1. Improve Search Engine Ranking - Search engines are desperately looking for content that is fresh and is updated on a regular basis. Since RSS allows you to update your content from time to time, the search engine spiders visit your site more frequently. Resulting in better ranking and more traffic from the major search engines, as well as RSS specific search engines and directories like Feedster and Syndic8.

2. Automate Delivery of Your Content - Delivering your content manually involves many hassles and other automation methods are out dated. Whereas RSS makes your content delivery automated. You don’t need to send a message like email, each time you provide an update. This makes your business almost hands free and puts the distribution of your publication on autopilot. As a result, your subscribers get freshly updated content of their choice at regular intervals. They get an ongoing, automated delivery of information from you without any chance of it getting blocked.

3. Easily Generate New Targeted Subscribers - A lot of web users are switching to RSS feeds to receive content they like. You can establish a direct connection with your subscribers as soon as they add your feed. RSS can bring you new targeted subscribers to your website with little effort. Since most of the people today are reluctant to give out their email address (thanks to heavy spamming), RSS can act as a real savior for your businesses. What’s more, your messages will never get blacklisted or filtered and will always be delivered promptly, unless and until your subscribers choose to end the relationship. Not only can RSS build a strong relationship with existing subscribers but will also help in attracting new potent subscribers who are interested in what you offer.

4. Drive Quality Traffic From Other Websites - Syndication is the process sharing content. Therefore, RSS allows you to easily publish your content on other websites. By publishing your content on different sites you’ll reap profits for a long time. You can very well reach new audiences of different interests, giving your website the ability to gain new visitors from the different corners of the web. With that, your sales also dramatically increase because of the additional targeted traffic you receive due to the extra exposure. Finally, you can achieve a higher ratio of profits and also gain recognition as an expert in your field. Since giving your business a professional recognition is important and that is exactly what happens when you start sharing your content with other similar websites.

5. Broaden Your Marketing Horizon -When you’re marketing on the Internet it’s important to keep yourself updated and in the process broaden your marketing horizons. With RSS, you can explore new marketing realms. Your resellers or affiliates can promote your products very easily using RSS. Giving them complete freedom of marketing without much effort. You can also provide them with RSS feeds of articles written by you customized with their affiliate links and let them distribute them. And coming to the higher end of it, you can distribute RSS product feeds and digital catalogues just like Amazon started doing not so long ago. There’s much more which you can come up with when you combine marketing with RSS. You’ll actually have a chance to do something new in the over-crowded Internet marketing field.

6. Widen Your Content Distribution - It’s very important to widen the distribution of your content if you want to reach a larger number of people. And it’s not so easy to experiment with your content when you’re using email. RSS provides the right platform for you to try out content distribution in many ways. For example, you can now categorize your content delivery because RSS will help you widen your present distribution. You don’t have to worry about publishing a monthly or a weekly publication. Syndication of your content enables you to efficiently provide daily content updates to your subscribers or as often as you want. Providing useful content to your subscribers from time to time builds a deeper relationship and a better understanding.

7. Increase Brand Awareness - Building brand awareness on the Internet can be difficult when you have clones of your product popping up everywhere. In fact, the online competition is so cut throat that it’s almost impossible to survive if you don’t build a strong image. Syndicating your content through RSS helps you make an unshakable impression and get that most wanted response from your subscribers. Since, they are the ones who choose to receive updates from you, it gives you a good platform to showcase how different you are from your competitors. RSS is a technology which is soon catching up, pretty fast, so the “really” early bird gets the worm!

There are numerous ways by which you can make your content work through RSS. You just have to choose the one which is suitable for your business and syndicate your way to success!

Mustafa Khundmiri is the co-founder of http://www.rapidfeeds.com - A Free online service, which helps anyone, create, edit, publish, and track RSS feeds online. Sign Up for your FREE account on his site and start publishing your own RSS feeds!

Am I Just Being Paranoid Or Are The Robots Out To Get Me?

It all started in the early part of the twenty-first century.

In the early days of email we were thrilled with its speed and reliability, far superior to “snail mail” but there’s always somebody who has to go and spoil things for everyone else. In the case of email it was the purveyors of the namesake of a certain pork-based substance. They became such a nuisance that large teams of robots had to be employed to keep them under control.

As the porkers got smarter, the robots had to become smarter still. At first, everybody agreed that stringent measures must be taken to defeat the porkers. Ever hear the phrase “throwing the baby out with the bath water” or “the cure is worse than the disease”?

The number of spam merchants multiplied over and over. Eventually, the only way of controlling them was for every email user to have his or her own robot to filter their mail. I did not want a robot filtering my mail but I didn’t have much choice: nobody was allowed an email account without a robot to monitor its use.

Every time I log into my email, I pause and listen for the faint metallic scraping and a slight pneumatic wheeze as the robot wakes and prepares to filter my mail. No matter how quiet I am, he always knows and is instantly awake and alert, ready to do his job. I did not request robotic help, don’t want it, don’t need it but the robot is here to stay.

I think my robot is like the paranoid android in The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy: slow moving and depressive, so I call him Marvin (not to his face, of course). I don’t suppose my Marvin feels that censoring my mail is a suitable occupation for a robot of his caliber, any more that his namesake thought attending the car park at the end of the universe was a great career for a robot with a brain the size of a planet. On my part, I am sure that I am old enough to take full responsibility for my own correspondence. There is no need for Marvin to wear out his circuits on my account but it appears that we are stuck with each other for the duration.

The extent of Marvin’s power first caught my attention when a regular newsletter which I enjoyed failed to arrive. Delivery just stopped altogether.

I asked my email provider if there was a problem with this particular mail and they said there was nothing wrong with my mailbox, it must be a problem with the sender. I asked the sender why delivery had stopped and they said it hadn’t, it must be a problem with my mailbox. I gave up and just resubscribed myself to the newsletter. Every time delivery stopped after that I wondered what else I might be missing in the way of interesting mail.

It was shortly after this that it became apparent to me that Marvin has a bad attitude. Now I can sympathise with him because I know how it feels to be stuck in a boring job while the brain cells shrivel. That doesn’t mean I think he should behave badly, he should do the job to the best of his ability (even if it is beneath him) and not make mischief.

Everyone seems to believe that the robots keep changing the rules in an effort to keep ahead of the porkers but I don’t believe that. I think they keep changing the rules mostly out of boredom but, in Marvin’s case, I sense a certain underlying malevolence. This surfaced recently when I sent an email to a friend I had not heard from for a while. My mail bounced back with a message to the effect that spam would not be delivered. How dare they, Spam indeed! From that day on, every mail I tried to send bounced straight back at me.

Angrily, I contacted the email company support desk to complain. They helpfully told me that this problem was nothing to do with them, I must have used forbidden words in my emails and that was why they bounced. The forbidden words included “friend”, “free”, “you”, “internet”, “remove”. The list of forbidden words is long and growing longer by the day, it is difficult to make up proper sentences without using the forbidden words, soon our only way of emailing will be by inventing a new language.

My problem now is that I cannot get email through to my friends and they cannot get email to me. Too late I realised that we neglected to exchange phone numbers: there seemed no point when email was so quick and easy. Now I can’t send email, can’t receive email, the robot has isolated me.

Only one way left to break out of quarantine and it’s a long time since I sat with pen and paper to write letters. I won’t use the word processor as I am convinced Marvin will recognise it as a means of communication but I don’t think he will know what the pen is for and I doubt he’ll be suspicious if I take some envelopes with me next time I go out. A glorified email filter is hardly likely to know the purpose of a mailbox which is not of the virtual variety.

I hear Marvin stir even though I have not switched on my computer, he seems to have the ability to read my mind. There is a faint clanking sound, the smell of ozone, an electrical crackle in the air. His hand on my shoulder is heavy and cold, the steel joints creak as his fingers tighten. I don’t think I will be going out to post any letters.

This is one of a series of articles
published by the author, Elaine Currie, BA(Hons)
at http://www.HuntingVenus.com
The author’s monthly newsletter is available free
from mailto:networkerhvm@ReportsNetwork.com

It was Friday night. I finished reading a book about RSS feeds. Quickly set up one for my site, submitted it on directories and went to bed.

Sunday morning, I noticed a sale. Idly, I scanned my logs to see where the buyer had found me.

It was from Yahoo! Now that may not seem surprising, except… I had not been listed in Yahoo! before.

Curious, I did a Yahoo! Search for my domain name… and almost fainted in shock! There were 123 of my pages listed - many of them in the top 10 ranks on my best keywords.

My RSS feed had been listed within 48 hours - and since my other pages were linked from it, they had all been indexed by Yahoo! just as quickly. And for free!

Since then I have heard many others share similar experiences. It is no fluke. RSS is H-O-T. And search engines LOVE it.

So what is RSS? An acronym for Really Simple Syndication, it is a web language format designed to help syndicate content across different sources.

RSS has been around for more than 10 years but has only recently become popular. RSS feeds provide headlines and summaries of information in a concise and standardized way.

The rise in RSS popularity, specially among marketers, has many reasons. Email filters and new legislation have lowered the effectiveness of email marketing. Content syndication in many different ways is gathering momentum. And fresh, frequently updated content is the very essence of the Web.

How can you use RSS feeds in your marketing? Is there a way to turn RSS feeds into profits?

Absolutely. Here are some ideas:

1. Beat email filters. Ask your subscribers, prospects and clients to sign up to your RSS feed along with your email newsletter. If the ezine gets blocked, they’ll still get your RSS feed.

2. Spread the word. Offer your new, valuable content to many other ‘lazy’ website owners - in return for getting extra exposure of your name and brand to their audiences.

3. Get listed on search engines. No one knows how long this ‘honeymoon’ will last. But ride the wave - and get into search engines quickly, inexpensively - by submitting your RSS feeds to them.

4. Use the first-mover advantage. Dedicated RSS directories are mushrooming. Make sure your RSS feed is indexed in them and you could future-proof your business. Imagine if you were one of the first sites to be indexed in Google or Yahoo 5 years ago!

5. Offer your readers new content. Keep creating your own content - but also use RSS feed syndication to offer other people’s content to your list. Less pain, less strain, more gain.

And that’s not all. On a bet, I sat down and listed 41 different ideas to profit from RSS feeds. I’m sure you can do it too - and turn the hot new revolution in online communication into a money magnet for your ebusiness.

Happy blogging.

About The Author

Dr.Mani Sivasubramanian has been marketing with blogs for over 3 years. His free 5 day RSS Primer explains the basics of RSS Marketing - sign up here: http://www.RSS-Marketing.com He is also author of ‘How To Profit From RSS Feeds - 41 Quick & Easy Ideas For RSS Feed Publishers’ - http://www.RSS-Marketing.com/book.htm

Everyone on the internet is concerned about the prevalence of
unsolicited email, AKA spam.

I understand their concern, but there has to be a better way to
handle the situation than through the bully tactics of elitist
groups such as Spam Cop.

I’ve been a target of their guilty until innocent tactics and no
matter how many times I prove that I’ve spammed no one they
twist the situation into it being my fault.

They remind me of the Spanish Inquisitors torturing “heretics”
at the stake, the truth be damned. They twist the wording of
emails to make any answer wrong.

I don’t know how in a country like America where we’re innocent
until proven guilty, it is just the opposite with the IRS and
Spam Cop.

It’s like an analyst asking a patient if they still hate their
mother. There is no possible way to answer correctly.

It’s time for marketers to wake up to the fact that anyone is
their target. They can cause you more hassles and affect your
business for any reason or no reason.

Where are the advocates of free speech? Where are the advocates
of free enterprise?

Wake up marketers, you could be next. You could be the next one
attacked by the Spam Cop McCarthyism. Don’t take your liberty
for granted.

The internet is still experiencing growing pains and for some
reason these individuals have appointed themselves as the
internets version of Hitler’s Brown Shirts.

I refuse to cave in to these elitists who feel it’s their duty
to tell me how I’m in the wrong no matter what the proof to the
contrary.

The media already controls the air waves. The internet is one of
the only bastions of free expression left for the average
person.

Don’t let freedom of speech and free enterprise go onto the
endangered species list because of these self - appointed
censors.

I will not go quietly and I hope you feel the same way.

If I wanted to be controlled by a dictator I’d move to Iraq.

Since I live in America, I still expect due process and I refuse
to cave in to faceless terrorists.

Let freedom ring.

Wishing You Success, John

Businesses and consumers are drowning in a never-ending deluge
of Spam (junk mail) – according to reports just released by
Quris, Inc. Spam has increased 450% from June of 2001 to now.
Furthermore, 70% of respondents indicated they are receiving so
much e-mail in the form of Spam that it’s negating their
acceptance and responsiveness to legitimate opt-in e-mail
messages (permission based). The average business user is forced
to spend 20-30 minutes a day wading through Spam clogged e-mail
in-boxes trying to separate legitimate e-mail from the junk in
order to delete the latter.

Many companies have tried to offer Spam solutions that are based
primarily on filtering technology. But, most of these products
and services have not worked well in practice – the ingenious
spammers have learned work arounds by constantly changing their
fake e-mail addresses and text to avoid the blocking filters.
It’s been a war of attrition to date and the spammers have been
wining so far!

I am pleased to report that one company has developed an elegant
but simple solution that has blocked 100% of the Spam that was
sent to me during a test period of five days. The company is
DigiPortal Software, Inc. www.digiportal.com and their Spam
killer application is called ChoiceMail. It works extremely
well, is easy to setup and only costs $29.95 (introductory
price) and they even offer a fourteen-day trial period for no
charge to test drive the product. And, the solution runs on your
desktop and does not necessitate your working with a third party
server and doesn’t require any service charges. Most
importantly, it puts the burden of proof on the Spammers,
forcing them to have your permission to contact you.

Here is how DigiPortal’s clever solution and software work: You
download or purchase the software and install it on your PC
(sorry PC version only right now) and setup your approval list
by exporting your address book. From that point forward
ChoiceMail automatically assumes all inbound e-mail is Spam and
it blocks any e-mail that is not on an approved list that you
have created.

If the e-mail sender is on your approved list it makes it
through to your inbox; if not, then ChoiceMail blocks the mail
if the address and adds it to a rejection list and sends the
sender a notification that your on a “permission network” and
that he/she has to clickthrough to a web site and send you a
message by filling out a form that automatically forwards the
person’s message to you, so you can elect to receive or not.

DigiPortal is effectively acting as a trusted middleman in a
process that reminds me of PGP (“Pretty Good Privacy”) the
defacto industry standard e-mail security application that
incorporates a similar process via a key held by a trusted third
party. Your ostensibly guaranteed never to receive any Spam
based e-mail as spammers will never receive your e-mail, let
alone reply to it – most use automated systems that have no
human intervention in the process. It’s relatively painless for
you to manage new contacts - if your receiving in-bound e-mails
from a new a person (contact) that you have no existing
relationship with it’s easy to accept his/her request to reach
you and the software also automatically updates your permission
list.

ChoiceMail is an elegant solution that works well, is easy to
use and solves a problem very cost effectively. There are a few
hiccups with the software – but, these are minor when you
consider the significant benefits of the product and assuming
the company will broaden its support for other applications in
the near term. At present DigiPortal only works with standard
ISPs such as Earthlink, ATT, etc. and with specific desktop
clients including Outlook Express and Eudora – no web-based
e-mail services (HotMail or Yahoo mail) work with the software
yet and there is no support for AOL at present. My biggest
complaint is that they don’t support a standard Outlook e-mail -
you have to manually import your contact list from Outlook,
which can be painstaking depending on the number of recipients
in your address book. And, their initial focus is on the small
business user or consumer, as they offer no support at present
for the corporate enterprise.

I received an email the other day from a work at home mom who
recently started a small publishing company. She wanted to start
selling advertising to other WAHM businesses but was concerned
about bulk emailing them… with good reason.

Spam is the four-letter word that most offends those of us
working online. Everyone with a website receives it and like bad
art, we all know it when we see it. But also -like art- in a
way, spam is in the eye of the beholder. I have participated in
discussions that disintegrated because each member had his or
her own definition of spam and was angry at those who disagreed.

In the offline world, it is perfectly acceptable to cold-call or
snail mail a business to tell them about a product or service
you offer. When I worked in an office environment, I took such
calls all the time. Often, I said ‘no thank you’ and that was
the end of it. But every once in a while, the call came in at
just the time I was searching for such an item - and a sale
would be made.

Of course, the power and low-cost of email make this an inexact
comparison. So what do you do when you have a product or service
that you *know* your target market *needs* — and you want to
use the power of the Internet to let them know about it?

THE PERSONAL APPROACH

The keywords are ‘target market.’ Find out who they are by doing
an Internet search to find them. Check out sites which include
directories of businesses in your target market. Then, visit
those sites - and send their owners a *personal* email pitching
your product. Be sure to use their *names* and comment on
something you learn about their businesses from their sites. If
they offer newsletters, sign up for them and comment upon
something you read there. This establishes a prior business
relationship and is not considered spam by *most* people.

However, even this personal approach will offend *some*
webmasters, and it will cost you a lot of time relative to the
number of people you reach. A more efficient means of getting
your message out would be to join discussion groups geared to
your audience and announce your product there.

ONLINE NETWORKING THROUGH DISCUSSION LISTS

But message boards and discussion lists have their own spam
issues. When joining a list, you must read their guidelines and
follow them. Sending out a blatant advertisement to the members
of a discussion list will not be tolerated - but you are welcome
to describe your business where it is *appropriate* (i.e.,
someone asks where they can find a product just like yours and
you announce that you just happen to sell that).

You are also allowed to put information in your sig line that
directs people to your website - so whenever you contribute to
the discussion, you have an opportunity to promote your business.

When you join, sit back for a couple of days and follow the
conversation so you can get a feel for the tone of the
discussion, the people involved and what is customary among
them. Then, introduce yourself as a new member (which also give
you an opportunity to bring up the subject of your business,
website, product - within the guidelines they set when you join).

An added benefit to marketing through discussion groups is the
fact that you will build new relationships with other business
people that can lead to joint ventures, assistance and even
friendship. In the offline world, it is similar to being part of
a chamber of commerce or other networking group and it works
just as well on the web.

At the ParentPreneur Club, we have our own discussion group, PPC
Advisory, where members brainstorm the issues they face as work
at home parents. To join, email <
mailto:ppca-subscribe@topica.com > .

Here are more of my favorite groups targeted to work at home
parents. You’ll find others specific to your needs by searching
for them at < http://www.yahoogroups.com > and <
http://www.topica.com >

< mailto:clubmom-affiliates-subscribe@yahoogroups.com > This
group is made up of members of the Club Mom affiliate program.
All members have websites with mom-related content and products,
which makes them ideal partners for the Club Mom membership
program. You must be an affiliate of Club Mom to be a member of
this list.

< mailto:DirectSelling-subscribe@yahoogroups.com > For direct
sales consultants who exchange ideas and suggestions on building
a client base, fund raising, recruiting, booking, inspiration,
motivation, party games, contests, merchandising, holiday ideas
and more.

< mailto:EP-subscribe@yahoogroups.com > This is a function of
the Entrepreneurial Parents (http://www.en-parent.com ) website.
A forum for Entrepreneurial Parents (EPs) to connect directly
with each other, discussing topics ranging from balancing work
and family under one roof, to sharing practical business tips,
to collective brainstorming, to supporting each other in
responsible parenthood.

< mailto:themompack-subscribe@yahoogroups.com > The MomPack (TM)
is a cooperative, not-for-profit organization, founded by
working moms, run by working moms and for working moms to
exchange business information amongst each other to help promote
and advertise each other’s businesses on and offline.

DON’T FORGET THE SEARCH ENGINES!

Do not overlook the value of getting your site listed in search
engines, which will bring prospective customers to *you*. There
are still many engines that will list your site for free. If you
plan to do this yourself, walk do not run to <
http://www.jimtools.com >. Jim Wilson carries one of the most
complete free site submission resources we have seen.

Merle at < http://www.mcpromotions.com > also has a wealth of
resources at her site. She specializes in promoting websites and
handles our monthly search engine submissions for the
ParentPreneur Club. Her prices are very reasonable.

GET PUBLICITY

Press releases should be part of your marketing plan, as well.
There is nothing so cost effective as having your business
mentioned in an offline publication or other medium. One
newspaper article could result in dozens of leads for your
business. Karon Thackston has put together a free email course
on how to write effective press releases. To receive it, send a
blank email to < mailto:pressrelease@zipresponse.com > Karon can
also handle your PR needs. < http://www.ktamarketing.com >

Another interesting offer comes from JeriLynn Thomas of the
Womens News Bureau. Jerilynn is offering a PR Boot Camp tailored
to the needs of female entrepreneurs. Check it out at <
http://www.womensnewsbureau.com/prbootcamp.htm >

EZINE ADVERTISING

Finally, there will come a time when you will need to pay for
some advertising. Ezines that go out to your target audience
give you a big bang for your advertising buck - your cost per
thousand (CPM) is generally way less than what you could expect
to pay in other media. Most sites that publish an ezine carry an
advertising page.

We could devote several more articles to the particulars of
writing ads and creating marketing campaigns. The one thing you
need to keep in mind is that writing advertising copy is not an
exact science. No one can guarantee how your audience will
respond to an ad, no matter how well you think it turned out.
The big marketers always test ads first and we suggest you do.
You can buy ezine ads at deep discounts at <
http://www.ezineadauction.com > (another site run by Merle of
MCPromotions). We use it ourselves to sell remnant space in our
ezines and have bought ads in other newsletters at a fraction of
their published rates. This is a great resource for anyone who
needs to advertise their businesses.

As you can see, there are lots of low-cost options for promoting
your business online that do not entail bulk email. They’re easy
to implement and are proven to work… try them and see!

One of the things I am constantly asked about is why doesn’t my
content rich website get better placed in the search engines. I
am told that they have followed all the advice about content
rich pages, they have used good metatags, yet still cannot get
into the top 50 never mind the top 10.

Now having content rich web pages is a must do, you can’t hope
to succeed on the Internet without them. It’s absolutely useless
putting up web pages with nothing more than banner ads for your
affiliate programmes and expect to sell anything. Your
prospective customer has to trust you, and normally has to
return several times before they buy from you.

So if all they see is banner ads, they will just click through
and buy somewhere else. What you need to do is pre-sell your
affiliate merchandise, and leave the hard sell to the merchant
involved. Picture this: a customer turns up to your page from
that hard earned search engine position, sees 20 banner ads for
different products and an attempt to take her money on the spot.
You now have one suspicious customer and their credit card
clicking back to the search engine for another link.

On the next link she finds an article fairly well written about
the particular subject she is looking for and in that article
are links to products that can solve the problem for her. Bingo
a customer who may buy, if she clicks onto that link she goes to
your affiliate merchant in a decent frame of mind where you’re
affiliate merchant can do the hard sell and you have earned some
commission.

Notice I said fairly well written, because you don’t have to be
a copy write genius to pre-sell your products. You don’t even
have to write the whole thing yourself, there’s nothing wrong
with taking a pre written report and changing it to suit your
needs, obviously it would be polite and politically expedient to
include a mention for the original author with his or her
website URL. Other than that the article can include all your
links inside it.

There are many sites that include free reports with full reprint
rights that you can use, and indeed free e-books as well. On the
hotbobs site there are a number of free reports and e-books that
you can give away from your site.

Web sites come and go each day on the Internet. If you visit a
web site and find it to be a great resource, show your support
for that web site by giving them a link. In addition, tell your
enzine subscribers about them. By supporting your favourite web
sites, you can show your appreciation for all of the hours and
hours of hard work that goes into developing the web site and
help ensure it will be there the next time you visit. Without
your support, many of your favourite web sites may not be there
in the future. Now having got the arguments for content rich
sites out of the way its time to address the problem with search
engine placement. Nine times out of ten sites that have good
content and should have ranked higher, fail to reach their
higher placement because of the way they were submitted to the
search engines in the first place.

Even with content, good metatags and keywords, you still have to
submit properly and that means not spamming the search engines,
perfectly good web sites have been penalised by the top ten
engines because they submitted to many pages at one go. You must
keep a record of how and when each search engine likes to be
submitted to and this is different for each one. If you have a
30 page or more web site, this can be a nightmare, and so people
tend to use submission software, or services depending on there
budget. The top ten search engines will detect that it is a
submission service and rank you lower because of it also with
submission software they can detect any multiple submissions for
a single website.

So what’s the answer you ask: Surprisingly its new stealth
submission software by Michael Campbell “search engine
commando”. This beautiful piece of software submits to each
engine with that engines logarithms in mind and at the frequency
best suited to each search engine. Even better than being
undetectable by the search engines it sits on your desktop and
submits in the background as you are doing other things (as long
as you are connected to the net of course). You don’t even have
to sit for hours typing in your URL’s it automatically spiders
your website for all the pages and gives you the option of
deleting those pages you don’t want spidered. Ie: those that are
password protected, or your thank you pages for clickbank.

This software was originally commissioned by Michael for his own
use, but he has now made it available to the public and guess
what you can even use it to create a site map so the search
engines can spider your site much quicker. Here are some of the
benefits

* automates search engine submissions with the same care and
attention as if you were doing it manually * amazing software
plays “within” the search engine rules of one web page, per URL,
per day * spiders folders on your hard drive to find html pages,
no more manual typing in URLs * software runs on your PC, no
third party service will know your submissions or who your
clients are * expert controls let you shut off the safety switch
and take total control over your domains * tracks which page was
submitted where, on what date, and what pages are next * tracks
and submits unlimited pages, across unlimited web sites and does
it all automatically

With the advent of new even smarter spider software it is vital
that you keep up to date with the search engine submission rules
or you will be placed in those out of the way pages where nobody
but you goes looking for your site.

To find out more about this software and lots of other time
saving idea’s visit http://www.hotbobs.com While your there
subscribe to our affiliate know-how newsletter, and join are
private marketing community.