Article Submission Services | One Way Link Building | Manual Article Submissions :: Articles Of Advice - Articles - Tools and Resources

Top Five Favorite Ways for Women Entrepreneurs to Become More Productive

no@spam.com (Susan Reid) — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 16:36:21 EDT

Do you need to increase your productivity and efficiency?
Would you like to know what are the favored techniques of
successful women entrepreneurs when it comes to increasing
productivity? I wanted to know, too.

Recently, I conducted an informal survey of 250 women
entrepreneurs asking them this question: "What's the number
one thing you do to boost your productivity? "

Listed in reverse order, here are the results:

5. Prioritize your daily list using the "ABCD and E" method.

A = must do.

B = should do.

C = would be nice to do.

D = delegate.

E = eliminate.

4. Delegate everything possible.

If it isn't directly making you money, it's time to
delegate it to someone else. Turn over data entry tasks,
packing and shipping, and answering non-essential emails
and calls to a competent administrative professional. Not
sure how to tell if you should turn something over? Ask
yourself, "Does this task need my direct attention, or can
it be done by someone else?" As an enterprising
entrepreneur, your job is to concentrate on what is of most
value to you and your business success, not on errands.

3. Break up projects into tasks.

If you have something on your to do list that's been there
for a long time, realize that it's probably not a task.
It's a project. To do lists are for discreet tasks. When
you put a project on your list, you'll get bogged down and
productivity will slow. Many of the women surveyed use
business strategist Brian Tracy's method for breaking up
projects into easy-to-do tasks:

+ First, list the finished result you want.

+ Next, map out each step of the project.

+ Then, put the steps into order, putting the important
steps to the front.

+ Now, delegate tasks and assign responsibilities.

+ Finally, devise a way to track the progress of the
project.

2. Give only 20% to what is urgent and a full 80% of your
attention to what is important.

As an entrepreneur, your job is to discern the difference
between what's important and what's urgent. To figure out
the difference between the two, ask yourself, "Will
focusing on this move my business forward and make me money
or will I just be putting out fires?" Dealing with the
urgent all day is draining. Dealing with what's important
is energizing. Make sure you're giving a full 80% of your
time and attention to what's important each day.

1. Focus on one thing at a time.

The #1 thing women entrepreneurs do to boost productivity
is... focus on one thing at a time. Although women are
known to be natural multi-taskers, surprisingly, those
surveyed said they were able to get more done when they
focused on one thing at a time. Starting and stopping in
the middle of things was frustrating for them and meant
that not much was completed at day's end.

What is the number one thing you consistently do to boost
your productivity? As you've just seen, among the 250 women
entrepreneurs I surveyed their answers ranged from
prioritizing their daily to do list to learning to break
projects up into smaller. Decide which of their favorite
techniques will help you the most, and start implementing
them right now. You're sure to boost productivity for
yourself and your business.

Make a Video Slide Show Of Your Seminar

no@spam.com (Thomas Christopher) — Wed, 19 Aug 2009 11:12:28 EDT

Make a video slide show of your seminar, and you create
additional income streams selling it on CDs or DVDs at your
speeches and other seminars and selling it over the web
either on CDs and DVDs or for download.

It's both simple and cheap to create a video slide show of
your seminar. Here's a recipe:

Ingredients:

An audio recording of your seminar.

Your slides for the seminar.

A digital photograph of you looking into the camera.

"Utensils":

A slide presentation program such as Open Office (Star
Office) Impress or Microsoft Powerpoint.

A video editing program such as Windows Movie Maker.

A computer with enough speed and disk memory.

Preparation:

Create a slide background for your presentation that
includes your picture in a corner. Seeing your face will
make viewing the show feel more like being present for a
live presentation.

If you expect people to watch the video over the internet
and you have slides with a great many bullet points or a
small font size split the slides up to have fewer bullet
points. Use a larger font on each. You will probably need
to make the window size smaller to allow the video file to
download quickly, and small text will be unreadable. If you
have slide animation such as bullet points sliding in, you
may need to create copies of the slide with increasing many
points showing on each one. The effects won't appear in the
sequences of slide images you load into the video editor.

Get an image file for each slide. Saving the slides as HTML
will give you a picture of each slide. (In Open
Office/Star Office, look under File>Export. )

Load the audio recording into your video editing program.

Drag the audio recording into the sound track. Edit the
audio file adjusting the volume and removing periods of
silence and extraneous material. You can do this, perhaps
better, in an audio editing program before loading it into
your video editing program.

Drag the slide pictures into your video editing program.

Drag one slide image at a time into the video track and
adjust the duration to match the audio it covers. If you
want to have a transition such as a dissolve from one slide
to the next, make the first slide last a little past the
point of transition. The next slide will start to appear
overlapped with the end of its predecessor.

Write out the video slide show file. You'll have a lot of
choices for output format. If you plan to have people view
the videos over the web, you better go for small files,
which is to say, small image size. For a DVD, you can make
them considerably larger.

Put the video slide show file up on your web site for
download or viewing, or make DVDs or digital CDs from the
file. There are plenty of companies that will duplicate
disks, label them, put them in cases with cover and side
art, and shrink-wrap them for you.

What's The Difference Between Your Internet Marketing Business And All The Others?

no@spam.com (Malcolm Leyshon) — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 13:10:36 EDT

So you've just set up an Internet marketing business and
are hoping to make money by offering people products and
programs that will help them to make money by setting up an
Internet marketing business on the Internet.

You are not the only one. In fact you are probably up
against several hundred thousand competitors in this
tightly packed and very popular marketing niche. So the
question I asked in the title to this article is especially
relevant to you. If you're website looks pretty much the
same as all the others out there, why should anybody buy
anything from you and not from some other Tom, Dick or
Harry?

And why is it that so many people set up in this niche only
to fail dismally? You may have heard that 95% of all
Internet marketers fail to make any money on the Internet.
And most of those people were trying to make money in the
highly profitable "make money on the Internet" niche.

One of the reasons why so many people fail, apart from the
fact that they are lazy, incompetent, and unwilling to
learn, is that they never do enough to differentiate their
business from all the others and make it appealing.

Just take a look at the success stories, the top Internet
marketers, the ones that you always want to buy from.
What's special about them? What do they do that all the
failures fail to do?

You probably know about some of the successful marketers
that I'm talking about. You probably know their names.
You've probably seen their photographs on the Internet. You
might even have watched one of their videos or listened to
one of their sound recordings. Perhaps you have even bought
one of their unique products. Maybe you have come back for
some more and bought an affiliate product based on one of
their recommendations. Maybe you went so far as to drop
them a line to let them know how much you have learned from
them.

If my previous paragraph struck a chord with you, then I
have some good news for you. You already have the secret to
success right there before your eyes. In that paragraph I
told you everything. Really, I should sell that paragraph
to you for a few hundred dollars so that you will
appreciate how valuable it is. But I'm not going to do
that. Instead let me just lay out the key points, which are
the things that will make a difference to your Internet
marketing business. You don't have to be a marketing
genius, you don't have to be a technical whizz kid. You can
be just plain average and still make a lot of money on the
Internet if you know what to do and start heading in the
right direction.

Obviously, I can't teach you everything in this article,
but the one thing I can do is emphasise that in a
competitive market you need to differentiate your website
and your business from all the others out there. That is
what all those people who succeed on the Internet do.

Here's how they do it. Remember, I told you all this in
that one paragraph, but I'd like to lay it out plain and
clear for you in this checklist.

1. They let you know who they are. That's why you know
their names.

2. They show you who they are. That's why you seen their
photographs or have watched their videos.

3. They develop unique products which sets them apart from
each other and the rest of the competition.

4. The products they develop are highly targeted to appeal
to their market niche.

5. They offer other products, including affiliate products
to their list of customers.

6. Many people buy affiliate products from them because
they have learned to trust them.

7. They encourage interaction with their customer base,
through blogs, e-mail, Skype and other communications media.

So if you want to make a difference for your Internet
marketing business, use this quick checklist as a quick
guide for developing your own unique presence on the
Internet. If you want to succeed, you must learn to be
different; if you want to be different you must learn to
copy from those who have already succeeded. By taking these
steps you will make a big positive difference to your
Internet marketing business, no matter what your level of
skill or experience at the moment.

Make Info Products From Recordings of Your Speeches

no@spam.com (Thomas Christopher) — Mon, 17 Aug 2009 10:05:50 EDT

A self-employed professional needs to be a public speaker.
Giving away abundant, valuable information makes you the
person people think of first when they need help.

But speaking isn't enough. You need to create information
products. We used to say, "write a book," but there are
more ways to package information than that. If you hand
out free, promotional material, people will think nothing
of throwing it away. But if they pay for it, they will look
at it. If they find it valuable, they will keep it, and it
will remind them of you.

But when do you have the time to create these products?
Most of the work is already done if you record your
speeches. Here are seven ways you can use the audio
recording of your speech:

1. Sell it on CDs "back-of-the- room" at your public
speaking engagements. Some people listen to CDs during
their drive time for information, inspiration, or
motivation. A CD may be more valuable to them than a book.

2. Send it out for your CD-of-the-month club. Many people
who listen to CDs during their drive time will gladly pay
$20 a month to receive CD's. CD clubs are a good form of
"continuity income": they show an obvious benefit of
membership that arrives each month.

3. Sell the recording as a digital download. Digital
downloads have almost no cost other than processing the
credit cards.

4. Better yet, repackage them. Cut the recording into
parts, edit in a musical introduction, and use them as
podcasts. You can sell them, or give them away free as
promotions: Use them in your blog and ezine to attract
people to your web site.

5. Give the recording away as a bonus for purchasing
another product online. One way to get people to decide to
go ahead and make a purchase is to offer a collection of
premiums with high stated values.

6. Have the recording transcribed and use the material for
a book or articles. You can get an inexpensive transcript
over the web.

7. Put the recording with slides and create a digital slide
show to sell on DVDs or as a digital download. This is easy
to do, combining your slides and the recording in a free
movie editor. Unless you are a particularly dynamic speaker
slides are almost as good as seeing you, and a whole lot
cheaper than professional video production. Amateurish
video is a lot worse.

LEED Certification For Government Contracts

no@spam.com (Christine OKelly) — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 17:02:11 EDT

As green technology develops, the cost for energy efficient buildings is slowly coming down. The drive for energy savings in light of energy costs and environmental concerns is blossoming into a full blown industry. The Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Green Building Rating System is now the benchmark for green construction.

By next year, it is estimated that at least 10% of all new construction projects will be green construction under LEED certification. The current green building construction market sits at roughly $60 billion. The upcoming Waxman-Markey Bill, also known as the American Energy Act, is going to reduce the allowable energy consumption for current buildings and future construction projects. The bill would require an immediate cut of 30% in energy consumption for current constructions and then up to 50% in 5 years and finally 75% in 20 years.

Construction Contracts Going Forward

LEED certification is going to drive the green construction market as government contracts will now have energy usage clauses. Contractors will need to use the techniques set out by the U.S. Green Building Council (USGBC) in order to stay competitive and meet proposal requirements. This change will be a significant shift in building practices that will require training and personnel with LEED certification on staff.

Buildings constructed under LEED guidelines use resources more efficiently and with less wasted energy than conventional structures. Certified structures also often provide a more healthy work and living environment while improving air and water quality and reducing solid waste.

Upfront costs for LEED certification in construction can be mitigated as the proper training programs and special material usage becomes more widespread. Reductions in building operations costs will also return that upfront cost and provide long term savings. Early studies are suggesting that an investment of 2% upfront will yield ten times that amount over the life cycle of the building. These reasons, combined with the environmental impact, are the reason why government contracts are going to begin mandating these practices.

Current Building Energy Usage

Projects to bring existing buildings into compliance are going to explode within a few short years. Less than 10% of existing corporate structures are currently undergoing renovation to meet the new standards, the other 90% will soon be following suit. In order to meet the proposed bill, a total auditing program is needed to assess opportunities to save energy in existing businesses and homes without compromising the durability and usability of the structure. Energy audit training is quickly going to become paramount in the building renovation market.

The Building Performance Institute (BPI) is a national organization that has established procedures for analyzing and correcting issues in building energy usage. Energy audit training programs that train personnel for their BPI certification will give contractors a lead in being able to perform green renovations and secure future contracts.

LEED certification and energy audit training leading to BPI certification are the tools that builders will need to utilize in the coming years to meet government regulations and be awarded government contracts. Investing in the training and certification programs now gives those who are looking forward a head start in securing a stake in the growing green construction market.

Ways to Create Multiple Streams of Residual Income

no@spam.com (Suzanne E Morrison) — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 09:42:04 EDT

Creating Multiple Streams of Income is one of the best ways
to protect yourself against failure when making money
online. You can take comfort in the fact that you are not
relying on one business or one website as your total source
of income.

Read on to find out some ideas for creating multiple
streams of residual income.

1. Join a network marketing company and get paid on the
efforts of others. Leveraging your time into a residual
income stream is easier to do today in network marketing
than at any time in the past.

It is now possible for you to build a worldwide multi level
marketing business without ever leaving your front door.
Creating a residual income in network marketing happens
when you use the power of duplication and build a large
network of distributors buying and selling products
underneath you.

2. Niche affiliate marketing is another way to generate
multiple streams of income. You do this by creating
websites or blogs in different targeted niches.

You then monetize these sites with products that you earn
commissions selling. A simple way of doing this is to join
affiliate programs and get paid for selling other peoples'
products without having to worry about inventory or payment
processing.

You can do this in various ways including selling
information products, or selling physical products from
affiliate merchants.

Developing a residual income happens when you have a system
put together to market and continue to make money from your
sites even when you're not working.

3. Another way to make money over and over in affiliate
marketing is to join two-tier affiliate programs. With
these programs you not only earn money selling products,
but you also earn money on products sold by affiliates you
recruit underneath you.

If you enjoy networking with people two-tier affiliate
marketing is a great way to create a residual income. You
get paid to teach people what you are already doing
successfully. Then you earn a residual income every time a
sale is made by your affiliate marketers even when you are
not working.

4. Create your own products e.g. EBooks and sell them on
Clickbank.com. This is a great way to continue to make
money over and over for doing your work one time.

It is very easy to set up an affiliate program on Clickbank
and they handle all the administration such as payment
processing and paying affiliates. And they offer you
thousands of affiliates to promote your products for you.

These were several ideas on how you can use the Internet as
your one stop source for multiple streams of residual
income. Why get paid for doing something over and over when
you can get paid over and over for doing it one time!

Credit crunch and online business

no@spam.com (Bobby Buys) — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 15:37:39 EDT

No matter how diligently and meticulously you take care of
your online business, it is always possible that some
greed-mongers half-way across the world pillage their
country's coffers or that someone starts a war and sends
petrol prices shooting up. As soon as that happens, the
global marketplace which in good times works in your
favour, allowing you to sell online all over the world,
becomes your greatest foe, allowing outside factors and
forces to affect your business adversely.

The online marketplace business model, where consumers
transact directly with other consumers, to some extent
thrives in a recession environment. In difficult economic
times, people will be more than ever looking for bargains
and will come to online marketplace. The new sellers will
come too, looking to sell whatever it is they can sell. And
on online marketplace, sellers very quickly become buyers.

While people will forego purchases of luxury goods when the
times are hard, they will not stop spending for birthday
gifts or household appliance that broke down. However, they
will be more than ever looking for great deals, which is
where online marketplace comes in. Buyers can actually save
money by shopping on online marketplace. They will search
for second hand goods instead of new ones or for last
season's model instead of the latest version. Above all,
they will take advantage of the fact that even the new
items and the newest models will be cheaper on online
marketplace than in shops, because online marketplace
sellers sell directly to the user, doing away with
expensive overheads like shop retail space.

Even so, you as a seller may need to adjust to the changed
economic climate. You may want to switch your product
portfolios. It is usually recommended to focus on the
products that are in demand and likely to sell fast, while
getting rid of the slow moving items by offering discounts.
The "buy cheap - sell cheap" philosophy may serve you well
when the consumers are strapped for cash. However, before
you rush to mark down prices on all your products, consider
some other options first. Research has shown that people
simply love prices ending with the number nine. So, revisit
all the items you sell at a fixed price and change the
final digit to nine. And yes, you can go up. On average,
people are 30 per cent more likely to buy something that
costs R49 than something that costs R44 - meaning that you
can increase the price and increase sales!

Economic downturn is also the time to trim the costs, for
example the packaging and stationery expenses. Little
things like printing in draft quality with black ink do add
up and can make a difference.

Though sad, the fact that not all businesses will survive
recession can work to your advantage. There are pickings to
be had from bankrupt or liquidation stock. Look out for
bargains and keep an eye on your competition.

Because, in the end, the economic woes will make many
people forego expensive vacations and socialising. In other
words, they will stay at home more - possibly in front of
their computers. That is when they may stumble upon online
marketplace. They may decide to sell something to raise
much needed cash. That is all good for online marketplace
sellers - because everybody knows, from their own
experience, how quickly new online marketplace sellers
become new online marketplace buyers. That means a wider
customer base - and more potential customers for you.

Using Internet Forums To Build Your Online Business Profile

no@spam.com (Malcolm Leyshon) — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 10:40:02 EDT

Free publicity is something that no Internet marketer would
turn down. Forum marketing is a a good example of a free
marketing technique that uses Online forums as a way of
advertising business websites. As long as you do it in in
good order it can benefit your business in several ways. So
what exactly is an Internet forum?

An Internet forum is a membership website on which users
can post their own comments and opinions about various
topics. Anybody who joins a forum website can read and
respond to the contents that are posted on the forum
website.

As forum members submit responses to ongoing conversations,
the topic thread grows longer and can go on for several
pages. There is no limit to how long a conversation can go
on unless the administrator decides to lock the thread.
Anybody can begin a new topic by clicking a "New Topic"
button.

To find a forum that focuses on your line of business,
simply run a search on your favourite search engine. For
example if you are selling yachts, you might enter
"yachting forum" in the search field and see what comes up.

How can you make a name for yourself and advertise your
website business without spamming a forum?

That is a serious question as there are not many active
forums that will put up with spammers. If you insist on
posting self-promotional post the post will most likely be
removed, and you might even be expelled from the forum.

The way to link back to your website from forum posts
without getting into trouble is to set up a link in the
signature file. A signature file is a short piece of text
plus a link to your website that you can have appear at the
foot of every comment you post. A signature file can be set
up in the "User Control Panel" on most forums.

On numerous forums you can add an avatar, a thumbnail-sized
photo or graphic, that'll appear each time you submit a
comment. It is a good idea to use an actual photo of
yourself to show how friendly you really are! Similarly,
it's a good idea to use your real name on the forum to let
people know that you're a real person running a real
business.

What is a good way to start out on the forum? The best
method to ease yourself into a forum is to say hello in
the "new members" section, if there is one, and then to
read and contribute to some ongoing conversations. Don't be
in too much of a hurry to post comments though. First, get
a feel for the character of the forum.

When you are ready to dive in, start by posting some
questions about topics of interest to the forum members.
Questions are always useful because they help other people
to respond and they also demonstrate a willingness to learn
on your part.

Once you have established yourself on the forum, you can
start some new topic threads of your own and begin to add
some more substantial contributions to quietly demonstrate
your expertise in your particular field.

In short, the best way to benefit from an Internet forum is
to participate fully in the life of the forum. By helping
others you will help yourself by building up a great
reputation that will make people more likely to want to
check out your website via your signature link.

Good Home Based Business Without the Problems

no@spam.com (Scott Murphy) — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 10:21:14 EDT

One reason many people avoid starting a home based business
today is they do not want the problems that are associated
with it. One way to get around this is to choose a good
home based business that comes without the normal problems
of a brick-and-mortar business. What I'm talking about is
using the Internet to automate your day to day functions.

I believe the way to do this is to start a blog that has a
theme relating to an area of interest or passion of yours.
This might be something that you do as a hobby or something
that you do as a career.

For example if you are a contractor that has expertise
finishing basements you might start a blog for do it
yourself basement finishing. If you have a passion in sport
fishing you might start a blog on how to become better
sport fishermen.

One question that immediately comes to mind is how would
you make money doing this?

The first thing you can do is monetize your blog with pay
per click ads from Google AdSense. You can also join
affiliate programs relating to the theme of your blog and
find products to sell as an affiliate marketer.

You can add banners on your blog to make it seem livelier
and those will contain links back to your affiliate
marketing website. Every time someone clicks on one of
these banners, are taken to your website, and make a
purchase, you earn a profit.

This really can become a good home based business because
it is fun. Its fun to write about things that are
interesting to you and your readers will pick up on this.
It is for a fun for them to purchase products from a
website where they are having a good time.

Professional bloggers today incorporate video marketing,
audio marketing, graphics, and various things to make their
blog more interactive with their visitors. You can
outsource anything that you do not want to do yourself, and
you can learn how to do the rest of it fairly easily.

Social networking today is a byproduct of blogging and one
of the reasons why you will not have a lot of problems with
this type of home based business. You get to interact with
your visitors in ways that might not have been possible
just a few years ago.

This makes blogging a good home based business to be in
both profitability and problem free!

Why Large Businesses Are Moving to VoIP

no@spam.com (Christine OKelly) — Mon, 30 Mar 2009 15:17:15 EDT

Historically, the slowest growing market segment for VoIP office phone systems has been the large business. The primary problem has been the misconception that they must abandon their expensive PBX phone system to adopt the new technology.