Catching Up With Online Business

There are so many competitions by running business. So you must do something in a smart way. Check this list to see which ones you can use in order to pull more profits from your business.

1. Gain an advantage over your competition. You should find one benefit your competition doesn’t offer and use it as your main selling point.

2. Design your e-zine so it creates multiple free advertising streams. Ask readers to forward it to people they know, offer ad trades, etc.

3. Allow your visitors to subscribe to an update e-zine. Anytime you make changes to your web site they can receive an informative e-mail.

4. Focus your articles on information the targeted readers and e-zine publishers want. They will get published more often, which means free publicity.

5. Use problems to attract online traffic. Find a common online problem and use your web site to solve it. People will visit and see your ads.

6. Have an informative FAQ page at your web site. Anticipate questions your prospects or visitors may have; this will help improve your sales ratio.

7. Improve your negotiation skills. This’ll improve your business because you’re always negotiating ad swaps, supply prices, joint ventures, wages, etc.

8. Beat your competition by giving away a similar product or service that they charge for. It could be add on products, warranties, servicing, etc.

9. Build a larger online community by giving your visitors bonuses for participating on your message boards or chat rooms. Try free products, ads, etc.

10. Instead of starting an affiliate program, start a referral program. Give people discounts and free products for referring people to your site.

Julia Tang publishes “Smart Online Business Tips” Newsletter which helps people to start, run and grow Internet businesses. To get tips, tactics, reliable business opportunities and promotional tools, plus over $200 free bonuses, you can visit http://www.best-internet-businesses.com

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One of the most discussed topics today is Article Writing. Many Webmasters are jumping into the bandwagon and are trying to revive and reinvent their old writing talents to good measure.

It is a known fact that there are several benefits in article writing and submitting articles to article directories. The main objective of most webmasters is to obtain one way links, thereby increasing Link Popularity and to generate Targeted Traffic.

Success is much easier to achieve when tried and tested strategies are adopted.Given below are such strategies, if adopted will have a tremendous impact in Boosting your link popularity and Exploding Traffic to your website.

1. TOPIC.
In article writing the most important thing is to choose the right Topic. Though you might be very knowledgeable in sports it makes no sense writing an article on sports if the theme of your website is Home Based Business. Choose a topic related to the theme of your website. If you find it difficult to choose a topic, then visit some of the Forums and see what popular topics are being discussed and select one related to your Home Based Business theme.

2. TITLE
Have a Powerful Killer or Catchy Title that will immediately grab the attention of the Audience. Success or Failure of your article is to a great extent dependent on your title. It is worth spending quite some time over this very important aspect.

3. INTRODUCTION.
The Introduction has to be very Compelling. So write an Introduction that is Concise Powerful and Absorbing. It should be such that the reader would want to continue reading the article right up to your Resource Box.

4. CONTENT.
Good Content is what the reader is interested in. Keep in mind the popular saying “Content is King”. Your article should be of high quality, Thought provoking, Informative, Precise and Accurate. Articles written sincerely from the heart are greatly appreciated and accepted by the audience because they realize that you are trying to be helpful and before long a rapport is established between you and the audience.

5. KEYWORDS
Key Words play a very significant role in article writing. The awareness and success of your articles is greatly dependent on your key words and where you place them. The keywords should be judiciously placed in the Title of your article, in the Introduction paragraph, in the Concluding paragraph and in the main Body of the article. It should not interrupt the flow of the article, be excessive and be seen as keyword stuffing.

6. RESOURCE BOX
One of the main purposes of article writing is to obtain a one way link and generate traffic to your site. For this the Resource Box is of utmost importance. Place a resource box at the end of the article with a very brief description of yourself or your product along with your name and URL. Double check your URL since this is your life line for both your link and traffic.

7. ARTICLE SUBMISSION
Having written a good article you now have to submit your article to various article directories and submission sites. All of them have their own submission rules. It is important that you study them before submitting your article. Failure to do so will mean that your article may not get published and all your efforts will be in vain.

That’s it. Follow this strategy in your article writing and you are assured of a surge of targeted traffic and increased link popularity. In addition you will soon be accepted as an authority and expert in your field. Isn’t it wonderful!

Copyright © 2005 Kanaga Siva

Kanaga Siva has a wealth of experience in Marketing and also running his own Home Based Business. He now operates his Internet Marketing Business. For Articles, Resources, Ideas and Advise to start a Home Based Business and for other recommended Programs, visit his website, www.business-fromhome.

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Self publish is a lot of work. With that said you can not complain later that we didn’t warn you. While there are many advantages to self publishing, it is also quite a long way from being easy or less stressful. Yet, the good far outweighs the bad. As the author, you can publish your books as you see fit and you will always have the final say. But, as an author, you also need to realize that most of the financial, marketing, and inventory of the books will fall onto your shoulders in self publishing.

In this type of publishing set up, you, as the author, will be the one that is responsible for developing the books, designing the layout and even working to come up with the cover and illustrations. Then, it will be up to you to have them printed as well. In many cases, you will need to foot this bill yourself. Next, you’ll need to market the book yourself so that those that it would interest will know that it is there. Some self publishing authors have no inventory and print the books only as they have an order for them. Nonetheless, basically all aspects of the publish fall to your shoulders.

Yet, this is an amazing experience. You are able to have complete freedom to do as you like with your book. No publisher will be involved telling you what the layout of the book should be or what the cover needs to look like. And, with all the advances in printer equipment for the average PC, not to mention the many locations that you can go and get the book printed, you can take care of virtually all aspects yourself successfully. So, self publishing may be hard, but it can be well worth it in the end.

For more information please see http://www.self-publishing-info.co.uk

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First lets look at WHAT it is, and Why would we want to make one?

CSV means Comma Separated Value, so that means; a ‘value’ that is separated by commas. It is usually made in XL or a txt file.

A ‘value’ is explained, in context below.

CSV files are the most common kind of format used by most software programs for importing data. This means that if we want to put several hundred names and addresses (values) into a “bulk mailing program” we can usually use a CSV file.

The CSV file would have to have all the names and addresses in it, and then we could go to our software program and use the ‘import’ function to upload all the names and addresses (values), with one click instead of spending hours entering each one by hand.

But, how do we get the names and addresses into the CSV file in the first place? It depends where they come from, if we are simply extracting the names and addresses (Values) from one program to another we can often choose to ‘export’ to a file in CSV format. If we have a list of ‘values’ that is, say, in Microsoft word, or some other kind of document, we would first need to copy and paste them into an XL document.

Once all the ‘values’ we want to use, are pasted into the XL document, WITH EACH VALUE IN A SEPARATE COLUMN. We can then save the XL document as a CSV file, and then upload it into our software. Easy!

Before we continue please note: It is often necessary to have these values in our CSV file in a particular order for example; some software, will require Column ‘A’ to have the ‘Name’ and column ‘B’ might have to be the ‘eMail’ or vise versa and etc…. So it’s a good idea to check first.

Some software allows us to choose where each ‘value’ will be loaded to, so in this case, the initial order in our CSV file won’t matter, because in the upload process we may be prompted to select which ‘fields to place which ‘values’ into.

Now, how to turn a XL document into a CSV file!
1. In your XL document with the info you wish to upload. Go to “file/save as” then select the option “as file type” and scroll down to “CSV (Comma Delimited)
2. Then name it “WHATEVERYOUWANT” and click save.
3. Now you will get a window asking a lot of questions.
4. Answer “OK” or “YES”, then you’ll get about two or three more windows one after the other. Answer each one “OK” or “YES”, until it is done then close the workbook. You’ll get more windows again. just answer “OK” and “YES” until it closes
5. Go to your software and find the import function, browse for your file and upload it!
6. Then check your “mailing List” to see the results!
Your CSV file will look like this a, if you saved it correctly!

If it doesn’t work for you, make sure it is in this format.

You may find that you need to play around with this a bit, but as long as you finish with an XL document in CSV format, you should be able to upload to just about any program. Of course this isn’t limited to email lists you can use this format for a range of different applications.

Bill Boyd; has a degree in business, he has run several successful email campaigns and found www.internetgoldenweb.com/groupmail/index.html“>this tool useful so he became an affiliate:
To visit his Internet marketing site go here: www.internetgoldenweb.com“>www.internetgoldenweb.com

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When Google introduced their new Adsense revenue sharing program, people began to wonder if things would change. Certain questions have been burning in people’s mind like: what’s going to happen to Associate Programs, how do they compare against Google’s Adsense and will Adsense cause Associate Programs to be obsolete?

Well, that really depends on a number of things, which I will go over. In this article I am only going to cover a few advantages and disadvantages of using Google’s Adsense vs Associate Programs and which Associate Programs will prevail.

In case you are not familiar with Google’s Adsense, Adsense is a new service provided by Google. This service allows you to have text based advertisements on your web site, known as Google Adwords. In return, you will receive a share of revenue based on a pay per click arrangement.

How Does Adsense’s Advantages Compare To Associate Programs

Adsense and Associate Programs share some of the same advantages such as, Adsense is free to join and so are most other Associate Programs. Making them both easy to start and suitable for you whether you are a beginner or an experienced marketer.

Another advantage with Adsense, is that you never have to search for advertisers. Google supplies you with the advertisements by using highly relevant content targeted ads. This will insure that only precisely relevant advertisements are displayed on your web site. As for Associate Programs, you will have to search for quality programs and the relevancy of the program will depend on the one you select.

Adsense enables you to filter out up to 200 urls, so you don’t have inappropriate ads or display advertisements of your competition. The last thing you want is to send traffic to your indirect competition. No one in their right mind would do that, right! Moreover, with Associate Programs you can select which ones you want to promote, instead of worrying about advertising your indirect competition.

How Does Adsense’s Disadvantages Compare To Associate Programs

One of the biggest disadvantages of Adsense, is that they never really tell you what percentage you will receive. I don’t know about you, but wouldn’t it be nice to know what percentage of revenue you will receive. If an Associate Program was to do that, they would have absolutely no one participating in their program, but somehow Google can manage to get away with that. With associate programs, you immediately know what your commission percentage is going to be before you sign up.

Even though you can filter certian urls, you will still receive inappropriate advertisements. The advertisements are only as good as the person who wrote them and if they select keywords or phrases that are too general, this will result in inappropriate advertisements appearring on your web site. Most Associate Programs enable you to write your own promotional advertisements, giving you a little more freedom.

Adsense does not rotate their advertisements, so eventually your click through ratio will decrease, as repeat visitors are less likely to click through them. Eventually, I’m sure Google will improve the way it does it’s content targeting and start rotating their advertisements. By promoting an Associate Program you can simply change the wording of the advertisement, but with Adsense you can’t do that, you have your hands tied behind your back.

Adsense’s stats are terrible, they don’t tell you which advertisements your visitors are clicking through or which keywords are involved. Google supplies Adwords users with the adequate stats, you would think that they would do the same for their Adsense partners.

You should keep in mind that any advertisement that is on your web site, is portrayed to be your recommendation. If you are advertising a poor product or service on your web site, it will reflect on your credibility. Any product or service that you promote, should be a reliable one. Otherwise people will assume that you have poor judgement and it will hurt your credibility. By promoting Associate Programs, you can pick and choose quality products or services to promote, giving you full control, without damaging your credibility.

Which Associate Programs Will Prevail

Even though Adsense has a substantial amount of disadvantages, it will still have a major affect on a lot of Associate Programs that are currently operating today. In fact, you could say it’s a wake up call for many merchants, especially for the ones who operate a poor Associate Program. So if you operate your own Associate Program, that has a low commission percentage and/or has a poor conservation rate, now might be a good time to start thinking seriously about improving your Associate Program.

As to which Associate Programs will survive and prevail over Google’s Adsense, it will be determined by a number of things. In order for Associate Programs to prevail, they will need to offer a high commission percentage of 40% or higher, have a high conservation rate of 1% or higher, and be a breeze to promote.

In the end, Google’s Adsense is merely just another avenue of generating profits on your web site. Associate Programs will not become obsolete. Moreover, they will filter out the good Associate Programs from those that are bad, and only the quality ones will prevail.

Moreover, you can expect that Google will improve their Adsense campaign overtime, proving that they are a worthy adversary to the Associate Program industry. You must be able to adapt and improve as changes occur.

About The Author

Rich Hamilton, Jr is the CEO/President of http://www.ElitesMarketing.com. You can start earning cash today by joining our FREE Two Tier Associate Program and make $45 - $270 per sale http://www.ElitesMarketing.com/assoc/.

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This year many companies will send their customers and associates corporate Christmas cards that are printed with their company details and greeting. The benefits are obvious - maintaining relationships with key customers, demonstrating how greatly their custom is appreciated and sending a Christmas message can only be good for future business. The reality though is that it’s all too easy to send a card that generates a negative impression of the company, tarnishing the customer relationship.

By following simple steps, it’s possible to avoid costly mistakes and maximise the goodwill that a Christmas card generates.

Firstly, consider the image your company portrays and the industry in which it operates. For example a teamwork orientated card would be well suited to a Consultancy, whereas a travel company may send a card with a more global theme. Also remember that not all your customers may celebrate Christmas so the message on the card front needs to be appropriate to everyone, regardless of cultural and religious background - cards that state ‘Season’s Greetings’, ‘From All of Us’ and ‘From All The Team’ are good choices.

To help choose the ideal card, it’s a good idea to create a shortlist of the ones you like and then take advantage of the free samples that many suppliers will provide. This enables you to view the actual card and inspect the quality of board it’s produced on. You may want to check whether the board is sourced from sustainable forests, and even better, FSC certified

Careful thought should be given to what’s printed inside the card. Like the card design, the greeting needs to be appropriate and suitable to all recipients. Essential company information such as address, telephone, fax, website and email should be included. Like any marketing collateral, it also makes sense to display your company logo, so increasing brand presence and recognition.

Ensure that the list of recipients is up-to-date with the correct contact and current mailing address - there’s nothing worse than a new contact receiving a card addressed to their predecessor.

Be sure to sign the cards - this provides a personal touch, demonstrating how important you feel the recipient is to your business. It also shows that real time and effort has been spent. Add a small specific message as this makes the card even more exclusive.

One of the more common mistakes is not allowing enough time for signing, especially if there’s a lot of cards and signatures required. Try circulating cards well in advance of when they’ll be posted or if necessary arrange a ’signature session’ on a set day. Include all those that work most closely with the customers in this process.

Finally, be organised! Purchase cards in plenty of time so they can be signed and then sent at the start of the Festive period. This is especially true for companies mailing overseas where some final post dates for airmail are in early December.

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Every professional or consultant knows that clients typically hire people they know, like and trust. But how do you build trust with strangers?

As Ralph Waldo Emerson’s 150-year-old essay titled “Compensation” teaches, first you must give if you want to receive. The best positioning strategy for professional service firms is to build trust by giving away valuable information. That’s why professional service firm marketing works best when it demonstrates expertise by educating prospects, not asserting superiority through flashy brochures and Web sites.

Based on best practices research, here are 10 must-do positioning steps every professional service firm and technology service should take.

1. Identify the target market. Find a potential market niche that will be profitable. In today’s market, clients demand specialists. You want fewer prospects to be interested in you, but you want them to be much more intensely interested. This requires focus. It doesn’t mean you’ll turn down a client who doesn’t fit into your two or three chosen verticals — it simply means you won’t be actively shaping your marketing message toward them. Evaluate your business. Have you sold most of your products to golf-ball manufacturers, pet stores and electrical suppliers? Then those are the three places to start thinking. But if pet stores in general don’t have the budget for your products, you’ll need to look harder.

2. Make a promise. Determine what promise you or your firm is making to your target market. This includes your unique selling proposition: what you do, who you do it for and how you are unlike competitors — all in 25 words or less. Are you willing to make a 100 percent satisfaction guarantee a part of that promise? You need to decide what makes you different from everybody else, and you need to overcome fear of focus — the desire to want to be everything to everybody. People hire professionals who specialize. Very few people would hire a surgeon who says he can do everything from tonsillectomies to facelifts and open-heart procedures. When you’re in pain, you want a specialist — not just somebody who’s “good with a knife.”

3. Check your reflection. Take a fresh look at your logo, letterhead, business cards, office space, wardrobe — anything tangible that a prospect could use as a basis for an early opinion about you. Design changes every few years. Take a hard look. Do your printed materials look like they’re stuck in the disco era? This is where it pays to overspend. There are five attributes that clients use to judge professionals, and appealing tangibles heads the list.

4. Create an educational Web site. Create an easy-to-update, database-driven Web site that demonstrates your competence, rather than asserts how great you are. The Web site is the cornerstone of new marketing, and must not be a mere electronic brochure. Your Web site is the silent salesperson that prospective clients visit before making the decision to grant you permission to meet. We have information available on the most common blunders in Web design, and we share that with clients.

5. Determine proprietary process. Create a proprietary problem-solving process that you name and protect by obtaining a trademark. Your process must have a mysterious name that requires explanation. A proprietary process is not only a marketing asset that will allow you to charge more, but also will make your work less accidental and improve the quality of your service.

6. Conduct proprietary research. Conduct research that you own. Begin by choosing the three biggest problems your target clients face that your service can solve. What clients want to know most is how they stack up to their competition. Your specific answers will command client and media attention.

7. Create white papers or how-to articles. Write articles on how clients can solve their biggest problems. In essence, you are giving your insights away for free. These are used on the Web site and in the lead generation efforts. You need to give away information on how to solve problems in general so clients will trust you enough to hire you to solve their specific problems.

8. Create an image folder. Create an image folder that will not go out of date for a minimum of five years. The folder needs to be appealing and should contain as few words as possible. There are several techniques to ensure the folder has a long and useful shelf life, like not printing photos of people (fashions change) and phone numbers (so do area codes). Next, create the adaptable contents for the folder. You may choose up to three target markets, and need materials to adapt to each one. This allows you to project an image of a specialist with a specific process for each target client base.

9. Create a PDF of tips brochure. Avoid printing a brochure if at all possible; instead create an electronic version that can be read by anyone with an e-mail address and free Adobe Acrobat software. You can post the brochure on your Web site, e-mail it to clients and even use your own laser printer to create print-on-demand versions for Internet-averse potential clients. As to the content, think guidebooks with tips rather than the traditional puff pieces.

Henry DeVries is a marketing coach and writer specializing in lead generation for professional service firms. An adjunct marketing professor at UCSD since 1984, he is the author of “Self Marketing Secrets” and the recently published “Client Seduction.” Visit http://www.newclientmarketing.com or e-mail questions to henry@newclientmarketing.com.

© 2005 Henry DeVries, All rights reserved. You are free to use this material in whole or in part in pint, on a web site or in an email newsletter, as long as you include complete attribution, including live web site link. Please also notify me where the material will appear.

The attribution should read:

“By Henry DeVries of the New Client Marketing Institute. Please visit Henry’s web site at http://www.newclientmarketing.com for additional marketing articles and resources on marketing for professional service businesses.”

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One of the most effective methods of getting traffic to a sales page is very well-known within Adsense circles (used to send traffic to Adwords advertisers through the Adsense program), but not as well known for traffic generation directly to sales letters.

That method is the content site. There are literally thousands of people making a living online by simply creating content sites, placing Google Adsense code on those content sites and collecting a check from Google every month.

There are literally thousands of others who have sales pages selling products and services who have never created a content site and pay for their traffic through the Google Adwords program. Much of that traffic is coming from those who are creating the content sites and placing Google Adsense code on their pages.

Isn’t that interesting? If you have a sales page selling a product or service; how much could you save by cutting Google out of the loop? A lot! If you have been creating content sites and depending on Google for a paycheck, how much more could you earn if you sent that traffic to a site selling an information product of your own? A lot!

There is even more money to be gained with this strategy then you might first imagine. At first, you might be tempted to think that the only money being left on the table is the money going to Google for providing the Adwords and Adsense programs. Nothing could be further from the truth. If that was the only money involved, then the percentages that Google keeps are very small… their service is well worth that price.

But it’s not! That money is only the start. Let’s consider the following facts to see that we can actually earn a multiple of whatever you are currently earning from your Adsense check or from your product site if you cut Google out of the loop.

1. The Adsense algorithm isn’t perfect. It often shows ads that aren’t very relevant. If you cut Google out of the loop, you can make your content site to sales page site traffic 100% relevant 100% of the time.

2. Adsense publishers often only get 0.5%-15% click through rates on any Adsense ad due to a number of factors. The method I will show you in this article will deliver 25% of the hotest buyers from your content site to your traffic site continually.

3. Adsense is currently a negative ranking factor on all three major search engines (see RankingFactors.com for more information on that). That means that by running Adsense on your content sites, they are slowly losing search engine traffic month after month. By removing the Adsense and sending that traffic directly to a product site, you will retain your search engine traffic.

4. Many have reported getting banned by the Google Adsense program. You came to the Internet to make money because you wanted more control and freedom over your life. By getting a large percentage of your income from a single company (Google), you are sabotaging your efforts. You are at the mercy of Google just like you were/are at the mercy of any employer.

5. If you are selling a product using Adwords traffic, you also are at the mercy of Google and bidding wars. You must continually improve your conversion ratio or the ongoing bidding wars will eventually eat up your profit. Google (or Overture or any other bid PPC system) is slowly allowing your competitors to either receive more traffic while you receive less… or causing you to pay them more and more of your profit every month as you are forced to raise your bids to continue to receive traffic.

Wouldn’tyou rather generate your own traffic and not be held hostage to bidding wars?

So we are agreed that you want to cut Google out of the loop whether you are a content site creator or the seller of a product or service; right? How?

Well, first of all you will nead to learn the skills of the other side. They aren’t difficult whichever side of the fence you are on. If you are a content site creator, you can pick up InfoProdCreation.com and have your own product 35 hours from now with 5 hours of work. If you are a seller of a product or service, you already have the skills to create content sites. Just write articles instead of sales pages and give information instead of trying to sell. Make it a multi-page site instead of a single page sales letter.

And I’m about to give you the secret to traffic delivery from a content site to a traffic site. It’s very simple. Create a home page with only the following elements:

1. A very short 2 paragraph, 3-5 sentence description o your product or service (no selling here).

2. A large (size 6) link that says either “Enter Site” or “Enter Here”. This link leads to your product site.

3. Three smaller links (size 2) on a single line below the above link that lead to the rest of your content site. They can say “Widget Articles”, “Widget Reviews”, “Widget Forum” or whatever types of content you have on your content site… about widgets in this case.

You will find that about 50% of the traffic on a content site eventually ends up at the home page. You will find that about 50% of those that end up at the home page will choose to click the “Enter Site” or “Enter Here” link. You will find that those 25% of the content site visitors (50% of 50%) will be fairly pre-qualified to read your offer. In many, many split tests, this traffic has out-performed Google Adwords traffic.

Have fun and please leave a comment and let me know how much more money you are making with this strategy. I would love to hear from you.

Come check The Ramblings of James D. Brausch. My marketing blog is updated regularly with stuff the other guys would put in an ebook and sell you.

When we speak about viral marketing, we are not talking about the newest disease. We are not talking about a Mad Cow Disease variant or something that you need to be vaccinated for. In fact, we are not referring to a disease at all.

What we are talking about is literally the most powerful traffic generation technique available on the internet. Viral marketing is so powerful that it makes the search engines look small and insignificant in comparison. Even link exchanges, as powerful as they can be, wilt into oblivion in comparison.

What you do with viral marketing is create something, anything, that visitors will want to give to other people. This thing, whatever it is, contains a link and perhaps a short advertisement for your website, ezine or ebook. So far so good, this is just good marketing. The viral part comes in because the people who receive these items want to give them to other people, who in turn want to give them away also.

So you see? What you get is an explosion of marketing for a very small price. It’s actually kind of like an avalanche, in that you throw a snowball down a slope and it just grows and grows until the whole mountain of ice and snow is tumbling down.

One very cool viral marketing technique that any web site can take advantage of is greeting cards. I’m sure you’ve run across these all over the web. You select a graphic (a drawing, photo or other image), perhaps a sound file and add some text. This is sent to one or more people via email. These people open the email and click on a link to view their card. They, of course, have the option from here to visit your web site and perhaps send additional cards to other people (or back to the sender).

If your cards are good enough, you can find this technique alone will generate an incredible amount of traffic. Of course, you have the same problem with greeting cards that you have with your web site - you have to get people to it to begin with. Once you do that, however, you will find that it becomes more or less self maintaining. The more traffic you get the more you generate. Just make sure that all of your greeting card pages are listed in the search engines, well displayed on your page (and perhaps all of your pages) and advertised elsewhere as much as practical.

In fact, it’s a good idea to spend as much or more time marketing the greeting cards as the rest of your site, since these tend to create visitors exponentially, while your site is linear.

How do you put greeting cards on your site? First, pick a theme or two. If your site is about model railroads, for example, you might get some photos of trains and train sets; you could include vacation photos, cute animal pictures, scanned drawings or anything else that you feel would make a good card. Just remember to honor copyrights - make sure you have the right to make copies of the materials before you use them.

Once you have a theme or two, you need to find a greeting card service. I’ve experimented with a few options. I’ve tried hosting it entirely on my own site, and what I’ve found is it is difficult to maintain. I’ve also tried it completely hosted on another site and found it is too restrictive.

The service that I settled upon is called CyberGreeting Network - http://cybergreet.net/. This company, in my opinion, provides the best of both worlds (local and remotely hosted).

The pages, images and sound files are stored on your own web site. You can tailor these all that you want so they blend with your pages perfectly. This is the perfect freedom, and as long as you set up the form properly all will work fine.

How do you do this? You download a template file (as explained in their instructions) and modify it to suite your needs. This may require a little effort on your part (as well as some skill with HTML) but the end result will be worth it.

The remote part of the product (which is free, by the way) is the piece that actually formats and sends the card. You see, on your page you get the visitor to supply the answers to a series of questions in a form. The form data is submitted to a CGI routine which puts everything together into a greeting card. Your visitor simply answers the questions and presses submit. You pass all of this to the routine, which then sends the card to the destination.

I was able to get half a dozen pages of greeting cards working perfectly in an afternoon. These remain on my site, and serve me well by creating a steady, growing stream of traffic. I think you would do well to take a look and determine if this will work for your site as well.

About The Author

Richard Lowe Jr. is the webmaster of Internet Tips And Secrets. This website includes over 1,000 free articles to improve your internet profits, enjoyment and knowledge.

Web Site Address: http://www.internet-tips.net

Weekly newsletter: http://www.internet-tips.net/joinlist.htm

Claudia Arevalo-Lowe is the webmistress of Internet Tips And Secrets and Surviving Asthma. Visit her site at http://survivingasthma.com

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