I must admit this blog has been inactive.

Today I’ll revive it – and this time, it’s on.

The last couple of months I got the most severe case of… guess what?

MULTI TASKING.

Seriously, I’ve been juggling 5 projects. Add to that the holidays plus school work (I’m at senior year, high school)

All this time I’ve been blind. Multi tasking…

• Made me work more
• And work more…

BUT with all those work, believe it or not, my earnings decreased.

The TRUE Secret

With that experience, I realized how important the tip “focus” is. I knew it before and I’ve heard of it a lot of times but I never really paid that much attention to it.

But before that, let me show some examples (cause i find it funny that even before, focus really IS the true secret)

300 – 300 Spartans fought thousands of Persian soldiers by focusing on one little narrow pass called Thermopylae. They funneled all the Persian soldiers in one pass and concentrated on only one side.

Blitzkrieg - The infamous blitzkrieg, focus on one single area and flood em’ with tanks, soldiers and air power. Served the German pretty well.

NBA – Ok that’s a weird jump but I think that also proves that FOCUS can be, should be applied anywhere.

Most players on the NBA before (way back! The time when they didn’t have a 3 point line) were all rounded. To play you have to be good at dribbling, shooting, rebounding and all skills. But look how players play today, each player focuses on 1 skill. One is good at dribbling, one at shooting, one at rebounding then they put it all together. They play better.

How did that happen? Because each player were able to train and master a specific skill instead of practicing all of it to get well rounded.

Here’s The Game Plan…

Now let’s put that into a business perspective. Let’s say you’ve got 3 projects. Each project consists of 3 weeks of work, on the 3rd week you make money.

The multitasker, let’s call him Thomas just for the sake of sounding cool, would do:

Week 1 – Project 1
Week 2 – Project 2
Week 3 – Project 3
Week 4 – Project 1
Week 5 – Project 2
Week 6 – Project 3
Week 7 – Complete Project 1 and Make Money!
Week 8 – Complete Project 2 and Make Money!
Week 9 – Complete Project 3 and Make Money!

That means it took Thomas 7 weeks before he started making money.

Now here’s Hocus Focus Max would do:

Week 1 – Project 1
Week 2 – Project 1
Week 3 – Complete Project 1 and Make Money!
Week 4 – Project 2
Week 5 – Project 2
Week 6 – Complete Project 2 and Make Money!
Week 7 – Project 3
Week 8 – Project 3
Week 9 – Complete Project 3 and Make Money!

The Blind Side

(Coincidental title, heh. Saw the movie btw – very touching and inspirational)

To me this is very crucial because I’ve missed this for a long time.

As you can see, Thomas makes money on weeks 7, 8 and 9 but Hocus Focus Max makes money on weeks 3, 6 and 9. That means Max makes money earlier and if Max is even smarter, he’ll use that money to finish the other projects faster.

Thomas however, makes money on the last 3 weeks – but that doesn’t include the time between switching projects to work on.

© Make Money Online

This article is guest posted by Welly Mulia.

The idea of building and running a profitable Internet business from the comfort of your own home sounds great, and I’ve seen a lot of people get very excited at the thought of doing this.

As great and awesome that may sound, one has to carefully think about the effects of building an Internet business, both from the positive and negative aspects.

You might think that there can ONLY be positive effects since everyone out there is talking how they are making 5 or 6 figure per month easily and effortlessly.

Well, nothing could be further from the truth.

Of course there are going to be NEGATIVE effects as well. Not only in business, in everything that we do there are always going to be 2 sides to every coin.

So what kind of negative effects are we talking about?

You see, when trying to build a successful online business, 99% of the time you’re NOT going to make any money at all when you’re just getting started.

Why?

Because you’re still learning the ropes of the game.

Let me ask you this question: “Let’s suppose you have never played tennis before, but you want to be good at it. Can you be good at the sport in a very short period of time?”

The answer is NO!

The same thing goes when trying to build a successful Internet business from scratch without much knowledge and experience. Heck, it’s not just about building an Internet business, it applies to every endeavor that you’re trying to learn and conquer.

Business in general, not just Internet or online business, is about investing for the future. I’m not talking about investing in shares, bonds, options or the likes. I’m talking about investing in our business NOW so that the business generates profits for us in the future.

Like what I’ve said earlier, when you’re just starting out to build your Internet business, your income for the first few months will most likely be zero. Even if you’ve managed to earn any money during this time, they will most likely be pennies.

You work on your business 30 or 40 hours per week and you don’t see any results. What do you do? Do you give up like most people do? Or do you continue to work hard and fine tune your business along the way?

You may only start to see results a year or two from now, but when you’ve successfully made that first dollar, then it’s going to be easier to make subsequent dollars.

Once you hit the next breakthrough in your business, your business has the potential to grow exponentially.

In fact, it’s very possible to grow your business exponentially while working less. You do this by having systems and quality team members in place to run the business WITHOUT you.

This is what I call the entrepreneur spirit.

Contrast this when you work as a full time employee for a company. You get paid a fix salary each and every month. You have peace of mind and can concentrate on your work because you know that at the end of the month you’re going to get paid by the company.

You get your full time salary at the end of the first month, at the end of next month, the month after, and so on. However, your income increases on a linear basis (usually only once per year).

Initially when just starting out, most people would rather be in the full time employee position because of the fix salary they can bring home every month. However as time goes on and the business keeps on improving, people would no doubt choose to be in the business owner position rather than just an employee whose income increases only linearly.

But that’s just how it works.

Entrepreneurs are rewarded for their determination and perseverance during the toughest of times, and are rewarded when their business starts to take off and make them even more money while working less.

Employees who have been enjoying consistent, fixed income continue to bring in that amount for the rest of their working lives while still having to work the normal 9 to 5.

Clearer picture

Having read this far, you should now have a clearer picture of the risks and rewards associated with building and running your own online business. Don’t simply jump in and get your feet wet at the thought of making money online from your Internet business. Consider carefully the advantages as well as disadvantages as outlined above.

Again, there’s always 2 sides to every story…

INSTANTLY Claim Your $488 FREE Internet Marketing Gifts That Will Show And Teach You How To Build A CONSISTENT Four Figure Per Month Online Business FAST!

© Make Money Online

This article is guest posted by RichKidMedia’s Chief Strategy Officer (weirdly awesome job title eh?), Alan – my dad.

My dad is also an entrepreneur and the manager of my mom’s event organizing business. Makes me think about the ol’ question “Do You Think Entrepreneurship Runs In The Blood?” (majorly epic long haired dude talking :-)

Without further ado, let’s jump in to the article…

Only 8 words on what marketing is and how it applies to your internet marketing business.

When I started out, I too did not get marketing right. I thought that marketing is selling. I also thought that it included advertising, slogans, logos and design of packages. Not wrong, but too narrow a definition.

I dug the site of the American Marketing Association and here’s how they define it:  ”Marketing is the activity, set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering, and exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners, and society at large.”

That’s 27 words in there and I don’t think that explanation is clear enough for you to kick start your internet business. Wikipedia’s definition is even longer – 3 times that long.

Here’s my 8 word definition of marketing: Providing More Value To More People More Often.

Remember these words: Value, People, Often. And don’t forget, More.

Let’s chop these down.

Provide More Value

Most people are uneasy with selling. In fact, most are afraid to sell. They think that selling is for the fast talker who would do everything to get the sale. And sadly, the sales industry is littered with such people.

Selling is helping people. Selling is giving value. And value is perceived from the customer’s end. What’s In It For Them?

In selling, you make sure that you and your customer both win in the deal. It’s  “quid pro quo.”  I give you this – you give me that. That is why in your salesletter,  you say that if the customer is not satisfied, he can return the product and you will promptly refund his money.

Most of the internet marketers are selling information. Information in the form of ebooks, audio or video. To increase the perceived value, some smart marketers have even converted these digital products into physical stuff.  (Even in the digital economy, people still prefer things they can touch and thumb through).  Look at the 3-ring binders, manuals, and CDs they are sending.

To More People

Remember Kidblogger’s formula for making money online? It’s called MARCOM. Market Reach + Conversion = Money.

Market Reach = website visitors + email subscribers

The more people you drive to your site, the more money you make. Dozens of ways to do this. Think of Social Bookmarking, Press Releases, Video Marketing, Guest Blogging on authority sites, PPC, Article Marketing, Blog Commenting, Forum Marketing, Tarantula Linking, etc.

Or just go over Carl’s 69 ways to build backlinks and drive hundreds of visitors to your site. And if you’re in for the long term in your internet business, don’t forget to capture your website visitors contact information.

More Often

Some marketers call this increasing the lifetime value of the customer. You’ve spent a great amount of time getting that customer, so why not make the most of it. Don’t ever think of making only one sale to your existing customer – think of multiple sales.

One brilliant way to do this is make many offers to that existing customer over time. That’s where the autoresponder comes in. I can only recommend two: Aweber and Getresponse.

You load related marketing messages in your autoresponder. At a predetermined time and sequence, these messages get into the inbox of your subscribers and customers. If you plan to send 3 emails a month, that’s equivalent to 36 messages a year! All messages are preloaded with links to your products or affiliate offers.

With an autoresponder you can also broadcast special messages from other people’s products. It’s hard to imagine a successful internet marketer without a contact capture method provided by an autoresponder.

Another way to increase lifetime value is providing residual offers. This is where your customer pays you over and over for the same offer. Membership sites and web hosting are some examples.

Got it? …Again…Again. What is Marketing?

© Make Money Online

This article is guest posted by John Tan.

There are so many reasons why people fail online but the below mistakes that I am going to mention are the 3 biggest online mistakes that anyone should avoid if you want to have a successful online business.

Mistake #1 – Talk More Than Taking Action

This is the most common mistake that I see people fall into. They have great ideas on what products they are going to create and how they going to build their list but when you ask them what they have done to their ideas, they just keep quiet.

Solution #1 – Take Action

The solution I have for this mistake is to take one of the ideas you have and start working on it. Be focus and complete that one project before you move on to the rest. You want to also break down your project into multiple small tasks so that you won’t get overwhelms with that one big project.

Tackle one small task at a time is the way to go.

Mistake #2 – Buying Addiction

This group of people just loves to buy products, collect them and do nothing with them. Even if they do do something, they just didn’t persist long enough to see the results before they jump to the next product that promises them the push button solution.

The reason why they do so is because when they bought something, they feel like they’ve done something which obviously they did not.

Solution #2 – Seek What To Buy

The solution I have for mistake #2 is to first choose a business model for your online business. For example if you have chosen building multiple adsense sites as your business model, then you want to only buy product related to your business needs.

Other product like list building and product creation is not what you want in your business. The key here is not to let product seek you but you seek out the product that you need.

Mistake #3 – Lying

This is especially true in the Internet Marketing market. They try to fake it till they make it. When people starting doing that, they usually cannot provide the value the customers need and in the end they end up losing more than they gain. They are just plain lying to themselves.

Solution #3 – Be Honest

It is ok that you mention that you are new in this market but will over deliver in the product you created. Being honest will help people trust you more and do business with you.

For the long term, your business will thrive and not die as people following you can see how you treat your business and customers in your business.

John Tan is a online business coach that focus on teaching people to build an online business with integrity. Right now you can get 54 powerful marketing secrets from one of his sites at www.MarketingLunchBreak.com for FREE.

© Make Money Online

DANGER: Extreme rant ahead. Proceed with caution!

*START RANT*

Is content king? I think that’s overrated.

The way I see it…

Marketing is king.

Let me throw some examples first:

Case 1: Coca Cola vs Pepsi

Since 1975, Pepsi has been running “The Pepsi Challenge” wherein they hand 2 blank cups to bystanders in malls – one containing Pepsi and the other one, Coke, and then they’d ask which tastes better.

The result? Pepsi topped the challenge.

But Coca Cola is still the number one soft drink. Why? Advertising.

Case 2: Problogger.net

It’s widely accepted that Darren is the #1 blogger who blogs about how to make money blogging (And I amen to that) but does Darren give “the” best content about blogging to make money? I’m not saying that Darren’s content sucks, Darren gives high octane info. But does he give the best content around the blogosphere?

Of course not, there are a lot of bloggers out there who give hard core advice on blogging but they’re unnoticed. Why? Because they didn’t market themselves enough. They haven’t positioned themselves properly. Darren positioned himself as THE Problogger.

Case 3: McDonalds

Let’s face it.

They don’t have the best tasting burgers.

They don’t have the best tasting french fries.

But they do know where to put their branches.

One of my dad’s MBA teachers once said “McDonalds is not in the fast food business, they’re in the real estate business.”

Content is just a part of marketing

I personally believe, and the way I apply it to my business, content – is just part of marketing.

There are a lot of people out there who are topping the charts but are not really “the” best or don’t really posses the best skills – but they know how to market themselves.

Another quick example: Bruce Lee, not the strongest, not the quickest but the most popular martial artist ever.

There are a lot of people too who have “the” best content, but are unknown.

Of course, I’m not saying that you should just put all your efforts into marketing – again, content is part of marketing – you have to deliver.

Not necessarily the best content, but “good enough” content to keep them coming back.

So in conclusion: Marketing is king.

*PHEW! END RANT*

© Make Money Online

This article is guest posted by Albert Fang.

In any webmasters point of view, they would agree that without targeted traffic, they are simply nothing. Bounce rates begin to reach ever so high, conversions are at it’s decimals, what else can be worse? These are the practical stats that most webmasters face due to the fact that the keyword that they want to rank for is too competitive and they become discouraged. They want to get targeted visitors that can convert, but they can’t simply due to the overwhelming competition that they know will take months, if not years to see some progress.

I am here to say, there is a simple way to bypass this. Simply, target your target audience indirectly. I know that it sounds like I’m reiterating my self on this, but trust me, it will make a lot more sense later on.

Step 1: Find Your Target Audience

You have now picked a niche and now have a site ready to make sales. You hint to your  self that you are promoting a product on  search engine optimization, which means that you now know that you want to target an audience that are of webmasters. Once you have found your target audience, you are ready for the next step.

Step 2: Target Your Target Audience Indirectly

Once you have found out your target audience, in this case webmasters, you are ready for the next step, digging deeper. I am not talking about a large marketing campaign, but rather a really simple project that only involves a simple piece of paper, a pen, and a bit of creativity. Once you have that out, it is time to visualize. Ask your self these questions.

• What else is my targeted audience interested in?
• What is popular that involves my target audience?
• What else are they searching up? (Keyword wise)
• What are my target audience’s goals?

Now answer them. I’ll give you an example of how it looks.

Target Audience: Webmasters

Q: What else is my targeted audience interested in?

A: Money making, Internet marketing, coding tutorials, article marketing, the list can go on and on.

Q: What is else popular that involves my target audience?

A: Link building, on-page optimization, specifically, search engine optimization as well, RSS, Twitter, Digg, Stumble Upon.

Q: What else are they searching up? (Keyword wise)

A: Lets look back at the above and jot down a few ideas. Lets think back to step 1. Webmasters want to rank one to do what? Make money right? So, perhaps keywords like money making, Internet marketing, and social networking sites, are also commonly searched by webmasters as well because we know that webmasters main goal is to try to get maximum exposure to make money. This also answers this question, “What are my target audience’s goals?”

Step 3: Research Keyword Competition

Now that we know that webmasters are interested in many topics like money making, Internet marketing, affiliate marketing, social networking, and etc, rather than just SEO alone. We now have a bigger playing field in terms of finding that perfect uncompetitive keyword that provide the same target audience to if I were ranked number one for the keyword SEO. Now jot down those keywords that are not as competitive and has a pretty good search rate, and you’ll be ready for the next step.

Step 4: Take Action

Now that you have found your keywords, simply take action and build those links. Keep on page optimization in mind as well, and you are bound to see results. Some important SEO factors to consider when optimizing for the search engines on page are…

• Bolding, italicising, underlining important links and keywords.
• Using the Dofollow tag correctly.
• Using <H2> for Post Titles.
• Sprinkling the keyword (not excessively) in the intro paragraph of a post.
• Using the keyword in the Title page.
• Adding alt tags to pictures

You can read the rest on our post called the 14 Effective Search Engine Optimization Tips.

The search engines shouldn’t be your only source to get targeted traffic. We now know that our target audience (webmasters) are also interested in social networking sites like Twitter, Digg, Stumble Upon, so why not utilize those sources to attract more readers as well? There are literally hundreds of untapped markets that has never been discovered before that are searched up everyday, waiting to be discovered. The possibilities are endless to finding your target audience. You just have to put the effort into finding them the hard way, directly, or the easy way, indirectly. All I can say is dig deep and you will succeed. If things look really overwhelming, slice it up. Simplify it!

This blog post was written by Albert Fang, the constructive guy behind MoolaDays.com. He and his blog emphasizes on the infinite ways to make money online, and everything else that comes along the line of ranking high, such as, tips on search engine optimization, tips on Internet marketing, and much more.

© Make Money Online

This article is guest posted by Jason Tarasi.

“Your idea will never work and I see absolutely no reason why people will have any interest in something like this….”

These were only words, but the meaning behind them cut into my soul and stabbed at my heart.

Well over ten years ago when I first stepped cautiously into the online marketing arena, I allowed someone I considered an expert to crush my dreams and make me question my self worth.

Since I trusted this man and took his word as gospel, I foolishly gave up on my idea that I believed had so much potential, and moved on.

Several months later, I learned this “expert” was in fact a fraud who had not only been feeding his hollow lies to me, but others who had placed their trust in him as well. Much to my dismay, I also discovered that another marketer had used an idea exactly like mine to start a business that became wildly successful.

I was ok with all of this, except for random urges to put my head in a microwave oven. One day while contemplating if I should nuke my head on high or medium power, a revelation came to me – In order to succeed at anything in life, I had to learn to trust myself.

This revelation would become the basis of my success over the next ten years, and it has never failed me to this day. The trust I have in myself has never waivered. There were times I made bad decisions, but I always used those failures as a learning experience.

This is why I have always maintained that the biggest secret to Internet marketing is your mindset. If you believe you are destined to fail, you undoubtedly will.

One of my favorite quotes about achieving success and believing in yourself was given by none other than punch drunk Rocky Balboa:

“The world ain’t all sunshine and rainbows. It’s a very mean and nasty place and I don’t care how tough you are it will beat you to your knees and keep you there permanently if you let it. You, me, or nobody is gonna hit as hard as life. But it ain’t about how hard ya hit. It’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward. How much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done! But until you start believing in yourself, ya ain’t gonna have a life.”

Marketing online takes resolve and it takes guts. Most of all, it forces you to put aside your fears and learn from your failures in order to keep moving forward. That is the only way to be successful in this business.

If you can’t trust yourself to make decisions, then who else can you trust? There will always be someone out there who doubts you and your ideas. Never let that person be you.

Believe in yourself and success will surely follow.

Warmly,
Jason Tarasi

Download my free ebook “Secret Lives Of Internet Marketers” and discover how 7 ordinary people just like you created their own full time online businesses -  and how you can follow their winning strategies to achieve financial independence!

Click here to download “Secret Lives Of Internet Marketers” instantly

© Make Money Online

This article is guest posted by YingHang, a 16 years old internet marketer who makes 4 figure income online.

Everyone has their own list for powerful “Jedi or Sith” Top ten favorites. Nowadays one of the toughest and most discussed questions is who is better of the two? Both of them has their own point of focus where Jedi focuses on value and originality, sith focuses on strategy; well everyone has their own choice and points to prove.

The latest on web is online business and marketing. With globalization and escalating use of technical advanced advertisements both on television and web, online marketing has gain a lot of consideration over last few years. People are trying different things and techniques to promote their business through online marketing. So a question arises, “Does Being a Jedi or Sith Makes You Better in Online Marketing”?

The answer to the question above is obviously not simple and no one will be able to agree on a single answer. In fact the answer can be miscellaneous in its own respect, as it depends upon ones thinking and attitude of the person answering.

There are some who focuses on providing value as Jedi does or there are people who are tactics based as in case of Sith. It’s not only a person’s attitude alone that effect’s the most, but at times there are circumstances and surrounding situations that modify the behavior of the person at crucial times.

Now based upon the principles of Jedi or sith one can have business/marketing plan based on two very different aspects of business making “Value or Strategy”. There is no exact and precise answer as to why one should choose the other over the expense of one. Regardless of the answer there are companies which emphasize on “Value” that is no matter what happens value is the most important and foremost thing for them. This behavior can have both negative and positive effects altering the way a company is governed and can change or even revolutionize the way different unit’s function as a whole.

Presently there are a number of “Value” based companies deploying and working with successful online marketing strategies and they have reached such horizons that no one would have ever expected of. The way these companies manage their plans and execute it exceptionally well that they maintain their image and value of the company in the eye of the beholder.

But that doesn’t mean that the “Sith” image is completely useless and downtrodden. No way who says that, working strategically and tactically can be equally useful and sometimes proves to be more effective when one is running tight on time and needs to meet strict deadlines.

Now at this point of one can engage into an endless discussion involving the two ideologies and we’ll be right where we start form, but this won’t be the case. Currently there are firms that are working on the same concept as of the “Sith”. Carefully designed and observed strategies are executed first on artificial conditions and then in practical life. One important example for such companies is when going with online marketing and deploying an instant online trade show for promoting business overseas.

Such companies work tactically on regular basis, testing various protocols and structures for designing fast forward strategies to make them a success both at local and international grounds. When these well defined and tested strategies are put to use with online marketing than one can see that working strategically and tactically can be equally fruitful and by no means can be considered inferior to the latter discussed above.

But those were the gone days when companies used to rely on these ideologies individually and some or the other had to suffer from time to time. With more advance and modern technology coming into picture the way companies go with online marketing is completely take up a new face for the corporate world.

Now both the ideologies are like two faces of a single coin that go hand in hand. Nowadays companies are working strategically to improve on product quality and customer value as a whole. It’s a matter of surprise that how the new technology has help to prepare a platform where companies are working “Tactically” with more “Value” of their own. Leaving the same old question unanswered.

This article is guest posted by YingHang, a 16 years old internet marketer who makes 4 figure income online through various monetization method. He blogs about his online marketing methods and experiments on his online marketing blog.

© Make Money Online

This article is guest posted by Crystal Miller

News stories about Twitter have surged in recent months. Oprah jumped on the Twitter bandwagon in April 2009 and major news stories have been broken over Twitter in the last eight months (the January 2009 US Airways plane crash into the Hudson and the Mumbai shootings in November 2008 are two examples). These along with other news events have boosted the awareness of Twitter across the world.

What does this mean?

The Business Insider recently revealed a chart of the day (on 5/21/09) comparing the number of worldwide unique visitors of three big names in social networking: Facebook, Myspace, and Twitter. The chart from comScore follows the number of unique visitors each month from April 2008 through April 2009. Take note Twitter fans: While still only 1/10 th the size of Facebook, with around 32 million unique visitors, Twitter is on a similar growth trend. This exponential growth provides the perfect sweet spot for tapping into a massive stream of laser-targeted visitors.
Here are 10 ways you can take advantage of this surge to build your business and increase your profits.

1. Sign up – if you haven’t already done so!

This almost goes without saying, but obviously, you can’t take advantage of Twitter’s popularity if you’re not on Twitter. Sign up for your free account today. Experiment with it. Set up your profile. Watch what other people are doing for a while (and brush up on your Twittequette) and then adapt it for your own business needs. Scads of good help can be found with a quick search on any Twitter-related topic. A great place to find tips is Mashable, the social media guide.

2. Create an account for each niche or area of interest.

At this point, there is nothing that says you can’t have more than one Twitter account. In fact, it’s best if you keep your interests separate within the social networking realm whenever possible. This helps you communicate only with people who are interested in the same things as you. If your interests are gardening and science fiction television, you can’t assume that your followers in the gardening niche will also be interested in time travel or laser swords, too.

3. Customize each account by creating your own background.

One of the interesting features of Twitter that a lot of people still aren’t using is the customized background. Design your own background to showcase your business. You don’t have a lot of room but there is plenty you can do with the area to the left side of the Twitter stream to highlight your company to your followers. Ben Parr offers some great advice on customized backgrounds in his article, How to Create Custom Twitter Backgrounds.

4. Start using a variety of Twitter tools to condense Twitter management tasks.

A simple search on a search engine will reveal a boatload of free tools that have been developed for Twitter users. New ones are popping up all the time. Once you get to a certain number of follow requests every day, a good tool to help you automate the following process is TweetLater. TweetLater has an automated Direct Message (DM) feature to save you time on replying to new followers. You can also schedule your tweets in advance to be sent at a certain time. Your tweets will send while you’re off taking care of other business or spending time with your family.

5. Tweet valuable advice to your followers.

The core of internet-based communication is to provide something of value to those you are communicating with. So make sure you provide tweets of substance. This can be a picture that evokes laughter, a link to a meaty article on your niche topic, or a quote to ponder that relates to your business or hobby.

6. Tweet often.

The frequency of your tweets will depend, in part, on your audience. Certain businesses have a daily urgency built in while others require less attention. For instance, someone who follows the daily rise and fall of a certain stock will want one or more tweets every day. For someone interested in gardening, several tweets a week or even as little as once every ten days will probably suffice. Implement whatever works best for your niche and stick to it.

7. Unfollow those who aren’t contributing to your tweet stream.

Every so often (you can determine how often) you will want to unfollow people. Perhaps they aren’t tweeting the kinds of things you really wanted to know about. Maybe they aren’t tweeting at all. Whenever you discover that someone is not providing the value you expected, simply click the unfollow link because you don’t have time to pay attention to anything that’s not of value to you or your business.

8. Add a “Follow Me on Twitter” button to your blog and other sites.

One of the best ways to build your Twitter presence is to add a “follow me” button to your blog or other sites you own. Since you have links from everywhere funneling traffic to your sites, you never know if someone reading your blog is already a follower or not. You might as well invite them to join you on Twitter. Adding the code for a “follow me” button is easy. Twitip offers a good list of resources for buttons and how-tos.

9. Provide specials that are exclusive to your Twitter followers.

Big name businesses have been doing this for quite a while now. Dell is one notable example and is reported to have made $1 million or more through sale alerts on Twitter. There’s no reason this can’t work for your business as well. As long as you are following good etiquette and not tweeting your own horn too much, you may as well toss in an exclusive offer or two for your loyal followers. (If you make it especially juicy, you may gain new followers out of the deal, too, because your offer will get re-tweeted.)

10. Mine your tweet stream for golden nuggets.

Just as the tweets you send provide top-notch advice, so do some of the tweets you receive. Mine your tweet stream for these golden tidbits so that you can re-use them. For example, you can collect links to meaty articles on a certain sub-topic within your niche. When you’ve gathered enough, use them as part of a free guide you put together on that topic to give to your customers. To make it easier to track the tweets you receive, you can use tools such as TweetDeck. In TweetDeck, you can group people you follow and subdivide your list into more manageable chunks.

This will help you sift out the true gold from the fool’s gold.

With the continued rise in Twitter’s popularity, it only makes sense to put it to work in your business.
To learn more about social media and how it can turbo-charge your traffic, build your brand, and build a community of rabid followers, go to http://www.web20visitorstampede.com.

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Whew! Just got back from the beach to celebrate my 16th birthday – Buffet breakfast, lunch, dinner (priceless!), triyaking, snorkeling and sun burn, all fun!

Kinda funny though because me and my cousin lost the snorkels when we fell off the triyak so we had to pay $50, GASP! Still fun though :-)

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