What To Do During Christmas & New Year

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First of all I want to wish EVERYONE a very Merry Xmas, Happy Kwanzee and whatever traditional festival you may be celebrating at his time of the year!

So what do you do while you visitors are tucking into turkey and taking time off away from their computers?

Here are a few tips to get you going:-

Top Tip: Get away from your PC and chill out, really, you need to rest and have fun with people you ENJOY being with.

Now let’s move on…

Tying Up Loose Ends

Get those all important tasks done that you keep on willing yourself to do but have not got around to finishing.

Good Housekeeping

Check over your web site[s] and give it a tweak here and there checking your dead links and errors.

Goal Setting

Get your Action Plans into gear for the coming New Year. Set realistic goals and proposed deadlines.

‘Mis en place’ [To Make Preparations]

A term from my culinary background which roughly translates to getting all things prepared and set in place.

Get on with some drafts for content, blog posts, articles and any other content so that you have some good content ready for those days when your mind goes blank with ideas. This will help you get off to a good start with your work projects.

Be Patient

Don’t sweat it. It is common for many webmasters to experience less traffic and general site activity at this time of the year. Take some time out to recuperate while you can cause when those people come back you want to be fully recharged and ready to roll back into working mode.

I’m sure you will find that you have a few things which need to be sorted out both online and offline. Anyway here’s the season to be jolly, or so they say.

Happy Holidays to you all and may 2006 be yet another prosperous New Year!

Cheers,
Nancy

Free Alternative To Microsoft Office

More freebies for the disconcerting computer owner. Have you ever wanted an alternative to Microsoft Office?

Have a look at a free alternative with no cost implications. That’s right, it’s completely free. Why pay out hugely expensive software to get the basics done when you can get the same work done for zero dollars.

Try OpenOffice freeware here

Free Advertising On Blogs

A revolutionary idea for even more free advertising has been brought to my attention. Have you heard the buzz about Mike Filesaime’s latest brainchild - The Free Advertising Blog?

Members can join for free and have a daily allowance of advertising which they can post on the blog.

There are also ‘Pixel Ads’ at the top header of each page where you can reserve a premium ad spot. For a minimal fee you will get a permanent link back to your site and enjoy great search engine rankings in the long term. So have a look at how you can get your very own ‘Lifetime Pixel Ad’ before all spots are taken!

Visit the Free Advertising Blog today to take a look for yourself.

All the best,
Nancy

Happy Holidays Limited Offer From Site Sell - Buy 1 Get 1 Free

I’ve just received an official announcement from Ken Envoy, President of the hugely popular Site Sell or Site Build It as it is more commonly referred as. He is offering an elite number of small business web site packages with a Christmas Special:

BUY 1 GET 1 FREE!

That’s two complete SBI packages at HALF PRICE. Great value for money, especially at this time of the year.

So what are you waiting for get in while BEFORE Ken’s offer expires. As long as you register your secure your order by 25th December 2005, you’re in for the best deal I’ve seen this month!

Click here to see your postcard from all at Site Sell.

Best Wishes,
Nancy

Jay Abraham’s Insider Secrets Revealed

Jay Abraham has given me the opporunity to share some valuable information with you, but first you should read about the incredible and real life results he has achieved time and time again.

Here Are The Real Life Examples:-

He took $20,000 a year start up idea called Icy Hot to $13 million in 18 “fast track” months.

He took Jim Cook’s $300,000 a year brokerage business to $500 million in two years.

He took Entrepreneur Magazine from $700,000 to $8,000,000 in an incredible nine month’s time.

He made David Hall a “staggering” $35 million in 18 months.

He gave Mark Victor Hansen and Jack Canfield the idea for Chicken Soup for the Soul.

He made Vic Conant $900,000 in 60 days, then $10 million more — in the next 15 months.

All have them are now hugely successful in their businesses and all of them give great appraisal of what valuable tips and working strategies they have gained from being a student of Jay Abraham’s Insider Secrets.

For the very first time this year Jay launched a once in a lifetime teleseminar, inviting regular people to joined in for $0.00 to learn some of his best guarded secrets strategies that have pulled business from the gutter to evolve into million dollar industries.

Before this time you would typically have to pay out a staggering $25,000 per person to attend a conference with Jay Abraham.

What could any one man possibly know that made his books?
worth $400 or $1,000 a copy, his tapes worth a shocking $2,000 - $5,000 a set.

Want to take your business to the next level to increase your profits?

Do you want your organisation to grow exponentially?

Then enrol in Jay’s Insider Secrets. I would suggest that only if you feel you are highly motivated and envisage yourself as a future entrepreneur before you embark on the road to Insider Secrets. Don’t expect to learn anything WITHOUT digesting the information and dissecting each learning curve so that you are grasping every technique to grow your business exponentially to show proven results.

You could really be setting yourself up for future prosperity for the New Year and beyond.

Take a look at my two announcements for both of Jay Abraham’s rare teleseminars PTI & PT II. Visit Jay Abrahams Insider Secrets and make 2006 your most profitable year ever.

[NOW ECLOSED]

Blog Directories For Niche Markets - Focus On Internet Marketing

Update: Looks like this site was short lived as it is no longer online. Ah well another one bites the dust!

A newly formed blog directory courtesy of Michelle Stahl with it’s primary niche of Internet Marketing related blogs. This directory stands out from the crowd of over subscribed directories with many broad and undefined subjects. It is so easy for your blog to get lost in the endless pit of blog listings.

All is not lost, all you have to do is search for niche blog directories that cater specifically for your target market. These blog directories will typically have a more focused following with a readership which has more interest in the type of information you have to offer. View my extensive list of blog directories.

So if your blog has an Internet Marketing theme, head on over to IMBlogs and get registered right away. Full credit goes to Jason Lewis for notifying me about this site.

[UPDATE - IMBLOGS IS NO LONGER AVAILABLE]

Technorati, Boing Boing and others are virtually bursting at their virtual seams with blogs on numerous subjects. It’s difficult to find essentially what you are looking for. Plus I find there is a tendency to get distracted and go someone else after my frustrations get the best of me.

Found any niche blog directories? then let me know and I will review and feature it here.

Good day to you all,
Nancy

How To Create A Basic Redirection Web Page

The following code can be used to set up a very basic redirection page. You may want to use redirection pages for your affiliate programs.

This is a technique which can save you entering a very long url which looks clumsy and unattractive and people will not want to click through the link. So let’s use a more appealing method in order to get those clicks!

Here’s what you need to do:

You’ll create a subdirectory at your site like www.yoursite.com/miriadz/ (if you don’t know how to do this ask your webmaster) and when people click on this page it will automatically redirect them to your affiliate link!

So anyone that clicks on www.yoursite.com/miriadz/ will be redirected to:

http://www.miriadz.com/affiliates/clickthru.cgi?id=username

Here’s the code you will need to insert into a web page to create your redirection process:

<html>

<body>

</body>

</html>

So now you can use the shorter and ‘cleaner’ www.yoursite.com/yourlinkname/ URL in your promotions!

This quick and simple set up helps to mask your affiliate links and gain more clicks in the process.

More advanced techniques to come!

One Stop Web Site For All Your Free Webmaster Tools

Where else can you find a host of resources and tools for webmasters?

Well I’ve found a great site with tons of free tools you can use to improve your web site.

Looking for:

Free 1-Hit web tools
Bookmark maker script
Broken link checker
Domain name check
Google Activity detector
HTTP Header viewer
HTML cleaner
HTML encryption
IP to country convert
Keyword analyzer
Keyword suggestion tool
Load time analyzer
Magic Ranking Prophet
Meta tag generator
Meta tag generator +
Merchant calculator
Page ranking checkers
Robot.txt generator
Screen sizes emulator
Search Engine Simulator
Spelling checkers
Tell-a-friend service

For all of the above resources and more can click the following link here!

What Has The Song ‘Jingle Bells’ Got To Do With Viral Marketing?

The popular Christmas Carol, Jingle Bells theme goes viral in the online marketing world!

I checked my inbox on Friday 9th December to be greeted with one of the craziest viral marketing ideas I have come across at this festive season.

Check out this link. But I do warn you that it will be hilariously funny!

A brilliant way to recharge yourself if you’re feeling low.

Well what did you think?

Love it or loathe it it is very infectious, a little wired maybe for most online marketers. I could see this kind of site more suited to Free Online Games sites for Kids or Joke Of The Day type of sites. What’s your verdict?

Join Marlon Sanders Associate Program, if you dare by clicking on the following link. Lots of great advice and practical marketing advice providing thigh quality products, mostly in CD Rom format. You’ll love what Marlon has to offer your business and potential clients.

Another unusal but powerful viral marketing site can be viewed in my past post here

Getting Your Action Plan Into Gear

Get your Action Plan into gear by drawing up a list of ‘Things To Do’. Then mark them off as you fulfil each task. Your Action Plan should be of equal importance or more than planning your Christmas, birthday, anniversary or wedding gifts.

Could you honestly get away with not bothering to get presents for these special occasions?

Equal importance should be given to your Action Plan. Don’t keep putting off things today and justify it by thinking you could do it tomorrow. There’s no time like the present!

New Year’s Resolutions should be an all year round concept. Then maybe fewer people would be disappointed when the set unrealistic goals which they cannot achieve. Or because they lack the willpower and motivation to carry them out.

Draw up a checklist of ‘Things To Do’ and set a ‘realistic’ time frame in which you would like to complete each task.

I personally do this on a daily to weekly basis, so that I get a rough idea of how many workable tasks I can complete so that my goals setting are workable.

Hmm, you could save that I am a regular goal setter, although there are some tasks which I don’t manage to get around to. Sometime I change my initial goal as time goes by in accordance with the results I expected.

For example:

I wanted to set up a new part of my site for my Practical Marketing Tips, an idea which evolved in early 2005. My first idea was to provide a free opt-in email tips, but I was concerned with email filtering from ISP’s and other email delivery problems.

Secondly I considered setting up a web page, which I actually got around to, well at least the front page announcement and a few web pages of tips.

Again I wasn’t entirely happy with the arrangement.

Finally, with the ever growing Blogosphere and potential to reach my target audience I invested the time and energy to set up THIS VERY BLOG. I have not looked back. Using Wordpress open resource blog has enabled me to get my message over to my readers in a way in which suits me down to the ground.

I got to admit that all of the headaches of extra coding, sorting out plugins and adding stuff to the template were a royal pain in the butt, for someone who is not a programmer or code genie. However, I am willing to learn new things and receive a lot of help and feedback from the Wordpress forum, where other bloggers volunteer to help out with issues on a daily basis.

So in May 2005, Nancy P Redford’s Practical Marketing Tips evolved and is here to stay, so long as my pace maker will allow me.

I hope you not only enjoy reading my posts, but will sign up to receive regular updates by email or the growing number of RSS users. Use the links to the right of my blog to sign up for free. Or click the handy links below:

Main Entries/Post: http://feeds.feedburner.com/PracticalMarketingTips

Comments: http://feeds.feedburner.com/PracticalMarketingTipsComments

Choose a news aggregator to download and read RSS feeds here. I use FeedReader because it’s free and easy to use.

Got your Action Plan into gear?

I am still drafting up my long term goals for online work and in my personal life. Will keep you posted of anything major.

Thanks for reading,
Nancy