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About To Start An Online Business? Read This First.

Copyright © 2004 Steve Shaw

I recently received an interesting question from a visitor to one of my web sites: “If there is any advice that you wish you would have gotten before you started a business online, what would it be?”. Rather than write an extensive email on this subject, I figured my answer would be of use to many people out there about to embark on what for many could be a life-changing experience.

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It takes a lot more work than much of the hype suggests.
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If you think you can put in a couple hours when you feel like it and achieve any level of success, you have been seriously misled. You need to be prepared to put in some very long hours, and to go through a steep learning curve as you find your way.

Establishing an online business is the same as setting up any other sort of business – it takes a lot of hard work and a lot of commitment over a long period of time, with many trials and tribulations along the way. Don’t expect instant results, nor to sit on the beach after a couple of weeks while the money flows in – it doesn’t happen.

The current success stories on the Internet have got there through months, more likely years, of hard work. You should be prepared to do the same, and to make whatever sacrifices you may need to make in your current life to do so.

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Don’t fear failure – just get started now.
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Many people do not start something because they are afraid of failure. They are afraid of looking a fool, afraid of their nearest and dearest saying ‘I told you so’, afraid of wasting time, effort and expense on something that may not work out.

In fact, the very nature of the question in my opening paragraph above is based on a fear of failure. It is a vain search for that gold nugget of information that will prevent them screwing up.

The truth is that failure should be celebrated, it is a simple milestone on the way to success. It is only through failure that you can truly find the path to any sort of success, right from when you first learned to walk as a small child. Failure teaches you important lessons that make you wiser and will make your business stronger and far more likely to succeed.

Instead of just giving up when something has failed or not worked out like you expected, there is a really simple question you can ask instead that can lead to great success – “What can I learn from this experience?”.

Everyone who has ever achieved success has gone through failure first. The difference is that the success stories picked themselves up, learned from the experience, and persisted anyway.

For many people, just getting started is often the hardest part. They will think about it, think some more, and then think again. Often rather than thinking in a focused way, they will end up procrastinating, and never get off the starting line.

The important part is just to get started. Yes, you may be initially doing completely the wrong thing, such as selling the wrong product in the wrong market, but failure is the only way you will learn, and the only way you will reach success. If you don’t fail, you can’t succeed.

And simply by starting, you have succeeded already, succeeded in getting way beyond the point that most people reach, which is usually just saying, ‘One day I will’. Make today that ‘one day’ – why wait until tomorrow, when tomorrow never comes?

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Focus, focus, focus.
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It is important to maintain your focus on what you actually want to achieve. Are you aiming for an additional income to supplement an existing wage; or are you looking to make an Internet business a full-time occupation?

Whatever your focus is, it is important that you continually work towards it until you achieve it, whatever knockbacks or challenges you receive along the way.

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Be careful what you read – beware of information overload.
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There is so much information out there about how to do business online, much of it contradictory, that it is often difficult to separate fact from fiction.

Rather than read everything and anything you can get your hands on, it is best to find just a few people who you trust, who have a good reputation, and who are actually qualified to give the advice they give, and listen to them.

A little high-quality information can be worth a great deal.

It is also useful to watch what they actually do, and compare that to what they say – sometimes the two are very different, and following what they do is far more useful.

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Don’t aim for perfection before you ‘launch’.
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No web site is ever perfect, and if you try to reach a high level of perfection before you launch or make your site live, you will lose more than you can achieve. Plus your version of ‘perfection’ may differ a great deal to what actually works with your market.

Once your site is functional and of a reasonable quality, start promoting it immediately. Start to build up your mailing list by requesting the email addresses of your visitors. Test what works with your visitors and what does not, and alter your site accordingly.

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Listen to your visitors and customers.
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When you have started and got a web site up and running, it is important to listen to your visitors and customers, and to treat them with great respect. Not only will you learn a great deal from them about what the market is actually looking for, you can also earn lifelong customers and friends.

Positive comments from customers can be used with their permission as testimonials on your web site, which will strengthen your online credibility and profit potential.

Be prepared to continually adjust your web site to meet the market demands. A web site is never ‘finished’, a successful web site must evolve over time on a continual path of improvement.

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But most importantly…
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Decide to succeed – right now.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Steve Shaw of takanomi.com develops software and systems for effective e-marketing. His PopUpMaster Pro software at http://popupmaster.com creates popups that beat the popup blockers and which you can use with Google Adwords.

How to Hire a Coach

Improve Your Life! How to Hire A Coach.

A reader writes, “I do not know how or where to contact a coach here. What kind of background should a good coach have?”

Perhaps others of you wondered the same thing. Hiring a coach takes some investigation on your part but according to the February issue of “Fast Company” magazine there are 20,000 coaches in the world so locating one isn’t going to be difficult. (See below for a link to the Fast Company article.) If you want a coach in your country that is definitely possible since coaching is a worldwide profession. That said however many coaches coach on the telephone so you are not limited to coaches in your country.

Where do you look for a coach? My favorite way of finding anything I need is to ask others who have had experience with it. So to find a coach I would ask my friends who their coach is. If that doesn’t work then there are directories of coaches on the web. A few such websites are: <http://www.coachu.com> and <http://www.coachfederation.com>.

You will need to have some search criteria to find the coach that is right for you. If your issues are work related you might want a business coach, a career coach, an executive coach or a corporate coach. If you have personal issues, you might want a personal coach, a life coach or a relationship coach. Another search criteria might be your country if you prefer to be coached by someone there.

The International Coach Federation, an association for coaches, suggests that people interview at least 3 coaches before deciding on one coach. That said I think what is most important is your trust and connection with your coach. If you call one coach and your intuition tells you this is the coach for you, then hire him or her. The one thing I do know is that you must believe that the coach can help you for the coaching to work. It is the coaching relationship that is most important.

Before you decide on which coaches to interview, go to their website if they have one and get a feel for the coach. Subscribe to his/her newsletter or read articles in the archives of the website. It will help you to understand where the coach is coming from and if his/her values align with yours. Finally many coaches give Teleclasses. This is a great way to “put your toe in the water” without a huge financial commitment.

Coaches come from many diverse backgrounds. There are former therapists, educators, and business people. Depending on your need one background may be more appropriate for you.

Some coaches have additional training as a coach. Rather than telling the client what to do, the coach’s role is to help the client to find his/her own path. Coach training programs give the coach the tools and resources to guide and motivate the client without pushing him/her. The advantage of having a trained coach is that he/she has no agenda other than to help you succeed.

For the interview you will want a list of questions that will help you to decide if this is the coach for you. (See below for a way to receive a list of questions to ask.) Let the coaches know your expectations and needs so that they can have a chance to tell you if they can meet them.

Finally be sure to discuss the fee with the coach. You must feel that the benefit of coaching is worth the cost of the coach and that you can easily afford that fee without cutting back on necessities.

Take Action

1. Ask friends about coaches they or any of their acquaintances use.

2. Search <http://www.coachu.com> and http://www.coachfederation.org for names of coaches to interview.

3. What kind of help are you looking for? Make a list of questions you would like to ask the coach. I have a list of questions that used to be on the CoachU website. If you would like the list, send an email to with “Coach Questions” as the subject.

4. Interview the coaches and let me know the result!

5. Read “Are You Being Coached?” from this month’s Fast Company magazine <http://www.fastcompany.com/subscr/91/open_playbook.html>

Alvah Parker is a Business and Career Coach as well as publisher of Parker’s Points, an email tip list and Road to Success, an ezine. Parker specializes in helping professionals create a career that is fun, fulfilling and profitable. Alvah is found on the web at http://www.asparker.com. She may also be reached at 781-598-0388.

Employees – Money Is Not The Only Inspiration

How to inspire employees to perform better and continue retaining their loyalty with the company? Ask this question around and the first option may be given as to raise the pay. Is raising the salary the only method of inspiring employees? Let us look at some others that can make a difference.

The first thought of money and inspiration means that we subconsciously compare our employees to machines. Add more fuel, maintain and it will perform better but that is for machines. Humans are certainly not machines. If money was the main motivating factor, you would not find people working for humanitarian and non profit causes without any money in return.

So when we think about motivating employees, we have to first look at them as thinking emotional beings with aspirations, their personality contradictions, and all the pluses and minuses of a human being. How does a thank you change the mood, especially when it was not expected? Thanking can change the mood totally, because by thanking we are acknowledging the good work done by some one. That acknowledgment is a big reward. I appreciate the good work being done by you and I thank for all the help that you have been to me and the organization. Send such a note once a month or so and watch the performance sky rocket.

Sorry. Yes I agree that this is a advice repeated umpteen times in as many articles. But I am still writing this because we forget about it. Many times, in our frustration and anger, we tend to forget that our anger is being released on a third party. The worst part is that we forget to say sorry. Sometimes, rather than a plain sorry, we should call the employee and discuss about the problems we were facing that gave rise to our anger. Make him/her a partner in your agony and say sorry. You will get not only a satisfied employee but sometimes a good friend for life.

Employees are as human as bosses are. Once employees realize that bosses are people of high character they would automatically get motivated to work with the company and for the company. Motivating them becomes difficult when we are ourselves lacking in some appreciable human quality. The golden rule should be to make yourself worthy of respect and you will not only get co-operation but a team that works for you to achieve a common goal. Good Luck.

CD Mohatta writes text for business use. Please view some of these ecards for happy boss day. You can also view his text in Free Wallpapers here. You can take fun tests at- Fun Quiz cards.

Weekends Spent on the Quad

The lifestyle of work hard and play hard is a great one. Working hard each day makes us feel very good deep down, just to know that you gave it your all and you are not capable of doing any more. Playing during the weekend feels real good deep down too, you deserve to play since you worked so hard, it creates for a perfect balance in life.

Four wheeling is fun to do during the weekends. If you are into racing, that is one thing, this is going out with your friends and having a blast on your four wheelers. You only need a few acres of land to really have a good time, or better yet you can travel to a location dedicated to four wheeling. It is fun when you go to a spot like this because you can meet up with a bunch of other people who are into it too, you can end up with new friends, and they might know of more places that you could go four wheeling. You want to make sure that you are in great physical shape, so you could take the diet supplement acceletrim to keep your energy up and help you work hard during the week. If you have a desk job, you might want to get to the gym and workout or participate in physical work after you get home. Spending your weekends four wheeling is a great way to spend your off time.

Finesse the no Fold ‘Em Poker Table

Low limit Texas Hold ‘Em tables are often referred to as “No Fold ‘Em” because the betting is limited to small amounts, making it more tempting to go all the way to river on an improbable draw. These are the poker tables where bad suck-outs happen, and if you get unhinged by that kind of play, avoid the low limit tables like the plague. If you are going to play No Fold ‘Em Hold ‘Em poker, you must be psychology prepared for some brutal beats. There are strategies you can use to help minimize losses and build up profitable pots at these tables. First, consider the most important factor in any poker game – the other players. Are they loose, passive callers with little raising going on? Or are there aggressive players driving up every pot and always going to the river, making it costly to see a full board?

With passive players, you can extend your range of starter hands and see more flops. Traditional premium hands like a high pocket pair or AK are more likely to get busted in this type of game because so many people stay in the pot. By seeing more flops, you can leverage some luck when it comes your way. If the flop misses you, get out. Don’t get sucked into passive betting.

At an aggressive table, you have to tighten up your starting hands. No Fold ‘Em Hold ‘Em almost always goes to showdown with the best hand winning. You can’t bluff anyone off the pot, so you have to know that your poker hand is a probable winner to remain in the action at these tables. When you’re sure you’re holding the winner, raise it up to get more value out of the aggressive players who always to go to the river.

Biggest Time Management Mistake

The biggest time management mistake you can ever make is forgetting your closest partner in life. The one who stays with you all the way from cradle to grave, every minute. The one who drives you through your daily and nightly routines, who runs all your habits. You want it or not, this partner of yours is the real manager of most of your time. His name is Your Subconscious Mind.

You and Your Subconscious Mind make one tightly bound team in everything you do. Whatever big or small project you undertake, you two depend critically on each other. And unless you both work in the same direction, your team hardly makes any big progress.

But how do you align those directions? Like in any team, communication is the key. You need to communicate to Your Subconscious Mind the specific target you want to hit and in what time frame. Of course, you can take the lead and set the direction to go. Yet, you still need to convince Your Subconscious Mind to follow you in that direction and hit your target.

The challenge is that Your Subconscious Mind has a stubborn and inert personality. If you just tell him what to do, he does not listen you well. He already has strong opinions about what you should be doing instead. After all, he is the one who holds all your beliefs that you absorbed throughout your life up to now. And he has a comprehensive toolbox of routines and automatic reactions to get you through your day.

But don’t give up on this challenge. If you manage to convince Your Subconscious Mind to drive you in the direction you want to go, he has the power to make you unstoppable! The power that can keep you on course through the storms of every day distractions and interruptions.

But how? How do you convince Your Subconscious Mind to help you? You need to learn how to communicate in the way he accepts and understands. That special way of communication with Your Subconscious Mind is what goal setting techniques and skills are really all about.

While there are finer points that you can pick up in books or on my site, here is the core essence of goal setting techniques as a way of communicating with Your Subconscious Mind.

The most critical element of goal setting is WRITING your goals. For a number of reasons, this writing process is absolutely necessary for Your Subconscious Mind to take them seriously. Writing is the basis of the communication. Anything less than a clearly written goal will be discarded as unimportant noise.

Note that the goal writing process is a two way communication. When you write your goal, if Your Subconscious Mind does not accept that goal as reasonable, he will try block your hand until you actually write something more realistic.

The second critical element is about the way you formulate the goal when you write it. You want to get your point across to Your Subconscious Mind most directly and effectively, in the language he understands best. That’s why you need to follow certain rules of goal writing.

In particular, formulate your goal in present tense, as a complete sentence that starts with “I”. Make the goal as measurable and specific as you can. Correct and rewrite it until it is crystal clear.

Set a specific time frame. Set it by finishing your sentence with a deadline that you honestly think you can meet.

Keep those notes in a safe place and come back to them often to review and correct your written goals. Keep thinking about them throughout your day.

Finally, take a few minutes right now and actually write down three to five of your most desirable goals. Reconnect to that important partner of yours and start communicating. Right now, and from now on.

Offshore Gambling Keeps Gamers Plugged into the Web

A new wave of gamblers should have spotted the term “offshore sports betting” in recent times, but many may not be entirely in the know what it symbolizes. A foreign gambling internet site basically performs external to the administration of a distinct nation alternatively it could mean a machine-accessible gaming web site running their servers inside a country in which on-line gaming is not at this time proscribed. Concisely then, it’s best portrayed as a betting administration working extraneous to the state of the participant. Internet betting world wide websites are mostly governed by three structures. They are OSGA (the Offshore Gaming Association), IGC (Interactive Gaming Council) and the Fidelity Trust Gaming Association (the FTGA).

The Offshore Gaming Association is an autonomous watchdog authority that presently keeps tabs on the thriving offshore betting trade with a duty to grant betting fans an avenue to readily determine good internet sites to play gambling games on, without concern. The authority attempts to protect customer’s rights, additionally they do not levy any annual expenses.

The agency is a proficient and objective third party company that voices unbiased points of view, advised by your comments, unbiased study, discussions, prompts not to mention delivers inside bulletins.

The Interactive Gaming Council is a non commercially motivated council. The administration has been established to allow a forum for concerned participants to address problems and in addition to advance relevant matters in the worldwide interactive gaming profession, to establish even-handed and efficient industry codes and habits which strive to enhance consumer trust in internet based wagering commodities and utilities, and to serve as the industry’s public procedure counselor and it supplies an information base.

The Interactive Gaming Council have established a distinction for advancing safety, stability and also credibility through the integrity standards it establishes, also its allure for businesses of principled practise. The Interactive Gaming Council regularizes offshore sports gaming by means of applying a specific 10-step series of standards and in addition charges sports gambling websites license fees to show their logo. Disappointed bettors can, should they want to, mention any of their disputes to the IGC.

The FTGA has been formed in an attempt to create a standard which will improve the transactions of networked gambling business concerns. The authority trust that conducting business exclusively with respectable enterprises, they are able to fabricate a coalition of the fairest and professional offshore gaming companies in the world at large.

To review, these are organizations which co-ordinate the transactions practised by networked sports betting and which should in time function to alleviate a few of the trepidation due to the insecurity felt by detractors. Networked gaming web sites are consistently dependable, since private details aren’t requested and the rewards and the gaming odds should be just as balanced and honest as your familiar Vegas-type stake. They diminish traveling time, but maintain the underlying essence, only today you can gamble at your own computer.

Vikings DE Udeze.s leukemia in remission

Property in Egypt

Property in Egypt is offered at a low price and involves a great opportunity to expand you big or small real estate portfolio. Though the place is associated with certain negative features it is still incredibly popular has retained its natural beauty.
The auspicious beauty of the rising sun, over the Red-sea and the Mediterranean-sea still attracts the attention of people from across the globe. Indeed a large number of tourists come to visit the place because of its beauty. Egypt has always been an example of the historic past; and the country has maintained a good relationship with the West.
Developments are progressing in a rapid rate. Property investment in Egypt is a profitable option and so property based companies from Dubai like “Emaar” have committed to make immense contributions of millions of dollars to enhance the business of real estate. The government has even compromised on the application of taxes in land related deals.
The business is flourishing mainly among the middle class sector because they make their profit from revenues that are gathered in the form of rents. Therefore, it is a lucrative opportunity to grab your little corner of the major market in resale property and enhance the construction of Dahab or other resort areas.

Software Tools To Help Your Business Sell More

Sales are all about leverage, because there is only so much you can do on your own. But, with the help of these simple tools, you can easily double, triple and quadruple your productiviting and make more sales.

PhoneTray Dialup

PhoneTray Dialup allows you to receive and screen phone calls while you are online. The program uses your V.92 modem and Call Waiting service from your phone company to detect an incoming call. If you have Caller ID on Call Waiting, also called Call Waiting ID or Visual Call Waiting, PhoneTray will show the caller’s name and number, so you can decide if you want to answer the call or ignore it. If your internet provider supports Modem-on-Hold, you can put internet on hold, take a call and continue browsing after you finish talking.

PhoneTray logs all your incoming calls. It keeps the date, time, name and phone number of each call. You can view a complete call history or calls received today, this week or this month. You can select what type of calls you want to see – all calls, local calls, long distance calls etc.
Because PhoneTray Dialup logs all calls (you can keep the log as an Excel file), you can easily follow up on your prospects.

More information: http://www.deprice.com/phonetraydialup.htm

Cure Reminder 2.1

With the help of Cute Reminder software you can easily create desktop sticky notes and make reminders for an appointment, birthday, phone call, bill payment, meeting, oil change, TV show and other events or tasks, so you can concentrate on your business.

The program automatically tracks the history of related events and stores the information into archive. Individually colored skins, support for audio files in various formats, schedule, linking files and Web pages to reminders and printing. The user-friendly interface provides comfort at your workplace whether at the office or at home.

Cute Reminder will make it easy and natural for you to manage your information, it will protect your mind from overstrain and encourage your creativity.

More Information: http://www.deprice.com/cutereminder.htm

TextAloud

TextAloud converts any text into spoken words. Instead of the valuable time you spend reading on your computer, imagine being free to relax, get up and stretch, or work on other things while the information you need is read to you in a pleasant, natural sounding human voice.

Better still, leave your computer behind.
TextAloud’s unique Text to MP3 conversion can save your daily reading to MP3 audio files to download to your portable MP3 player. Listen to email, online news, or important documents while you exercise, work or commute.

Just imaging how much more business you can do, if you listen to your e-mails while driving back home, rather than wasting hours on e-mail chores in the office or at home

More Information: http://www.deprice.com/textaloud.htm

John Deprice owns and operates http://www.deprice.com/utilities.htm

Fast Credit Repair – You Can Do it Today!

One of the major financial troubles which people are inclined to go through is credit repair. With diverse businesses and companies offering support on credit repair it is hard to choose the most best option. With the worldwide economic crisis, banks expect positive credit score before granting loans. This makes it essential to introduce fast credit repair methods. Fortunately, fast credit repair is not as complicated as is represented by credit businesses. Comprehensive and specialized details is not mandatory. You can easily pursue the techniques below and save your credit service expenses.

The first and foremost question to ask yourself is What have I done wrong? How did I get into bad credit? Only then can you recognize your solution and choose the most appropriate strategy. Once you find out the reason of your problem, its time to bring about a transformation in your lifestyle and financial activities. You can start going through your credit statements and focus on incorrect information and notify your creditors.

Heedless use of credit cards should be totally evaded. Credit cards should only be used only in dire need. All additional credit accounts should be closed to avoid overspending. Extra accounts also tend to show up in the annual credit statement and trigger negative scores. Outline and adjust your monthly spending budget. Keep track of your accounts and avert the accumulation of debts. Start believing that your victory lies in your own hands.

Never fall in the error of paying late. Timely payments guarantee that you will not face bad credit profile and that your credit score will continue to be positive. It will also ensure that a pleasant relationship is continued with your lenders. Make the attempt of raising your credit score as this will give you a positive image amongst your creditors and will support you in getting loans in the future.

Always determine your debt ratio to your credit balance ratio. Exercise caution and prudence when using credit cards. Use only 40% credit on a single credit card. Excessive usage of a credit card raises an uneasiness in the minds of the lenders and creates a unfriendly environment. It also cautions the lenders towards offering loans in the future.

People often tend to overlook the most straightforward and simple strategies of fast credit repair. Credit counseling is engaged instead of taking pains to evaluate their own situation and reaching at an appropriate result. This same task is performed by the credit counselors at a very high fee. The most effortless way to repair your credit score is to surf the net for limitless tips on fast credit repair. But in the end only your own endeavor can pull you out from this terrible credit mess.