Thinking of a greeting card - think about this

A need that people essentially struggle to fill in their lives is the longing to be appreciated. Showing appreciation for others can have a profound and lasting impact on your relationship with them although it may seem like an easy and simple thing to achieve. A good way to accomplish this is to send a greeting card. There's nothing like the feeling of finding an unexpected card in the mailbox. We open that piece of mail first all the time.

Whenever you need to wish your friend or acquaintances happy and belated birthday, or wish your near and dear ones merry Christmas, or send your beloved one happy valentines day wishes or just say hello or give a "get well soon" message to your bosom friend , you just go to a greetings card outlet or visit an online greetings card website and send the desired card. Are you wondering what greeting card is all about and how did it begin? This article is for you if you have the desire to know.

Greeting cards are several of the nicest things we will ever get in our lifetime. When was the last time someone made you cry with a simple card that had a short, heartwarming message? You could perhaps still feel the emotion that overwhelmed you when you first read it if it wasn't too long ago. Greetings cards may be the cheapest that we can buy someone, but they sure are the richest in meaning. Whether it's for a best friend or grandma whom you haven't seen since you were a grader, a card is always appreciated, especially when it arrives with a personal and some hugs and kisses.

Especially those you make yourself, possibly nothing can be nicer than cards except others cards. Homemade cards work even apparently most impersonal of reasons for giving such as for business purposes and never fail to cheer up anyone's day. A nice, personalized note surely can't be beat, so if you want to make all the best and warmest impressions on your receiver, create your own card and say it in your own words which is probably the best way to say it, anyway, whatever it is.

These days, you don't even have to worry about creating the actual card as there will be many tools you can use. You can download a lot of different software that are dedicated to creating personalized greeting cards on the Internet. Although, not everyone will be eager on doing things themselves. So if you think you only have a message but not the means to actually put it in a nice-looking card, there are websites as well that will do it for you for a very cheap price. After all, what's important is your message. Creating a design on the card by drawing it yourself may be great with kids, it just won't work when your receiver is your boss' wife or maybe your boss himself.

Make use of those software that could come much in handy, especially the holiday season if you want to be able to deliver your most honest and personal yet decent message to someone. Or then again, if computers are not your thing, simply find a website that will give you the cards you want with your own message and a great professional look to boot.

Those cards can even open a lot of opportunities for you whether you make your own cards using software or buy them from a website. These days when people when people put a premium on the convenience offered by the world online, a home based greeting card business sure sounds like a great way earn more income.

Explore the possibilities as you plan to put up your own greeting card business by searching the Internet for websites that can help you do just that. If you want proof that this venture works, you can check out review sites where you'll find people with their own greeting card businesses already taking flight. Find out what they have to say about the websites that opened opportunities for them and made them a success.

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Can a Blog Help your Business ?

So you have been thinking of creating a blog right ? Well, the time is now to get a blog. A blog, if done right, can act as a 

direct and indirect mechanism that brings large amounts of qualified visitors to your site, many of whom may become customers.

This is mostly related to the way blogs interact with search engines and the traffic I am speaking of will come from search
engines, mostly Google.

Before I explain how you can do this to help your website, let me first give some background on how search engines work, Google in
particular.

When it comes to optimizing your website (or blog for that matter) for search engines you must always keep in mind two
things: on-page optimization and off-page optimization.

On-page optimization is the elements of a Web page that better optimize it to be found and ranked well in the search engines.
These elements can include on-page content such as the actual sentences and paragraphs on the page, the headlines (or headers
or Hx tags), the links, the links' text, the title tag and much more.

Off-page optimization means the things that are done on sites besides your own, namely link-building. Off-page optimization is
the process of creating links (or causing others to create links)on other websites that point to your site. Inbound links as these
are often called have a major impact on how well you rank in search engines. Generally speaking, the more inbound links, the
better. But the quality of the sites with these inbound links, or the way the search engines perceive the sites, is even more
important.

To rank on the first couple of pages on the search engines requires work on both on-page and off-page optimization.

Two additional and important pieces of information that you'll need to understand are related to site content and internal
links.

Search engines also very much love new, original and quality content, and they like to see your website regularly adding this
kind of new content. You don't need to add pages every day, just add pages at the same rate over time. So if you add a page a week
to your site, keep it at around that same pace, or increase or decrease gradually.

A website can be considered a living entity in a sense. It certainly shouldn't be static. It should grow over time. And the
fantastic thing about content is that the more of it there is on your site, the more chances you have of getting found in the
search engines.

The idea that inbound links help your search engine rankings that I explained above can be extended to your own internal pages as
well. In other words, the more links to a particular page coming from other pages within the same site will boost that page's
rank as well.

Think of it this way. If you had a ten page site, including a product page and every page on the site contained a link to your
product page and, if all other things were equal, your product page would rank higher than the rest of your site's pages (besides
the home page which is given a little extra weight).

Now let's consider what would happen if there were only you and your competitor in your industry (if only that could be true!)
and your site still had those ten pages while your competitor's site contained one hundred pages. Furthermore, your competitor
set it up the same way as you where he added a link to every page on his site that pointed to his product page. If all other things
were equal, his product page would outrank your product page every time. Why? Because he had 100 internal links pointing to his
product page and you only had 10.

If you put all these pieces together now, on-page optimization, off-page optimization or link building, content creation and
internal linking, can you begin to see why a blog may be a good thing? A blog helps with all of these.

A blog that is regularly updated is providing a mechanism for adding fresh content on a regular basis. Plus, it's so easy to
use a blog that anyone can use them, so even if you or your employees don't know a thing about Web pages and HTML, you'll
still be able to add new content to your site.

Consider this. If you add fresh, quality content to your blog on a regular basis by writing posts, something the search engines
love, and within each post you link to an important page within your site, let's say your product page for instance, you're now
building links to help your rankings using your blog. With this additional link your product page gets that much more boost in
the search engines.

Remember how I explained that links from within your own site help your rankings? Adding links within your blog posts pointing
back to your other important pages that you want to rank well is a great way to help your rankings.

And every time you publish a new post, you're giving the search engines one more entry point into your site. Your site will
quickly get bigger, and with each new page your site gets more visible.

Keep in mind that the links you make within your blog posts should be relevant. Only link to your product page from a post
that has to do with your products. And also, blog posts ought to be useful to your site visitors. The less you talk about your
products and instead offer useful, free information that people can use, the more traffic and repeat visitors you'll get.

Remember that people really don't care about you, your website or your products, they only care about how you can help them. If
you sell furniture, a blog post about how to find the best deals on furniture would be far better than a post about how your
chairs are the best in the world.

One important thing to remember is that if you plan on creating a new blog for your business as a way to augment your website be
sure you put the blog on your actual domain. This means that you would not use a remote service like Blogger.com. Instead, you
must have the blog on your business website's address (or domain). For example, if your website address is
http://www.yoursite.com/ then your blog should be located at http://www.yoursite.com/blog or http://blog.yoursite.com/

By adding a blog to your business website you are creating a way to get more traffic. You'll get direct traffic from your posts,
which get indexed by the search engines and drive traffic to your site from searches. And, you'll get indirect traffic from your
other site's pages ranking well in the search engines because they have links pointing to them from your blog posts.

You'll be regularly adding fresh content to your site, which search engines love, thereby creating more ways to be found in
the search engines at the same time. And each post provides a new opportunity to create a link or two to other pages and blog posts
on your site, thereby boosting those pages' rankings.

Like I suggested at the beginning, if your business website doesn't have a blog, go get one.

Visit http://www.robertjrussell.com 

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A Day of Computer Prohibition!

Imagine a day coming to the office and discovering that the Internet lines are down. Is it still possible for companies to operate in these circumstances? Definitely a bad day for the average company big or small, but these circumstances would be very different for the Internet marketer. Let us see why.

Not withstanding the fact that many big companies such as hospitals, airports managements do have their private "generators" to deal with such situations, the computer in the office world can be summed up in three grand chapters namely communications, information and data processing. For the Internet marketer, if these basics are obviously similar they do not tie him down to his computer due to him having created an automatic follow-up for the majority of them.

It would be interesting to test a day in the office with no Internet access. Are people still capable of hand-writing a message to their colleagues, using a flowchart or even conceiving one? How many offices out there have foreseen an emergency plan and are set-up for such a day, heaven forbid and is it conceivable? My point is that we are very much addicted to our computers granted that they do increase the speed of daily chores, they have albeit indeed stolen human contacts and personal touches and have made every monthly bill from these conglomerates all but humane.

Conversely, the Internet marketer - and we all need to be one* - should enjoy a day or two of computer prohibition sprinkled into our weekly lives. We would use that time very productively by visiting our friends, taking a walk and thereby doing some public relations (in a small manner) as well as taking a little distance from our business to conceive some possible improvements to its approach and future; business that in any case runs without our constant presence, because that is how it must be setup. One website, an auto-responder are the basics, and upon these two essentials an empire can be build with all compatible ramifications that in time get included. The "job" of the marketer will then profit from when the office is closed due to the dreaded local Internet failure.

To find out about internet online marketing visit http://www.robertjrussell.com

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How do you rank in the Search Engines ?

Google and other Big Search Engines use for years a smart method for content backlink calculation, in fact an undercover algorhitm for giving specific positions for the web sites in search results, determined by the quality of results, where the main point is the quality of the backlink resources.

A good news is as today you don`t need to be a SEO expert to obtain good results in search engines. Only you have to know what and how you have to do, to obtain a large exposure in search engines, to bring as fast possible visitors and sales on your web site or blog.

PPC, AdWords or any other method of paid advertising is a quick way to get traffic, but there are some risk factors; you have to know SEO techniques to choose the right keywords and advertising text, but even you know how to do that, you have not guarantee of your results. You have nor one control in your traffic campaigns and anytime your ROI balance may fall.

The verified and guaranteed method to get stable a targeted organic traffic with a high conversion value is to use SEO optimization techniques for your site, then to use any natural, smart or safe method to build as many quality one way backlinks you can: Video sites, Bookmarks, article marketing, Social Networks, Podcasts, Blogs etc.. It seems to be a lot of work, it is?

Well, I will show you two methods easy to follow and for sure the most effective in present:

- Free Traffic System during his 2 months prelaunch period from September 2008 helped dozens of people to reach the 1st page in Google and in other big search engines. They was real people with web sites in different niches: arts, advertising, business management, current trading, computer games, health, loans, spiritual improvement etc.

- Less than a month ago was launched Viral Media Distribution where you will find detailed explanations, tools and resources about article marketing, video presentation, setting professional of a Clickbank or any other referral link, about using all great resources of video sites, bookmarks, social networks, podcasts, blogs etc. to develop a huge free traffic resources

A lot more details and some useful free stuff you will find in Wordpress Articles Business Blog .

With these two great components: Viral Media Distribution and Free Traffic System you can be sure as only the sky will be the limit for any type of business online you could have.

For answers about Real Estate & Insurance: visit http://www.robertjrussell.com

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Tangled in the World Wide Web? Avoid 2 Serious Online Mistakes

Reprint from: http://www.AgentsSalesJournal.com

August 2009 - Prospecting Corner

Written by Marilee Driscoll

Would you allow someone else to control the lease on your office space, your business phone number, or the renewal of your insurance license? Of course not! Being a business owner means having the responsibility to control and deploy assets that are important to your practice. And these days, your email addresses and Web site domains can be just as important to your business as a phone line. The way that you have purchased or leased these online assets may leave you vulnerable to a variety of avoidable risks. While setting up your online presence, make sure you are prepared for any later issues by avoiding two serious mistakes when it comes to establishing your Web address, your page design, and more. Mistake #1: Not owning your domain The most important thing you can do is to control your destiny by owning your domain name. The domain name is the part of a URL (uniform resource locator) that typically comes after "www." and ends with an extension such as ".com," ".net," ".org," etc. Your domain name is usually listed on your business card, as well as on any advertising you may place. People find your Web site on the Internet, by typing your URL into a browser (such as Internet Explorer or Firefox) or by conducting an Internet search on Google or some other engine and clicking on a result, which redirects their browser to a URL. The owner of a domain is called a "registrant," and that entity (it can be a person or another legal entity) controls the URL in the same way that the owner of a life insurance policy controls the policy. To keep things simple, you should be the registrant for any and all domain names you use. But here's the really important advice: Never, ever, obtain a domain through a reseller, even if they may you an offer to get your domain "on your behalf" for free when you purchase another service through them - usually a Web site and/or hosting. Why does this matter? Imagine that your Webmaster (or anyone else) purchases a domain that you use for your Web site (in this case, they are usually the registrant). You become unhappy with the service you are getting, and you want to switch to a new Webmaster or service. Well, like the insured who wants to change a policy that they don't own, they are at the mercy of the owner (in this case, the registrant). And there's no legal obligation to play nice. Your domain can effectively be held hostage while an expensive and time-consuming appeals process takes place. This type of situation is not, unfortunately, unusual. It happens all the time. A less malicious but equally difficult situation can happen when someone else acts as the registrant of your domain, and then becomes disabled or passes away. Will your domain be renewed (after all, it's the previous owner's credit card that's file)? What will their estate do with your domain? It should cost you less than $10/year to own your domain. The company that I use and recommend is www.GoDaddy.com (you've seen their ads on the Super Bowl). You can find other places to buy domains by searching for an "ICANN-accredited domain registrar." (ICANN is the worldwide organization that controls the Internet's naming system and can be found at www.ICANN.org.) Registering your domain has nothing to do with where your Web site is hosted; they are separate and distinct functions. Once you own a domain, you can have it hosted by any company, or leave it unhosted, if you like. You can also point a domain so that, when someone puts it into a browser, it points to another domain that is hosted. GoDaddy, for example, offers free pointing when you purchase a domain through them. Mistake #2: Not owning your Web site design If you hire someone to design a Web site for you, make sure that that they sign a contract before work starts and before any money changes hands stating that you own the Web site, that they are retained under what is called "work for hire," and that all copyright protection is transferred to you in exchange for the agreed-upon fee. Otherwise, like the photographer who takes a photograph, the creator/developer owns all the rights to what is created - in other words, your Web site. Also be sure to stay legal by checking the usage guidelines for clip art and any graphics you use on your site. You certainly wouldn't write a new application using someone else's name as agent. So don't make the similarly foolish mistake of abdicating ownership of the all-important online infrastructure of your business. Take the proper steps to keep everything under your name and your control, and you can avoid some unexpected but messy situations later on. Marilee Driscoll is a professional speaker and consultant, the author of "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Long-Term Care Planning," and a principal in FollowUpSystems LLC. She can be reached at 508-830-9975 or through www.marileedriscoll.com.

For information about Insurance & Real Estate visit: http://www.robertjrussell.com or http://www.InsurancePricedRight.com

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Is Social Media going to replace Emails ?

Some people are predicting that Social Media will soon replace emails.....here is a list of Social Media Websites to check out.....

To learn more about some of the most popular networks that are part of the Internet's second generation, read the blurbs below and then visit these sites. You'll find some easier to use and understand than others, but as you browse, ask yourself: How could our agency benefit by using this network?

• Facebook (www.facebook.com): A free online social media network created by Mark Zuckerberg in 2004 while he was at Harvard University. Named for the paper booklets that colleges distribute with names and photos of students, Facebook spread to other universities and now has 150 million subscribers worldwide.

• LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com): A network of 33 million professionals from around the world, representing 170 industries and 200 countries. Launched by five partners in 2003, the network exists to "find, be introduced to and collaborate with qualified professionals you need to work with to accomplish your goals."

• Twitter (www.twitter.com): A privately-funded social media service with offices in San Francisco. Started in March 2006, Twitter has grown into a real time short messaging service that works over multiple networks and devices. Members post news about themselves by answering, in 140 characters or less, the question: "What are you doing?" Other members respond by offering relevant information that may be useful. According to a source, Twitter had 744,000members as of January 2008.

• Craigslist (www.craigslist.com): A free, online classified advertising space that connects buyers and sellers, whether the item being "sold" is an antique dresser or a position at an insurance firm. The site is categorized by metropolitan area and further divided by suburbs. Ads are automatically deleted after seven days, at which time you may repost.

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