I had a passionate conversation with my cousin over this idea of "Internet Marketing". He asked as many questions as I can answer accordingly.



One significant question he asked is about how to compete with 'so many people and websites' in this business. This is the first time I'm ever asked such a question since I started out, so I did my best to answer...and my answer must have so impressed his father who overheard it that he said, "Yes yes, this is also exactly what I told my staff too."



This uncle is in the construction business and he does not know much about the Internet as I do, but the point is if he agrees with what I said, then the answer must contain principles applicable in real life.



I do admit that over the years I learned, inculcated and mastered as best as I can what I know to be universal principles whether they can be applied online or off.



I told my cousin you don't have to 'compete' though everything is done in 'healthy competition'. He has 3 courses of action to participate online, or in any other environments which he so chooses:



1) Be Yourself. I personally think that one of the hardest skill in self-development is 'knowing thyself' and shaping your personal identity throughout the years of business evolution. This calls for immense foresight and smart work at sustainability. A great example is Microsoft. This corporation always outdoes its own products and services and therefore it is able to evolute itself. What a powerful lesson it imparts! You better like this company now.



The first paragraph of pg. 129 in Stephen Covey's "The 7 Habits Of Highly Effective People" quotes from Viktor Frankl: "Ultimately, man should not ask what the meaning of life is, but rather must recognize that it is he who is asked. In a word, each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible."



2) Be Different. If…

One of the biggest issues any business would face is its unique position in the market. If you've not got a unique position, then you'll find that you've got nowhere to "stand out" of the crowd throughout your promotion.



USPs were originally defined around the 40s as a position a company took to make them stand out from their competitors and make the customers of said competitors switch to them. It works as an understandable and tangible reason for people to buy your product, over that of other competing products, or as a benefit that your competitors don't offer.



For example, a bank in the UK can be promoting itself based on these propositions:



1) All call centers are in the UK—so no one is dealing with crackly lines, or broken English due to the call centers being based in a lower-cost area of the world.



2) It has no middlemen—which means there's no commissions to pay to anyone.



3) It has no shareholders, so it does not charge money for things that should be free.



That's the USP for that bank and it has resulted in many people switching to it.



The USP is anything that makes you 'different' from your peers. The only caveat to this is to make sure it's a clear difference—anything unclear, or too technical may not work, or be completely overlooked by your customers, thereby creating no reason for them to switch to you or choose you over your competitors.



Your unique sales position is a clearly defined statement of what your business stands for—what makes it special apart from others, and is your key to monopolizing a stake in your customers' mind. If you have not thought of a USP before, why not think through all the departments of your business e.g. finance, accounting, human resources, sales and marketing, pre- and post-sales support etc. and discover if there's anything outstanding enough to be worth telling your customers about it? Just don't be shy about promoting it.



Say, your…

It is imperative you must know about this sooner or later. If you are into e-zine publishing right now, this set of criteria will significantly enable you to tweak your layout and presentation to suit your subscribers' taste in general. It's brief but better than nothing.

Newsletter readers like:

Easy-to-skim designs
Short articles
Interesting subjects
Good visuals
Calendars
Bulleted Lists
Content telling how to make money/save time
Offers and Benefits

Newsletter readers DON'T like:

Intimidating pages
Disorganized information
Long, continuing articles
Overly frequent mailings
Irrelevant content
Impersonal tone
Receiving multiple copies
Chaotic page design
Too many pages

Nelson Tan is the webmaster behind Internet Mastery Center. Download $347 worth of FREE Internet Marketing gifts at http://www.internetmasterycenter.com

Not strategies or techniques, but business models in a more general sense. To give you an idea:

1. Affiliate type website.
2. Content website with Adsense.
3. Affiliate type + Adsense.
4. Your own product - membership site.
5. Your own product - ebook.
6. JV deals.
7. Your own product - software.
8. Directory type site.
9. Online newsletter.
10. Promote affiliate products using AdWords.
Bonus. Sell on Ebay + your own site.

The VERY top way is to create your OWN business and market it well. Find out what YOU are GOOD at, see if there is a niche, and start your business in that niche. Run it like a professional business with profit/loss evaluation, business plan, goals, etc. You can make a lot of money doing this, but most people won't take the time and effort to make it happen. Question is: Will you be the one to do it?

Nelson Tan is the webmaster behind Internet Mastery Center. Download $347 worth of FREE Internet Marketing gifts at http://www.internetmasterycenter.com

Running your own free newsletter or e-zine can bring massive benefits to your website and profits. Did you know that newsletters are one of the most important components for you to drive traffic to your website and build your online business?



The popularity of newsletters is based on the thirst for information by information-hungry Internet surfers. The main reason people are online is because they want and need information and that is exactly what newsletters provide.



There are 3 major advantages of starting your own newsletter, no matter what product or service that you are offering. They are:



- Being able to maintain regular contact

- Being able to build a relationship with your subscribers

- Being able to offer new products and services



A newsletter allows you to keep the connection with your site visitors reminding them of how your product is suited for them.



The other, often overlooked, advantage of having a newsletter, is the income it can generate, not from selling your products and services or links to affiliate programs, but from selling advertising space in it.



You do need a medium to large subscriber base before other businesses will be interested in advertising, but this is not that hard to achieve, especially if it is regularly full of quality content. You can earn a few hundred, even thousands of dollars, every month just from ads if you play your cards rights.



Your online customers will eventually become your offline customers if they trust the information you regularly send them. Put simply, a newsletter is your way of helping people. If you help people online, eventually they will buy from you.



However, running your own newsletter involves a considerable amount of work. It is vital that you regularly write a lot of quality content before your next release. Ideally a newsletter should be sent out every week or at least every fortnight. This is not always easy. It…

Do you recall the classic statement, "the only constant is change"? It is an ever-present phenomenon, and by comprehension at the level of man's intelligence, a tricky one, because change is in constant clash with timeless principles, which by evidence of established patterns, do not change.



The winner is the one who knows how to maintain and manage the balance between change and timed, principle-based progress on a daily basis, which all boils down to the little decision-making that counts. One thing is for sure: the "final decision" is the only one that is expressed in action, which will translate into results. How you arrive to that decision ultimate hinges on the summation of your reaction to the present moment (a moment of change?) and your personal values (are they timeless?).



Interestingly, if you should look back at how you made your 'final' decisions in the past, you may find a pattern and a set of reasons for why you made your decisions in a certain way. Now, this is a part where you as a reader would be wondering what point I am driving at.



It's all in the habits.



Habit is the encompassing definition of the translation from "how you think" to "what you do". It is incredible that general statistics point to a real fact that 80% of businesses do not last over 2 years, but at a personal level, people don't seem to realize larger implications and consequences in the scheme of things even as they drudge through the motions of daily work.



Some things never change, particularly knowledge at grassroots level. An effective habit grounded well is knowledge applied from grassroots level onwards. In business, how many people know how to increase leads, build a database, convert them into customers, develop relationships with them, treat them right, follow-up and mold them into repeat customers? But this is the foundation for future profits, no matter how you work your business and how often you change your…

If you've reached the point of exhaustion trying to keep up with answering the mountain of e-mails that threatens to bury you alive every single day, you're ready to learn about autoresponders.



The bad news is that people expect prompt replies to their e-mail inquiries. However, unless you can figure out how to work continual 24-hour shifts, or hire enough people to constantly monitor incoming e-mails (while they're eating up your revenue), you have a problem. The good news is an autoresponder is an inexpensive—or even free—method of quickly responding to e-mails. What these programs do is automatically respond to incoming e-mails as soon as they are received.



E-mails are essential to your business for many different reasons. Most importantly, these invisible e-mail voices give you their feedback about your website—for free! However, if you spend all your working hours answering these e-mails, how are you supposed to run your business?



The answer is simple: use autoresponders. Autoresponders are programs that automatically respond to your e-mails without you so much as having to click on your mouse.



There are a number of good reasons why you need an autoresponder besides just answering your e-mail. For example, autoresponders can be used if you need a way to send information about your services or products, price lists, or if there are repeated questions asked across large numbers of e-mails. Maybe you want to offer your site visitors a special bonus of some kind, such as advice or relevant articles. All of this can be handled by an autoresponder. Additionally, you can advertise your business and then build stable relationships with your customers by using autoresponders.



Autoresponder programs vary from software that runs with your e-mail program to a specialized script that runs on your web hosting company's server. This kind of script may use a web page form or simply operate with your e-mail account. This kind of…

"To go from that legal type of setting to the basketball court in one day requires amazing concentration," Lakers forward Rick Fox said. "And Kobe is not only doing it, but he's growing as a player at the same time—if that's possible."



Back when Kobe was fighting against a charge of felony sexual assault in 2003, at the time of the report by Sports Illustrated, Kobe averaged 25.2 points, 7.4 rebounds and 7.5 assists since the All-Stars break, each number pushing the limits of his career marks.



It's not just the hours of consistent practice he put in. His greatest attribute (?) is an almost sociopathic focus that also alienates his teammates and may be the cause of his rift with O'Neal.



Like what Rick Fox said, Kobe's ability to tune in and out and between 2 very different environments like the Court of Justice and the basketball court is forcing him too deep into living in his own self-made world.



Actually it is a very familiar thing to some of us. Have you, in the midst of doing a top-priority task, got frustrated and shouted, "Don't disturb me!"? You may not have this personality trait, but some people find it easy to become self-absorbed and withdraw yourself into ignoring the kids, the kettle boiling etc.



Would you believe this 'amazing concentration' can be learned? This is what you do. Find a good quiet time and soundproof your room (close the windows and door)...all except for a rhythmic sound, e.g. the ticking of a clock.



Sit still, close your eyes and get yourself in tune with the rhythm. When you are ready, start to count along with the rhythm, all the ticks so to speak. The question is when the clock ticks for 60 seconds, did you count at 59 or 61? If you are seriously concentrating, there shouldn't be room for errors, period.



Next, you can fix your eyes on a particular pattern anywhere in your room down to a dot, and really concentrate on that spot while you count up to 60. After 60…

In the world of 21st century, it is no longer surprising to find that most business had already establishes a web presence to support their brick-and-mortar businesses. There are many advantages of establishing a web presence on the Internet such as selling globally to prospective customers and disseminating information to the public.



Most business owners would have already understood the importance of a web presence to their businesses. What most of them had failed to understand is that the domain name in their websites can contribute significantly to their online marketing strategy.



First, we look at a few rules of a good domain name. Most would agree that a good domain name should:



1) be able to describe your business when people first look it.

2) include hyphen in between the words to make it easier to read.

3) have an appropriate .com, .net, .biz, .info, .org to reflect the nature of the business.



What I differ in opinion is that a long domain name can be as effective as a short domain name depending on the context where the domain name is used. Many people would probably disagree with me on this point as they believe that a short domain name is easier to remember, but short domain names are easily imaginable and would have already been snapped up before you know it.



Still, when the context is right, having a catchy long domain name such as http://www.dont-miss-a-thing.com or http://www.once-in-a-lifetime.com definitely helps to draw attention to your business rather than promoting your website name like http://www.yourcompanyname.com, which is a usual practice, but remember this: customers don't care much about your company name or even your name until they can find the solution to their needs. When people reach…

In English idiom, "2 left feet" refers to an inept dancer and generally, a clumsy person. Putting this meaning aside, I wish I had 2 left feet so that I don't have to worry whether to go left or right, so I'll just stick to left and let Life happens as it always does, and if I walk left long enough, maybe enough people will start to question, "Does this guy ever turn right?"



Regardless of what 'success' means to you, for everyone reading this, it is a plus, not a minus. Success is a profitable endeavour. No intelligent people on earth would insist on walking from circumstance to circumstance getting pulled down all the time and still declare themselves a 'success' if that's fine with them. Well, it's fine with them, but I call it 'stubbornness'.



Success is not hocus-pocus; it's all about FOCUS. Just how many people had faltered in time past, thought twice and diverted when success was just a block away or around the corner. Consider the total revenue (in US$ billions) amassed by Coca-Cola and Pepsi Cola. Pepsi bought over Taco Bell, KFC, Domino Pizza and owns a range of soft drinks like 7-Up, Miranda and others, to name just a few.



Come to think of it, so many 'advisors' in the world say you shouldn't put your eggs in one basket; that's why you diversify your attention left and right. Here is one very great example of why putting all your eggs in one basket can earn you 10 times more. Coca-cola may not be good at mergers and acquisitions, but it has transcended that kind of business. It has become such an evangelistic institution that it conquers India faster than you can say 'Christianity'.



It's the same with McDonald's. McDonald's stick to 'McDonald's' and The Mac--small and big--becomes such an indispensable identity, people cannot "think outside the Mac". Today, many food franchises have emulated McDonald's franchise/food delivery system, but it is still the largest food chain in the world and will remain that way for a…