This week at SurviveAndConquerCoaching.com:

Tactic # 8 has been added to the series on List Building called List Building Tactics and Tactic #7 has been removed from the BASIC Level Membership. There are 24 Tactics in this series.

This week’s Cheat Sheet is *Understanding Online Search and the Differences between External and Internal Searches* It will be available to BASIC members for just a week.

I am introducing a new Short Report this week: Are You Maximizing Your Web Shop’s Search Options?
While its focus is on online Shops, if you have a wholesale site or showcase site, this WILL apply to your site!

Here is a list of the Resources currently available for PREMIER Members. Have YOU downloaded your copies yet?

Cheat Sheets (13)
CORE Cheat Sheets (4)
FREE Special Reports (2)
List Building Tactics (8)
Short Reports (3)
Software (3)
Special Update (1)
Survival Course (2)
Survival Guides (1)
WordPress Resources (5)
Videos (4)

Don’t forget to download the October 2008 WordPress Plugin report, while it is available.

Removed from BASIC Level: *Short Report - The Offline Business Owner’s Guide to Making the MOST of Local Portals & Directories!*. It is 11 pages with 10 question you should be asking about your Portal and Directory opportunities. There are more and more of these coming online, and they represent excellent marketing opportunities… IF you know the right questions to ask.

Just a reminder, if you are using WordPress for ANY type of site, the new Survival Course - Create an Effective Web Site YOU can Operate Yourself (even if you know NOTHING about the Internet) is a worthwhile read. It is available in Web Page format as part of Academy - Basic or as a PDF download.

http://surviveandconquercoaching.com

And… last but not least, check out the NEW Special Offers page! For a limited time, get

Survival Guide to Search, Search Engines, and Web Site Statistics

at a GREAT PRICE! You’ll have to join, but BASIC Level membership is free!

Sharing the Road to Success

Tink

The focus of my membership site, SurviveAndConquerCoaching, is to help offline businesses move online. This can be frightening and overwhelming… just one more problem to address in a busy work day. My goal is to provide the resources to minimize the stress, avoid the mistakes, and achieve an easy transition.

I wanted to share a recent email I got from a SurviveAndConquerCoaching member:

Subject: just took lesson 1 for Strategies for Online Retail Success!

I signed up for your basic level membership when you first talked about this on the quiltdesigners list… then it was ‘later’, ‘I dont have time right now’, etc.  I really wish I had MADE the time from the beginning.

You have really opened my eyes, just in the first lesson!  I just wanted to thank you for starting this up!  As soon as I have the funds available I’ll be upgrading.

Thanks Tink!!

Angela R McIntyre

Laughing Cat Designs Etc.!

**************************

NOW! On to what’s new this week at SurviveAndConquerCoaching.com:

Tactic # 7 has been added to the series on List Building called List Building Tactics and Tactic # 6 has been removed from the BASIC Level Membership. There are 24 Tactics in this series.

This week’s Cheat Sheet is *Why Blog?* It will be available to BASIC members for just a week.

A NEW Video Tutorial has been added to the BASIC-Video Vault. It explains *How to Create a PDF file Using Free Software*. It will be available to BASIC Level members for about a  week.

Don’t forget to download the October 2008 WordPress Plugin Report, while it is available.

If you haven’t downloaded the newest Short Report - The Offline Business Owner’s Guide to Making the MOST of Local Portals & Directories! — grab it now! It is 11 pages with 10 question you should be asking about your Portal and Directory opportunities. There are more and more of these coming online, and they represent excellent marketing opportunities… IF you know the right questions to ask.

Just a reminder, if you are using WordPress for ANY type of site, the new Survival Course - Create an Effective Web Site YOU can Operate Yourself (even if you know NOTHING about the Internet) is a worthwhile read. It is available in Web Page format as part of Academy - Basic or as a PDF download.

http://surviveandconquercoaching.com

Sharing the Road to Success

Tink

I spent several days last week in the NC Mts, visiting my best friend, Peg. I knew that I wouldn’t have a lot of time to read, so I didn’t bother to pack a book, which is VERY unusual for me!

When I wanted some quiet time before going to sleep, I spent it looking thru a 2 year old Log Homes magazine (I don’t remember which one, exactly) that I found on the bed side table.

I got intrigued by all of the URLs (web site addresses such as www.yoursite.com) in the magazine ads, articles, and editorials. What I found interesting was how many there were (easily one for every page in the magazine) and how hard to read the majority of them were.

This was especially true in the ads, and I know many of the ads were created by advertising professionals… YEESH!

So, Offline Business Owners… here is a valuable TIP:

The letters between the dots in a domain (www dot THESE LETTERS dot com / www.THESELETTERS.com) are NOT case sensitive. This means that you can make them either lower case OR upper case and they will still, happily, point folks to your web site.

OK… now for the good part… Use capitalization to make your domain/web address EASY TO READ and REMEMBER (Yes, I AM yelling… this is an important detail that can put you ahead of the competition!)

For instance, this domain is www.tinkboorddill.com

Is it hard to read? You betcha!

Could I make it easier to read?

Yep, I can:

www.TinkBoordDill.com

OR (I’m getting silly here to make the point ;-) )

www.tinkBOORDdill.com

OR

www.TINKboordDILL.com

If folks can read it easily, they are more likely to

• use it to visit
• type it accurately and actually get to your site ;-)
• remember it

All of these are important to YOUR business survival, cost NO money, and are easy to implement… and your competition is probably NOT doing it! LOL

Get into the habit for writing out your web site address in an easily readable format, put it on your business cards this way, and on all the promotional materials you use!

Sharing the Road to Success!

Tink

In these days of endless spam, it is incredibly tempting to try to avoid those countless reduction and enlargement messages that fill our mail boxes. Recently, I was offline for about 14 hours, due to thunderstorms blasting thru — I live in Kentucky in a 100 year old house and I unplug the computer in bad weather.

When I finally logged back on, my primary email address (which is a ancient 10 years old) had about 250 spam messages in the Junk Mailbox and another 350 messages in the Inbox. Of the messages in the Inbox, only about a dozen were NOT spam. YIKES! (To date, my personal favorite spam was promoting Pro Viagra — a concept I am still having difficulty wrapping by brain around — but, I digress!)

Anyway, we all get SPAM all the time and I am sure, we all HATE it! The temptation is to hide our email address or make folks fill out a form, but, as a business owner, it is YOUR responsibility to be accessible to your customers/clients. If they aren’t able to reach you easily, they will take their business elsewhere, and rightly so!

While there are a number of methods that can be used, I want to take today’s post to discuss an unfortunate side effect of the whole spam mess — ISP blocking. Many ISP (Internet Service Providers) and some hosting companies (the folks who provide the computer that a web site lives on) block some email addresses. Several of the big free email companies also do this.

This means that you, as a business owner may not be receiving some legitimate business email, even from folks who have no problems in the past — and — YOU MAY NOT KNOW IT!

I ran into this problem recently with a business hosted on one of the big name hosting companies. I know for a fact that many of my industry retailers host their ecommerce sites on here — and now I can no longer email them from my primary email address!

Can the problem be resolved? Possibly, but — not from my end. They have to take the initiative to do so.

Anyway, as a result of this problem, I have revised my stand on business email addresses of online businesses. I still feel that a business’s primary email address should be associated with the business’s web site - YourName@YourSite.com, for instance, but also I now believe that a business should also have — and display– a back up email address.

After much thought, I recommend using the Gmail service from Google for the backup email address. It should be reserved ONLY for business and should be checked often. There is a Cheat Sheet available and I have put a quick (and free) Tutorial up in the Academy - BASIC at SurviveAndConquerCoaching.com if you need help.

As an FYI - there is a recent Security Issue regarding Gmail and I have posted a Special Update in the Downloads area of SurviveAndConquerCoaching.com

Do have both email addresses on every page of your web site — easy to find and use. Don’t make it a scavenger hunt! ;-)

Sharing the Road to Success!

Tink

One of my favorite things to do is to surf real estate web sites for different areas. Currently, I am daydreaming about living in the North Carolina Mountains.

This morning, I ran into two issues (on two different sites).

On one site, the text descriptions of the houses (a VERY important part of any RE site and its content) were done in black on white (almost always a good choice) BUT in italic! It is EXTREMELY difficult to read paragraphs worth of italics!

So… when SHOULD you use Italics?

At this point, the majority of web site content is text. Additionally, most LINKS are underlined to show that they are clickable. As a result of that combination of circumstances I recomend the following:

• Limit Underlining ONLY to links (I do the same in my paper writing, as well)
• Limit Italics to brief usage (such as word or phrase or, rarely, a sentence). To make it easier to read, combine Bold and Italic.
• Use Bold for emphasis, especially for longer passages such a paragraphs, because it is easy to read.
• Avoid colored text unless you have chosen a font color and background color combination that has good contrast and is easy to read.
• Be sure that the Text size is reasonably large or else it may be hard to read.

Check your site in different browsers… and ask you customers/clients if it looks good to them!

This will remind them of your site, get them engaged, and, we hope, will alert you to any problems you may not be aware of!

If they can’t read your site… you are in TROUBLE!

Sharing the Road to Success!

Tink

PS- I’ll talk about the second issue I saw later on this week ;-)

As a business consultant, I spend a LOT of time recommending that my clients Blog to promote their businesses. I also suggest using WordPress to create standard business web sites (I have a Free ecourse on this topics in the works).

At the same time, I am also very aware of the large number of people who Blog as a social exercise, and as part of a spiritual journey.

Being hip deep in writing about blogging as I prepare for my upcoming TNNA classes, this article caught my eye:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/LIVING/personal/05/07/blog.therapy/index.html

Fascinating, isn’t it?

Sharing the Road to Success,

Tink

The most important action a web site can perform is to attract visitors — and, they need to be the RIGHT visitors!

There are actually 2 types of visitors that come to a web site - search engine spiders and human visitors.

I am going to put *Search Engine Spiders* first here, because one of your biggest concerns as a business owner is *do I show up in the search engines?* — Right? And, it is an extremely important goal of your web site and your business’s online presence.

Unfortunately, *Search Engine Optimization*, also known as SEO, is NOT a subject that all web designers/developers know about… and the dirty little secret is that a talented web designer and a beautiful web site may actually be sabotaging your web site in the search engines!

YIKES!

Who’d a thunk!

OK, don’t panic - let’s look at this issue in detail.

A *Search Engine Spider* is a program that follows or *crawls* along the internet, going from link to link and reading the contents of that page, which is then stored in the Search Engine memory. Now, there are TWO key issues here:

1) the page needs LINKS - If a page doesn’t have any links, coming or going, the spiders can’t find it. Most web site pages have links, usually multiple links, and so a *Search Engine Spider* will crawl from page to page and web site to web site.

2) the page needs CONTENT for the spider to READ - Let’s be clear here… at this point in internet technology, Search Engine Spiders can ONLY read TEXT. Search Engine Spiders can not read images! (et least, not yet! LOL) They can read the file name of a picture, and that can be used to help with search engine standings, but if all you have on a web page is a picture and links — if there is no real content for the search engine spider to READ — that page is NOT going to do well in the Search Engines.

In other words, if you have your restaurant’s menu displayed ONLY as a graphic/picture, while your human visitors may be able to read about your famous signature dish, the Search Engines won’t ever know about it and your web site, or at least that page, won’t show up in the results if a human visitor does a search for your famous signature dish!

OK — NOW you can panic!

So, what can YOU do? First, YOU — as the business owner — need to be taking an active role in your web site development, and this means protecting YOUR interests by educating yourself. The Internet is still new enough that comparing it to the Wild West is not a far leap. You need to protecting yourself and your business!

Fortunately, there is an incredibly valuable resource available online — and it is FREE.

Cricket Walker offers intensive online courses here:

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/SEO_Techniques/

and here:

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/successful-website-marketing/

If YOU don’t have time to take the courses, have one of your employees do so, especially the employee in charge of your web site.

No matter what, YOU need to read Cricket’s book, Search Engine Techniques.

http://www.gnc-web-creations.com/seo-techniques.htm

The reality is, you can’t trust anybody but yourself to protec your interests. If you have read Cricket’s book, you will know enough to protect yourself from talented and well-meaning but clueless web designers. ;-)

Sharing the Road to Success!

Tink

This is the first post in a new Series called — Now What?

We have all heard soooo much about the power of the internet and, as a result, it is very easy to develop unrealistic expectations. You put up your web site and then you wait… and wait… and wait…

Sometimes you know what you are waiting for (Lots of sales?Many new clients? The phone ringing off of the hook?) and sometimes you don’t — *I have a web site now. This will make a difference… won’t it?*

The truth of the matter is… a web site can have a tremendous positive (or worst case — a negative) impact on an offline business. However, you do need to understand the intricacies involved. Just having a web site online won’t do much for your business.

The good news is — and I am a *glass is half full* soul– you have already taken the first and hardest step… you HAVE a web site. Now you need to build and develop your online presence.

This series, *Now What* is aimed at helping you understand the issues involved and help you develop strategies to address them… so, stay tuned and look for *Now What* next week!

Sharing the Road to Success!

Tink

I ran into a problem recently… out of the blue!

I have a professional relationship with someone in one of my niches. We have communicated by email for a couple of years with no problems, other than an occasional email disappearing into the VOID. Ok, that happens. It can be inconvenient, but compared to the ease and speed with which most email is handled, I can live with it.

This last time however, out of the blue, and as Murphy would have it, with a deadline looming, my emails to her were suddenly AWOL!

Unfortunately, it took a while for me to realize that she wasn’t getting my precious missives… and she simply thought that I had failed to meet my deadline. ;-( To further complicate matters, all of this happened late one night on a weekend, so picking up the phone wasn’t a practical option… sigh…

Once the dust had settled, I realized that for some reason, Yahoo will no longer accept email from my tried and true primary email address. I have a number of web sites and use a couple of different hosting companies so I sent the final email from another site on a different host and she was able to receive it.

The problem arose in that she felt that this was MY problem, since it was MY email that was being blocked. As I looked into the matter, it became clear that I had no options to clear up the problem with Yahoo… sigh…

In this case, we now have a work around should we need it, but it got me to thinking. I consult with a fair number of independent retailers, many of whom sell online, and most of whom use email in their businesses.

I had just finished writing my ebook, *Email Marketing the RIGHT Way* and realized that I need to come up with a practical strategy to recommend to my retail clients, should this problem arise with their businesses.

I am in the process of writing a new Cheat Sheet to deal with this issue and to provide supplemental information for the Email Marketing the RIGHT Way. I’ll let you know as soon as the Cheat Sheet is ready!

Sharing the Road to Success!

Tink

FavIcons are one of my personal favs about marketing online.

So, what IS a FavIcon? A FavIcon is the little picture you see in the browser’s URL/address bar and next to that site’s name in a long list of bookmarks. For this web site, it is an itty bitty version of the colorful gear image on the blog header. Can you see it? Not all browsers show the FavIcon, but a lot of them do. I am sure that eventually all of them will do so.

I have been using FavIcon for many years now… in fact I NEVER put a site up without a FavIcon. Part of it is my lamentable *I am a Designer and everything has to be perfect* mentality… but, truth be told. I also honestly believe that it can give a web site an effective marketing edge.

I am online about 12-18 hours a day, barring the t’storms when I turn off and unplug the ‘puter (a 100 year old house and funky wiring, ya know! LOL). As a result, I have a terrifyingly long list of bookmark folders, each of which holds another long list of bookmarked web sites. Does a FavIcon make it easy for me to find a given web site in those long and endless lists?

You bet it does! ;-)

In addition, online, among the myriad of web sites which can be your site’s direct and indirect competition, a FavIcon can help build that all important marketing element — the *Online Brand*.

I have added a Cheat Sheet about FavIcons over at SurviveAndConquerOnline.com as well as a brief, FREE Tutorial in the Academy there.

Sharing the Road to Success!

Tink