• Google – Manipulate Your Listings For More Traffic

    Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: Search Engine Optimization | Response: 0

    Google seems to be the Search Engine that everyone talks about almost on a daily basis however, far from being about search engine optimization and specifically about Google related SEO i wanted to touch on something new that, perhaps you would not have already thought about.

    Manipulating Google Traffic.

    So your site is already listed in Google but you want to increase the amount of traffic you receive, one way that we as a company have been successfully using for the last 18 months is that of manipulating the display of our clickable links in Google, how are we doing this? Simple, using ASCII character codes in your meta tags.

    ASCII In Your Meta Tags.

    ASCII (American Standard Code for Information Interchange) it has been proven, when used in your HTML page Meta Tags will actually display not only letters and numbers but, symbols as well, as a webmaster this can give you a great advantage over how much traffic you can pull from your Google listings and, not only Google, a few of the other search engines also read ASCII code when it is found in your Meta Tags.

    Putting This To Use Practically.

    A good method of putting this to use would be utilizing in your Meta Tags as follows.

    <title>Site Name <ascii code here> page title</title>
    <meta name=”Description” content=”normal page description”>
    <meta name=”Keywords” content=”normal keywords”>

    This will display a search engine listing that not only has your site name on it as well as a description but, in the position where the ASCII code will appear you will also have an attention grabbing symbol enuring that your site stands out from all the others listed on the same search engine results page as yours.

    ASCII Meta Tags – An Overview.

    Hopefully you have seen how adapting your current HTML page Meta Tags by placing an ASCII character code within them can benefit you for gleeming further search engine traffic to your sites and, with this new found knowledge you may well place both your sites traffic and your bottom line profits ahead of other webmasters.

    Article written by Lee

  • Formatting HTML Text Using Tags

    Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: WebDesign | Response: 0

    Formatting HTML Text Using Tags.

    As we know there are many elements to a website from graphics to text. In this article we are going to have a closer look at text and, more importantly how we format the text to look like we want it to.

    The text of the HTML pages we create, as you already know goes inside the <body> tag of our HTML pages but, unless you are using a WYSIWYG editor you can not just click a button and make it appear bold or italic therefore we need to get to know some of the text property tags that can be used to enhance our HTML text. Lets take a look at some of these now.

    <b> Any text inside these two tags will appear bold on our page</b>
    <i> Any text inside these two tags will appear in italic on our page</i>
    <u> Any text inside these two tags will appear to be underlined on our page</u>
    <big> Any text inside these two tags will appear BIG on our page</big>
    <small> Any text inside these two tags will appear small on our page</small>
    <sub> Any text inside these two tags will appear subscript on our page</sub>
    <sup> Any text inside these two tags will appear as superscript on our page</sup>

    There are also things called ‘heading tags’ these will work the same as the formatting tags mentioned above however there are only six of them and they look like this <hx> with the x being replaced by a number from 1-6 the lower this number is in the tag the LARGER our text will become so for example:

    <h1> Will be the largest heading text</h1>
    <h2> Will be the next smallest heading tag</h2>
    <h3> Will be smaller again </h3>
    <h4> Will be one size smaller again</h4>
    <h5> Will be the second to smallest heading size</h5>
    <h6> Is the smallest of the heading tags</h6>

    Also, you should remember that it *IS* possible to use more than one of the text tags in any single line of portion of text on our web page so for example, if i wanted to have bold underlined italic text my tags for the text would look like this:

    <b><i><u>This text is bold, in italics, and underlined</u></i></b>

    You will notice from the above example that the tags were opened and closed in the same order they were created this doesn’t have to be done like this but, in the long run, it is easier for you as a webmaster to code your pages this way.

    Hopefully this article has given you a further understanding on how we can format out text and you will be bale to put this into practice on the next site you build.

    Article written by Lee

  • Designing Your Site With Link Popularity In Mind

    Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Traffic, WebDesign | Response: 0

    To get good traffic, your website needs to be popular, to be popular, your website needs links, to get links, your website needs to be popular. Annoying isn’t it :)

    Almost everyone agrees that link popularity is critical for your website’s visibility, traffic, and thus successfulness. It is something you need to have. As I pondered the ways of establishing and improving one’s “popularity”, eventually all come back to one central issue, your website must be designed to be popular.

    Link popularity is a basically the measure of links pointing to your website and is meant to be a measure of the best websites. Theoretically those websites that have the most links pointing to them must be important and thus worth the visit. Unfortunately, there are a lot of folks out there that have created programs to “boost” your popularity artificially and all they have done is create Spam and muddy the overall picture. The search engines and directories are keeping a close eye on these programs.

    Design: When getting a request or thinking about making one for a link exchange with a website, look thoroughly over the website first. The website’s theme or topic and general layout is the first thing to look at. Sites with themes or topics that are related to or compliment yours should be your main link partners. You do this to get targeted traffic.

    Just as you evaluated someone’s website, others will be doing the same to yours. Make sure you know what your theme or topic is and that it clearly encompasses the whole website. Stay focused; do not try to cover everything.

    Next, check out the links page or resource area. If they do have one, is it easy to find within the site? Does it seem to be part of the site or just a page off to the side? Are their linking rules available, clear, and easy to follow? Do they accept links from any website or are they choosy? Being part of someone’s well constructed links program, no mater what size, can be a very beneficial thing indeed.

    Again, the same goes for your website. You want to let other webmasters know that you want to exchange links and which type of website you will accept requests from. Make it easy for others to link with you.

    The last set of questions to ask yourself about any website is:

    Is it easy to navigate
    Does it have too many graphics (slow loading)
    Is it pleasant to the eye
    Does the information seem to be organized in a logical fashion

    What has been covered so far deals with what the visitors see; if visiting the website is a pleasant experience then people will stay and look and possibly come back. The final area to cover is what the search engines see.

    The underside (the source code) of the website is just as critical when designing or linking with a website. The search engines are the ones that read this and if it is not done properly then the website can not succeed. Below are a few things you need to consider in your source code and any potential site that has asked to be linked by you.

    Does the website contain frames
    Does it use the headers, titles, meta-tags, and alt tags properly
    Do the keyword location(s) and density seem appropriate and “optimized”

    The latter two issues mentioned above are critical, for they are the backbone to traffic production.

    Content: The information you have is just as important as how you set it up on your website. The more popular websites or the ones with good link popularity are those that have valuable information or resource(s) for its audience after all, they fill a niche! People will visit, stay, return, and recommend a website if it has the content they want or need.

    “Content is king.” A well-designed and organized website might look good but if it does not deliver anything of value, it will not be successful. Whatever subject matter you have on your site, make sure you have something of interest and importance to add to the subject, if you do and you promote it well, you and your site will be successful. In this context, it (content) does not just refer to images, why not add some stories or interesting links to news articles to improve your sites ‘popularity’.

    In addition to information, resources like mailing lists, surveys, polls, classified ads, forums, etc. are all things if used appropriately can add value and fresh content to your website which, in turn will assist you in interacting with your sites visitors.

    In conclusion: Take the time to design and optimize your website properly for the search engines. Make sure you have something of value or importance to add to whatever area your website is in. Provide resources and other tools, which your visitors could use and will make them come back. Be proactive and interact with your visitors. Websites that are dynamic and active are the best ones. All of this might take a little more time to get your website up and running, but it will be worth it.

    For yours or any website to be popular, it needs the links and to get the links, it needs to show the other webmasters that it is worthy of a link. It seems everyone today has a website, but not everyone has put together a website that adds value to the Internet community. Take a critical look at your website and any website you might link to and ask yourself…………….

    Would you bookmark it?

    Article written by Lee

  • Marketing Campaigns – Testing Your Variables

    Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: Promotion | Response: 0

    Irrespective of the medium, an online advertising campaign needs to be tested and optimized constantly in order to provide you with the optimum results. This is where advertising testing can play an important role in your marketing strategy. Despite the advantages to testing your online marketing campaigns, relatively few companies actually go out of their way to see what what works, what doesn’t and, more importantly, why.

    Steps To Testing Your Ad Campaign.

    1) Set expectations as to how you envisage your campaign to perform. This in itself will guide you’re optimization methods. An example of this is, if you expect your ad medium to get a 15% click thru rate or a, 10% conversion rate, you have justification in making adjustments to your campaign if the creative you are using does not perform to your level of expectation.

    2) Don’t get tied into a campaign, If you are going to be purchasing an advertising campaign on a resource site, ensure you have an ‘out clause’. This out clause will enable you to terminate the campaign as long as it has run for a set amount of time, usually, many resources will be happy to give you an out clause especially, if after testing your marketing materials, the results you were hoping for have still not shown themselves.

    3) Consider the variables in your ad campaign, usually, webmasters only think of the one variable in their advertising campaign – Price. However, there are many more variables to be looked at for example, if you are doing a mail drop, the subject line of the email, format and, copy text of the email body itself, all of these things can have a drastic effect on any given advertising campaign, at any given time and often, these can, and most probably will, fluctuate from site to site where you are purchasing ad space.

    4) Stats tracking, tracking your campaign makes it easier to test and review how your advertising medium is working for you, many sites offer live stats for your ad campaigns however, some still do not, where this isn’t a problem in itself as, most companies you choose to advertise with will be more than happy to provide you with statistics as and when you need them after all, you are paying for their services and support.

    5) Pull the plug on campaigns that are not performing, however, ensure you have changed your creative several times before doing so, often, you will find a simple change such as a new creative can drastically increase your marketing efforts. Also, do not just pull advertising as you feel like it, if your campaign has only been active for a week, don’t expect hundred / thousands of hits instantly, often it takes webmasters a while to realize there are new ad mediums running on the sites they visit so often.

    Online Advertising – Review.

    By constantly assessing and testing your advertising campaigns you can pull some interesting figures which can help you long term however, don’t rush into pulling campaigns that you have only just started. Give it a few days, change your copy text and creatives and, if that doesn’t work talk to the company, they will be able to offer you advice and help on improving your sales from your advertising medium after all, they want to keep your business.

    Article written by Lee

  • Building A Surfer Trap – Stage 6

    Date: 2011.02.21 | Category: Traffic | Response: 0

    Stage 6 already!

    Only 2 more stages to go after this tutorial until you have a fully functional surfer trap!

    Ok as promised in the last tutorial, we are going to implement the table pages you hopefully made in our last tutorial.

    You now need to signup for ANOTHER counter code. Use the same counter as you did last time and, again, make sure the URL you send the traffic from the counter to is your main Multi-Site FPA surfer trap page.

    Ok, you have the new counter code, what you should do with this is place it on every one of the niche table pages we made yesterday. Nowhere else except on these pages.

    Once you have the counter code placed you now need to go back to our consoles, what we are going to do is make these HTML table pages into a secondary console from off the first pop up that we get when a surfer visits any of our FPA’s.

    What you should do is enter the following coding in between the <head> and </head> tags of the niche pop-ups ensuring that you choose a DIFFERENT niche to the one of your original consoles:

    <!—— BEGIN CONSOLE CODE ——->
    <SCRIPT language=Javascript>
    <!–
    var exit=true;
    function exitcnsl()
    {
    if (exit)
    open(“http://www.yourdomain.com/tableconsolepage.html”, “tables”,”toolbar=0,location=0,status=0,menubar=0, scrollbars=0,resizable=0, width=800,height=600,top=0,left=0″);
    }
    //–>
    </SCRIPT>
    <!—— END CONSOLE CODE ——->

    You need to edit the figures for width= and height= to reflect the size of your table, ideally the frame of the console should be around 3 or 4 pixels either side of your tables.

    Ok now once you have added the above to your existing pop-ups you now need to add the following to the newly created table consoles between the <head> and the </head> tags:

    <SCRIPT language=javascript>
    self.blur();
    </script>

    What this will do is once the first console loads, it will immediately load a second console but, this second console should be ‘hidden’ behind the main window that is displayed. We have created a blur console.

    We now have one last thing to do with this ‘blur console’ that we have just created.

    Go to the HTML coding for the table ad console and add the same JavaScript to that page however, this time you DO NOT need to use the self.blur section of the instructions or, change the sizes of the console that pops.

    Instead you need to add the following to the <body> tag:

    onUnload=”exitcnsl()” so as an example your body tag may look like this:

    <BODY BGCOLOR=#000000 onUnload=”exitcnsl()”>

    Now you also need to alter the location for the console that will pop this time, you have a choice, you can send the console directly to the ARS POTD program or, you can send it BACK to your Multi-Site FPA page, at which point the surfer will be able to select another niche or leave your site.

    Now remember, this surfer trap IS aggressive however, every time one of your counter codes load both from the FPA’s where we implemented them AND on the newly created table consoles we are gaining extra traffic.

    If you have ANY questions at all please do not hesitate to post on the forums and myself or one of our administrators will assist you.

    Article written by Lee

  • Using SSI For Auto Updates

    Date: 2011.02.24 | Category: WebDesign | Response: 0

    We all realize the benefits of being able to save time when building sites so, I got into thinking, how can I make my sites look as if they are continually updated without the need to go in and update them manually? Enter the world of SSI.

    SSI is actually a nifty little tool, not only can you include files from a central location but, you can include them at specific times of the day, days of the week or even months of the year, very handy indeed if you are building any type of site that needs updating periodically.

    Once the main burst of work has been completed you can pretty much use the same files over and over again to help you out.

    So onto the auto updating SSI, the following SSI coding will enable you to update a page or pages based on which day of the month it is. It will check the day the page has been accessed and display the relevant information again, this is a handy thing to have should your sponsor be running a promotion over several days, all you need to do is update a selection of SSI files and all of your sites are updated instantly.

    <!–#config timefmt=”%d”–>
    <!–#include virtual=”/yourdirectory/$DATE_LOCAL.txt”–>

    What you need to do is create 31 text files named 01.txt right the way through to 31.txt take the SSI call above and edit the location of the SSI files on your server, you may like to have a central folder named /SSI/ for this purpose so the location would be changed to /domain.com/SSI/$DATE_LOCAL.txt

    I the 31 files you created you could have a table ad with eight of your sponsors links, an article in each one or even just a simple text link, anything that you may want to update can be included in these files.

    As I mentioned above you can base the time, date and even month of rotation to whatever you like to alter how the files are rotated and ultimately viewed on the web you should change the %d in the timefmt field to one of the following:

    %d : Day of the month requires 31 files named 01.txt to 31.txt
    %w : Day of the week requires 7 files named 0.txt to 6.txt
    %j : Day of the year requires 365 files named 001.txt to 365.txt
    %u : The week of the year requires 52 files named 00.txt to 53.txt
    %m : The month of the year requires 12 files named 01.txt to 12.txt
    %H : Hour of the day requires 24 files named 00.txt to 23.txt
    %M : Minute of the hour requires 60 files named 00.txt to 59.txt

    As you can see from the above there really are no limitations to the uses of updating using SSI and, apart fro the relative ease of use and the time saved using them should one sponsor not be converting for you all you need to do to swap sponsors is alter your central set of SSI files and you have instantly changed sponsors over all of your sites.

    Article written by Lee

  • Displaying Special Characters On Your HTML Pag

    Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: WebDesign | Response: 0

    In order to display certain characters within your HTML pages, you must use a special code. The codes below display the HTML code and the character when displayed on your web page. To use any of the characters displayed within the chart, copy & paste the HTML code to the left of the character you would like to use.

    HTML Code Browser View HTML Code Browser View HTML Code Browser View HTML Code Browser View
    &copy; © &#33; ! &#95; _ &#157; 
    &reg; ® &#34; &#96; ` &#158; ž
    &nbsp; &#35; ` &#97; a &#159; Ÿ
    &quot; &#36; $ &#98; b &#160;
    &amp; & &#37; % &#99; c &#161; ¡
    &lt; < &#38; & &#100; d &#162; ¢
    &gt; > &#39; &#101; e &#163; £
    &Agrave; À &#40; ( &#102; f &#164; ¤
    &Aacute; Á &#41; ) &#103; g &#165; ¥
    &Acirc; Â &#42; * &#104; h &#166; ¦
    &Atilde; Ã &#43; + &#105; i &#167; §
    &Auml; Ä &#44; , &#106; j &#168; ¨
    &Aring; Å &#45; &#107; k &#169; ©
    &AElig; Æ &#46; . &#108; l &#170; ª
    &Ccedil; Ç &#47; / &#109; m &#171; «
    &Egrave; È &#48; 0 &#110; n &#172; ¬
    &Eacute; É &#49; 1 &#111; o &#173; ­
    &Ecirc; Ê &#50; 2 &#112; p &#174; ®
    &Euml; Ë &#51; 3 &#113; q &#175; ¯
    &Igrave; Ì &#52; 4 &#114; r &#176; °
    &Iacute; Í &#53; 5 &#115; s &#177; ±
    &Icirc; Î &#54; 6 &#116; t &#178; ²
    &Iuml; Ï &#55; 7 &#117; u &#179; ³
    &ETH; Ð &#56; 8 &#118; v &#180; ´
    &Ntilde; Ñ &#57; 9 &#119; w &#181; µ
    &Otilde; Õ &#58; : &#120; x &#182;
    &Ouml; Ö &#59; ; &#121; y &#183; ·
    &Oslash; Ø &#60; < &#122; z &#184; ¸
    &Ugrave; Ù &#61; = &#123; { &#185; ¹
    &Uacute; Ú &#62; > &#124; | &#186; º
    &Ucirc; Û &#63; ? &#125; } &#187; »
    &Uuml; Ü &#64; @ &#126; ~ &#188; ¼
    &Yacute; Ý &#65; A &#127; ? &#189; ½
    &THORN; Þ &#66; B &#128; &#190; ¾
    &szlig; ß &#67; C &#129;  &#191; ¿
    &agrave; à &#68; D &#130; &#192; À
    &aacute; á &#69; E &#131; ƒ &#193; Á
    &aring; å &#70; F &#132; &#194; Â
    &aelig; æ &#71; G &#133; &#195; Ã
    &ccedil; ç &#72; H &#134; &#196; Ä
    &egrave; è &#73; I &#135; &#197; Å
    &eacute; é &#74; J &#136; ˆ &#198; Æ
    &ecirc; ê &#75; K &#137; &#199; Ç
    &euml; ë &#76; L &#138; Š &#200; È
    &igrave; ì &#77; M &#139; &#201; É
    &iacute; í &#78; N &#140; Œ &#202; ?
    &icirc; î &#79; O &#141;  &#203; Ë
    &iuml; ï &#80; P &#142; Ž &#204; Ì
    &eth; ð &#81; Q &#143;  &#205; Í
    &ntilde; ñ &#82; R &#144;  &#206; Î
    &ograve; ò &#83; S &#145; &#207; Ï
    &oacute; ó &#84; T &#146; &#208; Ð
    &ocirc; ô &#85; U &#147; &#209; Ñ
    &otilde; õ &#86; V &#148; &#210; Ò
    &ouml; ö &#87; W &#149; &#211; Ó
    &oslash; ø &#88; X &#150; &#212; Ô
    &ugrave; ù &#89; Y &#151; &#213; Õ
    &uacute; ú &#90; Z &#152; ˜ &#214; Ö
    &ucirc; û &#91; [ &#153; &#215; ×
    &yacute; ý &#92; \ &#154; š &#216; Ø
    &thorn; þ &#93; ] &#155; &#217; Ù
    &yuml; ÿ &#94; ^ &#156; œ &#218; Ú

    Whilst the above list is by no means complete, it should contain the most useful characters and codes for you to build your sites using the special characters with ease.

    Article written by Lee

  • Foreign Search Engines

    Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: Promotion | Response: 0

    ‘Suchmaschine’ | ‘Moteurs de Recherche’ | ‘Motores de Busqueda’ ? Or, to you and I ‘Search Engines’.

    Well what if I told you there was a huge chunk of the market (again I know) that your missing out on because, frankly, you haven’t attempted to get into it?

    What is this wondrous market? Simple.. Foreign search engines.

    I would say that AT least 80% of my traffic comes from the search engines, Google, AltaVista, etc, etc however a large portion of this se traffic is from countries whose language even some of my translators don’t know.

    So, how do you get the foreign search engine traffic? again that’s simple, there are several ways to get it, you can:

    1) Submit to your favorite search engine and wait, and wait, and wait… or 2) You can submit to your favorite search engine then, instead of leaving the page, go to the foreign equivalent of that same search engine!

    Guess what, if you submit to Google in English then go to google.de the submit form asks you exactly the same information as your submission on the English form would do…so, ya don’t even have to speak German to submit to google.de, isn’t that handy?

    In my previous article a few weeks ago I mentioned what countries were top of the ranks for surfers in Europe, well, this week I want to run some figures past you again about which search engines ‘seem’ to be sending a decent amount of foreign traffic.

    So here goes, we have the top 6 search engine referrals for December 2001:

    http://www.crawler.de/

    http://www.lycos.de/

    http://www.infoseek.com/Home?pg=Home.html&sv=ES

    http://search.yahoo.co.jp

    http://www.excite.co.uk/

    http://www.infoseek.com/Home?pg=Home.html&sv=FR

    As you can see infoseek (which has an English version) sends me lots of foreign traffic although, in reality, this is only for English pages, don’t ask me why but I guess the Spanish and French surfers love surfing for porn in English..

    On a separate note, for those of you who are either to stubborn, lazy or, stupid to try submitting to the foreign search engines we will shortly be releasing a foreign search engine submission chart on European Webmasters which will tell you step by step what to put in each of the boxes on the submission form, so even you have no excuse!

    Of course, the foreign traffic is going to mean you will need to pay more attention to your sites, perhaps offering these surfers a site in their language to sign up to or, before sending them off to a dialer, trade these foreign surfers off for some ‘English speaking ones via the use of a toplist. Admittedly, I haven’t found sending them to a toplist productive myself however, you might get different results to me.

    Basically, if you start to get the traffic, hell, the chances are your getting foreign traffic now and don’t even know about it… USE IT!

    If you want to ask questions specific to the foreign market that’s what our forums on EW are there for, we would gladly spend all day everyday answering your foreign traffic questions however, as yet, very few US based webmasters are taking the initiative to investigate further this GREAT source of revenue so, I guess ill just have to go back to my foreign search engines and get a bigger chunk of the ever increasing foreign porn surfer for myself.

    Article written by Lee

  • Content – Keeping your members coming back for more

    Date: 2011.02.22 | Category: Content | Response: 0

    We know that the first battle for pay site owners is getting the traffic and the signups. But, sometimes this becomes such a focus that we forget the other battle: keeping members interested once you have them. When people pay for a membership to a site they are expecting to get their money’s worth. In return for their monthly fee they are looking for a site that encompasses quality, variety and originality.

    As the web grows, so does the online entertainment industry. Four or five years ago there was only a handful of pay sites around compared to the thousands and thousands that are on the net today. Back then, you could literally put any kind of content on your sites and you would have membership, there just was not much choice out there for the connoisseur of porn. Now, potential members are more informed, they know what is out there, they know what they like, and they know what they want to see.

    What has to be done to cater to these more discriminating porn shoppers? You have to give them what they want. Here are some useful tips for choosing a content provider and/or content for your pay sites that will keep the members coming back for more:

    Go for the exclusive content.

    You want to be able to provide your members with something that is fairly fresh and that is not pasted on every pay site on the Internet. The last thing a potential buyer wants to see is a site that is a carbon copy of half the sites out there.

    Choose leased content.

    Choosing leased content over buying CD’s is a good way to keep your site fresh. Most leased content providers will update their content on a bi-monthly or monthly basis. As well, with leased content, it is just a matter of adding the feed into your site. This alleviates the need for extensive extra graphic design work.

    Have a wide variety of content.

    Make sure that your site has a little bit of everything a potential member could want: pictures, videos, live feeds, etc. The more you have the better. Many content providers have great package deals available that will include all of these things all set up and ready to put on a site.

    Choose a reputable content provider.

    You want to make sure that when you choose a content provider that you do not just go for the best deal out there. You want to also look at things like: how much bandwidth they provide, what their technical support is like and last but not least, do they have good customer service.

    These are just but a few helpful suggestions to follow when choosing content for your pay site. There are certainly many ways to achieve a high rate of member retention. One thing that many of our customers tell us is that they find that having a least one voyeur feed on their site great for keeping the members coming back for more. Laura’s Condo, one of our voyeur feeds, has one of the best member retention rates around. Visitors get attached to the girls, develop a rapport with them and they do not want to lose that. Hence, they will keep renewing to be able to keep their relationship going with their favorite girl.

    The number one thing that pay site owners must remember is that members equal money and in order to keep the cash flow rolling in they must keep the members interested and give them what they want. By spending a little extra money to get high quality exclusive content, you will actually be putting more money in recurring memberships back in your pocket at the end of the day.

    Article written by Meredith Murray

  • Networking – Not Just For Computers

    Date: 2011.02.23 | Category: General, Promotion | Response: 0

    Networking – Not Just For Computers.

    “Networking” is a buzz word today. Everybody talks about it. Everybody hears about it. Everybody wants to do it more effectively. But why? Why do people network, and what do they hope to accomplish?

    Primarily, networking is the process of meeting new people, either through a contact that you initiate, or through an introduction by a third party.

    Networking allows you to meet, and establish a relationship with, people who may not have heard of you and your business through any other method.

    For most professionals, networking is done to increase revenues. Sometimes new clients are found, sometimes suppliers and, sometimes new ways of doing things that increase your bottom line are found through networking.

    When networking you should work towards these common goals:

    To exchange business ideas.
    To get better service.
    To develop your business skills.
    To potentially increase your revenues.
    To establish long term friendships.

    This means that networking is an essential part of building up strong business relationships. We need each other to buy from us, sell to us and, brainstorm with us in order to progress in our fields. In order for us to do these things we must give something back in return, its all about give and take.

    we must be willing to hone our relationship building skills. We must be great listeners. We must be willing to give before we receive. We must get into networking mode in our own minds before we ask the same of others. This must be constant.

    Through consistent contact with others, you will, instinctively start to put 2 and 2 together. When you begin speaking with someone your mind will automatically start searching the inner most recesses of your brain to remember people, places, even products, that will assist the person you are networking for and, at the same time, you will also be thinking of what they can do for you in return.

    This Is Networking.

    This is the state of mind you should be in whenever you are talking to someone in your industry, to get your mind in this state takes a while but, once you have focus and determination, you will immediately see how you can help others and, how they can benefit you in return whilst listening to them. this is the first step in getting them to help you.

    Networking, as its name would suggest is WORK, hard work, the process is also a learned skill, its not something that we are all born with or, can all do. It can often be frustrating when you have a goal in mind but, your networking functions are not achieving that goal. All in all, networking is the building block of many a business venture, it can make and it can break you. Take some time to consider this fact the next time you are posting on a board or go to one of the tradeshows, you might just come away with more than you hoped for.

    Article Written By Lee

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