If you sell anything online, you need to be ready for Christmas… like last month ready.

Yes, the holiday season begins early online. It isn’t so much that people start shopping for Christmas this early, although they do, it’s that it takes time to get the search engines to notice your efforts.

Realistically, even earlier than now is best. You need to give as much time as possible for the search engines to find you and for the early shoppers to be delighted that you are prepared for them already.

Your efforts don’t need to be excessively obvious on the rest of your pages. I have some holiday specific pages on some of my sites that much of the year are referenced only on site maps. Once it’s appropriate their links are back up in the main navigation.

Your pay per click campaigns should ramp up as appropriate too. These you don’t need to turn on until you feel that there are enough serious shoppers that you feel you can make a profit.

If you have links outside your site that you can turn on and off, get them turned on.

Make sure you know what is hot in your niche this year. Promote the items you know will be selling well.

It’s tough getting ready for the holiday season. You have to get your business ready just as you have to get ready for the holidays on a personal level. But for many businesses this is a highly profitable time of year and you don’t want to miss it.

Technorati Tags: Christmas, holiday shopping, home business

Yes, it’s one of those massive product giveaways… even I’m participating, although my product relates to my Home with the Kids site, not this one. Haven’t developed a unique product for this site - yet!

It’s in celebration of Halloween. Yes, any holiday or none at all these days can make marketers give away great products. Fun, isn’t it?

There are some great resale products, ebooks, scripts and more available with this giveaway. It only runs for a short time, so check it out before the promotion is over.

This should be interesting. Google Alert now includes the option to check blogs.

I use Google Alert quite a bit. It’s a great way to keep up on various topics as Google finds them in the news or on regular websites. With the addition of the blog search, there’s one more way to keep up on interesting topics.

The one thing I don’t like is that I’ve read that some people are getting these alerts even though they haven’t asked for blogs to be included in their Google News alert searches. That isn’t the way these things should be done. Telling subscribers about the option, yes, sending the actual searches no.

I’m going to take some time to take advantage of these new searches. It strikes me as a great opportunity to keep in touch with topics I need to be up to date on, alongside all the blogs I already subscribe to.

It’s hard to keep focused when you work at home, yet your income depends on it. There are so many distractions and temptations it’s easy to forget what you’re supposed to be accomplishing.

Here’s a list of ways you can help yourself keep focused on your business:

1. Break tasks down into manageable pieces.
When you have a home business you often have times where you have to break your day into small pieces to cope with the various distractions, such as children. You can get more accomplished if you know what you can get done in the time you have.

2. Keep track of the things you need to get done.
This means having goals as well as a to do list. Keep focused on which are priorities, which need to be done quickly versus over time.

3. Make time for your family.
If you have children in the home, they can be a distraction, but taking enough time with them can help you to focus because you won’t feel so guilty about not taking enough time for them. Find that balance! Read the rest of this entry »

Building links is very important to a successful online business. I recently discussed linkbait in my newsletter. Now it’s time to take a look at link exchange emails.

Personally, I very, very rarely reply to link exchange emails. Most get an automatic delete. This is because the sites on which I do link exchanges I use a software, so if I get an email it means the person didn’t really look at my site.

Most link exchange emails also make it obvious that the person didn’t look at the site. They’re irrelevant or spam sites. But a few are worthwhile.

On very rare occasion I’ll see a request that is worth considering. It doesn’t happen often. But sometimes a webmaster with a good quality, relevant site will be out looking for links.

When you get a link exchange email start out by looking at the email itself. Do they show that they even looked at your site? How’s the grammar? Yes, I do delete simply for bad grammar and spelling. That speaks to me of a low quality site.

If by some chance the email convinces you to look at the site, look at both the main pages, the page you would be linking to and the page your link would appear on. That last should be easily navigated to from other pages. It should also be highly relevant to your site. If not, move on.

Relevant links are a challenge these days. There’s a lot of discussion about whether there’s any value to them at all anymore. If you do reciprocal link exchanges, make the effort to ensure that it is worth linking to.

Technorati Tags: link exchange, link building, relevant links

I haven’t had a lot of comments made on this site yet, but they are definitely trickling in on my other, somewhat busier website. I only have Instant Site Comments on the two sites so far, but I’ll steadily be adding it to my other non-blog websites.

The creator of Instant Site Comments has done a great job with updates. One was recently posted to make the Captcha form more user friendly; that is, he removed it’s use of common problem letters such as l,1,O and 0.

It’s not often that I get so enthusiastic about a product. Heck, I don’t buy very many, and because of that I don’t promote many. I don’t like to promote things I haven’t tried or read, and I don’t have the budget to go about trying every hot product that comes out. I have a family to care for, and that’s more important to me.

You don’t need much to use Instant Site Comments, and if you’re paying for hosting, everything you need is probably available to you. You need a MysQL database, may or may not need to edit your .htaccess file, depending on how your site is currently set up, and you need to be able to use PHP or SHTML includes. It’s a rare host that doesn’t include that, and if you have trouble, you can ask at the Instant Site Comment user forums or even get help installing it. I should know - due to server configuration I needed help and Robert was a delight to work with. That problem has since been fixed in Instant Site Comments, by the way.

Technorati Tags: instant site comment

What’s really free? Make Your Content PRESell, from SBI.

Really and truly free. You don’t even have to give them your email address. Only thing it’s going to cost you is the time it takes to download and read it.

What is Make Your Content PRESell?

It’s an ebook on writing skills. It’s about developing the writing skills that will help you to succeed in an online business. These skills are also helpful in other endeavors, even in academic work.

I know a lot of you out there view writing with a sense of dread. You can never find the right words to make people buy. The entire idea of MYCPS is to help you do that. And now you don’t even have to pay to learn these tactics. Go download it.

Every business is going to have the occasional unhappy customer. Some are very hard to satisfy. What do you do with upset customers?

Even before you make a sale, you need to be sure that you are setting your customer’s expectations to an appropriate level. Don’t promise the world and deliver a grain of sand. Keep your promises closely in line with what you actually deliver.

If you’re providing a service, make sure that both you and the client are very clear on what is to be delivered. If you are or become friends with a client, you still need to keep your professional relationship professional. Talk about what is expected of each party and use contracts to spell it all out.

If there’s a problem, try to fix it promptly. If you’re ignoring a customer’s problem you’re only going to make them angrier and the problem will be harder to solve. This is particularly important if the customer is a regular. You don’t want to lose a regular over a minor issue that you could have fixed quickly if you had been prompt about it. Read the rest of this entry »