PMI Coaching Blog

I am very thrilled to  have a website up and running. The coaches are wonderful. They are informative and I’m very glad I’ve been able to get to this point. The lessons are invaluable giving me information I wouldn’t otherwise know. This program is absolutely wonderful. – Cynthia A.

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“Wanted to let you know I’ve been having some success with my website, getting a few orders. It is a start and we’re working towards our goal. I enjoy doing it. I appreciate the help from PMI and want to thank you. I will keep you updated.” – Marilyn K.

“I love how PMI walks me through each method and shows me how to use it. I started an affiliate website with PMI last week and within two days, it’s already generating income. Great work. Great program.” – Shawn P.

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Malware is a shortened term that actually means malicious software.  It is software that is created explicitly to harm a computer system.  Most malware comes in the form of a Trojan horse or a computer virus or worm.

Trojan Horse

A Trojan horse is a deceptive program that starts out as if it is an innocent application.  It may be something you are invited to download, such as a free screensaver, or a tool bar, and it really turns out to be a program that will set out to destroy your hard drive.

Virus

A virus is a snippet of code that will connect to another file or program on your computer.  It acts to destroy parts of the computer such as hardware, files and software. A virus can spread from computer to computer through emails and networks.

Worm

A worm is similar to a virus, it can replicate itself and spread to other computers.  Unlike a virus that needs a mode to travel, such as you sending an email, the worm works automatically.  It can cause your email client to send out hundreds of emails with the worm attached, to do damage to other computers, and continue the process.

How To Protect from Malware

Updates

Make sure your operating system (OS) is updated.  For example, Windows often runs updates to computers.  Most of these are done to add security measures to your operating system, especially after a new piece of malware has come out.  Keeping the OS up to date will help to add protection and security.

Anti-Virus Software

Installing a decent anti-virus software program on your computer will go a long way in protecting against not only viruses, but also the worms and Trojan horses.  Make sure to keep the software updated and upgraded to protect against all the latest malware intruders.  Run virus scans often, daily or weekly at the very least.

Firewalls

Having a good firewall on your computer will help to block many attempts at an intrusion, especially when browsing other websites or running online applications such as online gaming.  Many good anti-virus software programs come with a firewall.

Clean the Cookies

Cookies are little files that attached to your computer while you are browsing websites.  Most are harmless and help your computer to remember things like passwords, web pages, etc.  But once in a while a bad cookie can attach and will create havoc on your computer.  By clearing out your cookies and your temporary files, you help to keep these away.

Spyware Protection

Some anti-virus programs will have spyware protection included.  If not, there are programs that can be purchased that will help to find any program that has tried to attach to your hard drive.  Normally these come from browsing other websites or tool bars and normally spyware is wanting to find information you may have stored, such as bank account, personal information.

Never click on links on emails that you don’t know the sender.  Never click a download from an email or website that you don’t know and trust.  Often malware can be avoided if these measures are taken.

Back up your system, especially your files in the event that malware is successful and you lose your information.  Keeping the above suggestions in place and current will go a long way in protecting your computer against any malware.

Listing your business on Internet Yellow Pages is not the only way to increase website traffic. A more effective strategy is to engage in online article writing and then submit articles online, in other words, ‘market your articles’. To make sure that you’ll do this process correctly, better utilize the article marketing tips shared below:

1. Your write ups should have information that’s relevant to the actual product or service you are selling.

You can’t boost traffic to your site if your works contain a different information e.g. tips that are not related to your niche, how tos that have no connection to your service or product, and so on. If you want to increase website traffic, you have to ensure that the information written in your write-ups will be able to entice targeted people to read further and eventually make them want to visit your web site. Anyone who does online article writing should remember how important it is to submit articles online that are niche-relevant, unique, interesting, and genuine, among others.

2. Articles should contain less than 1000 words, ideally from 400 – 550 words.

Included in article marketing tips is to have pieces that have just the right length, or just the right amount of words. If an article is too long, most people will get bored and would move on to another article without even taking a look at your author resource box and that has your website links, thus, the readers who didn’t finish reading your write ups will not be able to visit your site. To help increase website traffic, you have to make certain that most people will read your works from start to end, and actually decide to visit your web pages. Part of online article writing techniques, therefore, is to stick to writing articles that are composed of 400 words to less than 600 words (except in an article directory like Buzzle as it requires at least 600 word articles).

3. Create catchy titles as well as article descriptions or summaries that introduce the benefits readers can get from the articles.

Before you submit articles online, you also have to have interesting titles that will encourage more readers to take a look at your pieces. It is also vital for you to come up with article descriptions that mention briefly what benefits or perks people can get from reading your write-ups. Bear in mind that the title and the summary or description of your article will be the first things seen by the readers, thus, they are important and can aid in your mission to increase website traffic.

Aside from the article marketing techniques mentioned above, other steps you should take include: cross referencing your other articles, of course, if allowed by the writing directories; spell checking and grammar checking your works before they’re published online as most people are turned off when there are spelling errors and grammar errors; and many more.

Karen Winton wants to teach people how to become effective marketers. To make article-marketing easier, try: http://www.dp-db.com/quick-article-softwares. For quicker article submission, utilize: http://www.dp-db.com/articledemon.

Did you do your article marketing research? When people ask me why their writing efforts are not paying off, that’s the first question I ask. Here’s why.

While you might think of it as tedious, doing the research can ensure your success. Not doing it practically guarantees failure. You might rely on good luck, positive thinking or some other kind of unscientific plan for success. It makes sense to learn what other successful people have done.

Even successful people make mistakes. What’s nice is that they are often willing to talk about their mistakes. You can learn from their mistakes if you pay attention.

One of the mistakes many people made in the early days of the internet was to hide popular, but unrelated keywords in the pages of their websites. The practice generated some traffic initially, but the search engines soon came up with a method of detecting the practice and quickly labeled the websites as spam. That pushed the websites to the bottom of the search engine rankings.

Another mistake that people still make is to choose popular search terms to write about, even though the terms are unrelated to the subject of their websites. If your articles marketing strategy does not seem to be working, you may be publishing articles that are unrelated to your site. Usually, that does lead to increased hits, but the amount of time the visitors spend on the site is just a few seconds. They don’t hang around, because they aren’t interested

If you’ve been writing articles for months and you have yet to see any increase in traffic at all, it could simply be a problem with the quality of what you are writing. It might be a good idea to get some unbiased opinions about the readability of what you write.

People’s articles marketing strategy varies, but usually the reader must read through the entire article before they come to a link to the writer’s website. If what you write is boring, not engaging, has obvious spelling errors or looks like a 5th grader wrote it, you will need to make some changes.

Most ezines keep a running log of page views. Each time someone views your article, the count goes up. If you find that your articles are getting a lot of views, but you still aren’t getting any traffic at your site, then the problem is with the quality of what you are writing.

With good content and the necessary article marketing research, you can be successful. Don’t give up. Do some more research and keep trying.

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Having more web traffic means having a higher chance of having sales. Thus, if you’re a web based business owner, you should learn how to improve website traffic. The following are Internet marketing tips that are usually effective in increasing traffic:

Tip Number One: Use the right keywords, specifically niche relevant ones.

Keywords are what people use to find something e.g. a product, service, or information they’re interested in on the Internet. Keywords or key phrases are what search engines look at first to determine whether they’ll place you on top of their search results, or on the bottom where no one can find you, or if they do, it will take a long time.

If you want more web traffic, you should carefully research your keywords and see to it that you only use niche related ones, those with a good amount of searches monthly, and as much as possible, those that have low amount of competition. Good keywords will do wonders for any web based business and can really improve website traffic. Using keyword research tools is also one of the Internet marketing tips you should utilize to make certain that the keywords you’ll be using are the right or appropriate ones.

Tip Number Two: Link exchanging can also help.

Trading links with sites that fall under the same niche or category as your website is also a good strategy to get more web traffic. You should exchange links with relevant blogs and websites that have high page ranks, have nice amounts of traffic, etc. Blog commenting is a recommended activity, but you have to ensure that the moderators do not delete your comments so that the link to your website that you include in each comment will be seen by people online. You can do this yourself, or you can hire a writer or experienced blog commenter so you can focus on other necessary activities for your web based business.

Tip Number Three: Aside from following Internet marketing tips, do offline strategies to promote your biz.

Online promotions are not the only solutions. You can also get more web traffic if you advertise your business in newspapers and magazines — just make sure to include your website address on the ads. Giving flyers and business cards with your website information to various people is also a good idea.

There are various strategies to improve website traffic, and most of them are free. It is actually best if you combine offline marketing strategies with online marketing techniques to increase the amount of traffic received by your web based business.

Karen Winton is a seasoned content writer. Need a significant boost to your website’s traffic? Take advantage of this: http://www.dp-db.com/2bucks-an-ad. Learn more methods about receiving targeted web traffic. Visit: http://www.dp-db.com/total-web-traffic.

If you’re sending out massive amounts of worthless press releases solely as a way to improve your SEO, stop; you are ruining the internet.

Go to Google, search for anything you can think of, and click on “News” in the left sidebar. I don’t guarantee one of the top 10 results will be a press release, but the odds are pretty good.

This isn’t because these releases are fantastic quality and are sharing pricesless information; this is because companies put out dozens and dozens of these every day, hoping one will stick.

Well, instead of contributing to the spam of press releases on the Internet, focus on producing quality press releases which you then post and/or send to relvant websites and publishers.

For instance, not every event at your company or business is newsworthy. I know you think it’s really cool that you just hired a new sales guy, but the rest of the world likely doesn’t care. And if your widget company just made $100 million last quarter, some dog-lover magazine doesn’t care.

Not only do you have to craft a release that is newsworthy, but you have to send it to people who care. And while it’s totally fine to post your press releases online – yes, there is SEO benefit to it – when you do so you need to ensure you categorize it correctly so the right people see it.

People who visit or subscribe to these various press release websites don’t subscribe to every release; they only look at the ones relevent to their interest, their blog, or their publication. If you’re sending out you release just hoping for the chance that someone, anyone, might see it, you’re adding to the spam problem.

So take a dedicated approach to developing quality, targeted press releases – not throwing as much as you can out there to see what takes.

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When it comes to social media, it might seem like there are dozens of sites that do the same thing. Some people are loyal to their favorite—they get on Facebook once in a while, but that’s where it stops. Others maintain a presence on a few networks—each day they’ll browse Facebook, post a couple tweets, StumbleUpon a few articles and share them on their blogs. But if you really follow the ins and outs of social media, you’ve probably heard of a more obscure product: Friendfeed.

But what, exactly, is Friendfeed? To put it simply, Friendfeed was a product created by several former Google employees that brought together feeds from several different social networking sites into one place. It took away the need to jump from site to site to catch up with your friends, find the coolest blog posts or publish your ideas.

Among other features, Friendfeed included a “Like” button on all posts, which was an original idea at the time. It also left room to comment on all posts, whether they were videos, articles, blog posts or status updates, and the news feed was updated in real time.

If you’re thinking Friendfeed sounds a lot like Facebook, there’s a reason for that. Facebook acquired Friendfeed in 2009 and in the process brought to their team a few all-stars from Google (of Gmail and Google Maps fame): Paul Buchheit, Jim Norris, Sanjeev Singh and Bret Taylor. This acquisition has helped Facebook continue to be successful. The plan was initially to maintain Friendfeed as an independent product, but over time the Friendfeed team was split into different areas of Facebook and many features of Friendfeed were integrated into the Facebook user interface.

Users can still sign up for a Friendfeed account, but by now many of the benefits of Friendfeed are maintained within Facebook and many users find the old product redundant. With Friendfeed’s creators on board, you can bet Facebook will be rolling out even more new features over time.

One of the most popular Content Management Systems (CMS) out there is WordPress, an open-source blog publishing application. And the founding developer of that CMS is Matt Mullenwag.

Matt grew up in Houston, Texas and went to college there until deciding to pack up and move to San Francisco in 2004. In 2005, he announced his company Automattic, a web development corporation which oversee various projects including WordPress, Akismet, Gravatar, and others.

The beginnings of WordPress actually start with another blogging software called b2/cafelog. In 2002, the development of b2 had stopped and Matt decided to “fork” the software (taking the software in a new direction) which ultimately developed into WordPress.

So what can we learn from Matt? As long as you’re not breaking copyright laws, there’s nothing wrong with building off of an preexisting idea. Matt didn’t invent blogging or programming or anything like that. He built off of what other had done and made it his own.

Again, when dealing intellectual property, you can’t just go around tweaking it slightly and claiming it as your own.

But you can realize that you are, in fact, never really starting from scratch. Even if you’re not starting with preexisting software or a specific program, you still have your own knowledge and experiences, as well as the knowledge and experiences of any friends, colleagues, or mentors you may have.

When starting a new project, building a new business, or undertaking a new initiative, it can be daunting if your mindset is one of starting from nothing. But as Carl Sagan famously said, “If you wish to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first invent the universe.”

You’re never truly starting from scratch and you’re always working with a head start over someone else.

The other thing to take from Matt is the fact that WordPress is open source, meaning anyone can take it and do what they want with it. There’s no copyright saying you can’t alter it or change it. This has allowed for various other individuals to build off of what’s already there. That being said, consider sharing what insights you’ve developed, in the hopes that other can build off of your success.

Here is a quick look at three popular methods for finding a supplier. While each situation varies, you will likely find that a combination of strategies is sometimes the most effective. 

Search Engines: Search engines are another way to find suppliers. They can help you sift through billions of websites on the Internet and can yield some small and less-publicized suppliers. In fact, some of the suppliers you can find through search engines may be newer and haven’t had time to get listed in the major directories. Newer suppliers will have less competition for them and can give you an edge on your already established competitors.

The biggest advantage to using search engines is that they’re free. For businesses that have a lot of time but very little money, this can be a great way to find a supplier. But not only are they free, as mentioned earlier, you will have little competition for the suppliers you find. Not many people have the time to search through pages and pages of search engine results looking for a supplier (which is why directories have become so popular). But if you have the time and are willing to search, you can find some excellent suppliers.

Of course, search engine research is not without its drawbacks, and the biggest is the time required. Think about the last time you searched for something on the Internet. How many pages of results did you look at? Most people find what they are looking for after the first two or three pages and only rarely venture beyond five or six pages of results. But with search engine research for suppliers, you may need to go to page 10 or further to get a few good candidates. The reason you need to go so deep in the results is that some of the results will be unreliable or irrelevant.

Trade Shows: Trade shows can be a good way to find a second and third supplier because each company represented at these shows had to pay to be there. So you know right from the beginning that these companies are bona fide.

When you arrive at a tradeshow there are literally hundreds of companies ready and willing to do business with you. In fact, generating new business is generally their sole purpose for attending the show. You get to wander around the show looking for product ideas or searching for a specific product and when you find one you like, there are company representatives right there for you to talk with. Take time with these representatives to find out more about the products and services they offer; some will be willing to dropship, others will not.

While the merits of trade shows are such that you should try to go to a few every year, this can be difficult. You need to figure in the show’s admission cost, travel expenses, meals and any work you may miss if you have a job outside your Internet business. These costs are offset a little since they can be claimed as business expenses for tax purposes, but you need to have the money available up front to in order to attend the shows.

Direct Contact with Manufacturers: Some Internet business owners know exactly the product and even the brand they would like to feature on their site; if this is the case it can be beneficial to talk directly to the manufacturer to see what needs to be done to re-sell it. For example, if you know you want to focus your site around La Sportiva rock climbing shoes, you could use some of the techniques previously discussed to find the manufacturer and contact them directly. Similarly, you may already know the manufacturer and simply need to look up their contact information. 

Again, you can buy in bulk to get the absolute best prices directly from the manufacturer, but if they don’t allow you to buy directly from them, they almost always can refer you to some of their top distributors; and any time you talk with a wholesaler or distributor because of a manufacturer referral, it makes talking to them and setting up an agreement with them a lot easier. 

Of course it can be time consuming finding a manufacturer and trying to contact the person who could help you. Many times there is not one single person in charge of resellers so you can get the runaround when talking to large manufacturing companies. Similarly, when you do get in contact with a person who can help you, they may not completely understand what it is you want, especially if you are following the dropship business model. So you may need to take extra time make sure they understand.