Online Shopping Guide

Online Business Renting or Buying Lists

Many marketers peg acquisition-based e-mail response rates at historically low levels, primarily due to the high volume of messages in everyone’s inboxes these days. Some believe that allocating any percentage of a marketing budget to acquisition-based e-mail is waste. However, this is not true. Although the true response rates for acquisition are typically lower than those for retention-based e-mail, renting lists to win over prospects and grow a customer base can work wonders, if you do your homework.

Here are some guidelines that can help in buying or renting lists for achieving high ROI.
- With email, just like direct mail, how precisely the list is targeted to the marketer’s offer is critical to the success of the email campaign. The marketer will need to test a variety of email lists in order to find the most responsive names for their offer. Recency, Frequency, and Monetary Value are important within email lists. Thus, where applicable, focus on lists of recent online buyers or registered users.
- More importantly, when researching email lists, focus on the origin of the list to ensure compatibility with your offer. Make sure you obtain names from branded, well-recognized sites or sources. Since an outbound email announces to the recipient, in the form of a header, exactly where they gave permission, a well recognized source would lend more credibility to the message.
- A frequency cap can ensure lists aren’t over mailed. If a list manager can’t provide the details on mailing frequency, look elsewhere. That organization probably lacks the control, technical expertise, and reporting basics. Also ask about recency selects. Newer names offer access to new subscribers.
- Frequent uploads of new names and instant suppression of unsubscribes are a must. Your brand will be associated with spam by those who unsubscribed but still receive mailings before their request is processed. Lists that are housed and resold by multiple managers are probably mailed more frequently. This negatively impacts performance, brand equity, and deliverability.
- As filtering becomes increasingly dominant, you must make sure list managers are up to speed on delivery techniques and processes. ISP relations and white listing are critical. Check all available blacklists for the list manager’s IP addresses. List managers should be able to monitor delivery of their campaigns and ensure messages are delivered to the inbox, not a bulk mail folder.
- Finally, the best-performing lists provide the most ability to slice and dice the file to find the right people for your offer. Leveraging selects based on demographics, psychographics, and even specific stages of the buying cycle will almost always outperform untargeted mailings.

By: Tim Yu

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A Dozen Tips for Staying Motivated in Your Job Search

Lost motivation in your job search? 12 suggestions to help you get back in the game and land the career you want.

1.Recognize your motivational enemies in a job search.
They are: constant rejection, constant failure, and lack of control. Don’t let them make you inactive and lacking in confidence.
2.Look forward, not backward:
Every minute you spend thinking about your past job is a minute robbed from your future. And anyway, your previous employer is no longer paying you for thinking about them; you’re giving them free consulting time.
3.Focus on your strengths, not your weaknesses.
It is human nature to spend more time thinking about your weaknesses than your strengths, but getting a job and being successful in a career depends more on your strengths than your weaknesses.
4.Turn your goal into a vision.
The goal of “getting a job” isn’t enough. See in your minds eye the job you want, in detail.
5.Over prepare.
Practice interviewing, get input on your résumé, get appropriate job search and career counseling and help. Remember, “good enough” isn’t good enough.
6.Network, network, network.
About 70% of jobs are obtained through some form of personal contact (such as personal networking and utilizing recruiters). Less than 10% of jobs are obtained through the Internet; so why spend 95% of your time on the Internet?
7.Make your job search strategy specific.
Make a specific schedule listing your resources, actions, problems, solutions, expected results, and deadlines.
8.Attack your own excuses.
We all have excuses for why we’re not making the calls we need to make, or writing the letters we need to write. For example, don’t pamper yourself into thinking that you can make a job search call only when you’re “in the mood.”
9.Never give up.
Getting a job is a numbers game; the more potential employers you get in front of, the better your chances not only of getting a job, but getting the kind of job you want.
10.Maintain your professionalism.
Being a professional is not a function of how you are treated by others or whether they recognize your skills. Being a professional happens when you behave like a professional. And the most important time to behave like a professional is when you are NOT being treated like one.
11.Write your résumé and cover letter for a skimmer, not a reader.
Everyone knows that, but then everyone tries to make everything stand out in a resume. Can’t be done! You have to be ruthless in deciding what is most important, and put that first. It will help your motivation.
12.Focus on your bottom-line value to the company.
Sure, everyone talks about their experience and their skills, but companies hire because they need someone to help them solve their problems and achieve their goals. That’s what to focus on.

By Dr. Sander Marcus

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Website statistics software what can the new technology do for you?

I once heard someone say that everyone hates to pay for gasoline, because you never see it. Buying something invisible is almost like having to pay a tax or a toll. The bright side, of course, is in the results – you get to drive your car, rather than being stranded by the side of the road.

What about the money you invest in your website? How visible are the results? Your page views are up, your phone is ringing, and your business is profitable. Last time you checked, you had plenty of website traffic, and high rankings in the search engines. So everything is great, right? Sure! But could it be better?Let’s say you have a pay-per-click account in Overture or Google AdWords. You know how many clicks you are getting, because you pay the bill every month. But there is an invisible expense. While some keyword phrases are delivering real buyers, others only bring visitors who take a quick look and then leave. Furthermore, it’s difficult to identify those PPC generated visitors in your old tracking system, because they come in through search engines such as Yahoo or MSN. You can’t differentiate them from the traffic that you received for free, through an organic search.
With the new tracking technology, it is possible to more effectively measure the results of your paid promotions. This feature is called campaign tracking or PPC tracking. You can use it to tell how many visitors came from paid clicks, and specifically which campaign they came from. It’s not limited to pay-per-clicks. You can also use campaign tracking to identify visitors from your paid directories and email blasts.
The other significant new feature is called conversion tracking. When properly configured, this powerful function will allow you to see which visitors “converted” from lookers into buyers; it will even track how much they spent. This means that you can measure the actual return on investment (ROI) of your website promotion dollars.
Conversion tracking is valuable even if your website doesn’t process dollar transactions. A visitor who requests a brochure or signs up for a newsletter has certainly “converted” from an anonymous looker into a useful lead. These conversions provide a good measure of success for your online marketing.
Some time ago, I took a university class on marketing research. For me, the most memorable thing that the professor said was, “don’t bother to do marketing research unless you intend to act upon the results.” Indeed, by using a more advanced decision-making tool, you create the opportunity — and the responsibility — to more actively manage your promotion budget. You can reduce spending on less effective resources, and focus your budget on those that deliver the highest quality traffic - and the most revenues. When used this way, the ROI tracker more than pays for itself.

By jack doren

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6 Ways To Invest In Real Estate

If you’re interested in real estate investing, take a look at these 6 different and decide which one is right for you.
The first question I have for someone who’s interested in real estate investing is: What type of investing is right for you?
Now when I ask people this question, the response I often hear is:  “I didn’t know there were different types of real estate investments.  I just want to make
some money.” Well, there are several ways to invest in real estate. 

Let me explain.
1. Make Money Monthly (Cash Flow)
You buy property and become a landlord. This doesn’t necessarily mean you deal with tenants.
There are plenty of management companies that will do that for a nominal fee.
You buy property and structure the deal so that any mortgage payment, plus the sum total of expenses, are less than the amount of income (rent) you are receiving. Hence the term -
Positive Cash Flow!
When calculating positive cash flow, don’t forget there are annual tax benefits to owning real estate and appreciation (realized at the time of sale.)  
2. Buying and Selling (Flipping) The idea here is simple: buy property for less than you sell it for.  You can buy a distressed property that needs improvement, or buy from a distressed owner that needs out.
When you buy property that needs improvement, to make the most money you will want to bring the property up to snuff. Whether you do the work, or hire it done, you will need to calculate your cost to improve the property, as well as your holding costs. Holding costs are the expenses of owning the property during the time of repairs and until the property is sold. These costs include taxes, any mortgage interest payments, utilities, and normal maintenance such as grass cutting, and snow removal.    
When you buy property from a distressed owner, often the property is fine, but the owner has either fallen behind in mortgage payments or taxes, or does not want the property for other reasons such as relocation, divorce, probate, etc. In this situation, you payoff the owner¯ debt, take over the property, and sell for a profit. Obviously the debt needs to be lower than the market value for you to profit. 
3. Lease Option This less common method involves controlling the property without taking title. You lease the property and either sell the property or lease to another tenant until the property sells.  This one is a bit more complicated and has some drawbacks, such as the inability to depreciate your lease, but you can reap big profits.
4. Buying Tax Liens Property in default for back taxes can be purchased from the government.  You simply place a deposit as designated by the government and sit out the waiting period. If the taxes are not paid, you get the property. Oh, in the meantime your money earns interest and you are guaranteed by the government not to lose a dime!
5. Private Lending Individuals are allowed to finance so many properties per year without the regulations of becoming a mortgage company.  This is a great way to invest passively in the real estate market. By holding a first deed of trust, your money is secured by the property, and you can charge more interest than you would otherwise earn with a typical safe passive investment such as CDs. 
6. Pre-Construction:
Buy property direct from builders before they are built. You lock in a wholesale price and market the property upon completion. This is a good opportunity in many areas. You have no tenants to worry about and no mortgage payments during the construction.
So there are six choices for you to start making money in real estate!

By Yulin Peng

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How to Get Your Girlfriend to Kiss and Hug You More Often

 Physical contact between your girlfriend and you is very important to maintain a healthy relationship. Kisses and hugs will show that both of you are still deeply in love with each other. But when one of you feels that the other half does not show romantic gestures very often, it may cause him or her to lose self-esteem and confidence in the relationship.

Therefore, let met share with you some of the ways to maintain the romantic gestures between you and your girlfriend during relationships.
1. Show her affection, when walking in the mall, hold her hand. When you greet her, give her a kiss to show her you care about her. Snuggle next to her on the couch, with your arm around her, and your fingers playing with her ear lobe, or her neck. When you give affection, you will get it.
2. Before you get affection from her, you must give it to her first. Do not wait for her to do it first just because that you cannot put down your ego.
3. Be lovable so as to make her want to be around you. Have a good sense of humor. Discuss things that you both have in common.
4. Ask her for a kiss as this is a sure way to get one from your girlfriend.
5. Compliment her when she does something nice. Do not just be false in your words. Be honest and she will enjoy you more. It is a normal act that is displayed when one truly cares for the other. Just be yourself, be fun to be with and enjoy her company.

Maintaining romantic gestures during relationships is definitely a great way to create and maintain the sparks between you and her.

By Crid Lee

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