Maria Smith

The usual modus operandi in most automobile purchases is as follows.
Step 1: Recognize the urge for an automobile.
Step 2: Check the bank balances.
Step 3: Head for the purchase provided the second step gives a positive result.
Step 4: If the second step gives a negative result, take an automobile loan.

This will be rated as the most logical sequence of events by most people unless they acknowledge the fact that they can save hundreds of pounds by planning the automobile loan in a more systematic manner.

Recognizing the need for an automobile:
The first step will always be to concede that there actually is a need for a car or any other vehicle. The prices of vehicles have heavily come down. But they still continue to be treated as a luxury item. The desire to have a vehicle will always be there. People wrongly try to push desires as a need. Need emerges because of a difficulty being faced by the borrower. Only if a need is= recognized must one go to the second process.

Check for capability:
The automobile certainly would not come for free. One must have the capability to repay the value of the vehicle purchased. Fat bank balances are not always required. Taking a secured automobile loan allows investment in more productive uses while making you the proud owner of a vehicle.

Secured automobile loans require the borrower to keep the vehicle purchased or any other asset as collateral. The borrower must have a regular income source. Some lenders however specify a particular limit below which they do not accept borrowers. There is no need to get disheartened if you do not fulfill the qualifications. Every lender has a different lending policy. Given the numerous lenders offering mortgages, your financial condition is bound to match some or other lender's products.

Stretching ones finances too much will lead to a breakdown in the financial condition. The vehicle is not the only= expenditure on your part. There are many more expenditures to be borne by the customer. If the sum invested in the vehicle exceeds, the other expenditures will have to be curbed. Alternately, this would have an adverse effect on savings.

Therefore, the amount of secured loan must be decided with care. Once inside the showroom, almost every vehicle looks good. But one must vote for the vehicle that most suits his budget.

The loans process:
If you thought there is little to an automobile loan after making the decision to take it, then you are wrong. You are still halfway in the loans process. The implementation part is still remaining.

The first step in the loans process will be finding a suitable lender. Though there is a single lender who offers automobile loan, it is difficult to find the lender from the crowd of lenders. The various lenders chosen have to pass through various stages of screening to prove that they can provide the loan at the best of= terms. Online search significantly simplifies the process of search. No obligation loan quotes offered by the lenders too are of great help in the search process.

Once the lender is selected, the negotiations on the loans begin. Details of the loan like the term of repayment, interest charged, actual cost of the loan, amount of monthly or quarterly repayments etc. are to be decided in this stage. This is the most important step because this will decide how the loan fares in the long run.

The borrowers are advised to tread cautiously in this stage. The terms and conditions of the lenders must be read carefully. Particular attention must be given to clauses which rule out early or premature repayment with a penalty. All queries regarding the loan must be immediately clarified to prevent problems from emerging in the future.

The days ahead....
Has the loans process sucked most of your energy? You can rest now because the days ahead are a smoother ride. You= finally get the resources to purchase the vehicle of your choice. Secured automobile loans give borrowers a better bargaining power. Regular repayments to the automobile loan can further assure a smoother future. Taking a loan protection can be helpful in full and final settlement of the secured automobile loans.

About the Author

Maria smith has not been writing articles from the beginning.But the increase in perplexing loans information has urged her to write on different loans types.To find a Loans uk,secured loans,unsecured loans,Debt consolidation at low interest that best suits your needs visit http://www.loansfiesta.co.uk

How to Generate Record Profits from
Customers You Already Have

Many small business owners fail to take advantage of their most important asset, their customer list. Most of the small business owners I meet are constantly searching for ways to expand their customer base when it’s been proven time and time again that you can make more money from your present clients than constantly looking for new business. So, I devised some secrets to begin the process of retaining good customers and generating greater profits from them.

Get to Know Your Customers

Small Businesses today are finding that in order to survive super discount competitors and huge company advertising blitzes, they must go back to the relationship building of the good old days. In cities and towns of yesteryear, the shopkeeper knew his customers by name and the type of merchandise they needed and made certain he had it in stock. This kind of relationship coupled with personalized customer service and a genuine empathy with customers, is what keeps them coming back to you instead of going to your competitors.

Gather Customer Information

A database of customers is the most valuable asset your business has. Yet only 10% of the retailers in the United States keep a current list of their customers! Statistics show that businesses spend five times as much for new customers than they do on their present customers, yet a regular customer is worth 10 times the cost of acquiring a new customer!

Today, however, a mailing list is not enough. To build relationships with customers that commands loyalty, you must gather information, which is valuable to you. For example, age and even ages of relatives, size of home, color and style preferences, date of last purchase, amount of purchase, brand preferences, important dates including birthdays, anniversaries.

Serve the Customer

Waiting on customers courteously is just the beginning of good customer service. First, find out what the customer expects from you. Make sure your salespeople praise every customer, show an interest, and establish rapport. Get in the habit of corresponding with your customers. Send them notes, cards, articles, and clippings that interest them. Send them thank you notes and cards telling them about private specials and trunk showings. Mail out a newsletter explaining what's new in your company.

Reward the Customer

A study by the Rockefeller Foundation found that a whopping 68% of customers stop buying from you because of an attitude of indifference toward the customer by the owner, manager, or employee. In other words, if you ignore customers, 7 out of 10 will not shop with you again, for no special reason.

By segmenting customers into groups, you can treat customers individually, based on their buying habits and the information you've gathered. New customers need to know that you value them as a new customer and that you actually care if they shop with you again. Send them a thank you note after their first purchase.

Use What You Know to Get New Customers

Once you've built a list of customers, their preferences, demographics and transactional data, you'll be able to use this important information to find new customers with similar characteristics. Start a Referral program by rewarding customers who refer their friends and relatives. Obtain a list of new movers to your area with similar age and income parameters to your present customers. Use testimonials from satisfied customers to attract new customers by mail. Obtain a mailing list of targeted prospects that match your customer profile.

Tell a Friend

You now have the customers on your side; you now need to have a program for them to refer your products to your friends. When you have done that, aided with good products, you should be able to boost your site's traffic and have good sales. Refer-a-friend codes are available to help you put a plug-in to your website.

You should also offer incentives to your current customers to tell their friends and business associates about your site in any way that is appropriate to the content and purpose of your site. You may need to try several different incentives before you find one that works.

An inexpensive, yet effective incentive is to give them more chances to win a contest you are running for every friend they refer to your site. Another is to give them some kind of priority access to your services. It might be something as simple as offering a 10% coupon on products they purchase from your site after they have sent a few new customers.

About the author:

Peter Dobler is a 20+ year veteran in the IT business. He is an active Real Estate Investor and a successful Internet business owner. Collect more free software and bonus content for your own web site at http://www.online-business-idea.com

Visit our sponsor http://www.sell1on1.com

If SPAM in space makes Hormel executives smile, SPAM in cyberspace makes them grimace, and understandably so. That's because they've watched their carefully cultivated international trademark become generic Internet slang for unwanted junk mail. How and when SPAM entered the Internet vernacular for junk mail is anyone's guess, but the fact remains that when someone sends you unsolicited junk mail, netizens (citizens of the Net) will say you've been "spammed".

In the olden days, the most popular way to fight spam was also the easiest. All you have to do is to delete the spam mail on receipt, and never, ever reply to spam mail. Though, this could be a very tedious work especially if you receive tons of spam messages a day.

Nowadays, computer geniuses had come up with a greater, more effective, and relatively easier way of blocking the spam mail. This cyber space super hero comes in the form of a spam blocker. With spam blocker, blocking mail from spammers is just a click away. Though, there are instances that spam blockers malfunctions or they just don't operate effectively.

That's why in times like this, it is extremely important for you to identify a potential spam attack instantly. A relatively slow system performance could trigger your instinct for red alert, as this might be a potential spam attack. There maybe instances that your system is no longer capable of receiving emails. This may be due to a slow processing of hefty amount of mails, or your spam blocker was not able to detect a spam and your system had already suffered a spam attack.

In the event that your spam blocker was not clever enough to know that an imminent danger is on the way and you discover that you are a victim of spamming, it's a must that you do the following:

First Aid #1: Know your enemies!

Don't be left in the battle staring at a blank wall. Do a little investigation and know where your email had come from. You can do this by checking the headers, and immediately reconfigure your proxy servers to curb another possible entry of that same address.

Tip #2: Ask for help.

Advise your current Internet Service Provider or ISP for any spam attack. Ask them if they can change the settings of their proxy servers to impede another attack when the suspected address will be able to penetrate to your system again.

Tip #3: Do a little investigation.

Follow up with sites that possibly hosted the attack, like the ISPs you identified in your investigation of the problem, so as to alert them to the activity.

Tip #4: Go for the professional.

Notify the any group that works with the Internet community so as to smooth the progress of its replies to computer security incidents involving Internet hosts. These groups provide 24-hour technical assistance fro responding to computer security incidents, assistance, seminars, and technical documents.

Tip #5: Look for the best strategy.

Usually, e-mail clients provide their own spam blockers. Also, you can also block spam mails through firewalls.

Also, there are other alternatives wherein you can use a different strategy for blocking spamming. You can use a smap. Or you may resort to more simple options like updating your e-mail software and maintaining patches, updates, and bug fixes given by your e-mail provider.

There are many ways to get spam blockers on the Internet. All you have to do is to shop around and look for the spam blocker that could serve you best.

In reality, there is no way to actually prevent e-mail spamming. However, through spam blockers you can at least protect yourself and decrease the likelihood of a spamming attack.

Moreover, doing these five simple steps may not guarantee absolute solution to the problem or may act as alternatives for spam blockers. Keep in mind that as you try to identify the source of the email, the author of the attack may be under an alias and attempting to hide his or her true identity. Thus, it would be harder for you to prevent further spam attacks.

Indeed, it's almost impossible to actually prevent spamming. However, you can put up a good fight through educating yourself about unwanted commercial email and spam. As they say, an ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure.
 

About the author:

Peter Dobler is a 20+ year veteran in the IT business. He is an active Real Estate Investor and a successful Internet business owner. Collect more free software and bonus content for your own web site at http://www.online-business-idea.com

Visit our sponsor http://www.sell1on1.com

Richard Green

It's a worrying time for current and prospective students. Figures from the Prudential, show that a third of UK university students have considered abandoning their studies due to the financial strain they have encountered. It is not surprising that many prospective students are finding the need to seriously think through the merits of going to university. With the increase in course fees, alongside decreases in government financial support, the current crop of graduates can expect huge debts (currently averaging over £13,000) when they enter the employment market, which they hope will reward them with a highly paid job.

However, as more students get pushed on to the higher education production line and undertake degrees, the once elitist qualification becomes devalued. Suddenly employers find themselves surrounded by graduates of ambiguous quality. Prestigious highly-paid careers are rare these days and graduates find themselves increasingly under= pressure to jump through a number of hoops, with many interviews relying on an individual's ability to sell himself, rather than the basis of the academic work.

Students need to take responsibility for their own finances, while the government seeks our recognition of its actions (educating the unemployed is good for the books … and votes), without the state taking on responsibility ("it's an investment in your own future").

Too many want to bury their heads in the sand and wait for a lottery win to make it all better. With over one trillion pounds of personal debt in the UK, students need to realise that the, "it could be you!" they pray for, is actually an "it is you … in debt" … with trapped wind more likely than wind-fall.

Part of the problem is hopeful expectation (alias denial), part is a fear of controlling your own personal finances (alias apathy), and part is a lack of knowledge (alias ignorance). The first one is difficult, and needs to be= overcome by the individual. The other two however can both be overcome by looking for help. Sources of information need to be made available, actively promoted and sought out by consumers.

It's not like the information isn't there… there are plenty of financial product comparison sites loaded with information (and pictures): http://www.moneynet.co.uk/ for a start, or http://www.moneysavingexpert.com. The Financial Services Authority has its own finance help information for consumers http://www.fsa.gov.uk/consumer/index.html.

As the saying goes, "Seek and you shall find". It may be a hard lesson, but it is one that we must all currently embrace.

About the Author

Richard works in Edinburgh for a media company, occasionally writing for the personal finance blog Cashzilla ( http://cashzilla.blogspot.com/ ), and drinking too much coffee.

If you have a website, chances are, you want people to come and visit your web pages. OFTEN. As this is a sign that people appreciate your site and they do like what they see. For commercial web sites that offer different products, such as books, items, travel destinations, among other items, traffic building is the source of all internet trading. Traffic is monitored by the system administrator of the web site for the frequency of visits a user does on the web site.

And if you are a commercial web site, getting more and more traffic is what counts. Generally, there are two modes of gaining traffic: the search engines and links with other sites. But that is not easy as it sound because these two are codependent with each other. A search engine is dependent on these web sites because it needs to build up its index. But if these sites do not establish a link with your site or they are not using the correct key words or phrase that would direct the user onto your web site, then they do not add value to you and would not produce the traffic you would like.

What are the criteria for a good traffic count? There are three elements to it: one is content, second is the presentation, and last is the ease of use of the site. For the content, it has to be focused and with quality so that internet users would come back again and again. The content is the basic building block of the web site as this is comparable to garbage in, garbage out. Therefore always make sure that all content is of the best quality, it is focused to the target users you would like to reach and it is interesting to read to encourage new visitors to the site to return again.

The presentation makes a difference even if the content meets all the criteria in quality. If the site looks boring and uninteresting, chances are, it is. Therefore, how the website is presented in terms of format, presence of pictures, and other items would also encourage or discourage the user to come back or not.

Lastly, the ease of use or the comfort in navigating throughout the site is another factor that would encourage users to come back again and again. This includes the time it loads and the ease it goes to the next pages. Some web sites have made their web sites limited to two to three pages because they are not only concerned about the costs, but also with the ease of navigating through it.

Other factors that would build your traffic are by offering email updates but it has to be controlled so as to avoid spamming. Another good idea is to update your content on a regular basis. If the users have already book-marked your site and return to find no new information, they might not come again. And if your site is always updated with fresh information, search engines would come more often to “spider” your site to update its index.

Building more traffic can also be done by signing up with Yahoo!, Google, and other search engines that are available in the net. Although this two search engines have proven to be the best search engines for almost every internet user as Yahoo! and Google has extensive databases to draw the best results for any query.

Other ways of getting more traffic is via link exchanges. This is when you establish friendly link exchanges with other sites that could get you the same volume of traffic as in its site to your site.

There are other kinds of gimmicks that you could do to build traffic but some are just nuisance to internet users that they would not be too happy to see or appreciate very much. Keeping it all clean and fresh is the only way to be always on top of the heap as search engines do check if your site is semantically convenient for them to be able to spider well.

Traffic building is painless if you know what you are doing.
 

About the author:

Peter Dobler is a 20+ year veteran in the IT business. He is an active Real Estate Investor and a successful Internet business owner. Collect more free software and bonus content for your own web site at http://www.online-business-idea.com

Visit our sponsor http://www.sell1on1.com

Starting and running business today requires more than a good idea, a spoonful of gambled investment, a sensible business proposal, hard work, enthusiasm, perseverance, and stoke of luck. It also requires a complete mastery of the personal computer.

Computers are the modern businessperson's communications, managerial, and information center. That is why most businesses resort into some of the digital ways of doing business online. One of them is the so-called "pay per click" advertising.

Basically, PPC advertising is a straightforward form of doing advertisements. Just like it's traditional counterpart, PPC advertising is paid. Though, the concept behind PPC advertising is based on a pay-per-click basis. Hence, the company will have to pay those bid amounts every time a PPC search engines directs a potential buyer to the business site. This goes to show that the advertisers will only pay when a customer had clicked the company's advertisement.

Best of all, with PPC advertising, businesses are able to reach a wider market share. Since the information in the Internet is globally distributed, most businesses are assured of a global market reach.

However, since PPC advertising is, on its basic sense, a bidding activity, there's a higher probability that a higher bid of one ad can always beat the other. The solution: manage your PPC advertising. To do that, you have to do the following:

SET YOUR GOALS

Set a specific target. For example, you are currently in rank # 8, it's better if you would set your mind into reaching rank #2. In this way, you would find ways how to achieve that goal.

To do this, find out how much the advertiser in rank # 2 pays for the ad. For example, if they are paying $0.35 per click, you may bid $0.37 to reach that rank.

However, set a limit also on how much you should pay for the ad. Say, if your maximum budget for each pay per click ad is only $1.00, then aim for rank #2 without sacrificing your budget. Most often than not, keyword prices perk up whenever there are more people bidding on the same item.

Bear in mind that PPC advertising is relatively a ranking activity. This means that ads that have higher bids will definitely be on the higher positions compared to those that have lower bids. Therefore, businesses with a lower bid have to boost their offers in order to get a higher ranking. In turn, this can be very costly especially if the business is bidding on a common search engine keyword.


DO THE MATH TEST. GET RID OF THE DIFFERENCES

Calculate the amount of gaps you have with the your competitors. Track down how much your competitor pays per click. For example, if you are currently paying $0.50 per click, and you've discovered that your next-in-rank competitor is only paying $0.40, it would be best that you close the gap immediately. That is, opt for a lower amount than what you are currently paying, say, $0.46. In this way, you'll be saving more money but you're still placed on a higher position than your competitor.

STICK TO YOUR LIMITS

It really pays to be disciplined especially if you're dealing with money. If you've set a limit of $1.00 per click, then never opt for advertisements that will cost you more than what you can afford even if it means getting rank #1.

The best thing to do is to wait until the price depreciates. You may be losing more if you choose to take chances on a higher bid amount. Plus, you may end up bidding more if your competitor will not cut loose.

Indeed, the success of PPC advertising is, in turn, a case-to-case basis. This means that the higher you bid on the keyword that connects to your merchandise, the higher your rank, the more chances of getting more people to your website. Likewise, the more common a certain keyword is, the higher the business should bid on it in order to gain a higher position on the PPC search engines, and a higher bid means more expenses.

But this doesn't mean that you have to grab whatever chances there is just to get to a higher rank even if it means more hefty charges you have to pay. The rule of thumb is: know your way around. If you know how to play the game, chances are you'll win.
 

About the author:

Peter Dobler is a 20+ year veteran in the IT business. He is an active Real Estate Investor and a successful Internet business owner. Collect more free software and bonus content for your own web site at http://www.online-business-idea.com

Visit our sponsor http://www.sell1on1.com

Aditya Thakur

After seeing each other for years and being tagged as 'in love' since eternity, you desire to bring this to a logical end. You are wrong if you think I am suggesting a divorce even before you are actually married. The end to every love is wedding -the wedding of two bodies and two souls.

Have you been planning wedding since a long time but have been hindered because of the huge cost weddings entail nowadays.

Worry not. Spend as much as you can, because wedding loans are there to pay every penny of the expenses.

Average wedding costs anywhere between $19,000 – $27,000. This may go much higher if one is planning to have a gala wedding with all the pomp and show included.

And why shan't one. Wedding is a once in a lifetime event. People would take all efforts to make the wedding truly memorable.

But the society and the customs have changed much. Just as the parents or guardians lost their say over the choice of bride or groom,= they have little to do in the planning and financing of the wedding. So it is the couple who does all the spending on the wedding.

So how do the couples bear the expenses of wedding, in spite of being new to their professions and low on the income graph?

Wedding loans are an effective tool in their hands which they use to pay the entire wedding expenses. Wedding loans can finance practically every wedding expense right from the elegant wedding dress to the exquisitely beautiful engagement ring, from the lavish reception to the impeccable church decoration.

There are a number of other expenses which seem insignificant if seen individually, but become difficult to repay when taken in totality. These can be very easily paid through wedding loans.

Besides, wedding loans can be a much cheaper option to use for the payment rather than credit cards or past savings. Using a credit card can be simple if one goes by the immediate outcomes. But when the credit card= debts are due for payment you find them to be much more than what you really spent. No, the credit card company is not indulging in any king of overcharging or cheating. This is only because of the accumulation of interest. Payment through credit cards is just like drawing a loan, but at a much higher rate.

Utilizing past savings for a one day affair like a wedding would be a waste. It could have been a lot better had the past savings been used for some productive purposes.

A wedding loan allows the customer to enjoy two benefits. The first benefit of wedding loan is that the customer will not have to pay an exorbitantly high amount. Most of the lenders offer loans at reasonable rates of interest.

The second benefit is regarding the timing of payment. Even though a customer has to pay more than what he would have spent, he accepts this because he does not have to pay the whole amount at one go. Monthly payments require to be made towards the payment of= loan.

A certain amount of planning is necessary when taking a wedding loan. If parents are ready to be a part of the finances then they must be included in discussions. How much can they spend on the wedding needs to be decided well in advance. This will determine the amount of wedding loan that needs to be applied for.

Secured wedding loans taken against ones home will be much cheaper. A valuation of the home or property will be done. One can draw loan depending upon the worth of his home. However there are options for those who do not have a home or who do not want to put their home under any kind of obligation.

Next comes the choice of lenders. It is no longer necessary to depend on lenders in one particular locality or region. Almost every big and small lender is available online. An internet connection is what is needed. One does not even have to leave his home or office, and loan can be applied for instantly. Such a relief from the previous times when a= customer had to go to each and every lender to just get the quotes. Few customers were ready to go through this grind, and hence accepted whatever offer was given.

These loans are very easy to approve. With the valuation of property and credibility check over, it is very easy to get loans approved. Filling up each and every detail with caution and accuracy can save enough of time in the approval process.

Did you promise your wife an impeccable wedding ring? You can keep on the promise since wedding loans are there to meet the expense.

About the Author

Aditya Thakur is a financial consultant and is currently pursuing masters in journalism from JMI University. To find a secured loan that suits your need visit http://www.ukfinanceworld.co.uk

Before we even contemplate reading on about podcasting, we need to define several terms that we need to be aware of because we won’t be able to comprehend what podcasting is all about without the basic understanding of these basic terminologies used.

Let us first define what broadcasting is all about. Or what an iPod is. We also need to know what a digital audio player is and what it does. Or what are digital music files. We also need to know what the different audio file formats are.

Read on to find all about these and more.

The distribution of video and/or audio signals that are received or listened to by a large group that is either the whole public or a larger audience of the listening public is better known as broadcasting. And the internet is one medium of how to broadcast music around the world. It can be narrow (narrowcasting) or broad, traditional like those in radio and television via antenna or cable or modern via the World Wide Web (webcasting) and now podcasting.

But what is the iPod? Is this something new? Can this deliver what people want? Does everybody need an iPod? How come some just cannot live without their iPod stuck between their ears all the time?

iPod is a 21st century gadget developed by the same type of people who made the processors smaller and smaller. iPod used to be what the Generation Xers or Baby Boomers would generally call the walkman or the boom box. Imagine jogging without a walkman? Then came the CD players for sports enthusiasts, those CD players that played the songs even if it was running at the speed of the wearer. Then more developments and evolution came and so we have the iPod from Apple Computer.

It is an innovative digital audio player produced and marketed by the Apple Computer. And what is its purpose? It enables music files in digital format to be played. Then again, what is a digital audio player? And what are digital music files? A gadget that can store, play, and organize digital music files. If you think iPod is the only digital audio player available in the market, then you’re in for a surprise because there are three kinds of digital audio players and iPod is just one of them. The other two are: the MP3 CD players and flash-based players. iPod belong to those hard-drive based players or more linguistically known as digital jukeboxes. MP3 CD players are your ordinary, run-of-the-mill players that can play audio CDs and other home-made data CDs that have digital audio files or MP3s. Flash-based players use memory cards that are plugged into USB ports that can hold internal or external media audio files. The memory cards can be extended and upgraded with additional memory as card memory ranges from 128MB (megabyte) to 1GB (gigabyte). iPod is a digital jukebox as it is capable of accessing and reading digital audio files contained in a hard drive. It is an improvement from the flash-players as it has a higher memory capacity that ranges from 1.5 gigabyte to 100 gigabyte. With that capacity, even your entire song collection can fit in just one player.

Digital music files are under the audio file format division. To be able to store audio data in a computer, the audio data need to be in a file format that is compatible with WAV, FLAC, PCM, AU, TTM, Ogg Vorbis (OGG), MP3, Advanced Audio Codec (AAC) or the Windows Media Audio (WMA). So what are all these 2-4letter extensions? There are two kinds of audio file formats that you can use, if you were to create your own audio files. The first type is the lossless format which includes the first five extensions: WAV, FLAC, PCM, AU, and TTM. The other format has a lossy compression, of which the last four extensions belong: Ogg Vorbis (OGG), MP3, AAC or the WMA.

Now that we have established what the different terms mean, we come to podcasting.

Portmanteau words such as podcasting evolved due to the internet revolution. It has combined the words "iPod" and "broadcasting" and came up with podcasting. Due to its evolution, it can be deceptive as it does not require that you have an iPod or other types of players.

Podcasting has evolved to mean the transmission of audio broadcasts through the internet. It allows users to avail of files that are usually in MP3 format to be fed onto their portable digital audio players or onto their desktop computers. It is different from the other form of internet medium as it is of the model of subscription type. The file that is enclosed is fed via Atom or RSS. Nowadays, podcasting makes it possible for private individuals and producers to create their own “radio shows.” And so what podcasting is all about is the newest way of bringing the world closer to home.
 

About the author:

Peter Dobler is a 20+ year veteran in the IT business. He is an active Real Estate Investor and a successful Internet business owner. Collect more free software and bonus content for your own web site at http://www.online-business-idea.com

Visit our sponsor http://www.sell1on1.com

Every one of your marketing tools needs a headline. Headlines grab attention. Make your message easy to read, get your main selling points across, and lead your customer to a sale.

Generally, you should use a short three-word headline for classified ads. Use headlines frequently in your web site copy to help people learn your main message without having to spend a lot of time online.

Headlines range from those types that hit you right in the face to more subtle ones that do not seem like a headline at all. A hard-sell direct mail letter might have your headline in all capitals at the beginning.

Your headline gets attention when it appeals to the interests of the readers. Use your headline to point out a problem the reader has or something you know the reader feels strongly about. Headlines are not the best place to list the features of your product or service. Instead, headlines should showcase the benefit the feature provides and offers.

Studies have shown that headlines get even better results if they are enclosed in quotation marks. It is one good trick to use from time to time.

Over the years, copywriting pros have found several headline formulas that almost always work well.

Try some of these headlines.

1. Ask a Question. "Are you worried about filing your tax return this year?" A question headline gets the reader to answer in his mind subconciously. You automatically get the prospect involved in your message. Many people will read further into your letter, ad, or web site copy just to find out what answer or solution you provide.

2. Start your headline with "How to." "How to buy a car without getting a lemon." "How to" headlines work like magic. People love information that shows them how to do something valuable. It works for reports or letters that provide helpful information.

3. Provide a testimonial. The recommendation of a satisfied customer can go a long way in convincing others to buy from you. Always include the customer's full name and the city they live in. Many readers will not believe a testimonial where it is hard to figure out who the author is. "R.A.,LA" works better if it is written as “Richard Allen-Big Town, LA."

4. Issue a command. Some classic headlines command readers to "Aim High" and "Put a tiger in your tank." Turn your most important benefit into a commanding headline. "Stop rushing through life." "Make more money this month." "Feel better about yourself."

5. Important news makes a good headline. This particularly works well for big changes in your company or the introduction of hot new products. "Software Central introduces the new Instant Forms 2000--professional web site forms in 20 minutes."

6. Headline a deadline for a special offer. Most of us are busy and tend to put off taking action. If you don't get the prospect to act now, you may never get the sale. "Save Money Now" and "Get More If You Buy Now" offers increase the response rate.

7. FREE offers often pull the best response. "FREE report on boosting web site sales" is a powerful way to get lots of interested prospects. There is a myth that affluent or professional customers are turned off by free offers. Not true. Simply tailor your free offer to match the style of your customers or industry. You might subtly headline a "no-cost initial consultation."

Prospects are always in a hurry. They are bombarded with hundreds of ads, letters, postcards, and commercials every day. They tend to skip or tune out any marketing message that looks like it will take too much time or be too much trouble to figure out.

Headlines simplify the learning curve. A reader can scan down your page, quickly digest your headlines, and figure out what you're offering. Once the prospect knows you have something she is interested in, she will take more time to read your entire letter, ad, or web page.

Spice your headlines with action words like save, act, run, feel, and do. Cut out unnecessary words. Put subheadings in your copy to break up stretches of text. If someone else is writing copy for you, share some of these power headline ideas with them. In our hustle, bustle world, good headlines make your sales materials stand out, easy to use, and motivating.
 

About the author:

Peter Dobler is a 20+ year veteran in the IT business. He is an active Real Estate Investor and a successful Internet business owner. Collect more free software and bonus content for your own web site at http://www.online-business-idea.com

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