Power Ideaz

Pinaki Ghosh

When one adds the website to any of the search engine, it automatically uses a scanning software called ‘spider’ to go through the content of web pages. The so called spider then adds the links to the other pages to read all information on the different pages and join them in a larger database of the search engine. If then there is any need of the information on certain keywords from the search engine, it would help in searching its database and look out for sites offering information on the keywords that are needed. Most search engine have there own crawlers which vary in code from each other, but at the same time, have a similar set of rules which one can then apply to look on the web.
The simplest forms that are used by these crawlers are the HTML codes that are used by the sites and come free from errors. Why make a face if one does not find his site cached by the search engines; the mistake lies in the poor coding of that particular site. It also can mean that the menu system design restricts the technological spiders to follow it. In such a case your site will not be indexed by the search engines.

You can correct by following the ways given below:

(a) Change the menu system to CSS type, text based menu system.
(b) Add a text menu below the web page (as a second menu system).
(c) Update the latest code to a search engine friendly version.
You can also optimize your web page by keeping the following advices in mind:
(i) When it comes to understanding pictures the search engines are useless. They really understand nothing much but only the text names of the pictures. Thus, using the ‘alt tags’ which are text equivalent of the pictures on the site helps.
(ii) Try and make up a site map away connecting from the main page, to let the search engines find out the other pages of your site.
(iii) Never use the same kind of color of the text and background. Also, making the text appear transparent can get you penalized by any of the search engines for using irrelevant ways.
(iv) Try not to use the ‘hidden text’ in your CSS files.
Make use of the traditional techniques like the title, description, metatags, and at the same time some good content in your site; and then be convinced that your page will be cached.

Pinaki Ghosh

Google allots a value to almost all the web-pages in the Google index which is based on a complex formula. The search that Google performs has the results based on algorithm, which includes the Page Rank value. The higher is the Google Page Rank of your site, the more are your chances of getting a top listing, when someone performs a search Larry Page) and Sergey Brin   using keywords from your site.
Larry Page bought in and developed the Page Ranks System (The name Page rank comes from his surname) and Sergey Brin at Stanford University, while researching on a new search engine project. Together, Page and Brin gave birth to Google Inc.
You can easily download and install the Google toolbar (which is pretty simple). Then by choosing the ‘advanced’ option and you can view the Page Rank of any site on the toolbar.
The way Page rank works is best understood by the mathematicians as it’s complicated and involves a lot of calculations. For you to understand, let me put it in a simpler form:
PRA = 1-d + dPRt1/Ct1 + … + PRtn/Ctn
To understand the above Google PageRank formula, here’s the English meaning: The more links that point to your site, the higher is your rank. The higher is the Google PageRank of the sites, pointing (linking) to your site, the higher will be your Google PageRank.
Supposing, a site with PageRank 10, and 5 other sites link to your site it will give you more value, than any site with PageRank 20, and 100 other sites linking to your site. Besides, your PageRank goes on increasing if other sites with content similar to your site point to your site. Thus you see the formula has a lot of variables, and complications.

Your Google PageRank can be increased by:
(a) Getting the higher number of incoming links i.e. links to your site. The PageRank for your site falls by the increasing number of outgoing links.

(b) By getting the incoming links to your site from good sites with high PageRank, will increase your Google PageRank!

(c) To increase your PageRank you can increase the number of pages of your site.

(d) Your PageRank also increases if other sites with similar web content point to your site.
Every month your Google PageRank changes once, as Google updates the rankings once a month.

The world of online business through cyberspace has provided people from all over the world the opportunity of connecting and communicating.. www.focusonprosperity.com.au, is an Australia based company offering home based business opportunity. www.focusonprosperity.com.au.  is the business segment of ‘Life path Unlimited’, a company offering products in the personal development and personal growth industry.
As you log in, the company offers an individual-
1) A home based business opportunity with a unique team support.
2) Personal and prosperity development products that are claimed to be the best in the   industry that transforms life.
3) An opportunity to create an executive-level income within 4 months or so, without being involved in selling, convincing, monthly product purchase, any inventory or product delivery.
4) Secrets of business success from leaders in the online marketing industry.
5) Personal one-on-one training that will help the entrepreneurs to establish and grow their Home Based business.
6) A home based business that is positioned for explosive growth over the next 12 months, transforming the life of the individual as well as the people with whom they work with.
The most unique feature that I came across while going through the business plans of the company is the compensation plan that it offers in the direct sales industry. Even after retirement, individuals will still be receiving a residual income. Apart from the aspect of self development, this is one reason why I would recommend this home based business opportunity.

Good Points
The website has a unique page layout. After logging in to the site, a visitor need not wonder where to go and look for the required information for setting up a business. Every bit of necessary information is laid out in the most simple and unsophisticated way, so that even the most ordinary person can avail of all the information that he/she is looking for. The site has been built up in the most user friendly way as possible. It consists of all the top features that a good website should have.
1)      The site has easy readability, with background colors that make the text attractive and pleasing to the eye.
2)      In terms of navigability, the site is unique as the visitors do not have to look for information and be frustrated .Neither do they face any hassles, as everything is laid out before them in the simplest form. They do not have to click here and there for any information or query that they have. The division on Citizen Corps provides the visitors provides all research based information on home based business, which will guide the individual in the decision making process.
3)      The site loads quickly and the visitors do not have to wait for a long time.
4)      There is no dead link on any page, and the layout ensures that if a visitor visits that page he/she should get all the relevant information regarding the business. It also gives the visitor a very clear picture at the first instance whether this is actually what he/she is looking for.
5)      The content is apt, precise and to the point and interesting for the visitors, and provides a vivid description to the visitor what the website is about. It also contains the contact details of entrepreneurs Brad and Sonya, so that apart from the general information that the site presents, visitors can also personally contact them with any other queries related to the home based business that individuals might have.
6)      The site has been created aptly keeping the target audience of prospective home based business owners in mind. It is simple and bold, expressing what the visitors can expect from the site, an exposure to the business by Robert Kiyosaki, a contact page at the bottom for visitors to fill up to get a glimpse into the reviews that would help them to make a choice, and information about the entrepreneurs themselves.
Suggestions for improvement
1.    After you have glanced the home page, you discover that you cannot locate any other link and wonder where to go from there. There is a form below where you have to leave your name, email address and that is the gate pass to the other pages. Here I had two questions that came up in my mind. This form will discourage a majority of visitors to visit the other pages, because nowadays people do not want to leave their email addresses in order to avoid receiving spam. This is why I left a fake name and email address and while I was wondering whether it will block my way; it allowed me inside! Thus you can fool the system and enter the internal pages leaving a bogus name and email identity.

2.    Though there is an excellent support team provided by ‘Life Path Unlimited’, which truly leads individuals to a wide range of options to choose from, a website that contains all information in a comprehensive manner will always be a better choice for individuals who are venturing out for a home based business setup. When a visitor will get all relevant information from a single site, he/she will remain a permanent visitor and customer to that site.

By Pinaki Ghosh

If you have still not heard of Alexa; don’t feel shy, beauause many internet users still are not aware of Alexa. So, what’s Alexa?

It helps in giving rankings to the sites, and is therefore an extremely powerful tool which can compare the traffic of a site to the rest of the web. Alexa a brand owned by the very famous www.Amazon.com, gives ranking to any site with the help of the users participation. It also includes the webmaster services and data services.
To see the ranking of your site you can either log on to http://www.alexa.com, and then type in the name of any site, whose rank you would want to see, or else install the Alexa toolbar on your browser which is much more convenient. After you have installed the Alexa toolbar, you can view the various numbers on the toolbar, as you visit the sites. These numbers are basically the rankings of the sites. The lowest the number, the more visited site it is. Like Yahoo ranks no1, Google no5 and Amazon.com no 14; it means Yahoo is the most visited site on the internet.
Want to know how it works? As you install the Alexa toolbar on the browser, it starts scrutinizing all the sites that you visit; at the same time using the data to rank the sites. Then Alexa casts a vote to that site for the day. However you do not get more votes if you visit the same site several times during the same day. Soon after, It monitors the number of pages of the site you visit, and then adds up the number of pages you visit during the day (again, it does not count the same page twice, if you have visited it twice). The reach is the counting of each view, and the counting of page visits is called page views. Alexa combines these figures and uses the same data for three months to calculate the traffic visiting a site.

By Pinaki Ghosh

To know the importance of the keyword density, we must know the importance of the keywords first. It is a word used to find the similar web pages. It was popularized during the early days of Internet search, as it was not possible to ask natural language questions and find the desired sites. Searches gave the best results if only a few keywords were chosen and searched for. These “keywords” capture the essence of the topic in a question and were likely to be present on all sites listed by the search engine. Many modern search engines have methods for determining which words in a search string are important and are ought to be treated as keywords. Words like articles (a, an, the) and the conjunctions (and, or, but) are not keywords as almost every English-language site on the internet. Searching for these words is a mere waste of time!

Most of the websites present themselves high on the list of the search results by increasing the keyword density. Which means, if the keywords appear frequently on the website, there are chances that the search engines would find your site several times and list them high.

The term keyword density mathematically means the number of times the main keyword would appear in any passage, which can be divided by the total number of words in the passage and then multiplied by 100. Like a 5% keyword density means that the keyword appears 5 times for every 100 words of the passage. 4% - 7% is normally the best ratio of keyword appearance. The keywords should not at one place, and must be spaced out throughout the content. The search engines fine the artificial and unjustified ways in which the search engine optimization takes place, like by increasing keyword density, like repeating keywords one after another spacing them out by commas. Some of the black hats SEOs use techniques like hidden keywords by making the keyword color same as the background color, and increasing keyword density. The search engines penalize anyone using text color very close to the background color. Penalized sites therefore, get a poor ranking.

You can take the professional help of www.writer4me.com for your site in this regard.

By Pinaki Ghosh

The Internet marketing Gurus like Rand Fishkin promote that an internet-based business depends 60% on the sales page and 40% on the product itself. The 1 page mini websites mostly rely on the sales page. The total business rests on the same. A bad sales page is more of less like a death knell for your site, though it sells good.

Here are the 7 golden rules for writing golden sales letters that can bring you good business:

1. Shocking start
Begin your sales copy by saying something that sounds negative but creates certain amount of excitement. The market experts claim that a negative heading can be much more effective than a positive one. Suppose you read something like, “Throw your computer out of the window!” you will be curious to read further, and it continues in smaller letters, “Because you are going to get frustrated with the insane traffic flow that is going to hit you”. It does sound effective right?

2. Tell your own success story
Try writing a story in your own words, which is spicy and at the same time talks about your success. It does not have to be entirely true! Write in a very personalized form which is much appealing to the reader. Boast about the possessions! Most of us need a leader to follow.

3. Use testimonials
Post the testimonials of the buyers who have been satisfied alongside the main body of the sales letter. To make the testimonials look more genuine, paste photographs of people who have given the testimonials and the links to their sites.

4. Give free gifts
This trick works well! Give away e-books for free if someone buys one product. This way they feel satisfied as at the price of one, they get a number of things.
5. Use bullets
When one uses the bulleted points, it helps the content look better than the paragraph text – this is what the expert copywriters like Tom Johnson of the American University in Cairo believe. Not only are they readable, they also carry a point much more effectively into the mind of the reader. Log on to http://www.prc.dk/user-friendly-manuals/ufm/tip-9810.htm#WhyBullets to know more.

6. Buy it today
Most of the readers almost always forget to come back to the site, unless of course that is his requirement. Thus, you have to make the visitor take out the credit card as soon as he visits; if he decides to think over the offer later, he is never going to do so. Thus, it is important to show urgency or a deadline for any offer.

7. Increase the price and give a discount
Although is sounds funny, it works miracles. If you have decided to sell your product for $29.95, make the price $79.95 and then give a $50 discount. This heavy discount will make the real price of $29.95 sound very reasonable.
On a better side, it is always good to give an iron strong word of guarantee. The guarantees work well to convince your buyer. Your guarantee is even stronger if you can offer a 30 day money back trial offer. If your sales copy for the internet-based business is based on the 7 secret tips, you’re going to be very happy about your profits!

 By Pinaki Ghosh

After MySpace, Orkut (www.orkut.com) has gained immense popularity! Orkut, till Feb 07 had 44 million people who had signed in and the figure is growing every day. People from the USA, Brazil and India are in majority on Orkut. It’s not only for meeting friends, and discovering lost friends, but a very powerful tool for making your site popular as well.

The first three steps are similar to that with MySpace:

1. Start blogging: Become a blogger

2. Signup with a PPC (pay per click) advertisement distribution program like Google AdSense (http://google.com/adsense), and start your account. To know more you can refer to some of the earlier pages.

3. Signup with some affiliate program like Commission Junction (http://cj.com) or Clickbank (http://clickbank.com) and become an affiliate. You can carry advertisements of other companies and earn your commission.

4. Join Orkut (http://orkut.com). Earlier, to join Orkut, one had to accept an invitation which could be sent only by someone who already was a part of the community. But now, anyone who has a Google account can be a part of the community. Like people know, Orkut is a part of Google. You can use the same password and username. You can start adding friends in large numbers. The more friends you add, the better is your prospect of informing more people about your site/blog.

5. Join the ‘communities’ of Orkut. There are innumerable communities on Orkut; where you can find a lot of interested members. This will widen your access to a larger number of people. You can get in touch with these people at one click!

6. Post messages to the members of large communities. Write interesting messages with a link to your site/blog. Describe the purpose of your blog, and its utility; and send them to hundreds of members of various communities.

7. Send messages to all your Orkut friends and update them about your blog. At a single click of your mouse you can select all friends and reach them and also pass on your message. Try not to appear like a spamster. Your message should appear like an interesting story, or as if you are trying to pass some helpful advice to your friends; which has also benefited you. Add the link to your site/blog.

8. Make forum postings. Some of the communities do not allow messaging. Use forum postings in those communities. Orkut communities have forums where you can post your message, so that the members can see and if interested can email you.

If this is successfully carried out from time to time, the traffic is bound to increase!

By Pinaki Ghosh

MySpace (www.myspace.com) and Orkut (www.orkut.com) are the two main gigantic and massively popular social community sites. MySpace statistical facts like 80 million users, 240,000 new sign-ups each day, 30 billion page views ever month, may give you an idea of how popular MySpace.. If you are a MySpace user, you are wasting your time if you don’t know the secrets of how to use MySpace for earning a fortune. Here are the stepwise tips of your way to success using MySpace as a ladder.

1. Make your personal blog or website which gives information on subjects of general interest, like jobs. Also, you can get a free website from http://bravehost.com, and an easy to use (that even your kids / little sister can operate) blog from http://blogger.com, or http://bravejournal.com, or any of the hundreds of other options available.

2. Signup with a PPC (pay per click) advertisement distribution program like Google AdSense (http://google.com/adsense), and get your own account started. Get the java code that you have to paste into the HTML codes of your site/blog. Click advertisements will start appearing in the site/blog. You earn each time someone clicks on these advertisements.

3. Signup with some affiliate program like Commission Junction (http://cj.com) or Clickbank (http://clickbank.com). This means that your blog/site will be displaying their advertisements, and if the visitors to your site hit on these tabs and become paid members to the linking site, you earn a good percentage of what he or she has paid. An account is maintained in your name and time-to-time payments are dispatched.

4. Join MySpace (http://myspace.com) if you still have not registered. This step is the most important step in this chain, because this is the main source where you will build your relations. Everyone knows that visitors mean business! Start adding friends in large numbers. The more friends you add, the better is your prospect of making big money. There are some programs available in the market that can add some 500 friends in a day!

5. Join ‘groups’ in MySpace. This will widen your access to a larger number of people. Many of these ‘groups’ have thousands of members. Your one message can now penetrate to all these members at a time.
6. Post bulletins to the members of large groups. Write good notes that do not feel like advertisements. If other members think you are merely spamming them, you will get flagged. Therefore, describe the main purpose of your blog, and its utility; i.e. what others can gain out of it.
7. Send mails to all your friends informing about your blog. At the click of a mouse you can select all friends and pass them your message. Again, be careful, not to appear like a spam star! Your message should look like a story, or as if you are trying to pass some helpful advice to your friends; which has also benefited you.
By this totally free of cost campaign, you will attract a large number of interested visitors and make them visit your site/blog, and click the advertisements. Keep repeating the process every week and not every week, as this may irritate some people. Send completely new messages. Writing the messages (mails, bulletins) is an art in itself, and you will develop the art, through the process. At the end of the month, the paycheck will make you feel it was all worth the effort.

By Pinaki Ghosh

One can never sell a car at the original price that he got, but in the case e-books, one can benefit over the same. E-books have a re sale value also, there aren’t any chances that anyone would sue you for doing that as you aren’t breaking the law. Although you must change the information like the name of the publisher and the writer etc i.e., you must customize them.  Most of the e-books come with the master resell rights which means after the resale you are permitted to keep the full profits. You do not have to share the royalty with anyone. Ebooks on success, stress-management, travel and leisure, understanding human psychology, relationship development sell extremely well on eBay. Prices of books range from $9.95 (books on magic tricks or cooking recipes) to $79.95 (real good books on making huge money). The prices of most e-books are around $29.95 (travel, success formula, stress management, relationship-development, understanding human psychology and technical).

To find out a better way to keep your profits high on eBay, read on: 

1. Do your research before you start selling
Even before you become an eBay seller, do some amount of research about eBay, and how things go about on eBay. In a matter of days you will be able to identify your potential competitors and at what cost they are offering their e-books. There are 2 ways to sell:
(a) Selling to the highest bidder
(b) fixed price selling (advisable for selling e-books).  

2. Write a strong sales copy
The second step would be to write a strong, creative sales copy which can be used for eBay listings and that would work. If you are not very good with copywriting, hire a freelancer for this purpose, because, you will constantly need the help of this person for various e-books that you would work on. A convincing copy will always attract your potential buyers’ attention towards your product. Not only should the sales copy be attractive, but it should be SEO friendly; which means that it should be rich in keywords. That will also make your product search-engine-friendly.

3. Invest on a good e-book cover
If you want to step into business, why hamper the quality by not working or spending too much on the e-book cover! Experts like Brent Turner (CEO of eCover Frog, http://ecoverfrog.com) say that almost 40% buyers are attracted towards e-books by the image i.e. the e-book cover. Place an order with a professional designer to get a first grade e-book cover design. You can use this image (or images) in the eBay listings of your e-book.

4. Offer multiple payment options
Give the buyers as well as the bidders multiple options to clear the payments. In fact, offer them as many options as possible. This will also increase your chances of selling more.

5. Add shipping costs
Shipping costs do not come into consideration if you offer an option of direct download on payment, but if you opt to send your e-books in compact discs by snail mail; you must calculate and include the shipping cost which would be fair enough.

6. Maintain professionalism
Keeping the attitude and the relation completely professional right from the start, would help in the future. You must be extremely prompt and at the same time provide good service; you can change the taxes wherever necessary, and also register the business with the government.

7. Feedback
The system of the exchange of feedback with the buyer on eBay is extremely good. This helps in building a good relation with the buyer. There’s a lot of comfort in the picture. The feedback is you certificate which will motivate the other buyers. There are namely 3 types of feedback that can be given: (a) positive (b) neutral, and (c) negative. You must stay in the good books of your buyer! Just be frank, if the buyer has been rather nasty, give him the same kind of feedback. It is advisable sometimes not to leave a feedback at all, instead of leaving a neutral feedback for your buyer, as that can attract a negative for you.
Ultimately, you must be wondering how good is business on eBay? Effortless and slow in the beginning, picks up gradually and finally shoots up like a rocket. In a matter of days or weeks you can regain the money you invested on the e-book and for selling on eBay.

    ByPinaki Ghosh 

Step 1: How to register, who can register
By logging on to www.ebaystores.com you can easily start your very own Ebay store! All you have to do is click on ‘Open Your Store Now’ tab and go on to the form that is to be filled in. To open up your store, you must be a registered eBay user with a seller’s account. You must also meet any one of the following requirements:
  Feedback score of 20 or higher, or
  ID Verified ($5 charge), or 
  Pay Pal account in good standing
The rules are pretty simple. For example, your store name must be up to 35 characters. So, if a store name like ‘Jerry Christopher’s Candies, Gifts and Goodies’ is in your mind, I think you drop that plan and think for a smaller and smarter name. 

 Step 2: Subscription options

You can choose from three subscription options:

1. Basic @ $15.95/month
To experiment this is the best and the smallest account. It gives you a store platform which you can easily customize, access reports, brand your business on eBay, get free phone support, access the Selling Manager which also is an online sales management tool.

2. Featured @ $49.95/month
If the volume of your sales is expected to be medium, this is a better option for you. Additionally you also get the benefits of reporting and marketing choices.
3. Anchor @ $499.95/month
This is the most expensive but at the same time the best plan for large, hardcore business houses that needs maximum opening. It can be easily located while searching a certain category. It’s more like setting up a huge store at a prime location on a main street.
Besides the monthly subscription charges, at a price of only $0.02 per listing per month, you can gain access to the store inventory listing too. Ebay charges a very small commission on every sale which is a percentage on the price of every item sold.
How to list items
Once you open your store, you are automatically allowed to add store items to be listed for 30 days, or till they are sold out. All you have to do is mention that you want the items to stay enlisted for 30 days, or ‘Till Cancelled’, which means, that they can be kept till they are sold out. But the older items will keep showing in the list until you edit your list and delete them.
Ebay and Ebay Store: the difference
The buyers have blind trust on Ebay stores compared to Ebay. They expect more skill and professionalism from those selling in the Ebay stores. Thus, the buyers do not mind paying a little extra at Ebay stores. Setting up your eBay store can open a new horizon for you in internet marketing, and you can even expect to get better prices than normal from online sales. According to most internet marketing gurus, “Even slow moving items move fast here!”

By Pinaki Ghosh 

Viral Marketing is the most inexpensive and at the same time widely studied strategy of the internet marketing today. The name too, as it sounds, has been derived from the study of the multiplication of the virus which is also the growth. The Virus divides from 1 to 2, 2 to 4, 4 to 8, 8 to 16 and so on. The figure below would help you understand the viral marketing campaign:
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The central idea is; give out interesting things to people free of cost, with the name of your site inscribed in it, and people will happily pass them to others. The name of your site will spread like wildfire.
1. Give some laughing gas to people
People love to laugh no matter what age group they belong to. But however, the strain of modern lifestyle increases the hunger for laughter in people all the more. Giving out funny stuff, free of cost, from your site, and mainly via mails to your friends in and outside MySpace will work positive. It may include very funny pictures and videos. And, not to forget; the funny stuff must carry the name of your site written on them, or your effort is a waste. The people, who receive them, will love them, and pass them to a number of other friends, and the stuff will automatically keep passing as a chain-mail.

2. Give out free e-books, exploiting people’s greed
Most of the people are greedy by nature. If you give them some free e-book which promises success, they will be happy. Do pass your friends some free e-books and they will in turn pass the same to many other friends. This will go on for 6 to 7 stages, and within 2 weeks, the free e-book will reach a huge number of people. People must exhibit a burning interest for the book that will be an outcome of their greed. This will make you successful. Needless to say, the e-book must have a link to your site.

3. Exploit social networks
The viral marketing exploits social networks. Most of the people keep regular contact with 12 people on an average, who are the inner circle of friends and associates. If people love something, they almost invariably share it with these 12 people of the innermost circle. This is one of the secret of viral marketing success.

4. Keep it easy to transfer
The stuff you will give out for free must be essential. That means; it must be something which is transferable and downloadable over the internet. It should be easy and quick to transfer. If it is difficult to transfer or takes a very long time to download, you will fail to achieve the best result.
5. Campaigns must be repeated with new stuff in 2 – 3 weeks
The effect of a viral marketing campaign lasts for at least 2 – 3 weeks, after which it dies out. You have to repeat the process with a new campaign every 2 – 3 weeks, with new free stuff to give away.

6. Allow others to use your stuff
Make your stuff copyright free, so that they can be freely used and transferred to others.

7. Be ready for a magical growth
As people say, the virus that you create can kill you. This kind of viral marketing can lead to unbelievable rapid growth. If you are not ready to grow with it, it’s your business that will suffer. You must be ready to handle 10 times the order within a given time, or a bigger bandwidth for your website, to handle the additional traffic-load. You must be ready to hire people whenever necessary. If you can’t supply at par with the growing demand, you die!

 By Pinaki Ghosh

 Viral Marketing was the first which was used by venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson, the venture capitalist behind Hotmail, before it was sold to MSN in 1997 while describing Hotmail’s email practice of attaching their own advertisements with outgoing mail from their users. The infamous media critic Douglas Rushkoff wrote about Viral marketing in his book named Media Virus (1994); and that was the very first article on this special way of marketing.

In this book he wrote that Viral Marketing works. Even if we presume that many people who receive your free gifts will not share with others, still there will be 80% others who will share, and go ahead to pass them down to friends and acquaintances. He has written, that this network continues to seven or eight levels before the campaign fades out.

World famous examples of Viral Marketing 

   • Hotmail promotion campaign
• Gmail promotion campaign
• Microsoft’s Origami Project campaign
• Tupperware popularization
• Popularization of text massaging
• Popularization of chat
• BMW’s Mini Cooper campaign
• Ford Motor’s Evil Twin campaign
• Jami Kane game (BBC sponsored)
 

    By Pinaki Ghosh

The affiliate marketing is the name of one of the oldest systems of carrying on business and getting clients by referral in exchange of commission. For example if I refer a positive client to you, you will not mind paying me a percentage of the payment that you get from the client.  This is widely practiced in the web-world and such programs are called affiliate marketing programs. When you sign up with a merchant, you get a java code for their banner, and all you have to do is paste the code with the HTML code of your site. Soon after, the banners will appear on your site. An account will be maintained in your name with the merchant, and you will get a percentage of the payment that come to them from your referrals.

1. Keep it neat
Of course the first thought of a novice webmaster is that, the more affiliate banners that one plant in someone’s website, more are his chances of getting higher returns. Their main aim is to fill up the pages with banners and more banners. Wherever you look, there are affiliate banners. In reality, visitors hate visiting pages with lots of banners. You have to restrain yourself to make your site look decent which does not repel visitors.

2. Affiliate programs work in different ways for different webmasters
This kind of a program does not keep any room for returns for you but definitely gives the site owners high returns. These programs show different results on the different sites. If you are keen and keep your vision focused in the affiliate market forums, you will find at least one member complaining that his returns for a particular program have been very dull, while another member saying exactly the opposite words for the same affiliate program. Commission Junction (www.cj.com) or Clickbank (www.clickbank.com), eAds (www.eads.com), Teknosurf (www.teknosurf.com), ValueClick (www.valueclick.com), Safe Audit (www.safe-audit.com) and Demoz (www.dmoz) are some of the biggest affiliate program exchanges.

3. Go for multiple merchant affiliate marketing for the same niche
At all cost you can place affiliate banners of 3 – 4 merchants who fall under the same category, or niche. This is not unethical; rather it is helpful for visitors who have a choice. Let earnings come from several sources rather than one.

4. Check out the commission offered
50% or even more commission is offered for each referral again which is quite good! You shouldn’t settle for a program that offers les than 20% commission.

5. Give importance to the status and look of the site
 You must go in for a site that has a high status and also looks good. If you refer your visitors to a shabby site which is full of advertisements and has nothing more to offer, you are unlikely to get much business from the site.

6. How is their support?
Go through the areas like support that the merchant-site is going to provide you with. The Online support for your queries or live telephone support is extremely good. Online replies that come after more than 3 days does not work in your favor and you should not settle for such a site. The reports and automated statistics that are provided should be up to the mark.

7. Run newsletter campaigns for the merchant
Keeping the active newsletter campaigns running from your website with the banners of the merchant site, instead of just placing the cold banners on your site increases the conversion ratio, and also boosts your earnings from the affiliate marketing.
Almost all the small websites with a 400+ hits every day make $100 - $300 with affiliate marketing from a single website every month. If you run newsletter campaigns this return can be in the area of $450 to $600. Isn’t that simply great!

   By Pinaki Ghosh 

GetResponse (outsourced auto responder) http://www.getresponse.com/

Features
 Unlimited email marketing campaigns, auto responders, follow-ups, lists and broadcasts.
 150+ professionally designed HTML templates.
 Powerful, cost-effective newsletter hosting.
 Incomparable email deliverability.
 Click-through, sales and revenue tracking.
 Excellent support and training.

Pricing
 1 month  $17.95
 3 months  $47.85
 6 months  $87.70
 1 year  $145.40

b. JVListPro (outsourced auto responder) http://www.jvlistpro.com/

Features
 Experts state it often takes 7 or more messages before prospective customers make a purchase.
  Unlimited campaigns, lists, follow up messages, and newsletters.
  Reliable, >99.34% email deliverability, fast.
  51+ Templates for newsletter and follow up design.
  Easily create and add opt-in web forms to your website.
  Free training guides and videos.
  Expert unlimited free customer support.

Pricing
 1 Month $19.95n/aPaid
 3 Months $53.85
 6 Months $101.70
 1 Year  $179.40
c. Email-Auto responder-Free (Software type) http://www.email-autoresponder-free.com/

Features:
 Unlimited follow ups.
 Create systems ranging from the simplest “I’m out of office!” auto responders to automatically sending out messages to your contacts at regular time intervals.
 One can subscribe easily! The email address in any emails can be extracted and included into marketing database for further email marketing. 
 It provides support looping protection. Email Auto responder can find the closed loops.
 Powerful Contacts Management. Import contacts, export, adding, updating, deleting and perform many other operations.

Pricing
 Fast Email Auto responder  $139
 Fast E-Delivery Engine  $149
 Fast Email Verifier   $139
 Opt Out Manager   $99

By Pinaki Ghosh

What is an auto responder?
Does the swiftness of the other companies to revert your mails impress you? Does it make you feel that the customer care agent is the one who responds? On the other hand, there are chances that you are answered by their auto responder. It is software that responds to your mail instantly. This software plays a major role in carrying out an email campaign. These auto responders are divided into two main categories.

i. Outsourced auto responders:
The auto responders operate on the provider’s infrastructure and are usually configurable via a web-based control panel. The customer pays a monthly usage fee which is easy to implement for the end-user.

ii. Server-side auto responder:
This server enables users to install the auto responder system on their own server which also requires technical skills.

What is the need for one?

• Helps you save your time. The pain of replying all the mails that you receive is not necessary.
• It looks extremely professional. All the visitors and clients receive a reply immediately.
• In sending newsletters and running email campaigns, this technique works miracles.

By Pinaki Ghosh

This kind of a site allows the webmasters the ability to promote their sites or the associates, marketing campaign absolutely free of cost. This is just like the Click bank site, except that the exchanging is free. Without paying any charges to the traffic trading site, one can opt to surf and browse through the hundreds of affiliate programs which are offered.

The advantages of using free traffic sites are:

•  Saving; It is free!
• These sites get lots of visitors and members. You will get the attention of these visitors.
• Search engines give a lot of attention to traffic trading sites for:
  o Their heavy traffic.
  o Rapidly changing content.
  o Have several outgoing links.

By Pinaki Ghosh

First used in 1992, the web banners have evolved rapidly in the most innovative ways as a form of advertising since then. They come in several sizes and forms, like static banner, and flash banner which is animated. Banners serve much the same purpose as print ads with the added advantage of being linked to the advertiser’s site.
Banners are the main form of advertising for click ads, and affiliate programs.

Text links are not renowned but related to the banner ads, with no graphics, and serving pretty much the same purpose such as the banners.
A typical banner ad

Common sizes for banner ads are:

i. Full Banner: 468 by 60
ii. Half Banner: 234 by 60
iii. Micro Button: 80 by 15
iv. Micro Bar: 88 by 31
v. Button 1: 120 by 90
vi. Button 2: 120 by 60
vii. Vertical Banner: 120 by 240
viii. Square Button: 125 square
ix. Leader board: 728 by 90
x. Wide Skyscraper: 160 by 600
xi. Skyscraper: 120 by 600
xii. Half Page Ad: 300 by 600

By Pinaki Ghosh

1. Give away freebies: The most common methods that work is to forcefully make people sign up and give their details so as to give out free gifts. These free gifts should preferably be digitally downloadable. It should be automatically downloadable, to cut off any hassle.

Such free gifts are generally:
E-books on subjects like:
o Self help
o ‘How to’ topics
o ‘7 Secret tips’ type topics
o Business/career tips
o Internet business related
o Stress management
o Relationship development
o Health/fitness
o Travel
o Child care

• Software products of small niche utility, like mail management.
• Games
• Video
• Music

2. Disable some features for non members: While making your website, make an option for signing in. This means visitors have to become members to use all the features i.e. they will have to sign in to use the features. Non members should be allowed to see everything, but should not be allowed to use all features. If your website has appealing material, visitors will view everything and ultimately sign up.
This way you can get paid members too!

3. Allow a trial, create an addiction: Most of the times give a 30 day trial period to your users. After 30 days if they want to use all the features, or the software, they will have to sign up, may it be with payment. This will definitely work.

4. Offer discounts to members: You must showcase two types of rates for your products and services. One should be for the members; and the other for non members. This difference of rate will automatically make your visitors sign up.

NEW DELHI: Not just the economy even the US newspaper industry is going through tough times these days. Shrinking circulation, dwindling

advertising revenues, growth of the internet edition and rising newsprint prices have together put pressure on their margins. Even the best and most established US newspapers are feeling the heat.

To cope with the pressure, most newspapers have adopted various cost cutting measures. From reducing global coverage, cutting down the number of pages, streamlining resources and cutting excess jobs, they are trying out all kind of combinations to stay ahead. Now, the industry is also contemplating outsourcing some work outside the country to reduce costs.
The trend started a few years ago, as some US-based newspapers offshored their editorial work to India. In the next five years, offshoring is expected to gain traction.

According to a study done by Pune-based research firm ValueNotes, the offshore opportunity from newspaper publishers (including both the US and UK) is estimated to be around $3.5 billion.

It’s expected to reach $12 billion by 2012. The number of people employed in this industry is also likely to cross 5,500. Interestingly, the overall publishing outsourcing industry too has been growing fast in India for some years now.

There are over 100 vendors in this space. What’s more, revenues from Indian publishing offshoring is slated to grow from $444 million in 2006 to reach $1.46 billion in 2010. An estimated 26,000 people work in this space and the number is likely to grow to 74,000 by 2010. Most (96%) of the India-based vendors have capabilities to service the academic publishing segment. But newspaper outsourcing is different. And its this space that’s gaining ground now. As of now, only the top Tier 1 newspapers from the US are offshoring. Their work is largely limited to ad production services.

However, as the space matures, Tier 2 and Tier 3 publishers too are expected send a wide range of work to India. Since its still in the early stages, only a few service providers are active in India. According to ValueNotes research, the total number of people employed in the newspaper outsourcing industry is around 2,300, as of July 2008. However, there is a scarcity of ‘end-to-end’ service providers. And as the space grows vendors are expected to build complementary capabilities to achieve this objective.

However, as the space matures, Tier 2 and Tier 3 publishers too are expected send a wide range of work to India. Since its still in the early stages, only a few service providers are active in India. According to ValueNotes research, the total number of people employed in the newspaper outsourcing industry is around 2,300, as of July 2008. However, there is a scarcity of ‘end-to-end’ service providers. And as the space grows vendors are expected to build complementary capabilities to achieve this objective.

Source: Times of India News, 23 Sept, 2008 

By Pinaki Ghosh

1. Co-registration leads
Co-registration leads are better known as the commercial leads that are available on sale from leads traders. There are plenty of leads sellers who deal in such co-registration leads. They sell leads in several packages and at the same time promise to deliver general or targeted leads on demand, and in packages of 10,000, 100,000 or 500,000 leads.
They usually get these leads from the other small traders, or websites who sell them their own list. These sites build lists using various methods, like offering free e-books if visitors sign up the squeeze page. The list of hundreds of such sites are purchased by commercial leads traders, and compiled into general or categorical lists, which are sold to buyers on payment.

Here are some of the vendors of commercial leads, or co-registration leads:

 http://www.coregleadsource.com/
 http://www.leadsales.net/coregistration_leads.htm
 http://www.national-leads.com/bulkemailleads.html
 https://www.incentaclick.com/coregistration.php
 http://www.multiplestreammktg.com/buy_leads.html

Although, it is a good idea to be cautious while purchasing the co-registration leads, as sometimes unknowingly you might be drawn into a scam. Understand the 3 points that you should be careful about:

Scams with co-registration leads you should be careful about
o You paid good money to buy leads, you are getting visits, but not sales: The leads are fake, which means, they are not names and addresses of genuine people. Some times, children over the age of 13 are hired by the leads sellers to click on your email and visit your site. Needless to say these fake visitors will not generate any sales.

o Your hosting service provider has shut down your site: Most of the people unknowingly pay the spammers for illegal spam lists, thinking them to be genuine lists. The spam lists include email addresses of people who have opted out of the list; meaning, they prefer not to be mailed. If you mail these people, your site may get flagged and shut down. If your e-mailer cannot produce the IP address along with date and time stamp for each name he mails to, he does not have an opt in list. And this is how you can be on the safer side!

o You sent 2 million emails, but did not get a single response: If you outsource your email campaigns to the service providers, it may often happen that they do not carry out your campaign, even after receiving the payment from you. Due to which you do not get a single response. It is better to (a) go for a deal with the outsourcing company, where you want a fixed number of guaranteed conversion sales rather than a fixed number of emails sent out; (b) send the emails yourself, after creating your own list.

2. Website opt in box
It is the most simple, clean, and honest way to generate your own leads. There is no reason or any doubt about if whether you are being sold illegal leads or whether the leads will land you in trouble. These are your very own leads that your visitors have voluntarily offered you, by opting in to your newsletter list.
In all the sites which are of 5 pages, there is an option where you can subscribe to the site or even become a member. The members get the privileges over the non members; like to post in the forum one has to be a member. Non members can read the forum but cannot interact. This encourages the visitors to become opt in members by giving their details. This allows them to sign in, and allows you to legally send them newsletters announcing your very tempting offers.
It may be time consuming, but is a good way of list building.

3. Squeeze pages
The squeeze pages are better known as the landing pages, which are there for people to just collect the names and email addresses of visitors, in exchange of giving a free gift like an e-book which is essential. This is quite common in small websites. Some small websites have nothing except just a squeeze page. The content is kept to the least for avoiding distraction.
Here is an example of a squeeze page to understand it more:http://www.adsense-secrets.com/ .
Although the content is less, still people gather on these sites and even provide with their email addresses in the greed of getting the much hyped free e-book. The email addresses collected in this method is compiled into a sizeable list.
Squeeze pages are a simple method of list building than website opts in box, just because of the minimum content and the free gift exchange.

Ways to get visitors
1. Writing articles: The search engines and human visitors like the unique content. Articles are a splendid way to draw visitors. Articles on interesting topics like self help, or self development can be the way to go about, or you might try specific topics.

2. Posting in Ezines: Posting the content or articles in popular ezines is one of the good ways to get visitors. People come to popular ezines like http://ezinearticles.com in search of information and knowledge. Your info-rich article that also highlights your site and links to it is a sure success formula for drawing the attention from the crowd.

3. SEO: Hiring a professional SEO person can be a good investment which is worth making to attract the crowd. They have several legal and at times illegal ways of pulling the crowd.

4. Newsletters: The Newsletters and email campaigns can bring in the visitors if carried out successfully and in an innovative manner.

5. Affiliate programs: Means giving commission to the associates for every paid signup which is an excellent option to see visitors coming in.

6. Click advertising: (PPC) maybe expensive, but the programs such as Google Ad Words, can get in visitors within minutes of making your payments.

7. Free gifts: Most of the visitors are in search for items that are free. Giving out free digital gifts will not cost you much, yet can change the visitors scene for your site. Such digital gifts can be e-books or downloadable software’s.

By Pinaki Ghosh

An amusing line says that an internet marketer would first try to save his backup disks containing his lists, before anything else, if his house catches fire. Here are some of the facts about the importance of list building, to understand it better:

List building is an integral part of email marketing and also that of e-business. This business cannot prosper if you decide not to build your own lists.
The larger your list, the more are your chances of profit. It is like simple logic! If you have 10,000 people in your list, and run an email campaign, you are likely to get response from 100 – 400. If your list consists of 20,000 names and addresses, your response is likely to be between 200 and 800.

 You possibly cannot grow your e-business without the help of list building. It will always remain static and there will be no growth curve.
 List building helps you majorly to run email campaigns, to inform about new products and services, new schemes, new offers, discounts, etc.
 It helps in mailing newsletters, which is nothing but an email campaign in a more creative, concealed and helpful manner. The more the creative and helpful newsletters are, the better are the prospects of winning buyers.
 List building is a must for running viral marketing campaigns. Do go through the chapter on viral marketing in this book for additional information on the same.
 It helps you to get back your old visitors; it helps in sending a reminder to the visitors that they had once visited this site. It is said that in any business, the old customers are the best customers that one can get. Therefore, the list of your old customers is the best leads to get repeat business.
 The longer lists help in saving a lot of money on advertising. If most of your visitors come in revert to your email campaign which is obviously dependent on the list, what is the need of running expensive email campaigns?
 List building is legally safe and hence you will not be recognized as a spammer if you send emails to people in your list, since these people had by themselves given you their names and email addresses.

 By Pinaki Ghosh

Most of the people know by now that YPN is the biggest competitor of Google AdSense. From various blogs (eg. http://www.lithman.net/2007/02/making-money-with-ypn) it seems true that Yahoo is paying three times more to YPN (Yahoo Publishing Network) members than Google is paying to AdSense members. 

#How your income comes from YPN
As people have advertised through the program of Yahoo called ‘Search Marketing’, you can earn from YPN. The Ads that are under the Yahoo Search Marketing appear on your websites, and every time some visitor clicks on the Ads, you earn! Experts like Anthony Yap, [http://www.anthony-yap.com] State that Yahoo keeps a total of 32 % of the revenue from the advertisers, giving away 68% to the website owners who advertise.

  Step 1: Setup your website/blog
Get you website or blog ready and complete. It should be professional looking to get approved at the first instance.

Step 2: Apply for YPN membership
Only then, one can apply for the YPN membership (http://ypn.yahoo.com). Hit the ‘apply now’ button. You will have to fill up the following information, so make sure you are ready to answer the following:
 Email 
 First Name 
 Last Name 
 Phone Number 
 Company Name 
 Web Site URL 
 Monthly Page views
 Primary Type of Content
 Primary Purpose of Your Site (Blog/Content/Directory/Ecommerce/Social Networking/Other)
 Are you currently Displaying 3rd Party Ads? (Are you showing Google or other ads?)
 Do you have a Valid U.S. Social Security or Tax ID Number?You must agree to the terms and the conditions of Yahoo.

Step 3: Get feedback from Yahoo
You will have to wait for 7 days for a reply from YPN customer care. Presently YPN is offered to only members or the websites in the USA. Interested non US members have to wait a longer for this excellent opportunity to be opened to publishers or websites all over the world.  If you are approved, you will receive a mail and an YPN account with Yahoo.

Step 4: Design your advertisements
Try and customize the way you want the advertisement to appear in your website. You can customize the shape, size and color of ads to suit the color and available space of your website/blog.

Step 5: Copy and paste code
When you’re done with the customization, you will get a java code (see sample) that you have to copy and paste among the HTML code of your website, at suitable places, where you want the ads to appear. You can perhaps ask your technical friend to help you out with placing the code in your site, if you are not so comfortable with technical and HTML stuff.

Step 6: Advertisements start appearing
The Advertisements appear almost immediately. You can earn a lot from these advertisements every time a visitor on your site clicks on them. This means there are a lot higher the number of visitors and a lot more are your chances of earning. So, go ahead and make you presence felt, popularize your website; get a steady traffic flow. You are not allowed to click on these advertisements, or your membership will be terminated.

Step 7: Receiving payment
How much would a person earn from a single website with 1-3 pages? If SEO expert David Lithman is to be taken seriously, you are likely to earn $10 - $12 each day from it, with an average daily traffic flow of 400, amounting to a monthly $300 - $360 from 1 website. You can use these codes for all your websites thereafter. Multiply your earnings accordingly. You will receive your payment 45 days after the end of a month, for that accounting month.  The best advantage YPN has over Google AdSense is that you can transfer your earnings from YPN to place your own advertisements with Yahoo Search Marketing. So, what are you waiting for? Get spoilt with YPN! 

By Pinaki Ghosh

Google AdSense has come like a boon for the small businessman wanting to make their mark in the internet world and make some money. It has opened the magical doors for the small website owners who want some extra income. Then why should you stay out?

1. Make you own site or a blog. This is just the first step. First decide about the main category that your site will deal with. Start with a website for a club or an educational institution so you will get some visitors from that particular institution. If you are thinking on a larger perspective, do something that offers real good tips on the success. Maybe purchasing a good dot com name would help but at the same time choose a dependable web-hosting company.

2. Log on to http://google.com/adsense and click the apply button and sign up for the Google AdSense. The same way, you can log on to Yahoo Publishing Network. Yahoo does pay you more, but at the same time they are choosier and take a longer time to accept you into their network. Just recently, Microsoft has introduced their version of a similar program.

3. Herein you will have to submit the name of your own website while filling this form. Keep in mind that your website should be complete and uploaded when you apply. Google takes a few days to assess your website. If they feel your website is not fit or has adult content, your application will not be accepted. You will receive a mail from them in 2 – 3 working days which will inform you of their decision.

4. If you do not get selected on the grounds of incomplete website, do not think that it ends there. Keep updating your website and if it is incomplete, do not take time in completing it. There will be no chance of you getting de selected!

5. An account will be opened in your name that can be checked out by clicking on the following link: http://google.com/adsense. Then, you will get a java code, which will enable the advertisements that will appear on your site. The colors of the advertisements can be modified to match the color of your website which will work positive in case of presentation. You then have to paste the java code or ask a professional who understands the internet better. Then with the HTML codes of your site, and Google advertisements will start appearing at places where you have placed the java codes.

6. Make your site popular, but be sure that people do not identify you as a spammer. You must have a steady traffic flow for your site.

7. You earn every time someone clicks on the advertisements. If you want an Idea of how much you can earn, I’ll give you a fair idea: suppose you want to earn $1 each day per page, which is not a bad idea, for doing nothing! What you need for every page is:

• 400 visitors a day at 5% click-through rate (CTR) and average 5cent payout rate.
• Or, 200 visitors a day at 10% CTR and an average 5cent payout rate.
• Or, 100 visitors a day at 10% CTR, and an average 10cent payout rate.

8. Never click on your own advertisements. This is called click-fraud, and is illegal. Google has a check on the same, and can also cancel your agreement with them.

9. In case you want to check your account reports log in to your AdSense account, and know how much you are earning.

10. Google does not pay by Pay Pal. They send the cheque to your address, roughly 45 days after an accounting month.

If you have consistency, and do not quit midway, no one can stop you from being a successful internet-businessman that is for sure.

Pinaki Ghosh

Are you planning to get your personalized blog on the internet? If that is the thought, you would love to know more about blogging and how to divert and attract people to your blog. Generally blogs provide really useful information and have a certain thought, or not many would want to waste their time on the same. Promotion of a product, or servicing and partnering a site is what a blog is mostly known for. To get a good and crowded blog, here are some seven tips you would not want to miss out on:

1. Unique content
Do not put the same kind of content on your blog that means similar to what is already available. This way you will face the toughest competition on the internet. To get the most attention, select a good category that people would love to know about.

2. Keyword rich
The articles must contain the keywords to get the attention from the audience. The keywords are what the people usually search for on the various search engines. Therefore, more the keywords, the higher your blog will flash. It does give your content a little mechanical look, but is extremely beneficial.

3. Make your choice of blog software
The audience or the number of visitors by and large depends on the way you present your site, also on how fast one can locate your site or maybe how one can get a refined search on the specific topic. Thus, to get a Blogger.com good result what one needs is a good blog program. You may choose from a lot of blog software’s but the best are namely, Wordpress (http://wordpress.com), Blogger (http://blogger.com), TypePad (http://typepad), MovableType (http://movabletype.com), BraveJournal (http://bravejournal.com). Before zeroing down on one, you must understand the features of every program.

4. Submit to web-directories
Get your blog flashed on a number of good and popular web directories which will link to your blog. Most of us depend on such useful sites. For example:
• Strongest Links, http://www.strongestlinks.com/directories.php
• SEOCompany, http://www.seocompany.ca/directory/web-directories.html

5. Make forum posts
You must publish your blog in a forum which is popular or known by people. This way you can inform people about your blog and attract a number of people too. To benefit more, you may hire a freelancer to make some thousands of forum post and at the end; you will see a result too.

6. Make the best posts on busy days
You may notice that the blogs have irregular traffic. If your post is appealing you may find your blog flooded with visitors. Don’t waste the opportunities that you get. Try and use the traffic and make the best from these posts. Not only will it boost your traffic flow but also get overnight popularity to your blog.

7. Blog comments
You may not see a lot of people commenting early on your blog. When your blog does not receive comments, it ends up looking quite dull and un interesting also incomplete. When one faces such a situation, creating your id in some other name and commenting will also help to attract people. Automatically you may see that people view your blog and later, you can have 500+ visitors everyday.

These steps have been proved essential for the commercial success of a blog. You never tend to go wrong when you follow all the steps. When you have a fixed number of visitors on your blog, you can earn from other sites such as Google ads, the affiliate programs or even by promoting your own site which can sell of something.

Given below is a typical agreement which you can sign with your ghostwriter.

CO-WRITER/GHOSTWRITER-AUTHOR AGREEMENT OVER A BOOK

By this memorandum of understanding, signed this _____________ 2008; both the parties described herein under as PARTY A, represented by ______________, address, _____________________________________ also described as the ‘author’; and PARTY B, represented by ___________, address ____________________________________________________________________________________, also described as ‘ghostwriter’, do hereby agree to all the terms described and given below:

1. Party A is commissioning Party B to begin the project of writing a book on the subject: _______________________________________________________.
2. The tentative working title of the book shall be _______________________________________________________’. This title is subject to change subject to mutual consent of both the parties.
3. The deadline for completion of this book is _______ days after the signing of this agreement.
4. Party A agrees to pay Party B a consolidated sum of $_________ for the project that will include the following:
   1. Writing the content of the book on the guidelines of Party A.
   2. Getting it edited by a pro-editor before submission.
5. The fees of the co-writer/ghostwriter will be paid as follows:
   1. 50% advance to get the project started.
   2. 50% within 10 days of complete work submission (irrespective of whether Party A found time to go through it in 10 days or not).
6. Party B (ghostwriter) is subject to NO royalty or commission on the sales of the book. He is only entitled to the one time fees of $_________.
7. Party B (ghostwriter) will maintain full confidentiality about this project.
8. The book will be __________ pages long.
9. Party B agrees that he will not take the help of any plagiarism, meaning he will avoid using borrowed material in this book exactly as they are found elsewhere.
10. Party A will own all copyrights for this book, including sale and distribution rights.
11. Party A will have full freedom to set the retail price of this book, deal with any publisher, and may even distribute it free of cost if she wishes. Party B will have no say on setting the price of this book.
12. Party A can request party B to make a reasonable number of changes and edits during the period of production of this book and within 7 days of completion of the book.

Both the parties do hereby agree to the terms laid and set above.

Signature

Party A (author)

————————————————————————————-

Signature

Party B (ghostwriter)

Date:

By Pinaki Ghosh

A. Setting up an account with a domain name registrar
When you feel the urge to drink coffee, you can make a cup of coffee in a jiffy. Setting an account with a domain name registrar; or in simpler words, registering a domain name of your site is as simple as making yourself a cup of coffee.

For your help, here is a list of accredited companies that do the needful for you:
http://www.icann.org/registrars/accredited-list.html

Here are some well known registrars for you:

• GoDaddy.com
• behosting.com/register.html
• DomainInvestigator.com
• InexpensiveDomains.com
• NameCow.net
• NamesAreCheap.com

As we enter the process of registration, you must know the various extensions which are:
• Companies have the Dot Com.
• The non profit organizations use the Dot Org.
• Network providers use the Dot Net.
• The government owned websites go with Dot Gov.
• Television channels have the Dot Tv.

Leaving these aside there are more extensions for various countries and continents such as Dot uk for the sites in UK, Dot in for the Indian sites, etc.

Study the steps to follow while registering the domain name:
1. log on to the site of the online domain name registrar
2. Type in the name of the phrase for the domain name which you want to register in the box that has been assigned. Follow the rules as per the name format and the length of the word. Then you can choose the necessary extension.
3. It does not take a lot of time to search. The registrar then informs you about the availability of the domain name.

In case it has been already taken:
(a) Try using some other extension like, like in place of Dot Com use Dot Net, Dot Biz or Dot au etc
(b) Choose another name
(c) If you really want to have the same name try getting in touch with the one who already owns it and buy it from him at a reasonable price.

4. Get yourself registered when you actually are happy with the name.
5. You can pay the registration fees which may vary but is around 10$ for one year, online or by mail.

The domain name now belongs to you. By default you get the domain name for two years. Here’s an advice: Do not go in for the common names as they are already taken, try the uncommon names.

By Pinaki Ghosh 

Who is a ghostwriter and why are they hired?

People who pen down the articles on behalf of any other person are known as Ghostwriters. He generally does not get his name published in those writings. Most of the time, the celebrities get their autobiographies done from these Ghostwriters. The rich people too, hire these ghostwriters for the same. To name a few, Hillary Clinton, JF Kennedy and also the pop diva Madonna have hired their writers for the books. As these celebrities cannot find time to write themselves, but have the money to hire a ghost writer, they go in for one. The politicians too have their own Ghostwriters who are the people who write the speeches and the other correspondences.  As the Ghostwriters do not get any name or recognition for the service, they take heavy one time fees.

Recognition
Not always do the ghostwriters go unnoticed. Most of the times, the names of these writers are given on the acknowledgements page or sometimes as the co- writers. Thus, here they aren’t called the Ghostwriters, but collaborators.

Varieties of Ghostwriters
Not always do the people who hire these Ghostwriters lack the talent of writing. Sometimes established professional writers hire ghostwriters due to their lack of time, and also for refinement of their work. Just like, the Star Wars Novel, which was mainly a ghostwriter’s work, anmd also the Hardy Boys series that had the main author as Franklin W Dixon.

Why do you need a Ghostwriter?
It is definitely a good idea to get professional writers, especially a Ghostwriter for your articles. The best reasons are:

• They can give you the best content for your site
• They can write a blog everyday according to your requirement
• They can prepare you tailor-made, refined and good e-books

You can get some good writers and ghostwriters from the following sites:
• www.writerpinaki.com.com (bestseller ghostwriter hire)

• www.writer4me.com (affordable ghostwriter hire)

• www.123writer.com

These sites charge you somewhere in between $ 9.99 to $20 for every web-content piece/page that you order. For e-books the rate is about $400 to $1000 for every 100 pages.

Okay, now for some laugh… here are some common office phrases compiled by us, with what these phrases mean. Whether you agree is up to you. Cheers!

1.”We will do it” means “You will do it.”

2.”You have done a great job” means “More work to be given to you.”

3.”We are working on it” means “We have not yet started working on the same.”

4.”Tomorrow first thing in the morning” means “Its not getting done “At least not tomorrow!”

5.”After discussion we will decide-I am very open to views” means “I have already decided, I will tell you what to do.”

6.”There was a slight miscommunication” means “We had actually lied.”

7.”Lets call a meeting and discuss” means “I have no time now, will talk later.”

8.”We can always do it” means “We actually cannot do the same on time.”

9.”We are on the right track but there needs to be a slight extension of the deadline” means “The project is screwed up, we cannot deliver on time.”

10.”We had slight differences of opinion “means “We had actually fought.”

11.”Make a list of the work that you do and let’s see how I can help you” means “Anyway you have to find a way out… no help from me.”

12.”You should have told me earlier” means “Well even if you told me earlier that would have made hardly any difference!”

13.”We need to find out the real reason” means “Well I will tell you where your fault is.”

14.”Well Family is important; your leave is always granted. Just ensure that the work is not affected,” means, “Well you know…”

15.”We are a team,” means, “I am not the only one to be blamed.”

16.”That’s actually a good question” means “I do not know anything about it.”

17.”All the Best” means “You are in trouble”

By Pinaki Ghosh

The content and the websites actually are much related to each other, and the popularity is much based on the quality especially that of the content. No site can make it up to the top in case they have a site put up on the net.
You may taste the difference between the recipes made by you and the ones made by a professional chef, or maybe between the paintings which is painted by you or the one by any other professional painter. There is a lot of difference in the articles that you would pen down and the ones by a writer who is professional. There are a few advantages of actually hiring a content writer, reasons to hire them:
The experience of a professional has weight
When someone wants to hire a content writer, the best reason would be as the writer has a value. A person with experience can actually be trusted without hesitation. Years of experience has developed his/her skill to an extent that makes him/her a specialist of the job.
Improved language
The conversational skills of every person differ from the writing skills. When it comes to the creative content writers, the writing becomes a lot creative and also professional. Most of the time, the writers do not commit any mistakes in the language. Not everyone can be as fluent as the professionals.
Content attracts or repels visitors and search engines
This content attracts the humans and the search engine robots from any of the sites. The site has more chances of being popular if the site has good and informative content.  When the site has bad content, instantly people are less attracted towards to it. The content matters, and thus, people must not actually take a risk regarding that.
Time Saver
You can save your time at a cost…the choice is yours! Once you hire a good creative content writer, you instantly become free. It also helps keep some time for you. You will have to pay the writer for his/her time, and skill, enabling you to save yours’.

Search Engine Optimization
When you get a professional content writer for you, you instantly get a higher rating for your site, as the professionals are experts in the same. Their style of writing with high keyword density helps in high search engine ranking.

By Pinaki Ghosh

Why search engines love unique content?
In the world of internet, there goes a famous saying ‘Content is king’. But for an internet user or anyone who plans to set up their own one soon, you sure must be updated with the fact that the search engines usually catch the unique content.  The content on the sites must be edited and updated all the time so that the search engine ranking is maintained high. What actually decides the ranks of search-engine listings? Good and original content is one main deciding factor. The content should be entirely different and unique compared to the other sites.
“The content on the sites must be edited
and updated all the time so that the search engine
ranking is maintained high.”
Just like the human visitors, the wants and the similarities of the search engines are the same. Search Engines usually have search engine spiders which are actually the robots that walk through the net. The robots cannot enter poorly coded pages which have poor html, or JavaScript and Flash. During this, the robots aren’t patient enough. If the page content is not detected, it is directly rejected by the robot. Robots act the same way with poorly colored pages, whose background and letter colors are close to each other. Even if the robot tries to find his way in, the poor resolution of the pages might restrict them. That also means it’s a poor site map.
Not only search-engine robots, but also human visitors get confused and reject a website if the site map is complicated. The search engine robot will not be able to discover many deeply underlying pages with poor site planning.
The content along with the site must be quick in loading. If there is an excessive usage of graphics and Flash, the site takes a lot of time to load which in turn can make the search engine robot leave it. The website must take less than 5 seconds to load so as to let the robot find it. Even the new visitors would not want to wait too long and then go on to leave the site in case it’s too slow.
You may think that it would be alright if the search engine robot would leave you site. But this means that your site will not make it in the search engine listings and hence, the people who do not know the name of your site will not be able to visit your site ever.