Power Ideaz

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.

By Pinaki Ghosh.

A. Finding a hot product
Once you make your decision about the e business, you would want to think about the product that you would want to sell. Therefore the questions that would pester you would be the questions like WHAT and also as to WHO the customers would be. The most common mistake which the entrepreneurs commit is when they cater to everyone in making the most profits, but at the end make absolutely no profits. Instead of taking the plunge in the bigger e-business focus on the smaller but the more powerful market. Do not try to capture the entire market at once. The niche for you is the smaller market. Like, while trying to sell off the electronic goods, try to aim at one like the personal stereo. When the audience knows that your site deals with the personal stereos, the people who want to know or purchase the personal stereo would be the first to check out your site. To find your niche or the most wanted products is the most important take in your e-business.
B. Places to look
How can one actually look out for the hot products? How and from whom can one actually know about the products that are in demand? You really can’t rely on the mere guess work. What you can do is relax and look out for the pros and the cons. You can look out for some of the keywords on the places mentioned below:

Ebay: (www.ebay.com).
You can go through the pages of e-bay to get a random idea of the items and the products that are available on the net. The other PDF resource of some of the eBay hottest products they may be of some use:
http://pages.ebay.com/sellercentral/hotitems.pdf

Clickbank:
You can browse through the following site to get an update on the 100 top Clickbank products.
http://www.cbengine.com/res/cb_movers.cfm
You can also log on to the following site to get the best top clickbank selling products under numerous categories:
http://www.clickbank.com/buy_products.htm
The other sites that can provide you with such information are listed below:

• Commission Junction
• Linkshare.com
• Modernclick.com
• Aazoogle.com
• Cpaempire.com
•  Maxbounty.com

C. How to choose your product
You must choose the product that you want to sell. If you make a mistake here, that means your efforts go into vain. All the hard earned money and the enthusiasm which is invested in the business goes in vain. Here are some points you must keep in mind while making the ultimate choice of the product:

1. Do not be where the crowd is; stay away from the crowd
It is a tiring and a difficult job to sell shoes in a place wherein you have another 20 stores. You must avoid the kind of products that almost everyone would opt for. This may be on a higher demand due to the competition in the market. The prices vary and thus it is very difficult to get all the attention. As one would want it, better to be a very important person in a very small town than to be a small guy in a large town!

2. Prefer products that are digital and easily downloadable
The products which have digital downloads on the net have a high selling rate as they are easily available to the customer as soon as they complete the payment procedure. People are extremely impatient in taking over the product that is purchased. They are doubtful about the not so known business’s which ‘ship’ them the product. The items that are digital include:

• E-books
• Software products
• Music
• Videos

3. Keep it easy to ship
You must take care that the item is not very difficult to ship. You must try and keep it easy to port, small and light.
4. Not fragile, neither perishable
Make sure that your item is not really delicate or easily breakable. It gets really difficult to ship such items. Very big organizations have the advanced technologies and can easily transport perishable or fragile items. If you do not posses such transportation and the kind of infrastructure, then do not even think of such an initiative.
5. Niche must be small, yet it must be in demand
Niche marketing means narrowing down to a smaller market rather than the general market, is true enough; yet the market shouldn’t be so tiny that you hardly come across any buyers. The niche you are choosing should be in high demand. You can check the demand of these items from the various sites like eBay, Dmoz and Amazon. If you browse through the sites, you can look out in the different categories for the items that are in demand. To know more or see an example simply log on to the following site:
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal
6. Submit your niche to directories
After your ecommerce site is ready, submit the site to a number of directories so that there are enough back-links pointing towards your niche.
You can refer to http://www.strongestlinks.com/directories.php and http://www.seocompany.ca/directory/web-directories.html for the most popular web directories that you can use.

By Pinaki Ghosh

You can see a lot of products flooding the internet sites and also the ecommerce sites. But as one may see, not all products get to do the equal business. Some rules go in without consideration and need to be known by the people. The following are a few rules that you may have to follow develop if in case you want to sell your product and in turn earn profits.
1. Go for high profit margin products
The maximum number of people that went on to become millionaires was due to the internet business. Online business is the only business wherein one can expect around 100% profit. The margin of the profit that one can get during the other business is merely 20% to 33%. The original cost price of the product is around 67% - 80% is covered by the cost price. But if the product is a virtual one, there isn’t much of a cost-price or production cost (except the early investments), and as such you can expect to make a 100% profit from every sale. You can take the example of the software giants who gain 100% profit from every sale that they make. It is just the same for e-books.
2. Target niche market rather than the general market
Whenever we experience a heart pain, we take the initiative to visit the cardiologist rather than the normal physician. The same way, it’s a not a bad idea to select a position a niche market than targeting the general market, which is often over-saturated. As you go into the niche market, which deals with just a specific range of products, the chances of you getting noticed are much higher. You must try and develop the product which is aimed at specific interest groups.
3.  High quality
While selling your product, one thing that is utmost necessary is that you never compromise on the quality of the product. Remember, the old or the existing customers and clients are your best clients. Keeping them happy with the quality would compel them to remain satisfied with the product that they receive from you. If you have around 300 customers who are satisfied with the service and the quality, you will get a steady sale from them all the year round. Therefore keep them updated with the newsletters especially while announcing your new products.
“
Remember, the old or the existing customers and clients are your best clients… If you have around 300 customers who
are satisfied with the service and the quality, you will get a steady sale from them all the year round.
”
4. Quick delivery
One might observe that the humans are highly impatient. They would want quick service. Thus, your products must be easily accessible and auto downloadable, preferably quickly downloadable…something that the customers would be able to get their hands on immediately after payment.
5. Trial version
When you deliver a trail version of the product which is absolutely of no cost to access, sometimes, there are 40 % chances that the people who get to access this, would want to purchase the original full version. Therefore, in such cases, the trial version that is, when the product has a time limit, the item needs to be downloadable then may it be a software, e-book or a mere courseware.
6. Research
Look out and find more about the products that you need to sell online. Better if you can get the copies of the product and study them. If they sell well, then you can be assured of the plan and the product. You must try and do something related to the subject or may be the same in a different fashion. To start with, your product must be better than that product and at the same time, at a lower price than that product.

7. Keep upgrading
If the item that you are promoting and dealing with is the one related to the software field like the e-books, constant up gradations and improvements are necessary. At any level when you stop you tend to stall your business which is the untimely death. Thus, you must upgrade the same at least every 6 months. Even a minor up gradation would work.
As you may notice, the 7 tips are neither costly nor very difficult to keep in mind. The lower versions of the software’s and the games or even the e-books can be rated around $30 for every time that one downloads.  If you have around 200 visitors every day, one can expect 3% - 5% conversions which may increase later on after the trail versions have been tried and used, which also means approximately $250 of the daily sales which sums upto about $7500 every month. If you go on at this rate, this figure would be achieved along the 4th month. Therefore, why wait, put along your best foot forward!

By Pinaki Ghosh

If you are planning to start up with your own ecommerce site or already own one, you must get your updates and facts revised. Here are 7 main strategies which would help you instantly to gain profits. These policies are tested and confirmed.
1. Solid product description
While advertising your product online you must be able to make some good descriptions about the product which can create an interest among your customers. The products (in case of 50 plus articles) must be described in around 125 -150 words in length. For quality sake, getting the articles done from a professional person is imperative.  In case you are on the look out for professionals or freelancers, you may log on to sites like Writer4me (www.writer4me.com), 123writer (www.123writer.com), Guru (www.guru.com) and Elance (www.elance.com) to hire copywriters/content-writers who will work on your descriptions and give an amazing outcome or even help sell a refrigerator to an Eskimo.  In the case that you are selling an e-book or some course through your site, you can get the sales copy made, which may comprise of 3000-5000 words in length. Also, you can add in the feedbacks from your clients.
2. Accompanied by picture
Sometimes pictures provide the best explanations ever. Until and unless you put pictures on the products for the net, you really would not be able to create the interest on the customers. People like to see the products that they would want to buy, as said by Mark Luetke the marketing guru. But messy images are not really appealing. In case of really small products you can give them the satin background or maybe give it a cropped look and can even replace it with maybe a plain background. When the products such as car and bikes are promoted, you may get the shots outdoors. The cover pages of the e-books must be of high quality, cost of which is $30 upwards. You can visit the sites such as Writer4me (www.writer4me.com), if your budget is around $50, to get the best and the most professional e-book covers in the market.
3. Cross selling
Chain your other items just below the description of the products of each item so that people who want to purchase the product can also look out for other related products.  This way you can increase your sales upto 30%.
4. Free gifts to visitors to get their email address
Give out free gifts like ebooks from your squeeze page to any visitor who gives his/her email address. This way you can create your own database of your visitors whom you can keep updated with your newsletters.
5. Newsletters
Spam mails differ from newsletters. I would be surprised if anyone says he/she likes spam mails. They are advertisement-mails that go directly to the folder that has been assigned in your email account for ‘spam’. But newsletters give some really useful information to the customers and thus, most people mark the mails as ‘not spam’. This may be one of the powerful tools in keeping the update on the new products and schemes. Newsletters are far better than spam mails as promotional tools.
6. Discount
Giving various discounts throughout the year such as ‘winter bonanza: 25% off’ or maybe the ‘Spring Festival-up to 50% discount’ can boost up your sales. Keeping a track of your old customers and the ones that rely on you and then complementing them by giving some additional benefits can help.
7. Show professionalism with your affiliates
In case you are heading an affiliate program, you must act professionally. Clearing off the payment of your affiliates on time, and giving them codes for your banners can help in keeping good relations with them. Do not keep the affiliates hanging for a lot of time to get their commission.
Also, you can work on increasing your sources of getting some extra income by tying with the other service providers as an affiliate (and get commission) and also Google YPN (contextual pay per click). You can earn several hundred or even thousands of dollars every month from this.

By Pinaki Ghosh

So, are you all set to put your best foot ahead in the internet business field? Greetings to the internet marketing field of the world! The success stories such as those like Yahoo and Google are true, especially with the internet based business, it’s also true that a website which does not have any marketing plan is more or less like a store about which one would not know, and thus would not see a bad happening. Merely setting up your site is not important but how to gain the popularity is what is important. What would actually make your website popular and work is what one should be stressing on. Ultimately your site is your own money minting factory in just 6 months?
1. Writing articles
Content is often crowned as the king. Your site visitors are often attracted to the content more than anything. A good-looking site without good content is like food that looks yummy but does not have any taste, and hence finds no takers. Not many master the art of writing good articles.
“
A good-looking site without good content
is like food that looks yummy but does not have any taste, and hence finds no takers.
”
The articles should be keyword rich (repeated use of the keywords), so that they are found quickly during keyword search. Informative articles are extremely helpful and thus these articles must be posted in the various blogs and article banks, directories and ezines. And they should in turn be linked to your site. If you are very busy, hiring a copy writer is a good idea.
2. Pay per Click Marketing
One of the most expensive but the best ways of drawing the traffic is pay-par-click marketing. If you do not lie in the lower budgets but are keen on the profits, you should without hesitation try PPC. Mostly, success comes guaranteed.
Some of the popular Pay per Click schemes is:

•   Google Ad Words
•   Yahoo Search Marketing
•   Microsoft AdCenter

When you go for PPC advertisements, you must pay beforehand. Every time someone clicks on your ad, your pre-paid balance instantly gets debited. The advertisements also appear in the websites which have similar content such as your own site; as well as Google, Yahoo and MSN search engine listings. Sponsored results appear over natural search results. There have been however reports of click fraud, which may result in your loss of money.
3. Traffic purchase
Some of the sites offer visitor packages for fixed prices. The ultimate decision maker is you, who can make your decision and choose from the various packages that are available. Example: you can choose from a package of 1000 guaranteed visitors per month for a payment of $50 or 5000 visitors for $180 so on. You can choose the one that fits in your pocket and can get the traffic diverted to your site according to your requirement. But you must also keep away from the frauds.
4. Buying expired domains
Supposing someone hands over the keys of a new car which has been purchased by someone else, and then says, “Have fun! It’s for you!”  Would you instantly take it? Most possibly you would take it. Well, most of us would in such cases. In the world of internet too, sometimes websites that are owned by one, are often handled by people who get to manage it. To talk in clear terms, if I have my own website, I work hard to build up a traffic that can be beneficial to me, but gradually, maybe my other commitments and busy schedule and forgetfulness or maybe my carelessness to renew the website adds up, and after a time, the website expires. People are on constant vigil. As soon as the site expires they start up their own with the same domain name, and thus get a ready made traffic flow.
5. Viral marketing
One of the cheapest and the affordable ways of internet marketing is Viral Marketing. It works on the concept of chain mails, just the way hotmail used it for its popularity. Pictures, videos and e-books which are free are mostly loved by people. Especially when these items are placed on your site, people love to use them and forward them to their loved ones. Thus, by personalizing them and giving your name somewhere on the items, you end up marketing your site. Also, in case your product is liked by people they would end up forwarding it and thus, the number of viewers of your site goes only higher. The popularity of your site increases.

By Pinaki Ghosh

Keeping a track of your emails isn’t a big problem when you’re receiving a mere ten or less than ten mails a day. As your business grows the picture will change. As you end up sending approximately hundred mails a day, you too will receive as many mails. Thus, planning out a mail management system is advisable than to find yourself in a pretty nasty soup. The following tips may prove to be of great help:
1. Do not open your mails every time they arrive
One of the worst time killers, which often goes unrealized are incoming emails. Most of the email programs, have the email notifications like, when one receives a mail, you have little pop ups or some beeps and some shiny icons which act like mail alerts. But immediate reactions can end up as a distraction for those who work. While working, you must continue to work and not react to these mails. Time yourself to read the mails too. Set aside 2 or 3 fixed time in the day when you will read and answer mails…rather than reading them the moment they arrive. This is one of the most accepted and the best remedy overall.
2. Managing storage space 
Nowadays, one can see a lot many email programs which have a highly large space to offer. For example, Yahoo Mail got its Yahoo Mail Beta into market and offered a total 1 GB storage email space which was in turn a huge up gradation factor. Thus, the end result is such that if one is a light user of the emails, he would never have to delete mails. The same was the case when Microsoft launched its Windows Live Mail and the storage space was twice the space that Yahoo offered.

2 GB mail storage space was astonishing! This also meant that one would never have to delete mails and can also keep the attachments!
For those who have opted for the other programs or sites, they should keep in mind the 2 basic principles: (a) you must try and shift or go in for some mail program which would offer you a better space to store your mails (b) you may erase most of the mails as you receive them especially those which aren’t necessary. Once the attachment has been downloaded, you could delete the mails or just if you want to save them, you can do so in one of your separate folders. Adding any of the advertisements and the junk mails could be named as ‘spam’ and eventually you spam folder can be cleaned after a period of time.
3. Sending heavy attachments with your mails
Winzip can condense attachments of your mail to some extent. Most of the people who excel in this field know that this is not really sufficient, mainly when one has to send in the mails with heavy attachments and content with large graphics. Leave aside the others, MS Word documents which have graphs and graphics are not really lucky enough to be delivered as attachments if they are heavy files exceeding 10 MB. Thus, people have to find a solution for the same. Programs like http://rapidshare.com, http://megaupload.com, or http://4shared.com to upload the most important and heavy files are helpful. Once you are done with the uploading, you would receive a downloading link. All you have to do is mail the link to solve the entire problem. The main receiver must click on the link to download.

4. Keep a copy of sent items
Saving the mails that have been sent is another good option. To keep the sent items folder enabled always would help you keep a record and not lose any important information ever.
5. Spell Checking
It’s really sad that most of the email sites and programs do not offer the spell check facility like Microsoft Windows Live Mail. Thus, it’s advisable that you are a little cautious about your spellings when one is sending the mails to the big companies. A lot of the typos may change their attitude about you.
6. Use filters for better email management
One must make proper use of filters or even better known as folders. If you receive a lot of mails from many organizations, you may sort them according to your preferences in different folders. Naming the folders by different names would help you locate faster. When all the mails accumulate in one place it gives your inbox a messy look.
7. How to find email addresses
It gets annoying when you cannot find the email addresses of the person you are wanting to mail while sending an email. A Gmail or the Yahoo Mail Beta user would find that easy as the contacts appear when you happen to type in the first or the first two letters of the person you intend to mail, which is extremely convenient. Even Windows Live Mail happens to give you the freedom to check the email address of the person from the icons given next to compose and send column. If the email program that you are using does not help you out here, you may use the sites such as www.four11.com, www.switchboard.com and www.whowhere.com.
Once you follow these seven simple steps, it will help you in the management of your emails which is otherwise a nightmare, especially when have your business at the peak.

Manisha is very happy and contented today. When she had dreamt of providing financial security and prosperity to her family, and doing her bit for the wellbeing of her family, her dreams and wishes were waived of by the very members of her family, who depend on her decisions today concerning all matters. Well, achieving this position in a family with a very orthodox and rigid outlook was not an easy game.  As per the family traditions, she had to learn the intricate patterns with needles, and thread and acquired expertise at a very early age due to her creative bent of mind. Well, girls in their community had to know all these work as a part of their natural grooming and training in the society. But taking it up as a business, and competing in the market with men? POOOH!! “This girl must be crazy!” “ She’s building castles in the air! Search for a groom for her.”   These were the comments she always heard whenever she thought of nurturing her dream and giving it a shape in reality.

One day she was sharing her thoughts with Renuka, her friend who was happily married to a businessman .She talked of opening her own business of doing Jardousi work in dress materials and sarees. She admitted that she possessed all the necessary skills, but lacked support from the family, both financially and morally. Renuka gave her two of her own sarees and asked her to do jardousi patterns on them. Manisha was too happy to find a way to vent out her creative urge. She eagerly took up the work and prepared a wonderful demonstration of exquisite jardousi art on the sarees. When she presented the work to her friend Renuka after a short while, she was amazed at the talent of her friend . Renuka decided to back up her friend Manisha both morally and financially. Her husband Vinod lend her full cooperation in this motive , and within a very shortwhile Manisha,s dream got culminated into reality. The two friends opened up a business on boutique work and within a short span of time their products became very popular in the locality. There was no looking back after that, and their partnership firm RM ENTERPRISES is moving ahead at an unbelievable pace with an annual turnover of $174,000!

This is an example of woman entrepreneurship in India, where two women belonging to two different strata of the society join hands to walk towards the path of woman’s emancipation. Economic development in any society advances hand-in-hand with the liberation of the womenfolk from every kind of repression There is strong emergence of women entrepreneurship in India and they have an immense contribution to the national economy of India. Women entrepreneurship should be encouraged for their increased utilization of modern technology, increased investments, finding a niche in the export market, creating a sizable employment for others and setting the trend for other women entrepreneurs in the organized sector.

Although the potentiality in women entrepreneurs have been demonstrated, they are yet to achieve that capability of contributing much more than what they already are. To harness their potential and initiate continued growth and development, necessary and appropriate strategies should be formulated for stimulating, supporting and sustaining their efforts in this direction. Such strategies should be congruent with field realities, and should especially take into account the problems women entrepreneurs face within the current system.

Women entrepreneurs presently comprise about 10% of the total entrepreneurships in India. This percentage is growing every year. With the continuing trends it is most likely that in another five years,  20% of the entrepreneurial force in India will comprise of women. Hence international agencies like ILO are taking initiatives to understand the context of women entrepreneurs in India and evolve appropriate developmental strategies to suit their needs. With appropriate capital and other support through Grameen Bank and other microcredit institutions women , their families and communities flourish.

For the past several centuries, the combination of entrepreneurial culture and Economic Freedom have repeatedly created tremendous wealth, lifted millions of people out of poverty, and fostered profound innovation and evolution of technology, culture, and human capacity for the past several centuries.  FLOW launched an ongoing outreach, education, and engagement program  called EMPOWERING WOMEN ENTREPRENEURS in 2007  to celebrate the role women entrepreneurs play in economic and social development, call attention to the emerging global, women’s economic empowerment system, and facilitate broad-based engagement with the system. In March 2008, the campaign assumed the name Accelerating Women Entrepreneurs.
We envision a world overflowing with peace and prosperity, co-generated through the entrepreneurial energy of women in developing countries, the marketplace, and a conscious culture of communication and collaboration embodied by women and men around the world.

Are you boiling with energy about starting your own website, yet confused about what niche to choose for your site? Making the right choice of niche is important as that is the single factor that stands between failure and success. Let us take a look at the factors that
you should keep in mind while choosing your niche before investing on a website.

1. Stay away from the crowd
Avoid areas where everyone is crowding, as your chances of doing a profitable business
there is slim. If everyone is after ebook sites of ‘get rich easily’ schemes, you should
avoid that, and try to venture other in-demand areas like travel, health, relationship improvement and so on.

2. Be specific
Try to focus on a specific market, and not a very broad market. For example if you are
making a site on music, you have to be specific. There are hundreds of thousands of sites
on music; so your site may have a tough time being popular. If you target specific smaller
interest groups like golden 70s, you are likely to get a much better market from people
who love the music of the 70s.

3. Niche must be in demand
While you have to narrow down to a smaller market, it should not be so small that there
are no buyers. The niche you are choosing should be in high demand. You can check out
the demand of specific items from sites like eBay, Amazon, and Dmoz. If specific items
or subcategories are in high demand there, your site should be in demand too. You can
also get an idea of which keywords are in demand by visiting
https://adwords.google.com/select/KeywordToolExternal .

4. Passion about the niche
You should not go for a niche that does not interest you, because in the long run you are
likely to lose interest about the site. If you love cars, go for niche like specific car
accessories.

5. Gather niche knowledge
If you have ready knowledge about the niche you are choosing, there is nothing better
than that. If not, do some research about the subject to gather as much knowledge about it as you can; because you are going to need that.

6. Submit your niche to directories
After your site is ready, submit it to as many directories as possible so that there are
enough back-links pointing towards your niche. Here are two lists of several popular
web-directories that you can use: http://www.strongestlinks.com/directories.php , and
http://www.seocompany.ca/directory/web-directories.html.

7. Start blogging about your niche

Start your own blog. Wordpress is probably the best option for a blog; but there are other options too. Start writing about your niche and social bookmark them (Digg, Des.icio.us, etc.) . Write at least twice a week…niche specific articles, and within weeks or months you will get noticed as an expert of the niche. So what if you cannot write? Hire a professional writer to help you. Try www.123writer.com.

With all these guidelines you can never go wrong. So stop hesitating and plunge into the
pool. All the best!

by Chitralekha Chakraborty

Customers are left disappointed by the lack of basic knowledge of the goods on sale, lack of initiative and a general failure to ascertain their needs by the customer service providers. Customer satisfaction levels will make or break retailers in the UAE’s new service economy. “The retail sector is fiercely competitive now and will become more so, and it will be service that decides the winners” said Spicer.

Good customer service and retailing need to anticipate customer demands in line with the modern consumer science. “Today’s consumer is more aware than the consumer of five years before, which creates immediate need for staff training and a stronger infrastructure in customer services, which the GCC market really lacks” — Lootah told Gulf News.

Salim Kalsekar Rasasi, perfumes managing director said businesses tend to neglect the fact that they need to maintain “uniform quality across every level of customer service” amid pressures posed by expansion in the retail sector.

“The expansion of the retail sector has put immense pressures on quality of personnel and their attitude management. While it is good to have a fast growing brand, it is equally important to maintain uniform quality across every level of customer service. I think businesses tend to neglect this which undermines their performance in the long run” — Kalsekar said.

Product knowledge and pro-activity levels of staff were relatively low, as 41.0 percent of them did not ask supplementary questions to establish customer needs; 41 percent did not recommend or guide shoppers to a relevant product and 46.2 percent did not check if the customer had the product or information required.

Shoppers reported mixed impressions of staff attitudes, saying 38.1 per cent of the staff did not smile and 22.4 percent were considered unfriendly.

On the bright side, 93.3 percent of the shoppers reported a clean environment and 85.2 percent found the outlet they visited to be clutter-free.

Response times were found to be good, as 71.4 percent of the customers said they were assisted within three minutes of entering an outlet, and 51 percent of those purchasing products were served in less than one minute.

No wonder when you fly on a Chinese airline you will be pampered by flight attendants who look eerily alike. They are young, beautiful and practically the same height. This is not a coffee-tea-or-me stereotype but the result of a rigorous selection process that is more beauty pageant than equal-opportunity job interview.

—    If you are older than 24 don’t bother to apply.
—    If your legs are similar to tree trunks don’t call. Sounds like a throwback to the dark ages of workplace discrimination?
—    In China, the world’s fastest-growing aviation market, entry barriers for flight attendants are not only tolerated – they are flaunted as symbols of excellence.

“A lot of Chinese passengers judge the quality of airlines based on the quality of their flight attendants, meaning, are they pretty or not pretty” Luo Man said, a media director at China Southern, the country’s largest carrier.

Chinese airline officials say their industry is young and that it will take time for the public to move beyond the superficial. Until recently traveling by air was a privilege reserved for government officials and very rich people.

The first flight attendants were picked not so much for their looks as for their political reliability.

But that is changing fast.

As the Chinese get richer, domestic air traffic could soar nearly fivefold in two decades, analysts said. To meet the demand, China will have to buy about 3,400 new aircraft, quadrupling the present fleet and making the nation the second-largest aviation market in the World after the US.

Demand for new flight attendants is so great that a cottage industry of academies promising to produce star-quality cabin crews has emerged. The courses can range from etiquette and psychology to Basic English and geography. Once flight attendants are hired by the airlines, they typically receive additional safety and emergency training.

By Arindam Bhattacharya

What’s the usual turn around time to recover your credit score?
That’s your question…your neighbor’s question and the question of millions around you.
Let me answer honestly…it could take seven long years or even more!!!
You might also do it in a year, if you know the tricks that work.
Before you get those power-packed tips to pick up your credit score, let’s take a quick look on some basics which you must know.

What’s credit score?
Credit score also referred to as FICO score is a number based on how prompt you are in paying back your loans. When you have a high score, it means that you can save more money and the possibility of paying your bills on time is quite high.

What should be your ideal score?
Usually, 620 is the minimum standard score that you must have to secure a loan from a bank. If you have a score above 700, you will get loans at lower rates. When your score crosses 760, you will get loans at the lowest rate. The perfect credit score is 850, whereas the average score is 723.

How do you get your credit report?
According to the Fair and Accurate Credit Transactions Act, you can get a free copy of your credit report every year from any of the accredited agencies.
To track any change in your credit score, it’s a good idea, if you ask for your report every four months, instead of getting all the three at a time.

Credit bureaus
Experian, Equifax and TransUnion are three foremost credit bureaus.

Top tips to repair your credit:
• Never apply for credit cards when you don’t really need it. This is because a new account lowers your credit score by 10 points, on an average.

You can have credit cards, but make sure you have it when you are debt free. In fact, your credit score gets a boost if you borrow and repay in the very first chance. Remember that if you neither have a credit card nor installment loans, the lenders might find you a bit risky as you have no record of loan repayment.

• Make sure that your bills are paid on time. If you do this, your credit scores would be up by around 20 points in a month. In case you don’t, it would feature in an area called “Adverse Accounts”, which would show up all details like the particular months, period of delays etc. Keep in your mind that such details are normally kept for 7 years.

• Another effective way you can utilize to ensure a high credit score is by keeping your credit card balances at the minimum. That can save you at least 70 points.

• Make sure that you obtain your credit reports from each of the major bureaus. This is important because, you cannot repair your credit, if you do not know the contents of your report.

• Remember that you have the right to remove any incorrect information that you may find in your report. So, take steps to clean up your report to erase out all erroneous facts

• Never apply for more credits while you are in the stage of credit repair. If you do this, it will have an adverse effect on your credit score.

• It’ll be a smart move on your part if you give a call to your creditors and have an open talk with them about the facts. Always bear in your mind that the many lenders who have a provision which would lower your monthly installments till you are back on track.

• It’s always good if you go for professional help. There are lots of resources available to help you out. You can even search a credit counseling agency through the National Foundation for Credit Counseling.

• Be tolerant to the situation and keep paying your debts. Remember, repairing your credit is a procedure and that doesn’t happen overnight.

I’m sure with these tips; you can really look forward to get your credit in order within a normal time frame.

 By Pinaki Ghosh

1. Advertisements
It is much easier to get advertisements for your blog today than it was, a few years back.Thanks to Google, and Overture, you no longer have to run from door to door to impress advertisers, and wear off your shoe-sole in the process. Advertising programs like Google
AdSense, Yahoo Publishing Network (YPN), and Microsoft Content Ads, have made earning from advertisements easier than opening your fridge and taking a bite from a piece of cake. To know more about how you can possibly place contextual advertisements and banners on your blog, do visit the following:
• Google AdSense: http://google.com/adsense
• Yahoo Publishing Network / YPN (formerly Overture): http://ypn.yahoo.com/
• Microsoft Content Ads: http://advertising.microsoft.com/microsoftadcenter/
faqs/content-ads
Your earning comes from the advertisements in two ways.
• Every time someone clicks on the advertisements, you earn.
• You also earn from the number of times people ‘see’ your page (that is, the
advertisements).
As you agree to the terms of any one of the advertising programs, advertisements will
start appearing at various places of your blog, and an account will be maintained that
registers how much you are earning. On reaching the minimum earning, or the pay-date,
they dispatch you your paycheck. Cheers!

2. Affiliate programs
Your blog can get you revenue in one of the most traditional ways on earth; commission
in exchange of business. Hundreds of companies/websites (established brands inclusive),
who pay commission to you for sending them customers. Examples of such are
Commission Junction (http://cj.com) or clickbank (http://clickbank.com). They supply
you with a java code that you have to paste in the HTML of your blog, and their banner
appears. If any reader of your blog clicks these banners and becomes a paid member of
the affiliate site, you get a percentage of the payment. Hey, that’ s not bad at all.

3. Get noticed, get hired
No luck, if you decide to write the type of cliché content that thousands of other bloggers
are writing, but if the content of your blog is unique and style is crispy, you are bound to get noticed and get offers that sound like, “ I like your blog; how much, if you write a
daily blog for me?” I leave the rate part for you to decide. You can easily charge anything
between $15 and $25 for each article you write; and as such can earn around $150 per day.

4. Sell stuff
Set up your virtual store and sell stuff through your blog. It is absolutely free to become a PayPal (http://paypal.com) member and start accepting payments through your blog. You have to decide what you are going to sell. There are some items, that need to be shipped, and other items that have less hassle, and can be straightaway downloaded after a payment (for example, ebooks). This can become big business if you are serious and full hearted in your effort.

5. Become a sponsored blog owner
Things work if you can turn the right key. If you can impress others (read, business
owners) by your writing, it may so happen that they want you to write about their
products, and website through your blog. This is like direct advertising of someone via
your blog. Your articles will also carry links to the site that is selling the products or
service mentioned in the articles. Needless to say, you don’ t do this for free, or as a social service. You will get paid for writing about others’ products in your blog. What, if you aren’ t confident to write? Do you miss all these great scopes of earning? Never! Just go ahead and hire a writer. It is worth, even after paying him/her on per article or per month basis.

6. Promote your other site or service
You can use your blog to write interesting articles that will promote your other
ecommerce-websites, or talk of the services you provide. Thus, by building awareness,
you will get indirect earning from your other sources.

7. Donations
If your blog deals with social issues and charity, you are likely to attract donors who
would be interested to donate for charity. A serious and honest effort is bound to attract
donors.

Will you miss all these wonderful opportunities if you are not a great writer? Never. Just hire a pro blogger to write on your behalf. You can check out the HIRE A PRO BLOGGER scheme of www.123writer.com. For $143 you will get exclusive blog posts thrice a week for a month. Check it out.

By Chitralekha Chakraborty

The world is full of slogans, seminars and books that focus on customer service. We understand that excellent customer service increases customer loyalty, which in turn boosts profitability and drives growth. Then why is customer service so often still so poor? It’s a question of moving from attitude to action. This introductory note stresses some hard facts which probe why customer service is still mediocre at best in so many organizations.

What was your latest customer service mantra?
– “The customer is always right.”
– “The customer comes first.”
– “This is the year of the customer.”

Have you had a recent customer appreciation week, given all employees lapel buttons stating “Yes, I can” to reflect their empowered attitude? Most organizations have involved their employees in a slogan or a customer service seminar. Everyone in management has bought and perhaps read the latest books on service. Most of those books, slogans and seminars seem to create the right attitude, yet no meaningful action follows. Words, including these in this piece, don’t create improvements. Informed action does.

The best people and companies know this. They have come to understand the links, connecting excellent customer service, customer loyalty, organizational growth and profitability. They know that the key to their long-term success is changing the organization’s culture to one that prizes customer loyalty.

Although it’s true that service by itself does not guarantee loyalty, without it you greatly reduce your chances of retaining customers — the basis for building and sustaining growth and prosperity of organizations.

In the United States I see three levels of service being delivered. Those three are rude, indifferent and exceptional. Of these three, which do you mostly receive? “Indifferent” gets my vote.

Here’s one of my recent encounters with indifference. While I was renting a car, the customer service agent folded the rental contract, told me how to find my car and in which space, and then said “Thank you, Ms. Ford?” The misstatement indicated robotic, indifferent service. It also told me that this company does not have a culture that values me (and perhaps you) as its customer.

Most organizations are great in processing customers. Very few excel at serving and satisfying customers. We get processed all the time. Go to the bank and make a deposit. In most cases you get exactly what you expect — a correct receipt for your deposit and the amount of money you requested. Had anything occurred to leave you with a positive impression of the bank that would keep you loyal? It may be most unlikely . Perhaps your teller did not acknowledge you by name or thank you. May be the employees talked among themselves.

Exceptional service and satisfaction are required to create loyal customers. The process of being served is what’s memorable. That personalized transaction is the key to customer retention.

Customer service is not enough. Customer satisfaction that leads to loyalty is the goal. “Loyalty” means you retain a customer and increase the business you do with that customer, developing a relationship so this customer will not be lured away to the competition with the promise of a lower price.

Almost everyone knows the research and statistics, a few take the numbers to heart. Research done some years ago tells us it costs five or six times more to attract a new customer than to keep a current one. Experts estimate the cost today as being closer to eight to ten times. Bain & Company reports that if a company retains 5% of its current customer base, its profits will increase between 25% and 125%! Have you noticed how many companies spend their time, money and energy to attract new customers, while doing very little to keep their current customers? Although it’s a fairly common practice, it’s very short-sighted.

Here’s a scenario that has probably happened with you last year. Let’s say it’s 7 o’clock in the evening and you have just sat down to dinner. The telephone rings. You answer and discover it’s just one of the long-distance telephone carriers offering a great deal with plenty of incentives to entice you to become a new customer. You stop the representative and say “Time out! You already are my long-distance carrier.” The rep responds “Oops!!” Then you asked “Well, can I have that deal as an existing customer?” And the answer is “No”. The offer is only for a new customer, and not for you, an established customer.

It’s amazing how few organizations have figured out that marketing to current customers is good business. What about your organization? Does it work as hard to build the loyalty and business of current customers as it does to attract new ones? Write your experiences as a customer or rep — help me to reach closer to customer service in depth.

By Soumitra Chakraborty

“Making the decision to have a child is momentous. It is to decide forever to have your heart go walking around outside your body.” - Elizabeth Stone. Such is the intense and delicate relationship that a parent bears with the child. A new-born child of today, is the future of tomorrow. Therefore a good up-bringing of the child is absolutely necessary. Parents must put their hearts-out in seeing that a child gets enriched mentally, physically, and also gets proper moral and ethical values of life.

Valuable Tips For Ideal Parenting

1) Physical Presence : Children want and need the parents to be physically present in front of their eyes, right from infancy. In fact, when a child is in his/her mother’s womb, he or she, happens to hear the voices of the parents and starts distinguishing between the world on one side and parents on the other. It is absolutely necessary, from that time onwards, that parents do maintain a warm relationship amongst themselves.

2) Listening to and Understanding your child : Just being physically present doesn’t always serve the purpose. You have to listen to almost everything what your child wants you to understand, and interact with the infant as much as possible. This develops a proper bonding and communication between you and your child.

3) Being Supportive Towards Your Partner : Whether you are living together with your partner or not, should be the secondary issue for an ideal parent. The Parents should work together for the welfare of the child. Differences of opinion are a normal feature of parenthood. The most important thing is how the parents resolve or settle the differences that matter. In any case, exchange of respective ideas between the parents should he done in private and no confrontation whatsoever should take place in front of the child. This is just to preserve a feeling of emotional stability and security in the child.

4) Interact With the Child as much as Possible: One of the best ways of developing a good bonding with your child is to play with him/her. In other words, at times, parents do need to behave like children to maintain a close and proper interaction with them. Parents have to enter the child’s world in order to understand and exchange ideas and this in turn makes the child feel secure as well as it gives a sense of comfort and enjoyment to him/her.

5) Teach By Actions : Parents must keep in mind that children are hard core followers of their actions. They observe and follow each individual action of the parent and imitate them. So, it is very essential for a parent to act, behave and socialize properly, so that the child can pick up the best from them.

6) Love : The Best Tool To discipline The Child - To discipline is to guide and bring the best out of your child. Parents should be caring and loving enough, so that the child is inclined to listen to what they say. Talking in a harsh tone, or in a commanding attitude or forcible implications to certain aspects may have and adverse effect on the child’s all-round development.

Parenthood is never smooth and easy as becoming a parent is. It should always be remembered that if one can survive parenthood, one can survive anything.

By Chitralekha Chakraborty

I want to share a little known secret about the value of delivering good service to customers. Yes, it’s good for business and the organization. Yes, you may derive a lot of satisfaction by doing a customer service job well. No question. But what’s the most compelling reason to learn about, and deliver good customer service? It’s this. When you deliver good customer service to your customers, you experience less stress, and less hassle and grief from customers. They argue less. They’re much less likely to insult, and they’re less demanding. They don’t threaten you when they get upset (I’ll have your job!”).

You can save huge amounts of time. One disappointed customer may take up to ten or twenty times more of your time than a satisfied one. And the time spent with the displeased customer is usually not all that much fun. Customer service skills help you keep your happy customers happy, help prevent customers from becoming unhappy and taking out their frustrations on you, and help you deal effectively and quickly with customers who are upset and unhappy.

Every Tuesday I will write about the tools to interact with customers more effectively, so that the company, the customer, and you, the person dealing with the customer, all benefit. PowerIdeaz.com will provide us the space to discuss all those; and here will continue worlds first “Tuesday is the Customer Service Day” Blog. Hence, we will not restrict our discussion only on the principles or platitudes, or handy customer service slogans; rather our focus will also be on ‘doing’.
• What should you do with a customer who is swearing at you?
• What do you do to prevent customers who have waited a long time from getting really angry?
• What do you do to provide advice to customers so it will be heard and appreciated?
We’ll deal with these questions along with solutions.

Next week I’ll cover some basics of customer service; so customer service newbies can increase their understanding of what customers want, and the things that cause customers to hit the roof. We’ll also talk about various types of customers (internal, external, paying and non-paying), and we’ll explain how you can best use customer service techniques.

Far too much customer service training and far too many customer service books tell you only what you already know. Do you really need to be told again that you should smile? Or shake hands? No. But you might find it useful to know when it’s a bad idea to smile at a customer.

So, here’s the bottom line about this “Tuesday is the Customer Service Day” blog: you may come across a few things you already know. But you’ll also come across a number of techniques you probably haven’t thought about. Please do leave comments here with any unique, off the wall, follow-up tactics that have worked for you; and along the way, save yourself a lot of hassle and a lot of grief.

By Konica Paul Chakraborty

Women….

The fragrance of full bloomed jasmine at night,
The colours of ecstasy showing bright,
The vibrating pulses in mens’ wild heart,
The concoction of wit, mirth and art.

Women…

The strong history bonding mankind with earth,
The mother bearing the forthcoming childbirth,
The teacher teaching qualities humane,
The stoic who frees life of love, joy or pain.

Women…

The Gayatri of Hindu, Mary of Bethlehem,
The Teresa caring for each all the same,
The nightingale nursing the rich and the poor,
The spirit from heaven barring the locked door.

Women…

The future mistress of the universe,
The entrepreneur of the day, spirited and terse,
The leader of the nation battering the odd,
The sculptor of a beautiful world, where there’s just concord.

Women….

The ship that sails against powerful winds,
The mermaid igniting idle thoughts in the minds,
The navigators who navigate through the vast ocean of life,
The pioneers with powered ideas that end all strife.