I found out that a Squid Cast is a pretty neat tool. It’s basically the RSS feed for your lens, as well as a way to keep the people who have joined your fan club on Squidoo or favorited your lens informed about updates you’ve made to your lens.

And yes, I’m in the process of syndicating each of my 6 lenses RSS feeds with both Feed Burner and Rapid Feeds!

Here’s my strategy for getting the word out about my new website products ~ it’s a good bit of work as is anything that is worth it. And my business is worth it!

Squidoo has again out-performed all other promotional venues such as Kaboodle and Stylehive, bringing up to 44% total website traffic to me.

I work in my jewelry studio about 20 hours a weekand I also work on crocheting about 10 hours a week~ I’m ramping up my collective fashion designing getting ready for the fall, winter and spring selling season which has been traditionally for years now my most successful time of year for sales.

I’ll be adding around 5-10 hours of cross stitching work a week to my schedule soon, to create Victorian style Christmas ornaments. Conservatively I put in around 70-80 hours a week into my business, split more or less neatly down the middle between product creation and internet marketing.

So. Moving on…………..

- I create new products, take pictures, edit and crop pictures.

- I add the new items to their respective categories on my website.

- I blog one new item a day in my Jewelry Crochet Fashion Blog . This assures me of relevant blog material for quite a while.

- After blogging I move on to the appropriate Squidoo lens for each new item. I have my Squidoo lenses broken up to cover related categories on my website by theme. It’s easier to manage my lenses plus each lens is targeted to more specific interests as well as shopping interests.

- I’ve instituted a new text section on almost all of my lenses called "New Items" or something similar. You have a 10,000 character limit on text sections so I make the most of it by adding just the date, The name of the item, some product pictures, and a link back to the product page on my website where people can find out more about the item or purchase it.

- So I add the newest items to that section, save it, publish the lens and check it to make sure it looks/reads/links back OK.

- Then I click on "Send a Squid Cast" in the right hand column (you get 500 characters) and make a brief announcement about the updated lens and if there is room very brief generic mention of an item or two, just enough to pique interest.

- I then go back to my lens, scroll down to the "Bookmark and Share" section on the right sidebar all the way down at the bottom. I personally use Twitter, Delicious, Digg, Facebook and MySpace so I get to work on those. I personally can’t stand StumbleUpon so I don’t use that.

- I’m in the process of also adding RSS chicklets to all of my Squidoo lenses so people can subscribe to them right from the lens using their favorite reader. Not done with that yet.

- And lastly, I’m also working on integrating news about my wholesale website program, on each lens, as well as news about the monthly discount coupon for website newsletter subscribers. There will also be news about my website affiliate program which will be launched sometime during July 2008 ~ you’ll be able to earn money for each referral you make to my website that results in a sale!

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Well, I hope this article has enlightened you about the purpose behind Squid Casts and how to use them to your benefit as well as to how you can, with a little extra work, make your Squidoo lenses work for you to bring you website traffic, increase your search engine visibility and ultimately bring you more sales!

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P.S. ~ In your Squidoo dashboard ~ click on My Favorites to see the latest Squid Casts from lensmasters you’ve favorited (don’t forget to favorite your own lenses!) Keep up with them and comment back from time to time, make sure they are lensrolled on all of your lenses, and join their fan club !

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New Jersey Web Design by Jewelry Collectibles Design , conveniently located in Hackensack, Bergen County New Jersey, is owned and operated by Maureen McCullough. In business since 2000 as a freelance professional and now also an eBay Stores Certified Designer. Our clients receive professional, creative designs put together outside of the typical corporate genre, fully carrying your small business identity through your entire venue ~ website, blog, forum, links management, eBay store and other online venues.

Happy to be a woman owned small business ~ she also a wedding planner and bridal consultant ~ Wedding Event Planning ~ as well as a jewelry and fashion designer ~ Jewelry Collectibles .

Stay current with all of our posts on how to improve, promote and market YOUR business ~ Subscribe to Jewelry Collectibles Design by Email ~ you don’t even have to open up your RSS reader…….. we come straight to your mailbox whenever there’s a new post!

Getting yourself listed in online business directories, which are mostly for free, is a very good idea for more exposure throughout the search engines for your business.

However, what to do if you are a small business operating out of your home? Many of these online business directories want your address and then provide a Google map of your approximate location. You don’t have a "store front" in the traditional sense, and you’d like to preserve some semblance of privacy. What to do?

If your street address is NOT required for the particular directory to which you are applying, yet your city / state / zip details are ~ go with that and in your description of your business use the last paragraph to note politely that you are an Internet based home business with no actual storefront.

If however,  your street address IS required ~ you have 2 choices. Either opt out of the listing altogether, or use this work-a-round ~ list your address in full and in your description area at the very end include something like this:

"Although we are mainly an Internet e-commerce business, if you are local to {{{insert your locality here}}} and you would like to schedule a private appointment to meet with us about items you are interested in, call us to arrange a personal shopping appointment. We’ll be glad to help you out."

This way when people do call you, the ball is entirely in your court whether to meet with anyone in your home / garage / studio, etc. or do it over lunch somewhere away from the house. In the odd circumstance where you get uncomfortable vibes when speaking with someone over the phone you can decline altogether. Besides the possibility of gaining local sales, you are also getting listed in some valuable directories. I don’t know of anyone who can afford to turn down free business directory listings! Especially these days.

One such directory I highly recommend is hotfrog.com ~ here is my business listing ~ Jewelry Collectibles by Maureen McCullough ~ and you will see how I address the home business issue in my last paragraph in the "About" section.

I like the fact that you are given a generous 2000 character for a business description, as many keywords / tags as you like (as long,  of course, as they are relevant) and the ability to add an article, most positively of the "Latest News" genre (which I have yet to do), plus an RSS feed which presumably sends your article out into syndication.

That in itself is a HUGE plus given the overall amazing power of syndicated feeds.

Keep checking back with us as we’ll be finding more and more ways for you to "get the word out" and promote / market your business!

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New Jersey Web Design by Jewelry Collectibles Design , conveniently located in Hackensack, Bergen County New Jersey, is owned and operated by Maureen McCullough. In business since 2000 as a freelance professional and now also an eBay Stores Certified Designer. Our clients receive professional, creative designs put together outside of the typical corporate genre, fully carrying your small business identity through your entire venue ~ website, blog, forum, links management, eBay store and other online venues.

Happy to be a woman owned small business ~ she also a wedding planner and bridal consultant ~ Wedding Event Planning ~ as well as a jewelry and fashion designer ~ Jewelry Collectibles .

Stay current with all of our posts on how to improve, promote and market YOUR business ~ Subscribe to Jewelry Collectibles Design by Email ~ you don’t even have to open up your RSS reader…….. we come straight to your mailbox whenever there’s a new post!

In the middle of 2007, I really began to notice the strong shift away from hand coded websites to the cleaner templated systems and designs, shopping carts, blogs, CMS, etc. no doubt in very large part due to the growing popularity of and ease of use with CSS. All aimed, I am sure, in an effort to establish a more standardized scholastica of design and ultimately a standardized Internet.

This remarkable awakening of mine coincided with my own growing frustrations that grew out of managing client websites. Design is one thing ~ rewarding, creative and fulfilling. Gopher duty is another. And gopher duty is was indeed, being told to change this word on that page and to move this or that over just a smidge on another page.  Time was also a factor as my own retail and other businesses on the Internet were really starting to take off and I had no time to maintain my own sites, keep up with my own momentum, my own marketing and promotion needs, etc.

The shift towards a more templated state of being also coincided with the equally strong and quite logical shift of many web site owners towards wanting to handle their websites themselves. I’ve found that many web site owners still need the initial install, setup and customization plus on-demand troubleshooting / help / advice, yet do not need nor should they have to pay for someone to maintain the site when now, it was very easy to do it themselves.

I guess you can tell I’m not one of those designers that keep my clients locked in to me so they will HAVE  to depend on me and therefore keep paying me for every little thing. Simply can’t be bothered. And, I much prefer to see people run with the ball themselves……… once they know how.

Why? This gives them the freedom to make changes large and small, toy, tinker, play with, etc. on their own timeframe when they have the time or are struck by inspiration. That in itself is a form of creativity I think we all need and should have. They do not have to wait for someone else to "get to it", "fit it in", etc. and then have to pay good money besides.

What has this done for me as far as my design business goes? Well, I can look at this either of two ways….  as a cup half empty or a cup half full.

Looking at it from the cup half full perspective is in truth and in fact my real perspective.

Yes, my overall design business is down drastically. Geez, the recession couldn’t have hit at a worse time! Then again………..

Yes, my client base has changed drastically as well. My clients want to be setup and customized and then run with their own ball down the court, do things their way, and have access to me when they need it. For the most part, they LOVE the automated environment of their templated experience ~ be it blog, e-commerce website, information website, forum or eBay store. They LOVE not having to depend on someone for every little thing. They LOVE their blanket price for install, setup and customization and not needing to spend a penny more unless they need on-demand help.

The plus side for me personally is that I have MUCH more time to attend to my own websites and other businesses, tweak them as per my preferences and my customers preferences for their ease of use, promote them, market them, do the social networking required to bring in more traffic and business, find new promotional venues, particiapte in more targeted, relevant forums, create and design new products and fill orders.

So, rather than bemoaning the change in tide, I’m actually very happy it happened this way. No kicking and screaming here, no resistance to change. Then again, we all adapt to change, big and small, differently don’t we?

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New Jersey Web Design by Jewelry Collectibles Design , conveniently located in Hackensack, Bergen County New Jersey, is owned and operated by Maureen McCullough. In business since 2000 as a freelance professional and now also an eBay Stores Certified Designer. Our clients receive professional, creative designs put together outside of the typical corporate genre, fully carrying your small business identity through your entire venue ~ website, blog, forum, links management, eBay store and other online venues.

Happy to be a woman owned small business ~ she also a wedding planner and bridal consultant ~ Wedding Event Planning ~ as well as a jewelry and fashion designer ~ Jewelry Collectibles .

The other day I was reading someone else’s blog and saw THAT button. So I moused over it. WA-LA! I saw that it would lead me to rapidfeeds.com! Off I went to investigate.

With no one to hold my little hand, getting a feed established there was a bit of an annoying tussle. But I got it, because I simply won’t quit. Today I went back to add another feed (specifically the one for this website ~ this blog, that you are reading now). I had the bright idea to document the steps and shortcuts that I had found the other day. It’s really NOT difficult at all, once you’ve figured it out and know what you are doing.

So here goes. And by the way it’s a good service, I’ve already got some new and distinct traffic to my first blog from it. So it’s definitely worth your while.

Alright without further ado, here we go.

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Go to http://www.rapidfeeds.com, make yourself an account.

Ok. Login and go to Feed Manager.

Click on Create A New Feed.

Make a keyword rich interesting title.

Enter your feed link ~ just click on the little orange feed icon in your browser’s URL bar ~ copy and paste your feed URL here.

Write a brief, keyword rich description that makes sense.

Click Create A New Feed and ignore the screen that comes up prompting you to add an item.

Then click on the menu bar where it says Import Feed. Paste your feed URL there as well. Leave the cache time the way it is.

Click Import Feed.

It verifies and imports your feed.

Click continue.

Click on the +List Items link to see that it did indeed grab your feed correctly.

You can check your stats also by clicking on the stats icon under Manage Your Feeds.

Next click PING under Manage Your Feeds.

Select your services. Then copy your ping URL from your browser ~ should look something like this: http://www.rapidfeeds.com/feedsmanager/pingform.php?feedid=xxxxx (xxxxx being your feed account #)

After the ping results page comes up (and don’t be alarmed if some don’t have responses!) click on Publish.

Click on Add To Web Aggregators. Choose each one you want and copy the code one at a time pasting each into Notepad. Leave a line or two between each.

You’re done. Logout. Go into your blog, and add each link to the appropriate widget in your blog or directly into your sidebar coding so that more people than before can subscribe to your feed and get the word out there!

*** Side Note: If you use Word Press or another blogging system that allows you to update your pinging services, paste your Rapid Feeds ping URL in there so they are automatically notified each time you post. In Word Press just click on Settings, Writing, and scroll to the bottom of the page where it says Update Services. That is where you would paste your ping URL from Rapid Feed.***

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New Jersey Web Design by Jewelry Collectibles Design , conveniently located in Hackensack, Bergen County New Jersey, is owned and operated by Maureen McCullough. In business since 2000 as a freelance professional and now also an eBay Stores Certified Designer. Our clients receive professional, creative designs put together outside of the typical corporate genre, fully carrying your small business identity through your entire venue ~ website, blog, forum, links management, eBay store and other online venues.

Happy to be a woman owned small business ~ she also a wedding planner and bridal consultant ~ Wedding Event Planning ~ as well as a jewelry and fashion designer ~ Jewelry Collectibles .

Here’s my two cents on Squidoo and it’s benefits towards promoting your website. Yes, it’s hard work, and you have to keep at it. No, it’s not a one shot deal and all the people come running to your website. Yes, you have to keep at it to get results. No, it’s not the easy road to success but with a bit of elbow grease, devotion and ingenuity, it could very well be one of the high roads…………

Many people have sung the praises of Squidoo, started a lens or multiple lenses with much gusto, and abandoned them when they became "too much work".

Others have also sung the praises similarly, began a lens or lenses with much gusto, and kept them up but not nearly as often or with as much energy as they should have / could have.

Ring a bell, anyone?

We all know there are only so many hours in a day. That’s not rocket science. However if you run a website online and it is part of your income, or it IS your income, doesn’t it make sense to devote time to the mechanism that best (or one of the best mechanisms that best) promotes it? Makes sense to me.

Of course you could always abandon it and begin something new. And a couple of years down the road when that starts to be "too much work" you can always drop that and start something else……….. and so the cycle repeats itself over and over.

I belong to the 2nd Squidoo group above, for the most part. Never really let my lenses drop off the radar completely but did not keep them up like I should / could have.

As of late, I have, in better judgement, not only kept them up but experimented with what brought decent to good results traffic-wise. I tried Flickr slideshows, howerver, they are only good for users of Firefox. Explorer users have trouble with the Flickr slideshows. Then I tried Flickr thumbnails…………. not bad for alot of my products but for quite a few products they cut off parts of the photos. So I went back to a combination of Flickr thumbnails and regular featured product pictures with good write-ups.

And, I’ve finally reached payout level!! Woo hoo! To some of you that might be something you take for granted, but not me. I finally reached that nice level of having a chunk of change deposited in my PayPal account, and it felt good.

In the past I’ve garnered quite a few direct orders off of my website attributed to the people finding me via Squidoo, and have achieved anywhere from 25% down to 10% of my website traffic attributable to Squidoo, which is nothing to sneeze at, but I’ve never achieved payout level til now.

Now, I’m motivated to do even better!

I presently have 7 Squidoo lenses. They are, in no particular order of importance, the following:

Ladies and Babies Fashions in Crochet and Cross Stitch

Jewelry Collectibles Design ~ Everyday Beaded Jewelry ~ Earrings, Bracelets, Ankle Bracelets, Necklaces

Antiques, Vintage and Modern Collectibles

Wedding Bridal Jewelry and Bridal Resources

Practical Jewelry Gift Ideas ~ Designer Chic without the Designer Pricetag!

Religious Gifts of Faith

Elegant Birthstone and Mother’s Jewelry

What I’ve done is create one Squidoo lens per major category on my jewelry and collectibles website so that each lens is spacious enough to promote a general theme, and therefore more targeted with it’s product display.

I’ve utilized the tools given us such as table of contents and the discovery tool, listed all of my RSS feeds in each lens in order to appeal to a wider audience. (Hey, you never know who is into reading what!)

I’ve joined many, many Squidoo shopping groups, including my own Squidoo shopping group , obviously, plus I have my Squidoo referral code in various places both within each lens and on other sites as that is another mechanism to revenue.

Besides keeping my lenses up better ~ keeping them "fresh" ~ I’m now on a mission to add my various affiliate links to each and make a point of writing an interesting article in each of them and then refreshing that every so often!

And now that I’ve got my artisan designer studio re-located and re-organized, I’ll be able to keep adding more new creations to my website and subsequently to my Squidoo lenses.

Yes, Squidoo definitely gets my vote as a premier way of promoting your website, be that an informational website or a product driven website. If you want to get excellent traffic and revenue, then you’ve got to roll up your sleeves and dig into some hard work. Everything worth it is worth the work. If you are the type who says it’s "too much work" then you really need to do something else with yourself. Perhaps the Internet, which is essentially all about hard work and world wide exposure, is simply not your cup of tea.

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New Jersey Web Design by Jewelry Collectibles Design , conveniently located in Hackensack, Bergen County New Jersey, is owned and operated by Maureen McCullough. In business since 2000 as a freelance professional and now also an eBay Stores Certified Designer. Our clients receive professional, creative designs put together outside of the typical corporate genre, fully carrying your small business identity through your entire venue ~ website, blog, forum, links management, eBay store and other online venues.

Happy to be a woman owned small business ~ she also a wedding planner and bridal consultant ~ Wedding Event Planning ~ as well as a jewelry and fashion designer ~ Jewelry Collectibles .

Are you promoting, marketing, and cross-promoting as much as possible?

Are you blogging daily and cross referencing your website products or services within your blog posts?

Have you got your pingbacks setup in your blog?

Are you adding new products to your website regularly?

If a services website, are you blogging useful tips and tricks and ideas regularly?

Have you chosen a few good social networking and social shopping sites and have you learned to work them to your advantage?

Are you checking your website traffic stats and your Google traffic stats for keywords, keyphrases and digging to see where your traffic comes from and making the most of that?

Do you have a spam free contact system setup?

Do you have a website newsletter and do you offer coupons and discounts that promote but do not undercut your bottom line?

Do you participate in select forums every few days?

Do you tweak your website and your SEO on a regular basis?

I had lunch with an associate a few days back ~ he’s still hesitating about blogging, seems to be dazzle-eyed over getting "sponsors" for the blog as though that was more important than writing quality content to promote his website ~ he was hesitating this same way a year ago too.

This guy is a talented and gifted photographer who could really be a household name ~ instead he’s just an address in Smallville ~ wishing to put his website on the map.

What’s holding YOU back?

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New Jersey Web Design by Jewelry Collectibles Design , conveniently located in Hackensack, Bergen County New Jersey, is owned and operated by Maureen McCullough. In business since 2000 as a freelance professional and now also an eBay Stores Certified Designer. Our clients receive professional, creative designs put together outside of the typical corporate genre, fully carrying your small business identity through your entire venue ~ website, blog, forum, links management, eBay store and other online venues.

Happy to be a woman owned small business ~ she also a wedding planner and bridal consultant ~ Jewelry Collectibles Design ~ as well as a jewelry and fashion designer ~ Jewelry Collectibles .

As a shopper you don’t think much on it and many times you don’t abandon a cart for any lethal reason ~ after all, if the website was that lousy you would not have been shopping and filling up the cart to begin with.

However, for the online shop owner an abandoned shopping cart is a source of angst and lost sales. If your shopping cart is automated you have the means by which to check, if it is not automated, like for example Mal’s E, which is a fine cart but gives you no mechanism to see what’s been going on, you don’t know and will never know how many times your cart has been abandoned. Perhaps ignorance is bliss but in this case I’d rather know.

Seeing the tell tale phenomena happening in my own shopping cart I was determined to do something about it to recoup the lost sales and to prevent it from continuing.

First, I took a good hard look at my cart and compared it to that of another successful business I’ve long admired. This business is not even anywhere close to being in my own industry but I know their success and have long admired them.

Then I began carefully re-arranging my shopping cart templates ~ to move functional sections around, remove some sections altogether that I considered not relevant to my own business ~ and customized it rather extensively.

I moved my shopper login from the right menu to the left, right above the categories, and moved my mailing list signup also from the right menu to the left, under the categories.

I added my clickable SSL cert to the header of the cart so it will appear on every page of the cart at all times, and created a customized 2nd line menu in my header.

Lastly I created a completely new custom right menu underneath the shopping cart view area. I tried to keep these changes down to the natural navigation that a shopper would move through my cart with.

My store home page content is already customized and I like it the way it is so I left that alone.

I added a clickable visual link that takes you to an extra informative area about ordering securely because different browsers display the secure lock icon differently under different circumstances ~ my customers informed me of this on several occasions, so I investigated and it is indeed true. Also, personal computers are set to different security levels and different operating systems also add to this confusion. Again I saw this firsthand ~ I checked on all 3 of my laptops ~ XP Home, XP Professional and Vista Home ~ and what my customers have told me is true. In that informative section I also encourage my customers to simply phone the order in to me if they have ANY doubts or if the phoned in process would make them feel more comfortable.

Shipping is another issue. I made a custom section clickable from every page explaining my charges, insurance, domestic and international shipping, free shipping, and also clearly explained any adjustments that would be made before their credit card was actually charged.

And finally, I login to my admin area several times a day to check and monitor activity. Any customer who placed an order without entering payment info gets an immediate phone call so I can find out what happened. I use the card capture method for this reason so I can approve each sale, eliminate the fraudulent / scammer orders and address any immediate issues.

Any customer who has registered but did not place an order also gets a follow up phone call. If they are overseas they get an email. People do not generally register on a shopping site without already having been in the shopping cart checkout process.

By being diligent with making my site as shopper friendly as possible and by following up with any abandoned cart issues virtually immediately I’ve improved my orders base by 98%.

The remaining 2% I consider normal shopping cart mortality.

Try taking a good look at your shopping cart ~ look at it through the eyes of a shopper, not as you, the owner who knows the cart. See what you can do to keep the abandonment to a minimum and recoup the otherwise lost orders.

This has worked very well for me and no doubt will for you too!

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New Jersey Web Design by Jewelry Collectibles Design, conveniently located in Hackensack, Bergen County New Jersey, is owned and operated by Maureen McCullough. In business since 2000 as a freelance professional and now also an eBay Stores Certified Designer. Our clients receive professional, creative designs put together outside of the typical corporate genre, fully carrying your small business identity through your entire venue ~ website, blog, forum, links management, eBay store and other online venues. Happy to be a woman owned small business.

If your blog utilizes widgets, such as Blogger or the latest and greatest version of Word Press then by all means use them! They allow you flexibility and a means to arrange information in your blog much more effectively, also making it easier for you to create a custom experience without the need for expertise in the Land of Coding.

Make sure you not only have subscription links enabled for RSS readers but also for email subscriptions. Many people like to receive your latest news in their email box. Kind of like the morning paper but more interesting.

Make yourself an article footer and save it in Notepad or WordPad. Make sure it contains the all important link back to your website, and reads like a short bio of your business. Also make sure it’s filled with relevant keywords.

In your article footer file skip a few lines and list the keywords that are contained in your article footer. This will become a static file on your computer and you just need to remember ~ better yet, get in the habit of automatically appending it to the end of your daily post. Write your daily post as you normally would and then add the article footer. Most likely because of the hand coded link back to your website you will need to go into the CODE or HTML view and add the footer. Copying and pasting will do nicely. No need to type the same thing day after day.

If you have an SEO module installed in your blog fill in the title, description and keywords for your daily post, and make sure you do this every time you post. Just add this to the routine. When done with the keywords, refer back to your article footer file and copy and paste in those keywords as well.

And finally if your blog comes equipped with a tags field, simply copy the keywords and paste them into the tags field. Done deal. Amazingly accurate that way for the search engines and visitors.

You’ll find that you gain better traffic and better search engine visibility with these simple little tips.

For an example of the article footer, you’ll find it at the end of this post right underneath the line of asterisks. I’m pleased with the results I’m getting so I never forget to add it now.

Better bloggin’ to ya!

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New Jersey Web Design by Jewelry Collectibles Design, conveniently located in Hackensack, Bergen County New Jersey, is owned and operated by Maureen McCullough. In business since 2000 as a freelance professional and now also an eBay Stores Certified Designer. Our clients receive professional, creative designs put together outside of the typical corporate genre, fully carrying your small business identity through your entire venue ~ website, blog, forum, links management, eBay store and other online venues. Happy to be a woman owned small business.

For example:

Friend:

“I stopped by before and didn’t see your car. You were out shopping, right?”

Me:

“Uh no. I had to (go take orders to the Post Office) ~ (go visit a client / bride, etc.”) ~ (attend a meeting with a local business owner & his tech staff).”

Friend:

“OH NO. It’s such a nice day outside and you were WORKING?”

Another example:

Phone call comes in from friend (who mind you has other friends, boyfriend, etc.)

Friend:

“I locked my purse and keys in the trunk. Come and get me.”

Me:

“I can’t right now.”

Friend:

“Sure you can. I would’ve called my niece but she’s working.”

Me:

“I’m working too. I’ve got a client on the other line on hold.”

Friend:

“Well tell them you’ll call them back later. You can always do that stuff later. Come and get me.”

Me:

“Um no I can’t. I’m working and can’t just up and leave whenever.”

Friend departs in a huge huff.

By now please understand my eyeballs are SO DONE with rolling backwards they are in danger of getting stuck behind all that hair on the back of my head.

I don’t know about the rest of you who work at home, but I have found that the majority of people who have immediate access to you ~ friends, neighbors, family ~ just do not take working at home seriously and do not afford it the same respect as working outside the home.

Now, I watch the caller ID during working hours ~ whether it’s the phone on my desk or my VOIP service. If it’s a friend, neighbor or family member, I let it go to voicemail and listen to the message. If indeed it really is a genuine emergency I’m there faster than the speed of light. If it’s chitchat, or other stuff that can wait, well you can certainly believe that it does indeed wait.

Of all the disciplines one must learn in order to succeed with one’s home business when you are self employed, I think this one, the Setting Boundaries Discipline, is probably one of the most difficult. That and learning not to allow yourself to become upset by other people’s lack of understanding and acceptance that working at home is every single bit as real as working outside the house.

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New Jersey Web Design by Jewelry Collectibles Design, conveniently located in Hackensack, Bergen County New Jersey, is owned and operated by Maureen McCullough. In business since 2000 as a freelance professional and now also an eBay Stores Certified Designer. Our clients receive professional, creative designs put together outside of the typical corporate genre, fully carrying your small business identity through your entire venue ~ website, blog, forum, links management, eBay store and other online venues. Happy to be a woman owned small business.

It’s also easy to stamp our feet and demand, either from ourselves or our website manager, that things get fixed IMMEDIATELY because after all we paid for this or that and therefore it should work perfectly.

This is especially true if our online business is our livelihood and not just extra money or a hobby.

Just be sure to remember that the word “should” is technically a mythical term denoting paradise in the broadest sense, and theoretical bliss in the minimal sense. Technically “should” is a state of mind, not a realistic environment in our lives.

Well, things don’t work perfectly and things don’t go smoothly ~ that’s a fact of life.

How to deal? You can blow up, get angry, go on a rant for several days, accuse people of incompetence, blast everyone in sight and hearing, or, you can simply train yourself to assess the damage, note what’s happening when it’s broke, transfer that information to the people who can fix it as clearly and concisely as possible, and then learn to have patience and a PLAN B.

Case in point.

My retail website that sells jewelry and collectibles is broken. Last night it was dead broke. Today less dead broke, much less, but still not working the way it should.

I did something as a test, it didn’t work in part it was my fault and in part to an out of date file that needed technical help. I related the details of that adventure to my technical staff which I pay to help me in times like this. I found all the errors when I ran a test order through my store which is something I always do periodically to see how the experience is for my customers and where I can improve if possible. So I noted all errors and sent them off to the support staff with a trouble ticket. To my own surprise I did not even get upset, angry or feel my ears getting red. Amazing. Either I’m getting a better grip on the emotions or I’m getting complacent ~ that remains to be seen.

Then I thought……… my customers can see the items fine but can’t use the buy or add to cart button or even the view cart button, among other things. How to help them place an order until it’s fixed?

I put up a rather large message on my website entry page and also my store home page explaining that the store wasn’t feeling well, the techs were working on it, that you can see items but can’t use the shopping cart. Call me at either of two numbers given to place an order.

This has always worked in the past whenever this cart or my old cart was in need of repair or upgrade. Why?

I had purchased or rather invested in a credit cart machine because on occasion I still do select shows or take it with me to a meeting with a client or bride. I also use it in my office to process custom orders and phoned in orders. When I purchased the machine people shook their heads and told me I was crazy to throw my money away on an expensive credit card machine.

Same with when I got a Skype account and purchased a headset. I can make or take calls for a ridiculously low fee and work hands free at the same time, whether it is taking orders over the phone, calling the vet, making appointments for clients, etc. Made sense to me. Other folks told me I was a techno toy nut case. {{shrug shrug}}

Support is handling my shopping cart woes, which have now been fixed I believe (one more run through with the test account just for my sanity), my business is not compromised, life goes on and my blood pressure remains steady.

Bottom line is the support staff is always nice to me because I’m always nice to them and thank them for their patience in handling my request, whatever is wrong will get fixed in good time and I’m pleased that I had the foresight a while back to implement my PLAN B ~ which was the credit card machine and Skype.

The sun will set today as scheduled unless the Lord decides differently (in which case we will NOT be worrying much about the more mundane points of life such as messed up shopping carts), and life will go on. Life does not necessarily run smooth and you always need to remember that you alone are responsible for your business and you need to do whatever you need to do to ensure that you have a workable and relevant PLAN B when you hit a bump in the road.

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New Jersey Web Design by Jewelry Collectibles Design, conveniently located in Hackensack, Bergen County New Jersey, is owned and operated by Maureen McCullough. In business since 2000 as a freelance professional and now also an eBay Stores Certified Designer. Our clients receive professional, creative designs put together outside of the typical corporate genre, fully carrying your small business identity through your entire venue ~ website, blog, forum, links management, eBay store and other online venues. Happy to be a woman owned small business.

However, that being said, the links themselves have very little or no relevancy as far as being a direct, influential advantage to your website or business in terms of gaining customers and sales.

So, you don’t want to be spending much time “minding” something like this. Yet, having a link exchange is both highly advisable and recommended.

What to do? What’s involved? Sniff… sniff… do I detect a hint of drudgery in the air? Not necessarily.

There are two ways to handle this.

One way is to maintain a manual link exchange.

This involves creating pages on your website for each category you want in your link exchange, adding a form so people can apply manually, checking each site that applies to your link exchange for:

• website theme relevancy
• to see whether they actually put a link back to your site or just said they did
• to see whether they put your link on the same site they asked you to link to (or not) AKA 3 way linking
• checking periodically for dead links which can involve hours of time finding your link buried several pages deep somewhere on their site

Now, you are wondering why you would need to break your link exchange down into categories?

Because in Google Land, a link exchange with categories suggests an organized listing by themed content, as opposed to one long jumbled listing of links which not so vaguely resembles a link farm (a MAJOR NO-NO).

If your link exchange is small you can just divide one page into several categories until it grows.

Why would you feel compelled to do all the checking as noted above?

You want to check that the website applying to your link exchange is really the website they say it is and that it fits in with your link exchange theme. You want to discourage any 3 way linking which is generally something like this:

I have websites A and B. You have website C. A has no relevance to yours (C), and B has no page rank. I link yours (C) to mine (A) burying your link somewhere on page 31 of all my non-relevant links, while you out of the goodness of your heart are an absolute dear and you are promoting my never to be found website (B) in your link exchange. What’s wrong with this? Your website (C) is promoting my website B while I am doing absolutely nothing for you on my website A. It’s basically one way, with you doing all the work. You want to stay away from that. You want to have your website linked to my website which both have relevance to each other, nice direct links, that’s that end of story. Everybody benefits.

And, you want to check that each website is really linking back to you, otherwise, again, this becomes one-sided with you having a bunch of links and the other party or parties having nothing out there helping you. This can actually hurt you and lower your value (page rank) with having a bunch of dead or non-relevant links in your link exchange.

Now in case you have not noticed all of this is ridiculously time consuming, and apparently it’s slipped your mind that time is money. OOOOOOPS. Plus by now you have a migraine headache just thinking about link exchanging.

What to do about all of this cyber political handshaking that we call link exchanging?

First of all you DO NEED a link exchange ~ for page rank, for possible networking and for a small degree of search engine positioning (which despite being a small degree we Internet merchants cannot afford to ignore any small part!)

Second of all you need this process to be automated, efficient and affordable.

Here’s what I found works for me.

A self hosted top site script.

That’s what I use for my link exchange at my retail website, Jewelry Collectibles. I’ll be installing one for my webdesign site here, and for my wedding and event planning website as well, which only just launched and is in it’s infancy.

My link exchange is hosted on my server, so that all traffic to and from benefits my overall website stats, site traffic and ultimately search engine positioning. Plus the page rank of my link exchange contributes to the overall page rank of my website.

It’s heavily customized with some more customization on the way (we never stop tweaking do we!) so that I can feature websites or insert advertising where I like.

I can create custom pages if I want to run a contest, let’s say, and feature a website that belongs from time to time. Or just spell out the join rules clearly.

It’s no muss, no fuss. You signup, either with or without a banner and I get notified. I review your website, approve you, (or, gasp, disapprove you). Assuming I approve you, you then receive the join code in your email to put on your website, blog, Squidoo lens, MySpace page, Kaboodle profile, Stylehive profile, etc. etc. As long as that code is on your site, you stay listed in my link exchange. Drop the code, you get dropped from the link exchange faster than a hot potato.

Oh, how much time did I spend on your listing? Perhaps a minute to review your site and then to click “approve”.

How fast was I able to get back to attending to my own business? Virtually immediately.

If this sort of “work smarter not harder” approach appeals to you, and you need a link exchange at your website or blog, click here to find out more.

Reap the benefits and get back to minding YOUR business!

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New Jersey Web Design by Jewelry Collectibles Design, conveniently located in Hackensack, Bergen County New Jersey, is owned and operated by Maureen McCullough. In business since 2000 as a freelance professional and now also an eBay Stores Certified Designer. Our clients receive professional, creative designs put together outside of the typical corporate genre, fully carrying your small business identity through your entire venue ~ website, blog, forum, links management, eBay store and other online venues. Happy to be a woman owned small business.

Blasphemous statement, I can see the reactions now. Relax. I’ll explain in common sense terms. If you miss those, you really DO need to get out more.

Page rank became the be-all, know-all basic requirement of SEO professionals to prove their worth and for websites to tout their newfound rank above their competitors and newbies alike. Most likely because it was the latest and greatest new toy to play with out of Google Land, and people weren’t exactly sure where it stood in the grand scheme of things or what it’s power was as far as website visibility with regards to the search engines.

Here’s the deal with page rank ~ it’s got nothing at all to do with search engine positioning, which IS how people find your website on any given search engine. Page rank, on the other hand, doesn’t even register on the radar when people are looking for you.

Case in point:

When was the last time you as a shopper searched for a product or service based up page rank?

“Hmm…… let’s see, let me search for a personal trainer with a page rank of 3 or 4.”

I don’t think so.

The average shopper on the Internet who searches for any product or service is neither knowledgeable of nor do they care about page rank, if they even have a knowledge of page rank to begin with, because page rank has zero relevance to them in terms of what they are looking for. Which is to purchase a product or service ~ shop ~ spend money ~ hopefully on YOUR website.

Case in point number two:

Go ahead and check out the top 10 ~ 20 ~ 30 for any given keyword or keyphrase. 90-95% of those in the top 10 ~ 20 ~ 30 do have what’s considered to be great or good page rank. In fact, most of those sites have rather low page rank.

So, what does that tell you?

Page rank is simply an indicator of how well you are doing in Google Land as far as relevant inbound and outbound links, according to the algorithm in use at the time. It’s basically a “how am I doing” thing as far as how many relevant other sites are you linked into. That’s it.

And while quality inbound and outbound links are to be appreciated, check your website traffic stats. Most of your website traffic comes directly from folks inputting keywords or keyphrases into search engines, social shopping sites, or social networking sites and the like. Some of your traffic may come from forum participation where either a post you made piqued someone’s interest, or they got curious about the links in your forum signature. The rest in the lower 50% half may indeed come from links but the traffic that comes from the top 50% of the stats is what you are interested in. Generally that’s your search engine saturation. When that grows, that’s good.

So, for the good of your business and your online presence, what should you be concentrating on so people can find you? (Pop Quiz time)

A) Page Rank

OR

B) Tweaking your website page content and meta tags with keywords relevant to your website products and / or services?

You tell me.

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New Jersey Web Design by Jewelry Collectibles Design, conveniently located in Hackensack, Bergen County New Jersey, is owned and operated by Maureen McCullough. In business since 2000 as a freelance professional and now also an eBay Stores Certified Designer. Our clients receive professional, creative designs put together outside of the typical corporate genre, fully carrying your small business identity through your entire venue ~ website, blog, forum, links management, eBay store and other online venues. Happy to be a woman owned small business.

Part of the problem at the current time is the recession we as a country are facing due to a long drawn out war and presidential candidates who are so busy pecking at each other like birds of prey over a carcass. I rarely voice my political views in public but this whole campaign thing has become downright ridiculous, childish, and is making the United States of America look very foolish. Instead of the presidential candidates focusing on issues that actually concern the people who have the voting power they seem more interested in childish bickering and flinging their egos about, thus contributing in a very negative way to people’s fears about instability for the future in an economy already run down by war and careless leadership. When people get to having to choose between food or fuel that’s the bottom of the barrel.

Ok. End of rant ~ however we as a nation are suffering in a recession. What to do to encourage a little business?

Try installing a bookstore on your existing website! That’s right, you heard me right, a bookstore.

Why?

Sometimes people are just looking for information such as how to’s, patterns, ideas, and the like.

On my retail fashion site, Jewelry Collectibles, I’m constantly being asked by visitor’s for jewelry patterns, how to make something, ideas for making jewelry, whether I know the value of a collectible someone wants to sell, or for crochet or cross stitch patterns.

I’m not in business there for that. The purpose of that website is to sell my creations in jewelry and fiber and to sell my clients antiques and collectibles.

I have no problem with helping others with their information requests, however, there are only so many hours in the day and I need to stick to the parameters of my business plan in order to continue to be successful.

That’s when I turned to my Amazon Associates account for ideas. Then I checked my shopping cart software to see how this could be worked out. It was very easy to build my bookstore on the Amazon website as well as to embed my entire store right into my website so people who might end up buying a book or two would not be disconnected from my main website at any time during their shopping process. This way I don’t risk losing any sales of my own should that same someone decide to shop on my site during the same session.

What is my bookstore about? It merely compliments my website theme and products.

I have books on all different kinds of jewelry making, techniques and ideas for jewelry creations; books that identify antique glass ware and dinner ware; books full of very neat crochet and cross stitch ideas and patterns; and books on dolls and doll clothing.

Creating a themed book store or gadget store (for example, if you are a photographer, you might want to create a store that sells cameras, tripods, books on photography, etc.) for your website takes only a few minutes (honest!) and can only add to the ultimate value of your website. It provides your visitors with a means for info and products that you yourself could never provide in all practicality.

Plus, you get the added advantage of commission in your pocket when something sells, and extra website traffic.

Does it really make sense to say no to that?

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New Jersey Web Design by Jewelry Collectibles Design, conveniently located in Hackensack, Bergen County New Jersey, is owned and operated by Maureen McCullough. In business since 2000 as a freelance professional and now also an eBay Stores Certified Designer. Our clients receive professional, creative designs put together outside of the typical corporate genre, fully carrying your small business identity through your entire venue ~ website, blog, forum, links management, eBay store and other online venues. Happy to be a woman owned small business.

1 ~ ease of use for setup

2 ~ whether or not they allow you to promote your own goods / services

3 ~ and finally for results in terms of website traffic

Marketing one’s own business can be a daunting task, in terms of all the venues out there, which ones to choose, and are they worth your time. Time is money so you don’t want the time you spend on these venues to be a waste, rather, you want to reap rewards in terms of traffic to your site. Traffic is necessary, sales resulting from traffic is even better although never guaranteed but then nothing in life IS guaranteed.

Economic conditions as of late not withstanding, eBay disasters and inflexibility plus their self serving attitude not withstanding, all of us with a website owe it to ourselves to make the absolute best of it that we can. Since social networking and social shopping is the current wave, and I believe one that will stick around, these venues need to be examined and rated for producing results as well as ease of use.

Stay tuned!

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New Jersey Web Design by Jewelry Collectibles Design, conveniently located in Hackensack, Bergen County New Jersey, is owned and operated by Maureen McCullough. In business since 2000 as a freelance professional and now also an eBay Stores Certified Designer. Our clients receive professional, creative designs put together outside of the typical corporate genre, fully carrying your small business identity through your entire venue ~ website, blog, forum, links management, eBay store and other online venues. Happy to be a woman owned small business.

As a website designer who also performs SEO and marketing for my clients, I encourage them to learn to do things for themselves. I explain, I give examples. Many designers do NOT do this because they feel it’s a form of job security, to keep their clients dependent on them, and charge their clients for every little thing.

I disagree. I want my clients to hire me for what they need, of course. I also want them to grow up to be independent website owners who have the ability to handle and maintain as much as they care to and know they can always retain me again for what they can’t do, or don’t want to do, as well as retain me for an hour or two of consulting and then go run with their own ball. I get more recommendations that way too. Works for me and works for them.

So, let’s learn some simple SEO techniques.

The first one is a very simple one and contributes directly to your website SEO with it’s relevancy to page content. It’s your description meta tag.

Virtually all template based shopping carts and CMS (Content Management Systems) such as Joomla have the built in ability to customize your meta tags on any and every page you like.

Many people spend hours trying to figure out an SEO friendly description tag.

Let’s cut to the chase. Assuming you have decent website content and page copy, use it to your benefit. Simply copy and paste one relevant sentence from each page into that page’s description meta tag. Instant relevancy. No cheating. Happy search engine spiders.

Second is your keyword meta tag. You can use a free tool at submitexpress.com which they call their meta tag analyzer. It will tell you instantly all of your keywords and how many times they appear on any given page.

Once in a while you get some skewed or weird results but 99% of the time this tool is right on the money.

If you don’t for whatever reason find this tool altogether useful, here’s another way to accomplish this. Simply use the words in your store categories which usually run down your left hand menu plus keywords that appear repetitively on your page. When entering them in the keyword meta tag area, don’t use any of the words more than once ~ you should come up with 25 unique keywords.

Next is your page title which can also be used in your title meta tag. This just makes common sense.

Here’s a tip to enhance this whole title business. Again, most template based shopping carts and CMS systems give you an area on each page to input your own HTML.

Before writing your page content, first type a relevant page title. This does not have to be the same as your meta tag title, this is simply a descriptive page “opener” which I am calling a page title. It should of course be relevant to the page content, be keyword rich, and should be constructed to “read right” as opposed to reading like and looking like a bunch of keywords.

The trick here is to format this title NOT in a bold big font but by using the header style tags, which are usually available in a drop down box right above where you are entering the text. Each editor is different but usually you’ll find this right above your box where you are entering your page content.

Type out your page title, highlight it with your mouse, then choose the header tag you want. Be advised that header 1 is enormous and they get progressively smaller down to header 6 which is quite wee. Choosing header 3 or 4 is usually a good way to go. Then go ahead and type your page content. This will show up just as normal text.

Search engine spiders read header tags and utilize the text contained between the opening and closing header tags. They do not read bold or strong tags or font sizes when determining keyword relevancy like they do with header tags. If you view your page in code you will see the header tags look like this ~ an opening tag will look like this <h3> then you’ll see your text and then the closing tag </h3>

Well, there you go. Now get to work on your description, keyword and title meta tags and with properly formatting those page titles with header tags.

You should see better search engine results in 2-3 months if you take the time to be diligent about implementing this. Remember, you only get out of your website what you put into it!

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New Jersey Web Design by Jewelry Collectibles Design, conveniently located in Hackensack, Bergen County New Jersey, is owned and operated by Maureen McCullough. In business since 2000 as a freelance professional and now also an eBay Stores Certified Designer. Our clients receive professional, creative designs put together outside of the typical corporate genre, fully carrying your small business identity through your entire venue ~ website, blog, forum, links management, eBay store and other online venues. Happy to be a woman owned small business.

Most people who are looking to have a website designed for them do not know too much of the technical “stuff” that goes on behind the scenes, and look to their web designers for that knowledge. There are other people who again, do not know and really do not want to know. That baffles me. 99% of my clients always plied me with questions, really wanting to know, and they always set the limit on the knowledge when it got to be more than they could comfortably absorb. I had one client in 8 years who really didn’t want to know anything because it was not in within the artistic genre and this client really and truly considered it boring. Well, ok.

However, I’ve had a few recent inquiries where people really didn’t care at all. They just wanted the website to “make them money” ~ well, that’s nice, but you get out of it what you put into it. It’s really not rocket science and if the client is going to spend their hard earned money on hosting, site design, an e-commerce option, etc. one would think they would want to understand, at least basically, how the wheels turn and the axe grinds.

Now some designers are only interested in designing a site. Period end of story. They are not interested in providing the client with a little running SEO and other search engine and marketing advice. That’s fine. As long as they tell the client up front that all they do is design, whereby the client should ask if the design is search engine friendly. That really should not be a problem since most sites today are template based with some degree of SEO friendliness built in, and, if the designer is building from scratch, the client should then find this out because they will either have to hire a search engine specialist to get them off to a running start with the search engines or spend the time learning basic SEO themselves. This I personally would not advise since learning this takes time and it the website is meant to make money fairly soon after launch, it won’t.

On the other hand some designers design the site with SEO and marketing in mind ~ plus explain the basic concepts of these to the client. Better for the client, indeed! If you should find a designer that is willing to wear both hats, that one’s a keeper.

So. Which designer is the right one for you?

That’s your choice, based upon your needs as an online business and how fast you want to advance in the search engines and get sales.

Here’s the basics:

1 ~ You need website hosting, a domain name, and most likely an SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) cert. You need the domain name so people can find your website, you need hosting so your website has somewhere to live, and you need the SSL cert either because it is a requirement for your e-commerce shopping cart OR because you like to reassure your customers that you are who you say you are and that all transactions will be secure.

2 ~ If you are going to use e-commerce shopping cart software, you should carefully research what you’ll need. If you know what your business will need but the choices are too overwhelming and you need advice, this e-commerce design listing might be able to help you.

3 ~ SEO is not really the huge mystery that it’s made out to be. There are a few simple, straightforward techniques that you as a website owner can implement ~ they don’t cost you anything, you just need to know the why’s and what for’s and how’s. SEO oftens works hand in hand with basic website marketing. It’s to your benefit to have someone show you, help set you up and then you can be off and running, competently and knowledgeably on your own, independent. What a good feeling that is!

4 ~ Budget. You need to first set up a budget before you go buying services and hiring a designer. Realistically speaking, if you are going to have a professional looking / feelilng website that looks great, behaves well for your customers, is easy for them to shop on, and is search engine friendly, you need to set aside $1000. You won’t use it all, believe me. However, if you operate this whole thing with a businesslike perspective, you will fill the kitty and you will have money left over. You’ll end up spending around $600-$700 for a great website. Keep the rest of the money in reserve in case you decide to experiment with ads or other marketing. You may decide to add on options after a while, and the reserve will be there. ALWAYS have a budget.

5 ~ Business Plan ~ Always have one of these around too. Set your expectations for your new Internet business realistically, review often, evaluate often , and be ready to be flexible. More on that in another post.

If all else fails and you are just not sure which way to go with a designer, a website, etc. and you are simply not sure what to do, seek professional help with a small business consultant. It could be the best 4 hours of your life ~ you can walk away with a much clearer perspective of what you want and what you want to / are able to / can accomplish.

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New Jersey Web Design by Jewelry Collectibles Design, conveniently located in Hackensack, Bergen County New Jersey, is owned and operated by Maureen McCullough. In business since 2000 as a freelance professional and now also an eBay Stores Certified Designer. Our clients receive professional, creative designs put together outside of the typical corporate genre, fully carrying your small business identity through your entire venue ~ website, blog, forum, links management, eBay store and other online venues. Happy to be a woman owned small business.

What is a virtual assistant you ask? And why on earth would I need one?

A virtual assistant is an individual, or sometimes a group of individuals or a small company, who provide off-site (and sometimes rarely on-site) on-demand office assistance for various projects you may have come up over time.

There are times, events and projects that come up in your business and life where you would not logically need a full time employee because there would not normally be enough work for them. You would also not necessarily want to get a temp from the temp agency for the simple reason of economics and training. Temp fees are high compared to a VA (virtual assistant) and VA’s are experienced already in any number of office procedures, project types and skills ~ whereas you are taking a chance with a temp who may or may not be trained or have enough experience to qualify or quantify the needs of the job that has to get done.

VA’s are most often people who have worked in the corporate world already and have many years of vast experience behind them. They’ve built up a professionalism that a temp usually hasn’t yet developed.

Economically a virtual assistant is much more cost effective. They are hired on demand, for a fee that is agreed upon at the start of the project, they do not incur costs like health insurance, training, etc. and do not go on vacation with you paying for it.

A virtual assistant is an independent contractor, experienced and usually with a nice portfolio following them.

The tasks that a virtual assistant performs are varied ~ spreadsheets, documents, scanning, desktop publishing, information processing, personal assistance, concierge services, website services, communications management and more.

The next time you need help with administrative, web, or technical projects, you might consider hiring a virtual assistant to help you out.

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New Jersey Web Design by Jewelry Collectibles Design, conveniently located in Hackensack, Bergen County New Jersey, is owned and operated by Maureen McCullough. In business since 2000 as a freelance professional and now also an eBay Stores Certified Designer. Our clients receive professional, creative designs put together outside of the typical corporate genre, fully carrying your small business identity through your entire venue ~ website, blog, forum, links management, eBay store and other online venues. Happy to be a woman owned small business.

It’s a good question and makes perfect sense to want to know how best to do this for the health and well being of your jewelry business.

Read on…………….

Did you know that Top 100 Lists help your website in more than one way?

A Top 100 list, if hosted on your dot com, helps boost your overall traffic because it is treated as a part of your website, which it is. So for those of you concerned about whether it’s artificial inflation of traffic, it’s not.

Your Top 100 list can be efficiently used as your link exchange. This is a phenomenal idea because a top 100 is automated, meaning, you get to approve all applications, thereby culling non suitable sites immediately, and, you can set the parameters for inactive sites. This way you are assured of spammers falling off after X amount of days, and you are assured of quality websites becoming members.

What this means is you determine who joins and who doesn’t. The more quality websites that join, the better for you because they are quality outbound and inbound links. Outbound because you are linking to them, and inbound because they have to place your member button on their site in order to receive votes and stay active. That member button on their site is the all important inbound link to you.

Finish reading this article here.

And, another very helpful article……………..

People ask me all the time since there is SO much competition on the Internet with all types of jewelry, what works as far as effectively marketing your website and bringing in the traffic?

Here are a few proven tips below:

1 ~ Write in your jewelry blog every day at best, every two or three days worst case scenario. Include a number of creative links back to your website and your products, in relevance to your blog post. Writing in your blog is not something that can be ignored, nor is it to be considered an option. It is necessary to the life and health of your website and to the promotion of your products. Nor is it a pain in the A$$ ~ if it is, then your business must not be worth it. With the effective use of providing constant quality content to your blog and maximizing the performance of your RSS feed, the “word” gets out about you and what you do 10 times faster than just hoping the search engines will pick up your website.

Find out the rest of these proven, effective tips here.

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New Jersey Web Design by Jewelry Collectibles Design, conveniently located in Hackensack, Bergen County New Jersey, is owned and operated by Maureen McCullough. In business since 2000 as a freelance professional and now also an eBay Stores Certified Designer. Our clients receive professional, creative designs put together outside of the typical corporate genre, fully carrying your small business identity through your entire venue ~ website, blog, forum, links management, eBay store and other online venues. Happy to be a woman owned small business.

As a jewelry artist myself, I’ve come up with a relatively painless way for you to promote your website, free, no strings attached, and fun too.

I’ve started a jewelry forum that has been created EXCLUSIVELY for marketing and networking. Not too much shop talk, although I’ve set aside one topic area for questions / answers / ponderings on this subject. The rest of the forum is devoted to you being able to introduce yourselves, market your goods and your venues, and once a week put up something that you want to sell in our Bohemian Marketplace.

While I request that no one go overboard with the posting and kindly don’t take gross advantage, I want you to promote, market and network as much as practical.

SPAMMING is not allowed. As the forum rules state, spammers are booted without warning because they have already been warned in the forum rules section.

You can list your website, eBay store, blog, other auction venues, social networking and social shopping venues. You can show off pictures of your jewelry in your posts, with simply a discrete link back to the venue where it currently resides.

Once we get enough members, we’ll be holding a contest for Artist of the Month, with an interview for that artist in our small business blog.

It’s a new forum, like brand-new, so it’s still a bit bare but we’ll get members and be more able to network as time goes on.

The forum RSS feed has already been burned at Feedburner and already has subscribers.

The benefits to this are several. As the forum grows, the inbound and outbound links to your sites and shops helps you in the search engines, and the RSS feeds from the forum help get the word out about your businesses all the faster because we market them aggressively, plus, this forum is linked to two sister forums as well.

So, take advantage of this free marketing and promotion for you business and jump in and join us today at The Jewelry Forum!!

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New Jersey Web Design by Jewelry Collectibles Design, conveniently located in Hackensack, Bergen County New Jersey, is owned and operated by Maureen McCullough. In business since 2000 as a freelance professional and now also an eBay Stores Certified Designer. Our clients receive professional, creative designs put together outside of the typical corporate genre, fully carrying your small bus