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Rick Steves: How I Became A Successful Travel Writer

Barbra — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 18:24:46 +0000

Travel writer Rick Steves talks about his business philosophy and how he became successful.

How to Get More Exposure for Your Free Report

Barbra — Sun, 28 Feb 2010 15:46:17 +0000

Get more exposure for your free reports

Are you getting the most from your free reports? Or are they sitting in a corner of your website collecting virtual dust? To get more exposure for your reports, be sure to get listed in the “free stuff” directories on the web. If your report has real value, you can get listed on these directories and see a steady stream of new visitors to your web site. Even better, other sites will pick up your report from the premier freebie sites and you will get even more exposure. Here are some of the top freebie sites:
TotallyFreeStuff.com
TheFreeSite.com
Free-Stuff.com

Another way to get more exposure for your reports is to offer your freebie through newsletter directories. Let other newsletter editors know about your freebie. If they like it, they will offer it to their own newsletter subscribers. Imagine what will happen when 100 editors with 1,000,000 total subscribers all send out an announcement about your report.

What’s the value of a free report? It’s simple: at the start of your relationship with prospective customers, they are much more open to reading a report than they are to receiving a phone call from you (people are understandably wary of leaving themselves open to a full-on sales pitch).

Mark Satterfield from Gentle Rain Marketing stresses that your free report should build credibility for you and move the prospective client forward to the next step in the relationship building process. If a reader puts down the report without taking that next step, then your report hasn’t completely done its job.

So we want to build credibility and move the process forward. Quite an agenda for a free report, but it’s one that you can accomplish if you follow the sequence of steps outlined in Satterfield’s article How to Write a Free Report That Actually Gets Read.

Increase Your Backlinks with DoFollow Sites

Barbra — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 08:03:55 +0000

Learn more about DoFollow, where you can get listed on DoFollow sites, and what it means to you as a webmaster and link builder. via DoFollow: Increase Your Backlinks. Related posts:8 Ways to Increase Google Page RankingBest Online Video SitesHow to Leverage Your Profile on Social Networking Sites Related posts:

Speed Up Firefox With These Tweaks

Barbra — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 03:20:27 +0000

Firefox is the browser for any occasion. As a platform for developers it has shown that one browser can really be for everyone. Whether music is your thing, SEO is your calling or Photos are your soup de jour, Firefox can be sculpted to be the perfect web browser using its rich library of plugins and extensions. This guide will show you how to squeeze the most juice out of your Firefox experience from the bottom up.

via How To Use Firefox | How To Split An Atom.

How to make a simple DVD disc from video recordings

Barbra — Sun, 06 Dec 2009 21:14:49 +0000

In order to make a simple DVD from the recordings on your camera, follow these three steps:

Step 1. Check to make sure you have a DVD burner and software that will allow you to make a DVD disc.

What is a DVD burner? It’s part of your computer – an optical disc recorder that records video onto blank DVD discs (you know the CD player in your computer box? A DVD burner looks like it, and is usually located below the CD player) . Most newer computers come DVD burners already installed.

What is DVD burning software? DVD software is a computer program that tells your DVD burner how to make the DVD.

Where do I get DVD burning software? First check in the box that came with your camcorder (video camera). Usually there is software on a disk that goes along with your camcorder. If you can’t locate this software, there are many simple DVD burning software programs you can download onto your computer. My favorite simple DVD making tool is the free one at DVDFlick.net . Another good free site is sourceforge.net which is a trusted site in open source project hosting. Just search for “DVD Author” or “DVD burner” when you get there.

Step 2. Transfer the video from your camera to your computer, using the Firewire or USB connections provided with your camera (check your camcorder instruction booklet for details).

Step 3. After you have the video transferred to your computer, use your DVD burning software to create a DVD.

Interview with Nikki Romero from Pepper Virtual Assistants

Barbra — Thu, 03 Dec 2009 03:27:25 +0000

Nikki Romero

Nikki, tell us about your company…

Pepper Virtual Assistant is a business process outsourcing company that was launched early this year. Our mother company, Aspac Advertising, is an ad agency in the Philippines that’s been around since 1975.

Our idea is to provide an all-around virtual assistant, who is not only capable in administrative tasks, but also in other areas, like marketing and customer support. For other projects like web design and development, the our virtual assistants are backed up by a full digital team. This way, they can attend to all of the business and personal needs of their clients. This will inevitably make them the client’s go-to virtual assistant and partner in success.

We’d like to be a virtual Pepper Potts and help make the Philippines the first choice in virtual assistance and outsourcing.

Who or what is Pepper Potts?

Pepper Potts is a fictional character – the personal assistant of IronMan. She was played by Gwyneth Paltrow in the movie. If you watch the movie, you’ll find that she’s the ever reliable and efficient assistant. And that’s what we aim to be!

How did you get involved with Neelima Pratap’s non-profit organization?

I saw your tweet looking for free virtual assistant services for a non-profit organization. And I thought, what a great and unique way to help! I responded and the rest is history.

Why did you choose to donate services?

I know that many small non-profits operate on a shoestring, and they could do so much more good in the world if they had some admistrative help. Grace Educational Trust provides education for slum children in India, which really fits with our values.

Doing our social contribution is really part of my long-term plan for Pepper. It just came sooner than expected, albeit in the form of virtual assistant (VA) services. Since it’s something that we can easily do now, I took the opportunity to provide pro bono virtual assistant work for Grace Educational Trust. I strongly believe that if you do good, it will return tenfold. Good karma, so to speak.

The karma’s already working I hear.

Yes! A bonus is the additional promotions you’ve done for us, like the word-of-mouth recommendations and the testimonial video that Neelima did.

What VA services does your company offer?

We offer general office and administrative support, customer service, marketing, web design/development and creative services such as graphic design. For work that is outsourced to our teams, our VAs will also act as project managers.

How might a home business make best use of your services?

There are several ways we can help small businesses:

1.       We can help manage emails and filter them, so that only the
urgent ones will be forwarded to you. We take care of the rest and respond in your behalf.
2.       We can help with admin work, such as splicing audio recordings,
updating or posting information on your website, organizing and fixing your documents.
3.       We can help manage your calendar and appointments.
4.       We can make and accept calls for you.
5.       We can do research for you and compile them.
6.       We can help manage your social media accounts.
7.       And many more!

It’s normally the daily administrative tasks that eat up a lot of time. While these may not be big projects or matters of life and death, they still need to be done so that your business will function well. We can take this load off you so that you can focus on more important aspects of your business, like marketing and growing it.

Ready for the
Pepper Virtual Assistant
Experience?

(L)earning From an Ebook Launch

Barbra — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 19:57:57 +0000

In an article today titled $72,000 in E-Books in a Week – 8 Lessons I Learned, Darren Rowse of Problogger points out that launching a new e-book is time-consuming, especially from the customer service end of things…

the number of emails that I’ve personally replied to this week must have been quite a few hundred. The weight of customer service type queries that come in when doing a launch is massive.

People whose computers crash during downloads, problems with credit cards, complaints about PayPal, people with old versions of Adobe Reader that mean they can’t read the PDF, people who fail to see that you’re selling an E-Book not a hard cover book (despite you slapping it all over your sales page)….. etc

This is just the territory that comes with this type of launch and if I were smart I’d probably have outsourced it – but it was good to get my head across it all as it taught me a lot.

How to make Gmail your default mail application

Barbra — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 07:16:31 +0000

You can designate Gmail as your default mailto handler. This means that when you click on any hyperlinked email address, a Gmail compose window will open so you can send a message to that address from Gmail.

To do so in Windows:

Download the Gmail Notifier.
Right-click the Notifier icon in your system tray, and select Options.
Check the box next to Use Gmail for internet mailto: links.
Click OK.

If you decide later that you don’t want to use Gmail as your default email application, simply uncheck the box.

Pamela Akop: Self-Employed Independent Insurance Broker

Barbra — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 00:47:31 +0000

Pamela Akop

by guest writer Mark Kokocki

When it comes to healthcare coverage, as with most things, people want to choose what is right for them and their needs. That’s what an Independent Insurance Broker like Pamela Akop specializes in.

“I love what I do”

Pamela Akop ventured out on her own with Pamela & Associates in 2007. Before that she spent over 20 years working with major insurance companies UNUM and ManuLife Financial, as well as brokerage firms.

As an independent Insurance Broker, Pamela’s client base ranges from 2 to 400 group members in both the non-profits & for profit sectors. “Working for myself gives me the opportunity to choose who I will work with. If I don’t feel right about a person’s energy, I do not work with them.”

“Another benefit of working for myself is the freedom to offer products and services the larger companies do not. I can give my clients my undivided attention; I offer them products that I truly believe in that will fit the employer and employee needs.”

Pamela has also partnered with the Benefits Education Center (BEC) to help clients. “Daniel from BEC calls me when he has an individual with a disability with COBRA or HIPAA questions or they are looking for insurance.” Always an adventure, giving back to the community can mean providing a client with a dental plan, allowing them more money for food and necessities and by turning a negative into a positive when being denied for coverage is the goal in order for someone to get the surgery the client needs.

It’s easy to get distracted working from home

“My family is pulling at me from all directions. I love my family and yet, I have business to conduct. Don’t take me wrong, I do take the time to answer my sister’s questions, or go to the beach with daughter, have lunch with my son and listen to my husband. It’s not all about work, it’s about family and friends. I have more time to enjoy life.”

Pamela also makes time for her own interests by volunteering for Habitat for Humanity, being a member of the National Association of Female Executives, working towards both a Long Term Care Certification and a Human Resources Certificate and is currently in training to run her first marathon.

“It’s about choice, your choice.”

Pamela’s one piece of wisdom regarding National Healthcare and choice is “Currently, if you are employed with health coverage you may have a choice between an HMO and PPO plan. But in actuality, you chose what your employer has chosen for you. You did not choose the carrier. National Healthcare allows you to become able to choose your carrier and also the plan.”

Choosing to embrace working from home has been surprising adventure that is summed up simply as, “I am happy, extremely happy.” An old friend used to say, working with happy people is always better for your health. In Pamela’s case, I’d agree.

About the author: Mark Kokocki is a life & (in) business coach plus personal trainer and owner of dropdeadhappy.com working with people and businesses who are ready to be their best.

GoDaddy Now Registers .ca Domain Names

Barbra — Fri, 13 Nov 2009 23:39:21 +0000

For years I’ve been paying anywhere from $30 to $50 a year to register my www.sundquist.ca domain name. This is because there have been only a few domain registers that handle the .ca (Canada) extension.

I’m pleased to note that GoDaddy.com – where I have all my other domains registered – now registers .ca domains for $12.99 a year. Since it’s renewal time for sundquist.ca I decided to transfer it over to GoDaddy and save some money.

To transfer a .ca domain, you must approve the transfer through your Canadian Internet Registration Authority (CIRA) registrant account. The domain remains in your CIRA registrant account after the transfer, but you can manage it through our interface.

Domain Transfer Process for .ca

1. Purchase a transfer for your .ca domain.

2. We submit a request to CIRA.

3. CIRA sends an email message to the Administrative Contact listed in your CIRA registrant account to approve the transfer. The contact must approve the transfer before CIRA transfers the domain to us.

4. After the Administrative Contact approves the transfer, the domain becomes active in your account. You can manage it through the .ca Preset Profile. For more information, see Viewing Your .ca Domains.

Sounds pretty easy!