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Denise Hall Publisher/Editor denise@home-business-on-a-budget.com http://www.Home-Business-on-a-Budget.com Home Business on a Budget Newsletter is a bi-weekly publication. My mission is to help you succeed in your home business without spending an arm and a leg. Each issue contains useful tips, information and articles. Good luck in your business ventures! Translate this newsletter to another language: http://world.altavista.com/ Do you have a friend who would like this newsletter? By all means, pass it on please. The more, the merrier, as I always say! 
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My 2 Cents Worth - Editor's Chit-Chat
Hi All! Welcome to another Sunday with yours truly and thanks so much for letting me be a small part of your day. :~) If you're new today, a warm welcome to you. I hope you'll enjoy the issue. Happy Mother's Day to all the mom's out there! I hope you've got big family plans for today and have a wonderful day. I'm not sure yet what my day entails. My kids won't tell me much, just that they're taking me out to dinner. But, hey, anytime I don't have to cook and do dishes, I'm happy. :) I plan to put my son to work today, although he doesn't know it yet. LOL I did a bunch of spring cleaning yesterday, but he wasn't here to do the heavy work, so he gets to move furniture today. I think I'll send him out to rake the yard, too. After all, it is Mother's Day and I shouldn't have to work. ;) Actually, he gets to do a lot of stuff for me on his days off this week, too, but he doesn't know that yet either. The yard will need to be mowed by then, the garage needs to be cleaned, and the deck has to be re-stained. I figure since I don't charge him rent, he can pay up this way. LOL My daughter and son-in-law are coming for Memorial Day weekend, so even though the next issue of the newsletter is scheduled for May 25th, I won't be publishing it until they're gone, probably on the 26th or 27th. There are some great articles below, so don't miss anything. I'm off to enjoy my day! :) I'll see you here in two weeks. Until then, be profitable! Denise
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Feature Article
5 Costly Viral Ebook Mistakes (Or, How To Make Viral Ebooks Work For You) By Jimmy D. Brown If I had only known, I wouldn’t have made these mistakes. But I did. For such a small word, "if" sure does cause a lot of problems, doesn’t it? "If I had not turned off the alarm clock, I wouldn’t have overslept." "If I had paid attention to what my wife said, I would have not shrunk my 100% cotton shirt three sizes too small." "If I would have taken the time to fuel up, my car wouldn’t have run out of gas out here in the middle of nowhere." "If I had charged up the battery on my mobile phone, then I would be able to call AAA to bring me some gas out here in the middle of nowhere!" See what I mean? "If" is such a tiny word. But it’s like dynamite. It packs a lot of punch. For me, as I teach (and learn myself!) about viral eBooks, the phrase is this: "If I had only known, I wouldn’t have made these mistakes." You see, I made MANY costly mistakes in my early viral eBooks. Mistakes that are *literally* costing me thousands of dollars in profits right now. And there is nothing I can do to change them. Once you set a viral eBook into motion, it’s impossible to get it back and make corrections to things ya screwed up on. Man, if I could go back into time and change some things. I have learned the hard way some things you DON’T want to do with viral ebooks. That’s what we’re going to take a look at here. I’ve made ‘em all. You don’t have to. Don’t do this... 1. Never use any link inside the content that you can’t control. I learned the hard way that you should always use redirect links from your own domain when putting any kind of link inside your ebook. For example: most people insert their affiliate link for an affiliate offer inside the ebook that they have put together. The one that was given to them by the affiliate program owner. Instead, you want to link to a page at your site that refreshes and redirects the visitor to your assigned affiliate link. Something like this... http://www.yourdomain.com/brainstorm.html This is important so you can CHANGE the link anytime you want to in the future. For example: If I decided to no longer use ClickBank to handle my affiliate program and went with a different affiliate tracking link, what happens to the thousands of copies of your viral eBook that are in place with that old affiliate link in there? They become obsolete, unusable and unprofitable. Or, suppose you are linking to a dating service that goes out of business? What now? Your links are toast. They are worthless to you. With a redirect link you can easily adjust the target page and send the traffic to a different dating service, or to a page at your site. With a redirect link the changes are made at YOUR SITE, which you remain in control of regardless of what happens with the products and services that you linked to. Even if you change hosts or servers, you still remain in control. You don't have to make changes to all of those eBooks -- which would be impossible to do -- you simply make a 2 minute change at your site. I can’t tell you how many dead links are in some of my earlier ebooks that continue to give me headaches as people email me saying, "Jimmy, you’ve got a dead link here ... can you give the correct link?" It creates a lot of extra work in answering emails and certainly is throwing away potential profit for the countless people who never bother to ask for an updated link. So, never use any link inside the content that you can’t control. Always use redirect links. 2. Another thing is you want to avoid using dated information by providing too specific details. Affiliate program A may not be offering that free 30 day trial offer very much longer. The price for admission to that special site may not always be $29.95. That site that was "just released last week" may have become an all-time classic by the time Bob reads your viral ebook two years after it was released. You want to make certain that you stay away from information that is too specific that can easily become irrelevant. Again, I get emails all the time griping about inconsistent prices because I put a price for the Profits Vault membership into one of my early viral ebooks and that price is no longer valid. Hasn’t been for almost two years. I’ve even gotten ugly emails accusing me of fraud and false advertising, with threats to turn me in to the attorney general and all kinds of nonsense. So, be careful that you don’t date your viral ebook if you can avoid it. 3. Another no-no is to never put any information into your ebook that you don’t want all over the world. These things travel folks and they can be global in a matter of days and certainly over time you can easily have a worldwide audience. I made the mistake of putting my cell phone number in one of my earlier ebooks because everyone claimed that if I didn’t have my contact information in there, no one would buy from me... which is nonsense I might add. Anyway, I started getting all kinds of calls at all hours of the day. What was 3:00 in the afternoon in the Philippines was 3:00 in the morning where I live. So, it was a nuisance. Kind of a funny story came out of it. I disconnected that number, of course, and got a new one. That was almost 2 years ago. Well, about a month or so ago I had a lady email me and she was hopping mad. Apparently, she had ordered a cellular phone and got my old number... and folks were still calling! She told me that she was getting calls from England and all over looking for me and they were running her cellular bill up with charges. She wanted me to do something about it and all I could do was tell her "I’m sorry, there’s nothing I can do" With viral marketing, it’s pretty much unstoppable, which is why it is so effective. It keeps spreading and it’s hard to stop the growth once it gets going. So, never put anything into your ebook that you don’t want the world to know and use. 4. Another thing is this ... always have your carriers do the branding. You want to automate the process as much as possible. Again, I learned the hard way. Early on, before there were all of these branding tools available, I hand customized each ebook. And as they began to spread, the customization requests grew to be way too much for me to handle. I was spending most of my day putting together these customized viral ebooks for each new person that requested a copy. That had to change and so now I use branding tools and branding instructions. I give them to anyone who wants to customize the ebook and I let THEM do the work. Keeps me out of the loop completely. So, unless you have some specific reason to do it yourself, place that responsibility onto the ones who want to distribute the viral ebooks. 5. One more thing I want to share. Always launch new browser windows with your links in your ebooks. Whenever you link to a site within your viral eBook content, always remember to code that link to launch a new browser window when the reader clicks on it. I learned this the hard way. There are many scripts involved in the order-taking process at online credit card processing sites. And many of those have caused glitches in the eBook due to the software the eBook was created with and it crashes the eBook, making it impossible to order. So, what happens is this. You do your job well. The content is great. You've got a hungry customer waiting to buy. They click on a recommended product link. They arrive at the site still inside your eBook window. They click on the order link and the entire thing shuts down. I mean completely shuts down the ebook and website altogether. And, in some cases, it even crashes the computer. You just lost a customer because two sets of code didn't like each other. That has happened to me on MANY different occasions in some of my early ebooks. Now, all of my links launch new browser windows OUTSIDE of the ebook if you click on a link inside the ebook. All you need to do is insert a simple line of code into your links inside the eBook. The code looks like this... Target="Resource Window" Now when someone clicks on your link, a new browser window will launch outside of the eBook itself before taking them to the website. Now, you're safe. EVERY link in your eBook should have this code. You can thank me later. (NOTE: IF you are using a PDF maker for your ebooks, you should be fine with your links.) Viral eBooks are tremendous tools. But, there are also some pitfalls associated with them. I’ve just shared five of the mistakes that I have made. There is just no way of measuring how much profit I have lost over the years due to those errors. There wasn’t a manual available to tell me how to do it. History hadn’t really been recorded at that time to tell me what to stay away from and what to make sure I did in order to protect myself from problems. So, you’re getting something that I didn’t have. Aren’t ya happy? In all seriousness, don’t make the mistakes that I made. History doesn’t need to repeat itself on this one. Want to learn a NEW viral ebook strategy that isn't outdated and overused? Check out "How To Get Free Traffic With PLR Reports " by clicking here. You'll learn a great way to get free traffic to any site you choose with free "private label rights" reports.
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Grins 'n Giggles
A woman took her dog to the vet. She said, "I think my dog is dead." The doctor laid the dog on the table then reached down and took a cat out of a box. The cat walked all over the dog and the dog didn't move. "Yes, your dog is dead," says the doctor. "How much do I owe you?" the lady asks. "$345," says the doctor. "$345!!?" the lady asks. "Yes. $45 for the office visit and $300 for the cat scan."
Expert Advice
Each week I'll publish some tips or advice. I'll try to cover every subject I can think of, but if you have any suggestions, please send them to me at the e-mail address listed below. Finding and Marketing to Hot Niches This is a question that comes up all the time... "How do I zero in on a truly profitable niche?" There are ways to do research online that will show you where people "hang out" and give you ideas on what they would want to buy if it was offered to them. Basically you need to locate "hot" topics of interest. You can do this by searching online forums, groups and popular social networking sites. In order to find out what they might be interested in buying, you’ll need to read their questions and comments. This will give you ideas of what they’re looking for. This is a pretty general answer because the step-by-step details are too much to write here. However, that’s exactly what I did when I created my product Hot, Hungry Markets Revealed! I don’t want this to sound like an ad, but Hot, Hungry Markets Revealed! will show you exactly where to find hot markets, how to figure out if the niche is profitable enough to be worth your time and effort, and how to market your products to the niches you find. Here’s a great idea to make some quick money from the "hot topics" you locate at forums or other websites... Write a report (or use a product with Private Label Rights) that answers the questions the forum or group members have. Then simply put a link to your report in your signature file. (Be sure to use an enticing line of text so people will click your link.) Contribute some value to the conversation that’s going on about that topic daily so your signature appears frequently and you’ll start getting traffic and sales in no time. Send your suggestions or questions for the experts: mailto:denise@home-business-on-a-budget.com?subject=ExpertAdvice
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It's Your Dime - Reader's Feedback
Hey Denise, I love the new "free stuff" layout. Its true what they say, pictures really are an attention grabber :-) Dennis Hi Denise, Thank you very much for your latest newsletter which I found illuminating and informative as always. However, I'm rather doubtful about one of the Top 10 Reasons to Use Squidoo to Drive Traffic, namely... "8. Easily build and grow an opt-in list You've heard it before – the money's in the list. By adding an opt-in form to your lens and building a targeted opt-in list you can later follow up and send additional offers." This was certainly the case until the good folk at Squidoo disallowed the use of iframes due to gross spam abuse. At the moment, the standard way of implementing an opt-in form is to use a link which, when clicked, leads the lens visitor to an external page. This action, as you will agree, is undesirable. The minute someone clicks away from our page, we have lost them. There's no guarantee they'll be back to the lens. We want to keep our reader on our lens so they can read the rest of what we have on offer. So how do we get a lens visitor to sign up and get them to read the rest of our masterpiece? A delightfully convincing approach is the subject of my lens here: http://www.squidoo.com/in-transit-opt-in I'd be grateful if you could check it out and let me what you think. To your continued success, With warmest regards, John Note: You're correct about the i-frames, John, and I should have been more specific in my article. I usually add my squeeze page link to the Squidoo lenses where I'm building a list. Great article about squidoo lenses, Denise. Everyone that is interested at all in Internet Marketing or selling anything on-line or offline, should hop on the squidoo bandwagon. As Seth Godin says: Everyone is an expert about something. The fact that creating a squidoo lens is easy, free and you can get paid for it, makes this a complete no brainer. On top of that there is expert help and advice at Squidoo U. I always urge my readers to create a squidoo lens. Its just good solid advice. It's one of the easiest things you can do to take your first step. Or if you are an experienced marketer, its a great way to solidify your position. Albert Grande http://grandepublishing.com/sq.htm http://pizzatherapy.com Your contributions here. E-mail your comments, profiles, or feedback: denise@home-business-on-a-budget.com?subject=Here'sMyDime
Computer Security Tips
Searching The Web by Syd Tash © 2008 All Rights Reserved It can be argued that the two main functions of the Internet for most people are email and finding information. The first is fairly straightforward; you sign up for an email account with your ISP or with a Web-based client such as Yahoo, Hotmail (Windows Live) or Gmail. The second can make you crazy and waste a lot of time. Most human knowledge and information now seems to be on the Web. Searching for it is easy. But finding exactly what you are looking for can be quite a challenge. Here are a few tips that should help. But first, as you conduct your searches and visit Web sites, pay careful attention to any popup boxes or alerts you may receive. If you download something, proceed carefully. Make sure you are actually downloading the software that you want. It is easy to be lured into clicking on the “wrong” link. Read every End User License Agreement (EULA) from, well, end to end! If it says something like "The publisher may include third party software", then your download may include adware or spyware, or worse. Hit that Cancel or Delete button quick. Or at least scan your computer with all your security programs right after the download. Now let's get to searching. You probably use Google almost automatically for all your searches. Try other search engines or directories occasionally, and you may get different, hopefully better results. You may know that you need to make your search as specific as possible. Try putting quotation marks around the search terms. For example, if you search on "early Web development" without quotes, you will get all sorts of results containing the words early, and Web, and development. Not exactly what you had in mind. But if you search with the quotes, you will only get results containing all three words, in the order you wrote them. Somewhat better. Another lesser-known trick is to use inurl. Say you want to find all the URLs that contain the word security. Just enter this in Google: inurl:security Some Web sites are so big, you could get lost inside them for days. Your spouse may have to send out a search party to find you! To avoid this, use the search within feature. The syntax is site:URL "keywords". For example, if you want to rummage around on Microsoft's site for information on Windows 98, enter this: site:http://www.microsoft.com "Windows 98" And if you actually have Windows 98 on your computer, it is time to upgrade. Want to keep others from seeing where you have wandered and searched on the Net? Start by deleting your tracks in Internet Explorer. Click Tools, Internet Options, General tab. Click Delete Cookies, Delete Files and Clear History. In Firefox, click Tools, Options, Privacy. You can also search for search engines (search+engines) or for Google or Yahoo Cheat Sheets for a lot more tricks. Be patient and have fun! ------------- Syd Tash is a noted computer security consultant and author of How to Protect Your Computer Online – A Complete Guide. He has been keeping Web surfers safe and secure since the last century. Find out how he does it; get all the latest security news, tips and fixes right here: => http://MyPCSecurityBlog.com
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Editor's Closing Comments
I hope you've enjoyed today's issue of Home Business on a Budget. I always welcome reader's feedback, comments and suggestions. Please feel free to e-mail me if you ever have any questions that I can help you with. I am always willing to help in any way I can. I also accept guest articles for publication. Please send them to the e-mail listed below with "article" in the subject line. Denise Hall Publisher/Editor Contact me: denise@home-business-on-a-budget.com Website: http://www.Home-Business-on-a-Budget.com
LEGAL STUFF
I accept no responsibility whatsoever for the content, profitability or legality of any published articles or advertisements contained within Home Business on a Budget Newsletter. And, although all of the articles have been selected for their content, the publishing of such articles within this newsletter does not constitute a recommendation of the products or services mentioned or advertised within those articles. Be responsible! Always do your own Due Diligence before responding to any offer. I respect the privacy of my readers. I will never supply or sell your personal information to any Third Party!
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