Christmas 2006
Never be afraid to try something new. Remember, amateurs built the Ark. Professionals built the Titanic. -Anonymous
In this issue:
Greetings from the editor and
New Program Alert
Job Or Work From Home?
Humour
Feature Articles
Free Stuff
Search the Web from here
Greetings From London
Hello and welcome to Networkers' Calendar. My best wishes to you for a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year.
We are having the first significant frosts of this winter in London. Much less inconvenient than snow but just as pretty to look at anytime the mist lifts! Doesn't seem to be much chance of a real white Christmas in London this year and that suits me very well. After North London got hit by a small tornado a couple of weeks ago, some quiet weather is quite acceptable.
December is usually the quietest time of year online and this year is no exception. It is a good time for making changes to websites, investigating new opportunities and reading all those articles you bookmarked but never had time to look at. There has not been much new stuff around that has seemed particularly good. There have been plenty of seasonal sale offers but none that were worth getting excited about. There has also been an outbreak of "the death of" type reports as people desperately try to cash in on the stir created by the original "death of Adsense" report. Afraid the verdict is seen one, seen 'em all: the quality of the writing varies (actually some are very well written) but they are just vehicles for offering high priced products.
I have been taking advantage of the quiet period to spend time doing some genealogy research. I started with a 14 day trial offer. I didn't realise beforehand that I would be getting access to the very same software used on the TV show "Who Do You Think You Are", the membership includes unlimited searches and, as I was searching for ancestors with very common names, that made it a very good deal. Tracing my family tree has been in my mind for some years but, after seeing the special trial offer, I plunged in. It is every bit as fascinating as I had expected and I'm going to keep digging into the past. I have already discovered facts I thought would remain a mystery forever. I can personally recommend Ancestry.co.uk for family tree building.
This is a good time to search out and study new opportunities in readiness for the January boom when everyone surfaces from the winter holidays an is ready for something new. Although it is not new, Empowerism has recently undergone some very positive changes. It is good to be able to recommend a long standing program that has been running long enough to prove its stability. Empowerism is part of the Plug-In Profit Site opportunity. The changes to Empowerism have reinforced my belief that the Plug-In Profit Site has now taken on a new lease of life following the recent changes. I stopped promoting the Plug-In Profit Site for a while due to some changes which made it too expensive for many people. With the changes to Empowerism and the replacement of Success University with Clickbank the Plug-In Profit Site is once again a great place for Internet newcomers to start their online career. The Plug-In Profit Site is where I started, I learnt a lot from it and am very glad to be actively promoting it once again.
This is a good time to mention Dotcomology download a free copy with my compliments and learn the science of making money online.
The Difference Between A Job And A Work From Home Opportunity
This was posted in a previous issue and is now going to be retained as a permanent feature.
I have received a few emails from people who don't understand why I warn them that they should never pay to get a job but still promote programs that require a fee. This is something I always emphasise but people often seem to take in half the advice and overlook the rest.
The point is that there is a difference between a "job" and a work at home opportunity or home business. If someone requires a registration or admin fee to employ you, don't pay it. If someone requires payment for an ebook or an online training course for a work at home program, that is completely different: they are selling you something to help you to work on a self-employed basis, they are not employing you.
A job involves an employer, an employee, a contract of employment, a salary, paid holidays and sick leave. A boss tells you what to do, you do it and the boss pays you. If you have a home business, you are the boss, you decide what to do and you keep all the profits. A work at home opportunity is similar. If you buy into a franchise, purchase an ebook or subscribe to a training course, these are all legitimate expenses (and tax deductible).
If somebody has developed a system of working that makes money and is prepared to teach it to you, it is perfectly reasonable that they should expect to get paid for this service. Equally, if somebody has written an ebook with advice on working at home or running a home business, they are entitled to expect people to pay for the book - if you go to a bookshop, you don't start yelling "scam" when the cashier asks you to pay before you take the book home to read!
It is a good thing that people are suspicious, a bit of cynicism is healthy. Strangely, however, it often seems that the people who show the greatest suspicion of legitimate work from home opportunities are the first ones to fall for the "get rich quick" or "we do all the work so you don't have to" type of offers. Want to know a secret? - If you want to make money, you have to work for it. That's as true on the Internet as well as offline. Please don't spread this around, it's just between us, if it gets out that I've revealed this, the get rich quick mob are likely to come looking for me.
I mentioned Search Estate in the last issue and decided to repeat the mention here. Free resources are always worth mentioning. Search Estate is a brilliant viral free advertising resource, as close to set and forget as you could wish - that's why I kind of forgot about it. You can see my free website here. I have customised it a bit but not very much. There is no limit to the extent to which you can customise these sites. It is a very useful way to get a free website.
As usual, my top income program was SFI. There are some changes taking effect in January 2007 which will improve the commission structure and make it easier to earn money with SFI. The second was a surprise new entry Type-At-Home which pushed Survey Income System down to third place.
Big Daddy is growing ever bigger. If you have a website and want some traffic, check out Big Daddy.
In previous issues I have mentioned Submit YOUR Article and thought I'd give it another mention today in case you missed it before. I have been using this service myself for over a year and have been 100% satisfied with it .
Enough from me. I hope you will enjoy the rest of this month's Networkers Calendar, there are two articles this month. The first one contains a serious warning about a nasty program whose owners are out to get your money. Keep safe and have a happy Christmas. I'll be back in a month or so (promise not to be so long with the next issue) with some more Internet good stuff.
Don't forget to check out Free Blog Advertising before you go.
A Politically Correct Holiday Greeting
Best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially
responsible, low stress, non-addictive, gender-neutral, winter
solstice holiday, practiced within the most joyous traditions of
the religious persuasion of your choice , but with respect for
the religious persuasion of others who choose to practice their
own religion as well as those who choose not to practice a
religion at all; plus... A fiscally successful, personally
fulfilling, and medically uncomplicated recognition of the
generally accepted calendar year 2007, but not without due respect
for the calendars of choice of other cultures whose contributions
have helped make our society great, without regard to the race,
creed color, religious, or sexual preferences of the wishes.
Disclaimer: This greeting is subject to clarification or with-
drawal. It implies no promise by the wisher to actually implement
any of the wishes for her/himself or others and no responsibility
for any unintended emotional stress these greetings may bring to
those not caught up in the holiday spirit.
Remembering Why Christmas Is Celebrated
A woman was out Christmas shopping with her two children. After
many hours of looking at row after row of toys and everything else
imaginable, and hearing both her children asking for everything
they saw on those many shelves, this woman finally made it out of
the store and to the elevator with her two kids.
She was feeling what so many of us feel during the holiday season
time of the year: Overwhelming pressure to go to every party,
every housewarming, taste all the holiday food and treats, get
that perfect gift for every single person on our shopping list,
make sure we don't forget anyone on our card list, and the pressure
of making sure we respond to everyone who sends us a card. Not to
mention, getting the kids everything they ask for.
Finally the elevator doors opened--there was already a crowd in
the car. This woman pushed her way into the car and dragged her
two kids in with her, along with all her bags of stuff.
When the doors closed, she let out a big sigh and decided she
couldn't take it anymore, saying out loud, to no one in particular,
"Whoever started this whole Christmas thing should be arrested and
strung up!"
From the back of the elevator, a quiet calm voice responded,
"Don't worry ma'am, I believe they crucified Him."
Return Of The Monster
The Monster of the title is none other than Dollar Monster. Anyone who had dealings with Dollar Monster previously believed the beast had been slain by its owners but, it seems, it had just been banished and now is baaaaaaaaaack (as it says in its ads). Presumably the owners of Dollar Monster believe they have remained out of sight long enough for people to have forgiven or forgotten the events of 2004.
Dollar Monster pretends to be a friendly little monster who will help you to make money. It says: "DollarMonster's #1 priority is helping you make money!" In fact, its clear from the website that Dollar Monster will make the money for you and you can just sit back in your easy chair and do nothing. Dollar Monster claims to be the lazy person's way of making money; that should be a big enough hint that this program does not offer a legitimate way to make money.
Dollar Monster is a money doubler. Money Doubler programs enjoyed a brief spell of popularity back in 2004. Their popularity ended as one money doubler program after another closed owing members large sums of money and the whole money doubler industry was exposed as being a scam consisting of numerous pyramid schemes. The surprising thing is that the new Dollar Monster website refers to 2004 and to the notorious Easy Chair Club (sometimes described as the biggest Internet scam in recent history). It would seem more sensible for this site to pretend to have no connection whatsoever with the Easy Chair Club or the Dollar Monster that existed in 2004. In fact, it would seem more sensible to open up using an entirely different name because the people who joined Dollar Monster (or its sister site, My Magic Doubler) the first time round aren't going to be sucked in again and will warn people not to take part in the program.
The way money doublers work is that you pay money to the program, other people sign up after you and also pay money in. When enough has been paid in by new members, you get paid double the amount you first invested. The people whose money was used to pay you, get paid when members have paid enough cash in after them and so on…
When money doubler programs are first launched, the cycle time is very short (it can be a matter of hours) but as more people join the cycle time gets longer because the number of new members required to cycle existing member positions grows exponentially. Eventually, the cycle time becomes so long the program ceases to attract new members and, when the cash injections dry up, the doubler stalls. With no new recruits bringing in cash, the members on the lowest level don't get double their money back, they lose all the money they paid in. At this point, the program and its owner normally disappear.
Money Doubler programs can survive for anything from a matter of hours up to several months. The ones that disappear within hours are normally run by outright crooks who had no intention of paying any money out to anyone. As soon as they have obtained a substantial sum of cash, they just vanish with it. If you are lucky you might avoid these particular crooks and might even make some money. One thing that is guaranteed is that if you aren't lucky enough to join at the right time, you will lose your money.
I hope the return of Dollar Monster does not signal the start of a new money doubler craze. People who were not around in 2004 might take to money doublers as a replacement for the rapidly declining autosurf for cash programs. In 2004 I fell for the story that money doublers were legitimate programs and the money they paid out came from advertising revenue. I speak from experience when I say that if you want to make money on the Internet, you have to work for it. Dollar Monster and similar money doubler programs are not an alternative to working for a living.
By Elaine Currie
You may republish this article only in its
entirety and with this resource box intact
Elaine Currie provides ideas, help and resources
for anyone wanting to work at home
visit: http://www.HuntingVenus.com
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Internet Based Business - 7 Things To Do Online When It Goes Quiet
When you have your own Internet based business, you will seen realise that there are busy times and quiet spells. It's true that the Internet never sleeps. It does, however, take a rest from time to time. Around Thanksgiving and Christmas and again at the height of summer, your Internet based business will be much quieter and there is nothing you can do to prevent this. Your customers take holidays, you just have to live with that and wait for them to come back online. So, what to do during the lull? Well, you could check your sales a dozen times a day, you could make frequent checks on your website stats, you could check your inbox hourly, you could spend hours lurking around Internet forums. Alternatively, instead of wasting this time, you could do something useful; you could get your business primed for the forthcoming busy spell. Here are seven sensible ways to make productive use of holiday time.
1. Clean out your inbox. If you have an Internet based business, an overflowing inbox is part of the territory. Be completely ruthless: throw out the trash, all of it. Send straight to the trash bin anything not flagged for action that you have saved for more than a couple of weeks and can't identify by subject or sender. If you didn't flag it when you first read it, how important can it be? Don't waste time picking over the out of date rubbish, it will soon be replaced by fresh rubbish. Create folders to house as many different categories of mail as possible so you in future you won't have to hunt through several pages of general inbox to find a particular saved email.
2. Sort out your browser bookmarks. A tidy set of logically arranged bookmarks can be a very useful tool in an Internet based business. A jumbled collection of random bookmarks is a time-waster. Make folders for different categories of websites eg, classified advertising, affiliate programs, payment processors, list builders etc. Make sure the names assigned to the tags mean something to you. If you have accepted the website's default description it could say something along the lines of "a stampede of traffic to your website". If you have things like that, change the title to the actual name of the website. Arrange the contents of individual folders so the websites are listed in order of need with the sites you visit more frequently at the top.
3. Check out your autoresponder. With an Internet based business, the first contact many of your customers have with you will be via your autoresponder email series. Make sure the content appears fresh. Go through and remove any references to programs which have closed or that you no longer wish to promote. Check to see if your emails are in any way dated, either by reference to the year or maybe by reference to a particular event, and make any necessary changes to bring everything up to date.
4. Check your classified ads and your advertisements in your PPC campaigns. If you refer to a product as being your top pick for a certain year, make sure you update the reference so it does not relate to the previous year (this is a most important job to do during the December lull).
5. Writing and distributing articles is just about the best form of free advertising you can get for an Internet based business. Write as many articles as you can manage for submission to Ezine directories. If you can write a couple of articles a day throughout December, you can save some of them to submit to the Ezine directories or to use for blogs when things get busy and writing time is scarce.
6. The shop window of any Internet based business it the website. You should make regular updates to your business website as a matter of course to keep it up to date and free from broken links. If you want to make big changes to the content or layout, use the quiet weeks to perform this work without needing to rush.
7. Take time off and do something, anything unrelated to Internet based business. It's holiday time for goodness sake!
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By Elaine Currie
You may republish this article only in its
entirety and with this resource box intact
Elaine Currie provides ideas, help and resources
for anyone wanting to work at home
visit: http://www.HuntingVenus.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Does the idea of working with parents and babies interest you? This is your chance to start a home business offering a very rewarding service to families.
Due to recent media coverage, parents, and daycare providers are wanting to teach their babies and toddlers baby sign-language. This has created a demand for baby sign-language instructors.
With the Kindersigns Career Kit, you can learn the signs easily within a few hours and use the materials to market your new business.
What could be better than a business opportunity that is rewarding, interesting, and affordable. If you like, when you purchase this opportunity you will be offered the opportunity to be given one on one support you can use to make your business a success.
To receive more information for free
click here.
If you are not interested in teaching others to use baby sign-language but would like to learn how to use baby sign-language with your own baby, you will find some very useful information if you click here.
Send me your articles
If you would like to see your own article published here, just email it to me here I will consider articles on any subject, not just home business. As long as your article is interesting and contains no inappropriate material (no adult, hate etc), I will be happy to publish it. Please note, though, that I won’t publish anything which is just a disguised advertisement!
"You must be in business for yourself; you'll never get rich working for someone else."
J. P. Getty, America's first billionaire
Free Resources
Roboform. – Fill in your details just once and Roboform will save them and complete all your sign up forms with just a mouse click. This will save you hours of boring typing. I started using Roboform. when I started doing paid surveys and now I would be lost without it.
Mozilla Firefox Browser – The best browser for surfing. It has a total pop-up killer and is great for surfing numerous sites at the same time.
AdsVert. These are text ads that look like PPC ads but, they are free, you earn credits by showing other members' ads.
ColorPic. This is a great free tool that will help you to exactly match colours and give you the hex code when you are building or making changes to your website. It does a lot of other things as well - all entirely free.
FREE PDF Converter Print to PDF from virtually any application. Optimize PDF output for print or screen. No annoying pop-up ads - no catch! High-quality PDF creation.
Free Credit Report
Equifax, Experian, and Transunion,the three largest credit
reporting agencies, have set up a special site where
consumers can request, view, and print their free report.
Google Alerts A free service from Google which will alert you when there is any activity relating
to your chosen subject. You can use this to keep track of interest in your business, the antics of your favourite movie stars or the progress of your favourite sports team.
How does your website look to a search engine? Find out free. You will get an instant report about how well your site is designed for search engines to catalogue it -- and what to change if your site gets a poor grade.
Message Tag is a free software program you download on your computer. It sits in your system tray at the bottom right
of your monitor screen. It 'tags' your outgoing emails and instantly notifies you when the message recipient opens your email. If you don't receive a "read" notification, you know the message didn't get opened.
Spybot Search And Destroy – Anti-spy software. Search out and destroy the nasty spy bugs. Essential for surfers. Download free from Major Geeks
Ad-Aware – Anti-tracking software. Get rid of the tracking software that slows down your pc. Another must have for surfers. Download free from Major Geeks
Classified Advertising
Adland Pro – Free classified advertising and an interesting newsletter. They offer free site evaluations in the newsletter as well as articles etc. Upgrades on membership are available for extra features and unrestricted numbers of ads. No pressure to upgrade, so try out the free service for as long as you like.
Traffic Exchange Advertising
Traffic Swarm – The top traffic exchange. Free membership available but it is worth the small fee to upgrade to pro.
Top Surfer. More than just a traffic exchange, you can earn credits when you read the newsletter and also get the chance to win prizes of big credit packages.
Hitpulse. A great free manual traffic exchange. Hitpulse has been around for a while and is a reliable and popular programme.
For more information about Traffic Exchanges click here
Downline Building
Profit Rally - my favourite downline builder. You won't get inundated with emails from your uplinehere. If you take pro membership you also get random referrals. A great way to build downlines while advertising your programmes.
Home Income Team - Another great downline builder (recently updated). This one is growing and great new programmes are constantly being added to the portfolio.
For more information about downline builders click here
Listbuilding
Admailer – The biggest free list building club on the web.
Payment processors
Pay Pal – The most popular internet account. You will need an account at some stage if you work on the internet. Sign up free.
Alert Pay – One of the new processors which is already becoming popular. Sign up free.
e-gold - You are almost certain to need a "gold" account at some stage. Sign up free.
To see lots more free stuff click here
posted by Elaine Currie @ 2:06 AM
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