Do you ever feel like you’re constantly running around, trying to get your marketing materials put together and out the door? Are you frazzled by the marketing process, and driving your writer, designer, or printer absolutely nuts? Is your “plan” to just pick one new idea every now and then to implement? Or are you constantly hopping on the latest marketing idea, and throwing away your time and money with your efforts?

You’re not alone; most small businesses have the same approach to marketing. The result is marketing that’s not cohesive; it’s marketing using the “push-and-pray” method – you just create marketing pieces here and there, and then hope for new clients and sales to come rushing in. When you’re busy, you just forget or put off your marketing entirely; then, when you finish all of your client projects, you panic, push out some new marketing materials, and hope for the best.

The answer to push-and-pray marketing is to plan your marketing in advance: to sit down and create a Marketing Machine so that your marketing runs smoothly and effortlessly all year long. Creating a year-round plan for marketing can really improve the number of sales that you’ll be able to make, and keep a steady stream of clients and income coming in. There are several things to consider when creating your Marketing Machine:

Consistency and repetition are two of the most important things to planning your marketing. Experts say that you have to make 6 to 12 “first” impressions on a potential client before you’ll be remembered. So make sure to set up your Marketing Machine to include many marketing pieces per year, evenly distributed throughout the year (see “Timing,” below) and presented in many different ways (see “Format,” below).

You should also make sure to have consistent and repetitive copy and design elements throughout your materials. Using some of the same text selling points across all of your marketing materials helps increase memorability. And making sure the look-and-feel of your materials is also consistent, with a well-designed and well-established Visual Vocabulary, will make the pieces of your Marketing Machine look like a well-planned, professional, and unified set, instead of a disjointed mess, just slapped together.

Format is the way that you’re delivering your marketing materials. Marketing can be presented in many formats: * Printed materials, like stationery, brochures, postcards, and datasheets * Online materials, like your website * Digital materials, like Word templates, email signatures, and PDF files * Written materials, like articles and press release * Meeting and presentation materials, like PowerPoint presentations, presentation folders, proposal covers, and leave-behind materials like brochures or other marketing pieces. * Follow-up materials, like eZines or online newsletters, offline newsletters, sales letters, and thank-you cards

It’s important to match the media that you’re marketing in to your target audience to get great results from your Marketing Machine. For example, if your audience is highly technical, marketing online is probably a good idea. But if you’re selling to people who rarely use computers, printed media would be a better direction to take.

Timing includes making sure that you market consistently throughout the year. But there are some other factors to consider when setting up your Marketing Machine.

Make sure that you set up your Marketing Machine so that you have plenty of time to create your materials and promotions. Consider working materials in “off times” for your business, such as the holiday season, or on slow days. Working on marketing when you’re not busy with other projects will allow you to make the best possible use of your time and to devote enough attention to each of your marketing efforts.

If you partner with vendors, such as designers, printers, copywriters, or others to create your marketing materials, make sure that they have enough time to do a good-quality job as well. Ask what their lead times are, and be sensitive to their busy times as well.

Another technique to cut down on time spent working on your Marketing Machine is to batch similar projects together; for example, writing several articles at once and then setting up those pages on your website so that they’re ready to send when it’s time to release them. Some newsletter services, such as Email Brain (www.emailbrain.com) even allow you to set up your newsletters to send at a scheduled time in the future-even months down the road, which automates your Marketing Machine even further.

Budget approximately 10% of your gross profit for marketing use, say the experts. Be sure that you include all aspects of creating your marketing materials, including: * Design work * Copywriting and copyediting * Printing * Mailing * Placement fees for advertising * Public relations * HTML newsletter service fees * Website hosting and domain name fees * Website maintenance and updates * Search engine optimization * Trade show fees * Referral and affiliate fees

Some businesses also include networking fees, like meeting costs and membership dues, in their marketing budgets.

Batching several projects together not only helps with timing but also with staying within your marketing budget. For example, if you plan to send several postcards in a year, you can often save money by designing and printing them together. You can also save printing set-up fees by printing all of your materials for a year at once: that way, the printer only has to do the set-up work once. You might be able to get a discount on your web hosting or HTML newsletter fees by pre-paying an entire year at once.

And make sure to set a bit of your budget aside for unexpected marketing efforts: for that press release you’ll have to send when you win an award, or for advertising in the perfect new publication for your target market.

Evaluation of Success means asking your new leads how they found you, and tracking the resulting sales and conversion rates. Make sure that each of the components of your Marketing Machine is working for you and producing results. But be sure that you give those components a bit of time to begin working: it often takes a bit of consistent repetition in marketing to see some results.

Flexibility is important as well. If you begin a new type of marketing and you find that it isn’t working after a few months, you should be flexible in your plans for your Marketing Machine. Reevaluate whether the marketing tactic just needs a bit more time or if you should revise or replace it with some other type of marketing piece.

Maintaining the Machine involves reevaluating your Marketing Machine plans at least quarterly to make sure that they are in alignment with your business’s progress and goals for the year. See if you need to add any marketing tactics or revise your plans to fit with your business’s path.

If you create a Marketing Machine that addresses all of the topics above, you should be on your way to marketing your business in a successful, well-thought-out, and manageable way. And if you implement your Marketing Machine in a consistent and repetitive way throughout the year, you should have less stress and more sales in the coming year.

The Village of Tarrytown, New York is located on the eastern shore of the Hudson River near the Tappan Zee Bridge. It is a convenient 40-minute train ride to New York City (about 20 miles) and provides an array of seasonal activities such as golf, hiking, biking, skiing, and fishing. Since the Tarrytown area was first settled in 1645 by Dutch settlers, the area’s industry has grown from growing wheat to housing corporate offices such as Hitachi America. Today, the area is home to about 11,500 people.

While looking for homes in Tarrytown, a common question regarding the the area’s schools is often asked. Although there are plenty of private schools in the area, most people choose to send their children to the local schools. The school district that serves the children of Tarrytown, New York is the Union Free School District of the Tarrytowns. The school district instructs about 2400 students in grades K-12. There are about 18-20 students per class and about 210 teachers in the district according to the New York State Report Card for the 2004-2005 school year.

Six schools make up the Union Free School District of the Tarrytowns. Pre-K and Kindergarten students attend Tappan Hill Elementary School where they begin their education. In this nurturing environment, each child learns at his or her own rate and each program is aimed at developing the whole child – cognitively, emotionally, physically, and socially. First-graders attend John Paulding Elementary School where they continue on their learning career in a challenging and fun environment. The Winfield L. Morse Elementary School is for children in grades 2 and 3. Here they will further develop their reading and writing skills. With a focus on hands-on learning, students at Winfield L. Morse Elementary will begin to explore the concepts of community, multicultural awareness, and American History. At Washington Irving Elementary School students in grades 4-6 will continue to challenge and develop their learning skills. Graduates of Washington Irving Elementary School will move on to the 7th grade at Sleepy Hollow Middle School and then on to the 8th grade. All students moving up from Sleepy Hollow Middle School typically attend Sleepy Hollow High School to complete their primary education. Sleepy Hollow High School is a high-achieving school – over 90% of the Class of 2006 attending an institution of higher learning and each year, an impressive number of state, federal, and private foundation grants fund programs that broaden and enhance the curriculum.

With its convenient location to New York City, its many shops and restaurants, great school school district, and hometown feel, the Village of Tarrytown is a great place to live and it is no wonder why homes in Tarrytown are so sought after. For more information about the Village of Tarrytown, please visit the official Village of Tarrytown website.

As students of spirituality we are on the path to personal freedom, peace and moving through life with fearlessness. One of the biggest challenges to our freedom is our need to cling to our perceptions and believe that they’re truth. But before I continue with our dialogue, let’s agree for the purpose of our conversation, that freedom is a state of being where we experience lack of restraints, confinement or controls of any kind. So why would I bring up the idea of freedom in reference to perception – what’s the connection?

From a scientific point of view, we can say we are beings of perception. We exist to take in light from our surroundings and interpret it according to the limits and possibilities of the machine that is translating that information. On the other hand, we become trapped when we believe that the machine’s conclusions are definitive truth. If we do not have the awareness of this process, we will automatically be subject to the restrains and restrictions of the machine rather than moving past them to the freedom of absolute consciousness.

Let’s take a moment to put this into practical terms. Imagine you’ve just finished grocery shopping and as you’re pulling out of your parking spot. The person in the car behind you quickly pulls out at the exact same time and hits your car. You jump out of your car ready to scream at that person for driving like an idiot, smashing your car, being reckless and blind as a bat. However, when the person gets out of their car they are crying and deeply upset. The person relays to you that they just received a call that their mother had passed away and they were stricken by grief. They didn’t see that there was someone pulling out behind them because of all the tears in their eyes. In that moment, all your anger drains away, and you offer to assist them in any way you can.

So what just happened here? In our imaginary story, your eyes and ears took in light and your brain translated that into a picture or virtual reality where your car intersected with another car. Your mind told you that this situation was bad and further judged the other person to be wrong and irresponsible. The result of this interpretation was anger and resentment. In that moment, you were trapped by the limitations of your machine – and fell for the conclusions your mind came to in this situation. You lost your peace because you believed what your mind was telling you – you thought it was truth and you trusted it. As a result, you lost your personal freedom and were at the mercy of your fear-based emotions.

In Buddhism, the Diamond Sutra says, “Where there is perception, there is deception.” As students of spirituality, we must use our awareness to transcend the way we’ve been trained to perceive, and to learn to see without the machine’s constraints and preconceptions. This is true freedom, having the ability to interact within this reality without being bound to our own points of view, opinions and prejudices. This month, I challenge you to ask yourself, “Is this truth,” whenever you are in a situation where you are tempted to believe yourself. See what happens!

You are welcome to reprint this article with the following information at the conclusion of the text: Dr. Sheri Rosenthal is a master Toltec teacher and author of The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Toltec Wisdom and WITH Forgiveness. Having trained with don Miguel Ruiz, author of The Four Agreements, she currently takes students on spiritual journeys, works with personal apprentices and enjoys being extremely happy. You can reach her at http://www.sherirosenthal.com, http://www.journeysofthespirit.com and http://www.withforgiveness.com.

When you require a headset as part of your job description, being tethered to a wire all day can get old very quickly. If you need to get up for any reason, be it to make a copy or to use the fax machine, you need to put your customer on hold in order to take your headset off to go do what needs to be done. Now, however, with the invention of the wireless office headset, you have much more freedom to do what needs to be done. Merely keep your wireless office headset on, while keeping your customer on the line, as you make your copies, fax, or whatever else you have to do. It cuts down on hold times and it’s much more customer service friendly than the models that come with cords. Plus, there are no pesky cords to trip over.

Pacing While On The Phone

Some people, when they require an office headset for their job, like to pace as they talk on the phone. This helps them think and it makes them less anxious when they are in a sales or customer service position. If you have a wire connected to your headset and you find that you cannot pace as you’d like to, get yourself a wireless office headset. With a wireless office headset, you can pace all you want. You can even dance if you want to, whatever you’re in to, because, with a wireless office headset, you have the freedom to move about to get more done. Just because you’re on the phone doesn’t mean you have to stay locked in your chair. These freedoms make the wireless office headset invaluable.

If your company doesn’t give you a wireless office headset to work with, ask your supervisor if you can get one on your own. You can find great deals on wireless office headsets on the internet. There are many online shops that have more than gracious deals on even the best headsets. Or, try an internet auction site where you can find anything you want and you can get it for less money than you’d spend in a retail store.

So, stop sitting all day, get up and move around. Go to work wearing a wireless office headset. If your company doesn’t have them and suddenly you do, more than likely everyone will have one soon. Get up, use the copier, use the fax, you can even go fill your coffee cup, all while staying connected to that important customer. Your customer will love the customer service as they aren’t put on hold and you will love how you have complete freedom away from a pesky cord.

SEO should be one of the elements — an important element to be sure — of your complete and comprehensive marketing program for your Internet business enterprise. Don¡¯t get me wrong, there are quite a few excellent SEO copywriters out there, and you should definitely shop around. The purpose of this article isn¡¯t to scare you; it¡¯s to help you find the SEO copywriter who¡¯ll deliver honest service and excellent results.

Many potential clients are scared by the search engine optimization process. They feel that to achieve top search engine rankings, they must cede control of their site to the SEO who might run roughshod over its look, feel, and messaging. SEO / Client relationships need not be so contentious.

SEO companies have the resources and are doing this day in day out. Since they are working with more than one industry, they know the search pattern, are pre-warned in case of algorithm changes because of the research and can affectively implement the changes. Wikipedia : “Search engine optimization (SEO) is a set of methodologies aimed at improving the visibility of a website in search engine listings.

3 Things All Affiliate Marketers Need To Survive Online

Every affiliate marketer is always looking for the successful market that gives the biggest paycheck. Sometimes they think it is a magic formula that is readily available for them. Actually, it is more complicated than that. It is just good marketing practices that have been proven over years of hard work and dedication. There are tactics that have worked before with online marketing and is continuing to work in the online affiliate marketing world of today. With these top three marketing tips, you will be able to able to increase your sales and survive in the affiliate marketing online.

What are these three tactics?

1. Using unique web pages to promote each separate product you are marketing. Do not lump all of it together just to save some money on web hosting. It is best to have a site focusing on each and every product and nothing more.

Always include product reviews on the website so visitors will have an initial understanding on what the product can do to those who buys them. Also include testimonials from users who have already tried the product. Be sure that these customers are more than willing to allow you to use their names and photos on the site of the specific product you are marketing. You can also write articles highlighting the uses of the product and include them on the website as an additional page. Make the pages attractive compelling and include calls to act on the information. Each headline should attract the readers to try and read more, even contact you. Highlight your special points. This will help your readers to learn what the page is about and will want to find out more.

2. Offer free reports to your readers. If possible position them at the very top side of your page so it they simply cannot be missed. Try to create autoresponder messages that will be mailed to those who input their personal information into your sign up box. According to research, a sale is closed usually on the seventh contact with a prospect.

If someone offers you fast results they may be pulling your leg. If you aren¡¯t listed on search engines the average time to be index takes around 4 weeks. Someone offering submissions in less then that is coning you. Websites that are already listed and are just being updated will have a faster result.

The role of SEO is one of filling the gaps between website intention and website performance. Typically, the website content creation process fails to take into account the broad searching parameters of the targeted audience.

The competition is immense (at the time of writing, there were approx 3,240,000,000 results for this search in Google.com) and the IT giants already dominate the search engines for this keyword.

These keywords need to be acutely descriptive and very much common so that people who think of your business will come up with these keywords when searching fro business such as yours. Only then the SEO will work best for you. Translated, SEO means Search Engine Optimisation. Everybody who has a site want’s a lot of traffic on it. And the best way to get good targeted traffic is from Search Engines like Google, yahoo or Msn. But For your site to get the great traffic that you’ve always dreamed it must rank well in search engines. And this is where SEO comes up.

Only two things can possibly happen with the web page alone: closed sale or the prospect leaving the page and never return again. By placing useful information into their inboxes at certain specified period, you will remind them of the product they thought they want later and will find out that the sale is closed. Be sure that the content is directed toward specific reasons to buy the product. Do not make it sound like a sales pitch. Get free SEO Tips, and rank within the top 30 positions in Google SEO.

Focus on important points like how your product can make life and things easier and more enjoyable. Include compelling subject lines in the email. As much as possible, avoid using the word ¡°free¡± because there are still older spam filters that dumps those kind of contents into the junk before even anyone reading them first. Convince those who signed up for your free reports that they will be missing something big if they do not avail of your products and services.

3. Get the kind of traffic that is targeted to your product. Just think, if the person who visited your website has no interest whatsoever in what you are offering, they will be among those who move on and never come back. Write articles for publication in e-zines and e-reports. This way you can locate publications that is focusing on your target customers and what you have put up might just grab their interest.

Try to write a minimum of 2 articles per week, with at least 300-600 words in length. By continuously writing and maintaining these articles you can generate as many as 100 targeted readers to your site in a day. Always remember that only 1 out of 100 people are likely to buy your product or get your services. If you can generate as much as 1,000 targeted hits for your website in a day, that means you can made 10 sales based on the average statistic. The tactics given above does not really sound very difficult to do, if you think about it. It just requires a little time and an action plan on your part.

Try to use these tips for several affiliate marketing programs. You can end maintaining a good source of income and surviving in this business that not all marketers can do. Besides, think of the huge paychecks you will be receiving¡­

In all probability, you would know about the algorithm change only after it has affected your rankings. You would then either research on your own to find what happened, or visit forums where the SEO professionals are discussing what probably went wrong.

META tags are special tags included at the top of a HTML page. Their purpose is to provide extra information about the web page. The most influential tags for search engine ranking are the Keywords tag and the Description tag.

FFA stands for Free For All, pages which are designed to carry a designated amount of links on each page. Have in mind that when comes to link popularity relevancy counts and links form this pages will not going to help you much. Add to this that FFA pages have very limited life span, you will get the picture.

So what is it? Search Engine Optimization Public Relations (SEO PR) is a blend of search engine visibility and traditional public relations that disperses a company¡¯s message across the Internet by way of online media outlets and search engines. First, let me explain you what a SEOcontest is. A SEOcontest is a contest where every webmaster can build a website or page about a special keyword

Computer and Video games have the world enthralled. Adults and young ones are hooked to the fast paced mind absorbing thrills a game offers. What is more gaming has donned a new mantle and gamers can now play with teams and opponents from all over the world creating a fertile environment of exchange of thoughts, beliefs, and developments.

Significant developments in gaming have resulted in games becoming much more than entertainment they have metamorphosed into training tools that fine tune and create skilled professionals and leaders.

Leaders who spend a life time in studying learning through game playing in top universities like Wisconsin found that:

* Games enhance problem solving abilities. * Players take on different personas and so learn to shoulder different loyalties in gaming. In becoming a hero or warlord the player is constantly challenged and has to think on his toes. Problem solving abilities are greatly sharpened. * Since games are interactive, players have to face immediately the consequences of actions and when backed against a wall need to find ways to escape or overcome problems. * Games teach skills of co-ordination, team work, team spirit, and lateral thinking.

* War games like Full Spectrum Warrior promote military life and teach lay persons what life in the armed forces is like.

* There are games that hone communication skills, enhance comprehension, and teach reading skills. These are valuable learning tools that take learning away from being hum drum to exciting. Players actually look forward to playing and the absorption in gaming leads to unconscious learning.

According to personnel managers play and learn session’s help adults become more effective managers and decision makers. Gaming rewards players who are successful with promotions to the next level. Mentally rewards are like lollipops and the person is encouraged to succeed and this forms a stimulus that jerks a person from lethargy or complacency. Video and computer gaming have become integral to leadership development programs in: Bombardier Inc; Ontario Power Generation Inc; the Rotman school of Management; the Kellogg school of Management; The UN; and the US Navy.

Computer and Video games are fast changing the way people learn. And, their very nature permits creativity as well as advance planning skills. All the qualities required in leadership can be acquired through sensible gaming. A word of caution, gaming can be harmful too. One needs to use gaming positively and keep away from its negative effects. Games according to experts are perfect learning tools as they promote leaning by action and not rote.

Picture someone passing a high tech advertising hoarding and noticing that it shows Palm fringed beaches in a Pacific paradise and then when a second person goes by and the hoarding changes to show a children’s party and finally a third person walks by and the hoarding shows a picture of President Hilary Clinton going into the Oval Office!

What the fictional high tech advertising hoarding above was doing was showing advertisements relevant to what the passing individual was thinking about. And of course all that was science fiction. But advertising relevant to what the shopper is thinking of and searching for is already here. It is called “Contextual Advertising”. And it is so remarkable that I indulged in a little “science fiction” above, to bring it to your attention.

Google Adsense is the most well known of the many Contextual Advertising Systems. And the one most targeted over the last year by marketers claiming to show us all how to make a fortune just by pasting a little snippet of JavaScript on our website.

Thousands of Internet Newbies have bought such nonsense. Just as a surefire way of making money during the Gold Rush was to sell picks and shovels, a surefire way of making money nowadays is to market “Adsense Nonsense”.

Contextual Advertising works very well for advertisers since it matches the information on the page and may lead to exactly what the shopper or surfer was looking for; it works for publishers and webmasters since it can serve webpages devoted to virtually any subject. And the shopper frequently gets exactly what they were looking for.

But the Internet newbie who thought that putting Adsense on their blog or website was going to lead to a high income is usually disappointed as months go by and single figure earnings stubbornly persist.

In many cases Adsense may not be the best monetisation option. The only way to know is to try various options and track and record the results. Many webmasters have found affiliate programs that pay them better than adsense.

Contextual Advertising is a clever and effective tool. Whether or not it is appropriate on a particular website or blog is a moot point. The only proper advice to a Newbie webmaster or blogger is try different advertising alternatives from Clickbank, Commision Junction or even Amazon and find out for themselves which works best for them on their site for their niche.

The media play an integral role in the way the world perceives America, especially young black men. It’s been said, if you say something enough times, it will become true. Therefore, it is important to put the media on notice when they start to propagate negative stereotypes.

Case in point, Law & Order: CI. I’m a big fan of the show, but I can’t let a recent episode go by without registering my outrage and sounding an alarm before mainstream media jumps on the bandwagon of the “stop-snitching” craze, spinning it to portray the black community in a negative light.

The episode, “Flipped,” was about a rapper who was killed leaving a radio station. There were several witnesses to the murder. All of the predominantly black characters were afraid of being labeled a snitch and refused to cooperate with the police. Even the black police officer working for the gang unit sanctioned this “don’t tell” manifesto. To add injury to insult, there were several young children – about 8 or 9-years-old – who continued to play as if nothing happened, despite the fact that the body of an assassinated snitch flew off the roof landing near their play area.

As a lifetime member of the beloved community, I doubt that there is one neighborhood in America so desensitized to murder that children would continue business as usual amid a dead body; certainly not a black neighborhood. I take offense that Law & Order would devote an entire episode to depicting the black community as a bunch of apathetic hedonists with questionable values, spooked by the thought of assisting the police in any way for fear that they would be labeled a snitch and assassinated.

It is true that snitches are detested in the black community. However, a person reporting criminal activity in their neighborhood is not a snitch. That would be a CONCERNED CITIZEN. Someone that gives an accurate account of a crime is called a WITNESS.

Snitches are the government-made parasites that drop a dime on people for a reduction in prison time, a get-out-of-jail credit, monetary payment, or a hit of crack. When necessary, these foot soldiers in the so-called “War on Drugs” embellish the truth. Quite often, they fabricate stories. Snitches are responsible for nearly 46% of wrongful capital convictions from false testimony, according to a study by Northwestern University Law School’s Center on Wrongful Convictions. They are also the reason that innocence commissions across the country have concluded that snitch testimony is false and unreliable. Snitches are criminals hustling the system.

Although the media has caught a hold of the “stop-snitching” slogan, the crafty snitch system has also spawned sayings like “Don’t Go To The Pen, Send A Friend,” and “If You Can’t Do The Time, Drop A Dime.”

So yes, I’m a card-carrying member of the “stop-snitching” movement, but I refuse to allow mainstream media to frame the issue, creating the illusion that the crime epidemic is fueled by the black community’s reluctance to cooperate with police investigations. The majority of black’s are no different than the average American. They want to keep their neighborhoods free of drugs, gangs, violence, and other criminal activities. I’m not saying that incidents of witness intimidation do not occur, but honest people are not conspiring with criminals in some imaginary code of silence.

I will admit that average black is a little closed-mouthed when it comes to talking to the police. That can probably be attributed more to the fear of dishonest police than the fear of retaliation. An honest citizen might offer information one minute, then find themselves in custody for the crime the next minute. They know that when police officers go to court, whether it’s on a traffic violation or for a murder trial, they say whatever will guarantee the conviction disregarding the guilt or innocence of the defendant.

In black and poor communities the police are not trusted, and for good reasons. Police lie, plant evidence, and strong-arm residents more frequently than anyone will admit. Unless the corruption receives major media attention like the Rampart debacle in Los Angeles, the Tulia case in Texas, or the gunning down of 92-year-old Kathryn Johnston by police in Atlanta, gun-toting fanatics persist and are rarely held accountable for their abuse.

In the Rampart case, 30 officers and at least three supervisors were accused of framing people. According to the LA Times, the scandal resulted in the examination of more than 3,000 questionable cases. In Tulia, Texas, 46 residents were set up by an unreliable undercover narcotics officer. The victims were later exonerated. In Atlanta, Fulton County District Attorney Paul Howard is seeking to indict three police officers on murder charges for the botched drug raid at Johnston’s home. The magnitude of police corruption cases across the country proves that more than a few law enforcement officers are dishonest.

So let’s get it correct. Black people are not a gang of quasi-criminals determined to obstruct justice. They are intelligent people who have learned from the constant injustices perpetrated on black people, that, regardless of our income level, we are presumed guilty even when proven innocent. Minorities and poor white people understand that they are jeopardizing their freedom talking with the police. Very much like the wealthy whites-they call it exercising their Fifth Amendment rights.

To the writers at Law & Order, and any of the mainstream media telling our stories, take care not to present a biased picture of the black community for the sake of “drama.” To talk about the “stop-snitching” phenomenon without addressing the unreliable snitch-racket or police corruption is partial and misleading. The black community has enough problems; we don’t need a media-driven movement added to the list.

It doesn’t matter what kind of business you own. Whether you’re making Internet content websites, selling affiliate products online, or running an EBay shopping site, as your business grows you will soon find yourself stuck between a rock and a hard spot.

You see, a home or internet based business is almost always started as a solo operation. One person – you – is the only person available to do all the required work in your business. As that business grows though, you quickly find that you’re not able to keep up. Then you’re faced with a tough decision: Do you keep the work at managable levels at the sacrafice of generating more income, or do you hire someone to help?

Most home and internet based business owners don’t particularly like the idea of hiring employees. They do after all, come with a lot of extra responsibilities. You have to provide work space and tools for them, provide insurance, take care of their tax deductions and much more. The result unfortunately, is that many home and internet based businesses end up sacraficing profits because they don’t want to hire employees.

There is another option though. You can allow your business to continue growing and continue earning more money month over month, and year over year. It’s called outsourcing.

When you outsource, you’re essentially hiring independant freelance specialists to take care of some – or all – of your business workload. Since these freelancers are independant, that means they run their own business providing services for business owners like yourself. In other words, they take care of their own work space, tools, taxes, insurance and so on.

There are many aspects of your business that can be outsourced inexpensively, freeing up your time for other things, and helping to increase the overall profitability of your business. Let’s look at some of the most common outsourcing services most businesses use:

Writing – This is often outsourced by content based websites, newletter and ebook publishers, news focused blogs, and any websites that require a lot of words written regularly. By outsourcing your writing needs to a freelancers, you can free up hours of time every day. Often you’ll also find that much more writing gets done once it’s outsourced too, since it’s not dependant on what else you need to get done.

Customer Support – This is another daily business chore that can eat up a lot of the owner’s time, and it’s easily outsourced to freelancers. Not only does this free up your own time, it also allows you to provide customer support and service 24 hours a day, instead of just when you are available personally.

Website Design and Maintenance – This is particularly useful as an outsourced project when businesses are not large enough to need a full time web designer or developer. By outsourcing this as a project to a freelancer, your website will be done much more quickly than you might be able to do it yourself, and it will usually look much more professional as well.

Product Photography – This is a time consuming, and often frustrating task for anyone with an ecommerce website. Whether you simply run an ebay store which turns over 100 or more products each month, or you’ve started a full fledged large ecommerce operation with thousands of products for sale, getting the pictures created for all of those products takes a lot of time. And if you’re not a professional photographer, you also tend to spend a lot more additional time trying to get better pictures, or trying to fix the pictures using graphics design software.

This is another excellent example of how you can save time in your day-to-day business activities, while also increasing the overall profitability too. By outsourcing your product photography, you’ll get professional top quality photos that will help you sell more products – without having to spend hours of your own personal time doing so.

There are many more standard business activities that can be outsourced of course, but this list gives you a basic starting point. In the end though, if you want your business to be more profitable, and you want to have time for yourself and your family, you should seriously consider outsourcing to professionals who specialize in these tasks.

Do you ever feel like you’re constantly running around, trying to get your marketing materials put together and out the door? Are you frazzled by the marketing process, and driving your writer, designer, or printer absolutely nuts? Is your “plan” to just pick one new idea every now and then to implement? Or are you constantly hopping on the latest marketing idea, and throwing away your time and money with your efforts?

You’re not alone; most small businesses have the same approach to marketing. The result is marketing that’s not cohesive; it’s marketing using the “push-and-pray” method – you just create marketing pieces here and there, and then hope for new clients and sales to come rushing in. When you’re busy, you just forget or put off your marketing entirely; then, when you finish all of your client projects, you panic, push out some new marketing materials, and hope for the best.

The answer to push-and-pray marketing is to plan your marketing in advance: to sit down and create a Marketing Machine so that your marketing runs smoothly and effortlessly all year long. Creating a year-round plan for marketing can really improve the number of sales that you’ll be able to make, and keep a steady stream of clients and income coming in. There are several things to consider when creating your Marketing Machine:

Consistency and repetition are two of the most important things to planning your marketing. Experts say that you have to make 6 to 12 “first” impressions on a potential client before you’ll be remembered. So make sure to set up your Marketing Machine to include many marketing pieces per year, evenly distributed throughout the year (see “Timing,” below) and presented in many different ways (see “Format,” below).

You should also make sure to have consistent and repetitive copy and design elements throughout your materials. Using some of the same text selling points across all of your marketing materials helps increase memorability. And making sure the look-and-feel of your materials is also consistent, with a well-designed and well-established Visual Vocabulary, will make the pieces of your Marketing Machine look like a well-planned, professional, and unified set, instead of a disjointed mess, just slapped together.

Format is the way that you’re delivering your marketing materials. Marketing can be presented in many formats: * Printed materials, like stationery, brochures, postcards, and datasheets * Online materials, like your website * Digital materials, like Word templates, email signatures, and PDF files * Written materials, like articles and press release * Meeting and presentation materials, like PowerPoint presentations, presentation folders, proposal covers, and leave-behind materials like brochures or other marketing pieces. * Follow-up materials, like eZines or online newsletters, offline newsletters, sales letters, and thank-you cards

It’s important to match the media that you’re marketing in to your target audience to get great results from your Marketing Machine. For example, if your audience is highly technical, marketing online is probably a good idea. But if you’re selling to people who rarely use computers, printed media would be a better direction to take.

Timing includes making sure that you market consistently throughout the year. But there are some other factors to consider when setting up your Marketing Machine.

Make sure that you set up your Marketing Machine so that you have plenty of time to create your materials and promotions. Consider working materials in “off times” for your business, such as the holiday season, or on slow days. Working on marketing when you’re not busy with other projects will allow you to make the best possible use of your time and to devote enough attention to each of your marketing efforts.

If you partner with vendors, such as designers, printers, copywriters, or others to create your marketing materials, make sure that they have enough time to do a good-quality job as well. Ask what their lead times are, and be sensitive to their busy times as well.

Another technique to cut down on time spent working on your Marketing Machine is to batch similar projects together; for example, writing several articles at once and then setting up those pages on your website so that they’re ready to send when it’s time to release them. Some newsletter services, such as Email Brain (www.emailbrain.com) even allow you to set up your newsletters to send at a scheduled time in the future-even months down the road, which automates your Marketing Machine even further.

Budget approximately 10% of your gross profit for marketing use, say the experts. Be sure that you include all aspects of creating your marketing materials, including: * Design work * Copywriting and copyediting * Printing * Mailing * Placement fees for advertising * Public relations * HTML newsletter service fees * Website hosting and domain name fees * Website maintenance and updates * Search engine optimization * Trade show fees * Referral and affiliate fees

Some businesses also include networking fees, like meeting costs and membership dues, in their marketing budgets.

Batching several projects together not only helps with timing but also with staying within your marketing budget. For example, if you plan to send several postcards in a year, you can often save money by designing and printing them together. You can also save printing set-up fees by printing all of your materials for a year at once: that way, the printer only has to do the set-up work once. You might be able to get a discount on your web hosting or HTML newsletter fees by pre-paying an entire year at once.

And make sure to set a bit of your budget aside for unexpected marketing efforts: for that press release you’ll have to send when you win an award, or for advertising in the perfect new publication for your target market.

Evaluation of Success means asking your new leads how they found you, and tracking the resulting sales and conversion rates. Make sure that each of the components of your Marketing Machine is working for you and producing results. But be sure that you give those components a bit of time to begin working: it often takes a bit of consistent repetition in marketing to see some results.

Flexibility is important as well. If you begin a new type of marketing and you find that it isn’t working after a few months, you should be flexible in your plans for your Marketing Machine. Reevaluate whether the marketing tactic just needs a bit more time or if you should revise or replace it with some other type of marketing piece.

Maintaining the Machine involves reevaluating your Marketing Machine plans at least quarterly to make sure that they are in alignment with your business’s progress and goals for the year. See if you need to add any marketing tactics or revise your plans to fit with your business’s path.

If you create a Marketing Machine that addresses all of the topics above, you should be on your way to marketing your business in a successful, well-thought-out, and manageable way. And if you implement your Marketing Machine in a consistent and repetitive way throughout the year, you should have less stress and more sales in the coming year.