Who you are is a full package. This means that you need to know yourself from soup to nuts, and understand who you are both as a person and a professional, and what exactly you can bring to the table when it comes to the needs of the client. This requires a great deal of self-awareness, as well as a high amount of business savvy.

Not only do you need to be knowledgeable, but you also have to be able to be able to sell yourself, as well. This sounds a lot more titillating than it actually is a lot of selling yourself involves getting social networking accounts and schmoozing with potential clients. Never underestimate the power of the schmooze if youve got serious social skills, now is the time to have them shine. If you dont, now is the time to learn to cultivate some.

Another thing to consider when youre going into the business of consulting is how much youre actually worth. Your mom might say that youre worth your weight in gold, but its unlikely that most clients will say the same. In general its a good idea to charge your clients hourly rather than by the job, as it presents a more consistently professional image. Its more difficult to judge how much an individual job may be worth, too, and if clients believe that other clients are getting preferential treatment, it does damage to the reputation of your company or your name, which is anathema in consulting.

Remember to take the time to establish a relationship with the client that will go beyond the first sale. Building and cultivating longevity in your consulting endeavors should be one of your most important goals if you can sow the right relationship in the beginning, its very possible you might have a customer for life. Treating clients like long term business partners right off the bat helps be sure to approach new clients with a professional attitude and a comprehensive plan as to how you are the right consultant for the job. A firm handshake and smile will go farther than you will ever know.

In short, its not just about your ability to think and your expertise in a particular subject that will make you a god consultant. There are of course, millions of people who have the knowledge to be excellent consultants but only a small amount of people are able to make it happen. Its very important to remember to package yourself as first-class goods and get out there and market often, its not what you know, but whom you can convince that you know enough to get the job done!

Let’s face it, image is exceptionally critical to any online business and domain names have their own brand image. Short domains, one word names with the dot com after them are in extreme demand. A domain name must be memorable and easy to remember because a domain name must be able to stand alone for any corporate to have its own online identity. Customer’s today type in the most used domain names simply from memory. A great domain name means search engines simply aren’t necessary.

Who are domainers?

Domainers are the professionals who deal in domain names. Domainers buy, sell, and develop domain names in a manner similar to real estate investors. Domainers generate revenue via domain parking, web-site development, and resale of domain names. Domainers are also sometimes referred to as domain investors, web site developers, domain registrants and commercial registrants.

As of December 2006 there are an estimated 8,000 to 10,000 individuals globally who make buying and selling domain names a part of their business. USA Today reported that many Domainers prefer to remain anonymous due to the highly competitive nature of their business[1]

2. What is pay per click advertising?

Pay per click (PPC) is an advertising technique used on websites, advertising networks, and search engines.

Advertisers bid on “keywords” that they believe their target market (people they think would be interested in their offer) would type in the search bar when they are looking for their type of product or service. For example, if an advertiser sells red widgets, he/she would bid on the keyword “red widgets”, hoping a user would type those words in the search bar, see their ad, click on it and buy.

These ads are called “sponsored links” or “sponsored ads” and appear next to and sometimes above the natural or organic results on the page. The advertiser pays only when the user clicks on the ad.

While many companies exist in this space, Google AdWords and Yahoo! Search Marketing, which was formerly Overture, are the largest network operators as of 2006. In the spring of 2006, MSN started beta testing their own in-house service, MSN adCenter. Arguably this advertising model may be open to abuse through click fraud, although recently Google and other search engines have implemented automated systems to guard against this.

3. What is direct navigation?

Direct navigation describes the method individuals use to navigate the Internet in order to arrive at specific websites. Direct navigation is a new, loosely defined term, which is generally understood to include type-in traffic and bookmarked traffic. This involves an internet user navigating to a website directly through the website address bar, bypassing any online search engines and navigating directly to the domain.

WebSideStory has recently published a report illustrating that direct navigation traffic, converts into sales for advertisers at a rate twice that of search engines.[1] Specifically, the Q4 2005 study of internet traffic, revealed that direct navigation traffic such as browser type-in traffic, bookmarks of existing sites and visits to existing, known website domain names converts into sales for advertisers at 4.23% of total visits compared to 2.3% for product and service related searches performed via the search box at search engines such as Google and Yahoo.[1]

Do you have skills predicting future trends? What names might be big in the next few years if a woman or a black man were elected president, if an issue other than terrorism begins to creep into the world psyche? If green becomes in or America revamps its health care system what will be the key domain names that will represent the future? What names today represent a great business opportunities for you tomorrow?

Choosing the right price for your E-Book is one of the most critical parts of the marketing process. The first rule of pricing E-Books is to never underprice. Determine the highest price your audience can afford, and then if you find your book isnt selling, you can always reduce the price. Before you take that step, make sure you are promoting your book like crazy on the Internet and on websites. The price should be aimed at bringing in profits, but you should never forget that price is one of the factors that people use in judging the value of your E-Book ? before they buy it. So always start with the highest price, and then launch a mega-marketing campaign.

Pricing an E-Book is particularly difficult because E-Books are a fairly new commodity. Since they are digital, the value of an E-Book is as confusing as the understanding of what digital actually is to the average layperson. This means that we must look at E-Books in a different light in order to determine their actual worth in this brave, new cyber world.

Let’s look at the difference between a book in print and an E-Book. A printed book is an object you can hold in your hand, store on your bookshelf, even hand down to the next generation. It is priced on factors such as paper stock, design and production costs, and marketing.

But the fact that unites E-Books and print books is that they are composed of ideas. It is the ideas in these books that have the ability to change, or possibly transform, people’s lives.

What do you think an idea is worth when evaluated against the cost of paper and ink?

It is the IDEAS that are valuable! That is how you determine the cost of your E-Book.

What should I charge for my ideas?

There are all different formulas and methods for determining the correct price for your E-Book. Let’s begin with honing in on your ultimate goals.

Decide if your goal is to get wide distribution and maximum exposure. This goal is aimed at drawing customers to your business or service, or to establishing the credibility of your reputation. If this is your main goal, you should aim to keep your price on the low side. Some authors have even priced their E-Books at a profit loss to draw a high number of new customers. The key is to find a price that maximizes your profits and the number of books you sell.

This is an excellent pricing strategy if you are looking to acquire long-term customers. Long-term customers are extremely likely to buy from you again and again as long as the first E-Book they buy is of exceptional quality and beneficial to the customer.

However, if your book contains valuable and more importantly NEW information, references, or techniques then you should aim to price it on the high end.

After you figure out your goal, you must figure out what your audience’s need is for your E-Book. For example, does your book solve a particular problem? If it does, and solves it in a way that hasn’t been written about in one hundred other E-Books, you will be able to achieve high sales at a high price. If your book solves a problem or answers questions in a new and unique way, you should price your book as high as you can go. You will achieve larger profits this way, but bring in fewer customers. Just make sure the question or problem that your book solves is one that is important and relevant to the majority of your market audience. If your ideas are not common knowledge, or you are presenting a brand new technique, you will be able to sell books at a high price. Just be prepared for your competition to undercut you on price as soon as they hear about your book.

Keep in mind that the above pricing strategy is temporary. Eventually, you will cease to sell books at this high price. So figure out in advance how long you plan to offer your E-Book at this high price, and when that time is up, change your pricing strategy.

If you want to see large profits over customer draw, aim for an audience that is looking for easy solutions to their problems at a low price. If your book is aimed at solving one particular problem rather than general advice, then you can charge more. Start at the highest price the market will bear to bring in the largest profits, and plan to discount the book a number of times throughout the year.

Marketing Strategies

The key that unlocks the sales potential of your E-Book is to find a single sentence that becomes your selling handle. This sentence states what question or problem your book answers and the benefits your E-Book can provide. Then be sure to use that sentence in every piece of sales and promotional material, and every time anyone asks you about your E-Book.

Besides promoting your books assiduously online, there are several other strategies that can help you sell more books.

One is to give something away for free with your book, such as a valuable bonus item. Or bundle several E-Books under one price, which lowers the price for each E-Book if they were sold separately.

An effective technique for figuring out a price is to send out a survey to your current customers. If these customers have already bought an E-Book from you, ask for their opinion in terms of price. Do this by creating a sales page for the new book, but don’t include a price on that page. Instead, add a number of links to survey questions that ask pointed questions to aid you in assigning a price to your E-Book.

Another strategy is to test out prices by creating a number of duplicate sales pages with different prices on each page. Make sure your sales copy is exactly the same on every page, and includes your selling-handle sentence. Then figure out for each page the conversion ratio between visitors to your site and sales of your book. This will tell you what your optimum price is.

Ultimately, if you’ve written a book that solves a problem or presents a new technique, your book will bring in both traffic and profits. So be sure to write that selling-handle sentence that sums up what problem your book solves and what the benefits of your book will be to the customers who purchase it. And then watch your market come to you!

If you are getting frustrated watching your site stagnate in the Google rankings, then you will want to make sure you follow these tips. You need to make sure you research properly and the proper plugins installed. You also have to make sure your page is setup properly and you are creating content. Lastly you need to build backlinks to your content. Once you have read about these steps below, you will be able to skyrocket your site to the top of Google.

1. Research – You have to research your keywords. A lot of people, and I mean a lot, are going to tell you to look for low competition long tail keywords. I disagree. I say you go for the big guys first. Do your research of course though. If you want to rank for a spanish course then “Learn Spanish” is a great place to start. Using programs like Google’s free keyword tool you can find out an estimate of how many people search for a term. The higher the better. Do a Google search yourself and see if people are buying Paid Google ads – if so that means there is money to be made. Don’t be scared of very competitive terms either – that is where the money is.

2. Plugins – Make sure you install all applicable SEO related plugins. At the very least you should be installing All-IN-One Seo and XML Google Sitemaps. The first plugin will help with on page optimization, while the latter one will build a XML sitemap and submit it to Google. Do some research and see if any other SEO related plugins could fit on your site.

3. On Page Optimization – Although not as important as it once was you should still make sure your website is optimized. You want all your title tags to be keyword rich. That is the first thing Google sees. You also want to make sure you have no broken links on your site. The keyword appearing in your body as well as in H1 tags will also help. I would also make sure my permalinks were keyword rich. To do this set your custom permalink structure to something like /%postname%/. That way whatever you title your posts will become part of your URL.

4. Constant Content – Start adding content and don’t stop ever. Google loves fresh content and so do your visitors. Try to post everyday, if not really aim for five times a week. If you need to get guest bloggers to help you do that, but make sure you have a steady flow of content.

5. Build Links – Build links, everyone knows Google loves backlinks. Get them wherever you can. Online directories, blog comments, forum signatures, forum profiles, social bookmarking and social media all have opportunities to place backlinks. You can research proper backlinking and find tons of great ideas.

These five steps are very simple, but they are the key to getting your WordPress blog to the top of Google. If you research, plugin, optimize, create and build, you will blast to the top of Google.

Any number of tracking programs are out there from Hits Connect to Track That Ad to the new Link Brander. Even server-side tracking scripts are available for purchase. Regardless of what you use, tracking every ad that you post, whether it be to a traffic exchange or to a safelist, you need to know how successful your marketing is. Why? Because if you dont track your ads, you may spend tons of time and money chasing a dog that youll never catch.

Tracking works simply. You place the ad URL into the tracker, which devises a new URL for you to use in its place. Every time you employ the tracker URL, that hit is recorded by the tracking system.

Lets say you buy 1,000 hits at XYZ traffic exchange. How will you know if they have been delivered, unless youre using a tracking system? You wont, and though its the exception rather than the norm, you may not get the hits you paid for.

What should really interest you are actual click-throughs. That tells you how many times someone has actually seen your page and clicked on the link to take them to the site youre promoting. In this case, you will use the tracker link as the URL in your call to action (the click here, join now, etc.) button on your splash page. Or, use it as the link in your safelist mailing, as an FFA link, or in any other form of traffic generation system. By using the tracking link, youll know every time someone clicks because the tracking system will tell you.

As another example, lets say we advertised site ABC on traffic exchange XYZ and we used a tracking link for our call to action. We did the same thing at traffic exchange 123. At XYZ, we got our 1,000 hits and only 15 people clicked through to our page. At 123, we got 1,000 hits, but 100 people clicked through to our page. In which traffic exchange do you want to promote that particular page more heavily? No brainer, right? At 123, of course.

The only way that you can possibly know whether your advertising is working is by tracking the results. Check out several tracking services to see which fits your budget and has the features you like. Then, either buy the script or sign up for a subscription. A tracking system is one tool in your marketing toolbox that you cannot afford to be without.

1. WordPress.com/WordPress.org Forums: Whether you host your own site or use the .com service, both instances have an online forum. This is probably the first place you should look for any issues you are having. If something is wrong with your WordPress site there is a good chance that someone else has dealt with it.

Before you make a post asking your question, do a search on the forums and you might find a thread with your answer. If you can’t find an answer that addresses your issue, then you can make your own thread dealing with it. Titling and tagging your post properly will be a huge help in getting the answer you need. Make sure you describe your issue in detail, including your website URL never hurts.

2. Paid Theme Support: This is only helpful if you have paid for a WordPress theme. Most of these premium WordPress themes will have their own support. If you come across an issue, this should be the first place you look. Either email your theme provider or use their support forum (they should have one). The reason this should be your first stop is that there will be people there that know specific issues with your theme. The WordPress.org forums won’t have access to certain details about your theme.

It will also be hard to find support elsewhere, because paid theme providers make sure that theme specific support info is only shared by them. This ensures people aren’t just stealing their theme.

3. Google: Google is your friend. Just today a friend of mine upgraded to WP 3.0 and had an issue. His admin panel was all of a sudden full of error messages. We had no idea what to do, and no idea what the error meant. I simply took as much of the error code that wasn’t specific to his site and Googled it. I got a couple different results but the fixes didn’t work. I then Googled the error code with the name of his theme, and instantly got the fix from a blog. It was as simple as changing a tiny piece of code. Google is the world’s leading search provider for a reason – it works.

By using the above methods you can probably address just about any problem you come across. The toughest part of fixing your problems is properly explaining them and only with practice will you get better. The more times you use a support forum means the better you will be at using it. The same goes for Google, once you have spent some time hunting down answers you will get a knack for stringing together the right search terms. Good luck, and I hope you find the answer to all your probelms quickly and painlessly.