Everyone knows that getting in good with Google can increase the popularity of a web site. How do you know where you stand with Google? You can actually install a button on your toolbar that will show the page rank of any site you visit, including your own. Just visit google.com/toolbar and click the Install Google Toolbar button on the right side of the screen. Once the button is installed, you will be able to look at the button on your toolbar to see the page rank of any web page you visit. The higher the page rank, the more Google thinks of that page! The highest possible ranking is 10 of 10.

Alexa is another easy tool to install. This button will show you where you fall in the entire list of web sites on the internet. In this case, the lower your number, the better your rank. For example, there are billions of web sites on the internet. If your Alexa ranking is 2,000,000, you really aren’t doing all that bad. However, if your Alexa ranking is 200, you are a top ranking web site. To install this button go to Alexa.com and click on Toolbar on the menu across the top. From there you can download the button.

Another analytical tool is Compete. The Compete button will show where they have placed you in the overall list of web sites, and will also show you how trustworthy the site is. To install this button go to Compete.com, click on Resourcee and then Toolbar. By the way, Google’s page rank of Compete.com is 6 of 10. Which is actually very good!

It’s hard to say which tool is the best indicator of how popular your site is. These are just benchmarks to go by without having to access a lot of complicated statistics. Periodically though, it is good to get more detail to really analyze how your site is performing and what may need tweaking.

To your success

Laura Sorensen

http://mlm-travel-ventures-business.com

“Travel agencies are an important part of our distribution system,” Carnival’s Vice President of Worldwide Sales Joni Rein said, “we created the ‘Pinnacle Club’ to recognize those high-volume agencies like Rovia who are truly experts in their field.” The award only recognizes those companies at the “pinnacle” of their craft. The Pinnacle Award is not just a singular event but it more often serves as a herald for uphill momentum and unquestionable credibility.

Now in its 25th year, the Pinnacle Awards recognize conference centers, hotels, convention centers and visitor’s bureaus as chosen and reviewed by meeting planners for their commitment to hospitality excellence. Previous Pinnacle Award winners include: the Bellagio and Ballys in Las Vegas, the MGM Grand Hotel in Detroit, and in Texas – the Adolphus Hotel-Dallas, and the Four Seasons-Irving, others include the Sheraton-Waikiki, the Hyatt-Alburquerque, and the Drake in Chicago, just to name a few.

To be eligible for the “Pinnacle Club,” travel companies must demonstrate exceptional professionalism, both in the corporate world as well as commercial interaction. Creative sales and marketing techniques must provide extraordinary, impactful and outstanding support for the Carnival product.

 There are many money making scams floating around and stories of how to “get rich quick.” There are also some legitimate alternatives that may not bring overnight success, but certainly have the potential for longer term benefits. One of these alternatives is network marketing, or multi-level marketing.

 In the past, network marketing carried with it a very negative stigma and whispers of “pyramid scheme” followed the footsteps of those who chose to become involved with these types of companies. Some companies were guilty of strongly resembling a pyramid scheme, defined by Wikipedia as “a non-sustainable business model that involves the exchange of money primarily for enrolling other people into the scheme, often without any product or service being delivered.” However, many well established companies such as Mary Kay, Amway and Avon are legitimate businesses with products and / or services. Just because the representatives have the opportunity to draw more reps into the business and earn commission from those reps sales, does not automatically dictate a pyramid scheme. In fact, have you looked at a traditional company organizational chart? Isn’t there one person, the President or CEO at the very top who makes the most money? Below that person are several Vice Presidents who also earn a high level salary. Below the Vice Presidents are managers, supervisors and then general employees. Typically, with each position, the salary is based on how high up in the organization you are.

 Network marketing has several advantages over traditional businesses as far as employment opportunities go:

 Not only do the legal non-discriminatory rules apply (race, sex, religion, etc.), but you don’t need to have a formal education, not even a high school diploma (although generally you need to be able to read and write). If you can find a sponsor and pay the start up costs, you most likely will be accepted.

 Your potential is limited only by the amount of effort you are willing to put into the organization, not by some employer determining how much you’re worth and paying you a salary.

 You can earn more than the people who came into the organization before you. If you’re putting forth more effort than they are, you can exceed them, and they will thank you for it!

 Network marketing companies offer more training and marketing resources than ever before. You should make sure that the company you join does offer these things. Many even teach you how to market on the internet.

 You can choose from virtually unlimited products and services to promote and sell. Network marketing isn’t just about make-up and vitamins anymore!

 Together, network marketing companies generated $28.7 billion in U.S. sales in 2002, according to the Direct Selling Association (DSA), a lobbying association that represents network marketers and other companies who sell directly to consumers. (taken from an internet article at Microsoft Small Business Center, by Monte Enbysk).

 I’m not saying that making money at network marketing is easy. A lot of jobs are not easy, and they don’t offer you the financial and physical freedom that can come from being your own boss. So you can choose to work hard to make someone else a lot of money, or you can choose to work hard at learning some new skills that will enable you to make a lot of money for yourself and your family, and eliminate restrictions on your valuable time and financial resources. If circumstances are forcing you to make a change anyway, you really don’t have that much to lose, and you have a lot to gain!

 To your success

 Laura Sorensen

http://www.mlm-travel-ventures-business.com

http://www.elstravels.worldventures.biz

There’s more to Twitter than answering the question “What are you doing?” in 140 characters or less. What many people don’t realize is that there are many programs on the internet designed to integrally work with Twitter to make better use of your time and resources. Following are just a few applications available. Feel free to spend some time searching for others that help streamline your Twitter tasks.

Probably the one program that I find most helpful is Tweetlater.com. It’s free to sign up, although you can upgrade to a paid version. Tweetlater allows you to set up direct messages to people when they start following you. You can even set up several versions of responses that will rotate so that not every follower gets exactly the same message. Although this may seem impersonal, it’s very handy when you can’t keep up with your followers. Sending a robotic “thank you” is better than not responding at all! You can also set up drafts so you can reuse messages rather than retyping them all of the time. You can set up your account to automatically follow or unfollow people who do the same to you. For more options, visit Tweetlater and get your free account.

Another application that works really well is Twitterfeed. Twitterfeed allows you to feed your blog posts so that they automatically show up in 4 different social sites including Twitter and Ping.fm. Within Ping.fm you can also post to additional sites such as Facebook. This saves you from having to repost your articles and blogs to multiple sites individually, a real time saver!

Other programs such as Twollo and Tweetergetter help you generate followers automatically based on criteria that you choose. Revtwt.com and Tweetmyblog.com are different methods used to generate revenue from your Twitter account.

There are even more Twitter applications out there. Just use caution when submitting your Twitter user name and password. You don’t want anyone hijacking your Twitter account! Also, don’t forget to add a live comment on Twitter now and then. The whole point is to be social which means keeping it personal.

Now go out there and start Tweeting!

To your success,

Laura Sorensen

http://www.mlm-travel-ventures-business.com

 Recent statistics published by the U.S. Travel Association state that the travel industry is a $770,000,000,000 or 770 billion dollar industry. This number may decrease slightly in this time of economic recovery, but the number is certain to stay high.

 Who is receiving all of this money? Here is a breakdown of a few of the more popular internet sites.

 Originally started by Microsoft, Expedia is publicly traded so it’s owned by its stockholders. Chairman Barry Diller owns 58% of the stock.

 Travelocity is a privately owned company and a subsidiary of Sabre Holdings Corp. 2005 revenue generated by Travelocity was $830 million (most recent statistic found). Travelocity was actually the first internet travel service that allowed customers to reserve, book, and purchase tickets without the help of a travel agent or broker.

 Orbitz is another publicly traded company. This was a collaborative project of several major airlines starting in 2001. In 2004 all of Orbitz stock was purchased by Cendant Corp for $27.50 per share. As of the writing of this article, Orbitz shares are currently selling for $1.89 per share.

 What does this mean for the prospects of working in the travel industry? There are internet based travel companies that allow you to promote the use of their sites and earn commissions on travel booked. Rovia is one provider of internet travel services that now has access to 3 Global Distribution Services, giving them a very competitive edge on the internet. Compensation plans vary as well as products and services offered. There is no physical office to go to and you can set your own schedule. There are even training programs available to extend your credentials in order to attract more customers and earn higher commissions.

 Earn your way into the billion dollar travel industry. Take advantage of work from home options and earn direct commissions versus making risky stock investments! Do your research, and find a legitimate business opportunity that allows you to enjoy the benefits of the travel business without the old fashioned restrictions of a traditional employer.    

 Cheers to your success!

Laura Sorensen

http://mlm-travel-ventures-business.com

 There is no shortage of affiliate programs to participate in. You don’t have to look very hard or very far to find an internet company that allows members to promote their products and earn a commission when a purchase is made via the member’s affiliate link.

 Just a few examples of internet businesses that offer affiliate programs are Magnetic Sponsoring, Site Build It and iContact. Each of these companies allows you the opportunity to promote their specific products or services and earn affiliate commissions on sales made through your link. Some companies require you to be a paying participant in their products before you can become an affiliate but not all of them.

 There is another resource for joining affiliate programs. Commission Junction allows you to search for advertisers that offer products and services that are compatible with your business and interests. Once you find an advertiser that you want to partner with, you fill out a simple application and submit it to them on line for approval. There is a short wait to see if you’ve been approved, usually 24 hours or less. Once you are approved you are given access to their links and banners to put on your web site or in your email newsletters. Different advertisers have different terms and may restrict the use of their links for some uses such as Google Ads. Just make sure you read the terms and conditions for each advertiser before you start promoting their programs.

 Several nice features of using a service like Commission Junction are the ability to search for relevant advertisers, historical data on each company’s campaign, and an overview of the commission plan. Examples of advertisers that participate in Commission Junction are Mexicana, iContact and Travel Guard Insurance.

 No matter which programs you choose to participate in, do some research and make sure they are legitimate advertisers that add value to you and your primary business. You don’t want to develop a reputation for exposing your contacts to advertising scams! Promoting reputable products and services creates a win-win situation for you and your customers. They receive something of value and you receive a commission for offering it to them. You also establish yourself as a credible advertiser and build a long term relationship with your contacts.

 Cheers to your success!

 Laura Sorensen

http://www.mlm-travel-ventures-business.com

When you meet people using a computerized social network, you have limited access to information about those individuals. There is a risk that not everyone is who they present themselves to be. There is also the limitation of real time interaction. Granted, there are chat rooms, instant messengers, skype and program specific chat capabilities. This is only useful if the people you want to communicate with happen to be on line at the same time you are. If they aren’t, you can tweet them, write on their wall or leave them a written message. There’s no guarantee they will respond to your message assuming they ever get it to begin with.

Not to give up on electronic socializing entirely, but there is an additional community that can offer some of the benefits of computerized social networking and eliminate some of the shortcomings. The interesting thing is that this particular group begins on the internet, but takes their socializing to a whole other level.

Meetup, hosted at meetup.com, offers a wide range of opportunities for people to come together and share their ideas or interests in person. It’s free to sign up, although there is a nominal fee if you decide to administer your own meetup group. Once you set up your account, you can search for an unlimited number of topics that you would like to participate in group discussions about. You can request email notifications as the groups you’ve targeted create new meetups, schedule new meetings or host special events. If you don’t find a group that fits your agenda you can start a new one yourself. Each group determines what fees if any will be associated with being a member. Actual meetings are hosted on site at a physical location and participants who attend can interact with each other in a live setting.

Some examples of local meetup groups in this area are: Business Success Forum, geared for entrepreneurs and small business owners; Madison Web Design & Development Meetup; and The Madison International Travel Meetup Group. Anyone can start a meetup group in their particular locale, and the list of countries that participants can search for groups in is quite extensive.

Take a break from the computer, after you’ve registered with Meetup.com and joined your interest groups of course. Experience the old fashioned social networking style, greet your friends and associates with a handshake and a smile instead of just a tweet.

Cheers to your success!

Laura Sorensen
http://www.mlm-travel-ventures-business.com

 For each of the marketing strategies mentioned above, you need an article, letter or form of written presentation. A good place to start is by writing something that would be appropriate for each. Using a word processor that allows you to save your work in plain text format usually works the best.

 Once you have your text written, formatted and proof read, you are ready for the first step. It doesn’t really matter what order you go in, but if you keep it consistent you will establish a routine and the process will become completely natural in a short period of time.

 For example, let’s say the first step in your routine is to take your article or text and submit it to an ezine such as ezinearticles.com. You copy the text from your plain text document into the article submission form. Now you can copy and paste the same plain text document into your blog. You may want to preview it before posting to check for paragraph spacing and other formatting issues. Finally, you can copy and paste your document one more time into your email newsletter template. Using this routine, you can ensure that your information is exposed to as large an audience as possible with a minimal amount of effort.

 If you really want to expose your literary creations however, there are a couple of other steps that you can take to increase your audience awareness.

 Once you’ve posted to your blog, you can submit your specific blog url to different bookmarking sites such as Propeller, Delicious and Stumbleupon. The final step of your marketing routine is to go to Pingomatic and ping your blog submissions to multiple internet services simultaneously.

 Those are the five steps to establishing a basic marketing plan. Notice that the entire process should not cost you one dime out of pocket! Once you’ve written your document, the actual marketing process should take no more than half an hour. This means you have more time to spend generating leads for your business and following up with those leads.

 I hope that you find this information useful in marketing your business, whatever industry you are in.

Cheers to your success!

Laura Sorensen

http://www.mlm-travel-ventures-business.com

 One resource to submit your blog site to is FeedAgg.com. This is a one time submission per blog site. FeedAgg is a form of RSS, or Really Simple Syndication. This means that once your site has been submitted, it will update here automatically as you add new “feeds” or pages. It is then available for public viewing sorted by category and subject matter.

 Another way you can bookmark your site is to install a button on your browser bar for a site called Stumbleupon. This installs a button with a thumbs up or thumbs down icon. When you stumble upon a web site that you like, you click the thumbs up icon. You choose a category for the site and type a brief review and it is bookmarked in the Stumbleupon library. The advantage of this feature is that you can use it to improve the popularity of your own web sites and blogs by clicking the thumbs up icon when you visit your own site!

 Other services that work very similarly to each other are Delicious.com,  Propeller.com and Digg.com. These require you to set up login information before bookmarking sites. These services are also designed to bookmark your individual blog posts rather than a single submission per blog. Each time you write a new page you want to submit to these services with the URL containing the specific post title. For easy submission to over 130 other bookmarking sites, visit Google’s socialmarking.com page and follow the instructions on the page.

 Once you’ve completed all of your social bookmarking submissions, be sure to go to Pingomatic.com. Type in your blog post URL and with the click of a button send a ping to multiple internet services to let them know you have a new post to share!

Cheers to your success!

Laura Sorensen

http://www.mlm-travel-ventures-business.com

 There are several ways to use blogs to inform people about you and your business, and get them to visit your other web sites.

 First, the search engines recognize your blog in the same way they recognize other web sites. They will base their search ranking on keywords that you use in your titles and content, how often you add content and whether what you post is original and relevant. So the more frequently you post and the higher quality information you add, the more likely your blog will show up in the search results.

 Second, you have the ability to write a bio associated with your blog site. This is where you can give your visitors some personal information about yourself, your business and the link to any other web sites you may be promoting. You can also display URL links in your signature whenever you make a new post.

 A third way to use blogs to gain recognition is to post comments to other people’s blogs. This increases your exposure and the opportunity for people to go check out your pages and your other related web sites.

 Finally, the search engines are very favorable to web sites that have a lot of quality inbound links. When you put your other web URL’s in your blog signatures or bio data sections, you are automatically creating a new link to your other sites. This will cause “link popularity” and help move your related sites higher in the search engine results.

 There are other creative things you can do with your blog, depending on which services you use and whether you use free or paid blogging. For example, Google has their own blog called Blogger.com. You can use it absolutely free, and install Google ads on it so that if visitors click on the ads, you recieve a commission for each ad clicked. Word Press is another popular blogging service. You can also put ads on your Word Press blogs, but only if you upgrade to a paid subscription. You can have multiple blogs with either service, and you can blog to more than one service if you like.

 With blogging being such a popular internet activity, there are many sites that you can join and start blogging your way to success. Check them out and see which ones fit your personality and blogging needs the best.

Cheers to your success!
 

Laura Sorensen

http://www.mlm-travel-ventures-business.com