When Eric Gantly went to trade in his $300,000 laser-cutting machine' for a newer model, the manufacturer told him it was worthless, and offered him $5,000 for the spare parts.

So Gantly, president of Frigo Design, Inc. in Brewerton, posted the five-year-old piece of equipment on eBay. Within one week, he sold the machine for about $50,000, he says.

Gantly and other Central New York-based manufacturers are using online markets such as eBay and its "Manufacturing & Metalworking" category to buy and sell both new and used manufacturing equipment.

Frigo Design manufactures custom-built frames and panels for appliances (for example: covers for refrigerators to match them with cabinet patterns and colors). The firm began selling its products on its Web site (www.fhgodesign.com) in 2001, and started auctioning its goods on eBay soon after, Gently says "[eBay] gives people another avenue to find us," Gantly says. "People looking on eBay are looking for a specialty product or a bargain."

The sale of the laser cutter was the only time Frigo used eBay to sell its used equipment. Providing the ability to locate niche manufacturers in need of used equipment for their operations is a significant draw for eBay's Manufacturing & Metalworking category, says Benjamin Hanna, senior manager of eBay business.

In the second quarter of 2005 eBay sold an average of about 350 welding machines, 300 toolholding products, 100 end-mills, 100 micrometers, 70 pieces of metalworking equipment, and 30 industrial sewing machines per day.

About 50 percent of Bameveld-based Hud-Son Forest Equipment's revenue is generated through its online operations, says Christopher Sharrow, who deals exclusively with the firm's Internet sales.

Until Hud-Son began offering products on its Web site as well as the sites of eBay, Yahoo!, and Amazon, the firm's sales came exclusively from its catalog and trade shows, Sharrow says. Today, these avenues generate only about half of the firm's sales, and that number is steadily decreasing.

Soon after Hud-Son began offering online sales, the firm stopped using Amazon, because the site lacked the customer base to make the price of posting products cost-effective, Sharrow says.

"Amazon is just much smaller and not geared to what we deal with," Sharrow adds.

Amazon's equipment sales are limited to office supplies, computers, and electronics. A search for Hud-Son Forest Equipment on Yahoo! returns 43,800 hits, and a Google search for the firm returns 1.9 million Web sites, many of which lead to the firm's eBay products.

eBay has 30,000 manufacturing items listed on its Web site on any given day, Hanna says.

Hud-Son manufactures and sells logging equipment and tractors to a variety of customers throughout the United States. The firm also salvages and resells snowmobiles. Hud-Son's clients range from large corporations to individual proprietors and homeowners, and eBay helps the firm access the breadth of customers it needs to reach, Sharrow says.

While eBay has been around since 1995, the corporation launched its eBay business & industrial division in early 2003, after monitoring the skyrocketing number of equipment and business-use items posted in the site's "other" category, Hanna says.

"We started saying: 'look, there's something going on here that we better pay attention to," Hanna says.

In addition to the manufacturing & metalworking category, eBay business includes construction, health care, food service and retail, and laboratory and life sciences divisions, Hanna says.

Of the $10.9 billion of eBay's total merchandise sales in the second quarter of 2005, $1.5 billion came from the firm's business & industrial category. eBay does not break down its sales into business and industrial's sub-categories, Hanna says.

Massively multiplayer role-playing games (MMORPGs) are among the most popular types of online game. A successful title may have tens of thousands or even millions of subscribers and, at any given time, may have thousands of players online. This paper presents a method for modeling MMORPG system performance and applies it in an analysis of two real MMORPGs. The results show that a strong linear relationship exists between performance metrics at the server side and the number of concurrent players online. As a result, utilization of IT resources, including network traffic and server load, can be predicted, given the number of concurrent players. The performance model presented here can be used for automated IT resource allocation at runtime and is thus useful in the context of utility computing and on demand systems.

Online games are the trend of the day. Online game services such as PlayStation ** online, Xbox ** Live, GameSpy ** Arcade, and other independent PC-based services are becoming increasingly popular. In their 2004 prediction, International Data Corporation (IDC) estimated industry revenue to reach $656.3 million in 2004 and grow to over $2 billion by 2008. (1) Online games enable multiple players to simultaneously interact in a "game world" to which they connect over a network. Most online games today follow a client/server model; research is ongoing concerning the feasibility of other types of architecture, such as peer-to-peer and grid architectures. (2,3)

PC-based online games can be classified into two subcategories--multiplayer online games (MOGs) and massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs)--based on the maximum number of simultaneous players in a single game world. Popular MMOGs might have thousands of players online at any given time, usually exclusively on a company-owned server. On the other hand, MOGs usually have less than 50 players online and are usually played on private servers. MOGs are frequently adopted by fast-paced game genres like first-person-shooter (FPS) games in which response latency is the most critical factor, aside from game content, in the game experience. Some examples of FPS games are Doom, ** Quake, ** Half-Life, ** and Counter-Strike, (4,5) which are session-based games in which the goal is for a player's alter ego to accumulate successful "kills" against other players. To support more players, MOGs can scale up by horizontally replicating the game world without coordination or synchronization between these worlds.

The first and most popular type of MMOG is the massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) genre, which can be traced to the nongraphical online multiuser dungeon (MUD) games of the 1970s and became popular in the late 1990s. Reference 6 estimates that MMORPGs hold a 95.5 percent share of the MMOG market. Some examples of MMORPGs are EverQuest **, Lineage **, and World of Warcraft **. (7-9) MMORPGs are also called persistent-state-world (PSW) or persistent-world (PW) games because the game world is normally hosted by a company and is always available, and world events happen continually, even while some of the players are not playing their character. Players may retain the same title for several years. Popular MMORPG game titles have large numbers of subscribers. Figure 1, based on Reference 6, shows the statistics up to May 2005.

From the figure, we can see that subscriptions to the same title vary over time. Such dynamics of subscription bring challenges to gaming service providers who traditionally install a dedicated infrastructure for each title, due to the high risk of over- and under-allocation of resources and potentially poor resource utilization. This situation may become worse, as the number of commercially operated game titles has increased dramatically in recent years.

A successful gaming service provider must be able not only to satisfy its subscribers' demand for high quality and attractive game content but also to reduce the risk of high investment in game hosting infrastructure associated with the difficulty of predicting the success of a new game title. The utility computing model, (also called "on demand," (10) "utility data center," (11) or "just in time computing" (12)) is believed to be the solution to this problem from an infrastructure perspective. For example, Shaikh et al. propose an on demand service platform for hosting large-scale multiplayer games. (13) The key idea proposed is sharing IT resources across multiple game titles or customers by dynamically provisioning and deprovisioning resources for a title or customer from a shared resource pool.

A critical component for these solutions is the provisioning manager, which is responsible for resource provisioning and deprovisioning, such as the IBM Tivoli Intelligent Orchestrator (TIO). The TIO is an off-the-shelf product that automatically deploys and configures servers, software, and network devices in a data center environment. (14) The primary function of a provisioning manager is to collect performance and availability metrics from game servers, predict their trends, and decide how to adjust resource allocation accordingly

Developing a massively multiplayer online game which utilizes physically based simulation to provide realistic behaviors requires numerical integration functions with inherently high computational costs. This simulation, performed on the individual clients of a peer-to-peer networked game or for a client/server online game, presents challenges due to many factors, including limited computing resources at the client level and network latency in the propagation of a client's state to other clients. Computationally intensive simulation may adversely affect performance and result in a situation in which little processing capacity is left for other aspects of the game. In this paper, we explore how a game developer who is aware of these issues might create a game for IBM's recently announced Cell Broadband Engine[TM] processor; we also present an example of the development of a game in which multiple human and robotic characters interact with static and dynamic objects in a virtual environment. Although our experience suggests that porting code to the Cell Broadband Engine core with minimal use of its synergistic processing elements (SPEs) should not be expected to produce significant performance gains at this time, the potential of the Cell SPEs to improve performance is considerable. We discuss performance and design and implementation decisions, with programmability issues being especially noted.

The video game industry had an annual revenue of approximately $25.4B in 2004, and this is projected to increase to $54.6B by 2009, according to Price Waterhouse Coopers. (1) This figure represents a 16.5 percent compound annual growth rate. Game platforms (both PCs and consoles) host non-networked and multiplayer networked games. Although revenue from offline games has been dominant over the years, analysts' predictions suggest that multiplayer online game sales will eventually dwarf those of traditional console PC games, with revenues approaching $5.2B by 2006. (2)

Currently, online games are predominantly turn-based role-playing games with limited behavioral dynamics incorporated into game play. Several problems, such as low network bandwidth and high latency as well as low server-side computing density, are limiting the state of the art in massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs). As the number of households with broadband access increases in the United States and around the world, the network limitations should be significantly reduced. The next generation of MMOGs will likely employ a much higher level of physically based modeling, artificial intelligence, dynamic story lines, user-created content, and gesture-based input devices, and a higher level of visual quality, motivated by a new family of high-performance game consoles equipped with integrated Ethernet controllers. Powerful servers based on the same microprocessor technology used in these consoles can enable the simulation of virtual worlds on a massive scale.

Game developers using current technology are forced to use a design model that binds the scope, quality, quantity, and complexity of interactivity between players. This limits both the type of game that developers can create and the market penetration of the game. The design model is limited due to many problems, including communications latency, bandwidth constraints, algorithmic and computational complexity, development and implementation costs, implementation time, and the inherent complexities of combining visual, musical, and literary arts with technology. MMOGs have traditionaily addressed these challenges by imposing design constraints on the level of interactivity or realism provided in the game. For example, games such as EverQuest ** or Ultima Online ** do not attempt to provide a level of realism that depends on physical simulation, whereas Guild Wars ** provides a higher level of visual realism and attempts to include better simulation than traditional role-playing games.

Physical simulation allows computer-generated objects to behave in a physically realistic manner. This is accomplished by formulating and evaluating a mathematical model consistent with the laws of physics governing the behaviors being simulated. Physical simulation is very computationally intensive and consequently very slow. It can also result in unrealistic behaviors due to instabilities at extremes in the simulation, such as very heavy or very light objects, extreme forces exerted at joints, or very large velocities. These challenges often lead simulation models to use physics for some aspects, but rely on nonphysical simulations for others. For example, the simulation of a multibody object using articulated joints may constrain one body to move itself after each time step to maintain a consistent position or orientation to an adjacent body. Higher-performing and more stable "pseudo-physics" is typically used in video games, but may be inadequate for other simulations such as those required for simulating animal behavior or mechanical systems.

Blockbuster Entertainment ended 2005 with fewer stores than it started with, a reversal in a long-time growth trend that will continue into 2006 and beyond. The 4,617-store chain shed about 80 stores in 2005 while reporting a net loss of $588 million, down from $1.25 billion in 2004. But the retailer managed to generate net income of $18 million in the fourth quarter despite a 10.1% decline in same-store sales. The chain attributed the bulk of its 2005 losses to its decision to eliminate late fees.

Looking forward, Blockbuster expects to close up to 150 stores in 2006. During a March 9 conference call, Blockbuster ceo John Antioco said he expects "significant capacity shrinkage over the next couple. of years" as the chain ad justs to a changing market.

One area Blockbuster expects to grow is online rentals. It currently has 1.2 million subscribers for Blockbuster Online and hopes to increase its membership to 2 million by the end of 2006 with a new marketing campaign.

Companies that want to sell music online in the European Union can now get a single license to operate in all 25 member states, the European Commission said on Wednesday.

"These licences will make it easier for new European-based online services to take off," Internal Market and Services Commissioner Charlie McCreevy said in a statement.

Starting an online music service in Europe such as Apple's iTunes currently requires the consent of dozens of license holders in each country—record labels, royalty collection societies, music publishers, and, in some cases, from the artists themselves.

The resulting lengthy negotiations pushed back the launch of services such as iTunes and Napster by months, and some popular U.S. music services such as Yahoo have yet to appear in Europe in part because of licensing red tape.

The Commission said in its guidelines to the industry on Wednesday that societies collecting royalty income on behalf of authors of music should henceforth have the right to operate across the EU, scrapping any territorial restrictions.

I will be monitoring the situation closely and, if I am not satisfied that sufficient progress is being made, I will take tougher action," McCreevy said.

The Commission hopes this will end a situation whereby royalties owed to authors are not always distributed to them because of national barriers.

Delta Air Lines said on Wednesday (12 January) that it saw record sales on its website the day after it announced a reduction in its most expensive fares.

The airline did not however reveal the effect of the increased sales on its revenues and earnings.

Delta said in a statement that on 6 January Delta.com recorded more than USD10m in daily revenue, the number of tickets sold through the site doubled from an average day, and at peak volume Delta.com ticket sales totalled nearly USD1m per hour over a period of several hours.

On the day of the announcement, 5 January, Delta reportedly saw a 300% increase in single-day traffic on its website. In the five days following the launch of the new pricing ticket sales on the website increased by 60% compared with the same period a year ago.

One thing you have to say about the Internet: It's where creativity and ambition can truly turn anyone into a millionaire.

You’ve no doubt heard the stories and maybe even seen some of the advertising e-mail and Web sites offering so-called wealth building systems. Certainly, a lot of the hard sell is just hype. But a surprisingly high percentage of those claims are true. For Online Internet marketers are continuing to rake in fortunes and there's always room for one more.

Maybe that could be you.

That said, if you are considering a change in careers and looking for information on how to start an Internet business, you need to know that despite what the hyper-excited online sales pitches say, there is no get-rich-quick system.

Let me phrase that differently: If you want to make it in Internet marketing, you are going to have to work as hard or harder at it than anything you've ever done before. And you are going to have to be patient. It takes months to even start a trickle of income, a year or more before you see your efforts really start to pay off.

Let me be really blunt here. You are going to have to work hard at this. There truly is no such thing as a free lunch.

No matter how good the system and how automatic the programming and software help, if you donpt put in the time and effort, you’re going to be disappointed.

Still want to get into Internet sales and marketing?

Good.

Here are three tips on how to start a successful Internet business:

1) Research, research, research. Learn all you can. Read all the sales pitches and look at all the tutorial videos that you will find through sites like YourInfoConnection.com and other Internet marketing resource sites. And read the forums, too, on those sites, where real users will give you an unvarnished dose of reality. You need a solid education on how Internet business is done, both from the technology end and the business and marketing ends.

2) Don't buy every offer that comes your way. And believe me, once your name is on the lists of those interested in Internet marketing, you'll be deluged with come-ons and touts almost daily. All are breathlessly written and filled with glorious testimonials. You'll soon see the pattern and recognize the key phrases. Most are seldom what they claim to be. Don't buy any software or any plan until you know exactly what's required of you, how many other people are using the same system and whether it fits your time and schedule.

3) Understand that this will require time. For moderate success, it's going to take two to three hours a day, five days a week, to start building traction. Besides the work of setting up sites, you will need to market them. people don't automatically flock to your site once it goes live.

Is it easier to sell your product or service when people see in person how it works? Well, don't pack your bags for another sales meeting just yet. Have you considered hosting interactive conferences without even leaving your office?

As many entrepreneurs have found, Web seminars--aka "webinars"--can be used to explain your business and close sales. And according to David Alexander, an industry manager with San Antonio consulting firm Frost & Sullivan, the trend is taking off: "The world Web conferencing market is expected to grow approximately 33 percent annually through 2009."

Imagine leading a Web-based presentation while talking to prospects on the phone. You could walk them through a software demonstration. Or you might work on an application with people anywhere in the world.

As long as basic computer system requirements are met, you and your audience can download a plug-in that lets attendees view shared computers. As the host, you can give a presentation or let participants interact with the applications on your machine. Attendees can enjoy the show--but they see only the information you select.

Lead generation is one application that's fueling webinar usage by businesses both big and small. "Small businesses are faster in adopting technology," says Jeffrey Koll, sales manager for San Jose, California-based WebEx Communications Inc., which provides real-time communications infrastructure for business meetings. "Web conferencing makes them appear larger and allows them to effectively compete with larger companies and efficiently sell to more people."

With more than 64 percent of the Web conferencing market share, according to a 2002 Frost & Sullivan study, WebEx Communications offers three services that help growing companies: Presentation Studio, WebEx Event Center and WebEx Meeting Center. The first lets users create presentations, the second supports auditorium-style presentations for 25 to 2600 attendees, and the third specializes in highly interactive meetings. Subscriptions cost about $100 per month per port. (A port is an open channel of communication. So if you host a session with two people on their own computers, then three ports are open because you're also using a port.)

Genesys, PlaceWare and Raindance also offer Web conferencing services. So do AT&T and Verizon. Ask about a free trial or a pay-per-use option so you can test-drive the technology.

Wondering how to structure your first webinar? According to Koll, the majority of their 7,500 clients deliver 60-minute presentations, which include a demo and Q-and-A time.

Although most companies use webinars to make sales presentations, you could also market a fee-based webinar. Why not offer training (for a fee) and then pitch your business? If your tools improve participants' results, they'll buy from you. And if you're lucky enough to ran a home-based business, you can deliver a sales presentation or training in your slippers.

If you want to have promotions and good standing in search engines then you should know that the written content of your website is one of the very important factors to meet that ends and the quality of the content of your website can make that happen. It is absolutely the one factor that could possibly meet the success goals of your site. Remember that if the site contains only images it can do nothing to make the sales higher and for the visitors to stay and return.

Your site is valuable to every customer; there should be articles in your website to help convince people to visit your site over and over again. Let the people be encouraged in visiting your website through the content of your copywriting. And besides, the content of your site will depend upon the image of your company that will make the positive outlook and will convey thoroughness, awareness and pique the interest of the visitors to your site.

There is so much that needs to be considered and applied when writing for a website. The quality of thoughts is very much important when it comes to the content in terms of relating it to the structures of the site that you are writing for. It needs to catch the attention of the visitors of your site and needs to reveal the accurate search terms to make a reasonably high ranking with the content driven search engines.

The importance of the copy on your site has to work together with a specific direction so that the readers can be attracted with what they read and to make them always keep in touch with your site and for them to be familiarized with all the products that you are selling. All the details in your site project the image of the company, and it should capture the interests of the readers or the visitors of your site. One very important factor is that the content should make logical sense to the readers.

The more the readers or visitors value your site, the more you will have higher rankings. Definitely your company will remain competitive and will remain on top.

Copywriting is writing words that sell. It should consist of words that are precise and clear for the effectiveness of all the content of your site because it will definitely give your visitors the confidence and trust to your products or services. Copywriting should catch the attention of the customers since it is the lifeblood of every online services and businesses.

Your site will be successful if you always bring the quality information to potential customers and will generate more potential sales. Words that you will use in an online business will draw the customer to purchase a product and the words you used on that certain page will be the basis of the customer in making decision whether to stay or get out of your site.

In web copywriting, it determines the best and appropriate way of getting the sales increase. It means that promoting a certain product or service will depend upon the words you convey in your online access. Every word that you are going to use will change the way you sell forever.

Web site copy writing will soon be the huge demand for the successful online business because using selling and persuasive words can be powerful in terms of selling your products or services. You have just to put to your online business with the words of wisdom and ultimately you will meet the increase to your online sales and get the possible highest search engine ranking.

For this reason, even with the technology that covers online businesses, still, it need highly revolutionized and very effective marketing strategy in order to boost their productivity and sales.

Basically, since the advent of the Internet, people started to flock this new medium of information without even knowing its fundamental principles, how it works, things that are needed to survive in it, etc. Many people literally bombarded the Internet thinking that life would be a lot easier if they will invest on online businesses.

Indeed, it is a well-known fact that you can find money online, but only for those who know their way around and employ the best marketing strategy there is online.

What people do not know is that online marketing does not have to be very complicated. It just needs the right stuff to keep you going.

Take for example the use of mailing list, particularly opt in list. Before, no one ever dare to use opt in list thinking that it will not do any good for their business. Most entrepreneurs think that building an opt in list is just a waste of time and money. What they do not know is that, according to the "golden rule of the Internet," money is in the list.

It has probably been mentioned before, and is worth mentioning again, money is really in the list.

Why? Because with opt in lists, you get to keep your readers on the hook by providing them with information, promotion, and other campaigns in order to entice them to buy again from you.

Basically, opt in lists are lists of email addresses of customers with their consent. This means that after the customer had closed the transaction in a particular web site, there is an option on whether or not they wish to subscribe to the mailing list of the online business for any future promotions, newsletters, or campaigns that they would like to be informed of.

And because it is an option, the customers are not compelled to provide their email addresses to the web site. Plus, the web site owners will not be accused of spamming because emails that will be sent to the customers have the consent of the customer.

Creating an opt in list can be very beneficial to your site. In fact, it has been proven that in the two-step concept of selling, follow-ups are important to sustain the interest of the consumers. The other step is to obtain the interest of the buyer.

Hence, in order to sustain the interest of your buying public, it is best to create an opt in list so that you can always give your buyers the chance to remember your products, your business, and your services, in which they have been satisfied with.

To know more of the advantages of creating an opt in list for your business; here is a list that would tell you the reasons why it is beneficial.

1. Opt in lists are the business' most valuable asset

If you were to ask the owners of some online business about their most valuable asset, they will tell you that it is their opt in list. This is because opt in lists are customers' lists that can provide higher probability sales in a more consistent and stable condition. Because with opt in lists, all you have to do is to follow up orders or sales through promotions and ad campaigns.

2. It is always available

The best thing about opt in list is that it never grows old. As long as your customer needs something to survive, your contact with them will never grow old. This means that you can always have a fresh, new transaction wit them every time you inform them that you have new products or services. Every transaction is a new way of increasing your sales. Simply put, no opt in list = no sales (at the most).

3. Bigger opt in list would mean bigger profits

The more customer's names and email addresses you have on your list, the more chances you have in increasing your online sales. Every name, every email address can be worth a hundred dollars that can be accumulated with each transaction

A lot of people dream of starting their own independent record label, but for most it is a fantasy that will never become a reality. However, there are a number of musicians and music fans out there that are creating their own alternative to getting a recording contract with a major record label. These folks put a lot of hard work and a bit of their soul into producing, promoting and distributing the music that means so much to them.

Here are a few how-to tips (in no particular order) based on what they've learned:

1. Check with your local government to see if you need any licenses. The people at the licensing department are used to dealing with folks who know very little, and they are a great source of information.

2. Learn as much as you can about the music industry. If you're going to be a player, then you need to know the rules of the game. Once you understand how the industry works, it's easier to take your place in it.

3. Find talent. If you're planning to release your own music, then you've already got this one licked. If not, then you're going to need to convince some band or musician that working with your label is in their best interest. (Following step number two above will help you sound a lot smarter during this conversation!)

4. Get yourself a web site, and make sure that people can order your products online. You might consider selling merchandise for your label or band in addition to music.

5. Make sure that you're creating a good product. While one of the benefits of starting your own indie label is that you can produce any artist you desire, if you want to make a profit, you should probably consider the actual talent of your talent!

6. If you can swing it, get yourself a barcode to mark your products. This will help official sales numbers for the label. If one of your albums starts selling really big, it could actually end up on the charts because it was being tracked.

7. Create a business plan. This is pretty much essential if you're looking for funding. If not, it's still a good idea because it forces you to sit down and think through all the how-to aspects of starting and running an independent label.

8. Keep accurate records of your sales and expenses. You will have to file taxes on your business, and this will be infinitely easier if you have kept track of your income and "out go." Setting up a checking account for all your business transactions can be really helpful for this purpose, and you'll get updated statements from the bank.

9. Get some decent contracts for use with your talent and other vendors. There are plenty available online, so do some research to find out what will be the most useful for you and your label.

10. Get business cards made. Be sure to include your name and that of the label, along with any contact information. Don't forget to include your web site address (for those online sales). In addition to having business cards made, make sure you have business cards with you at all times. Give them to prospective talent, possible business connections, and your family (they'll be really impressed). Having business cards helps make you more legitimate, and they are a great marketing tool.

Have you still yet to hit a homerun for your online sales? No worries. In this Internet marketing strategy guide, I will show you 10 absolutely terrific ways to hit the ball off the park so that you can ram home more sales.

1. Multiply your marketing efforts

One of the keys to success on the Internet is multiplication. Any sales campaign is a numbers game, and you need to multiply your marketing or advertising efforts in order to hit those numbers. Do you do e-zine advertising? Then look for e-zines with more than 10,000 subscribers, and then look for more of such e-zines to multiply the numbers.

Do you advertise on message boards? Then use software to send your message out to multiple message boards. It's all about multiplication here.

2. Track your hits

Do you track your hits? If not, then it is high time that you do it, so that you can improve on your visitor ratio. Any serious Internet marketer should be doing it. You need to know where all your visitors are coming from, so that you can do the necessary improvements, like changing your headlines, offer a stronger guarantee, or add new testimonials, etc.

3. Find out who are your strongest leads

You can do yourself a favor by finding out who are your strongest leads for buying your products by offering a free e-zine. The visitors who are very interested in your products will definitely subscribe to it, and from there, you will know where these people come from, and how to find them.

4. Team up with your competition

If you can't beat them, then join them. Team up with your competition and start an association for your particular industry. This Internet marketing strategy can lead to a very profitable partnership with your competitors, so it is a win-win situation here.

5. Come up with a proper sales plan

Most Internet marketers fail because they never draw up any specific plans to do their marketing, and in the end, found themselves heading nowhere. So draw up a proper plan, a proper Internet marketing strategy. For example, you can plan a 4-week strategy to use e-zine advertising, and then make sure you stick to this plan.

6. Look for comments on your business

You can do a search for your online business' name in newsgroup or discussion boards. Look out for any comments about your business, because some of these comments you find can actually help to improve your business.

7. Get people to link to you

Attract other webmasters to link to your website. You can do this by offering them a discount on some of your products you sell, or give them some free stuff in appreciation for their links, like a free e-book or a free report. This Internet marketing strategy will improve your website's link popularity, which will be very helpful when it comes to your site's ranking in the search engines.

8. Grow your own opt-in list

It is widely agreed throughout the world of Internet marketing that the big money is in the list. So grow your own opt-in email list by giving your visitors a compelling reason for them to join your list. You can allow them to sign up for free stuffs, like some free marketing course, or contests, or discounts to some of your products.

9. Create more "PR" for your business

You can encourage more "PR" by creating a PR page for your business. What you can do here is to search for information that can be considered newsworthy for e-zines and other online mediums.

10. Return a favor for positive reviews

You can give your business and products more credibility by linking to other websites that have written favorable and positive reviews about your business. Other people have actually taken the trouble to write something good about your business, so the very least you can do is to return some of that favor to them by linking back to their websites.

Getting visitors to your Web site is the essence of the success of your home business online marketing promotion. You can build the greatest home business Internet site but if its marketing and promotion doesn't bring user traffic to the site it's useless. Once those visitors are coming to your site your it is important to have tracking software that can let you know which pages they view and for how long and what brings them to the site and what page they are on when they exit the site. All this information helps you improve your site and the online sales process for your home business Internet marketing and promotion.
Your online marketing and promotion plan for your Internet home business should include the following goals:

* To get instant low cost traffic to your site so that your visitors can let you know if your Web sales copy works, if the order form is right, if the navigation is easy and if the opt-in e-mail offer is productive.
* To test whether the sales process you have set up online does the optimal job of converting your home Internet business' Web traffic into the greatest number of sales.

* To bring the greatest number of consumers to your Web site in the least amount of time.
* And to assure that putting your Web traffic marketing and promotion campaign on autopilot successfully grows your Internet home business.
When it comes to testing your Internet site prior to home business online marketing promotion a lot of entrepreneurs don't know how to test and what to test. The basics that you need to look at are the ordering process, the sales copy, the opt-in e-mail offer and the navigation of the site. The ordering process must be designed with the assumption that the consumer who buys from you has never done so online before. Make it so easy to navigate that the Web novice won't give up in frustration.

When looking at the sales copy on your site you want to pay close attention to how captivating your headlines are, how clear and influential the benefits are spelled out, that the guarantee is prominent and clear and that there is a strong call to action.
The opt-in offer must be prominent and very inviting. The point of testing this is to make sure that you're getting the contact information from that consumer. You know can lure them to your site time and time again until they say otherwise.

Online shopping has gone through quite a surge during the past couple of years. Between the ease of use and lower shipping rates, more and more people are using online shopping for everything from every day shopping for food items to seasonal shopping for gifts. If you are doing online shopping, you should not be buying anything else until you’ve found online coupons for your favorite shops.

Competition for online consumers has led web shopping sites to almost continually offer online coupons for things such as free shipping, reduced shipping or price reductions. I know as a consumer I tend to shop around for particular items via different stores and then purchase through one that offers an online coupon simply because it usually ends up being the best over all price. There are very few online stores that don’t offer online coupons, so it is to your benefit that you check every time you shop.

Companies now realize that the internet is extremely popular when it comes to online sales. Therefore, not only are stores competing against each other in malls and physical stores, but they are now competing against each other for online consumers. These are very useful if you continually shop from the same sites, but if you are only making one purchase here and there from particular web sites then these club options are not for you. You would be better off searching for online coupons each time you complete a transaction, because chances are that one exists.

To check for online coupons, simply search for the store name & coupons using your trusty search engine (Google or Yahoo will do fine). This will bring up several sites that specialize in broadcasting and listing online coupon codes, so you will have to do some clicking before you find something. When you chance upon a site that you like, you can save a coupon site to your favorites and just use that site each time you check out the next time round.