How To Conduct a Successful Teleconference

The key to any successful teleconference is in the planning. Here are a few tips to make sure your next teleconference runs as smooth as silk.1. It is always important to have an agenda. Know what you’re going to talk about, how long the call is going to take and what expected outcome you have.

2. Ask your participants to review your agenda prior to the call.

3. Don’t forget to send all participants the dial in number and pass-codes.

4. Consider arrangements for hearing impaired participants.

5. Avoid headaches and panic attacks. Have a back up plan for potential technology failure.

6. Be sure to tell your participants if they have to have a file or website open on their computer for the call. Make sure all supporting documentation has been delivered well before the call.

7. If you’re facilitating, log on early so that you’re the first one online.

8. Greet and know the people that you’re speaking with. Try to announce everyone’s name before they speak.

9. Find out if anyone needs to leave the call early. You may need to restructure the agenda. Be prepared to do so.

10. Call from a quiet location and make sure your technology is strong and doesn’t have any annoying feedback or distracting sounds.

11. Give listeners the chance to get up and stretch if the call is a long one.

12. Take advantage of guest speakers to keep the call engaging.

13. Track who speaks so that you can involve all members in the conversation.

14. If the group gets off the agenda take steps necessary to refocus the conversation but promise to come back to the issue if there is time at the end.

15. Generally, the larger the group, the more directive your facilitation needs to be to keep a small number of people from dominating the call.

Teleconferencing is a fantastic tool to not only meet with people all around the world in different time zones, it is a great tool to educate, inform and connect with your customers and prospects. Simple steps to ensure that the meeting is planned and structured as well as steps to ensure that common courtesies are given will take you a long way toward a successful teleconference.

How to Apply for a Business License

Applying for a business license is something you should do as soon after you decide to start your business as possible. There are different requirements for getting a business license at the federal, state/city and county levels. Each locality is different in those requirements and there are even some localities that do not require you to have a business license, but you need to determine what your business requires by following and completing the steps below.

If your business is in the United States, you can find tons of information on starting your business, including applying for a business license by visiting the Small Business Administration (www.sba.gov).

There you will find links to help you determine, what if any licensing requirements there are for your business. You’ll be able to determine what type of license your business requires based on the type of business you own. Just a few of the common licenses include:

Business License
This is a basic business license that says you are allowed by law to do business in your locality. Some places require it, others don’t so be sure to check with your local and state taxing authorities to determine your individual case.

Occupational & Professional Licencse
There are certain professions that require you to carry a special license in order to conduct business. Some of these businesses include:

Accountants
Doctors
Barbers
Security Professionals
Real Estate Agents

Licensing Based On The Type of Products You Sell

Tax Registration
One of the biggest reasons a business license is required is for tax purposes. The type of business you run, along with other factors, will determine your tax rates at the state and federal level. It will also help to determine certain taxes, such as sales tax, etc. that you may be exempt from paying.

Trade or Doing Business As (DB) Name
Many states require a special license if you are a sole proprietor doing business under a name other than your name.

Employer Registration
If you have, or plan to in have in the future, employees this is definitely a must to check into. You can find more information about what all is required of you as an employer by checking with your states Department of Revenue or Labor.

A business license is something that, if you’re required to have one, you should acquire as soon as possible. Some states can and will penalize business owners who operate a business without the proper license, so don’t delay in finding out what your business needs. Many states have business workshops to help make certain owners have everything they need in place. Check your state or www.sba.gov to find one near you.

How To Grab Your Reader’s Attention From the Get Go

The trick to writing anything whether it is a sales page or a how to article is to hook your reader’s attention immediately. Of course you have to hold on to that attention too but that’s significantly easier once you already have it. Here are three must do’s if you want to grab your reader’s attention right away:

1. Headlines are the end all be all of copywriting. Newspapers know this, advertisers know this and you must too. What makes a compelling headline? Several things actually:

* A promise. A good headline can make a promise - Lose 30 pounds in 30 days-guaranteed.

* Make it newsworthy. New diet guarantees fast, healthy weight loss.

* Ask a question. Is the food you eat making you sick?

* Offer a benefit full of emotion. You’re going to absolutely love your new body-guaranteed.

* Appeal to their self interest. Know the secret to losing weight permanently?

* Offer value. 3 easy steps to losing weight naturally.

* Headlines must use strong verbs and powerful words. Compare these two headlines:
- Lose weight with our enzyme based diet
- Weight literally falls off with enzyme based diet.

2. Make sure your most compelling copy is above the fold. First, let’s clarify what the ‘fold’ is. When you look at a website, the fold is the point at which you need to start scrolling down. This means that anything above the fold is what you see immediately on your screen. If your good stuff is below the fold, most people won’t stick around to read it. You must make sure that your most compelling copy, your headline and your first paragraph, are immediately viewable.

Of course everyone has a different screen size so you want to work for the least common denominator - the smaller screen sizes.

3. Make sure your copy is scannable. There’s an old joke about what people read on the web. The joke is - they don’t. What people do is scan. They spend about 20 seconds evaluating your web page, if it isn’t easy to read they’re gone. If you want to grab your reader’s attention immediately - make your copy easy to read. Use bold lettering for words that you want to stand out. Space the copy well so that it is easy to read. Use bullets and numbers to list benefits or steps.

There are many expert tricks of the trade and these three will take you far. Make your headline strong and compelling, keep your strongest copy above the fold and make sure your copy is easy to scan. You’ll have visitors that are more than happy to spend time reading your web content.

How To Get Your CamStudio Video On Your Website

Once you have your tutorial or video recorded on CamStudio and saved your next step is to get it onto your website. Here’s how:Step One: Open CamStudio.

Step Two: From the tools file open the SWF producer. This tool converts AVI files to flash files.

Step Three: Once inside you want to go to the file menu and open the file that you want to convert to a flash file. Click on the blue C to convert. A menu will pop up which gives you a few options, make your choices, name your file and click okay.

Step Four: Add it to your website as a link. This is the easiest way to add a video to your website. Links are easy to follow and they won’t slow down the load time of your website.

Step Five: Rather have the file embedded onto your web page? Take care that it won’t work for all visitors, because they’ll have to be able to view flash videos and because videos take up a large amount of space and download time. Here’s how to do it:

Open your web building software like FrontPage or DreamWeaver. Open the page that you want your video to appear on. From your toolbar click on insert and choose video option. You’ll have several choices to make in the menu box that pops up, choices like how many times do you want the video to loop and if you want the file to play as soon as the page is opened.

Note: Your file can be an AVI or a Flash file here. Using a non-AVI file means that you’ll have to set the window size of your movie, this can be done in the general tab on the menu.

If however, you want to embed your movie as a plug in then you’ll again visit your insert button on your toolbar. Go to insert web component and advanced controls and choose Plug In. A menu will pop up asking for some information.

Go ahead and add your video and then click on the extended button at the bottom of the menu to determine how often you want the video to loop and when you want it to start. You can even add a message to visitors without plug in capabilities.

Adding a video to your website is a great way to interact with your visitors and to add some interest to your site. It can take a little trial and error time to get your video to work but is well worth the patience and effort - your visitors will appreciate it too.

How To Create a Video In CamStudio

CamStudio is an opensource software screen recorder. This means that you can use it to record screen videos - videos using your computer screen.

You can also record audio using your computer’s microphone and/or audio coming from your computer. It’s perfect for tutorials and best of all…it’s free!

Step 1. Visit CamStudio.org and download the free software.

Step 2. Once CamStudio is installed, you can make your video adjustments. Open CamStudio and click on the options button at the top. A menu will drop down and you’ll see Video Options at the top. Adjust your video to compress via one of the listed programs, you’ll have to download these from the other programs websites or you can leave it on the default settings.

Step 3. You have a choice of two video formats, either AVI or SWF. AVI is a standard video format that most people can easily open however SWF is better if you want to publish your file to a website. SWF is a flash format. Some feel SWF is better for web publication because you don’t have to embed it onto your site.

Step 4. Your next step will be to adjust your audio options so that you can either record via your computer’s microphone or record using your computer’s speakers. This means that if you’re recording a game or some program that has sound, the sound will be included in your video. The program’s default is to have the sound turned off.

Step 5. You can go ahead and simply click record right now and see what happens. When you’re done recording you simply push the stop button and you’ll see a prompt on your screen to save the file. However, you may want the CamStudio screen to be minimized so that it isn’t included in your video. Scroll down to program options and choose the Minimize program on the start recording option.

Step 6. You’re essentially done at this point and may begin recording. I suggest that you give yourself an hour or two to play with the program. You can change how your curser looks. You can pan in and out and even control the speed. You can adjust whether you record a full screen or simply a portion of your screen. You can also add screen annotations and adjust how they look.

CamStudio has a few bugs, it doesn’t work in Firefox, but they’re working on it and when it comes to opensource screenrecorders, it can’t be beat. It’s simple and straightforward to use and the results are quality. Download it and give it a shot today, you may find that your next information product is only a few clicks away.

How to Generate Start Up Cash for Your Business

Ahhh the ever popular, where can I get the money I need to start a business question. There are various options for generating start up cash and depending on the amount you need, you may not have to do a whole lot to accomplish it. Here are just a few suggestions of ways to help generate start up cash for your business.

1. Have a yard sale.
2. Sell items on eBay or other auction type sites.
3. Research and apply for federal and local grants.
4. Take out a loan.
5. Borrow the money from a family member or friend with the agreement you will pay the amount back at an agreed upon rate and time frame.
6. Offer to do small jobs, such as run errands for neighbors.
7. Search online for ways to generate business start up cash.
8. Talk with others you know have started their own business to get ideas.
9. Cut back on unnecessary expenses. Do you really need that Starbuck’s coffee EVERY morning?
10. Visit the small business administration at www.sba.gov
11. Barter services or products with other business owners to get the things you need to get your business off the ground.
12. Find someone to partner with to help cut down expenses.

The possibilities are endless, so do some research, talk to people and finding a way to generate start up cash for your business, might not be as hard as you think. With so many possibilities for getting your business started, money really shouldn’t be the only thing stopping you. Here’s to making your dream of owning your own business a reality!

Widget Ad Generator Review

 The Widget Ad Generator simply allows you to create custom ads that you can place on your site. The upside of this is that you have the option of earning dollars instead of cents like Adsense delivers.

For example, you can grab some information from your own products or affiliate products and create ads for those items to display as static ads or you can even rotate them. So, you can get rid of the middle man and earn more cash by placing the ads that you want to see on your site yourself.

I purchased this little script over a week ago because I thought it looked really cool and it would be a great thing to try on some of my sites. After installing it on my server, which was a breeze, I was a little disappointed on how it was setup from the backend.

Everything worked correctly, but the one problem that I was having was that I did not have the option of creating various campaigns to display on different themed sites, so I was a little bummed out.

The good news is that I just received word that the script has gone through some modifications and now has removed that problem. Which I was really excited about. Thus the reason I am now writing this review.

Some of the features include:

• Ability to track every visitor from view, to click, to purchase. This helps you to determine which ads are working the best for you on your site.
• You can encrypt all of your affiliate links.
• You have 100% control over your ad placements.
• You have 100% control over the size and shape of your ads.
• Easy to use and install

I’m still testing this little generator out and now that the new features are in place I think it will be a good fit for my sites.

You can grab more details and also view a video of the script in action here.

The Land of Wordpress Themes

I wanted to make a post specifically about Wordpress themes. I’ve been using Wordpress for a couple of years and have even converted a couple of sites over to it as well. What does that mean? Well, I’m a big fan of Wordpress.

I’ve seen many people ask where they can get good quality themes from and I wanted to share these designer’s sites with you. I have used their themes and they are exceptional in every aspect. So if you’re on the hunt for a theme for your Wordpress blog, check these sites out first.

• Brian Gardner - Awesome, awesome themes! If you haven’t noticed this blog is using his Revolution theme. I recently contacted Brian about helping me out with a little customization for the theme that I’m using on my other site at MommiesMagazine.com and he was a huge help and was great to communicate with.

• Michael Pollock - Another great designer worth checking out. I’ve used a few of his themes when they were free and even gave him a donation because I was so happy with how easily the themes were to edit, etc. It looks as though Michael has changed his site a little since I was last there. The themes that were once free now have a price tag with them, but they are well worth the price.

Do you know another Wordpress theme designer that you would like to give kudos to? Share them in our comment section.

Site Been Hacked?

Has your website been hacked? I recently discovered that some of my sites were accessed and were being redirected to other sites.

The problem was I didn’t know it until I received an email from Angela Wills letting me know. Every time that I went to my sites they showed up fine to me, even after I deleted all of my browser’s cache files, etc. (Thanks again Angela!)

I quickly discovered that a bunch of garbage was added to my .htaccess file and had to go through and edit them all over again.

You can never be to save and I recommend that you check out Lynette Chandler’s post that gives you 5 preventive tips.

How Much Is To Much?

Being involved in the Internet marketing niche I often come across many squeeze pages where other marketers are offering some sort of freebie or discount for my name and email address in exchange.

I find myself buried in emails, which is understandable since I signed up for so many lists but here is a pet peeve that I have that I wanted to share.

How much is to much?

I won’t name any names but there were two mailing lists that I was subscribed to until recently when I rushed to the unsubscribe link at the bottom of their mailings. The reason was because I was receiving emails from them every day, sometimes twice a day. What was in the majority of these mailings? Pure sales pitches.

Hey, I’m not saying a marketer shouldn’t promote products but if you’re doing it on a constant basis then do you think your subscribers are going to keep reading? Not this chick. You’ve probably heard this from many other marketers, if you’re not creating a relationship with your subscribers then you can just kiss your mailing list goodbye.

How often do you promote to your lists?

25 Ways To Earn Extra Cash Before The Holidays

Want some extra cash for your holiday shopping? Grab this free 15 page report that mentions 25 ways that you can do just that.

Download it here

Don’t miss out on these financial tips

I’m excited about this free teleseminar that is taking place this week. If you’re an Ebay seller, online marketer, affiliate marketer or operate another type of online business you won’t want to miss these financial tips that will be shared showing you how to maximize your profits while minimizing your taxes.

Check it out at:

http://www.financialtipsforwahms.com/2007/10/free-telesemina.html 

Do you know what your tax responsibilities are?

Rae Lynn Glispin of Raelynn’s Creations

Name: Rae Lynn Glispin

Tell us a little about yourself:
I am the proud Mom of two toddler boys…Parker just turned 4 years old and Noah will be 3 in November. I am extremely happily married, and very lucky to have met my “fantasy man”…perfect Father and Husband.
In April, my position was eliminated at a company I had spent the better part of 19 years at. I am very motivated and a go-getter, so I was determined I was going to do something I enjoyed now. I would invent something, or start a business, or something!

What is your business name and web address:
My business name is raelynn’s creations! You can visit us at http://www.raelynnscreations.com or http://www.mydoudou.com to view our assortment of My Doudou™ child themed safety bed bumpers.

Tell us a little about your business:
Over this past Winter, I had been trying to come up with a way to keep my boys from resting against their bedroom walls while they slept, because I felt their walls were always chilly. Along with that, I was also concerned because they tossed and turned during their sleep like jumping beans. I came up with this bumper, and very quickly threw a couple together on my 38-year old sewing machine. When my position was eliminated, I started researching on-line to see if it was something with potential. I was amazed to find that no other bumper like this existed! I networked, researched, and I’m sure drove my Husband crazy. Within the span of two months, I became an incorporated legal business and have patent pending status on my bumper. I received so much support from the CWE, Center For Women in Enterprise. Through government grants I was able to become a successful business in just a few months.

What inspired you to become a work at home mom:
I always wanted to actually be able to raise my children without a five-day-per-week daycare. In this day and age, it is very difficult. It is nearly impossible to afford living expenses on one income. Luckily, I have a fire inside of me that has always driven me to try to over-achieve. Having kids has made me want to be a better person, and my Husband is the kind of person that makes me want to be a better person. I guess you could say they are my inspiration.

Is there any advice that you would like to share with other women on the path of working from home:
Don’t ever get discouraged. If you do, just shake it off the next day and plow on! We can do anything if we put our minds to it. On the occasion when I get a little discouraged, I just try harder, try a different angle, dig a little deeper and look for encouragement from the people that support me. Sometimes all it takes is a few encouraging words from a friend, family member or even a chat room.

What has been the most effective advertising method for you:
So far, I think it has been emailing other related business, magazines and newspapers. Letters to editors of area newspapers, related magazines, etc. Get articles out there. Most of these methods are free as well. You really need to promote yourself even if sometimes it may feel awkward.

Can you share with us one negative business experience that you learned from:
I was almost talked into buying a “list” of names and addresses to do some snail mail marketing…postcards and such. Their price quotes were very inexpensive and they had lots of info on how successful it could make me. I decided to research it from top to bottom, and come to find out, there were way too many other expenses associated with this method. I also learned that for my type of business, the success rate of this form of marketing is very low…under 1%. There are lots of people out there that “want to help”. Unfortunately, a large percentage of them are out for themselves. You need to do your research before making any financial decisions just based on one or two suggestions from contacts. Research, research, research…has been my best friend.