Bargain Travel Agency

Quality Care Options is an established company advocating for the right of all seniors to receive excellent service and product. The organization recommends Certified Senior Approved Services to its elderly clientele.

Through its highly visible web sites and monthly ezines, Quality Care Options (QCO) attracts both the senior and the businesses that serve the senior population.

Barbara Mascio, Founder of QCO, has been inundated with requests from healthcare businesses for recommendations towards resources that would further promote an elder or healthcare related business.

These requests include; ‘Who should I call for the best liability insurance coverage?’ ‘Who do you recommend as a resource for market analysis?’ ‘How do I start an elder care business?’ and even ‘Who can handle our maintenance and lawn care?’

“Every business serving our senior population needs resources towards recruitment, security checks, lead generation and advice on marketing how-to’s and so we’ve provided a very affordable method for businesses offering these products, services and resources to reach our web site visitors”, states Barbara.

Not all advertising will be accepted. You must first submit your banner or text by following the guidelines found on http://www.qualityeldercare.com/advertising

Speakers and professional networking groups are offered special low rates of just $10 per month for an ad with a hyperlink to their web. Businesses to Business advertising can be purchased for as little as $20 a month. “We’re not trying to make a living from advertising revenue, that’s not what this is all about, states Barbara. We simply want to cover the administrative costs and provide our web visitors the resources they need to further grow their business.”

For businesses marketing directly to the senior citizen, please see http://www.qualityeldercare.com/providers to review how to apply for Senior Approved Certification as no advertising is accepted for this segment of our business.

Advertising on the Internet can be a crapshoot. You should do your homework before spending any amount of money. Does the web site have enough unique visitors each day interested in the service you offer? One site to check traffic stats on line is http://www.alexa.com Simply enter the url address of any web site to review certified traffic results. Obviously, you want a site to have higher web traffic than your own, or at the very least, equal to your traffic.

Barbara Mascio is the founder of http://www.qualityeldercare.com and of http://www.seniorsapprove.com

How did you learn the alphabet? You sang it. How much longer would it have taken if you had had to learn it some other way?

Songs get information into our minds faster and more permanently than any other communication. Lovers speak fondly of “our song” because it instantly calls up happy memories. McDonalds’ s “Da da da DA DAHH” is so entrenched that the second part no longer needs to be sung — our minds instantly supply “..I’m lovin’ it!” This is powerful stuff.

A person can be hot in the middle of a conversation. A jingle comes on a radio playing in the background and goes into our heads even though we’re paying no attention to it. Could any advertiser ask for more?

There are two caveats: a jingle must be as good as a hit song, and its ‘hook’ line must put a specific, relevant idea into listeners’ minds. Here are some great hooks:

“I scream, you scream, for Kline’s Ice Cream!” “Red Lobster for the Seafood Lover in You!” “We’ll be good to your car, so your car will be good to you, Jiffy Lube!” “Your Steven Kia Dealer’s got great Kia deals for you!”

Each one says exactly what the business does except the first, which ties the generations-old “I scream…” with the business. Kline’s means ice cream!

Unfortunately, no license is required to write or produce a jingle, and there are far more awful jingles out there than good ones. Here’s how to make certain you get a good one:

When you hear a really great jingle, make a note of the business it was produced for, and find out who did it for them. Before talking with a jingle house, be sure you know what your company’s Unique Selling Proposition, or USP, is. Your USP is that reason which gets people to buy from you rather than your competition. A USP is not a friendly staff, competitive prices, beautiful store, or number of years in business. Unique Selling Propositions are things such as money-back-plus-10-percent guarantees, 30-day free trials (if such a thing is rare in your industry), no-money-changes-hands-until-you’re-completely-satisfied, more color choices than any other store within 100 miles. In other words, a USP is a specific, instantly graspable, desirable advantage. Your USP can even be something common to every business in your industry except that no one is saying it. Claude Hopkins, the Father of American Advertising, once toured a new client’s facility, a brewery, and found that the bottles were pressure steam-washed three times during the bottling process. At the time, hygiene was a huge issue because we had not conquered the big killer infectious diseases. So Hopkins touted this steam-washing in the company’s ads. Their market share went through the roof.

But every brewer did that, steam-washed their bottles. It was simply that no one had said it in their ads. And now that Hopkins’ client was saying it, his competitors couldn’t, because they’d look like they were being forced into it in order to compete, the implication being that they weren’t doing it before.

You can find something about your industry that’s true of you and your competitors but none of you is saying. Get the jingle house to put it in a song, and you’ve just taken the lead.

A good jingle house wants your USP, they want to know your style, how you see your company through your eyes, how your customers see it through their eyes.

Don’t fool with a jingle company that presses you to accept an idea. If you aren’t deliriously happy with something they bring you, don’t accept it and don’t give them a penny. You can expect to be asked for fifty percent up front, but do it only with the written understanding that you do not pay the balance until you have exactly what you feel in your gut is going to work for you, and that if for some unlikely reason you reach an impasse with the jingle house, the deposit is refunded with absolutely no deductions. Good jingle houses have no problem with these propositions and will probably suggest them.

When you get something you like, play it for everyone. Email it to people outside your industry. Don’t count all that much on what people in your business say; people ‘in the biz’ aren’t as capable of objectivity as those on the outside.

Expect to pay three to five thousand dollars for a jingle. National companies pay a multiple of that. If you think 3 to 5K is a lot, consider that good jingles were three thousand in the 1970’s, which in today’s dollars would be about ten thousand. They aren’t because today’s technology allows talented composer / producers to create every musical component (every instrument) using digital samplers, and a roomful of musicians no longer has to be hired. It’s not good news for musicians, but the technology exists and unless a client has a very big budget, jingle houses cannot afford to use live musicians and stay in business.

You will get 10 - 15 versions of the jingle, in thirty- and sixty-second formats.
There will be ‘full sing,’ which is the song itself sung all the way through. There will be ‘donuts,’ so called because they are timed gaps in the singing to allow for voiceover copy of varying lengths (very useful), to fully instrumental.

You should use the full sing version of your jingle for at least the first month (or longer) it airs before going to the donuts.

A truly good jingle will be usable for ten years or more. If it’s really good, no one will get tired of it. Every time it airs, someone who has never heard it before will hear it for the first time. Your USP, your message, your identity, will be reinforced in a unique and powerful way that will make people feel good and want to do business with you.

Never get a cheap jingle. It will not do the job for you, period. There are companies who will plug your name into a pre-made jingle, but using music, lyrics, and style that can’t be custom-fitted to your business is entirely counterproductive. Some companies partner with radio or television stations and offer “free” jingles to businesses who commit to schedules on these outlets. I have never heard one of these jingles that has a good hook, either in word or melody; most have one or two singers; often the same singer will do multiple jingles in the same market.

You’ll know you have the right one when you can’t wait to get it on the air. It’s not hard to get a jingle you’ll love and that will boost your visibility and increase traffic. Never settle for anything less than what makes you smile and gets your blood pumping.

Michael K. Holmes will get your business a jingle that cements your name into listeners’ minds and makes them happy to do business with you. Hear jingles of this caliber at http://www.commercialmagic.com.

Ah, my very favorite promotional product of all, the refrigerator magnet. They are my favorite, because they are so extremely inexpensive, and extremely effective in getting your company name seen in countless locations.

They don’t make the greatest commission for a salesman of advertising specialties, but I can’t stop myself from recommending these little beauties first and foremost to my new customers and prospects. And the reason is so simple. They WORK! I’ve yet to approach anyone in any kind of business where I don’t feel that a refrigerator magnet will be effective advertising. Granted, some are more suited than others, but I still maintain that they’d be of use to any business.

Domino’s Pizza is notorious for giving out a magnet with deliveries that includes their logo and the phone number of the local store. I worked for Domino’s when I was a young guy, as a delivery driver. Often, whenever sales would dip a little, or the manager was bucking for a prize, we would go “door hanging”. Boy did these door hangers produce strong results. Inexpensive marketing that had proven itself time and time again. My fellow employees and I would spend time in a “slow” neighborhood, hanging these on the door knobs of as many homes and apartments as we could, and the results would be immediate. Sales would shoot through the roof! If a crew went out “door hanging” you could count on a lot of calls coming in that evening from the area you’d just targeted, for the next 3 days. The problem with these door hangers is, they’re paper, and they wind up in the trash, rather quickly.

A refrigerator magnet, almost always … always winds up on the refrigerator. And there it stays, for a long, long time. What other conventional advertising stays in a home that long? A commercial, printed advertisement, a radio address, nothing … stays as long as the magnet. And no matter what is put on the fridge, be it your child’s neatest drawing of a hairy fire truck, or their lunch menu at school, what’s on the very top? The beautiful, blessed magnet sporting YOUR company logo!

Let’s say you own a heating and a/c company. You get a call from a referral, or yellow page ad. You show up, fix the problem the customer is happy with the work you’ve done, the price you charged, and then you or one of your service technicians leaves. Three, or four years go by, and this same customer’s a/c breaks down. He says to his wife, “honey, what was the name of that company we used last time?” Who can remember that long ago? Had the customer been left with a refrigerator magnet, had the service tech actually physically went and put it on this customer’s fridge the last time he was over, the number would be right there waiting for him. What if this time, he’s going to need his complete a/c unit replaced? That’s one heck of a sale to miss out on.

Now most men will probably gripe at me for this one, but c’est la vie. Let’s say you’re a florist. A young teen boy calls to get a mum for his girlfriend for homecoming or a corsage for prom or roses for Valentines. You deliver the item(s) with a refrigerator magnet. Months roll by, and the teen girl’s father wakes up and realizes TODAY is his anniversary, and he didn’t buy his wife a gift! Trust me; his immediate thought goes to flowers. The old faithful, the default at any time, flowers. He’s going to have them delivered to her work. He remembers the “free delivery” comment on the magnet of your shop, and goes right to it. He calls the number and places his order. Without the magnet, he would have called AAAAmanda’s Flowers in the yellow pages.

Online businesses can benefit too. Now if promoting a web site, one would immediately think to sell a promotional item that would sit by a computer, but I disagree. If you sent a magnet to an existing customer, it’d wind up on his or her fridge. A friend, family member, or delivery person could see it, and inquire about the site. In addition, magnets will adhere to most automobiles. You can carry them around with you, and put them on cars, for focused advertising. I have one client that does this, he’s in real estate. Often he’ll stop by a prospect’s home, and if no one answers the door, yet a car is in the driveway, he puts a magnet on the car as he leaves. It’s produced positive results for him, he says. And he’s gotten word of mouth advertising from those people as well. I’d be willing to bet that it came from friends and family seeing the magnet on the former customer’s refrigerator, or toolbox, beer keg cooler, etc.

In my opinion, no business is unable to benefit from this item. So if you own a company and you’re looking to advertise, consider the refrigerator magnet. They’re inexpensive, and last a long, long time. Plus the Dominos one on your fridge is lonely, I’m sure.

Need content? You may use this article at your website, or in your newsletter. The only requirement is inclusion of the following sentence - Article by Kirk Otto of http://www.MakeYourCompanyVisible.com - a premiere source for promotional advertising products.

Look around and what do you see? Ipods®, mini Ipods®, Cell
Phones, Satellite radio, Internet radio and Tivo®. Excited about
being in the radio industry today? Since I first entered the
world of radio in 1976 I have seen the landscape change, but few
stations have changed with the times. The one noticeable lack of
change has been in the liner department. The same plan of attack
as always. Find a voice, have them cut a few lines every week
for freshness and that’s it. Creativity is relegated to the
program director (PD) who has enough work for two people. Most
PD’s have had their creative juices squeezed out of them with
meeting after meeting. You need a creative force on your side. A
member of your team that is not in the daily grind, but on the
outside looking in with an objective view.

Scott Radio (www.scottradio.com) has over twenty years of radio
experience, a fresh approach and voice that will help your
station beat not only the other forces on the dial, but all the
other options available to the consumer. The market share will
continue to decline as newer video games, better ipod® devices
and technology yet realized find their way into our reality. Are
you positioned for this battle?

Promos, liners and sweepers are not something you write because
they are funny or creative, they are written because they fit
the “big picture” concept of the station. Just like the music
must have a “feel” so must the liners and other elements. So
often the “feel” part of the process is determined by the voice.
Scott Radio knows it is much more.

Face it or not, the business is a cut throat world and when you decide to get in you must be prepared to do battle.Companies engage in a marketing war to try to compete for market share and dominance. If you are going to taken serious as business and operate on a global scale or even a national scale you must be aware of the tools of battle. Your marketing is what defines you and your business and it must be excuted to precision if you want to dominate in your industry. One part of your marketing mix, is ofcourse is door to door Leaflet distribution which can be loosely classified as direect mail. Getting you business infront of your customers eyes long enough for them to say yes is what you need to get your company at the forefront of your industry.

Leaflet distribution is one way you can do this, and not only is it effective when done correctly but it alows you to focus your sales material to your target. You have total control of when and where your prospective clients see your material which means that leaftlet distribution can be used to re-enforce any marketing campaign you are currently running along side. Getting you leaflets distributed by the right team makes your work even easier as a reliable leaflet distribution company will ensure they are distributed correctly.

Now that you have a product, it’s time to get your business
started. This may sound very basic but they are all the
fundamentals to having a successful Internet business.

First, you need to create your sales page. A good sales letter
defines everything - whether people will buy from you or not.
Copywriting is a job of creating your sales letter, and there
are tons of strategies to improve your response. To explain
copywriting alone can take a whole book with hundreds of pages
to explain!

Nevertheless, when starting out you wouldn’t want to spend five
figures just to hire a good copywriter in order to write your
sales page, so you should try and write it yourself - while
studying sales copy written by famous copywriters like Michel
Fortin, Gary Halbert, or Alex Mandossian. There are several
useful website builders available on the Internet which allows
people with no HTML knowledge to create even better looking
websites from those who are expert in HTML. For a free one,
there’s NVU at http://www.nvu.com.

Sometimes you’ll see the word WYSIWYG - it stands for what you
see is what you get, usually describing a website builder which
allows you to build a website which have an exact look with the
outcome. To save your time on the learning curve for NVU,
http://www.nicheopolis.com has all the tutorials you need.

Nevertheless, free tools usually have their drawbacks thus
getting a paid one like FrontPage, Dreamweaver or XsitePro will
always be a better choice. When your sales page is created, then
you’ll need to host it.

Before we go on to hosting, let’s talk about domain name. There
are billions and billions of websites out there and most of them
have their own domain names, which renders people with little
choice on their process of naming their own domain names.

If you want a website mainly for selling sunglasses but
http://www.sunglasses.com was taken, that’s not a problem. We
want the keyword “sunglasses” in the domain name so that it
helps in search engine ranking optimization. A simple trick is
to add numbers down into your domain name. Here’s what it means:

* www.1sunglasses.com * www.1sunglasses1.com *
www.01sunglasses.com * www.sunglasses9.com *
www.sunglasses10.com * www.101sunglasses.com

Alright, once you have your domain name registered, you need to
host it. We don’t suggest using free hosting for your own
Internet business, but if you really want a free one you can get
it at: http://geocities.yahoo.com.

If you have no idea which hosting company is good for you, you
can check out midPhase or LunarPages. Of course, you can choose
other hosting companies which you feel comfortable with. The two
hosting companies listed above provides free domain names for
life, so you won’t need to register for one or renew them as
long as you continue hosting with them. Once you have your
domain name hosted, the rest is only uploading your files into
the “public_html” directory(or folder) and you’re done. For your
main page, name it index.html so it will be automatically shown
to your visitors when they visit your URL/domain name.

Now that we have hosted everything up, the last thing to do is
accepting payments. If you need to have an Internet business,
you must know about PayPal.

PayPal is the most widely used payment processor currently and
anyone can join it for free at http://www.paypal.com. To accept
payments, you need to register for the premier or business
account. Nevertheless, not everyone is able to withdraw their
money from PayPal. These are the only countries entitled for
money withdrawal: Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Denmark,
Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy,
Japan, Mexico, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Portugal,
Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan, and
the United Kingdom.

If you don’t live in any of those countries, you can always use
2CheckOut. With a one time fee of $49, you will be able to use
2CO as your payment processor for life. If you are selling
electronic products like an e-book or software which is
downloadable, ClickBank is one of the best choices. They will
send a check to you on every 1st and 15th day of the month, 2
payments every month on your earnings.

You probably won’t realize but now you are ready to launch your
Internet business! You have your product ready, you have your
domain hosted, you can receive payments, these are all you need
to start a business online!

Fighting and struggling to make more money with Adsense?

Here are some tips:

1) Concentrate on a single block of ads if your website isn’t getting lots of traffic.

Overview:

Google is smart… we love it, but we hate it. However, since they came up with Adsense, everybody gone mad on publishing their ads to make some quick money. But here comes the question.

What are you fighting for?

More clicks or more money from a click?

Problem: more ads you have, lower the cost of the click. You could get 10 clicks and make 0.50$ because most of the clicks will get 0.05$.

Solution: concentrate on a single block of ads. The high payers will have their ads there, and if you get a click, then you will get more than 0.50$ for that one.

2) Focusing on the hot zones of your webpage

Right after you sign up with Google’s AdSense publishing service, you are invited to see some videos.

You will see in one of the chapters a slick idea of how to position your ads in order to get clicks. The left side and the upper side of your page is more likely to get clicks.

Don’t spread ads in other places, stick with the rules. What works for others will always work for you.

Notice: I have been testing ad positioning in the last months and I realised that having an ad in the middle of an article could do well.

Before closing, remember, you have to test and see what really works for you. Each website it’s different, but Google wants to make money with you.

But in the end…. it’s all about testing.

Vladimir Ghetau is specialized in professional Web Development. He created the most amazing link exchange software called LinksBRO, a web application which helps you to get a high PR and increase the traffic on your website up to 742%.