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Online contests are tempered much more indifferently than the winners who are not chosen by risk but by an good element of easy skill. 2 hours ago also a Belgium dutch online company took of a online contest and is also legally differently. Really anyone can win great laptops now every 6 weeks even if you live in DeSoto Texas or in Coon Rapids Minnesota, isn’t that super.

Translated it means: Leeft u in Vlist of Neerijnen en wilt u graag vaker een prijs winnen’ Met Win de Prijsvraag winnen is nergens zo eenvoudig. Geweldige prijzen winnen met de site van windeprijsvraag.nl‘ Minstens 207 prijzen per week. Van Sint Anthonis tot Zutphen, met Windeprijsvraag winnen gaat hier altijd. Een vrouw van 29 heeft een week geleden nog een reis gewonnen.

Online sweepstakes are also legally absolutely different from the online game contests in Alexandria Virginia. That’s why there are absolutely fantastic Hummers to be won at fun website and easy sweepstakes this month. Entering cyber sweepstakes by mail is rejecting in online popularity nowadays. It will be marvelous to win prizes worth 9090 euro and that easy. Sweepstakes and actions are prohibited from involving a purchase to enter. A lot more contest websites are choose up to enter online internet sweepstakes. Promotions advertised as funny online contests, in time, can involve an entry fee or manifest of buy. Internet sweepstakes are in the main much gentler and quicker to enter than fun websites.

If you’ve a savvy businessperson, the chances are you’ve already taken a look at your competitors’ auctions. What you might not have realised is just how much you can learn if you know what you’re looking for.

To begin with, don’t bother looking at listings that haven’t ended yet – you don’t know what’s going to happen with them. Instead, use the advanced search page to search for listings that sold. Just go to the advanced search page, type in the keywords that you know will find your competitors’ items, tick ‘Completed listings only’ and set the minimum number of bids to 1. Set it to sort by ‘Price: highest first’.

This will show you auctions competing with yours that have recently finished, starting with the ones that sold for the most (ignore any with prices in red – they didn’t sell). Go through and take a look, paying special attention to the following points:

Titles. What information do the top sellers of your item put in their titles, and what do they leave out? If your titles are very different to theirs, it might be time for a rethink.

Descriptions. You’ll probably notice that the highest sellers haven’t just copied text from the company’s website or an Amazon.com review – they’ve gone to the trouble of writing a little about the item, and about themselves. Learn from their example.

Pictures. I can almost guarantee you that the listing will have very nice pictures – not catalogue quality, but good enough to see what you’re getting. With items of any significant cost, you’ll probably find more than one photo from different angles.

Style. Is it written conversationally, or in terse businesslike language? The way you should write entirely depends on what the market seems to like – and the market seems to like what the top sellers wrote.

Time. It’s pretty easy to ignore this as a factor without meaning to, but pay attention to when the top selling items’ auctions began and ended. This might give you a few clues about the best to catch buyers who will bid highly on your item, and then you can schedule your items accordingly.

Price. If your competitors are selling using Buy it Now, you can see what the maximum is that they’ve managed to sell for recently, and set your own Buy it Now price slightly below that.

Shipping. Look around to see the sweet spot for shipping. If you can figure out a way to get your shipping costs lower than the highest sellers, then this is a great opportunity to differentiate yourself in the market.

Once you see what works, you can start to emulate your competitors – of course you can’t just copy them completely, but you can structure your auction similarly and make sure it includes the same information.

“Which is your best CD?”

Ever get that question? My band has five CDs that we sell at shows, and I get that question all the time. People rely on the suggestions of others to determine what they are going to buy. They trust the opinions of others to help them make decisions. So having great testimonials to sell your CDs is essential.

The trouble is most fans email you something like this: “You rock! -Joe.” They don’t explain how your music affected them or why they came to that conclusion, and you don’t bother to ask.

But if you want great testimonials, you have to ask for them. You can’t be passive and wait for those one in a thousand great testimonials to come in. Instead, educate your fans.

That’s one of the secrets to the success of the Brobdingnagian Bards. We have a lot of fans who are passionate about our music. Steven Hahn is so gung-ho about our music that he called a television station to tell them about a gig we had. And a camera crew showed up!

That kind of enthusiasm is contagious. But it’s also been taught. You see, we educate our fans on how to help us.

That’s also what you have to do when gathering testimonials. Educate your fans how to write them. Guide them step-by-step. Ask questions that will get you your desired response. They know they love your music. Now you have to get that into a format that will help you sell more CDs.

To write a testimonial, you need to know what makes a killer testimonial?

1. Great testimonials focus on benefits.

How did your music affect them? Have them tell a story about the drive home as they were headbanging in the car when a cop pulled up next to them on a motorcycle and gave them a disapproving glance.

2. Great testimonials are visual.

Could you see that cop in the statement above? That’s the type of short story that will make your fans feel like they’re back at the club nervously shaking your hand when they meet you.

3. Great testimonials evoke a feeling.

They should touch an emotion inside, whether it’s joy, sadness, anger, tranquility, energy, excitement, nervousness, or whatever. That feeling should come across in the testimonial to connect with other fans.

4. Great testimonials create a positive atmosphere.

Not only will you sell more CDs, but your fans will also get a better feeling about your band. You want something that will connect to people, adding energy, excitement and goodwill to all around you.

Here are a few guidelines for creating testimonials that will make people take notice.

1. Keep it short. Cut the quote down to three sentences that really shine. You want it to grab them quickly, not something that is difficult to read.

2. Be specific. Fans can go on and on that “you rock” or “you’re awesome,” but those phrases don’t personalize it. Instead, have them describe what is awesome about you or your CD. “The way you sang, ‘The Bridge’ on your CD ‘Soul of a Harper’ gave me goosebumps.”

3. Keep it positive. If a quote is written with a negative connotation like, “I can’t believe how cool you are!” Ask them if you can rewrite it in a more positive manner, like “I love how cool you are!” It will energize your site all the more.

4. Include a name. The most-powerful quotes include your fan’s name, city and state (sometimes job or career can also been effective). Get permission to use as much information about the person as they are willing to give.

5. Clarify the situation. Get the five W’s from your fan: who, what, where, when, why, and how. Weave that info into the testimonial. It will add personality to the testimonial and let the reader know there’s a person behind it.

Of course, if fans don’t really want to share more than “you rock,” accept it happily. Sometimes even something that simple can be effective. If you’re fans are writing from the heart, that enthusiasm will bubble over to their friends and your word-of-mouth will continue to spread.

Bard Marc Gunn of the Brobdingnagian Bards has helped 1000’s of musicians make money with their musical groups through the Bards Crier Music Marketing and Promotion Ezine and the Texas Musicians’ Texas Music Biz Tips. Now you can get personal advice by visiting http://www.bardscrier.com for FREE “how-to” music marketing assistance.

No time to visit the site? Subscribe to the BardsCrier.com distributed weekly for Free. Just email subscribe@bardscrier.com

When Dr. Frankenstein exclaimed “it’s alive… it’s alive,” he thought he had brought
wonderful new life to the world. What he really did was create a monster. He took a
bit from here and another piece from there and sewed it altogether. Then he was
distressed to see how things turned out. Many marketers create their own monsters
in the form of sales letters. They throw everything into them and then are distressed
at the response.

Sales letters work best when you have something to sell. You make an offer. Too
many sales letters from smaller businesses are of the “Hi my name is…” school.
When it comes right down to it, I’m busy; I don’t care if you just started this
wonderful venture because you love to serve people. What can you do for me right
now? Why should I take time reading any of your letter? Make me an offer I can’t
refuse. Quickly convince me that I need what you have to offer.

When creating a better monster–er sales letter–start off where Frankenstein made
his biggest mistake. He used the wrong head.

The right head (or headline) can make or break your sales letter. Focus it tightly on
your target market. Address a big problem your target faces (assuming you have the
solution for it) or play on their desires. If you can do this with a clever play on
words, by all means go for it, but if wordplay isn’t your forte, keep it simple and
straightforward. There’s no perfect length for a headline, but don’t waste words.
Keep it to one sentence. The point is, make them care.

Once you’ve grabbed them with your headline. Don’t let them escape. It may seem
odd, but the last words of your letter–the PS–are often read right after the
headline. A PS is the best way to end your letter. It sticks out from the body and
grabs attention. Don’t waste your PS. Say something that will encourage your reader
to go back to the beginning and start to read.

The first paragraph is crucial, so get to the point. Give them the guts of your offer
and what makes your offer so good. How much money is it going to save/earn
them. How will their lives be dramatically improved. Whatever makes your offer
worthwhile must be there.

By this point you either have their interest or you don’t. If you do, the remainder of
the letter must answer the basic questions and address the common doubts your
reader may have. After all, you’ve worked hard get them this far, it would be a
shame to lose them on a technicality.

Fill the body of your letter with benefits, not features. Give it the “so what” test. If a
benefit doesn’t answer the question “so what?” for your target audience, it’s a
feature not a benefit. Dig deeper and discover what your offer really delivers to your
target.

Speak to your target in their language. Write informally. Ask rhetorical questions.
Create as conversational a letter as you can. However, take care when using
humour. It can backfire, because we don’t all have the same sense of it. Unless you
know for sure, keep humour to a minimum.

Busy, busy, busy. I know it, you know it. Everyone is busy. They probably won’t read
everything in your letter, but guide them to the good bits. Embolden the bits they’ll
care about. It’ll encourage them to keep reading. (But don’t embolden your company
or product name. Your names may be interesting to you, but they’re not what’s
interesting to your target.)

Now that you’ve told them how great your offer is, get someone else to tell them
too. It sounds so much better coming from someone else. In the body of your letter,
sprinkle a testimonial or two. Write them yourself, and then ask one of your best
clients if they would be comfortable having it quoted under their name. Focus on
the results your clients have achieved. Testimonials are best if they are believable
and don’t gush.

Once you’ve covered all the possible doubts and questions in the body, it’s time to
put your best foot forward again. Repeat your offer. And, if you can, offer a
guarantee of satisfaction. Make trying your services a risk-free endeavour.
Unfortunately, this is difficult for some service-based companies because often their
services aren’t directly quantifiable.

Just to make your life more difficult, with business-to-business marketing, keep
your letter to one page. If your letter is more than one page, re-write it.

Before you set your letter loose upon the world, try a test on a limited number of
prospects. Fine-tune it according to your responses. Then continue to track your
responses to further fine-tune both the letter, and your target market.

A sales letter won’t do it all. Keep up your other marketing efforts, and don’t forget
to quickly follow up on all leads generated by your sales letter.

Put together with care and skill, a good sales letter will prepare your audience for
your sales approach. A great sales letter will have them out looking for you.

Keith Thirgood, Creative Director

Capstone Communications Group

Helping businesses get more business through innovative marketing

http://www.capstonecomm.com/

Markham, Ontario, Canada
905-472-2330

Subscribe to Thrive-on-line
http://list.capstonecomm.com/mail.cgi?f=list&l=thrive_on_line

One of my first internship jobs as a college student was working for a defense company who, at the time, developed a highly sophisticated torpedo for hunting down submarines and destroying them. The operation of the torpedo was pretty fascinating. The torpedo was launched from the deck of a ship or dropped from a helicopter into the water.

The torpedo would then turn on and initiate a search mode, where it would make circular patterns while constantly “pinging.” Pinging is the sound the sonar device makes when it wants to bounce sound waves off objects underwater. The torpedo had what was called an underwater signature recognizer, a device that compares the echo outlines of each incoming sound wave with a database of other outlines. The goal, find a submarine outline.

Once it detected something that “might” be a submarine, the torpedo would then go after the target. As the torpedo got closer to its potential target, it would continue pinging and comparing each echo (outline) in order to be sure the object was indeed a submarine. The closer the torpedo got, the better the definition of the echo.

The torpedo would break off its “attack mode” if, as it got closer to the acquired target, it realized the silhouette did not match; if the object was a false alarm, it would steer off course. For example, the torpedo was able to discern a submarine from let’s say a whale, a school of fish or an underwater rock formation. So, as the torpedo got closer and discovered the object wasn’t a submarine, it would break off and terminate its attack mode. It would then begin a new search pattern all over again in another area.
Take a lesson from the torpedo’s behavior. Right now, many of you are in the search mode looking for your target. You’re trying to find somethingsomething that will fulfill you, something to look forward to everyday.

“In order to find success, we need to create search patterns.”

But a recent survey confirmed that 53% of people in the workforce are unhappy and over 75% would rather be doing something else. Unfortunately, many are afraid to search for something new or have simply given up “pinging” for their true calling.
Don’t be a statistic. Continue pinging until you find what it is you truly love to do. Only then, will you be successful and more importantly, happy. Remember, the toughest road to success is the road back to you…the real you!

Victor Gonzalez, top Hispanic motivational speaker and author of “The LOGIC of Success”. For more info go to: www.thelogicofsuccess.com or by email victor@thelogicofsuccess.com

In one of the most famous quarters of Rome, at 100 m. from San Pietro Basilica and Vatican’s Museum , and near Olympic stadium and all the most important monuments, there are room to let by Roma 2000.
It’s a cosy apartment and consists in spacious and sunny rooms endow with the best comfort.
We stay at subway station Ottaviano- San Pietro so you can visit the city in a short time thanks to many means of transport (subway, bus and taxi). Besides the adjacent streets offer to you the possibility to have shopping in the famous and characteristic shops.

In addition, you can find a lot of liking and cordiality!
Roma 2000 is duly authorized by the Tourism promotion agency of Rome and complies with all health and safety standard required by law.

THE SERVICES OFFER TO OUR CLIENTS:

Conjoin both of everybody’s first pursuits and what you’ll get is a trend known as a Web sportsbook. Well, what could be more original… If you envisage a group of sports dudes clapping to support any preferred sports heroes, and continuously stakes will be fixed complementing the commotion. So very keen to get a share of the anticipation, bystanders routinely venture to foreknow who will prevail in the imminent match. Put together, this all turns to become a warmhearted match named Web sportsbook.

Why hold back? Play today’s top internet sports wagering game now!

Granted that it is bound to appear addiction prone, instead sports wagering is essentially only an amusing entertainment and to relate with one’s fellow sports buddies. Here, you’ll be able to wager a any negligible sum of lucre and nonetheless have a incredible time. Read on sundry basics to get you started sports wagering.

To wager, you’ll search out a Web sportsbook, which is a place that takes in Web sportsbook. In the U.S., you can find no less than four states to do sports wagering lawfully, but semi-legally you can go for it everywhere as long as you pinpoint a bookie AND happen to be legally of age. Included among the sports activities you can choose to wager on are professional and, moreover, college football & basketball, professional hockey, professional hockey, and, moreover, betting on both horse and dog racing. You may choose to risk some money on the comprehensive results of a fight or game, when exactly a given opponent will be knocked out, and even if a given coin toss in a fight or game comes out either heads or tails.

The odds makers place their trust in statistics to aid you arrive at a decision which sports heroes you may suppose will prevail. First, we have the likelihood, which is a advantage tallied to the weaker lineup that is presumed to fail by a specified number points. Evidently, this is the sportsbook company’s modality of organizing objective lays for a Sportsbook. For example, you may bet on a contestant that is presumed to fail and and nonetheless profit from that wager as long as the lineup does actually lose by a specified number of points.

Well, why not have a crack at it, and amuse yourself simultaneously… Just determine that you won’t get seized and throw away your complete retirement pension on a vagary… For otherwise you will find yourself distressed till the end of your days…

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The Web site hosting business has become more competitive in recent years. If you can find a better hosting deal, you may be able to save money by switching hosting providers. But what’s the best way to move your Web site? What if you have a virtual private server (VPS) hosting several domains? What about PHP and your SQL data? The thought of moving may be daunting, but moving servers is not difficult if you plan properly. Here’s how.

A complete migration involves transferring the site data itself, meaning all the HTML and possibly PHP and MySQL files and CGI programs. You also need to modify the Domain Name System (DNS) information for the site and for the routing of the site email. DNS holds information that translates IP addresses to human-readable domain names. For Web site migration, the two important DNS records are the address (A) record, which tells the browser the IP address of the Web server, and the mail exchange (MX) record, which tells mail servers how to route the email.

When you migrate your Web site to another hosting provider, you need to update DNS to point browsers to the new location of your site. However, it can take as long as 48 hours for DNS updates to propagate to all DNS servers on the Internet. Part of your planning will be how to deal with that delay.

Often your domain name has been registered via a third-party domain name registration company. When you move the site, your domain name company remains the same, and only your Web hosting company changes. If your domain name originaly came with hosting, you may need to contact your old hosting company to see if you can separate the hosting package from the domain name.

The keys to a successful move are planning and preparation. Before the move you should warn your users or customers of the forthcoming upgrade. Prepare a “server down for upgrade” page for your old site. Note the IP addresses of your new and old servers; these will come in handy when DNS is still in flux.

Decide when to upgrade, meaning when your server is least busy. If you have site statistics, use those to determine the best time. To reduce down time, it is best to make the DNS changes several hours before you actually move the domain. As long as your mail server is running on the new server, you won’t lose any email messages. If you have a static site, you can copy over the data before you switch DNS and no one will ever know your hosting provider changed. For a dynamic site you can out a skeleton site on your new server until you make the full move.

The DNS changes you need to make involve updating the MX and A records to point to your new server. To do that, you need to access the control panel provided by the domain name registration company from which you obtained your domain name.

The new MX record will need to point to the new server. Like A records, MX records can take a while to propagate through the Internet. To avoid mail loss you will need to check your old mailbox at least once a couple of days after the move. You will also need to use the IP address of the old mail server rather than its domain name, as you won’t be able to rely on mail.domain.com to check the old mailbox, as that will point to your new server. Depending on how much control you have of your old server, you could shut down the mail server after modifying the MX records, in which case incoming mail would queue up until the new mail server is running, at which point it would be delivered without problems.

Once you’ve handled the DNS information, it’s time to tackle the data itself. HTML and PHP files aren’t hard to move; just use a good FTP program and copy the data from one server to the other. If you have SSH access to both of the servers you can copy the files directly. If you don’t, you will have to download the files to a local machine and then upload them to the new server.

Moving databases is a bit more complex. Assuming you are using MySQL, there are several ways to copy over the data. One is to do a dump of the data into a file and then copy that file to the new server and populate the new database. To do this you use the mysqldump command:

$ mysqldump -p -u username mydatabase > mydata.sql

Once copied onto the new server your can populate your new database with the mysql command:

$ mysql -p -u username mydatabase < mydata.sql

If you don’t have SSH access to your servers you won’t be able to use these MySQL commands, but you can still use a tool such as phpMyAdmin that handles MySQL administration over the Web. phpMyAdmin has excellent dump and restore features, though for the restore there is a maximum upload file size of 2,048KB. You can use compression to maximize your chances of squeezing all of your data into 2MB. [what if you have more than 2MB, as many of our readers will? - Lee, I have altered the next paragraph to clarify this]

If you lack SSH access and you have too much data for phpMyAdmin to handle, look into a MySQL synchronization tool called SQLyog Job Agent (SJA).

If all else fails you will need to ask the support team of your old hosting company to dump your database for you. Then you will need to ask the support team of your new hosting company to populate the new database.[Lee, I have added this paragraph in case readers don't have ssh, can't use phpMyAdmin and can't use SJA.]

If you have a site with dynamic data, such as an e-commerce site, you need to make special provisions for the DNS update delays. As the DNS changes propagate through the Internet some people will see your new site and others your old. This could cause problems for you. Imagine a customer placing an order on your old site after you have moved all the data over to your new site.

There are two [different] ways you can deal with this problem. [Lee, this is an either-or] First, stop taking orders on the old site once you have started the move. At the checkout stage display a polite notice asking customers to come back in a couple of hours, after which they should be taken to the new site. If you don’t have that kind of control over your site then the best thing is to close down the old site by replacing its index.html with a notice saying the server is down for upgrades and will be back soon. An alternative solution is to use a synchronization tool like SJA to make sure any changes made on the old site get propagated to the new one.

Finally, watch out for incompatibilities between the software on your old server and that on the new. Try to make sure that any difference in versions of crucial software like MySQL and PHP won’t cause any problems.

If you host a VPS installation then you probably have several domains to migrate. The problems are the same, but there is more work to do. If you have a VPS you should warn your customers in plenty of time about the upcoming move. Call it a server upgrade, as this will cause less worry.

An advantage of having a VPS is that you have more control of your sites. You probably have SSH access and you can do things like shutting down the mail server during the transition. However, if you are hosting domains for others, then there is the problem of passwords. When you move to the new server you will need to re-create domains and user accounts, but you won’t have access to the passwords set by your customers. Generally you will need to issue your customers new passwords. Again, plenty of advanced warning will help ease the pain.

If your VPS uses Plesk 7 Reloaded then migration becomes a lot easier. This software includes a great (though still experimental) tool called the Migration Manager that supports migrating from remote servers using Plesk 2.5.x, 5.x, 6.x, and 7.x, as well as Confixx 2, Ensim 3.5.x, and cPanel 9.

To use the Migration Manager you need to enter the remote host address (it is best to use the IP address), the login name (normally root) and the password. After that you set the remote system type (Plesk, cPanel, etc.) and click Next. The Migration Manager will then send an agent to the remote server and offer you a list of domains and clients on the remote server. If you migrate a client it will bring over the client data (like username and password) and all the domains belonging to that client. If you import a domain you will have to have a client account ready on the new server to take ownership of the imported domain.

Although experimental, for standard cases Migration Manager should work well. In a recent real-life migration, 95% of the domains [I moved for a client] migrated without a problem. There was one domain that had more than 100 subdomains that failed; They had to be copied over by hand!

When moving servers you need to keep downtime to a minimum. If you plan properly your users may not even notice that you have switched servers. If possible, perform a trial run of the actual move. No one will see your new site because you won’t update DNS yet. To enable you to see your new site, edit the /etc/hosts file on your client and add your domain name (including the www) with the new IP address. You should also restart your browser. Don’t forget to remove this entry when you have finished experimenting.

Technology executives are confident consumers will soon radically alter how they make calls forever reducing the need for a phone line from a old school telecoms company. VoIP essentially turns telephone calls into data which is transferred via an IP network, and due to this simplicity the future for VoIP seems promising.

From the very start when Skype emerged on the scene the industry has been buzzing. Google has entered the Voice over IP market with an IM and voice application and is testing a wireless customer service that has the potential to deliver data to wireless devices.

The technology companies are already beginning to launch double purpose products such as digital cameras that appear to be a normal digital camera but when a person slides the back of the camera down, it reveals a full keyboard. Memory sticks preloaded with a softphone are also now available. They come with a microphone and earphones.

Companies such as Google, Yahoo, and EarthLink have already played around with this technology. Last winter Yahoo added improved Voice over IP calling to its its instant messenger program. Google has debuted Google Talk. AOL announced it would be providing a VoIP service called TotalTalk. AOL’s TotalTalk will essentially let people replace their traditional landlines. It has advanced communication features, such as unified voice, e-mail and instant messaging, and call-management.

It could be argued the phone companies will face a challenge with these drastic changes coming to the fore with VoIP technology.