The significant challenges that we face today cannot be resolved by the same level of thinking that created them.

Hi and welcome to KIT and the Home 4 Success channel. I don't know about you but personally, I can't wait for spring to arrive. It's that crazy time of year where you go from +3 in the daytime to -30 at night with blizzard conditions.

As most of you know, your comments and/or suggestions are always appreciated and the place to do this will be found at the bottom of any post made in the channel. If you want to share your thoughts with us please feel free to do so. I'd love to hear from you.

My husband, James, has decided to take another shot at setting up Mandrake Linux on his desktop computer. I've been interested in taking a look at Linux for some time so this will give me the perfect opportunity to test it out. Fellow Quikonnex publisher John Botscharow of 3R Marketing has also made the switch. John is using his as an operating system and my husband has decided to use his by setting up all the servers so that he can do some basic hosting. It would be interesting to note how many people are taking a serious look at Linux and why. What operating system do you currently use? Let us know.

Our Feature Article, Stop Getting Ripped Off On Domain Names, pretty much says it all. Willie Crawford says "If you pay more than $10 per year to register a domain name, you're being ripped off."

If you are looking to register a domain name, you'll find excellent prices at Domain Names Cheaper. I've transferred my domains here and renew them from here myself.

Bill Platt wrote today's Special Feature, Sell Yourself, Not Your Products or Services. He makes a very good point in that no matter which product you offer - in the case of affiliate programs, there may a time when it no longers fills and need and you will have to drop it. He provides some useful suggestions for expaning your business which in turn will increase your traffic.

Don't forget to take advantage of Corey Rudl's generous offer for the Free Trial of the Internet Marketing Course. This is a time limited offer.

Have a great day and keep smiling.

An Effective Alternative to eMail

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Stop Getting Ripped-Off On Domain Names
Copyright 2004 by Willie Crawford

Wake up and smell the rip-offs! If you're still paying more than $10 per year for a domain name, you're getting ripped-off.

Maybe ripped-off is too strong a language. After all, many of the firms charging you over $10 per year do provide you with additional services. Many of these firms do offer domain name registrations, renewals, and transfers as an "additional service." Many web hosts do this as an example. However, I still don't think that justifies them charging you 2 - 10 times what it costs them!

The problem is that many beginners don't realize that they don't have to pay those outrageous fees. They don't realize that they don't have to use their web hosts to register a domain name and they don't have to renew their domain through their old registrar.

Let me give you a little history.....

When I first came online ... back in 1996, Network Solutions was the only place to get a domain name. They charged $35 per year and you had to register for 2 years minimum. They practically had a monopoly on the domain name registration business with the government's blessing. They were a typical BIG company that could be nearly impossible to deal with if your records ever got messed up. Boy do I have stories that I could tell you :-)

Present day facts ...

Today, anyone can be a domain name registrar or an agent for one. In-fact, I got so fed up with seeing my clients getting ripped-off that I set up my own service. My clients can get a domain name for under $8 per year (much cheaper for some extensions). They can transfer domains, bulk register domains, set up domain forwarding, and even arrange to hide who owns a domain ...

Why would you want to hide who owns a domain? Well, whether you realized it or not, your domain registration records are a matter of public record. Anyone can go to whois.com and look up the record for any of your domains. Within that record, is your address, email address and phone number. This means you are an easy target for spammers, stalkers, and tele-marketers! With the domain masking service they see the information for a proxy service, but you really maintain full control over the domain.

That's digressing a little, but I did want you to know that services like that exist. If you want to check out the service I set up for my subscribers and clients, it at: http://TheRealSecrets.com/hosting/ You are welcome to use it too. My pricing is nearly break-even. When I factor in all of my overhead, I actually lose a little. If you're familiar with the law of reciprocity, you'll understand why I do that.

There are many other similar rip-offs that I teach my clients and attendees to my workshops about. It's when you're first starting out that your funds are the tightest. It's also at that time that you know the least and are therefore the easiest to take advantage of. Hopefully this article and others I'm writing will level the playing field. Now you don't need to be an unknowing victim of rip-offs.

Willie Crawford has been teaching others how to build an online business since late 1996. Frequently featured in radio, magazine and newspaper articles and interviews, Willie teaches the average guy what the top marketers are doing but seldom talking about. Willie provides detailed how to information in his newsletter, through his personal coaching, and at his annual how to workshop. Learn more at: http://InternetMarketingHowToWorkshop.com

While I hate to admit this, marketing has never been my strong suit. It's taken me a long time to understand that there is a difference between 'the pushy saleman' and effective marketing.

Like it or not, if you operate an internet business, you have to market in order to make money. I needed to reach out for help in this department so I went to one of the best - Marlon Sanders. This man knows how to sell his products so who better to learn from.

His Marketing Dashboard is a touch of genius. The Marketing Dashboard is divided into 6 steps, with 6 steps each, which makes it a 6 week program with actions you take -- 6 days per week. Or simply work at your own pace.

Probably the easiest way to explain it is to just 'show' you a picture - then you'll see why this is so exciting. Click here for a picture and to read more: Marketing Dashboard

The moment avoiding failure becomes your motivation, you're down the path of inactivity. You stumble only if you're moving.
- Roberto Goizueta

You don't have to control your thoughts, you just have to stop letting them control you.
- Dan Millman

No power on earth can impede your progress as surely and implacably as you can.
- Colin Turner, Author

Sell Yourself, Not Your Products or Services
Copyright © 2002-2004, Bill Platt
the Phantom Writers
http://thePhantomWriters.com

Sell yourself, not your products or services. The point we need to make is that your products and services will change over time as your business adapts to the realities of the marketplace.

If you spend your time promoting Product A and then you discontinue the sale of Product A, you will suddenly find yourself starting over from scratch with nothing to show for all of your previous work!

For as long as you remain on this planet, you will always be. No matter the course of your product or service line, selling yourself first and then your products will give you the leverage to remain flexible in your business journeys.

If your primary products are affiliate programs, you should be able to see this quite well.

How many times have you been involved with an affiliate program that either changed their rules for operation to your disadvantage or simply went out of business? How many times have you seen your hard work go down the drain by no fault of your own?

Selling yourself may seem a challenge, but it really is not that difficult.

In the matter of selling yourself, your goal is to create name recognition in the market place. You need for name recognition for your website, your own name or both.

There are five methods that work very well for promoting your online business. Those five methods are:

You might note that four of these five methods incorporate email in one fashion or another. That is not by mistake. Of course, direct email is the weakest of the four methods employing email. The reason for this weakness is the fear of spam by the recipient of the email. I generally avoid direct email for this very reason. Better safe than sorry I say.

What I am outlining here is a blueprint that all online business persons should strive to accomplish.

First, we must build our website. Our website should serve as a direct sales letter to the buying public. While the website should exist for anyone looking to do business online, it is not the end all for your online business presence. Once the website is ready for the public, it should be submitted to the search engines. Keep in mind, search engines are interested in the words on your site ... pictures don't mean a thing to the search engines.

We should then develop an ezine to accompany our website. We should invite all site visitors to subscribe to our ezine as this enables us to create an ongoing conversation with our potential customers. Do not let the ezine become more than a tool to keep contact with your customers. I publish my ezine only once a month so that I may have more time for growing my businesses.

Many folks agree that ezine advertising is one of, if not the most effective way to build your business. You should never simply put an advertisement out there in the market without testing the effectiveness of that ad first. You should also always be sure of the target audience of the ezines you are looking to are the same as your target market if that is possible.

The truth is that you can burn through thousands of dollars in ezine advertising without ever turning a single sale. To be sure of the effectiveness of your ads before spending money for the advertisement, you might want to consider using a ad tracking service to determine the worth of your ads before plunking down the money for your advertising.

An interesting and effective technique for tapping into the value of ezine advertising without blowing the bank is to use Free-Reprint Articles to open the door to ezines.

The truth is that most publishers do not have the time or energy to create all of their own content. As a result, most of them turn to article lists and sites to find the content they feel would be attractive to their readers. Free-Reprint Rights is the key here. Most online publishers are running on a very tight budget and cannot afford to buy the content they publish.

In the Free-Reprint market, there are a number of large lists that provide an excellent assortment of articles that carry the Free-Reprint rights. One example is called *Free Ezine Content* and can be subscribed to by sending a blank email to: mailto:FreeEzineContent-subscribe@topica.com. Another group is *Free Reprint Articles* at YahooGroups. Send an email to: mailto:Free-Reprint-Articles-subscribe@yahoogroups.com for your free subscription.

Tapping into the Free-Reprint market is easy. The trick to getting your articles published is being able to teach your readers something of value and being able to do so in an easygoing article style that folks will read and enjoy.

Providing your are successful in teaching the readers something of value in an interesting manner, then you will find your articles getting published regularly, even in the larger ezines.

Through the use of articles to promote your business, you will be selling yourself first and then your business. The resource box that follows every article is like a small classified ad that tells who you are, what you do, and where to be able to reach you or your business. The resource box is best kept to under 6 lines of 65 characters in length.

Your resource box is your advertisement in the ezine. Ironically, readers will read an article and visit the website of an author well before they read an advertisement posted in the same ezine.

As your articles get reprinted again and again, you will begin to see for yourself the promise of Free-Reprint Articles coming to life for you and your business. Your site traffic and sales will continue to grow as you continue to build your all-important name recognition in the market place.

Bill Platt owns http://thePhantomWriters.com. Do you need free content for your website or ezine? Our archives deliver more than 300 free-reprint articles available for your use. http://content.thePhantomWriters.com. Do you write your own articles? Let us distribute them for you to our network of 6000+ publishers & webmasters http://thePhantomWriters.com/distribution

No we’re not talking about updating your current version of Windows, but installing a new version of Windows entirely. We’re not going to tell you how to do it at this point, but just examine a few of the current versions available. This tip also applies if you are considering a new computer with Windows already loaded.

First - If you buy a computer from a discount store or a buyers club, the odds are you will NOT get the CD for Windows – Bad Move. If you ever have to reinstall Windows you are looking at a hefty cost for the price of the software, and your bargain basement computer suddenly is no longer a bargain.

We build and upgrade computers as part of our “shtick”. Typically, unless you have a dinosaur, you can upgrade your current computer to a powerhouse for about the cost of one of those bargain basement ones.

You should also avoid buying from a company that does not allow upgrades unless you use their components, and that are not compatible with industry standard parts. You know which ones I mean – you see their ads on TV all the time. But enough on that, on to today’s tip.

You can find computers with the following versions of Windows:

Windows ME – run – don’t walk to the nearest exit. In our judgment this is the worst product Microsoft ever foisted on the public.

Windows XP – good for the casual user and sending Email to Aunt Tillie. Beware that it might not support some of your older hardware such as scanners, etc.

Windows XP Pro – a bit pricey, but a great operating system and is very stable.

Windows 2000 – this is a Windows 98 “look alike” but much more stable than 98, and is the one that I personally use.

We have 10 computers tied into our local area network, and have had experience with all of these systems – yes we still have one running Windows 98 and another 95.

In my judgment the best overall Windows Operating System is XP Pro. Sorry Mac Users – while my first computer was an Apple, I am not up on their current technology. If there is a Mac User who would like to comment send an email to me at: bob@adv-marketing.com?Subject=MacAttack

Not only do you get an instant sales letter that you can use to start making sales with right away, but you also get access to a complete "point and click" web design system.

You can check it out at:

Your Partner in Success,
Lois M. Jeary

P.S. If you have any questions, feel free to click the URL above and contact Customer Service. Live Chat is available to help you during regular business hours!

Legal Stuff ...

We accept no responsibility whatsoever for the content, profitability or legality of any published articles or advertisements contained within KIT.

And, although all of the articles have been selected for their content, the publishing of such articles within this newsletter does NOT constitute a recommendation of the products or services mentioned or advertised within those articles.

Be responsible! Always do your own Due Diligence before responding to any offer.