Hi Friend!

I had intended to get this out before Christmas - but then the last few days before Christmas seemed to go by in a festive frenzy. I woke up one morning, and it was suddenly the day itself.

I hope you had a great Christmas. This Christmas was kind of special for us - our two little ones are three and a half, and just over a year old, and with young children around, Christmas has a nice magical glow to it. Giving them both a hug on Christmas morning certainly has a bit of magic to it.

My eldest, my daughter Sumiah, blew us away with something she said too. Coming downstairs to a Christmas tree beladen with gifts, she insisted that I open the present from her first, before she touched any of her own.

To me, that's the Christmas spirit, where giving is more important, and often more enjoyable and satisfying, than 'getting'. Hopefully it's a spirit she won't grow out of.

In that vein, dozens of top marketers are 'giving' away the ship this Christmas, and it's now been specially extended until January 1, 2004 - so if you missed my previous mail, or have yet to take advantage, rush, rush, rush right now over to http://www.takanomi.com/jinglebells. You won't believe the stuff that's available there, and all completely free - but there's hardly any time left on this.

If you want to do some 'giving' too, simply tell everyone you know about the page, and pronto, before the page is taken down forever!

Finally, my brand new article submission service is now up and running. It doesn't just automatically submit your articles to multiple publishing channels in seconds, it also provides you with a full article management suite - full details are available at SubmitYOURArticle.com.

Speaking of articles, this month's article gives you my five top tips for a prosperous 2004, essential reading as we head into another new year.

I sincerely wish you and your family good health and prosperity for 2004 and beyond.

To Your Success,

Steve Shaw, "Technical eMarketer"
Publisher of essential software for effective e-marketing, including
"PopUpMaster Pro"

Contact me at steve@takanomi.com

PS. Of course, I now use SubmitYOURArticle.com myself - after submitting an article shortly before Christmas with just a single click, traffic increased immediately and sales are now up by about a third. Think how this could help your own web site!? And you won't believe just how quick and easy it is.
 

Five Top Tips For A Prosperous 2004

According to many market forecasts, 2004 is likely to be a buoyant year online. These are my top tips for making the most of it, and ensuring a happy, healthy and prosperous 2004.

1. Seek out new markets and niches, and make them work for you.

This is a simple technique to find profitable niches for your business. Download the free Good Keywords software from goodkeywords.com - this is a virtual crystal ball into what you should be selling online. Find keywords that have a high number of searches, and a low number of pages for those keywords on the most popular search engine, Google. The ratio between the number of searches, and the number of results found for that keyword or phrase, determines the potential profitability of the keyword.

Another method is to use the free trial service at wordtracker.com.

Create a product or service around the profitable keyword, and you'll be onto a potential goldmine online.

2. Automate, automate, automate

If you find you are doing something repetitively, is it something you can automate? Automating a repetitive task is something that could save you hours, if not days or weeks of time, in 2004, all of which you could be spending doing something more worthwhile and profitable.

Automate almost everything you can, wherever possible. An Internet business allows for a great deal of automation, from list management to product fulfillment, so take advantage of it wherever you can.

3. Seek out non-email-reliant profit avenues

With spam filters, overloaded email folders, and increasing legislation proving ever-more troublesome to legitimate opt-in email marketers, it's wise to develop branches of your business that do not solely rely on email for profitability.

That's not to say email marketing is no longer relevant or important, it quite clearly is both of these when used effectively - but my tip for 2004 is to try to find other supplementary routes to profitability.

For example, a niche area in the search engines (as outlined in tip 1 above) will bring you a lot of traffic, without over-relying on email as a traffic and sales generation tool - and even if you don't have a specific product, if you combine great content with effective use of Google Adsense, that's another great income stream for your business.

Success online is all about not putting all your eggs into one basket, and developing 'multiple streams of income'. If you lost your email list(s) overnight, would you still be profitable?

4. Take more exercise

What? What's that got to do with doing business online?

Well, more than you think. For one, sitting in front of a computer for 12 hours a day can be detrimental to your health - and if you don't have your health, you won't have much of a business.

Getting some regular fresh air and exercise will not only help to keep you healthy, it will also:

- Increase your energy levels, so you can get a lot more done in less time.

- Clear your head, so you can concentrate more effectively.

- Help you to relax and come up with some great ideas for your business (my best and most profitable ideas come to me when I'm on vacation, or otherwise relaxed and 'switched off').

- Boost your confidence and self-esteem, the absence of which is often at the route of many business failures. When you're confident, you take more risks, and risk-taking is closely linked to profitability. If you stay the same, and take no risks, you're unlikely to move forward in your business.

And don't forget, while you are exercising, you can listen to educational tapes and CDs that will help you grow and learn, all of which can boost your business long-term.

5. Set goals

Close your eyes, and picture yourself at the end of 2004. Where would you like to be?

If you continue doing what you are doing now, where will you be, realistically?

Set some goals that will get you from where you are currently heading, to where you would like to be. Break those goals down into specific steps that know you can achieve, and will ensure you reach your goals by the end of 2004.

Refer to your goals regularly, don't be afraid to adjust them if necessary during the year, and take one step at a time.

Need content for your web site or ezine? You can republish this article, but please just write to me first to let me know, and I'll send you a short bio to include.

A sample from the postbag this month:

"...Just want to let you know too that I've enjoyed your Takanomi Newsletter. I'm thinking you're in Great Britain and I must say you Brits know a thing or two about customer service (compared to us self-absorbed Yanks).

Eben Bryant
http://appraiseraid.com"

"Hi Steve,

"Could you help me? I am new to the Internet business - I teach T'ai Chi for a living, and have just developed a new website on which we teach T'ai Chi at taichiscotland.com. Although we haven't got an ezine yet, could we use ListInferno to pull people to our health arts site?

Regards,
John Ward
taichiscotland.com

PS. I think your info is really good keep up the good work.

Hi John

That's a great question.

With any web site, you need to try and focus on grabbing the details of the visitor, eg. offer them free info on Tai Chi (such as excerpts from your product, free sample chapters etc.) - you can then mail to a group of people who you know are very targetted and very interested in what you have to offer.

Here's what I'd advise:

1. Concentrate on capturing your visitors details, using say a sign up form on your web site, and perhaps a popup of some sort
2. Set yourself up with a mailing management tool - the one I recommend is at http://takanomi.com/par, though there are other free advertising-supported services available - this will enable you to easily capture 'leads' and subsequently mail to them
3. Set up a sequence of autoresponder messages to mail to them - for example, take some excerpts from the products you sell (if you wrote them - otherwise of course there'll be copyright issues), and mail them out in some sort of sequence; or just valuable info on Tai Chi - plus mail them say on a monthly basis with say valuable Tai Chi tips for your subscribers. This way, you maintain contact with an interested targetted group of prospects who may evolve into future customers, plus you're building up your credibility, the lack of which often prevents sales online.
4. Sign up for ListInferno - you now have an ezine you can plug in, and you'll be able to take full advantage of the service to bring you more subscribers.
 

If you have feedback, please just let me know.
 

How you can ... check when Google last spidered your site

Here's an easy way to find out when Google last spidered your web site:

• Add a server-side date to your web page, eg. in PHP, SSI, etc.; client-side JavaScript won't work for this. A quick search online will find various code snippets you can use for this, though you may need some help from a programmer if you're really unsure what to do.

• You may have to wait a month or so to do this, so that Google spiders your site which now contains the date, but this is the general principle. Find your site on Google - a search using the format "popupmaster."+com (just change to suit your own site) should put your web site at the very top of the listings. Click the 'Cached' link - the cache contains a copy of your site the last time Google came to visit. Check the date showing on your web page and you'll see exactly when they last dropped by.

Google generally seem to spider once a month or so, although for some sites this frequency is increased - if you know when they last came to visit, you'll have an idea about when they are likely to next spider your web site.

...Create Any Kind Of PopUp In Less Than Three Minutes!

He is a programmer by trade - he was awarded with a Masters Degree with Distinction in Information Technology, and is proficient in virtually all web development media.

He possesses a unique understanding of the technology that lies behind effective e-marketing, and has worked closely with leading figures in the industry including Jonathan Mizel of Cyberwave Media.

If you would like some assistance with your project and believe Steve may be able to help, please write to him at steve@takanomi.com or call 0044 1904 677680 for a free initial consultation.