Earning Money With An Internet Business

The Benefits of Blogging for Scrapbookers

admin — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 10:21:20 +0000

Even scrappers have started to blog and the number of blogging scrappers is climbing at an unbelievable rate. Scrappers have come to realize what the benefits of blogging are and how to integrate these benefits into their scrapbooking world.

Blogging has become a very popular way of communication within the past few years. While it used to be something that techy geeks would do, it’s become a way of life in the meantime. People blog for various reasons, being that they have a particular topic they would like to discuss, such as politics, sports, music, hobbies or themselves. There seems to be a blog for just about any subject.

Another benefit is communication with other family members or friends that live far away. Let’s face it, this is a fast-paced world we are living in, where time is of the essence. Instead of writing to each and every family member or several friends about what is happening in your life, you can simply suggest that they read your blog. It saves time and they can look at it whenever they want. There are blogs that have a password option, so not to worry. If you would like your blog read only by certain people, that is a possibility.

Since there is a need for themes out there, some designers have begun to realize this and are developing cool scrapbooking themes for blogs. Most recently a special free scrapbooking theme was created for WordPress by SimplyWP. The theme contains scrapbooking elements in the header image and the background theme. There are also two sidebars and a second sidebar can be used to list all your friends or to add buttons or blinkies. This theme was created in subtle, soft colors to allow your layouts to be the main attraction of your blog.

Some scrappers enjoy sharing their layouts and projects with other scrappers where a blog can really come in handy. Many blogs offer photo galleries, making it easy for scrapbloggers to get inspiration from other scrappers. To make it look like an actual blog for scrappers, some scrappers have a nice matching theme. Many blogs offer various themes for a variety of subjects. For scrappers, although, the selection is very slim. The good thing about themes is that you don’t have to be a programmer to have your blog looking fabulous! You just select it and viola, there it is! Why pay someone to make something that you can already get for free!?

The above mentioned scrapbooking theme can be previewed at http://www.scrapblogging.net/?theme=scrapbook and downloaded at http://www.photomix.com/news/free-scrapbooking-theme-for-wordpress/ absolutely free. It’s unbelievably easy to implement, so you’ll have no fuss with it at all. You can show all of your friends what a cool scrapbooking blog you have almost instantly.

Joining the Crowd with Mailing Lists

admin — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 11:19:07 +0000

Once you become familiar with the idea of sending a message to an individual through the Internet, it isn’t much of a leap to imagine that with a slight change or two, you could actually send the same message to a group of dozens, hundreds, or even thousands of users, all without incurring any charge.
Imagine that you’re sending a letter to a post office with a really fast copying machine and a big list of addresses. If you send a letter to, for example, all homeowners in your neighborhood, you’d need to send only one copy of the letter, and the post office would duplicate it and send copies to every registered homeowner - for free.
That’s exactly how mailing lists work on the Internet. A central computer somewhere on the network maintains a list, and then anyone on the list can send e-mail easily to everyone else on that discussion list by addressing it to the so-called list server machine.
If you’ve ever thought about what it must be like to maintain current names and addresses for a magazine like TV Guide, you wouldn’t be surprised to find that it’s quite a lot of work. Electronic mailing lists on the Internet are quite involved also, but the good news is that computers can make the process considerably easier.
The most common software package used to maintain lists on central computers is called Listserv (without the trailing e for mundane historical reasons). To sign up for a list that uses the Listserv software, send an e-mail message directly to the Listserv program, requesting that you be added (or removed) from the specified list.
With 20,000,000 users, there are also a lot of mailing lists, enough that a list of them with one-line descriptions come to almost 400,000 bytes. At last count, there are almost 8,000 mailing lists, ranging from medieval literature and issues surrounding consulting to a list that offers tips on working with Microsoft Word on the Macintosh and a popular list that discusses the commercialization of the Internet itself.

A Virtual Storefront

admin — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 11:12:34 +0000

The logistics of setting up a storefront in the local strip mall or office building are fairly straightforward, but doing business on the information highway is nowhere near as easy. Indeed, few companies fully understand the various tools and services they could offer, the tradeoffs involved, and the best way to ensure profitable results from their investment. Part of the reason this is more difficult is because unlike in the real world, in cyberspace, you can’t see where you’re going.
If you’re driving down Interstate 95 to attend a meeting in downtown Fort Lauderdale, for example, you can look for-and hope to find-the sign that indicates the desired exit ramp. Even if you get hopelessly lost, you can always pull off the highway, pull in at a gas station, and ask for directions.
Cruise the Internet in search of a program stored on a university computer system, by contrast, and you can spend hours poking about, vainly attempting to summon the exact commands needed without so much as a virtual gas station in sight. Unlike centralized commercial online services such as CompuServe and Prodigy, there’s no toll-free technical support department you can call for help when you get lost on the Internet.
What if you want to put your business on the Internet and access millions of potential customers? If it’s a struggle for you to find information on the Internet, imagine the trouble your customers will have trying to locate your Internet “store.” How will your customers know that you’re even online? Complicating the picture further, the Internet provides a dizzying array of information services that you can offer customers and potential customers, ranging from a simple file and information archives to electronic catalogs to elaborate multimedia documents. Remember that your customers will need to know in advance not only what Internet services you offer but how you offer them. If they send e-mail to an in-formation archive, for example, they may hit a dead end-and go looking for another company that offers more accessible information. These are only a few of the problems involved in doing business on the Internet. Despite the Internet’s massive human and informational resources and its enormous potential as a worldwide marketplace, the Internet is still, to a large extent, an uncharted frontier. Imagine New York City without street signs, the Kalahari Desert without a map, and hieroglyphics without the Rosetta stone, and you’re starting to get an idea of what navigating the Internet can be like if you don’t know what you’re doing.

Key Business Benefits Of The Internet

admin — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 10:54:18 +0000

The Internet offers businesses an impressive number of competitive advantages, including these six key benefits: electronic mail, access to research, tracking competitors, inexpensive remote collaboration, enhanced customer service, and low-cost marketing and advertising.
Let’s look at them one by one.

Electronic Mail

Much of the traffic on the Internet today is electronic mail. Indeed, it’s been estimated that well over 4,000 messages are sent each second of the day on the Internet.
Being able to send messages in seconds to a user anywhere in the world is probably the single most important reason so many companies find the Internet so appealing.
The Internet is also cheaper and more cost-efficient than comparable commercial online networks such as CompuServe, GEnie, or MCI Mail. Once you’re connected to the information highway, there are no additional per-minute or per-message charges. In the world of commercial online services, by contrast, flat-fee plans by which users send unlimited messages are quickly giving way to pay-as-you-go schemes as the services learn to compete in this new market.
There’s another important aspect to this, too: In addition to enabling your employees to communicate in an effective and inexpensive manner, the Internet links your company with the Internet’s more than 20,000,000 users.
To be fair, we’re not talking 20,000,000 potential customers, but even if only 1 percent are vaguely interested.. .well, you get the picture.

Research

Imagine that every site in your local library were actually a gateway to another library and that each of those libraries had another two to fifty times as many volumes as the first one. That’s what makes the Internet such a treasure trove of information for your business. For starters, the Internet provides
■ Access to the Library of Congress and just about every major university library in the United States
■ Business-oriented databases such as Commerce Business Daily, the Federal Register, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Economic Bulletin Board
■ U.S. and Canadian Census data
■ Supreme Court decisions
■ World health statistics
■ Security and Exchange Commission corporate financial reports
■ International weather forecasts (including up-to-the-hour satellite pictures)
■ United Nations information
■ And even transcripts of daily White House press briefings
The Internet has more than statistical data, however. The network’s lifeblood is its widely varying and often freewheeling discussion forums, split between public bulletin boards (called Usenet) and private electronic mailing lists. Both offer forums packed with experts discussing new developments in their fields. There are Internet discussion groups about almost anything you can think of - chemical engineering, entrepreneurship, computer programming, franchise opportunities, Eastern European trade and politics, semiconductor manufacturing, continuing employee education, and over 10,000 other forums.

Who Runs This Show Anyway? (2)

admin — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 10:49:10 +0000

The Internet is not a corporation; it’s a computer cooperative. Nobody owns the Internet and there’s no one you can hold accountable if the system breaks down, which it occasionally does.
Even so, the Internet’s quirky infrastructure is remarkably efficient at transmitting information from point A to point B. One way to understand the Internet is to compare it with the phone company. Due to public access laws, phone companies are required by law to offer a connection to anyone who wants one; no analogous requirements are yet in place for Internet connections (an important consideration for many businesses that we examine later in the site).
If you imagine how a phone system that connected only subscribers would work, you have a rough idea of how e-mail and other messages are transmitted through the network. You compose and address a message with the Internet equivalent of an area code and phone number: an e-mail address. Your local system then consults various databases to identify the unique computer address for the remote system, then directly feeds the message to that system.
The main backbone of the Internet is the National Science Foundation-funded NSF Network (NSFNet). The primary artery for research and academic Internet information flow, NSFNet prohibits all commercial traffic. Its acceptable-use policy excludes any advertising except for announcements of new products and services that would be of interest to the research and education community.
However, a second, parallel backbone run by the Commercial Internet Exchange (CIX), a private cooperative venture, has no such restrictions. Because most Internet access providers and online services offer underlying CIX connectivity in addition to or instead of NSFNet, the remaining barriers to doing business on the Internet today are more cultural than regulatory. The government, meanwhile, is getting out of the Internet business; it’s planning to start reducing its $11,500,000 subsidy beginning in 1994.
As federal restrictions on Internet use drop away, the main barrier to advertising on the Internet is the Internet purists who believe that advertising is out of place there. Many users, especially those affiliated with government research institutions and universities, can be downright hostile to any sales pitches or junk mail that litter their electronic frontier. With that in mind, we advise you to adopt more passive strategies for making your corporate presence known on the information highway.

Who Runs This Show Anyway?

admin — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 10:46:10 +0000

The world of business has always been a pretty rough and tumble place, with competitors using innuendo, unfair trade practices, monopolies, bribes, and other unsavory techniques to ensure their individual success in the marketplace. More recently, consumers have become a little savvier. These days, companies that thrive are those that work with the community, becoming “good corporate citizens,” and trying to make a positive addition to their communities.
The Internet is no different from any other community, and those companies that “go native” by brushing up on the network’s culture and mores will gain a competitive advantage in the electronic marketplace .
Taking time to learn about the Internet now can pay big dividends in the future. If the current growth rate is sustained, more than 50,000,000 people will be accessible through the Internet by the turn of the century. Companies that jump in early and learn how to work with the Internet community will become productive, valued members of cyberspace; those that don’t may end up as roadkill on tomorrow’s Infobahn.
The quickest way to hitch a ride on the information highway is by hopping aboard the Internet. Created in 1969 as a way to link the U.S. Defense Department with high-level university researchers working on sensitive government projects, the Internet has no central computer that stores its millions of gigabytes of information. That’s because the government feared that, in the event of a nuclear attack, all its valuable military data could be destroyed. As a result, the Internet became a decentralized network with data stored on each of thousands of computers.
That’s good news for our country’s defense but not for today’s business users. Unlike traditional online services such as CompuServe, Prodigy, and America Online, the Internet has no central mainframe to dial into, no 800 number to call for a starter kit, precious little easy-to-use navigational software, and no technical support staff to call with problems or questions. Check with some of your colleagues, and you’ll find that the Internet interface they see is probably very different from your own, with Mac and PC systems vying with UNIX systems for greatest popularity and dialup access offering a primitive text-based view of the information highway.