*********

In 2000, Drs. Sheena S. Iyengar and Mark R. Lepper set up a tasting booth at an upscale grocery store in California. On some days, they put out a selection of six types of jam; on other days they set out twenty-four. Although the wider selection attracted more shoppers, more people bought the jam when there were fewer options. It seemed
the more choices people had, the harder it was to make a decision.

The Paradox of Choice explored this infamous dilemma, in which having more options tends to leave us paralyzed and increase our buyer’s remorse. But what does that mean when you’re not just shopping? What about when you’re doing much more important stuff…like picking a job, a house, or – gasp – a life partner?…

If you ever listened to your teachers, talked to your parents, or watched Mr. Rogers’ Neighborhood, you learned that you were a special snowflake and the world was yours for the taking. But for a generation with more options than ever before, how do you choose when you’ve been taught you can have it all?

Choister?

Today’s twenty- and thirty-somethings approach life and love very differently than past generations. The explosion of choices now available has impacted our desires and expectations, and led us to reconsider traditional decisions. Young men and women are increasingly reluctant to make the ultimate commitment and get married, and much of
that is due to all the other glittery options out there competing for our attention – friends, professional success, 30 Rock, the people in the world you haven’t yet dated.

If you love choices and think the world is your oyster, you’re a choister.

In a world where you might have twenty careers by your 31st birthday, you just might want to cultivate some more stability in your relationships.

The “choice effect” is that pit in your stomach as soon as the waiter walks away with your food order and you realize you wanted what she’s having. It’s a reality, and one that impacts our love
lives.

So how do you overcome this paradox in relationships? For your mother’s sake, take notes.

5 Ways to Tame the Choice Effect:

Use the following “C”-words to make the other “C”-word–commitment–less daunting.

1. Criteria:

Before I decided to settled down with “J”, my now fiancé from Argentina, there were several key moments where I questioned the very basis of our relationship. As foreigners in each other’s lands, cultural and language barriers have been an ongoing theme. It’s taken him years to accept that in my country we eat omelets for breakfast – not lunch – and my visible upset at the break-up of Tipper and Al made him more than pause (okay, maybe that’s not cultural). But one day while I related a particularly hysterical Jon Stewart shtick, the worst happened. He told me it didn’t sound very funny. And that’s when I asked myself: could I really spend a lifetime single-handedly explaining the nuances of The Daily Show to a newbie?

My non-negotiables had been there from the start: internationalism, spirituality, and ambition. Although J matched me well on these fronts, we weren’t carbon copies of one another by any stretch of the imagination. He spends hundreds of hours a year on photography, and I traveled around the world for an entire year without bringing my own camera. I still don’t understand if a bass and a bass guitar are the same thing, but there are apparently three of them displayed in our foyer. I had never heard of Maradona.

We make trade offs in our love lives – J’s cultural “shortcomings” are made up for by key compatibilities. As I’ve come to believe, a man who has never tasted peanut butter can still make an excellent father. So think about what you need. Not a never-ending wish list about how the perfect partner will want to attend Lilith Fair and share your love of Neti pots. Pick the stuff that matters and find someone with those qualities.

2. Concentration:

Like Stephen Stills once sung: “Love the one you’re with.”

When J and I had been dating less than a year, I moved half-way around the world for an MBA program. Suddenly
my wonderful, intelligent, handsome boyfriend was a pixelated photo to Skype with. Meanwhile, real, warm-blooded men played lacrosse around me. This world will pull us in lots of directions, and you need to decide what your prize is and keep your eye on it. Don’t get distracted by every boy or girl that musters the energy for a “how YOU doin’?” Don’t forget your fiance’s cello concert because you’re wall-flirting with your middle school crush on Facebook. I’m all for canvassing your options, but beware the shiny ball syndrome.

3. Common Sense:

Does your ideal life involve a mud hut in Nicaragua with a partner equally thrilled by jungle monkies? Then don’t go trolling for men on what’s left of Wall Street. If you’re a conservative Christian who’s into side hugs, don’t make eyes at the atheist hippie at the local coffee shop. Yes, opposites attract. Paula Abdul said so. But they aren’t a long-term win. Don’t fall into a relationship that checks none of your boxes. Although you may think this is destiny slapping you on the face, this is actually just adrenaline. Probably heightened from the fog of patchouli.

4. Calculation:

Keep an eye on the clock. Not in the Marisa-Tomei-stomping-your-foot kind of way. But there’s being picky and then there’s being paralyzed. So ask yourself – whether you’re choosing a pair of shoes, a healthcare plan, or a spouse – “How long SHOULD this take?” For example – would you agree with the following: you should spend no longer than an hour of your life at GAP deciding between unremarkable fragrances, and no longer than 5 years to decide on a partner? Like my best friend who, after dating her boyfriend for seven years, suddenly thought, “How much more data can I expect to gather?” and suggested they elope to Vegas. You don’t have to adhere perfectly, but it’s good to step back, pick a number (I just might recommend two years), and buy a watch.

5. Choose Already:

If you went into an ice-cream store and saw a child ordering an ice cream cone with 7 different scoops, you’d tell him he was idiot (or not, because that is mean and he is small). Don’t be that kid. You don’t get to have everything.
And, to be fair, you don’t want to. College buffet lines were fun at the beginning, but a plate full of pasta-pizza-ranch-dressing-Fruit Loops loses its appeal after a while. So choose.

What stops so many of us from making a commitment is our fear that once we make a choice we have to close the door on all the other options. If we marry Andy, we will never date Charles. True. If we become an architect, we will never be a ferret trainer. Also true. However, if we do sack up and choose to become an architect, then we have a whole host of new and shiny choices to think about! Should we make a doghouse or a people house? Should the house be blue or red? Should the building be small, medium, or big?

Choosing doesn’t limit choices—it just changes them. So feel free to pick that city, that career, that partner, knowing that even commitment brings a whole new set of options – children/pets/red and blue houses – to be excited (and angsty) about.

By the way, I picked me an architect. (See how I tied that up?)

*********

Claire Williams is co-author of The Choice Effect, which explores overcoming the Paradox of Choice in decisions–big and small–that affect your life. Her previous writing on navigating choices can be found here.

Universal search results – this is typical results and shows the most relevant search items for a given inquiry.
Search Option Panel – allows users to choose their search options (whether they want news, blogs, or general results)
Google Squared – this is still in a way a concept that they are rolling out slowly. This allows users to choose “something different” on a related topic.

The jury is still out on the Google search changes. It’s expected that people will like it, but already criticism is rolling in that they are trying to be too much like Bing. Still yet, as technology advances we figure that Google will refine their changes and stay the best search engine that there is.

What do you think of the changes to the Google search option. If you haven’t seen them, it’s because they are rolling them out in phases.
Google’s stock opened at an even $500 and so far during trading swung between a high of $505.32 and a low of $481.33. We expect the stock to stay steady during the day, unless something unforseen happens.

Source:
Small Business Computing

So why not invest in your word of mouth advertising? Why not make it easier for people to refer you? Well this is where your web site comes in!

Here are 5 ways to use your web site to boost your word of mouth advertising:

1. Tell all your word-of-mouth advertisers about your web site.
Often, a business will either put up their web site for the first time or make significant updates and not tell anyone. People who can potentially refer you business ought to be aware of your web site. So when you put up a web site or make significant updates, let everyone know about it.

2. Get your web site on all your points of contact.
This will help spread the word about your web site. In addition to putting your web site name on brochures and business cards, put it on the not-so-obvious places like your emails, voice mail greeting, and customer receipts. The more times people hear about your web site, the more they will share it when telling people about you.

3. Put your referral program on your web site.
Having a page on your web site that explains your referral program will help others be more effective at sending leads your way. On this page, make it clear how to refer business to you and what kind of business you are looking for.

4. Put your special offers on your site.
Special offers are good for getting prospects to take action. They also can make referring people to you easier. For example, instead of saying, "My friend Joe is a plumber, he can help you," a referrer can say, "My friend Joe is a plumber, go to his web site, and you can get 10% off!" After you put your offers on your web site, let the people who will refer you know about them.

5. Give free information on your web site.
Free information is a good way to make referring people to your web site easy to do. It can be as easy as saying, "Oh, go check out Jen's web site. There's a lot of good free advice there." Everyone wants good free advice. Let everyone who may refer you business know about the free information on your web site.

Wouldn't it be great if people who used to say, "Hey, my friend Ann is a graphic designer, umm, I have her card somewhere." can now say, "Hey, my friend Ann is a graphic designer, visit her site at www.anndesign.com so you can get free design samples?"
In conclusion, use your web site to boost your word of mouth referrals. By doing so, you will attract prospects that have a higher degree of trust, and you will have an easier time closing sales.

In this new book from JSC, you’ll learn all the ins and outs of using Twitter and using it as an essential marketing resource for your Internet business. If you haven’t heard the buzz about Twitter yet or are still wondering what the real purpose of twitter is all about, let me try to explain.

Twitter in a nutshell is a simple social networking website that lets you share with your friends know what you’re doing – right now! Hence the old catch phrase on the Twitter sign-up page –“What are you doing?” Think of Facebook, instant messaging and sms all rolled into one simple package, and you’ve got Twitter.

Twitter works around a time line which is displayed on a single page that’s updated every second of every minute of every hour….you get my point. It’s a constantly updated stream of news from people all around the world. As a member, you can add your own little message to the time line up to 140 characters long to it known as a "tweet".

But that doesn’t mean you’re going to be able to see every Twitter user’s Tweets. You can choose who you want to “Follow” and others can choose to Follow you. And it’s these followers who you can converse (tweet) with.

You might be thinking “wow, big deal” but there is massive potential in this mini social networking site to meet other like-minded people, share info and web site links. And those factors mixed with the ability to grow your followers make it a perfect platform for business.

You can also use Twitter to….

* Send direct messages to users instead of broadcasting to everyone,
* Mobile options to send and receive tweets via SMS and email from your cellphone,
* Search options allowing you to find Twitter users posting about a certain topic,
* An API that allows 3rd party developers to develop some great applications.

We are excited to share this new book so look for the launch in June 2010.

In essence, PPC advertising is all about bidding for the top or leading position on search engine results and listings. Advertisers do this by buying or bidding on keyword phrases that are relevant to their products or services - the higher the bid, the higher the spot on the search results, the more the people will find the ad (and click on it) to go to their websites (this is why some people call it "keyword auctioning"). Advertisers would then pay the bidding price every time a visitor clicks through the website.

PPC advertising is also known under the following names/variations:

Pay per placement
Pay per performance
Pay per ranking
Pay per position
Cost per click (CPC)

PPC advertising is usually done with the following standard procedures:

1. Setting up an account and/or deposit funds.

2. Creating a keyword list.

3. Choosing (and setting up) an account with a PPC search engine.

4. Bidding on the ad placement, including the search result words or phrases.

5. Writing out an ad copy.

6. Setting up the 'landing pages' for your ads.

7. Placing the advertisement in the search engine.

There are many benefits to Pay Per Click advertising, making it an effective way of promoting a business 'online'. Some of them are listed below:

Get launched immediately. PPC advertisements are implemented very quickly - they can go 'online' within an hour after winning the bid and paying for it.

Obtain specific, pre-qualified, and quality traffic. PPC provides you with a quality or a well-targeted traffic. Visitors are narrowed down into 'qualified' people who are actually looking for specific products and/or services that you offer - those who are more likely to become a 'lead' (a convert) and complete a transaction (either by buying your product or subscribing to the service that you are offering.

Widen your reach. PPC advertising provides additional traffic to your site, aside from the natural or "organic" search engines.

Track your investment. PPC advertising makes use of a tracking system that will determine exactly who comes to the website and what they do once they arrive - the length of their stay on the site and the number of pages (including the actual pages) that they view. These are valuable tools in determining statistics such as return on investment (ROI), acquisition cost-per-visitor, and conversion rates (the percentage of visitors who are converted into customers or leads).

Below are some important things to consider when planning on a pay per click campaign:

1. Know your product. Take an inventory of the product and/or services that you have to offer (before anything else).

2. Stay within the budget. Determine your daily or monthly budget; and stay with it. This means keeping your budget in mind, avoiding bidding wars if possible.

3. Bid just right. Know how to bid right - a bid that is too high can exhaust all of your money, while a bid that is too low can make you lose that spot.

4. Watch the bottom line. Measure your profit margin against your spending or expenses. Know when to stop and terminate your PPC program - if you spend more on advertising but have little or no sales at all.

5. Find the right keywords. Decide which keyword phrases to opt and bid for. Do some keyword research, either by actually looking at existing search terms or with the use of online keyword suggestion tools, to know which terms are mostly used when searching for items that are related to your business. Focus on specific keywords, not on general ones.

6. Write effective ads. A good PPC ad is that which can persuade and move a searcher. There are several approaches to this:

Discount offers
Testimonials
Celebrity/famous endorsers
Money-back guarantees
Free trials or sample offers
Freebies
Reverse psychology
Major benefits ("Lose weight")
Direct instructions ("Click here")

7. Maintain a professional-looking site. Your web content should be regularly updated and checked for spelling and grammatical errors. There should be no broken links or images. The website should be simple - designed in such a way that it will be easy for visitors to navigate and load. Include contact details to create a good impression among potential customers.

Done properly, PPC advertising can be an effective marketing tool that will maximize the return on your investment.

However, PPC search engine advertising does not end there. It is important to understand that although PPC search engine advertising generates leads, it is also important for users to find relevant information at the website they are directed to. Information is a valuable asset in PPC search engine advertising that is often left unchecked by many websites. Keep in mind that users are more likely to purchase products or services from a company that provided them with the necessary information they needed in the first place.

Qualified traffic with PPC search engine advertising

One of the benefits of PPC search engine advertising is that it provides qualified traffic to a specific website. Users that click on a PPC ad are those in search of a particular product or service. This helps eliminate unnecessary clicks from non-prospective buyers that only produce expenditures not profits. PPC search engine advertising is also the fastest way to get a reasonable return on investment.

A bidding process is used to establish the price of a specific keyword. In general, the budget for PPC search engine advertising may be a $100 to $100,000 depending on the number of keywords used. These prices can skyrocket in just minutes as more and more sites bid for the same keyword thus causing the prices to jack up.

PPC ads are placed alongside search engine results to which they are relevant. The highest bids for a specific keyword or phrase gets top billing on the search engine results page. Getting top placement provides greater odds for a PPC ad to get clicked by a qualified searcher.

Elements of PPC search engine advertising

PPC search engine advertising involves three basic elements; constant monitoring, response analysis and refinement as the essential factors involved in PPC search engine advertising. Proper management of PPC search engine advertising can result in big profits for a website.

PPC search engine advertising makes it possible for sites to monitor the productivity of each PPC ad they place. This gives a site the opportunity to turn off any PPC ad that is not performing at its best. PPC search engine advertising provides the most economical way for a site to advertise on the World Wide Web.

The cost entailed in PPC search engine advertising is dictated by the clicks made on a particular PPC ad. The number of clicks made on a PPC ad is subtracted from the initial amount paid by the business to a search engine company. To minimize cost and maximize return on investment, a business will have to regularly monitor its PPC search engine advertising campaign.

How to use PPC search engine advertising

Many businesses are unable to get the most out of their PPC search engine advertising campaign. PPC search engine advertising involves a lot more than just bidding on the highest keywords. Information is a main concern of many online users.

Providing online users with relevant information they need will help bring about a more long-term relationship with an online user that will more likely result in a sale.
Information provided to online users may be in the form of a newsletter or e-zine that online users would likely sign up for. Sign-ups may be enough to cover the expenses of a PPC search engine advertising campaign.

Sign-ups also help generate leads for websites as they build opt in list from qualified online searchers who clicked their PPC ad. Getting personal information from qualified online searchers can be done in a variety of ways such as offering freebies for surveys or signing up for newsletters.

PPC search engine advertising is a continuous process that requires hands on supervision and a thorough understanding of PPC search engines. Businesses may opt to hire the services of a professional or do PPC search engine advertising with in-house experts. Whatever course of action is selected, a business is sure to get a huge return on investment with PPC search engine advertising.

1. Before you can run a successful internet business, you are going to need the necessary knowledge. In other words, if you are looking to start an internet business, choose an industry that you are familiar with. By doing this you will ensure yourself of knowing where to start, and how to handle problems as they arise. Of course, it is possible to run a successful internet business even if you do not have past experience. You will just want to make sure that you do your homework before starting. This way you will have some background information on the industry instead of simply going into the venture blind.

2. Make sure that you are organized from the very start. The most successful internet businesses are ones that have a quality business and marketing plan in place from the start. This will allow you to follow your plan as the days go by so that you do not get lost. It is hard to be successful in anything if you do not know where you are trying to go. A business plan will give you an idea on how you want your company to progress, where as a marketing plan will direct you on how to grow your company. These are two things that are synonymous with every successful internet business.

3. Never be ashamed to ask for help if you are having a rough time. A lot of business owners do not like to ask other people for help because they do not want to hurt their pride. This is something that you should come to grips with before you even get started. It is impossible to know everything about your industry, so there are times when you will have to ask questions. Instead of thinking of this as a bad thing, why not look at it as a way of making new business contacts? If you are having a technical problem that you cannot figure out, you should get in touch with an IT company right away. There is nothing wrong with doing this. In fact, if you do not ask questions to other people you will only be holding your company back.

4. Do not reinvent the wheel, by following an established Internet Marketing Plan you can take a shortcut to your online success. Be aware though to not follow unsuccessful plans, there are free ones which are just excellent like "The Internet Marketing Master Plan".

By following the tips above you will be well on your way to running a successful internet business. Remember, anybody can run a business, but to be successful you will have to be determined.

As nice as it is to hear that you should be active, involved, and in the know when it comes to your child or teenager and the internet, you may be wondering what is so important about doing so. Although you may use the internet to search for jobs online or pay your bills, it is important to remember that there is so much more out there. Your child can and may be doing more than just doing research for a school project. They may be using online chat rooms, private instant messaging programs, and social networking websites.

As for why online chat rooms, private instant messaging programs, and social networking sites are dangerous, it is important to remember that the internet makes it easy to pretend to be someone else. Your child may unknowingly end up making a 50 year old friend, thinking that friend is their own age. Information posted online has also been used for harassment or harmful purposes when otherwise high school or junior high school friends have a falling out.

Now that you know the importance of staying updated and in the know about your child's internet use, you may be curious as to how you can go about doing so. The good news is that it is relatively easy to do so.

The first step is to make sure that you are computer literate yourself. Do you know how to check your computer's internet history? Better yet, do you even know what a computer's internet history is or does? If not, you will want to take a computer course or ask a trusted friend or relative, other than your child, to give you a crash course. You will want to learn as much as you can about the internet and a computer, but be sure to know about parental controls, a computer's internet history, and so forth.

Speaking of checking your computer's internet history, be sure that you do so. Your computer's internet history records all of the websites that are visited within the last week or past few days. To do so, open up a new Internet Explorer window. Towards the top of the page you should see a number of icons. Click on the one that has a clock with a green arrow partly around it. This should be the computer's internet history. What websites has your teenager or child visited?

Another easy way to stay involved in your child's internet use is to set parental controls. Most computers come standard with them. Make your parental controls password protected. Do not give your child the password, but do use it to unlock websites that may innocently be blocked on accident, like those needed for a school research project.

Moving your child's computer into a family room or a frequently traveled room is advised. In fact, your child should be able to use a shared family computer. This tends to limit the visiting of potential dangerous chat rooms and social networking websites, as most teens like to view these sites in private. If you must, limit your child's use of the computer to certain times, like when you are home or in the room.

Be sure to talk to your child about the dangers of the internet. Let them know that it is possible to meet internet predators online, especially with the use of private chat rooms or social networking websites. Let them know that if they are harassed, whether it be by someone they know or don't know, contact you immediately. You may, in turn, want to contact the proper authorities.

OK...

If you can write and you know your topic very well, then you can write a short report, an email series to put into your autoresponder, or even a short ebook. But how do you go about that, if you hate to or can't write?

Well, you can buy Private Label Rights (PLR) articles or ebooks and adapt them to suit the topic of your list. Let's talk about those for a moment.

Private Label Rights articles and ebooks are popular because they help you to save time. With PLR materials, the writer or owner of the material gives you the "rights" to sell or giveaway pre-written material. You can use it as if your own company or you personally wrote the information and you have the right to adapt the material in any manner you see fit.

Rather than gathering research and writing the material you'd like to give to your list yourself, you can simply take the articles and change some of the words, rearrange paragraphs, and give the articles new titles. This is a good idea. You definitely don't want to offer the same things going around to the people who are signing up for your list. If they saw the same exact thing before on some other list or another giveaway deal, they'll feel cheated and won't trust you. Plus, they'll probably unsubscribe from your list, to boot. That's not good. The people on your list need to trust you.

You can buy article "spinning" software, but as far as that goes... just finding synonyms for words and plugging them into the article text won't cut it, either. People aren't that stupid, and you certainly never want to insult the intelligence of the people on your list. You want them to like you, too.

Writing articles or short reports isn't that hard if you know your subject. Come up with a great title, something that people will really take notice of. If you're on my list, you've seen some of my email titles, like: "Crusty Old Norwegian," or "ADD Superman Bends Time." Great titles will definitely get people to read your stuff.

Then, tell them something about your topic. Focus on one facet of it, and don't try to tell the whole story in one article. You'll fail. Here's an example:

If I were to write about Internet Marketing, that would be a very broad topic. I could never cover it all in one short article. Right? But what if I narrowed that down to list building? Then, what if I narrowed it even more to how to set up an autoresponder? But even more than that, what if I wrote step-by-step instructions on plugging the autoresponder opt-in box into your web site? You see? Get your topic down to a chewable size and BANG!

If you have more time than money, study about writing articles, until you get really, really good at it. Buy a home study course, or an ebook about writing articles and study those. If you really hone in on what it is you're trying to accomplish, just focus on that one thing... you'll be an article-writing ninja before you even know it.

And think of how this will impact your relationship with your list. If you send them crappy looking articles, they won't respect you. Give them something you can be proud of, even if you have to pay for it. For the respect it will give you with your list, the money will be well worth it.

To get the needed targeted traffic in search engines such as Google, you need your blog, and your post to prominently show in the top ten search engine results. There are also tools to determine the rank of every keyword in key phrase to be used in the titles and first paragraph of the post to be able to get high ranking.

There are two factors affecting search engine ranking of a blog ñ on-page and off-page optimization. The former means that you have to make use of high ranking keywords to be used on your post (meaning putting it in the title or the first paragraph of the text) and off-page optimization which is getting quality back links pointing to your blog and its pages.

To on-page optimize your blog, as what I stated in my earlier posts:

* Keywords - it is what the search engine look for in your title tag and the content of your post when someone type it in the search engine. When you search on a particular phrase, the title or the content of the web page with the exact phrase you have searched for will be the first to be shown on search engine results.

* On page relevancy - since Google has tweaked its algorithms on title tags, it now requires that your page/posts should have relevancy to your title in a particular keyword your choose. It simply means that your title has a particular keyword that is being search and some of it is also found in your posts.

For off-page optimization:

* Get a lot of one way links - since link-exchange and reciprocal links no longer works and it will only clutter your site template Google looks at it with a frown. But one-way links is the best way to get page rank they said but I said since page rank does not contribute much in the search engine ranking, links to your posts from other sites with a particular keyword.

It means that many sites links to your blog with a particular keyword your blog page located on your title post and on the body post itself your blog page will show higher on search engine results.

Let us say your blog post is about niche fishing, and there are thousand of links pointing to your page from the anchor text niche fishing your page will be put on the top list of the search engine when someone look for the term. But donít jump on creating links like this yet.

Search engine looks at the thousand of links going to a blog especially if itís new as a link spam, and your effort will be wasted.

* One way links with the right anchor text (ex. ìniche fishingî) pointing to your post from other sites. Links should come from variety of locations (let us say forums with different ip address, social networking sites that are not owned by just one owner (know what I mean).

* Do not overuse the keyword or same anchor text in your link building effort. Just one keyword pointing to your blog post will trigger search engine suspicion.

* Creating links to your blog should be done minimally at leas 8-10 links a day will be enough in order for your blog post not to be put in the Google Sandbox.

Getting back link is easy but requires a lot of effort. You can manually submit your own created articles or rehash content from private label articles to article directories.