One thing that will make a huge difference between you and your competition is if your client or customer is able to view your website wherever they are.

PROBLEM: Website is not Mobile Responsive and needs to be updated!

SOLUTION: Hire Staci from CreativeVirtualSpark.com to update your website theme plus add a Membership that you can start earning Passive Income. Your All-in-One Solution is awaiting for you… see here!

Other Mobile Responsive themes:

Available with an Archive, Blog, Landing and Column template:

• http://www.studiopress.com/themes/streamline
• http://www.studiopress.com/themes/prose
• http://www.studiopress.com/themes/focus
• http://www.studiopress.com/themes/agency
• http://www.studiopress.com/themes/mocha

Available with an Archive, Blog and Landing template:

• http://www.studiopress.com/themes/generate

Available with an Archive and Blog template:

• http://www.studiopress.com/themes/eleven40

Highly recommended theme (in my opinion!):

• http://www.studiopress.com/themes/balance (archive, blog, landing, portfolio, landing)

See this in action at http://creativevirtualspark.com/members

There are lots of ways you can make money on the internet; all it takes is a little time and effort. You can sell things via classified ads, auctions, or create your own web site to sell your product. If you don’t know what to sell, consider selling access to information in the form of e-books or reports. Selling or providing electronic access to information online is a no-hassle way to promote a product that doesn’t have to be manufactured or shipped. Just create a website for your content, set up a few simple marketing campaigns, and you’re on your way to becoming an e-author, providing the information that people crave. If you have the skills to communicate an idea to another person in writing, then you’ve got what it takes. People are interested in becoming enlightened and educated about topics that appeal to their basic needs.

Another way to make money on the internet is with affiliate programs. You’ve probably heard before a bunch of hype about how much money you can make with this type of marketing, which is true if you can get with the best. Amazon.com is one of the original affiliate programs, offering a hype-free way to really make money online. It’ll only take a day to make the site, and it’s low cost and low effort. Go to www.entrepreneurs.about.com for detailed information on how to make money on the internet fairly effortlessly and for only about $20! Another great site to visit is www.about-the-web.com offering great ideas on writing and publishing e-books, creating websites, and marketing your product by selling advertising to people who want traffic sent to their website from yours; banner ads and affiliate programs are two types of popular internet marketing. You’re paid a few cents for each click on their banner, to a large commission for the sale of their product or service.

There are also a few tools you’ll need to make money on the internet like AdWords, AdSense, affiliations, auto-responders, banner exchanges, link exchanges, mailing lists, pay-per-click advertising, merchant accounts, submission services, and software, just to name the basics. If you’re not a computer geek, this may all sound a little overwhelming at first, especially if you’re intimidated by learning html and basic website maintenance. Learning how to do these essentials yourself will save you loads of money, it’s fairly easy to do, and you’ll have complete control over your internet endeavor. Save all your hard earned cash and use your innate skills and abilities to supplement your income online.

Not so many years ago, “blog” was not a household word. Today, blogging is almost an international hobby, with literally millions of bloggers, posting their thoughts on everything from global warming to tips on pet care. Some have huge followings, while others don’t fare so well. Let’s  take a look at how you can create a blog that stands out in the crowd.

If you want to create a blog, the process is simple, quick and free with any of the many blog hosting services. When you create a blog page, give your topic and writing style a bit – quite a bit – of thought before simply jumping in and hoping for the best.

Most important in the planning phase is your topic. Passion for your subject is what ultimately breeds success with your readership. When you create a blog, select a subject that fills you with excitement, curiosity and a desire to share with others. This makes words flow easily and nurtures an untiring commitment, so necessary to long-term success.

Once you’ve nailed down your topic, your primary job is to tweak  reader’s interest with knowledge, perspective and provocative commentary. This causes readers to reflect on your posts and contribute thoughts, questions and perhaps new information that sets off a flurry of responses from yet other readers.

When you create a blog that meets this criteria, you’re halfway there. Another key point to consider: know your topic and be willing to research and learn more. You’ve heard it said, the more you know, the more you realize what you don’t know. This is what makes an expert in any field.

Readers may pose a situation or difference of opinion that requires that you do additional research before you can make an educated response. This only fuels your own enthusiasm and gains you further credibility. You’ll learn new facts or ideas and have even more interesting material to offer. The usual result is a wider readership.

Word-of-mouth is an excellent way to promote your blog. However, a little active marketing never hurts.

Many bloggers swear by spreading word of their blog through personal profile sites such as myspace, where you can highlight your cyberspace presence with an infusion of your personality and lifestyle that will pique the interest of individuals who might otherwise not ever have come across your blog. Submit some of your best entries to article directories in the appropriate category. Search out newsletters that focus on your topic and then offer your most provocative pieces to the editor, in exchange for a byline that links to your blog. Just these three simple efforts will do wonders for your exposure to new readers.

Go for it! Create a blog! Choose your subject carefully, respect and encourage comments from others and learn all you can. Blogging is a satisfying activity. You may just change the world for the better!

I wish I could tell you that there was one secret key to how to start up a small business. Unfortunately, if you are starting your own business, you’re going to have to work hard, and you might not succeed. Any business entrepreneur will to you that working hard is the biggest part of how to start up a small business. There is no other way to do it. Just learning how to promote a business is an art in and of itself, and that doesn’t even get to the nitty-gritty of owning and operating one. Nonetheless, the right business advice can really help you start out. I know. When I first got going, I had no idea how to start up small businesses. If someone more experienced in the field had not taken me under his wing, I might never have become the success that I am today.

The first key to learning how to start up a small business is understanding how to choose your business properly. There are many different options available for small business entrepreneurs. One of the most popular ones today is to start up a business franchise. Business franchises have a lot of advantages over independently starting your own business. First of all, you already have a recognized name in the industry. A lot of the time, people will just stop in because they are familiar with the product you sell. If you start your own coffee shop, restaurant, or convenience store, people might not trust you immediately. You have to build a name for yourself.

Of course, there are some advantages to owning a business that is not a franchise. Anyone who knows anything about how to start up a small business will tell you the importance of niche marketing. If you can find a niche and exploit it, you can make a lot of cash. By starting your own independent business, you have a good chance of doing just that. You find a new angle and market it – something that people don’t know about already. A lot of the time, small local businesses have a certain charm that corporate chains don’t. Starting your own coffee shop and giving it a funky, offbeat style, can make you a good amount of money in the long run. It is a risky venture, but it can work. If you can promote the business properly, you will see the money flowing in.

Confused by keyword research? You’re not alone. Terms like “phrase match” and “broad match” are tossed around a lot, but what do they really mean?

Broad Match

Let’s look at an example keyword search. Say you’re in the weight loss niche, and you want to find a keyword phrase to use for your new article marketing campaign. You head over to Google’s handy keyword tool and type in weight loss, and up pops a few hundred possibilities. If you’ve chosen broad match, your monthly search figure for the term “weight loss” should be around 5 million searches. But does that mean 5 million searches are performed for the term “weight loss”? No.

What it means is that 5 million searches related to weight loss are performed every month. These searches might be for “easy weight loss”, “lose weight”, “how to lose weight”, or even “gain weight.” Broad match includes every search that includes all or part of your search term, in any order.

Phrase Match

Phrase match brings you a little closer to what you’d expect. If you change your settings to phrase match, you’ll find your search numbers go down to about 4 million. Phrase match searches will include every search term that includes the phrase “weight loss.” So searches such as “weight loss tips” and “foods for weight loss” will be included in that number. What is excluded is a rewording of the phrase, so “loss of weight” doesn’t make the list.

Exact Match

Exact match numbers are where it’s at. When you change your parameters to exact match, you find out that roughly 60,000 searches are performed on that term each month. That means someone typed “weight loss” and nothing else into Google’s search box. They didn’t search for “how to lose weight” or “best tips for weight loss.” They searched only for “weight loss.”

It’s All Relative

Regardless of the tool you use or the numbers you chase, keep in mind that the only true measure of value for a specific keyword is against other keywords in that same search. In other words, if you generally use Google for your research, and you find your keyword has 3,000 exact matches per month, you can’t expect to get 3,000 visits, even if you land the top spot. What you can expect, though, is that your keyword will fare better than one that shows only 1,000 exact matches.

Remember, too, that you cannot reasonably compare numbers from one keyword tool to another (Wordtracker vs. Google, for example) and you can’t really compare keywords across niches. The only real comparison you can make is between keywords within the same niche, using the same tool, with the same settings.

It’s really not necessary to spend hours on keyword research. Nor is it necessary to spend a lot of money on fancy tools just to pull keywords from Google or Wordtracker. A simple search should be enough to show you what search term meets your requirements for the article or post you’re writing. Choose exact match keywords with a promising number of searches per day or per month, and get to work.

Visitors to your blog are good. RSS subscribers are better. But the real money online is in your mailing list. Build a large list of qualified buyers, and you’ll see a much higher return on your investment than you will from any other marketing effort. The only question is, how do you build a qualified list?

• Present an irresistible offer. The days of getting people to give you their email address with the promise of a monthly or weekly newsletter are gone. You need to offer your readers something of value. Downloadable products like eBooks and special reports are popular, as are software, and even trial subscriptions to membership sites.
• Use highly targeted marketing. If your list focuses on gardening, and all your Twitter followers are other Internet marketers, pushing signups on your Twitter account is not going to result in a lot of conversions. Instead, concentrate your efforts where gardeners hang out – online forums, niche blogs, even Craig’s List are all good choices for getting your list in front of qualified, interested individuals.
• Get traffic to your opt-in page. Common wisdom says that you need an opt-in form on every page of your site, and while that’s important, it’s even more critical to have a separate opt-in page. When linking back to your site from articles, forums, guest blogs, or ads, link to that page rather than your home page. You’ll see conversions increase dramatically.
• Test, analyze, tweak, and repeat. No headline or opt-in page is perfect from the start. Keep an eye on your stats, and systematically change out elements to test performance. You can use scripts to split-test headlines and other parts of a squeeze page, or you can just manually track which ones work and which do not. And keep notes, you’ll want to refer back to them later for other campaigns.
• Change your offer, too. Today’s hot ebook will eventually become yesterday’s news, and a new offer will often rejuvenate a quiet list.

Getting sign-ups is only part of your overall list building campaign, however. Once people are on your list, your job turns to keeping them there. Start by living up to the promise you made them. Revisit your opt-in page and welcome letter and make sure you’re doing what you said you would do. Did you promise a weekly newsletter? Then you need to get it out in a timely manner. Regardless of the promised schedule, don’t let weeks go by without contacting your list. An out-of-the-blue email from someone they haven’t heard from in three months will likely result in an unsubscribe.

At the same time, don’t make every contact with your list a sales pitch. Sure, they know they’re going to be marketed to when they sign-up, but they expect (and deserve) some value from being a member as well. It’s impossible to say what the exact ratio of information to sales pitch should be, but you should definitely test and analyze your results until you find the optimum mix for your market.

Building a list – and keeping it healthy – should be your highest priority as a business owner. Whether your business is selling diaper patterns to new moms, or multi-thousand-dollar software systems to IT professionals, your list is your biggest asset. Treat it well, and you will reap the rewards.

Niche blogging, in combination with affiliate marketing, has proven to be a great source of income for many.  By providing quality content and developing a trusted relationship with your blog visitors, you can also create a profitable online business.

Before starting any business, it is always advised to do your research first.  Niche blogging is the same.

So what do you need to research?

You are looking for three main things when doing your research:

1. A topic/niche that you are interested in
2. A niche that has a lot of interest in by others
3. A profitable niche

So how do you determine these things?  We’ll discuss each one in more detail in what follows.

1. A Topic That You Are Interested In

• Google favors authority blogs and websites.  This means sites that have quality content that is valuable and relevant to site visitors, as well as sites that are kept fresh by adding more quality content all the time.
• Therefore, if you choose a topic that bores you, it will be very difficult to keep your site updated.  This would also make it difficult to build a long-term business.

2. A Niche That Has a Lot of Interest in By Others

• Not only do you need to be interested in the topic, but also your audience needs to be interested.
• If you are not sure of what topics are of interest to others, here are some places you can start looking:
• Dummies.com – Check out what kinds of Dummies books exist.  If there’s a book written about it, then there’s got to be interest in that subject.
• Yahoo Answers – Learn what kinds of questions people are asking, and try to find a pattern.
• Amazon.com – Look through their books and magazines to see what the best sellers are.

3. A Topic That is Profitable

• Although the first two points are important, this third one must not be overlooked.  Although you may have an interest in something, if there is no way to profit from your work, then you will not make any money.
• You also want to consider niches where people are willing to spend money.  For example, golfers are always interested in perfecting their techniques.  Furthermore, people who are experiencing pain (emotional or physical) are looking for ways to get better, and are often willing to spend money to have this happen.
• To profit, you need to find good products (physical or digital) that you can recommend to your blog visitors.

Here are a few ways to research profitability:

Affiliate Programs –

• Do a Google search by “Your Niche Topic” Affiliate.  So, for example, if you are interested in the stress niche, look up “Stress” Affiliate, and you will get a number of listings.  You are looking for good products that you can wisely recommend to your readers.
• You can check places like Clickbank, Amazon, EBay, Pepperjam Network, Market Health, Commission Junction, and others to find out what products you can promote.
• When looking up products on Amazon, be sure to check out their “Best Sellers” in the particular category you are considering.

Sponsored Ads –

• Pay attention to ads that are displayed on the right side of the search engine results when doing Google searches.  Several ads for a specific topic means there is an interest, and likely profit to be made from that topic.

In summary, niche blogging can be a great place to start your online business.  The points listed above provide you with a few ideas of how to get started, in order that you can have a profitable blogging business.

For beginning internet business owners, advertising dollars can sometimes be low.  Fortunately, there are some successful low-cost ways to advertise your business, increase your visibility in the search engines, and get traffic to your website.

In what follows, are two ways that can help you to get your website or blog noticed:

1. Article Marketing -

• By writing articles, and submitting them to article directories, you can drive traffic to your website.
• When other website owners visit article directories looking for well-written articles that they can use on their own sites, they are supposed to keep your biography and links intact.
• Therefore, it is through your biography and links that you can get direct traffic from the articles themselves.  This can be a great way to begin establishing yourself as an expert in a niche.
• The one-way links, which you also get back to your site when your article is posted on another related website, can help you rank better in Google.
• Since the Google Panda updates, SEO experts have been recommending that you submit unique, quality articles to a limited number of article directories of higher page rank and Alexa rankings.

2. Do Video Marketing -

• YouTube and other video streaming sites have become the “go-to” place to look up how to do things, and so much more.
• In fact, YouTube is considered the number two search engine, so you want to make sure that you do not ignore this important method of advertising your business.
• Start by creating a YouTube channel.  When you choose a name for your channel, try to use keywords and make it something relevant to your online business.
• Create videos that are useful and educational, yet do not give all the information away.  You still want to entice people to visit your website or blog, so you just want to give them a taste without telling them all the information.  Otherwise, there will be no need for them to visit your site if you give them all the information on your videos.
• In order to increase the chances that people will visit your website after viewing your videos online, be sure to include http://www.yourdomain.com address in the Description box.  You also want to include your domain name on the actual video, should viewers be watching your video when not on the YouTube website.  To do this, you can use software programs such as Windows Movie Maker (for PC’s).
• When naming your videos, use keyword-rich titles that are interesting.  Also, be sure to include tags for your videos to increase the chances of your videos being found.

In summary, two low-cost ways of advertising your online business include using article marketing, and video marketing.  Using these two methods will bring your website or blog increased exposure.

WordPress is one of the best free blogging software programs available to both technical and non-technical online entrepreneurs.

For the purposes of this article, I’m speaking of the WordPress blogging software that you can install from within the c-panel of your web hosting company.

In what follows, you will learn many of the benefits to using WordPress for your website/blog:

• You do not need to know computer code – such as HTML and PHP to create your own site. This means that you can get your site up and running very quickly, even without this knowledge.
• WordPress is not only for bloggers – You can use WordPress to create very attractive websites with static pages that don’t even look like blog pages. You can even use WordPress to create a website with a separate blogging section on it. Furthermore, you can use it to create e-commerce sites.
• Numerous free WordPress plugins are available – These plugins allow you to do so many other things to your WordPress site. For example, there are plugins that allow you to add photo galleries to your site (NextGen), ones that increase your exposure in the search engines (All-In-One SEO), others that allow you to control the appearance of your site (Exclude Pages), and so many others.
• Excellent paid WordPress plugins are also available – You can find some good paid plugins such as the WP-Estore, which allows you to create an E-store and sell products on your website. Again, there is no fancy code needed to set this up on your site. Pretty Link Pro is another paid plugin that allows you to redirect and cloak your links to decrease theft of your affiliate links.
• WordPress is used globally – Because WordPress is so well recognized throughout the globe, it is easy to find programmers online who are familiar with it, and can make any desired modifications to your website.
• It can save you a lot of money – If you have some time and the desire to learn how WordPress works, you can save a lot in hiring a website designer. In addition, once you learn WordPress, you don’t have to hire someone every time you need to update your website or blog.
• A number of WordPress themes are available – Many themes have been created; some are free while others are not. The various themes allow you to set up the appearance and layout of your site. There are also inexpensive software programs that you can purchase to create your own WordPress themes from scratch, without needing to know HTML.
• WordPress is SEO-friendly – WordPress contains many built-in search-engine optimization tools. For example, you can use keywords in the permalinks/URL’s of your posts and pages. You can also categorize topics, and use tags in order that search engines can better index your site.

In summary, WordPress offers many advantages when building a website and/or blog. For this reason, technical and non-technical people throughout the world use it.