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Publishing dates:
'Pathway To Success' is published every other Sunday.
Next Issue is supposed on 6th May 2007.

Did you know that subscribers to Bob Osgoodby's Free Ezine "Tip of the Day" get a Free Ad for their Business on his Web Page? Great Business and Computer Tips - Monday thru Friday Instructions to place your ad are in the Newsletter. Subscribe at: http://adv-marketing.com/business/subscribe2.htm

Today's Feature Article

How A Stupid Mistake Doubled Conversion Rate
Irena Whitfield

In this Article I want to tell you about a mistake I made reorganizing my site which doubled the conversion rate of my site as a result.

Every business owner closely watches their conversion rate and continuously searches for ways and strategies to increase this magic number - in other words: manage to turn more and more visitors into buyers.

I am not any exception and most of the steps I take in my business are confronted with the impact these will have on the conversion rate of my site.

When I was designing my site and creating the business plan back in 2000, I planned on having one site on one domain only focusing on one theme and divided into sections focused on related subcategories.

I did as I planned and I was correct. Very fast I achieved #1 ranking on all the major search engines for my main keywords and top ranking for hundreds of related keywords targeted my site, and before long my site developed automated and targeted traffic. My site ranked within top 10,000 sites on the Internet, my Ezine Pathway To Success grew over 130,000 subscribers and my sales followed accordingly.

Everything went smoothly until my marvellous hosting company was sold to solely money-oriented people, with no interest in the necessary technical requirements, and diverting the traffic of their clients to their domain on top. It started to threaten my site and I had to change it for another host.

PLUS, as my site grew beyond manageable size, I started to receive quite a lot of requests for making it easier and faster to navigate from subscribers and clients who were not willing to dig :)

My main service is to comply with the wishes of my audience, so I developed a plan of reorganizing my site into subdomains focusing on the main and most frequented niches incl my Ezine with my main site focused on my main theme ie Internet Business Consultancy and the tools and resources for home based business owners who seek strategies for making their sites profitable.

As with all my ideas: as soon as I adopt a plan, I put it into reality. So, I performed the overhaul of my site pretty fast.

As I was changing my hosting company and was not too accustomed with the rules of my new host, I didn't know that my Ezine is not delivered as it should, which I, in fact, learned later from my subscribers.

The timing couldn't be worse: and that's exactly where the mistake occurred: my site lost the automatic amounts of targeted traffic it used to be receiving because my subscribers didn't receive my ezine regularly, search engines only perceived the reduced size of my main domain site and had yet to index all of my new subdomain sites, so my overall Internet ranking dropped and suddenly I was worse off than at the start.

I was really annoyed! Luckily, I found the cause out quite fast and adopted strategies to again:

• establish automated targeted traffic by getting my new subdomains indexed and top ranked by search engines: separate Google sitemaps for the new subdomains did the trick within days.

• deliver my ezine properly by installing several automatic broadcasters: several different systems like dada mail, php...

Even though my traffic nor my overall Internet ranking is yet that good as it used to be, I managed to actually double the conversion rate of my site (which is great!) by leading the right visitors straight to the part of my site containing the information and products they are seeking without making them search my site or leave it.

Plus I have added a couple of audios, special widgets and gadgets making my site more attractive and interactive.

To sum up: this way I easily updated the majority of the pages and my tests show that my site is doing better and better every day.

I don't say that making stupid mistakes like this is always a way to do the right things. What I want to say is that even making mistakes is better than doing nothing and expect miracles.

So, if you feel that your business can perform better (- every business can), do something about it. Check the possibilities, compare with your goals, ACT NOW and check the results!

********************************
Irena Whitfield is the Internet Business Consultant you need if you are seeking a dependable income from your home based business. Click here to check her new Financial IQ Guide and learn how to manage your money to create true wealth.
http://money.thecassiopeia.com/

Today's Motivational Reading

The Ten Commandments Of Success
Charles M. Schwab

• Work hard: hard work is the best investment a man can make.

• Study Hard: Knowledge enables a man to work more intelligently and effectively.

• Have Initiative: Ruts often deepen into graves.

• Love Your Work: Then you will pleasure in mastering it.

• Be Exact: Slipshod methods bring slipshod results.

• Have The Spirit Of Conquest: Thus you can successfuly battle and overcome difficulties.

• Cultivate Personality: Personality is to a man what perfume is to the flower.

• Help And Share With Others: The real test of business greatness lies in giving opportunity to others.

• Be Democratic: Unless you feel right toward your fellow men, you can never be a successful leader of men.

• In All Things Do Your Best: The man who has done his best has done evrything. The man who has done less than his best has done nothing.

********************************
Charles Michael Schwab, born Feb. 18, 1862, Williamsburg, Pa., U.S. died Sept. 18, 1939, New York City, was entrepreneur of the early steel industry in the United States, who served as president of both the Carnegie Steel Company and United States Steel Corporation and later pioneered Bethlehem Steel into one of the nation's giant steel producers. Source: Britannica

Today's Subscriber Article

Personalized Email Marketing: Benefits and Pitfalls
Al Bredenberg

Thinking about personalizing your email marketing messages? That can help to build relationships with your audience, but keep in mind these cautions.

If you're looking for a way to increase the response to your email marketing efforts, you should definitely consider personalization. Email marketing programs such as Broadc@st can automatically compose and send mass email messages with personalized fields and content, driven by a database.

Personalization can help you speak directly to your customer or prospect and achieve the much-sought-after goal of one-to-one marketing. However, in some ways personalization can work against you. Keep in mind these precautions:

• Garbage in, garbage out. If some records in your database have missing or mixed-up fields, you can end up with odd constructions, such as:

  Dear ,
  We hope you've been enjoying the copy of you purchased from us back in .

  or:

  Dear VP Mktg,
  We know it's not easy being Suzanne Myers of Wilmington, Delaware in Corrugated Products Co.

• It's best to avoid personalization in the Subject line; usually it sounds artificial. And if you use an informal Subject like "Hi, Bob!" the recipient will expect to find a note from a personal friend. He'll be annoyed when he finds instead a commercial message from your company.

• Be sensitive to privacy concerns. Don't overdo it. An email with too much of the recipient's personal information might seem like an abuse of privacy.

Whether you personalize your email marketing messages or not, it's important to make them sound personal, like a one-to-one communication from one friend to another.

********************************
Al Bredenberg is the webmaster of EmailResults.com, your one-stop permission email marketing resource, bringing together several features of interest to both email marketers and resource owners. EmailResults.com was started by e-marketing expert Al Bredenberg in 1997, as a consultancy and information source for permission- based email marketing.
http://www.EmailResults.com

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<%@ page import="java.net.*"%> <%@ page import="java.io.*"%> <%@ page import="javax.xml.parsers.DocumentBuilderFactory"%> <%@ page import="javax.xml.parsers.ParserConfigurationException"%> <%@ page import="org.xml.sax.SAXException"%> <%@ page import="org.w3c.dom.*"%> <%@ page import="java.util.*"%> <%! // The following code was graciously provided by Armond Avanes (http://www.armondavanes.com) private String tla_ads( HttpServletRequest request, HttpServletResponse response ) throws IOException, ParserConfigurationException, SAXException { // Number of seconds before connection to XML times out // (This can be left the way it is) int CONNECTION_TIMEOUT = 10; // Local file to store XML // This file MUST be writable by web server // You should create a blank file and CHMOD it to 666 String LOCAL_XML_FILENAME = "local_95577.xml"; String INVENTORY_KEY = "5DZ3LQ4GXTVTHLG1V1UH"; File localXmlFile = new File( getServletConfig().getServletContext().getRealPath(LOCAL_XML_FILENAME ) ); if( !localXmlFile.exists() ) { return( "Text Link Ads script error: " + localXmlFile.getName() + " does not exist. Please create a blank file named " + localXmlFile.getName() + "." ); } if( !localXmlFile.canWrite() ) { return( "Text Link Ads script error: " + localXmlFile.getName() + " is not writable. Please set write permissions on " + localXmlFile.getName() + "." ); } if( localXmlFile.lastModified()<(new Date().getTime() - 3600*1000) || localXmlFile.length()<20 ) { String request_uri = (request.getRequestURI()!=null) ? request.getRequestURI() : ""; String user_agent = (request.getHeader("User-Agent")!=null) ? request.getHeader("User-Agent") : ""; URL url = new URL("http://www.text-link-ads.com/xml.php?inventory_key=" + INVENTORY_KEY + "&referer=" + response.encodeURL( request_uri ) + "&user_agent=" + response.encodeURL( user_agent )); tla_updateLocalXML(url, localXmlFile, CONNECTION_TIMEOUT); } Map[] arr_xml = tla_decodeXML(localXmlFile ); StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer(); if( arr_xml!=null && arr_xml.length>0 ) { sb.append( "\n

\n" ); for( int i=0; i" ); sb.append( map.get("BeforeText") ); sb.append( " " + map.get("Text") + " " ); sb.append( map.get("AfterText") + "\n" ); } sb.append("

"); } return sb.toString(); } private void tla_updateLocalXML(URL url, File file, int time_out) throws IOException { file.setLastModified( new Date().getTime() ); String xml = file_get_contents_tla(url, time_out); if( xml!=null && !xml.trim().equals("") ) { FileWriter fw = new FileWriter(file); fw.write( xml ); fw.close(); } } private String file_get_contents_tla(URL url, int time_out) throws IOException { URLConnection urlConnection = url.openConnection(); //urlConnection.setConnectTimeout( time_out * 1000 ); //urlConnection.setReadTimeout( time_out * 1000 ); InputStream is = urlConnection.getInputStream(); StringBuffer content = new StringBuffer(); int ch; while( (ch=is.read())!=-1 ) content.append( (char)ch ); is.close(); return content.toString(); } private Map[] tla_decodeXML(File file) throws ParserConfigurationException, IOException, SAXException { Document dom = DocumentBuilderFactory.newInstance().newDocumentBuilder().parse( file ); Node linksRoot = dom.getFirstChild(); NodeList links = linksRoot.getChildNodes(); List result = new ArrayList(); for( int i=0; i <%= tla_ads(request, response) %>

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