The local Better Business Bureau (WAKE COUNTY, N.C.) is warning about a new internet work-at-home scam.

This latest threat comes from a Raleigh-based company called Eco Venture Group.

Customers sign up to receive materials that will show them how to work at home.

After customers provide their credit card numbers to cover shipping costs, they’re billed much more than they agreed to.

Sometimes they receive fraudulent charges from Web sites they never visited.

BBB experts said usually that money is gone for good.

“Of course the better business bureau can’t work with the company to seek a resolution if they’re not answering the complaints,” Beverly Baskin, President of the Eastern North Carolina BBB, said. “The likelihood of consumers getting their money back is not very good.”

Baskin suggests consumers who pay with a credit card call their credit company to try and get some of the charges reversed.

Experts also said consumers should research a company before entering into an agreement.

You can find tips about dealing with the work-at-home scams from the North Carolina Attorney General.

1. The lowly extension cord. People get cold feet. They get a space heater. They plug it into a two-pronged extension cord. They forget to unplug it when they leave work. That night, while you are sleeping, your entire business burns down. Your brilliant marketing plan, your three-year projections, all of your records, your new product samples.. You get the idea. This is not something that most business owners think about, but insurance companies know that extension cords and space heaters are major fire hazards. It is good practice not to allow any extension cords in your business that aren’t three-pronged.

2. Bad receivables. Let’s assume that you are using good judgment as to which customers get credit and how much. Even so, it is very easy to get into a business-life-threatening situation because of a big customer that goes broke. Months before the bankruptcy filing, the following statements will be made to you: “I’m not going anywhere. We’ve been short on cash before, and we always come out of it. You have my personal word.” And you will respond: “We’ve been doing business together for 30 years. I’m not worried about it.” Bad things happen to good people. Good and honest intentions do not always result in getting paid. It is very painful and difficult to cut off an old customer, especially when you need the business. But many companies go broke because of bad receivables.

3. Interviewing. It is both art and science. Like a bad science experiment, it can cause explosions. Having someone who hasn’t been properly trained interview prospective employees is a recipe for disaster. There are many questions that you cannot ask without risking a nasty lawsuit that will cost plenty of time and money.

4. Hiring without doing background checks. There are some bad people out there looking for jobs. Even with a background check, there is no guarantee that you won’t have a problem, but it will certainly improve the odds.

5. Vehicles. They are rolling liabilities. Allowing someone who is not insured properly through the company to drive one can have disastrous results if there is an accident. You will be seen as having “deep pockets” — even if your pockets are empty.

6. Vehicles, again! With the demise of the full-service gas station and longer intervals between oil changes, many people are driving around on under-inflated tires, which are much less noticeable since the advent of the radial tire. Under-inflated tires are more likely to cause a blowout, which can result in very bad things. We check all of our vehicles once a month.

7. And again! Texting while driving is the new drunk driving. Do not allow it.

8. Insurance. I asked my insurance broker what the three biggest small-business insurance failings were. His response: 1) understating insurance to value; 2) not having employment-practices insurance; 3) not having business-income replacement coverage to replace lost revenue until the company is up and running again. It is no secret that the insurance companies are in a much bigger hurry to settle a claim when they are paying out money every week to replace that income.

9. The wrong accountant. Many accountants just do tax returns and are not qualified to act as an outside voice and keep an eye on the health of the company. I have seen more than one company fail because the owners didn’t know what they didn’t know.

10. Bad controls. Many companies have gone broke because of theft or embezzlement. Your accountant should help you set up these systems.

11. Bad company policies. I was just in a spa. There was a sign posted that said that tips must be paid in cash. I asked why. (Apparently, they get asked about this a lot.) The receptionist explained that the employees didn’t necessarily claim all of the tips and the company did, so there could be a discrepancy if either got audited. Not a great story. I am sure that some customers — 5 percent? 20 percent? — will either find it inconvenient to use cash or will resent supporting tax evasion. If I am right and they lose customers, the spa will undoubtedly blame the losses on competition or the economy.

An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure. Benjamin Franklin was a good businessman.

Can anyone add to the list?

Tip #1:
Find the pages which your visitors leave most. In the content tab there is a link to top exit pages. Check which pages have the highest percentage of leaves. Is it your “thank you” page which is displayed when customer completes the order? If yes, there is nothing to be improved on your website. However, the top exit page will be probably one of your content pages. Try to improve these sites and check the results later. If you see better results now you did the right changes.

Tip #2:
Learn about visitors loyalty. What does the visitors loyalty mean? These statistics show you how many visitors return to your website after their initial visit and how many times they come back. If the loyalty of your website visitors is low you must analyze your website and find the reason they don’t want to come back.

You might have gotten tired of how short lived traffic from article directories turns out to be in the long run. Blog commenting and forum commenting don’t seem to have the same value as they did earlier when it comes to quality backlinks. So how do you get long term traffic that lasts?

I stumbled upon a unique technique to boost the PageRank of my site while getting lots of quality traffic in the process. It’s quite simple and involves boosting your site or blog indirectly. It’s possible to boost your site’s PageRank greatly by utilizing the power of another high ranking site.

The way to do this is to locate a high page rank blog in your niche that’s relevant to the content of your site. Leave a comment on the blog and then submit that blog comment to all the social bookmarking sites like digg, StumbleUpon, delicious, furl, reddit etc. This makes your backlink stick and you not only get lots of interested visitors, but the PageRank of your site increases too. With this technique I was able to get a PageRank of 1 quite easily.

In contrast to painstakingly writing a bunch of articles, submitting them to all the article directories and waiting for them to be approved and published, this technique is faster with more immediate observable results. You can do this in an hour or two and reap the benefits. Continue to employ this technique on a consistent basis and you’ll see your Google PageRank shooting up while traffic to your site quadruples over time.

Author: Ibrahim Elsherbiny “Seo Marketing Expert” with two years SEO Experience, Hope I can Help My clients to get the first Google SERP.

1. Your own Website.

And by this I don’t mean a corporate/brochure style site which bores visitors and has them clicking away in seconds. No. You need to entertain as well as educate your visitors.

To do this best I think it is essential to have a WordPress Website attached to your main business website…or even on a separate domain. Don’t just name it blog! Give it a keyword rich, benefit laden title…tell them how your will make their lives better. Use the common terms others use to search for your business in Google [and the other search engines].

There is lots of advice online on how to set up a WordPress site. If you are unsure you can hire someone from a site such as Elance or RentaGuru.

The beauty of WordPress is that it is so easy to use. Non-techie small business owners can add fresh content, offers, audio, and videos to their site without having to pay a webmaster every time. Small business profits is as much about saving money as it is about increased revenue.

Oh, and of course, Google and Social Media love WordPress as well. More free visitors is always nice.

2. Add a means of capturing the names and addresses of your visitors.

Unfortunately, buying cycles are getting longer and longer. This means that people are rarely going to buy from you the first time they come across you.

So, to get around this you will need:

an optin/squeeze page an autoresponder [e.g. Aweber] a series of emails in your autoresponder a free gift valuable enough that visitors will be prepared to give your their info

This may sound daunting if you’ve never done it. However it is easy to hire someone to do it for you…or even better, learn to do it yourself. These are very low cost marketing tactics with excellent results when done right.

3. Generate some visitors to your site.

You can either pay for traffic or generate it using your own time. Either way there is no such thing as free traffic…you pay with time, money or both.

Personally, I think a mixture of paid and self-generated is best. It will depend for you on your present skills and whether you are time-rich or money-rich.

Pay-per-click [PPC] is the fastest way to generate traffic. You can have visitors to your site within the hour. Sadly PPC can be very expensive and there is a learning curve. But don’t get me wrong…well done it can be a gold mine..just tread carefully and test and track your results.

Add new fresh content to your site every week. Make it fun. Make people smile as they learn new stuff and they will reward you by staying longer on your site and coming back for more.

Use photos and videos. Get them involved with competitions and surveys. My favourite tip is this…see what your competition is doing and do the opposite. No one ever got wealthy following the herd!

Other tactics to consider:

Social marketing ezine ads swapping links get all your past and present customers to sign up put your website address on receipts, signs, and all your other marketing banner ads post articles to article directories.

The more you do of each the more success you’ll have.

4. Build relationships with your prospects who have signed up.

The way to do this is to talk about their problems and offer solutions. That will get their attention!

Make sure your personalize your emails. Tell them about yourself, your family and your business. Get them to see you as a friend/trusted advisor: give them tips and tricks industry news free info

5. Make them offers

When your have their trust and they know, like and trust you…they will no longer regard your offers with suspicion.

Keep in contact regularly…you need to decide what you feel is right…but a minimum of once a week.

Make them repeated offers: vary them different bonuses discounts bundle products and services together make sure every offer has a deadline new products and services ask them what they want and need.

6. Keep doing more of the same.

The fact is you will probably lose 20% of your list a month. Make sure you keep doing each of the first five steps…this will give you a list of hungry, loyal buyers. Subscribers who look forward to hearing form you. Who want to hear your latest tips, news, and offers.

7. Never lose sight of where your focus should be:

“How can I offer more value to my customers?”

The moment you forget them and start concentrating on only yourself…they’ll know. It will come across in all your communications and marketing. Put them first, and they will stay loyal, and you will reap the rewards.

Author: Dr.Mark Holmes shows small business owners how to use low cost strategies and tactics to make fast repeatable profits and build a list of hungry customers and prospects. He makes this fast and easy to achieve by using step-by-step videos, action planners, and salesletter and email templates. He has free videos, special reports, and articles you can access instantly at: http://www.thelocalbusinessdoctor.co.uk/videos.

In-House rather than SEO Outsourcing

History shows that there are several possible reasons why in-house SEO projects often fail:

• No clear purpose, objectives and timeframes
• Lack of management training in the fundamentals of internet marketing in general, and SEO in particular
• Exclusive delegation of responsibility for SEO success to an in-house web-developer who knows little about marketing
• Exclusive delegation of responsibility for SEO success to an in-house marketing professional who knows little about web pages, their usability and their ’spider ability’

Even if some initial success is achieved, it is unsustainable if funding is not provided for staffing, equipping, training and, very importantly, keeping people up to date with the fast moving SEO world as Google and the others try and stay one step ahead of the great ‘black hat’ sharks.

SEO Outsourcing can work – if care is taken

Organizations with greater financial resources often decide that search engine optimization is not a core competence and seek strategic suppliers for this service. Either way, companies who want to reap the benefits of good search engine placement through the use of third party services face many challenges.

The client organization must retain overall responsibility for the SEO outsourcing project. Failure to establish a clear purpose as well as setting measurable supporting objectives and timeline deliverables will doom the project from the start.

Once an organization is clear on what the purpose and expectations are for the SEO project, the next challenge is to develop a specification of requirements before going to the market to seek a suitable SEO services company. This specification, normally in the form of a living document, is essential preparation before engaging with prospective SEO services suppliers.

Even with a clear purpose and objectives, a well defined timeline and a detailed specification of requirements, the purpose and motivation of any prospective SEO organization need to be assessed. For example, there can be huge differentials in the prices quoted by various SEO companies to deliver a given requirements specification. It is not unheard of for SEO experts to offer a very low price when their primary motivation is to understand your business and your niche with a view to reusing their work by either competing with you or selling the same solution to your competitors.

Clarity of purpose, well defined objective and timeline, a comprehensive specification of requirements including ground rules for management and communications, as well as the careful selection of a reliable and effective supplier can avoid many problems.

These problems include ’scope creep’ where the goalposts are continually moving, poor communications between the in-house business person and the jargon-rich supplier who often seems to be speaking a different language, and a gradual breakdown in trust.

The sad reality, particularly with smaller organizations, is that clients are often “too busy to get involved”. This is usually why they have decided to outsource SEO services in the first instance.

Even the most professional SEO services company is powerless when it comes to achieving long-lasting, needle-moving results for a client who isn’t willing or able to help. New online training courses for managers have started to appear, such as ‘Outsourcing SEO Projects’ from the author’s firm. These courses can go a long way towards mitigating the risks and paying for themselves many times over as they help to ensure the successful SEO project outsourcing.

About the author: Noel Coburn
A company director and former executive with Digital Equipment Corporation and Lotus Development Corporation, Noel is a prize-winning MBA graduate and a Member of the Advisory Board to the Center for Breakthrough Thinking in Los Angeles. Both veterans of the IT industry, Noel and his brother John Coburn are joint founders of CoburnBrothers.com, http://www.coburnbrothers.com, the international firm specializing in purpose-directed internet marketing. CoburnBrothers.com are on a mission to ensure that ‘information overload’ and ‘technical jargon’ do not deter the owners and managers of otherwise sound businesses from realizing the benefits of internet marketing. Having trained over 2,000 small to medium sized businesses, CoburnBrothers.com develops and markets internet marketing e-training specifically for business owners and executives. For more information please see http://www.coburnbrothers.com/SEO/outsource.htm

To a large degree this is because fat cat corporations have traditionally had lots of marketing and advertising dollars to burn, and used few, if any, ways to track results. So they invest in lots of branding ads and fancy commercials. And maybe a little direct mail.

Of course, since that’s what we see the most, it’s only natural for small business owners to follow that example. So if you do any marketing or advertising, it’s probably more about branding and visibility than making sales.

Small business owners simply can’t afford to do this. But that’s not the only expensive, business-killing marketing mistake I see small businesses make all the time. Below are 6 more you’ll want to avoid like the plague…

Mistake #1 – Branding-only promotions.

While branding is important, if you’re creating ads and promotions that primarily include only your name and/or business name, phone number, logo, headshot, and Web address, you’re missing the boat.

Every promotion you do should, at a minimum, give people a good reason to want to know more and an incentive to do it. So make ‘em an offer they can’t refuse and provide plenty of reasons to take advantage of it right now (think deadlines, special bonuses, limited quantity, etc.)! Then track results.

Mistake #2 – Assuming your prospects, clients or customers won’t do something.

This includes… Attend a seminar, read a long sales page, listen to audio, take action, buy this. Typically people make these assumptions based on what they themselves like, or will or won’t do.

Since everyone has a different learning style (some people learn by reading, others by listening, or watching, or doing) and living style, it’s dangerous to assume everyone in your market is the same.

Instead of not using certain formats, use all possible formats to appeal to the most people possible. Or at the very least test one against the other until you find the best option.

Mistake #3 – Offering a free consultation as your primary lead-generation tactic.

Listen, when somebody offers you a free consultation, what do you think first? If you’re like most people, you immediately think “sales pitch.” And who wants to volunteer to spend their time listening to a sales pitch-especially for something they’re not even sure they want.

Instead, offer something of value. Something they’re going to want. Even if that just means renaming or reframing your original offer to make it juicy and benefits-laden.

Mistake #4 – Not telling people what to do next.

Every piece of marketing or advertising you do should have a compelling offer combined with a clear call to action (Do A to get B). In other words, once you come up with something of value to offer them, you need to convince them of why they would want it, then tell them exactly what to do to get it.

Mistake #5 – Expecting people to guess or search.

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve wanted to buy something, or order something, or sign up for something, but didn’t because I couldn’t figure out how or where. Everyone is so busy, so you can’t expect anyone to spend time figuring out how to take the next step.

So make sure your contact info is on everything you do. And more importantly, even if you have your contact info on there somewhere, make sure you include it again right there with your call to action. And make it big and bold. This holds true whether it’s a brochure, ad, postcard or whatever.

On a Website make sure your Buy Now button is big and obvious. And if you’re going to promote something, send people directly to THAT Webpage and not your home page or a catchall products or services page. Otherwise you force them to search for what
they were interested in, and you may lose them in the process.

Mistake #6 – Being bland or boring with your marketing.

“Corporatespeak” may finally be dying a slow death (at least I hope so), but it’s alive and well in most small business marketing materials. And given that we’re hit with more than 3000 ads a day, boring isn’t going to cut through the clutter and help you stand out from the crowd.

Instead be human, interesting, fun, sassy, snappy, whatever. Even if you sell to businesses, you’re still always selling to another person. So don’t feel like you have to stick with a dry, formal, academic tone of voice to be taken seriously.

Remember, people buy from people they know, like and trust. So be likable, not a stick-in-the-mud.

If you’re guilty of one or more of these mistakes, don’t despair. Just get to work making your marketing more effective. Fixing even one of these 6 mistakes is sure to catapult your results and help you generate more leads and sales.

About the author:

Practical Marketing Expert Stacy Karacostas-author of the 2-page marketing plan workbook “Putting Your Business on the Road to Success”, and “The Small Business Website Bible”-specializes in taking the stress, struggle and confusion out of growing your small business. For more down-to-earth, business-building wisdom grab a copy of her free report “The 7 Deadliest Small Business Marketing Sins…Are You Guilty?” at http://www.7deadliestsins.com

Personally, I don’t particularly like the word ‘opportunity’, because it sounds vague, it sounds like it is something you could miss out on. And often – I may lose some readers saying this – but I often do feel that people seeking an ‘opportunity’ aren’t being particularly serious in their business approach.

Let me explain…

People seeking an opportunity are often looking for something easy, something instant, something ’secret’ so to speak. Instant money is what they want. Sorry folks, but no such thing exists other than in a lottery win.

So opportunity seekers are not actually thinking logically about creating a viable and sustainable business.

15 years ago I was a business ‘opportunity’ seeker: I bought loads of stuff which was advertised in magazines, direct mail and to be honest, I didn’t have a clue. I just wanted to make money… as quickly as possible.

Luckily, I stayed interested in the online business world for years. I kept reading and I kept studying and I kept trying different things. It was during this process that my mentality changed from a business opportunity seeker to actually beginning to think like a business owner.

Let me be frank with you… Forget the business ‘opportunity’ approach – Being a business OWNER is where the money is made. What concerns me most about the term business opportunity is that it attract people who may be interested in network marketing, which I personally don’t think is a very robust or serious business model.

I will explain why in a second…

Making money from home with an online business is not easy. It can be fun and very rewarding, but it is not easy. It takes commitment, it takes knowledge and it takes skills, the last two you have to learn and develop. If you are not interested in putting in a substantial amount of effort then to be honest you will be hard-pushed to make any sort of significant money online.

That is why in order to make your internet home-based business work for you need to START THINKING AND  ACTING LIKE A BUSINESS OWNER. You need to be dedicated and tenacious, not an opportunist.

Just coming back to network marketing – or multi-level marketing as it is sometimes known – I was interested in that years ago but feel that I have grown out of it as I became more serious in business.

The reason is that with network marketing you are depending on one company for your entire income pretty much. You are doing all this work with the assumption that the company is going to always be around, and also the problem is the focus is not on selling the product but on selling the opportunity and really a business should be selling a product not selling an opportunity. If you are selling an opportunity, other people are selling an opportunity and so on and so forth.

The whole set up feels flimsy, like a pack of cards.

Years ago when I was looking at network marketing companies I was talking to someone who was very successful – he was in the UK and he was making £250,000 a year from network marketing (roughly 350,000 dollars) – but then the company went out of business. And overnight his income collapsed to zero.

So that is the main danger, the company you relying on for your income suddenly disappearing.

But also, just as importantly, you are not building an asset. You are not building something you can actually sell. The benefit of actually building a business if you choose to do that – either developing websites or else developing a business – is that you are developing an asset which one day you can sell for a lot of money. And that I feel is a lot more robust and a lot more genuine and can be a lot more profitable than building up a network marketing business.

Obviously the network marketing dream is you do some work then you can stop working and then the money keeps coming in and it keeps growing and keeps growing. And that happens for some people but I would say they are the exception rather than the norm.

So this is just my opinion. But I would say that if you are serious about making good part-time income – or even great full-time income – I would advise leaning more towards a proper business, learning the ropes and developing the skills and developing an asset that one day you can sell for a surprising amount of money. That way it could provide for a comfortable retirement, or else instantly give you a fund that you can use to invest into property and live off the rental income for example.

So remember, be a business owner, not a business opportunist. Build an asset not an opportunity.

About the author:

Dominic Allport has been a professional writer for many years. Currently he specializes in writing about information publishing and internet marketing. He is co-founder of SevenFigureBlueprints.com a website dedicated to helping current and aspiring home-based and small business owners.

Click through to claim your FREE Membership and discover exactly how people just like you are making small investments into their own new, or existing, business and turning it into six or even seven figures in income: http://www.SevenFigureBlueprints.com

5 advanced strategies to attract blog traffic

1. Create videos of your articles

Not all people like to read content in its written form. Many prefer visual and audio presentations. To convert your articles into videos either read them in front of a video camera or create slides of them.

After creating your video distribute it to video sharing web sites to attract tons of new visitors that wouldn’t normally read your articles.

2. Do teleseminar presentations

You can use your blog articles to hold your own teleseminar. Google “web conferencing software” to find software to run your teleseminar. String a series of related articles together to present to your audience. Make an announcement on your blog, joint venture partners and newsletter subscribers about your teleseminar. Be sure to mention your blog URL several times throughout your presentation to gain lots of new visitors.

3. Use Social bookmarking

Social Bookmarking refers to web based applications that enables you to store bookmarks online instead of in your favorites or bookmarks on your computer. The immediate advantage of this is that you can access your bookmarked sites from any computer or mobile phone.

To make it easy for visitors to bookmark your posts download and install the “I Love Social Bookmarking” this for Word Press. This plugin currently supports the bookmarking sites: Blinklist, Bloglines, Blogmarks, Digg, del.icio.us, Facebook, Furl, Ma.gnolia, NewsVine, Reddit, StumbleUpon, Technorati.

4. Set up an autoresponder

It’s well known in Internet Marketing you need to touch base with a visitor several times before they act (ie subscribe to a newsletter or buy a product). An autoresponder enables you to automatically build a relationship with your visitor over several days or weeks by sending them new information.

Instead of only contacting them once and losing them forever you have the potential to create a life long relationship. The most robust and well known autoresponder service is Aweber. They even give you a free test drive or get started for $19.00 a month.

5. Pay Per Click Marketing

Pay per click advertising is a great way to get instant traffic to your blog. Your ads can be immediately displayed on the first page of the search engine results pages. You pay whenever someone clicks on your ad. The key to making a profit is your return on investment (ROI). For example if your product price is $100, your cost per click (CPC) is 10 cents and you sell 1 item for every 100 clicks your profit will be by $90.00.

After creating a successful campaign on Google AdWords, do the same for Yahoo and MSN.