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I stumbled onto Twitter as a marketing tool completely by accident. I was looking for a way to promote a book I’m working on, and a friend suggested that I do two things: Start a blog and get on Twitter.

“What is Twitter? I don’t get how will it help me promote my book to tell people what I am having for breakfast,” I replied. “It would take me too long to explain, just try it out,” he said.

What follows here is a week-by-week review of how I learned that Twitter can be an important business-development tool for lawyers and law firms.

Week 1: Signing up The sign-up at Twitter. com was just like everything else. I needed to add a picture but luckily, I was still holding on to the picture used for my attorney bio, so I uploaded that. A bio. Usually I leave them blank, but this one was limited to 150 characters, so I wrote: “Father, husband, attorney, and aspiring author. Follow me as I work to get published.” I was pretty happy with myself, it was a perfect bio for someone trying to get published. After I finished my profile, Twitter suggested that I start following a bunch of famous people like Ashton Kutcher and Shaquille O’Neal. Was it the real Shaq? Turns out it was. These famous people have almost 80,000 people following them, and the truth is I just didn’t get it.

Week 2: I start following people I needed help finding some publishers to submit my manuscript to, so I used the Twitter search function. I searched using the term “publisher” and turned up about 50 results. So I started following all 50 of them. Some were small publishers, some were big, but the cool part was that they were all posting stories and links all about writing and publishing, one of the articles was “10 Things Every Author Should Do Before Submitting a Manuscript.” This was good stuff, exactly the types of things I needed to learn in my situation. I also realized that, as I started following people, the majority of them followed me back. Now I had more than 30 followers. I was feeling pretty good.

Week 3: A fortuitous connection Some total stranger was asking about my book, this was great. So I explained my book to him, and we chatted back and forth using Twitter’s Direct Messages, which are kind of like an e-mail message or private messages on Facebook. He was an author who has self-published in the past, and he gave me the phone number of one of the gurus of self-publishing. Out of the blue, I call this guy up, and he takes an hour and talks to me. He gives me advice and shares a few contacts with me.

Week 4: Spreading the message When someone shares an interesting link to an article on Twitter or shares a good quote, it gets repeated. This is called a “retweet.” I noticed that whenever I posted articles, they never got retweeted. Why not? Because they weren’t interesting enough. So I started paying attention to the types of articles that were retweeted. Usually they announced breaking news or shared really interesting content on blogs, so I started trying to think of something to post on my blog that might garner some interest. I posted a satirical response to an article one of my buddies from law school posted, and it spread like wildfire, or at least like a small brush fire. I had 170 unique visitors to my blog in just an hour or two in response to that one post. That was fun but, more importantly, it made me realize the power of Twitter. Here I was with fewer than 100 followers, and my message spread well beyond that circle.

Week 5: My first corporate client “Does anybody know an attorney that practices contract law?” “Yeah, that’s actually what I do, what do you need?” I replied suspiciously. “My friend needs some legal advice about a contract, could you talk to her?” “Sure, send me a direct message with her contact into.” After exchanging e-mail addresses and a few phone conversations, my firm had a new client. All our communication was exchanged over the phone and e-mail, and the retainer and payment were paid by credit card. It was so easy, it made me realize that maybe there was more to Twitter than just promoting books. Maybe I could use Twitter to find clients. You see, Twitter functions like a giant cocktail party where thousands of conversations are going on simultaneously. You can listen in on any conversation you please, you just simply need to “follow” the individuals having the conversation. Unlike two other social networking sites, Facebook and Myspace,you don’t need to be accepted as someone’s “friend” to listen in on their conversation. For example, if MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice (both of whom are on Twitter) are having a Twitter conversation, then you may listen in if you have a Twitter account- you can even try to add your own clever enough comment or question to be included in their discussion.

Week 6: Automated searches Using the free program Tweetdeck, I set up searches so that every time someone mentioned “contract law” on Twitter, from anywhere in the world, their post was filtered through a search that arrived instantly on my computer. I soon learned how to create an alert that would send me an e-mail or text message any time the term “contract law” was mentioned in a Twitter post. That allowed me to respond in real time. Return for a second to our cocktail-party analogy. Here you are at this gigantic cocktail party, and you overhear a conversation about contract law. “Excuse me, I couldn’t help but overhear you are looking for a corporate attorney. Could I recommend someone? And like that, a new relationship is created that is specifically targeted. Here are a few of the comments I saw posted on Twitter after setting up my search: “I urgently need an immigration attorney, can anybody recommend one?” “My friend is getting a divorce, can anybody recommend an attorney?” “Does anybody know a NY attorney I can ask a malpractice question to?”

Week 7 and beyond: A world of opportunity I have been on Twitter for 14 weeks. I have a large following now, but more importantly, I have learned some amazing tools that are helping me to expand my zone of influence beyond just Western New York. Every day I see potential leads- some of which I pass on or have to ignore because they are outside of my area of expertise. There are some 12 million users of Twitter now, mostly highly educated people in urban centers, and they are talking about every single legal topic imaginable. My recommendation for any lawyer? You just need to jump in and give it a try.

Adrian Dayton is an attorney who was recently admitted to practice law in the state of New York. He is also an author awaiting publication of his first book “The Year of 12 Virtues.” He can be found on Twitter @adriandayton or at his website http://adriandayton.com/blog/

Everyone who owns a website, whether this site is explicitly business oriented or a strictly personal venture would like to find a way to make their site profitable (or more profitable, as the case may be). There are a number of different ways to go when it comes to monetizing a website; some may be more effective in your case than others and of course, you can use some of these monetization strategies concurrently. If you’d like to find out more about how to make your website turn a profit, keep reading to see how it’s done.

1) Selling advertising space on your website. Just as if you were the publisher of a magazine or newspaper, you have space on your website which is a desirable commodity to companies who want to reach the people who visit your site. Many sites do quite well for themselves in this fashion; the challenge is to find advertisers who are eager to reach the demographic who correspond with your readership. You can sell both banner-style adverts to businesses directly or get involved in textual advertising programs such as Google Adsense. With this format you can offer contextual ads which match the content of your web pages. A bit of code will do the job nicely and whenever anybody clicks on your ads, you get paid. This is a great option to fill space on your pages until you can charge a premium for other adverts.

2) Offer a subscription based service. If your site offers a service of some sort, you can make your site profitable by also offering a premium service which is available to your audience for a monthly, quarterly or yearly fee. What you offer to your premium subscribers is up to you; just make your premium content something which has a perceived value which is high enough that your readers will be eager to sign on. A subscription service can be a very lucrative venture indeed if you can figure out what your readers want to see - and since you know your readers, this shouldn’t be too difficult.

3) Have an opt-in form on your site. This probably won’t be too effective unless your site happens to be commercially oriented, but this can be a great way to market new offerings to those who sign up for your email list (including announcing a upcoming members/subscribers only service!). After all, everyone likes to feel like they’re part of an exclusive group - it’s basic human nature and something which can work quite well for you in promoting products, services and subscriptions for premium content). Opt-in forms and email lists are something commonly used in internet marketing, especially affiliate marketing, but even if all you’re selling is your own website’s content, these are an effective tool which are well worth examining.

Since you’ve invested a lot of time and work into your website, it’s natural to want to see a return on this investment in monetary form. Using these and other monetizing strategies can turn a labor of love into a full-fledged, profitable business; something which is well worth doing for yourself.

Andrew Long is an advertising sales consultant and runs his own advertising company in the UK. This article about internet advertising revenue can be used on a website as long as this resource box and all live links are added http://www.selling-advertising.com/Internet-Advertising-Revenue-money-from-website-23

Do you know that if you sell links it can be the most profitable and popular way for you to make money via your website? The use of text links to generate search engine traffic has been around for quite sometime. Text link advertisers are earning a whole lot more money since their effectiveness in advertising are becoming more and more popular in the virtual world.

The domains with high traffic seems to be very popular in the advertising field. Since, they generate a lot of traffic, it becomes an ideal medium for other advertisers. In addition, it attracts niche traffic based on the sites contents. As advertisers, it is important to target the right audiences, rather than taking their chances to a general crowd.

Therefore, using text links in the specific websites will tap into the niche markets and gain access to those who are more interested in what you have to offer. The best thing is that, the text links ads might help you boost your search engine rankings.

Getting other webmasters to put links on your site and charging them might earn you a steady income. On the other hand, the price will depend on the type of metrics your website has. The charges will vary based on the topic, link location etc.

These days, there are a lot of platforms in the web that can assist you to sell links. They are also known as link brokers. The options are numerous and your choice will depend on how much money you want to make and how much work you are willing to do.

Selling links can be a tough call when you want to sell links page by page from your website. It takes a lot more work, unfortunately, less money to generate. The only solution is to sell individual links across your entire site. Selling thousands of links from hundreds of your web pages requires a lot of work and effort, plus, the income generation is sometimes not worth the effort you put in. Thus, a good link broker should be chosen wisely.

Reality check, nowadays, link buyers are obsessed with a good PR. In other words, when the websites they are advertising their text links on do not attract high traffic, it does not profit their business either. Certainly, buyers will search for the best deal they can get. With Google lowering PR across the web, it is more difficult to make money selling links.

You need to be more careful to whom you sell your links to. Many site owners obviously never considered how much collateral damage can be done to their websites optimization. Once Google distrust your site’s linkage, outbound and internal links, the optimization efforts on navigational links to your website are jeopardized. Thus, selling links not only will be useless to your site, but will cause negative impact on your chances of making money online. Consequently, internal links that do not pass the relevancy via anchor text is worse than having less PR.

About the author: Cliff Posey, owner of http://webbusinesstoolsonline.com has also operated several other successful web businesse such as Love Song Cards and Radio Career Consultants. The content in this article was developed from his experience in these businesses and his continual research into further business improvements. .

Take a good look around you. Have you noticed anything different in the retail section of your city? In many cases we are seeing a significant rise in store closures. Certainly the economy has done a number on existing retail outlets.

I absolutely believe the economic crisis that began in late 2007 will be marked as the single greatest contributor to the view of ecommerce as the preferred method to sell merchandise.

Many of the businesses that are shuttering stores may be reorganizing with a concentrated focus on online sales.

What does ecommerce offer the business owner?

* No need for a storefront.

* No need for sales associates.

* No need for building and liability insurance.

* No need for heating and cooling.

* No need for sales training.

* No need for expensive computer infrastructure for each store.

* No need for a cart roundup.

* No need to work at covering shifts.

But it also offers value to the consumer.

* An online visual catalogue.

* Full company contact.

* No waiting in line.

* Immediate customer response through autoresponders.

* Delivery to the customer’s door.

* Twenty-four hour shopping.

* Accessible content to help customers understand the products better.

* Value added memberships that may include additional content, free shipping or access to a member’s only forum.

Honestly we are seeing many business owners asking themselves, “Why do I need a storefront anymore?” In equal honestly I have to suggest it may not be a requirement to do business in the 21st century.

It can be disappointing to see the many shuttered buildings, but the shift is nearly seismic in scope. Many businesses started out using a web store as a means of garnering additional business. The shift happens when these business owners see their website outperforming retail shops that cost considerably more to run. Some stores are seeing less than 20% of their annual income through their retail outlets while more than 80% is happening online.

At some point the question strikes a cord with those paying close attention to the bottom line, “Why keep the store open.”

My prediction is that many former retail shops may be converted to product fulfillment centers for online business. They may feature a front office where phone calls are managed, but the bulk of these former shops will be dedicated to housing products and fulfilling incoming orders. This dynamic can be as true in a town with fewer than 2,000 residents as it is about a city with more than 100,000.

Obviously there will be a continued need for restaurants, grocery stores and other essential needs in a community, but for those businesses that may be aimed at discretionary money you may well see those shops moving more and more to an online world.

Many will claim this as a win-win scenario for both business owners as well as consumers. I believe it will pose unique challenges for municipalities that may need to restructure how they promote and refill their retail district. If viewed correctly this could mean unique new opportunities, but it will require an alteration in how you think about the empty buildings.

The times – they are a changin’. Welcome to an era of extreme adaptation.

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Are you aware that even if you place ads on Craigslist via a proxy, Craigslist can still be aware of your activities? Craigslist is careful about how many ads you can post from an IP. Everything you do and post on Craigslist is tracked and posting too many ads from one IP can cause problems. You probably are interested in knowing how many ads can be posted from one IP on their Craigslist proxy per day safely without raising any alarms. The answer to this varies a lot depending on several factors.

Generally speaking, don’t post anymore than 20 ads per day from any one IP. This is the commonly accepted maximum by the Craigslist advertising community on how many ads you can safely post from one IP each day. If you want you can try posting more than this but do so at your own risk, so it is not advised to go beyond 20 ads per day. You might have no problem with your ads beyond this, but usually after sometime they discover that their ads are no longer sticking like they used to. The quantity of IPs you have on your proxy server will also affect your posting method. Do you have a lot or just a few IPs at your dispose? Having only a few IPs means it makes sense to try and post as many ads as you can. Take this with a grain of salt though. Do not post all the ads at once from a single IP over a short period of time. It is better to change your IP between posting ads. If you don’t do this, Craigslist will soon be able to detect that one person is posting several ads. This is perhaps one of the biggest mistakes made by people advertising on Craigslist. They start off great but post too many ads during a short period from one single IP and quickly hit a brick wall once they get flagged as spam by the Craigslist spam filters. Having one or several IPs blocked by Craigslist can be extremely troublesome. Any ads you post from the blocked IP range will more than likely be blocked and not show up. Currently, there is no known timeframe for how long blocked IPs remain blocked. IT may just be temporary or it could even be permanent. Is it worth risking having your IPs blocked and causing headache for yourself in the long run?

If you wish to increase the traffic and potential leads you generate from Craigslist, always remember to implement the above technique when posting ads to avoid any chance that your IPs on your proxy server are flagged or blacklisted so as to make posting ads on Craigslist as easy and painless as possible. By doing nothing more than this, you can make the most of your Craigslist proxy and hopefully generate more traffic. Traffic is the life blood of all websites and is something that you should pay great attention to.

Want to setup your own Craigslist Proxy? Be sure to get the best Craigslist proxy and visit this site today all about Craigslist proxies.

You’re sure to have felt the squeeze every now and again, especially with today’s tumbling economy. At one time or another, you might have found yourself strapped for cash, especially for those emergency spending or unexpected expenses! Even here, in Ontario where life is pretty much easy-going and laid backed, you’ll have felt the pressure.

But don’t fret! If you’re looking for an easy, fast and convenient way to get cash, then don’t forget to use payday loans in Ontario. This great option gives payday advances for when you just can’t wait for your payroll to come by, and gives you that breathing room you so badly need!

Where to start discussing the virtues of this option? Most companies will guarantee that your payday loans in Ontario will be as easy as a walk in the park. Why not decide for yourself? Here’s what you can expect from any company offering payday loans in Ontario:

No faxing is required! Unlike other companies who require a boatload of information to be sent over by fax, some online companies will be glad to accept your vital information even over the Internet! Just visit their site and get typing!

No hidden fees! Ever experienced that? Just when you thought your money troubles were over, suddenly, a new bill comes along for some hidden charge for a loan that you acquired. Well, no worries there. There are no hidden charges in your transaction.

No application fee! Sometimes, you just have to get pissed off. Here you are, already needing cash badly, then some insensitive loans company will actually charge you even before you avail of their services! The online payday loans in Ontario providers understand your worries, and will not charge you anything from the get-go!

Confidentiality is what you can rely on! Another great thing about payday loans in Ontario is that all your sensitive information will be kept private, practically under lock and key. You can rest well knowing that never will your vital information leak out for spurious people to play around with.

It’s all click and go! Once you’ve gone online and filled out the application form, all you have to do is wait for your account to be verified! Once that is over, you’ll receive your loan within an hour of application! It’s that simple and easy!

Easy transfer and pick-up! The money will be wired directly into your account, or even straight to the billing company. No hassles, no fuss! Whether the amount is small or large, you can be sure that payday loans in Ontario will get you covered.

Should you choose to avail of payday loans in Ontario, you’ll not only be assured of a fast, reliable and easy way to get cash, but also, of a whole experience with your satisfaction in mind. Not only will you get the answer to your financial problem, you can also get it safely, easily, and with less hassle when you go for payday loans in Ontario.

When it comes to a payday advance or payday loans in Ontario, you can only rely on MoneyLoansCompany.com. Visit them today for those payday loans.