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If you are thinking about all the spam email that you spend your precious time clearing out of your mailbox, I would ask you to read this carefully and keep an open mind. Let me explain the difference between spam (which is illegal) and permission based email (opt-in).

Make Huge Profits through Opt-in Email When someone comes to a website and completes a little form giving permission to receive email from that company and/or other companies that are specified, that is called opt-in email. It is the only legitimate form of bulk email. The good news about email marketing is that people who have opted in to receive your mailings, know your name and are much more likely to open your email. Even if they ignore it for months and months, the fact that your name is coming across their monitor again and again is imprinting a powerful message in their minds. That message is something like this: ?Wow ? this company is very persistent and they are really on the ball.? As they read your email which is not just ads but giving them valuable tips and information, they are building a trusting relationship with you. People buy from people they like and trust.

The key to email marketing is that it must add perceived value to the visitor. Otherwise it is just more junk mail that wastes their time. Short tips, articles, quotes, poems and even audio and video clips are welcomed and appreciated by most email subscribers. As people read your information and learn from you, you become regarded as the ?expert? in your field. These people are more open to what you have to say and much more likely to trust your judgment and use your products and services. Not only that, when they like you and trust you, they will spread the good word about you to family, friends and business associates.

Rest assured too that there are ways to prevent your email from ending up in someone?s spam or junk mail folder. Keep reading to find out how.

Grow Your Business Through Your Subscriber List: The most important thing that you can do is to build a list of subscribers at your website. When you signup with a mail list service (which I highly recommend), you can give your webmaster some simple code to put on your pages that will prompt people to opt in to receive your newsletter. An online newsletter is called an e-zine. You want to give your e-zine a name that relates to what it is about. The name of your e-zine does not have to be the same as your domain name. You might purchase a separate domain name just for your e-zine.

I purchased the domain name WinningMarketingSecrets.com. Even though I am not using that name to promote my e-zine, I purchased it mainly to prevent someone else from getting a benefit from my e-zine name. Always give people a url to use for subscribing to your e-zine. It could be your separate domain that you use specifically for building your list. Or you could send them to a page on your main website. Even if you include a sign up form on every page of your site which is highly recommended, a newsletter page is also important. This page gives you more room to explain the benefits and include your picture, your name as the publisher, an impressive cover that makes it look like a real magazine, your incentive for subscribing, your privacy policy and a sign up form.

Get more people to opt-in when your ezine publishing looks professional. When you make your e-zine cover look like a real magazine, you will attract more subscribers. Giving your ezine a value will help even more. Below is the cover that I designed for my e-zine and the cover for my free giveaway ? the special report that you receive almost instantly when you subscribe.

The next step is to create some written messages that your subscribers see after they complete the form. The first message is a simple thank you, acknowledging that they signed up for your e-zine. It also prompts them to check their email right away to confirm their subscription. Most email list services recommend a double opt-in process for subscription. That means that the initial email message requires that the visitor click a confirmation link to confirm that it was them and not someone else who put them on the list. Once they click that link, they get another message with a welcome, some key benefits of the e-zine and what to expect in terms of frequency of publication. This is a great time to provide them with a free gift ? something that you promised as an incentive for their subscription. It might be a free report, coupon, an audio teleclass or even an eBook or software. Ideally it is something electronic that relates to the products or services that you provide. Immediate delivery of your freebie will make it much more attractive. A free pre-recorded teleclass is a great giveaway idea. It allows you to build credibility, establish yourself as an expert and promote to your business.

An Effective E-zine will make you an Expert When your impressive professional e-zine with valuable tips and information shows up in your subscriber?s email, they notice you. This is only true if it becomes a pattern over a period of time. After a while, they look forward to seeing your name in their list of messages.

Email marketing is easy and affordable. There are list services that allow you to automate the whole process. Not all list services offer the same quality product and service. The company I use is reasonably priced, easy to use and provides great support. You can send unlimited mailings in html (they look like a webpage) as well as text. You can choose from a number of professionally designed templates or upload your own custom design. There is also a feature that checks your copy against spam criteria, giving you a score and how to improve in order to get through spam filters. This is your best assurance that you email will not end up in someone?s spam folder. This company has everything you need to build your list and to send your e-zine and other mailings.

Ideally, your template should compliment your website with the same theme and colors. This ties the concept of your e-zine to your website and to your overall image. This is the advantage to a custom design. A one column format has been proven to be easier to read and is more likely to hold the reader?s attention. Below is the template I custom designed and use for my e-zine ?Winning Marketing Secrets.?

To view my custom designed e-zine template, go to ? When my emails are sent, the list company adds a footer which includes my company name, address and a link to subscribe and unsubscribe (required by law). All of this is automated so that once it is set up, it does not require additional attention. Writing and sending out e-zines however is an ongoing commitment ? one that makes you an expert in the eyes of your subscribers, allows you to stay in front of them, build a trusting relationship and earn their business.

Build a Massive List by Submitting Articles and your E-zine to Directories and Newsgroups! Besides building an opt-in list and sending out e-zines to your list of subscribers, you can submit articles and your e-zine to newsgroups in your target market. You can generate thousands of visitors every month with article marketing alone. There are hundreds of directories that will allow you to post articles along with a brief byline about you, your company and a link to your website. Search engines also find your articles through keywords that drive more traffic to your website. Once on your website, your main objective is to have them join your list. Remember that people seldom buy on their first exposure to a company ? this is particularly true on the Internet. It is repetition of seeing your messages again and again that will convert them to customers.

One way to get people to join your e-zine is to advertise in e-zine publications where your target market subscribes. You can search directories to find e-zines that match your requirements and have a significant subscriber list. If you are going to advertise in these e-zines, make sure you get top positioning as this will affect your results. Advertise in at least 3 consecutive issues and 7 times is best. Always track your responses by using a tracking link in your ad. It is also a good idea to test your ad copy as variations in headlines and even strategic use of capital letters can generate different results. Once your e-zine is more established and you have a substantial subscriber list, you may also want to swap ads with e-zine publishers who share your target market. Be sure they do not compete with you and that they have a customer base equal to or larger than yours.

Always remember that the power to brand yourself, become ?the expert? and make money while you sleep and vacation is in your list. Ezine publishing is one of the most effective Internet marketing strategies you can use. Make the growth of your list, your number 1 priority at your website! There is no more effective and least costly way to build a following, get in front of people over and over and make your bank account mushroom. Your success is all about the marketing.

Online design and marketing specialist, Ruth Kuttler, ?the Web PuzzleMaster,? is the creator of ?Winning Marketing Secrets? E-zine. Get my FREE SPECIAL REPORT, ?10 Simple Secrets for Making your Website into a Selling Machine!? at http://www.WebPuzzleMaster.com/newsletter.htm

You are welcome to ?reprint? this article, provided it remains complete (including the contact information at the end). Thanks!

Article Source:
http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Ruth_Kuttler

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Shocked about the “O” word?

The O word.

In today?s political discourse, few words have been demonized as much as outsourcing. Outsourcing has become the scapegoat for all our problems: from deficits and unemployment, to corporate greed and tax evasion. In his State of the Union address, President Obama even declared, ?No, we will not go back to an economy weakened by outsourcing.?

But is outsourcing really all that bad?

I mean, we all do it.

Last night, did you make dinner yourself or did you go out? Did you grow the food yourself? Did you wash the dishes by hand or did you put them in the dishwasher?

This year, did you do your taxes yourself, or did you hire an accountant? Was your accountant human, or did they take the form of software, like Turbo Tax?

Outsourcing is a fact of life. I need a computer for my work, but have no idea how to make one myself. So I outsourced that task to Dell. It was an easy decision.

Simply defined, outsourcing is a way to procure what you need more effectively than you could do it yourself.

How we determine what ?effectively? means though, varies by each situation. In basic terms you can think of three factors to measure effectiveness:

1. Lower cost
2. Greater speed
3. Superior quality

For example, you probably could do your taxes yourself, but it will probably take you a long time and might not be as accurate as having them professionally done.

Outsourcing is about using resources efficiently. But while efficiency is universally praised, outsourcing remains vilified. Why?

Outsourcing has an image problem.

The image that comes to mind is the American worker who lost his job to a lower-priced doppelganger in India. I don?t mean to make light of this situation because it definitely does happen. And no one is advocating sweat shops or abusive employee-employer relationships.

But what about the thousands of small business owners who outsource critical elements of their operation every day? These entrepreneurs are creating value not just in their own communities, but in communities around the world as well.

Say you have an idea for a killer new website, but don?t know how to program a website. You could sit down and spend months or years learning html and php and web design, or you could hire someone who already has these skills. Your website gets built much faster and you start attracting customers sooner. In this way, outsourcing accelerates value creation.

The other misconception about outsourcing is that it?s all overseas. You might be surprised to learn there is a thriving outsourcing economy right here in the United States. Look at the busy marketplaces on Elance or oDesk and you?ll find thousands of talented local professionals ready to work.

Outsourcing doesn?t have to be a dirty word. After all, anything that promotes efficiency, productivity, and value creation can?t be so bad.

About the Author: Nick Loper is an online entrepreneur and the founder of VirtualAssistantAssistant.com, the leading source of honest virtual assistant reviews. On a typical day you can find him walking on his treadmill desk and dreaming of making the 4-Hour Work Week a reality.

Image: Ian Kahn

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A large majority of Americans disapprove of a new strategic partnership with Afghanistan that will keep US troops on Afghan soil beyond 2014, according to a Monitor/TIPP poll.

A large majority of Americans do not favor the new strategic?partnership with Afghanistan signed during a surprise visit to Kabul?last week by President Obama.

Skip to next paragraph Ben Arnoldy

Deputy International Editor

Ben Arnoldy is the Deputy International Editor at The Christian Science Monitor. He has served as the Monitor’s bureau chief in India and Northern California.?

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By a margin of 63 percent disapproval to 33 percent approval, respondents rejected a?description of the deal that will include a US troop presence and?billions of dollars in monetary support for Afghan forces in the?decade after 2014, according to a Monitor/TIPP poll conducted April 27?to May 4.

Unusually for a key issue facing Americans in an election year, the lack?of support was bipartisan, showing only small differences across the ideological spectrum. However, with few national politicians?dissenting on the broad outlines of the Afghanistan policy, the popular?unhappiness has few immediately discernable political consequences.

Some of the polling was done before Mr. Obama had a chance to outline?his case for the deal in a national televised address on May 1, the anniversary of the killing of Osama bin Laden.

In that address, Obama presented the partnership as enabling a?withdrawal of most US forces by 2014 while still safeguarding?Afghanistan in the long-term from a return of Al Qaeda.

?The agreement we signed today sends a clear message to the Afghan?people: As you stand up, you will not stand alone,? said Obama.??Within this framework, we will work with the Afghans to determine?what support they need to accomplish two narrow security missions?beyond 2014: counterterrorism and continued training.?

Under the 10-year agreement, US forces would have access to Afghan?bases beyond 2014 for training Afghans and hunting Al Qaeda. The US commits to ask Congress annually to help pay for Afghanistan?s?security forces, whose cost outstrips the country?s budget.

The agreement does not spell out US troop numbers or dollar figures.?However, estimates for the yearly cost of sustaining the Afghan forces envisioned after 2014 are upwards of $4 billion. US and Afghan?officials have suggested the US will pay several billion dollars a?year annually, with the rest coming from the Afghans and from NATO?partners.

In his address, Obama conceded Americans were tired of the war.??Others will ask why we don?t leave immediately. That answer is also?clear: we must give Afghanistan the opportunity to stabilize.?Otherwise our gains could be lost, and Al Qaeda could establish itself?once more.?

Since the summer of 2010, however, tracking polls from the Pew?Research Center show a majority of Americans want US troops to come home from Afghanistan ?as soon as possible? rather than stay ?until the?situation is stabilized.? Pew?s most recent poll in mid-April found a?60 to 32 split for leaving now.?That split resembles closely the new Monitor/TIPP poll on the?strategic partnership deal.

Respondents in the TIPP poll were asked: ?The US plans to remove most American forces?from Afghanistan by 2014. To help Afghanistan after 2014, the US will?sign a 10-year deal that keeps some US troops there and the US will?also spend several billion dollars a year on the Afghan military. Do?you approve or disapprove of such US involvement in Afghanistan beyond?2014??

Among Democrats, 13 percent strongly approved, 17 percent somewhat?approved, 19 percent somewhat disapproved, and 46 percent strongly disapproved. Among Republicans, the percentages skewed only slightly?more positive, 15, 22, 20, and 38, respectively. For independents, the?percentages were 12, 21, 15, and 49.

The margin of error was plus/minus 3.3 percentage points.

Few discernible trends were noted between races, genders, or types of?hometown. Older Americans were substantially more likely to strongly disapprove of the deal. Cohorts under age 45 registered strong?disapproval in the 30 percent range, while more than 50 percent of?those over 45 strongly disapproved.

Such broad dissent raises questions about whether the president has a?democratic mandate to commit the US to a long-term deal. But the most contentious issues ? troop numbers and dollar figures ? will involve?consulting Congress.

Despite its unpopularity, America?s longest war has not stirred the?intensity of passions that surrounded the Iraq war. Only small numbers?have taken protests into the streets, with expressions of dissent?mostly limited to social media efforts from groups like Rethink?Afghanistan.

War protesters and members of the Occupy movement are planning to converge on Chicago ahead of a NATO?summit on Afghanistan scheduled for May 20. At that summit, the US will ask its NATO partners to commit to covering some of the costs of?Afghan security forces post-2014.

Get daily or weekly updates from CSMonitor.com delivered to your inbox.?Sign up today.?

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Q&A site Quora has raised $50 million at a $400 million pre-money valuation according to a report by the Wall Street Journal and confirmed to me by the founders themselves. We had reported that Quora was raising in this range back in April and it looks like Facebook board member Peter Thiel has beat out many other investors including a much-rumored KPCB to lead the round. Also investing is Matrix’s Josh Hannah and Northbridge’s Jonathan Heiliger. According to our own sources, Quora co-founder Adam D’Angelo put $20 million of his own money into the Series B financing. Thiel is leading personally and not through Founders Fund, breaking up the remaining $30 million between Matrix and Northbridge.

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The great Pacific garbage patch has created a new breeding ground for a marine insect, which in turn is changing Pacific ecosystems.?

The great Pacific garbage patch is giving sea striders a place to breed out on the open ocean, changing the natural environment there, new research suggests.

Skip to next paragraph The average American throws away three and a half pounds of trash each day. You may be surprised that some of that is ending up in the ocean, with much going to what is called the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. At twice the size of Texas, one woman has made cleaning this vast space her mission.

The great Pacific garbage patch, known to scientists as the?North Pacific Subtropial Gyre, is a large patch of mulched up plastic and other garbage, often said to be the size of Texas, floating in the Pacific Ocean.

“This paper shows a dramatic increase in plastic over a relatively short time period and the effect it’s having on a common North Pacific Gyre invertebrate,” study researcher Miriam Goldstein, graduate student at the University of California San Diego, said in a statement. “We’re seeing changes in this marine insect that can be directly attributed to the plastic.”

The sea strider,?Halobates sericeus, is related to?pond striders?seen in freshwater lakes. It usually lays its eggs on floating objects in the ocean, like seashells, seabird feathers, tar lumps and pumice. The researchers compared recently collected plastic to that collected in 1972 under a microscope.

They found that the number of pieces of plastic less than 0.2 inches (5 millimeters) in diameter increased about 100 times over the past 40 years. They also found that these tiny plastic pieces gave sea striders more room to lay their eggs, leading to much higher densities of the invertebrate in?the garbage patch.

By giving these insects a place to breed out on the open ocean, the plastic patch is changing the natural environment and could be having an impact on the local food web, the researchers said. This is exactly what they’ve been worried about, Goldstein said. [Video: Humans Hit the Oceans Hard]

“It’s a general pattern throughout the ocean that the animals that live on hard surfaces are different than the animals that live on soft surfaces, or in the water column. All this plastic has added a lot of hard surfaces to an ecosystem that historically has very few,” Goldstein told LiveScience in an email.

This could be a “good” thing for the insect’s main predator, crabs, increasing their numbers ? but such a large change could?disrupt the oceanic food web, the researchers said. And the items that the insect eats, including tiny animals like zooplankton and fish eggs, could take a big population hit.

The garbage patch community seems to have a very low amount of biodiversity, Goldstein said, which isn’t a great thing: “We’re concerned that this might change the flow of energy in this ecosystem, potentially favoring the low-biodiversity rafting community at the expense of the high-biodiversity water column community.”

The study will be published May 9 in the journal Biology Letters.

You can follow LiveScience staff writer Jennifer Welsh on?Twitter, on?Google+?or on?Facebook. Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on?Twitter?and on?Facebook.

Copyright 2012?LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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We’re all now familiar with how adwords campaigns on Google work. You buy keywords commonly used in search terms, such as “plumber in X town”, and send people to a response mechanism, usually a web site. But increasingly that response mechanism is not a just a web site but a phone number as well – sometimes it’s even just a phone number. But these days it’s rarely an ordinary number – it’s usually a ‘smart number’ that performs certain kinds of actions and sends data, just like browser calls a web page and sends data from that page. These smart numbers can be made to grab an RSS feed, play a sound file, make the caller fill out a form with their voice – just about anything. Increasingly we are seeing tech startups address what you do with that phone call and the data and analytics that can be pulled from it, just like on the Web. While Google and Facebook look at this area with their pet own projects, startups have appeared on the market to address this, such as AdInsight, Tropo, Twilio and Iovox, among others.

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