The Individual Guide

The year 2010 is significant because it is the first year of the new decade. This is why a lot of analysts are making their own predictions on what this might bring for the coming ten years. But before we make any predictions, it’s better to look back at the previous decade. 1999, in particular was a tumultuous year for IT considering that everyone was busy anticipating the effects of Y2K.
Everyone was concerned about the potential effects of the new millennium on the computers. And then everyone breathed a sigh of relief when it was found that it isn’t as bad as was expected. In 2001, there was a new reality in the world and the US in particular. For IT and the government, the importance of cyber security became widely appreciated. The following year, 2002, had most economies in the world reeling with the IT suffering considerably. By the end of 2003, however, IT was beginning to go back to the new normal and the US economy has managed to recover.
Then 2004 came with its virtualization and blade servers on managed hosting going on a pilot project stage. By the following year, 2005, these technologies are beginning to get deployed for a couple of production applications. In 2006, they started gaining hold on the industry and data centers began to run out of cooling, power or both. In January of that year, the EPA convened for its first national conference in order to assess and explore energy saving opportunities for both data centers and enterprise servers.
The Green Grid was born in 2007. This is a concept of energy efficiency. The Environmental Protection Agency posted warnings about energy consumption. In 2008, the economic meltdown started and governments all over the world hit the stop button in order to keep their financial sectors afloat. Finally 2009 was beginning to show a lot of promise as virtualization has finally gained footing.

A modern job hunting campaign is by nature often intricate. While the internet has offered a variety of new channels, it also creates increased competition for choice jobs and potential challenges for job hunters.

Job search needs to be thought of as a personal, highly aimed marketing operation where you are the product. Your resume is an advertisement. Your extended network of contacts is your source for job information.

So where does the internet fit in? At AA-Careers, we just posted a job on a popular job board and got over 650 applications in a calendar week. For one job. That’s increased competition.

Had the right person called us before we ran the ad, they could have gotten the job prior to having all that competition. How? By finding someone who knows someone at our company who became aware of the job prior to posting. Everyone knew of the job for at least 9 days before it was posted. Who in your network might know of a job that’s coming available soon?

Be sure to check your cover letter and resume carefully! When we did an analysis of the 650 resumes, we found a large number of errors. 63% of the applicants were easily eliminated with a quick triage process. How? The same way any employer would. By passing over resumes where the objective didn’t match our job posting. By passing over prospects whose cover letters gave us causes not to employ them, like "I know I’m overqualified but I really need a job". By eliminating job hunters whose documents that didn’t open properly. And by passing over prospects who didn’t trouble to spell check their cover letter and/or resume.

So the great news is that job sites give you a feel of who is hiring, and for what kinds of positions. But once those positions are posted, the competition is intense. You can still try, if you have a well thought out resume, designed to appeal directly and clearly to the recruiter. And if you have practiced interviewing – so you don’t stumble at a critical point.

Another downside to be aware of is how quickly and easily you can be checked out on the internet. As we Googled several candidates, we ran into some Facebook comments that were in questionable taste. Nothing larcenous, but enough to sway our thoughts about who to hire.

AA-Careers provides a broad set of services for Bay Area job seekers, providing our clients a personal career consultant, a managed job hunting campaign, modern tools like a personal website, video, highly targeted resume, and much more. Let us know if we can help you.

Be careful out there, and good hunting!

Online Shopping is more and more starting to be the norm for many people. It offers an unprecedented selection of products all purchasable without actually leaving the comfort of your residence. It is a dream come true for those who loathe thinking of traipsing round the shops together with all the other crowds of folk. As very many more of people become linked to the web and have access to online payment methods the amount of shopping online rises month on month. It is not only shopping for goods such as men’s trousers or coats for women that takes places on the internet, but also booking vacations, paying bills, banking and obtaining tickets for travelling.

Among the list of problems which can affect individuals who shop often on the web is shipping. This can bring about problems as items go missing or take quite some time to come. Specific retailers can also be very strict in relation to their delivery regulations and will only ship to certain countries and only on the buying cardholders address. Should you be not in your home country when you endeavor to create an online purchase this can additionally cause you troubles because the merchant may question the transaction as they may think it is fraudulent. Your location will be noted by the seller and if it does not correspond with your home address they may stop your transaction as they feel it is being done with a compromised or copied credit card.

An additional concern to consider if shopping online is the possibility of paying import duties inside your country. For example for anyone who is in the European Union and you buy from a merchant within that region then there will be no fees. However if you buy from outside Europe, the USA as an example, then you can be charged customs duty on your purchase. You might well get a nasty shock when the postman demands a hefty payment as he delivers the package.

Aided by the increase in online shopping there is so much more opportunity for people who promote counterfeit goods to con buyers. A while ago in the united kingdom over 1200 sites which were dealing in counterfeit brand goods were shut down. Lots of buyers had already been conned by the lure of affordable designer items before this occurred. If you ever buy such products from net retailers that are not popular then you are taking a huge chance. Make sure to take a decent look at the site that you are on and see that they offer comprehensive contact details plus a phone number in addition to address and remember that if the transaction looks too good to be authentic then it probably is! If you ever acquire products from an auction site such as Ebay then you also need to take care because many of the designer items traded there are knockoffs.

Choosing the best domain and nailing down the right registration are the first items to consider when you are setting up a website. Nevertheless, this isn’t an uncomplicated decision. But let’s face it: the easiest way to see to it that all your requirements are fulfilled is to conduct some painstaking research of domain hosting suppliers by taking a look at reviews website.

When you go through the domain hosting reviews, how to establish what it is you are actually searching for? As with any other business decision, you need to find out which characteristics are important for your website. A common alternative is to host your website with the same provider that you register your domain with. Service is something that could have far-reaching effects even long after registration.

It is wise not to rely upon purported reviews directly in a company’s advertisements. It is crucial to look at an unbiased appraisal prior to making a choice. Take time to look through different domain hosting review sites and be sure to pay close attention to the reviewers’ feedback. Do you come across any concerns over and again? What reviews highlight the strengths of the company you are reading about? Do good reviews outweigh the negative reviews?

As with any company, you should find both positive and negative reviews. It’s best to read all the opinions with objectivity and weigh them all. Without a shadow of a doubt, pricing must be taken into account, but it’s absolutely crucial to get the optimum value for your money. To follow are some questions to follow up on when selecting which provider to go with.

Does the company you are considering feature uninterrupted technical support with a free number, can you find if they respond quickly to any complaints or inquiries? What system uptime will they guarantee? Can they ensure that it’s >99%? Are there any limitations imposed on bandwidth? Some companies provide unlimited domain hosting and bandwidth as standard, along with sweetners such as software packages to help run your website, coupons good for pay-per-click campaigns, even discounts on extra domain names.

What payment plans are available? Are all payments automatic, and are weekly payments accepted? In the event of a server breakdown, what will they do? In the long run it’s a decision only you can make, but before you settle for any company, be sure you have checked out all the options. Reading appropriate hosting reviews is usually a tremendous way to save a lot of time and money.

Not so long ago, if you were browsing the web, you might have had just a single password to remember for your email account. These days though it’s not exceptional to have 10 or 20 passwords created for countless online services you’ve joined. And you can guess what happens : Lots of people are inclined to utilize the very same password over and over. Some people may not think their Bebo member account as being majorly vital, but it is if you’re using the same password as you are for your PayPal account. Sure, it’s handy to only have to remember just one password, but what happens if an individual gets hold of that single password? That’s right, they potentially have access to all of your accounts that share that same password. And if you think they can’t know what other services you’ve signed up to, they simply don’t need to. They can launch web application programs which test tens of thousands of online services against your username/password pairing that they already have.

This is a problem we all have to consider, but it is rather easily solved. The fact is, it’s not necessary to store every username/password. Let your browser do it. Be it your Twitter acount or Email password. Ask your browser to store each username/password, and then have a master password just in case a person else gets physical access to your computer. Physical access to your computer will still require the knowledge of the master password to gain access to all the other passwords. Or to put it another way, you can sign up to hundreds of web services, and merely need to remember one password : your browser’s master password (achieving what you wanted to do in a secure way - necessitating in just one password.

When creating passwords, make them random and long, such as K94545Dcd which is a mix of lower and upper case characters and numbers. As you don’t need to remember them yourself, be as obscure as you wish. Whatever you do, don’t use normal words as a password, as these are simple to identify for hackers.

Whether you’re looking for the latest toys, groceries or gadgets there is a wealth of online discounts available to you through sites such as Discount Shopping UK. They are in direct contact with many of the top online retailers and one man bands as well. This means they are in a great position to offer their visitors the latest and freshest online discounts.

The range of goods and services which are available to the online shopper make the high street pail in comparison to the online shopping experience. The high street or busy town centre can’t possibly compare to the sheer volume of sites which are now offering sales directly via an online service.

The online discount codes which Discount Shopping UK supply are easily entered during the check out procedure you go through at the retailers site. There is little fuss and the shopping procedure is as simple as any you get in your local megastores.

With a procedure as simple as this you would be a fool to not take advantage of these fantastic savings which are available to you. Saving money is one of the chief concerns of many shoppers after all!

So why not try Discount Shopping UK first before you make any online purchase, in these times where every penny counts you can’t afford not to.

When I trace back some of my favorite internet marketing eBooks, systems and courses I find that they were written by people residing in the UK. Internet marketing UK style is no different than how the rest of the world is doing it but in my humbled opinion the books I’ve found out there are written very well and explained both for the newbie as well as seasoned professional internet marketer. The UK is also a pretty big place and many new marketing concepts come out of there every day. I am fascinated with learning how these brilliant concepts come to be.

The internet is as much commercial as it is information services. The beauty of the internet is they have built an infrastructure that utilizes both marketing and information services together. Unlike television for example where by you watch the show then see the commercial, the web shows you both and the commercial is often very much in line with the information and offers you something valuable in line with your interests (the site you sought out for example). In much the same way product placement in movies works. Internet online marketing advertising business is brilliant if you ask me, its very non invasive so long as you don’t use it in the way of spam but in line with website marketing.

If your website generates large volumes of traffic, a dedicated server is likely the best choice. Many web sites start by using a shared hosting plan but as they grow they need to scale their site to meet the added requirements. A dedicated server is the most effective way to do that.

Dedicated servers are used strictly for your website. There are no other sites sharing the resources on the machine. This lets you have ultimate control over the way the server is configured.

If you need more storage or more RAM, the hosting company can add that for you (at an added cost naturally). If you need to install a particular program or operating system, you can do that.

When looking for dedicated hosting services, there are a few things to keep in mind.

First, ensure that you have a technical support and administration plan in place. This could be someone in your own company or the hosting company may provide these services for you.

Be sure the hosting company has planned for redundancy in case of system failures. If your server crashes, there needs to be a backup in place that can take on the load with minimal downtime for your website.

If your hosting company is managing the server for you, make sure they have a maintenance schedule in place for things such as security upgrades and operating system patches.

These kind of security updates are released on a regular basis, and you need to be sure that your web server is updated so it isn’t vulnerable to attack.

Web hosting companies are not all created equal. When choosing your hosting provider, you need to be sure that they are going to be able to keep your site up and running consistently.

If your website is large enough to justify a dedicated server, you can’t afford to have any downtime.

There are a lot of directories on the internet and there is probably room for a lot more although building a directory that is beneficial to the users, webmasters who add their site and yourself takes a little bit of forethought and a lot of work.

There are many types of directories including general directories and niche (often reffered to as vertical) directories. There are also many ways these can be structured.

The first step in planning to build a directory is deciding what it will be a directory of. You could choose to be general and have a vast array of categories and sub categories where a website on any topic can be submitted or you can choose to have a niche directory which are often reffered to as vertical directories. Vertical directories are becoming popular with users and webmasters due to the entire site and it’s listings being related to one topic.

Your next choice is whether to have static pages and create each page manually or use a script that creates pages, manages your listings, site submissions and more. Using a script is the popular and sensible choice and if you have programming skills you may choose to build your own. Otherwise there are numerous directory scripts available and some are even free, for example: PHP Link Directory, Barracuda Links Directory or WSN Links to name a few.

Once you have your directory up and running with all the categories relevant to a general directory or your chosen topic the next task is get listings as without those it’s not much. For other webmasters to submit their link they need to be able to find your site so getting links from ‘directory of directories’ sites are a good place to start in promoting your site. Although there may be catch, those sites may not want to list yours if it’s not populated with listings to some extent so choose some quality sites and add them to your categories and sub categories.

For a start you may need to give free listings to get things going although there’s something to watch in who you list on your directory which is summed up by quality attracts quality and trash does trash. Screen your listings and be sure they aren’t banned by search engines,low quality sites, scrapper sites or just plain spam. The quality of your listings will reflect the quality of your directory to users, webmasters and to some extent search engines.

Your next choice once your directory starts to grow is how you will benefit from your work. Choices here can be running Pay Per Click advertising, banner ads, affiliate ads or charging for links or maybe both.

To get submissions from quality sites and maybe payment for links webmasters will be looking at or for Higher the Google PR the better, well keyworded title and category description, low density of links/listings per page and the quality of the other sites listed. Here is a neat trick, add top ranking sites under the appropriate categories and other sites trying to achieve top ranking for that particular keyword/category title will probably submit to have their site listed.

From there it is a matter of constantly promoting your directory via links to your site, advertising and marketing.

Rod Charles is the owner of the Directory of Directories site where you can find over 1000 directories categorised by submission type or topic.

The FAQ page… a standard addition to almost any site. It usually lists questions customers ask on a regular basis, and the answers to those questions. But what befuddles me is that hardly any sites I’ve visited use this page as a sales tool.

Did you think of that? If not, you’re losing out on the use of some valuable real estate! FAQ pages are generally well-trafficked areas of your site. With just a few adjustments, your FAQ page could become one of your leading sources for sales conversions.

Let me give you a before and after version of one site I visited. I’ve changed some of the information so as not to promote (or embarrass) the site owner.

BEFORE

What is the source of the minerals used in your supplements?

We use all-natural minerals from sources such as limestone and dolomite. Nothing artificial.

[back to top]

What is the source of Vitamin C?

Ascorbic acid, which was originally gained by isolation from fruits and plants, is produced today by an industrial process. The basis for the industrial ascorbic acid synthesis is D-Glucose (grape sugar or corn sugar), one of the most common organic compounds in nature.

[back to top]

Informative? Yes. Does it answer the question? Yes. Does it contribute to making the sale? Not really.

Now, let’s change these two answers just a bit, add a link or two, and see how much more powerful they can become.

AFTER

What is the source of the minerals used in your supplements?

We use all-natural minerals from sources such as limestone and dolomite. These 100% natural minerals are then carefully processed under low heat to remove impurities and preserve quality. Many minerals are processed under high heat, which literally kills the beneficial elements of the mineral. Because of our devotion to producing quality vitamins and minerals, we take additional precautions that other manufacturers skip. To ensure you receive the most potent supplements possible, choose XYZ Vitamins.

[shop for minerals]
[back to top]

What is the source of Vitamin C?

Ascorbic acid, which was originally gained by isolation from fruits and plants, is produced today by an industrial process. The basis for the industrial ascorbic acid synthesis is D-Glucose (grape sugar or corn sugar), one of the most common organic compounds in nature.

XYZ Vitamins uses only organically-grown grapes and corn, and we extract our own D-Glucose to ensure the process remains 100% natural. No other manufacturer in the world has developed its own facility specifically to produce the highest quality of Vitamin C. We go the extra mile to ensure the vitamins and minerals you buy from XYZ Vitamins are the most beneficial for you and your family.

[shop for vitamins]
[back to top]

See the difference? The “before” versions JUST answer the questions. The “after” versions boost consumer confidence, promote unique qualities of the products, and offer easy-to-follow links to buy the products in question.

By using some imagination and salesmanship, you can turn your FAQ page into a highly productive tool that not only gives visitors the information they need, but also encourages more sales!

by Karon Thackston © 2006

Copy not getting results? Learn to write SEO copy that impresses the engines and your visitors at http://www.copywritingcourse.com Be sure to also check out Karon’s latest e-report “How To Increase Keyword Saturation (Without Destroying the Flow of Your Copy)” at http://www.copywritingcourse.com/keyword