-Writing the best thinking-

If you want to get more traffic to your website, here are 5 invaluable tips and tactics to transform the number of visitors you get each day. 4 of them are absolutely FREE, whilst the 5th. involves only a small outlay for potentially enormous profits.


FOUR NO COST TACTICS:

1. Articles - 

One of the easiest ways to get increased website traffic is through the promotion of articles. Write a series of short pieces, of anything from 350 to 750 words of highly specific text to the product or service you want to promote. Include a byline containing your name and credentials, along with a link back to your site. You may want to supply a link to a special page where visitors can get more information, rather than a direct link to a product or service being promoted. Make sure you read the terms and conditions of each article directory you use to ensure you comply. 

2. News Releases -

A great way to draw attention to your website is through online (and offline) Press Releases. Put together an 'event' in order to target the launch of your website, or a new product, or the re-branding of an existing product. The text should be specific to the occasion and aimed at conveying information to potential prospects, rather than a direct sales pitch. 

3. Newsletters and Ezines -

Ask most established business owners where most customers come from, and they will all tell you 'word of mouth'. If you provide good quality products, lots of information about them BEFORE your customers make a purchase, and you have a generous customer service policy, your customers will want to buy more products from you. And they will recommend you to others. The result: increased website traffic. A regular newsletter or ezine is a perfect way to provide your website visitors with general information about your niche and specific information about your products and services. 

4. Blogging - 

Another great way to 'connect' with your customers and prospects is to set up a blog. This is so easy to do and, if you do it properly, can produce a huge amount of additional interest in your website, resulting in still more increased website traffic. As with all the other tactics described in this article, your aim is not to do a sales pitch, but to provide information about your products and your market in general. Include links back to your website.

ONE LOW COST TACTIC: 

1. Start An Affiliate Program -

Whether you are looking for a means to market a new product, or you have well established products and want to increase sales, a powerful way to drive increased website traffic to your sales page is to set up an affiliate program. This can transform the performance of any web based business - but it has to be done properly, e.g. generous commissions and a good support system for your affiliates. This can mean the difference between a handful of affiliates generating a few extra visitors, and an army of hungry affiliates spreading the word and transforming your sales figures. 

An good affiliate program may cost a little to set up, but the potential rewards can be huge. 

All these strategies will take time to achieve results. But they are all extremely effective in producing increased website traffic, if done correctly.

Single lens reflex cameras are advanced, high-end cameras favored by professional photographers and amateur enthusiasts. Such photographers gravitate toward SLR cameras because they are faster, take more precise photographs, and are more adaptable.

Have you ever used a film camera and noticed that photo you took is slightly off-center from the image you framed through the viewfinder, especially on close-up shots? This happens because one cannot look through the actual lens of the camera--the shutter and film (or in the case of digital cameras, the image sensor) are in the way. Thus, the viewfinder is off to the side of the actual camera lens, resulting in two slightly different angles of view.

SLR cameras fix this problem by using mirrors and prisms to let the photographer see through the camera lens. It achieves this by lowering a mirror into the lens box. The mirror reflects the image coming through the lens upward into a prism, which in turn bounces the image into the viewfinder. This way, the photographer is able to see exactly what the camera lens is seeing, with the exception of the brief instant when the photograph is being taken.

At this point, the mirror flips up out of the way of the lens box. The shutter opens, exposing the film or image sensor to the light coming through the lens. The picture is captured, the shutter closes, the mirror drops back down, and the photographer can once again see through the viewfinder.

The introduction of digital "point and shoot" cameras changed the game slightly. They also allow the photographer to see exactly what the lens is seeing. They have limitations, however, that some professional photographers feel make them unusable. The main drawback of commercial digital cameras is a considerable lag time between when the photographer pushes the button and when the camera actually captures the image. During these seconds, the camera may be jostled, the angle change, the lens shift out of focus, or the subject being photographed may move. Although perfectly fine for still pictures, photographers who need to capture an image instantly, such as sports, action, or wildlife photographers, the lag time is unacceptable.

A new generation of Digital SLR cameras (DSLR) combine the best of both technologies. They use the SLR mirror system to allow the photographer to see exactly what the lens sees. Simply by replacing the film behind the shutter with a digital light image sensor instead, a DSLR camera is still able to capture images instantly. In this way, a DSLR camera combines the accuracy and speed of an SLR camera with the convenience of digital cameras.

As DSLR cameras are usually high-end machines intended for a professional market, they tend to be more expensive, but also incorporate other advanced features. An average DSLR camera usually includes auto focus options, live preview, electronic flash controls, the ability to swap specialized lenses, and electronic adjustment of the captured digital image, such as optimizing the contrast and color, red-eye correction, and monochrome options, among many others. DSLR cameras also generally have a larger digital image sensor, providing better quality images with a higher pixel resolution, lower noise, and a superior color range. While the price of DSLR cameras make them a financial investment, professional photographers and amateur enthusiasts will consider it well worth it.

"Ok, we bought an LMS, put up a course and turned it on. We can start using this thing tomorrow." So says your manager, as you look at him half in shock, and half with that can-do serious face that has got you this far.

Of course nothing is that easy. Listed here are ten tips that you can apply to make your LMS implementation go more smoothly. If you decide on these "philosophical" issues before you start an implementation, it will progress much faster.

· Naming Conventions - Every data category needs a naming convention. Some might be very specific - for example: o 'Smart' Class IDs -- ABC-SAF-1-English-11-16-2008 -- Where you have a code for your company (ABC), the category of the subject (Safety Level 1), the language it is being offered in (English, Spanish, Hindi), and the date it is offered (November 16, 2008). Or it can be a simple code like 'Safety101' Think about the people who will need to use this information and how to make these conventions both easy for them to identify and understand, and for you to organize. Here are some LMS areas where you can effectively decide on such conventions: o UserIDs - employee numbers, email addresses, auto-generated? o Passwords - email addresses, user-defined, or a fixed standard password changed by users when they log in for the first time? o Courses - simple or complex coding structures? o Classes - simple or complex coding conventions, or something in between? o Course categories - subject-driven (safety, operating systems, nursing); organizational (Management, Corporate Mandatory, New Hire); something else? o Hierarchy levels - Organizational or geographical? · Reporting Needs - Perhaps better defined as "who needs to see what information." Think of the different groups in your organization - students, managers, administrators, upper management, training managers - each of them probably needs different training information at different levels of detail.

For example, students might need detailed transcript reports, to let them know exactly where they stand in their training. Managers or supervisors may need to see who in their group is doing their training and who isn't - giving them a tool to remind the people who must still complete their training. Upper management probably wants total numbers, without details - such as percentages of people in their organization who are training according to plan, and percentages who are not - broken out by the separate groups they are managing.

Don't forget that these are training reports only - they aren't about job performance, pay scales, or anything outside the training realm. So be sure to investigate and understand your whole organization's training-information needs. You can then define the reports that need to be built to provide that information, including hierarchy-based reporting structures.

· Catalog Management -- Think of how you want to organize your course catalog. Some organizational techniques may be: o Offering certain classes to specific groups in the organization - A hospital group may want nurses in a specific hospital to take classes only at that hospital, and not at any another facility. o Creating a separate pricing structure for certain large customers - They might need their own catalog. o Management leadership programs - You may want to limit courses and classes by management structure. o By third parties - Such as, offering different distributors different course offerings.

All such cases separate out a portion of your entire catalog for a specific group. So consider defining those groups, and make sure you are able to deliver only the training products that you want them to access.

· e-Commerce If you are going to offer your courses and classes through an e-Commerce portal, you will need to identify a merchant account that will handle all credit-card verifications and back-end banking. Authorize.net and Paypal are popular examples of such organizations. · Competencies and learning paths - Many companies spend countless hours defining learning paths for attaining job roles, promotions, or other corporate goals. These are often scattered and loosely defined, or are adapted throughout the organization with no standardization. If you need to implement these types of plans, first spend some time understanding what is currently defined in your company and if it needs to be standardized (perhaps even streamlined) for training purposes. · Branding - Some LMSs let you customize the look and feel or your training site. Determine what those needs are for you. Will your training portal need to parallel your company's existing Website design or its intranet's look and feel? You'll save a lot of time if you gather all company graphics (such as logos and special pictures you will need) and define the color schemes you want to use before your first LMS implementation meeting. · User Information - There are many ways to get user information into an LMS. This will be defined by your organizational needs, for instance: o You are an online learning provider - In this case, people will probably need to register for training through an online process. o You have a stable employee work force - Here, you might need only an initial user-information upload, after which you can maintain the information manually through user editing screens. o You have a very mobile work force - Maybe a nightly feed from your HR system would work best? So you should define your organization's user base and your administrative capacity, and then select the appropriate loading and updating process for your user data.

· Certificates - Do you want to issue certificates to students who pass courses? If so, then define upfront what the certificates will look like and which course/class information will appear on them. · Interfaces - Will the LMS need to connect with any existing corporate systems? These may include an HR interface, or a backend link to order data on your accounting system. Define what your needs are in this area. Talk with your IT department to see how hard it will be to create such connections, and how long it will take to get your project on their active project list. · Help Administration - Who will handle help-desk requests from students? Will the requests be centralized in the training department or de-centralized to information experts throughout the organization (IT, course subject matter, networking, and so on). Depending on the size and needs of your organization, most LMSs allow you to disperse this help-desk load. So be sure to identify the people who will fill these jobs, especially their email addresses and phone numbers.

Finally, print this article and give it to your manager. It will help them understand the size of the job you face. Some of these items can be defined and decided easily, while others may take some time and involve other organizations (like marketing, IT, accounting, and sales).

A very simple installation, where all of these items are defined ahead of time, could be done within days (or a couple weeks). But for larger organizations, an LMS installation could easily require months before all necessary decisions are made and everyone reaches accord. Either way, this list should give you a good start on that process.