BUSINESSBUILDER NEWSLETTER

Hi, Glenn Gordon here with another BusinessBuilder.

Disclaimer: I will not knowingly run ads for products or services which are immoral or dishonest. However, I cannot take responsibility for the business practices of others, nor can I support any claims made in any of these ads. I urge you to carefully evaluate any offers you read here, as you would any other offer.

The BusinessBuilder is dedicated to bringing you relevant articles, tips, resources and ideas that will truly help you build your online business. I am always looking for suggestions for other newsletter content that would be more helpful to you. Give me a yell at
 Feedback@BusinessBuilder
Newsletter.com

It's your turn!

Submit Your Bio
First, [firstname], is a call for you to submit a short bio on yourself and your online business. How did you get to where you are, regardless of where that may be? I'm not looking just for amazing success stories - just stories about ordinary people like you and me.  I will be selecting interesting submissions for publication in the newsletter. Please don't make it an ad, although it is fine if you include your website name and URL. I can't guarantee whose or how many will be published, but I will try to acknowledge each one with a personal note. Send your bio to
SubBio@BusinessBuilderNewsletter.com

Submit Your Site
Second, if you think your site is great, near great or on the way to becoming great, send me the URL for possible publication in an upcoming Sites of Note section. Send it to
SitesOfNote@BusinessBuilder
Newsletter.com

Please rate this Ezine at the Cumuli Ezine Finder.
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for A^OL users.

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Beat the Sp^am Filter software. Check your e-mails for trigger words with the Filter Buster software. With FR^EE Master Resale license. Get it at
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Kevin Bidwell "The Marketing Wizard" is giving away a free business start-up kit to everyone who visits his site:
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And Remember...

Image Viewer/Editor
An image viewer and editor that supports all major formats. It features drag-and-drop support, TWAIN support, slide shows and
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MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS: Windows 95/98/Me/NT/2000/XP
COST: Free
 http://www.irfanview.com/

Looking to give your Web pages a makeover? This site offers a good selection of free Web page templates. Here, you'll find HTML templates, Flash templates, Flash intros, and more.
http://www.template-empire.com/

A good resource for Webmasters, this site offers tips, advice and articles on a wide range of site-building topics.
WebmasterCircle.com features tutorials on Photoshop, Flash, PHP,
site design, ASP, XML and more.
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Power Toys for Windows XP:
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Subscriber's Bio
None this time; send my yours!

Selling Through ClickBank - a good summary of the ins and outs of ClickBank plus how to protect your "thank-you" pages from being accessed by freebie-scammers, using a simple PHP redirect script.
http://www.ur-in-business.com/bonus/clickbank.zip

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You are receiving the BusinessBuilder Newsletter because you subscribed to it. However, if you don't want to receive any more issues, unfathomable as that sounds to me, follow the instructions below and you will be removed immediately.

Hello, glad you joined us again for  another issue of the BusinessBuilder Newsletter. I will be traveling on a short vacation this coming week, so am publishing the newsletter a day early. I'm also sending this one by email as well as online, for a change. I have a lot of things worth discussing today, so let's get at it!

In this issue:

- My ramblings
- Making Your Mark
- Five Reasons Your Home Business Needs a Business Plan
- Your Invitation
- Free Report
- My Top 10 Favorite Internet Tools
and more.....

You and me and the FTC
I want to briefly revisit the discussion about the FTC and their actions against scammers/spammers. I know you're neither, of course. But, while the FTC isn't likely to accuse you of spamming when you didn't, I can't offer quite as firm a statement about scamming. That's because it has become commonplace for many (most, or all?) of us, from time to time, to make claims in ads that some might consider overstatements. But what IS considered overstatement, and who decides? Well, the FTC doesn't peruse every online ad, but they do exercise oversight in this area of advertising, just as they do in other modes of commerce. None of like to spend time in gray areas, particularly when our business is on the line. So, I thought it helpful to point out some specific FTC documents you can read to judge your advertising against.

General site: http://www.ftc.gov
Ad FAQ:
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/buspubs/ad-faqs.htm
Guide concerning use of the word "fr*ee":
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/guides/free.htm
Discussion of disclaimers you need:
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/guides/guides.htm

Good-bye Netscape Navigator?
It appears that AOL has abandoned the Netscape browser, as far as future upgrades are concerned. Read more at:
http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-1011356.html

If it were your newsletter...
Here's a way to improve the BusinessBuilder and receive a copy of Joe Vitale's new Advanced Spiritual Marketing e-book. I realize that there are a ton of Internet business newsletters for you to choose from, and you chose this one because you thought it would fill a need in your business. You haven't unsubscribed because it apparently has some value.

But if you could tailor it to specifically fit you, what would it be like? If you would take a few minutes to tell me, you could make the BusinessBuilder a better rag. Just send your preferences to the email address below. Indicate these preferences as 1A, 2D, 3C, etc. (For numbers 1 and 3, you can enter multiple selections if you like.) That's all you need to do (although, of course, additional  comments are welcome).
1. Delivery method
A - Email text
B - Email HTML
C - online
D - all the above

2. Number of ads
A - none
B - fewer
C - more
D - about right

3. Article type
A - more motivational oriented
B - more webmaster oriented
C - more pure marketing techniques
D - more practical how-to types

4. Frequency of publication
A - Twice weekly
B - Weekly
C - Bi-weekly (current)
D - Monthly

Send your choices to
Yourezine@ur-in-business.par32.com
Be sure to leave the subject blank. Every input will receive a copy of Joe Vitale's new Advanced Spiritual Marketing e-book.

Push-Button Leads - I Like it!
If you have your own ezine and haven't tried some variety of co-registration rotator, you are probably in the minority.  I have used Subscription Rocket for a while, and its effects seem to have dwindled to near nothing. Part of its value to any publisher depends on the amount of traffic your site has. My take is that if I had enough traffic, I wouldn't need a rotator! A new rotator just out is Push-Button Leads. I have been trying it for a few days now, and it is pulling in the subscribers!

How does it work? You sign up to receive at least 2 newsletters from a list. You then enter your ezine information, which will be placed on the rotator list for other people to sign up for (you can tweak your ezine ad on the fly!). Cost? Fr*ee for 15 days, then $19.95/month thereafter. You receive your own link to promote, and get $10/month for each referral that stays on after the free trial period. It shouldn't be difficult to at the very least cover your own costs by getting a few referrals. (Note: Once you try it and cancel, you can't join again.) Since the exposure doesn't depend on traffic to your site (shucks, you don't even need a site!), the results should be better than SubscriptionRocket.

How well does it work? Well, I have had it running for about 3 days now, and have picked up an average of 13 subscribers a day. Run that out to a year and you have, let's see, about 4750 subscribers! Looked at another way, if I paid .05 per subscriber (about the minimum you can find) through other services, I would end up paying $19.50 a month to get the same number of subscribers, with no means of offsetting that cost. Of course no one can guarantee what the subscription rate will be over a year's period.

I think it's shaping up to be a super service. You can check it out (and start picking up your own subs!) at
http://www.pushbuttonleads.com/index.php?aff=ggordon

SpamTerminator
As I mentioned last time, I downloaded it to try and it got its tail stuck in a crack during setup. It still isn't working and the Spam Terminator people aren't helping. That's probably that! I'd be interested to hear your success story, or otherwise. I did get an email from Spam Terminator indicating that they have experienced a lot of technical problems with the product, so guess I'm not alone.

PayLock Generator Special Offer
As you may know, I recently started a new website dedicated to Internet business security issues, at http://www.AllAboutSecurity.info. I have some free resources there, so you ought to go take a look. I will be adding more articles, resources, and products that I have tried and like. The first of that category is PayLock Generator. It generates encrypted PayPal buttons right from your computer. No more worries about someone changing the price on your digital product, and you can save a configuration instead of going to PayPal and re-entering all you information! You can read all about it at
 http://www.allaboutsecurity.info/PLG/.

As you will note there, it comes in 3 versions according to whether you want to generate only buy buttons, or also subscription and shopping cart buttons. For BusinessBuilder subscribers only, you can get the full-bore do-it-all Pro version for the version 2.0 price ($47). Read the ad at the address given above, then, to get your special price, go to this subscribers-only link:
http://www.allaboutsecurity.info/PLG/PLGSpecial.htm

Oh, in case you missed it, [firstname], I am offering the complete audio tape set (18 hours!) from the Big Seminar held here in Dallas earlier this year. Since I was there, I KNOW how fantastic it was, and how valuable it could be for you in your business. Get yours at a small fraction of the cost of the seminar itself. See details at
http://www.ur-in-business.com/BigSeminar

LifeBuilder thoughts for today.....
The LifeBuilder is on summer vacation. See the archive here.

I invite you to send in your most thorny question or problem to be answered in the new section called Answers to your Questions. Send them to Questions@BusinessBuilderNewsletter.com

Making Your Mark
By Glenn Gordon
(c) Glenn Gordon - All Rights reserved

Millions every day. I'm not talking about the amount of money changing hands on the Internet, although I'm sure that's true also. I'm talking about the number of new web pages that go up every day.

Makes you feel rather insignificant, doesn't it? How can I possibly compete with people who are smarter than I, with more money to put into fancier websites than I can possibly afford? How can my online business possibly thrive, or even survive?

I believe it comes down to two questions. How many others are doing exactly what you are doing? And, more importantly, how many other people are there exactly like you?

To answer the first, there may be several sites that appear on the surface to be targeting your area. But to the second, I know without a doubt that there is no one exactly like you.

I would propose that a large part of your success online is to see the link between the two questions. Because there is no one exactly like you, you need to be translating your uniqueness into your website and your business - making your mark, so to speak.

The temptation is strong to follow what works online, to do what others are doing, the way they are doing it. To an extent, and more importantly, in some areas, this is true. There are a number of business and marketing principles that you shouldn't ignore. But there are also vast areas of your business that are open to being made uniquely yours - to carrying your mark.

In a previous article, I quoted author Gil Bailie who writes "Don't ask yourself what the world needs. Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and go do that; because what the world needs is people who have come alive." A good part of making your mark is to see that your uniqueness, tied up in what makes you "come alive," should be expressed not only in what you do but how you do it. In other words, your choice of what you do online is only the beginning point in the expression of what makes you unique.

After all, in spite of all the technology that we love, your Internet business should still concentrate on a personal interaction - you and someone else!  And the more your uniqueness is expressed, the more satisfaction you will get out of your business efforts, the more you will "connect" with other people, and, chances are, the more successful you will be.

Give yourself freedom to be the unique person God made you to be. Make your mark in, and on, your business! The world is waiting!

Glenn Gordon
Building Success Online at
http://www.ur-in-business.com
The Ultimate Autoresponder Guide at
http://www.allaboutautoresponders.info
BusinessBuilder Newsletter at
http://www.businessbuildernewsletter.com

This article contains 435 words and may be freely reproduced as long as the resource information above is included.

If you found the above article helpful or it has triggered some additional thoughts or suggestions, send them to me at Feedback@BusinessBuilderNewsletter.com

Five Reasons Your Home Business Needs a Business Plan

Do you have a business plan for your home business?

"Don't need one," I can hear some of you saying.  "I don't want or need a bank loan or venture capital, so why bother?  Besides, I have other, more urgent things to do."

Think again.

Every business, no matter how small, needs a business plan.

When I started my first business, the very first step I took was writing a twenty page business plan from scratch. The idea was to sketch out my thoughts in a coherent way so I could see whether they made sense, and to define what resources I thought
I would need to put into the business.

That first plan got read by no one but me, my wife, some friends whose opinions I respected, and my first  employees. The basic ideas laid out in it helped us grow the business to more than $1 million monthly in sales in less than 18 months.

Along the way, a revised version of that plan was shown to a banker, and helped secure a line of credit.

Still later, after we had enjoyed explosive sales growth, a much revised version made the rounds of venture capital firms, and helped us raise more than $10 million in venture capital.

But the first plan was for me, family, friendly advisors and employees. It made everything else possible.  I made a lot of mistakes, but I would have made many, many more without a written plan to guide me.

Here are five reasons your very small home business should have a plan:

*   It focuses you on the tasks required for success.  It is one thing to have an idea. It is quite a different thing to have a plan. Writing out a plan forces you to focus on what you need to do to convert your idea into reality, and so multiplies the likelihood that you
will focus on and achieve those tasks.

*   It helps you to assess the real potential of the business.  A lot of potential businesses seem like great ideas until you think about them in detail. Once you think about them, though, you may realize that the market is too small, the competition too fierce, or the investment required too great. You want to figure
that out on the front end, so you can move quickly to another, better business with all your energy and resources still available. You do not want to figure that out after spending a year plugging away at a business that a plan would have revealed was not likely to succeed.

*   It provides a structure for making the hard choices about where to spend time and money.  You will not be able to pursue every marketing idea or business opportunity that comes along. You also cannot afford to run out of money or time halfway through getting the business up and running. Creating a plan helps you build a coherent list of priorities, which in turn will help you make the right choices about where to invest your time and money.

*   It gives you a structured format for sharing your thoughts with others.  People respond more analytically to a written plan. They can spot holes in your thinking or important unspoken assumptions
more easily when dealing with a structured, written presentation. If and when you get to the stage of having employees or partners, the written plan also helps them understand your vision for the business -- and having them understand and pursue the same vision is absolutely, positively critical to your business. Last but not least, if and when you get to the stage that you need outside support from banks, government agencies, investors, vendors or landlords,
your finely honed written plan will go a long way to persuading them of the worth of your enterprise.

*   It shows to family and others that you are serious about this home business, and helps you in enlisting their support and cooperation. Let4s face it: sometimes the last people to take your business
seriously are those closest to you. Having a written plan tells people that you take this business seriously and have made a commitment. Once family and friends realize that you take the business seriously,
they are more likely to take it seriously as well, and more likely to cooperate and help.

So what is involved in writing a business plan?  To be of value, it must be based on your thoughts and analysis, and not cut and pasted from a template or business plan software. What matters is not that it look good or have the standard boilerplate phrases, but that it provides a way for you and others to think through the issues surrounding your business.

Next week, we will go into more detail about what needs to be included in your business plan.  For now, the takeaway point is this: start planning. It can be the foundation of your success.

**********************************

Ray Worthy Campbell4s first online business reached $1 million monthly in sales in less than 18 months. His weekly business tips are available at
http://www.Home-Business-Tips.net.

Copyright: Hard Knocks MBA, Inc., 2003

**********************************

Your Invitation

I would like to invite you to join our All About Autoresponders affiliate team. You earn 50% commission on all sales, and there's nothing like it on the net. For details, go to http://www.allaboutautoresponders.info/Affiliate/

Fr*ee Report

If you've ever wanted to write a book but never had the time, I highly recommend this Special Report: How To Write A Book in 14 Days!!
http://www.WriteABookNow.com/welcome/writeXnow/

My Top 10 Favorite Internet Tools

- by Jim Edwards

(c) Jim Edwards - All Rights reserved
http://www.thenetreporter.com
-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-

When you make your living on the Internet, you can
sometimes forget that the tools and resources you take for granted might rate an incredible discovery to someone who doesn't already know they exist.

Whether they help you save time, save money, or avoid frustration, these tools and services rate my highest recommendation for just plain making life easier, faster and cheaper.

1. Short Keys -
Available fr*ee at www.shortkeys.com/lite.htm, Short Keys allows you to create shortcut keys to cut down on repetitive typing tasks. I absolutely love this program because of the amount of time it saves me every single day.

2. Good Keywords -
Available fr*ee at www.goodkeywords.com, Good Keywords enables you to condense hours of keyword research into a few seconds. Find out the top keywords your target audience searches for so you can put your advertising dollars in the right spot to catch the biggest fish.

3. Mail Washer -
Available fr*ee at www.mailwasher.net, this program enables you to spot and delete spam and viruses before downloading them to your computer. With so much spam clogging my email in-box, I couldn't survive any more without this program!

4. ClickBank -
If you sell a downloadable product such as an ebook,
report, or software, you can't beat clickbank for
processing credit card payments. Not only do they take the payments and send you a check twice a month, they also plug your product into an existing network of thousands of affiliates who can sell it for you.

5. GoDaddy.com -
Cheap, reliable, easy to use domain name registrar that only charges $8.95 per year for each domain name you register. Godaddy rates cheaper and just as, if not more, reliable than any other domain registrar.

6. GroupMail -
Visit www.infacta.com to download the fr*ee version of GroupMail. The program allows you to email and do mail merge to your entire database of contacts. It's a great way to stay in touch with customers, family, and clients.

7. Google -
As far as I'm concerned, Google.com rates as the Web's best search engine. When I need to find something online in a hurry, Google usually produces exactly what I want to locate!

8. Front Page -
Say what you want about Microsoft, but the FrontPage html editor has served me well for the last 5 years and counting. Though I don't use the more advanced features, I can always count on FrontPage to help me get my web pages done quickly and easily.

9. Smart FTP -
Log on to www.smartftp.com and download a fr*ee copy of the easiest FTP program I've every used. If you need to transfer files to and from a web server and you know how to use Windows Explorer, Smart FTP will enable you to upload files to the web like a pro in minutes.

10. Note Tab Light -
Perhaps my favorite tool of all. Note Tab enables me to easily format text messages for my newsletters, manipulate html code and remove formatting from word processing documents. Log on to www.notetab.com for a fr*ee copy of the
"light" version.

----

Jim Edwards is a syndicated newspaper columnist and the co-author of an amazing new ebook, "Turn Words Into Traffic," that will teach you how to use free articles to quickly drive thousands of targeted visitors to your website or affiliate link!
Click Here => http://www.turnwordsintotraffic.com

A Final Note

Thanks for joining us. I have enjoyed preparing a new issue for you and hope to get your feedback. Send your comments, positive or negative, what you would like to see an article about, a gripe you have, or whatever, to
Feedback@BusinessBuilderNewsletter.com

Glenn Gordon

Copyright (c) 2003 Glenn Gordon
Owner, You're In Business