1. Price – WordPress is free, you can even use their WordPress.com service to host your site for free. You also don’t have to pay any money to design your family website. WordPress has thousands of free themes that will change the whole design of your site with the click of a button.

2. Dynamic Nature – WordPress is the ultimate tool to post dynamic content. What that means is it is made for publishing time sensitive content that is continually being updated. Out of the box with no settings tweaked WordPress will naturally publish your content by date, with the freshest news displayed.

3. Easy Picture Galleries – WordPress makes it so simple to upload a picture. You just click one button and you can add a picture to your latest news posts. Take it one step further though and upload a number of pictures. WordPress has a built in gallery feature that will allow you to share all your Christmas pictures in one post. They will appear in a nice grid formation as thumbnails that expand when clicked.

4. Add Authors – You can easily add other authors to your WordPress powered site. Why is this important? Well imagine you and your family live in NY, but your brother and his family live in LA. You can add your brother as an author and he will be able to add his own family updates and pictures. You can add as many family members as you want as well. WordPress will also show which author wrote what, so you won’t get confused on updates.

These four reasons alone should be enough to show you that WordPress is the best way to deal with family updates and/or newsletters. The ability to add content constantly, have it organized and include picture galleries means that your family newsletter will never be looked at as boring again.

Social networking sites allow you to develop relationships to people worldwide and introduce them to what your business has to offer. If you have an online business and haven’t yet used social networking for your business then now is the time to start.

Here are the top ten social networking websites to use for your business.

1. Facebook – Facebook is probably the biggest social networking website and gives many opportunities to meet new people in the niche of your business. With Facebook you can create groups for your business where you can share your offers for some great results.

2. YouTube – This is also a huge social network site allowing people to connect through video. You can build a channel of video uploads that you can share with people worldwide. YouTube allows people to subscribe to your video channel so you can build relationships through video marketing.

3. Twitter – with Twitter you can follow your friends or colleagues and they can follow you. You can share micro-updates with people who follow you and if you do it right this can be a great way to drive people to your website.

4. Squidoo – with this website you can create your own mini website called a lens and you can write about any topic you like. This is a great site for sharing information and also bringing visitors through to your own website.

5. Hubpages – is very similar to Squidoo but you create hubs in which you can write about any topic and link back to your own website.

6. MySpace – MySpace was once the biggest social networking site but is not as popular as it once was. It is still a very good site to build up contacts and promote your business.

7. LinkedIn – this site allows you to network with other business people within your industry. This is a great site for connecting with other people in the same industry or with similar business interests.

8. Classmates – this is a great social networking site that can connect you with friends that you went to school with and have lost contact with. This is a great way to rekindle friendships from the past.

9. Xanga – this is a fantastic blogging community where you can share photos, videos, blogs and more. You can network with people worldwide that share similar interests.

10. Weebly – this is another site similar to a blog where you can write about any topic and share information with other people worldwide. This is another great network site that can help you to promote your business.

These are our top ten social networking sites and there are many others out there. The most important point to remember when using any of these websites for marketing your business is that you abide by their terms of service. Your business can reach a whole new level when using social network sites for marketing so start joining some of these websites and watch your business and social life grow.

1. People tend to buy more products during seasonal celebrations than the rest of the year.

2. People are determined to purchase products, so it is easier to persuade them to purchase a product you offer (assuming of course you are doing it the right way).

3. Most purchases concern gifts to others, therefore quality is what matters while price is less significant.

4. The time of celebration is limited and specific. Therefore people cannot leave for tomorrow what they need to buy for the celebration. They must act in a timely manner. This urgency is a huge advantage to marketers trying to sell products.

One other motivating factor for buyers is that seasonal products are limited and something they have in-mind may not be available in the stores at a different time.

5. People connect seasonal celebrations with their childhood. That makes them more emotional and as you might already know emotion is the key factor that makes people buy a product.

6. It is not always necessary to offer a celebration related product to increase your sales. Even a valued Internet product like software or e-books can be a valued gift.

7. Marketers do not have to invent new or never before used methods to create interest in seasonal products.

The old traditional marketing techniques are effective and can still be applied. People want to buy because of the “celebration”. In fact, many people may not see their purchase as buying at all, but as an act of making someone (including themselves) more happy.

Naturally, seasonal marketing may use different strategies to promote products. Instead of offering a product discount try the following:

- Offer a portion of the price of your product to charities and make people feel they contribute to this charity themselves.

- Try a special offer like “purchase one product and get the other at half price” or “purchase one product and get another free to offer as a gift”.

These types of special offers can very easily increase your sales volume.

So, do not hesitate. Start promoting your products (or affiliate products) now. And don’t forget, once a celebration ends, there are many others right around the corner. People are always looking for reasons to purchase gifts for others or for themselves.

Outside of the specific area of interest that your business is involved in is the actual location of the business. Of course, with the advent of the Internet it’s entirely possible to market yourself worldwide, and common sense seems to say that appealing to as wide of an audience as you can is the best way to hook in more customers.

There is some truth to this, and it’s very true that the most profitable companies are international. But the flip side to this is that most of these companies did start out as local enterprises that simply grew and grew. Very few companies make their start hitting the international scene directly. Working worldwide requires an incredible attention to detail and generally a large staff of people who can pay attention to what regions are interested in what products and services.

In short, if you’re a smaller business, you’ll undoubtedly find it’s much more cost effective to market to your local area first. Of course, the nature of the Internet and international shipping being what they are, if you’re running a car parts dealership in Detroit and you get a query from Seattle, you’ll be able to help. Yet for marketing to be most effective, if you’re based out of Detroit, it will help if most of your marketing is targeted toward Detroit. This means that even if you don’t have a brick and mortar outlet, the costs of shipping and communication are much lower as compared to trying to do business with people in Moscow.

Once your business takes off, you can start marketing yourself to a wider arc of audiences. If you start in Detroit, move from there to the greater Michigan area, to the Midwest, to the country, to Canada and across the world. There’s a definite procession to the art, and you’ll likely find it much less expensive and a lot more effective to start small and then think big, rather than trying to take the entire world on at once. Start with your niche, start local – and grow.

The issue, though, is to become narrowed in focus without becoming too narrow. You need to be able to appeal to a broad swath of people in order to get maximum interest in your business. If you own a car parts dealership and your area of expertise is in auto body repair, you’ll do much better if you can also help the person who wants to know how to do an oil change. Keeping your focus narrow enough to be able to give off an aura of expertise about the subject at hand without becoming too esoteric or getting pegged as “the brakes guy” is the key. If you get too specific, you’ll lose a great deal of potential clients.

Joining several different forum groups is a great way to spread your expertise across many lines. If you focus in German cars, be sure to work with the Volkswagen fan group as well as the BMWs. If you like to do paint jobs on cars, you’ll better your business if you can also speak about changing the rims on tires. There are many ways to vary your expertise.

Also, be sure that all of your blog entries aren’t about the same sort of thing. Being able to write well about many different aspects of your business makes you seem more knowledgeable and you will get many more people coming to your website and asking you for advice. Ultimately, this level of trust will get you business.

Essentially, you want to go for the “jack of all trades, master of all trades” persona. This can be rather difficult to pull off, no doubt about it. But the fact of the matter is that when you get down to the business of spreading your expertise across many areas, the business will come back to you. Guaranteed.

Now I’ve read the studies too that state the lack of capital as the main reason most small businesses fail however, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that although I can’t prove it, I believe one of the biggest reasons business fail or underachieve is due to lack of effective marketing.

When I attended a seminar by T. Harv Eker a few years back, he mentioned and I quote “it takes creativity to make money”. In other words it doesn’t take money to make money; it takes creativity to make money. Now that’s a hard concept for most of us to grasp, it certainly was for me until I started reading a few Guerrilla Marketing books by Jay Conrad Levinson which primarily deal with using sweat equity and creativity instead of money to promote your business.

Now why am I telling you this? Basically to lay the foundation for the gem I’m about to share with you here today. That gem is a simple yet effective technique I picked up from two of my mentors Mark Victor Hansen and Jack Canfield.

This technique is called the “Rule of 5” and what it means is simply doing at least 5 things every day towards accomplishing a specific goal.

Now since learning this concept a ways back, I have expanded on it a bit to make it more relevant and effective for me. And my guess here is that there’s a good chance it will suit you as well.

So here’s my adaptation that I call “Rule of 5 Marketing”. Essentially it means doing at least 5 marketing activities every day to effectively promote yourself or your business. You commit to this and you are virtually guaranteed success.

Now that can mean making 5 phone calls to key prospects, giving a teleseminar to 5 or more prospects, sending out a press release to 5 publications that cater to your target audience or, whatever marketing activity is most effective for your business. Just make sure you do 5 things day in and day out, without fail because a big part of marketing is about consistency.

And speaking of consistency, a great way to hold yourself accountable and to stay on track is to keep a daily journal where you log the 5 marketing activities you completed each day.

If you find yourself slipping and not getting it done, I recommend you enlist a coach or a colleague to become an accountability partner for you – then you can phone them or shoot them an email letting them know you honored your commitment. This just adds that little extra something to inspire you to get it done.

So commit to it, journal it and be accountable to apply the Rule of 5 to your marketing every day and watch your business take off.

What this means is that starting an online business can be profitable if done correctly, given the predominance of the Internet in the average household. People who are naturally entrepreneurial or those who have already started a non-internet based business will definitely have a leg up on the rest of the game, but for the right person who’s willing to take appropriate steps to ensure success, starting an online business can be easy, fun, and even profitable.

In general, the differences between online business and traditional businesses are slight but distinct. Here are a few things that potential online business owners should take into consideration before jumping on the Information Superhighway:

Lower start up costs/high effort. One of the greatest things about online businesses is that they typically don’t cost much to get started. There’s no need to rent out a space or pay utilities, and there are lots of free avenues to advertise with over the digital waves. However, don’t be fooled into thinking that “less money invested means less work,” because nothing could be further from the truth. Online business owners often feel like their computers are grafted onto their hands!

Be a jack of all trades. It’s not good enough just to have a stellar idea or a fantastic service. In order to be successful, you need to be able to do graphic design, understand web server technology, programming, and knowledge of the Internet as a marketing medium. For those that can’t do all of this single handedly, outsourcing is an option, but this raises overall cost.

Think globally. This isn’t opening up a small Mom and Pop store in your neighborhood. The business will be able to reach all corners of the globe, thanks to the Internet. The good part is that this potentially means more business – the bad part is that owners will have to make provisions for costs such as international shipping, and maybe even pay for translated versions of their websites.

Marketers make the market. There are thousands of ways to market on the Internet, including pay-per-click, viral, drip, social networking, AdWords, and many others. Don’t know what these things mean? Owners of successful online businesses take the time to learn!

Some of these attributes make working online easier, some may prove to be more of a challenge – but they all make online businesses unique!