Work Without Boss Blog

Over the weekend, seven of us went to dinner at an Italian restaurant in the next town over from where we live. Ironically none of us ever heard of it before it being recommended by a co-worker one day last week. It is the internet age so we immediately checked their online menu (which, by the way, contained no prices but we were assured by the person who recommended the place that their prices were very reasonable).

The online reviews were terrific mainly focusing on the great food quality and the fact that the owner/chef would personally come to the table and rattle off the menu. This further added to our excitement.

We arrived there and were surprised to see that there were only 8 tables in the tiny restaurant (and we took up 3 of them pushed together). True to form, the owner/chef came out and rattled off the menu but then told us in his charming, half English and half Italian that he would decide for us. The appetizer came out which was one small pepper and a few lettuce leaves on top of 2 small slices of tomato. Next came pasta: 10 – 12 penne pastas per person with a trace of sauce (when my wife asked for extra sauce, out came the chef, rolled his eyes and said, again in his charming style, basta – enough – you have enough sauce). The entre came and it had 1 chicken medallion and 1 spare rib. For dessert the charmer sent out 7 different desserts from a tiny slice of pound cake to my pinky-sized sliver of cheesecake approximately ½ an inch high. (I should mention that my wine connoisseur cousin did order a bottle of wine for the table which she claims was out of some “few bucks wine in a box”.) When the bill arrived all of us were stunned: 50 bucks per person.

The next day when we realized what transpired the previous night, all of us were emailing each other about the experience. We felt as though we paid 5 dollars for the food and 45 for the entertainment. All felt ripped off by this shyster charmer. And we all vowed to tell everyone we knew either in person or via email to stay away.

Now, why tell you about that experience? How do you present your business opportunity?

Are you the charmer who will purposely skirt anything that might dissuade the prospect from joining your home based business opportunity such as viewing a product or price list? That happened to me once when I wanted to see the product price list and was told that it was proprietary information and would only be shown to me AFTER I became a representative. For some reason that sounded plausible to me…my feeling was that they have their rules. But when I eventually saw it, I was horrified and not only felt like my friend was part of ripping me off but betrayed our friendship as well.

When you speak about residual, walk-away income are you being honestly substantive? Does your prospect fully understand that it will take time to build a decent residual income? Or are you giving it the fluff approach: before you know it money will flow from all these income streams that you really will not know where to spend it all. (We actually attended a network marketing function when some almighty muck-a-de-muck breathlessly told us about getting various monthly checks: a green one, a blue one, a white one, a pink one, a yellow one, a tan one…)

Fluff might sponsor them in to your group but when they realize it was all fluff, they will be out of there. You might sponsor fewer reps presenting substance (with a tad of flare) but they will remain with you building their business (and yours too).

Andy Acciaiolii, Providence College, Entrepreneurial Business Owner 31 Years, Baby Boomer, Online Marketing Strategist, Global Marketers Online, http://www.GlobalMarketersOnline.com

Article Source:http://www.articlesbase.com/internet-marketing-articles/when-it-comes-to-your-network-marketing-opportunity-are-you-all-fluff-or-all-substance-1412410.html

RSS directories are popular these days. RSS is widely used initially by news sites to allow others to syndicate their news stories. Now, a lot of other websites are using RSS. It is being used in flagging new forum headlines, auction listings, sales listings and others.

The meaning of RSS is actually not clear. RSS may or may not be an acronym, actually. RSS may stand for Really Simple Syndication. But others say its Rich Site Summary and sometimes Rich Syndication Standard. The noted creator of RSS directory would be Netscape. It was released sometime in March 1999. The included a UserLand application which is called scripting news. Netscape stopped developing it, but UserLand continued doing so. Another company, RSS-DEV Working Group also released their own version.

RSS directories are sites that collate all RSS links and place them in different categories for other applications to use. This is similar to web hosting, only instead of web pages, they contain RSS links. These links will pop out on the website and when you click it, you will be directed to the main source of the link.

RSS poses a lot of uses for those who’d like to use the Internet for marketing or commerce. Here are the things you can do with it:

Create links from their website to yours.
If you are selling or promoting something, web traffic is important. The more RSS directory you upload, the more chances you have people seeing those and checking your site out. And if they have customized their sites with your RSS feeds, then they would get updated listings from your site to theirs automatically.

Collating analysis.
If you have a brand and you’d like to know how your competitor is doing, you may use RSS to see what they have so far. Get a directory of their product or service so you’ll know first hand what they have come out with. With the data gathered you now can plan on how you can counter them.

Tracking your own progress. If you can check out your competitor, of course you’d like to check out too how your business or product is going too. With an RSS directory of your own, you can know how many people are interested in what you are selling or offering.

Increases productivity.
Putting up RSS directories, let’s say for newsletters, adds efficiency to your company. If you use RSS for sending out newsletters instead of mailing them to recipients, you’d eliminate the possibility of your letter being classified as spam by users, or being sent in a closed mail account.

Increases efficiency.
There are a lot of websites or news articles that could be beneficial to your brand or company. At times, you’d like to add them to your site. Without the use of RSS, you’d have to copy the entire thing down and note where you got it. If you use RSS, then the headline and part of the story shows up on your site. And this is an automatic process now. If you use RSS, you just include the directory and automatically, the headline appears without you doing much.

Posting RSS directories could cost you some. But the benefits override it. Some sites even offer free RSS directory posting. If you are just starting up, you may like to check those out. The more RSS directory you have up, the more the possibility that you are sending out information to the people interested in your goods. Reason behind is that people will only get the RSS feeds that they are interested in. If they get yours, they sure are the target market.

Disseminating information online has become easier with RSS. The technology provided a cost-effective way of transferring facts and figures out. Utilizing it would definitely add up to your marketing approach. With it, you have an avenue of reaching out to even more people so easily.

RSS uses XML to syndicate pages. Though that sounds a little technical, there a lot of websites that has user-friendly interface to guide in building your directory. Go ahead and put up your RSS directory up now. RSS has proven to be essential. It has ceased to be an option; it has become a necessity.