Tips To Get Your Creative Juices Flowing

Written by Christian on December 7, 2011 in How To - No comments

5 Easy Ways To Get Your Creative Juices Going

Writing an article doesnt just mean putting down thoughts into words then typing and writing it. You have to capture the interest of your readers and get them to keep on reading. To send your message across you have to get the attention of the reader and have a firm grasp of their interest and pique their curiosity.

The main ingredient in baking up an article is a large dose of creativity. While creativity may come natural to many people, some just gets into a block or something to that effect that can drive someone crazy. Many writers have literally torn their hair out when they get writers block and just cant seem to get their creative juices flowing.

Putting words into images in the readers mind is an art. A clear and crisp depiction requires a certain flair that only creativity can provide. Similes and metaphors help a lot, but the way an article gets entwined word for word, sentence by sentence then paragraph by paragraph into a whole article develops the essence of the article.

So just what do you have to do when nothing comes to mind? There is no surefire ways to get the perfect ideas but there are easy ways to get your creative juices flowing. No one can guarantee you of having the perfect mindset but many methods may aid you in achieving that state of mind. Here are five easy ways for that.

KEEP A DIARY OR A JOURNAL

1) Keep a diary or a journal with you always. Ideas can be triggered by anything you may hear, see, or smell. Your senses are your radar in finding great ideas. Write all of them into a journal and keep it with you for future reference. You may also write down anything that you have read or heard, someones ideas could be used to develop your own ideas and this is not stealing. Remember that ideas and creativity can come from anywhere; its the development of the idea that makes it unique.

RELAX

2) Relax and take time to sort things out. A jumbled mind cannot create any space for new ideas. Everyone must have a clear mind if one wishes to have their creativity in full speed. Get rid of all obstacles that can be a hindrance to your creativity. If you are bothered by something, you cannot force your mind to stay focused.

Try to relax every time that you can and think about your experiences and interactions with others. Your experiences are what shape your mindset and your opinions which could be reflected on your writings. Try to discover yourself, find out what triggers your emotions. Discover what inspires you and what ticks you off. You can use these emotions to help you in expressing yourself and your ideas, with this you can grow creatively.

CREATE A WORKSPACE THAT INSPIRES CREATIVITY

CREATIVE WORKSPACE

3) Create a working place that can inspire your creativeness. Your working place can be quite a hindrance if it doesnt make you feel happy or relaxed. Creativity comes from being in a good state of mind and a messed up workplace that causes distraction wont be conducive in firing up your creative flow.

Surround your working place with objects that makes you happy and relaxed. You may put up pictures, or scents, objects that inspire, or anything that can get your creativeness cranking. A clean and well organized workplace also rids of distractions and unwanted hindrances. With a good working place, you can work in peace and never notice the time pass by.

SET THE MOOD

4) Set the mood. Setting the mood requires you to just go with the moment or to induce your self to feeling what makes your mind works best. Finding out what makes you tick could help you find ways to get your creative juices flowing. Set the pace and tempo for your mood and everything else will follow.

There are many ways to set the mood. Some writers have been known to use alcohol, a little sip of wine to stir up the imagination. Some would like some mood music while others let the lighting of the environment create the mood.

GETAWAY

5) Go on a getaway and just do something unlike crazy. Letting yourself go and have fun produces adrenaline that can make your imagination go wild. Take an adventure or a solemn hike. Whatever it is that is unusual from your daily routine can take the rut out of your schedule. In no time at all, your creativeness will make use of that experience and get your imagination to go on overdrive.

-These tips can be used by anyone in the creative field , concept is still the same whether you are a graphic designer , poet or a musician

3 Tips Affiliate Marketers Need To Survive

Written by Christian on November 16, 2011 in Affiliate Marketing - No comments

3 Things All Affiliate Marketers Need To Survive Online

Affiliate marketers are always looking for the most succesful market that delievers the biggest payday. Sometimes they think it is a magic formula that is readily available for them. Actually, it is more complicated than that. It is just good marketing practices that have been proven over years of hard work and dedication.
There are tactics that have worked before with online marketing and is continuing to work in the online affiliate marketing world of today. With these top three marketing tips, you will be able to able to increase your sales and survive in the affiliate marketing online, ultimately making you a more effective affiliate marketer.

3 Tips For Affiliate Marketers

Affiliate Marketing - Orland oWeb Design - Orland WordPress Design

Affiliate Marketers Tip #1 – Use Unique Pages

1. Use unique web pages to promote each separate product you are marketing. Do not jumble everything together just to save some money on web hosting. It is best to have a site focusing on each and every product and nothing more.

Always include product reviews on the website so visitors will have an initial understanding on what the product can do for those who purchase them. Also include testimonials from users who have already tried the product. Be sure that these customers are more than willing to allow you to use their names and photos on the site of the specific product you are marketing.

You can also write articles highlighting the uses of the product and include them on the website as an additional page. Make the pages attractive compelling and include calls to act on the information. Each headline should attract the readers to try and read more, even contact you. Highlight your special points. This will help your readers to learn what the page is about and will want to find out more.

Affiliate Marketing - Orlando Web Design

Affiliate Marketers Tip #2 – Free is Good

2. Offer free reports to your readers. If possible position them at the very top side of your page so it they simply cannot be missed. Try to create autoresponder messages that will be mailed to those who input their personal information into your sign up box. According to research, a sale is closed usually on the seventh contact with a prospect.

Only two things can possibly happen with the web page alone: closed sale or the prospect leaving the page and never return again. By placing useful information into their inboxes at certain specified period, you will remind them of the product they thought they want later and will find out that the sale is closed. Be sure that the content is directed toward specific reasons to buy the product. Do not make it sound like a sales pitch.

Focus on important points like how your product can make life and things easier and more enjoyable. Include compelling subject lines in the email. As much as possible, avoid using the word free because there are still older spam filters that dumps those kind of contents into the junk before even anyone reading them first. Convince those who signed up for your free reports that they will be missing something big if they do not avail of your products and services.

Affiliate Marketers Tip #3 – Traffic , Traffic and More Traffic

3. Get the kind of traffic that is targeted to your product. Just think, if the person who visited your website has no interest whatsoever in what you are offering, they will be among those who move on and never come back. Write articles for publication in e-zines and e-reports. This way you can locate publications that is focusing on your target customers and what you have put up might just grab their interest.

Try to write a minimum of 2 articles per week, with at least 300-600 words in length. By continuously writing and maintaining these articles you can generate as many as 100 targeted readers to your site in a day.
Always remember that only 1 out of 100 people are likely to buy your product or get your services. If you can generate as much as 1,000 targeted hits for your website in a day, that means you can made 10 sales based on the average statistic.

The tactics mentioned above are not hard to implement, if you think about it. It just requires a little time and an action plan on your part.

Try to use these tips for several affiliate marketing programs. You can end maintaining a good source of income and surviving in this business that not all marketers can do.
Besides, think of the huge paychecks you will be receiving. By following these steps , you will be on your way to joining the ranks of succesful affiliate marketers.

Strategies to Improve Your Localized Marketing

Written by Christian on October 15, 2011 in Affiliate Marketing - No comments

Get More Out Of Your Local Marketing

As businesses continue to improve their digital marketing portfolio, not only has nation-wide marketing become important, but localized marketing has become highly competitive as well. Whether your business is a restaurant, independent local store or general business, local consumers drive plenty of businesses. Assuming your business thrives more off local marketing than it does national, there are some easy tips that can help improve your local business marketing.

Even with local businesses being right around the corner from customers, an online profile is still vital in the process of getting people through the door. Local businesses face the same set of obstacles that larger scale companies face when it comes to building their online profile. It’s important for most businesses to build an impressive digital portfolio, no matter the scale of the company.

Continuing on with the importance of the online portfolio, it’s important to get mobile profile as well. Search engines often rate websites with mobile versions much higher than those without. Also, building your website with location based keywords such as a city name, street name or neighborhood help make it more accessible for mobile web surfers.

One of the major local marketing techniques that’s taken off in the past couple years is “check in” services. Using services such as Foursquare or Gowalla allows different businesses to offer discounts or special deals for checking in at a specific location. Building a profile of check-ins on either of these services help to spread the word through a social network medium, as well as rewards customers for building loyalty.

Along with developing check in services, building up your social media profile is just as important in localized marketing. Having an active profile on platforms such as Facebook and Twitter is one of the main ways to keep contact with your customers when they aren’t in the store. A twitter account and a Facebook page are two great first steps. You can also extend your social media footprint by considering other platforms like LinkedIn and MeetUp.

The most important aspect of improving your localized marketing is to essentially target your websites and ads in general. This means that your website would be focused towards a specific city, state or region where your business is located. For example, if your business is in Central Florida, you would make sure to put your address on every page of your website, that way customers are reassured of the locality of your business.

Because your business may be smaller and lack the manpower, it could be smart to outsource some of your local marketing, depending on your location. For example, if you’re located in Central Florida, you could use an Orlando SEO, mobile design, or development company to improve your localized profile. Not only can this take some of the stress off your hands, but it will also ensure quality work done by professionals.

For smaller businesses, localized marketing can be a key to your long run success. Luckily, there are some great techniques for building that local profile in a time period that isn’t too long. More than ever, customers are going straight online to get results for what they’re looking for. Follow these tips to make sure your business stays high in local search results.

- Article Written By

Paige Taylor
pgtaylor8@gmail.com

5 Ways To Increase Your Page Rank

Written by Christian on September 30, 2011 in Google, SEO, Social Networks - No comments

This is one of the questions that I get asked alot by some of my clients , and so , I decided to write do a quick wrtie up on this topic. There are way more than 5 ways to increase your page rank ( however I am only going to cover 5 of them ).

What is Page Rank , and Why Do I want it ?

Google describes PageRank:^[4]

“

PageRank reflects our view of the importance of web pages by considering more than 500 million variables and 2 billion terms. Pages that we believe are important pages receive a higher PageRank and are more likely to appear at the top of the search results.

PageRank also considers the importance of each page that casts a vote, as votes from some pages are considered to have greater value, thus giving the linked page greater value. We have always taken a pragmatic approach to help improve search quality and create useful products, and our technology uses the collective intelligence of the web to determine a page's importance.

1. SHARE YOUR CONTENT VIA YOUR SOCIAL NETWORKS

You have written a great article, so why not spread the word ? By using social networks ( Twitter, Facebook, and of course Google+, you can spread your news \ article to a much larger audience. and in turn, increase the likelihood of someone retweeting your link , or even linking back to you. What does that mean ? Increaasing your visibility to a network of people you previsouly would not have access to

2. USE APPROPRIATE KEYWORDS (keyword stuffing is a Big Google no-no)

Some people have the notion that the more keywords they "stuff" in their meta tags the better. In theory that sounds right , but that could be further from the truth. Google frowns upon this practice , and could penalize your site ( by taking away whatever page rank you have and even pulling your website from the search engine). Using clear, accurate keywords for your web site is very important. When adding keywords for your page \ website, please keep the following points in mind

Using clear, accurate keywords for your web site is very important.
The words you use as your keywords will determine how you are found.
Use only keywords that are distinctly related to the main focus of your web site.
Using the same keywords does not increase your relevancy.
Avoid using keywords that are too vague or too specific.
You are found by any coombination of the keywords you choose.
Changing your keywords often increases your visibility.
Do not use names of other companies in order to capitalize on their existing exposure.
Use only one word per "Keyword Field." No spaces or punctuation are allowed.

Here is an example of the proper use of keywords
Exotic Gift Baskets, Inc. sells gift baskets which contain exotic coffees, candies, nuts and flowers. Their claim to fame is a line of gift baskets known as "Quick Baskets," which they can usually ship within 6 hours. The corporate office is based in New York and ships to anywhere in the U.S. and Canada. The majority of their business is done during the holiday season.

Examples of good and bad Keywords for a listing:

Good Keywords:

gifts
baskets
exotic
quick
flowers
unique
Christmas

Bad Keywords:

free – (Using the word "free" is misleading)
Starbucks – (Do not use other company names unless authorized and relevant)
FTD – (Do not use other company names unless authorized and relevant)
Web – (Too vague and not directly related)
chrysanthemums – (Too specific and not directly related)

3. Include Signatures

Including signatures whenever you post is a great way to get backlinks to your site. After posting a comment on a forum, a website ,etc. Here is an example:

John Doe

john.doe@email.com

http://www.johndoe.com

to easy right ?

4. Submit Your Website To Search Engines

Submit to search engine directories. Search engine directories are a good way to get a free link to your website. They also increase your chances at being listed higher on popular search engines like Google, and overture.

Most search engine directories allow you to submit to their website for free. This will allow you to increase your web presence by being listed on another search engine, and it will also be a free link.

Remember the more links you have the higher your PR will be.

Here are some links that you can submit your website to get you started :

Google

Yahoo

5. RSS FEEDS – ( Rich Site Summary)

RSS is also known as Really Simple Syndication. JISC describes RSS as “a lightweight XML format for distributing news headlines and other content on the Web.”

In addition to making it easy for other sites to distribute your headlines and content, your RSS feed will be indexed by popular Blog search engines, including Technorati, BlogSearch, and Ask.com Bloglines.

As I mentioned , there are tons of ways to increase your Page Rank, what are some methods you use ?

New analytics tools should drive even more businesses into social media use

Written by Christian on September 29, 2011 in Featured, SEO, Twitter - 1 Comment

I am pleased to announce that I will now have a guest blogger posting here with me from time to time. Paige Taylor is a recent college graduate majoring in creative writing,

New analytics tools should drive even more businesses into social media use

A few weeks back, Twitter announced the release of a new web analytics tool that will allow webmasters and businesses to begin tracking the traffic that is driven in by the popular social networking tool. Twitter has grown into one of the largest social media services on the planet with over 100 million users worldwide and it will continue to grow in the corporate landscape with new tools such as this.

Up until the announcement from Twitter a few weeks back, the landscape for tracking and crunching statistics tied to social media platforms has generally been a tough go. Even though analytics tools grow at a good pace, the social media realm is growing at an exponential rate currently. This makes it hard for analytics tools to keep pace. In the past, these platforms of social media have had to rely on outside vendors to get any type of data to comeback. Now that there is an official social media platform analytics tool, expect other platforms to follow suit.

The twitter tool will help site owners and webmasters understand the total amount of traffic that is being driven in through the social network. This new tool is related to Twitter’s acquisition of BackType earlier this year, a web designed program for exploring the effect of tweeting. An initial round of the analytics service was rolled out this past week to a small division of partners and then a full release is expected in the next couple of weeks.

Having a tool like this will be a great attractor for businesses on the fence about embarking into the social media landscape. Even though most seem to be up on the trend, there are still some businesses clinging to their non-tech personality. Tools like these will give businesses an easier way to track their success through social media, making it more appealing for bosses who are number and goal hungry. One would expect the other social media platforms to develop similar tools with their own branding in the near future and this will only drive more businesses in as well.

The Twitter analytics tool is just one of the great examples of growth and trends in digital marketing and social media analytics in 2011. Data tracking for social media platforms has become one of the most talked about trends in digital marketing, as well as other growing tools such as mobile development, tag management and anomaly detection.

As the importance of a digital presence becomes more pervasive in the coming years, expect the last handful of businesses to truly hop onto to the ideal of having a total online presence. As small tools such as social media analytics make things easier for the business owners and users, they will only continue to drive more and more people into the world of digital marketing.

- Article Written By

Paige Taylor

pgtaylor8@gmail.com

invalid command-line parameter: Files\Android\android-sdk\tools/emulator-arm.exe.

Written by Christian on September 16, 2011 in Android Development - No comments

So I was working on an app last night an upgraded the Android SDK ( yay upgrade right ? ) Wrong. After I restarted Eclipse , and I tried running an app , I was getting this message-

What does this nonsense mean ?

It means that Eclipse is not able to properly read the SDK. There is currently a problem with R12 where the SDK location cannot contain any spaces.

The default installation location is: C:\Programme Files(x86)\Android\android-sdk. They are currently fixing the problem but you can currently work around it by changing the SDK location path in eclipse to C:\PROGRA~2\Android\android-sdk.

If you are running 32-bit Windows, change the path to C:\PROGRA~1\Android\android-sdk

To simplify things ( and avoid any possible glitches in the future) I literally copied the android-sdk folder , and pasted it in C:\ , so now the SDK is located here : C:\android-sdk. Once the SDK has been moved you need to adjust the location of the SDK in your IDE ( check the screenshot below)

Go to Window>>>>Preferences

Eclipse Android SDK

On the left hand column you will see different Categories ( General, Android, Etc) . Click on Android. You will see the SDK location. Click browse, and then locate your newly moved SDK. Click apply , and then restart .

That's it for today folks Hope this was helpful .

Eclipse Android SDK 2

So what are you still doing here ? Go develop some apps lol . Peace

TTYL App for Android

Written by Christian on September 13, 2011 in Android Development - No comments

Have you ever been in a business meeting, and received a text message that you could not respond to ? Or how about when you receive a message while in the middle of driving? This app sends an automatic reply to anyone that sends you a text message, informing them that you are temporarily not available to respond.

How does it work ?

If you are going to be unavailable , or just don't wish to be disturbed its as easy as

1. Type in your new away message ( i.e. , "I am driving and cannot reply to you right now"

2. Press " Change Away Message" ( you will hear a notification to let you know that the message gas been updated )

3. That's it !!!

( be sure to keep the app window open , otherwise the app will deactivate )

Please note – This app will only work if it is active on your screen. If you close the app out , or go to another Window, it will deactivate.

Click Here To Download

Screenshots :

TTYL for Android

Features Include :

+ Audible Alert to notify when "Away Message" has been changed
+ *Geolocation Based Text ( geolocation is displayed on auto-reply text)
+ User friendly interface
+ Can Install App to SD Card ( I highly recommend using App 2 SD )

FOR THOSE WONDERING – THIS APPLICATION HAS ACCESS TO THE FOLLOWING:

SEND SMS MESSAGES
Allows application to send SMS messages. Malicious applications may cost you money by sending messages without your confirmation.

YOUR LOCATION
FINE (GPS) LOCATION
Access fine location sources such as the Global Positioning System on the device, where available. Malicious applications can use this to determine where you are, and may consume additional battery power.

COARSE (NETWORK-BASED) LOCATION
Access coarse location sources such as the cellular network database to determine an approximate device location, where available. Malicious applications can use this to determine approximately where you are.

MOCK LOCATION SOURCES FOR TESTING
Create mock location sources for testing. Malicious applications can use this to override the location and/or status returned by real location sources such as GPS or Network providers.