Horse Hubs

There's a little known secret we writers like to keep to ourselves, because we fear that if word got out, readers would immediately become disillusioned and abandon us. It's not as bad as a reviewer spoiling a twist in the plot of a book, I suppose. Those people should be tarred with onion dip, feathered with potato chips and released to a crowd of hungry football fans on the day of the Super Bowl. But it is a little like the magician showing you how he fooled you.

Here's the secret: stories are rarely written from beginning to end without rough spots along the way.

This might sound obvious, but if you're a good writer it should never be obvious to the reader. Your stories should read seamlessly. I know the process is anything but seamless. Piecing Frankenstein's monster together was less daunting. You've got stitches all over the page. Scotch tape. Different colored inks. Scribbles in the margins. Stop and goes. And this is your third draft. But after that final draft, all of this must be invisible to the reader.

What you should take away from this is the understanding that you have incredible freedom as a writer. No one has to ever see your early drafts, your wastepaper basket full of crumpled paper, that climax that was so ingenious when you first thought of it but turned out to be a cliché on the page. Those are yours to keep. No one need ever read them.

The process doesn't have to be painful, either. In fact, if you remove some of the constraints you place on yourself as a writer, it can be down right enjoyable. For instance, you don't always have to write a story from beginning to end. Connie Willis likes to write her endings first, then write the story back toward the beginning. Jeffrey Deaver prefers to spend months working out every detail of his story in an outline, with specific places for twists. Dean Koontz, who used to outline his stories, now lets his characters provide the impetus for his books. He follows along behind and lets himself experience surprise much as his readers will.

Every writer has to find what works best for him. And every writer has to understand that what works best for this story might not work best for the next. Don't be afraid to experiment. Don't be afraid to let go and see where it takes you. (This will, of course, be easier if you stuff a dirty sock into the mouth of that little editor sitting on your shoulder. You know who I'm talking about. He's the one who never has anything nice to say. So do that now. Dig out a dirty sock and use it.)

What I'd like you to take away from this is the comfort that a word on a piece of paper (or on a computer screen, for that matter) is not the same as a word etched in stone. It's okay to work on the description of a character until you get restless, then toy with the opening sentence or try reworking the dialogue in that early scene. It's okay to toss out pages, try different words, add scenes. Tinkering goes hand-in-hand with creativity.

And again — no one will ever know.

It may resemble Frankenstein's monster to you, but all the reader will see is a living, breathing story.

Just don't forget to pull the stitches before you're finished.

Copyright © 2005 David B. Silva

About David: David B. Silva has written eight novels. His most recent, All The Lonely People, is published by Delirium Press. He's awaiting the release of The Hawke Legacy, a novel of epic horror, from Subterranean Press. His short fiction has appeared in The Year's Best Horror, The Year's Best Fantasy & Horror, and The Best American Mystery Stories. In 1991, he won a Bram Stoker Award for his short story, The Calling. Visit his site, The Successful Writer (http://thesuccessfulwriter.com)

There are numerous reasons why people choose to start a
home-based business. Some of those reasons include:

1. Dissatisfied with their present employment situation.
2. Out of work due to being laid off or downsizing by their
   employer.
3. A need to be home more with young children, an infirm family member, or aging parents.
4. A yearning to be their own boss.

Whatever your particular reason for exploring a home-based
business, there are a few common steps you need to take in order
to launch your business.

First off, you need to come to grips with reality…be realistic
in your expectations. Far too many folks read advertisements
that are hype and imply quick money, and lots of it, from a
home-based business start-up. It will certainly take a year, and
in some cases it may take up to three years, before you begin to
truly make a significant profit from your business.

I have helped a large number of people start up their own
home-based businesses using the Internet. Over time, I have come
to recognize two of the most important factors for identifying
people that should NOT start a home based business. If a
prospective entrepreneur says something like…

“I’m broke and need to make some money, fast!” or,

“I want to start a home-based business, but I don’t want to spend
anything on it until after I start earning some money.”

…it is certain that they have not addressed reality and, with
that mindset, they will most certainly fail.

It takes a lot of time to successfully market and promote a new
business. If you are planning a home-based business in order to
spend a lot of time with young children or care for the elderly, a
full-time business (and income) may not be a realistic objective.

Second, spend some time researching your business idea. Make sure
there is truly enough of a market for your product or service.
It’s easy to fall into the trap of having a hobby or passion for
something that you like to do and just assuming that you can turn
it into an economically viable business.

Third, learn as much as you can about small business. There is a
wealth of information available on this topic and the US Small
Business Administration is probably as good a place to start as
any. Just go to http://www.sba.gov/ and navigate to the sections
dealing with home based businesses.

Fourth, write a business plan. It is your roadmap to reaching
your objectives. There are numerous articles on the Internet
and in libraries that can assist you in developing your business
plan as well as addressing the many other issues involved with
starting and operating a business from home. As a starting
point, here are a couple of Small Business Administration
website locations that should prove useful:

http://www.sba.gov/starting/indexbusplans.html
http://www.sba.gov/library/pubs.html

And last, but not least, seek the advice of a tax professional.
Your first reaction may be that you can’t afford such expenses
right now; but, in reality, you can’t afford not to seek such
advice from the very beginning of your home business start-up.
They can advise you about ways you may be able to reduce the
amount of taxable business income at the end of the year.
Paying for an hour or two of consultation with a tax professional
at the beginning will probably save you much more than that
amount later on down the road.

I never cease to be amazed at the number of people that seem to
think that some magic is somehow created when you put the words
“home based” in front of the word “business”. It’s still
business…it just happens to be based in the home.

This article is freely available for reprint provided that the
resource box at the end of the article is left intact and the
article is published complete and unaltered. If you are using
this article on a website or e-book, please make sure that the
link in the resource box is live or clickable.

—————————————————————–
Kirk Bannerman operates a successful home based business and
resides in California. For more details, visit his website at
http://business-at-home.us
—————————————————————–

Have you noticed that 90% of “How To” information about creating and marketing your own information-based products online is basic beginner stuff?

Yet, every week we hear from those looking for help taking their business to the next level.

It’s true, the vast majority of dreamers never earn a cent because they simply don’t get started.

Most of the how to ebooks are aimed at this audience.

What about the large group who struggle to turn initial success into a massive success?

Now - it’s true, we all want to constantly improve our businesses, meaning that we are never completely satisfied with our results.

Yet there is still a massive number of people who have achieved some initial success - but not quite enough to both sustain and grow their business to the next level.

Do you fall into one of the following categories?

• Working your online business part-time, hoping to replace full-time job?

• Working your online business full-time, want to hire some help to free up more of your time to focus on growth

• Finished testing your latest product or service, results look positive, but you really need to ramp up quickly to beat the growth curve.

Chance are you do fall into one of those categories - they tend to fit most online entrepreneurs today.

It’s so important to start with the end in mind.

Expect success, plan to achieve it and plan to exceed it right from the early stages of your business planning.

Here are 3 steps you can take today to take your online business marketing how to infoproducts to the next level.

Tip 1: Increase Your Profit Per Customer

Yes, the other PPC - profit per customer is the revenue generated by each customer after subtracting costs such as marketing, overhead and cost of product/cost of sales.

How do you increase your profit per customer?

Here are a few ways you need to put into practice immediately:

• Implement a post-sale autoresponder sequence that is setup to expose multiple back-end offers relevant to your buyers

• Bundle multiple products and additional bonuses to increase the price of your products without increasing cost

• Include a service offering related to your product as an upsell or back-end sale to your offer

• Explore alternative product formats with higher perceived value such as software, videos, audios or seminars

Tip 2: Pollinate Multiple Product Sites

Just as bees cross-pollinate flowers to help them grow, so will your business benefit from multiple, related product sites cross-marketing.

A master of this approach is the highly successful Yanik Silver

You’ll find by visiting one of his sites, for example, his tremendously successful Instant Sales Letters Site here:

http://www.infoproductcreator.com/part/ysales.html

You will find cross-marketing for some of his other related sites such as his “33 Days To Online Profits”

You won’t just find pop-ups, but also links right in the sales letter talking about his other related products.

Not only does this expose people to multiple products which enhances his Profit Per Customer, but it also allows him to setup strong links which help his search engine positioning

Tip 3: Setup and Support Affiliate Program

Folks, if you are not running your own affiliate program, and supporting your affiliates - keeping contact as well as trainings, then you are missing the boat on sales *** possibly as much as 100% or more increase in sales.

Over 50% of my traffic and sales come from affiliates.

There are many options including services such as Commission Junction (www.cj.com), and software you use to manage your affiliate programs, my favorites being:

1Automation Wiz for overall order processing, autoresponders and affiliate management: http://www.infoproductcreator.com/part/1automationwiz

Ultimate Affiliate from Groundbreak.com: http://www.infoproductcreator.com/part/groundbreak

They both have trial periods so you can check them out before spending a dime.

It’s fair to say that every successful how to product marketer online I know practices these 3 principles.

When work with ebook writers or other product entrepreneurs to increase their success online through our consulting programs, we often achieve incredible results by working on one of these 3 areas.

You can take your business to the next level too - and if you need help, let us know, we’ll be happy to share more information with you.

About The Author

Jeff Smith

Discover how to create your own best-selling eBooks, Special reports or books to sell online …AND keep 100% of the profits. Limited time complimentary access to 7-Part Minicourse will get you started quickly and easily. Visit: http://www.highertrustmarketing.com/

Thinking Unconsciously

Daydreaming your way to performance and profits.

Like many of my clients, I am always looking for ways to speed things up - to produce more results with the same or even fewer resources. We probably agree on this. The key is certainly not about working harder; it may not even be about working smarter. But there are definitely ideas which work, and those ideas need to be uncovered. Often you can find them through analytical thinking. In my last article I discussed this: a process of asking deliberate questions, and in a disciplined, even rigorous way, coming up with answers. Asking and answering, that’s the analytical thinking process. Do it enough and you will likely come up with something useful.

But there is a whole other process, a “something” that goes on in the mind. Many people call it intuition. Others call it “gut feel,” or “tapping the universal spirit.” In contrast to rational, linear left-brain thinking, it is sometimes called “right-brain” thinking, synthetic, or holistic thinking. I’m going to call it unconscious thinking. What I mean by this cumbersome phrase is that this kind of ideation is based on removing the linear, rational, questioning, conscious thinker from the equation, and tapping into the results when they come.

How do you do that? Everybody has their favorite way. Several people, responding to my last article’s caveat that I was not referring to the thinking that goes on in the shower, wrote that their best ideas occur in the shower. For others, unconscious thinking occurs while driving their car. Or working out in the gym, riding a bike, or jogging. Gardening seems to be a hot spot for hot ideas. And sybarites I know report getting great ideas while being massaged and sipping wine in the hot tub.

Some people put themselves in a trance state via meditation or actively listening to music. Others go into a trance watching TV. I get great ideas when I’m at the movies. (Curiously, it doesn’t work while watching a movie on videotape — I think the level of concentration is too low — which may be a key to the way these processes work. For the car people, it only works while driving — not as a passenger. The logic behind this is similar.)

What is this spontaneous generation of unconscious ideas? I must confess that, really, I have no idea. But I do know how to make it happen. Spontaneously. The key is to loosen the grip of consciousness on the mind, and get the logical, linear, Q&A thinking process out of the way.

Spontaneous generation comes in two basic flavors –fortuitous and deliberate, both of them “unconscious”. An example of the fortuitous kind is what happens when you are driving your car, and an incredibly useful thought just “comes” to you. If you are not prepared, you are likely to lose it as quickly as it came. On the other hand, if you keep a voice recorder or notepad handy, you can capture this potential gem. Plus, being prepared to capture these “fortuitous” intuitive pearls, seems to be a very important part of having them more often.

An example of the deliberate version is when, upon retiring for the evening, you tell yourself (with feeling and conviction) you want to dream the solution to a particular problem. If you get lucky (back to fortuitous), you will. If you do this repeatedly — program yourself with a problem — you will start to dream solutions regularly.

Analytical types may scoff at this “telling yourself” bit. But recent research in cognitive science indicates a possible model for the mind as a series of unconnected agents, each with its own limited function set. Some of these agents may be linked by well-worn pathways. Others, however, have never communicated, and as yet have no way to do so. “Telling yourself” what you want to think about has the effect of sending a broadcast signal throughout the agent population, which may enlist them in your unconscious thinking process.

Whether by happenstance or intention, the available techniques, if you can call taking a shower a technique, are interchangeable. The only difference is whether you set out to generate a specific idea or whether random ideas comes unbidden.

Two habits will make unconscious thinking work more effectively for you. First, prepare your environment to capture ideas as they come. I put 3×5 note cards and pens everywhere — in my car, my night-table, the medicine cabinet, next to my favorite reading chair, my suit pockets, gym bag, even my under-the-seat bike storage pocket — just about everywhere I am, I can find a note card. Plus, I carry a voice recorder in my briefcase. The new one has a digital interface to my computer and transcribes notes automatically.

The second habit is to deliberately plant seeds of ideas in my unconscious mind. I regularly “re-mind” myself of the areas where I could use a creative flash. For instance, if I am working on a book chapter or an article, or if I need a new solution for a client’s business problem, I put that into my mental hopper and let it sit. Often ideas come to me, and if I am prepared to capture them — voila!

So — what are some ways to stimulate unconscious thinking?

We’ve mentioned a number already. One way to stimulate unconscious thinking is to engage in physical exercise. Jogging, swimming, biking, hiking, weight-lifting — all of these activities are great for idea generation. The key is they are all sort of mindless - not requiring much detailed thought. This may seem paradoxical — if you are trying to shut down your conscious mind, wouldn’t you want to distract it with a conscious thought process? No — it seems you want to have the opposite effect– you want to lull the conscious questioning thinker to sleep, and simple repetitive physical work seems to do that. Likewise, playing a rhythm instrument like drums or bass, or any sort of rhythmic chanting or dancing, will produce a similar result.

These activities, along with morning showers, afternoon massages, and evening hot tubs, may be considered strange in the corporate setting (except in California.) Here are some more corporately flavored, “structured” ways to generate unconscious thinking.

Mind mapping is an excellent technique for tapping the unconscious. Tony Buzan, the inventor of mind mapping, has a book called The Mind Map Book which details this technique. Mind mapping seems to unlock certain expressive mechanisms not available by writing. Drawing representations of your problems and possible solutions, however crudely, also works well. For truly graphically challenged, try collages made from cutout images. Sometimes just flipping though magazines will stimulate ideas. Get a big stack of publications — ones with good pictures — and start flipping.

There are activities which you can do in groups. You can play word association games. The game will usually have a context — the idea you’d like to explore. Start with a list of words which relate to your central idea, and free associate. Speed matters in this process, so record these games on audio tape. Another version is to use one of those magnetic poetry kits. Give people the kits and let them go to work. Also, you can mind-map in groups. Or gather a bunch of great images on a projector and let your group play off them.

I mentioned this in my last article: you can use structured information sources in an unstructured way. Use the Oxford English Dictionary (really any dictionary will do, the OED just seems better.) Pick words at random and establish connections with your central ideas. Or use a Tarot deck, or the Taoist I-Ching. You used to be able to do this with fortune cookies but the message quality has gone downhill. Pick a passage from your favorite inspirational literature such as the Bible or Jonathan Livingston Seagull, and invent a connection to your central idea — see what new things come up.

Try attending a seminar when you need new ideas. The seminar need not even be on the subject of concern. Just being in the seminar room, removed from your controlled environment, can cause your conscious mind to let go a little — just enough for spontaneous ideas to creep to the surface and make themselves available. And for those of you who don’t - read some books. On anything. Reading books always stimulates random thinking if you let it. Remember to keep note cards and pens handy.

Bring in outside speakers or consultants to spout off their ideas. (I know this might seem like a shameless plug.) Or cross-over people from departments who normally don’t work together. That always gets the juices flowing. Take these mixed-up groups and do any of the above.

Try game playing — simple things like checkers, go fish, touch-tackle football, Lego, plastic model building, even pickup sticks. Even home or office renovation work, which is simply another game to play. Try something community minded -a neighborhood cleanup program: lots of sweeping, lawn mowing, and trash pickup. All of these “games” distract the conscious mind. Do a session, gather everyone together, and ask what ideas came up. They will.

Do you get the idea? Do you have any other ideas?

Here then are your first two assignments. One: Make a mind map of all the ways you currently do this. Two: Focus your intention on developing some new unconscious processes. Walk around for a few days with this thought deep in the back of your mind. See what you come up with during the week.

The steps are:

Identify the area in which you want new ideas.

Create a diversion for your conscious mind. Lull it to sleep using any of the above methods, or one of your own.

Keep handy a way to record your ideas. This is critical. Use a pocket recorder or note cards. It’s a good idea to always carry one or the other.

Take your unconsciously generated ideas seriously. Pay attention to them: you may not use every idea, but at least evaluate it. Your unconscious mind likes that and you’ll get more.

Visit www.paullemberg.com/toolsandtips.html to download a list of more “methods” to stimulate unconscious thinking.

Paul Lemberg is the president of Quantum Growth Coaching, the world’s only fully systemized business coaching program guaranteed to help entrepreneurs rapidly create More Profits and More Life. To get your copy of our free special report with detailed steps on how to grow your business at least 40% faster, even when you aren’t sure what to do next, go to Paul’s business coaching website.

Click here if you are interested in Quantum’s Business Coaching Franchise opportunities.

Copyright 2005 Richard Grady

I attended a presentation a couple of weeks ago given by Internet marketer, Michael Green. Michael runs the ‘How To Corp’ and has created numerous information products covering a wide range of topics.

There were a number of very interesting points that came out of the presentation but I wanted to ’steal’ one of them as the topic of this newsletter. I am sure Michael won’t mind

The point in question is a simple one but one which is regularly overlooked by people just starting out in Internet marketing and that is to get into affiliate marketing later rather than sooner.

Many people jump at the chance of selling someone else’s product as an affiliate as there are many obvious advantages:

No need to create a product of your own
No involvement in the delivery or support of the product
Minimal contact with customers
No need to have your own website

At first glance, affiliate marketing can appear to be the ideal business opportunity and in many ways, it is. However, if you are new to Internet marketing and have no website, no email list and no traffic, affiliate marketing will almost certainly be a lot of hard work.

The key to being a successful affiliate is to be able to drive reasonable levels of traffic to a sales page that is relevant to the traffic in question. If you don’t have any existing traffic or a mailing list, the chances are that you are going to have to pay for this traffic (at least initially). Whilst this can be very effective, it can also take time to get right and will be costing money in the process.

Therefore, to go back to the original statement, getting involved in affiliate marketing is definitely a good idea but if you start to work as an affiliate once you have built up your own website, traffic and mailing list, you will find that it is far more rewarding.

To illustrate this further, when I first started writing this newsletter, I would often throw in the odd affiliate link but they rarely resulted in any sales. The reason for this was simple - I hardly had any subscribers on the mailing list! Over the years, as my list has grown and as subscribers have ‘got to know me’ and I have gained more trust, my affiliate sales have increased.

Looking at it from another angle, I find that my most successful affiliates are those that have an established website or mailing list. Of course, this makes perfect sense since there is already existing traffic to sell to and often no effort is required other than adding a hyperlink to a web page or giving a product a mention in mailshot.

Once you have an existing website and customers/subscribers, you will also start to build credibility in your chosen field/industry. This means that your customers are more likely to trust your recommendations and actually purchase something if you promote it as being a great product.

In the early days of my Internet marketing career, I would regularly try and promote products that were about making money online. I wasn’t very successful with these promotions and one of the main reasons was that I wasn’t personally making much money online. Once I started to become more successful and my customers/subscribers were able to see that I did actually know what I was talking about, they were far more willing to purchase these types of products from me or on my recommendation.

Therefore, in summary, get your own website/product/newsletter/whatever up and running first and then concentrate on adding additional value to your product range by promoting relevant affiliate products.

If you choose to go down the road of only selling products as an affiliate, remember that this is perfectly possible to do but it will take time, hard work and a fair bit of patience.

Of course, the other benefit in selling your own product is that you don’t have to share the sales proceeds

Richard Grady has been helping ordinary people earn online since 1998. He writes a free newsletter which is published every two weeks. To subscribe (and claim your free gifts), visit: http://www.thetraderonline.com/newsletter.html

What is manifesting? Most people probably haven’t heard the term and so they don’t have a clue as to what manifesting is or what it’s all about. Hopefully this article can clear up a little of the confusion.

Manifesting is a term that refers to a collection of ideas and techniques that, when used together can help you achieve your dreams and life-goals in a much faster and more satisfying way than is usually possible through “normal” methods. Normal methods, such as planning, strategizing, scheming, plotting, analyzing, goal-setting, etc. would be how most people would go about achieving something in their life. Most people have had some degree of success with such methods, so they assume that such methods are the best way to go about something, and they never try, or even consider, another way. Manifesting IS that other way.

Manifestation is the practice of thinking of what it is you want and then visualizing yourself achieving it, and then letting the result just come to you. Whether it’s a new job, or a new car, maybe a new house, or a new relationship, you can visualize all these things and then, through manifestation, can have them come to you. It’s like you become a magnet for all the good things in your life that you wanted to achieve, but were so frustrated and limited in your “normal” attempts to achieve them.

Manifestation connects you with the unseen metaphysical forces in the universe that regulate the stream of supply and demand of these things in your life, and allows you to “turn on the tap” to allow these things to flow into your life. Your stress level goes way down as you realize that you no longer have to worry, plan, and scheme to achieve the things you want.

With manifestation, you can literally create your own reality and then by visualizing and then manifesting it, you can make it your reality. The process starts when you visualize whatever it is that you’re wanting, and then assume that it WILL happen. Close your eyes and picture in your mind that your desire has already been granted, and that it is inevitable that you will receive it. Look into your mind and “seeing” yourself getting it and you can count on it just being a matter of time until that desire is Manifested in your life.

This is just a very brief introduction to the power of Manifesting your dreams into reality. Visit our website for more info and a FREE ebook that introduces you to the techniques of manifesting.

Til next time…Success to you!

-Ted

Ted is part of a group of forward-thinking individuals
that makes their home at:

http://www.MyLife2LiveNow.com

Check it out for the latest ideas on how YOU
can get what YOU want in Life!

Some have said that everything is a wave. That our entire life experience is a wave, that matter is held together by a wave. That light, gravity, ionic bonding, sound and even the human energy or soul is nothing more than a wave? A wave indeed, okay let us take this concept and play it out a little and ask some questions as the entire theory is quite intriguing. How so you ask?

Well let us say every thing is a wave for a moment. Since everything is a wave you can change to a wave of UV, gamma, sound or very low frequency, which in fact can change the surface of the temperature of the water in the ocean, or at any altitude up to and beyond the Ionosphere. What we are doing here is expanding this idea into weather control to prevent Hurricanes, by re-tuning the dials a tad.

If you take a spherical fruit out of your refrigerator and placed it in a box and stuck a straw into the middle, the coolness from within the fruit will escape and will change the temperature within that box, a few degrees. But as we have learned and are learning from the climate change or some prefer to call it the global warming affect we are witnessing today which threatens to change the earth system and somewhat disrupt human life upon the land we can see that we do have options.

If we can change one of the interacting wave, it will have an effect on the whole system, because everything would be connected to everything else, since remember the theory is; “it is all a wave!” Since all waves interact with all matter, we can change the waves and change the resultant, by a little fine-tuning magic wave manipulation? So, this means we can probably create or destroy extreme weather events once we fully understand the interaction of all waves. You think? I don’t know, do you? What I should be asking is let’s get started; Think on it.

“Lance Winslow” - Online Think Tank forum board. If you have innovative thoughts and unique perspectives, come think with Lance; www.WorldThinkTank.net/wttbbs/

It’s Christmas time and everything is getting the decorative treatment: including brownies.

This simple recipe for Holiday Mint Brownies is a fun way to turn ordinary brownies into an extraordinary festive treat. The flavors are wonderful with chocolate mint chips and cream cheese frosting. Plus, you can have fun decorating them with decorating gel and candies.

Best of all, these brownies are an easy holiday cookie recipe to make. Any brownie lover will enjoy these special holiday brownies.

Holiday Mint Brownies

• 1 1-pound 5 oz pkg fudge brownie mix
• cup mint flavored chocolate chips
• cup water
• cup oil
• 1 egg
• 1 16 oz can cream cheese frosting (or vanilla frosting)
• 5 (.68 oz) tubes green decorating gel
• 1 to 2 tablespoons (84) cinnamon candies or small red decorator candies

Directions

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Line a 13×9-inch pan with foil so edges extend over pan; grease bottom only of foil.

In large bowl, combine brownie mix, chocolate chips, water, oil and egg; beat 50 strokes with spoon. DO NOT UNDERMIX. Spread in greased foil-lined pan.

Bake for 31-33 minutes. Cool 1 hour or until completely cooled.

Frost brownies. Freeze 1 hour.

Remove brownies from pan by lifting foil; peel off foil. Cut brownies into squares or cut diagonally into diamond shapes.

Outline each brownie with green decorating gel. Place 3 red candies in the corner or middle of each brownie. Store in a single layer in covered container, in a cool place.

Makes 28 brownies.

About The Author

Copyright 2004

Donna Monday

Got a brownie craving? Satisfy it here

http://www.best-brownie-recipes.com

Autoresponders = Automatic Internet Marketing Success By Pradeep
Aggarwal

What if you could send out all the information that your
potential customers have requested without checking your email
or answering a phone? While this may seem impossible, it is
becoming more and more popular among the most successful
Internet marketing gurus. This is all due to what is called an
autoresponder. An autoresponder is an automatic method of
responding to emails sent by existing or potential customers and
is an must for any Internet business. Time is money and
answering emails personally take a lot of valuable time for both
you and the customer. Not only do autorespnders allow you to
spend the time elsewhere in your business, but it gives the
customer access to the information almost immediately.

Since there are so many different uses for autoresponders, they
can be of value to virtually any type of business. Some choose
to use the autoresponders to answer frequently asked questions
about a product or service. Others use them to provide
information about pricing or product information. Autoresponders
are also a nice way to welcome new members to a website or group
as well as thank them after a visit.

One might ask what would be the advantage of using
autoresponders as opposed to simply listing the information on
the site. An important feature of autoresponders is that they
send you an email notification each time a response is sent out.
This allows you to track the success of your promotions as well
as have the email addresses of potential customers at your
fingertips so that you can easily send out updated and new
information to them.

It is of the utmost importance to choose an effective
autoresponder. An autoresponder should be as personal as
possible and send out follow-ups to potential customers since it
has been proven that persistence pays off. It could take up to
seven contacts before a final sale is conducted. Generally
speaking an advertisement should be short and to the point.
However, in this case, the customer has asked to see this
specific information and therefore an effective autoresponder
should allow you to place as much text on the page as you
desire. The autoresponder that you choose should provide
automatic updates to customers free of charge.

The autoresponder is one Internet marketing tool that will not
cost you an arm and a leg. You can get free autoresponders
online from several sources. The automatic responses will be a
welcome addition to your marketing strategy and will help to
automatically increase traffic to your site all while you do
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According to the NAMB (National Association of Mortgage Brokers), two out of three Americans work with a mortgage broker to purchase a home because of the broker’s expertise and wide selection of loan products and lenders. However, with so many so called “experts” out there, how does one separate the wheat from the chaff? How do you know if a broker is honest? And how do you know they’re an “expert” or not?

The NAMB says that over 70 percent of brokers are legitimate, that is they have safeguards and policies in place to make sure that they stay on the straight and narrow. So what about the other 30 percent? Well, the whole 30 percent isn’t bad, but just as in any classroom, you’re going to have those at the top, some in the middle, a few at the bottom, and others who simply don’t show for class. Obviously, those at the bottom and the no shows would not be your first choice if you were going into surgery and they were holding the scapel, nor should they be handling your loan when you purchase a home or refinance.

Because of the surge in numbers of mortgage brokers in the past few years, there are plenty of incompetent and dishonest brokers out there. In order to avoid the 30 percentile, I offer the following tips to help you find a mortgage broker that is not only an expert but honest and reputable as well:

Don’t believe everything you hear. Asking friends or family to recommend a mortgage professional is usually the first place people start. However, how do they know the broker is reputable and trustworthy? Check with your state regulatory offices and licensing bureau once you have some referrals. Better to be safe than sorry.

Use an NAMB certified mortgage broker. Brokers certified by the NAMB practice the highest ethical and professional standards in the industry. There is a “Find a Broker” link on the NAMB’s website at www.namb.org.

Use an Upfront Mortgage Broker (UMB). These brokers disclose their fees to customers in writing in advance at the customer’s request. They also disclose the wholesale prices they receive from lenders. For a list of UMBs visit www.mtgprofessor.com.

Honesty is the best policy. If a mortgage broker suggests that you lie on your loan application in any way, he/she is most likely in the 30 percentile. Walk away.

They need to show you the money. If a mortgage broker doesn’t disclose your closing costs in three business days, it’s probably best to take your business elsewhere.

If you’re not bleeding, they shouldn’t be applying pressure. A mortgage broker who pressures you into anything you are not comfortable with probably failed ethics. No reputable broker will pressure you into anything you don’t feel comfortable with.

There are no stupid questions. Does the mortgage broker answer all your questions to your satisfaction? Are his/her answers straightforward, honest, and respectful?

Do you have a reservation? If you feel comfortable with whom you’re working with and feel like they have answered all your questions and put all your reservations to ease, you’ve probably found a good mortgage broker.

Brian Daniel is a loan officer for Bend Mortgage Group Ltd. a mortgage company in Bend, Oregon. He is also the company’s marketing coordinator. For more information or help with an Oregon home loan visit http://www.bendmortgagegroup.com.