It is too competitive to get into this market!!!

Jerry wrote a great article last year and he has reposted on his blog. This is an excerpt from that post and a link to Jerrys blog:

Does this sound familiar? Does this come into your head or out of your mouth when you look to get into a market?

Today is Father’s Day, and I was relaxing in the sun having a visit with my dad. The visit was a little one-sided since he past away in 2003. As it often does, inspiration comes at odd times. Let me share with you a story that I was just reminded of . . .

In the early 80s, when I was in high school, a man moved into the house across the street. We didn’t have many move-ins as our neighborhood was very stable. My father made me go with him to welcome our new neighbor to the area. Hey, I was a teenager, I didn’t want to go, but I was fortunate, as it was an introduction that I would long remember. In the conversation, my father asked our new neighbor what he did for a living.

“I sell pianos and I am opening a piano store in the area,” he replied.

This interested my father. Even though he was a school teacher, he loved discussing business. It was a passion of his.

“We just bought a piano,” my father followed. “There are three piano stores in the area already and I visited each one. Each store was empty when I went in and business seemed to be very poor. In fact, we got a great deal on our piano because of it.”

From seorevolution.com

Working at Home

If you work from home, you need to know how to qualify for the home office deduction, pay self-employment tax and understand which business expenses you can take as a tax deduction on your income tax return.

Being your own boss

Don’t listen to the naysayers who tell you that taking the home office deduction is a red flag for an IRS audit. Congress created these tax breaks and we’ll show you how to take advantage of them, with advice on:

• How to qualify for the home office deduction
• Paying self-employment tax
• Which business expenses you can deduct

Going from employee to self-employed

Hard to believe, but you can get a tax break for staying in your pajamas and fuzzy slippers to run your business.

Many people who leave jobs in mid-career choose to fly solo and start their own businesses, working out of their homes. Once you switch from life as an employee to become an independent contractor, your tax situation changes, too. Here are several things to keep in mind to keep your tax house in order:

Estimated tax payments

The bad news, Part 1:

Your employer used to take care of withholding your income taxes and sending payments to IRS. But once you’re self-employed, it’ll be up to you to make estimated tax payments to IRS during the year to cover your federal tax liability, unless you expect to owe less than $1,000. You make your payments quarterly, using Form 1040 ES.

Self-employment tax

The bad news, Part II:

Uncle Sam takes a bigger bite out of your income, employment-tax wise, when you’re on your own. To cover your Social Security and Medicare tax liability, in 2008 you’ll owe Uncle Sam 15.3 percent on the first $102,000 of your net earnings from self-employment.

For net earnings above $102,000, you’ll still owe Medicare tax of 2.9 percent. (For 2009, the full weight of the self-employment tax falls on net income up to $106,800.)

But there’s good news: You can deduct half of your self-employment tax when figuring adjusted gross income on your 1040. So if you’re in the 25 percent federal income tax bracket, the government effectively refunds 12.5 percent of the Social Security tax you pay.

Business expenses

Don’t throw away those receipts!

You can write off a long list of business costs—everything from business meals to insurance to bad debts—so it’s important to maintain good records of those expenses to get all the tax deductions you’re entitled to. And because you can’t deduct personal expenses, you must be sure to keep your business expenses separate. An easy way to do this is to set up a separate bank account for your business, and have a credit card used only for business purchases.

Home office deduction

If you’re working from home, deducting the costs associated with your home office can be a big tax saver—but the rules are tricky.

To get the deduction, the law requires you to use your home office “exclusively and regularly” for your business. It must be an area in your home where you don’t mix business with other activities. In other words, the kids can’ t play and you can’t watch a lot of football in the same area as your workplace. So put that big-screen TV somewhere else in the house.

The office also has to be your principal place of business or a place you meet regularly with clients or patients. What if you’re on the road a lot for business? No problem. You can qualify even if you spend most of your work time away from the office—as, say, a self-employed plumber who spends most of his time working at clients’ homes—as long as you manage the business from the home office and have no other office. If you qualify for home office deductions, the write-off will help pay for what otherwise would be considered personal expenses, such as part of the cost of heating and lighting, and home insurance premiums.

More options for retirement saving

Working in your pajamas is still work.

So plan now for full-time relaxation later and start a retirement plan, which is another great tax saver. And once you’re self-employed, your options go far beyond the individual retirement account. Check out SEP (Simplified Employee Pension), SIMPLE (Savings Incentive Match Plan), Keogh and individual 401(k) plans. All allow you to sock away money for retirement and take a tax deduction for those pay-ins.

Checkbook Wallet

Optimization of your Website

There are two main parts of website optimization. On Page and off page optimization. Both of these are important and both need to be dealt with. There are two ways of looking at these two very important parts of optimization. Off site optimization is definitely the most powerful but on site is usually what we try to deal with first mainly because it is something we control. Sites can be moved to the top of the search engines with off site optimization alone but it is much easier if you use both techniques. The website for the movie Irobot was a great example of this. Even though the site was completely a flash site. In the eyes of the search engines there was not a single word on the page because flash cannot be seen by the search engines. But there were so many links pointing at the site with the term “robot” in the anchor text. Thus the site was number one for robot for the longest.

Billfolds

Our Services

InternetConsultingNow teaches business owners how to build online brand visibility and equity, as well as increase their customer base through online marketing and business development. We assist clients in building interactive campaigns that include market analysis, social media and other types of online marketing strategies and methods for measuring campaign effectiveness. We also offer SEO/SMO services and web copy development to ensure our clients get the respect from search engines that they deserve.

It seems as if everyone is talking about “social media” these days. And while social media platforms can be helpful for sharing brand messages and cultivating relationships, they can also end up as a colossal waste of time. This primarily occurs when a business owner considers the various sites to be an end in and of themselves, rather than a channel through which information flows.

In addition, different platforms appeal to different target markets, have different cultures, different growth factors. Combine the variables of the platforms themselves with the fact that humanity is nothing but one giant variable and the words “moving target” take on a whole new meaning.

Getting the basics can literally mean the difference between long hours of frustration and little benefit vs. productivity and connectivity. We offer four training options to help you get started. If you don’t find something you like here, just drop us a line and we will happily discuss options with you.

We offer four standard training packages, a research option, and a project-based bidding option.

• Just Plain Coaching: This is the package we recommend to everyone. It will get you what you want at the price you can afford. No matter where you are in your business that is where we will work with you.
• Economy: A 30 minute session per month – $50 per month
• Regular Coaching:  A 30 minute session every other week – $100 per month
• Fast Pace Coaching: A 30 minute session every week – $200 per month
•  
• Just Getting Started: This training package is a 1 month introduction to social media marketing. Over the course of 4, 2 hour sessions (with assigned homework) we will teach you the basic information about top social media platforms, engagement and basic monitoring. The sessions will be taught virtually. If you are in need of in person training outside of the West Point, MS area, please contact me for more information. The cost of this package is $1000.
• SEO/SMO: This is not your mother’s SEO…if your mother had SEO, that is. This is the new, social media friendly version of search engine optimization. We build out a language to use on your home site, as well as any social media platforms where you establish a presence. The cost of this service is affected by the size of the job, the fee can range from $400-$750.
• Online Campaign Research and Recommendations: We work with your company to create a research and recommendations package that can include online competitive analysis, market research, target market identification, identification of “best fit” social media platforms, effective engagement strategies, and strategies for measuring results. The length of time for these sessions will vary. Generally, these will be taught virtually. If you are in need of in person training outside of the West Point area, please contact me for more information. This is a project-based fee.
• We Want More: This training package is fully loaded with information online brand research, identifying target markets, basic SEO and SMO, campaign development, identification and utilization of social media platforms, engagement strategies, metrics, analysis and implementation of feedback. These sessions are taught over the course of 3 months in 2 hour blocks, once a week. Generally, these will be taught virtually. If you are in need of in person training outside of the West Point area, please contact me for more information. The cost of this package is $6,000.

Give us a call at 662-251-0844 or email at freddie@internetconsultingnow.com if you are interested in a package option or would like to talk about a project-based bid…we look forward to connecting!

Trifold

On Page Optimization

On Page optimization has many different parts. Some of these are listed below

* Title Tags
* Heading Tags H1, H2 and so forth
* Copy on the page (copy is king)
* first link prevalence
* outbound links
* especially linking to authority sites
* bold, underlined or italicized words show importance

Internal Linking would be a form of on page optimization. If a link from your on site goes to another page on your site that would be internal liking.

Mens Belt

Off Page Optimization

Off page optimization can get websites to the top of the search engines. Basicly off page optimization is all about getting links. Links can come from either your own site or from other sites. Either can have a huge effect on a websites ranking results in the search engines.

We usually like to work with our onsite links first because this is something we controll. Then we set up a strategy of getting links from other sites. There are many stratagys for getting links from other sites. Some of the places to get these links from include:
* directories
* article directories
* social media sites like Hub Pages and Squidoo
* blogs
* and one of the best places to get links is other peoples websites.

An example of an off page link would be like this: Men’s Belt

This is a link pointing to a site that we want to come up in Google when someone types the term Men’s Belt in.

(This was a great way to sneak a link in here wasn’t it)

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