Internet Traffic

The first part of the equation, internet traffic, is possibly the most fought over and hardest part of affiliate marketing. It is best summarized as the quest to get those elusive surfers to your site. Traffic is the foundation of e-commerce and no website is successful without it. There are two fundamental ways people can find you online. The first and most popular is through a search engine.

Search Engines

When most consumers go online to find a product or service, they use a search engine. Popular search engines include Google, Yahoo, and Msn to name a few. Generally, the consumer will go one, maybe two pages deep in their search for a website they’d like to visit. Logically, the better your rank in a search engine, the more consumers that will come to your site. Because surfers won’t go 10 pages deep in a search engine’s results, site ranking is VERY competitive.

SEO

There are two ways to get ranked with a search engine. The first is referred to as SEO (search engine optimization). This is by far the most competitive (and profitable) route. Google, for instance, places a great amount of emphasis on your website’s links. The more links you have going out and coming into your website from other “like” websites, the more “relative” your site becomes. Consequently, the more relative your site is, the higher your page rank. There are numerous other ways to optimize your site for SEs. Our team will be happy to give you with this and point you to more resources.

Pay Per Click (PPC)

The second method by which a website can get ranked with a search engine is using a pay-perclick (PPC) campaign. Above, you can see the PPCs on the right side of the google page. Instead of competing for page rank, these listings pay to get listed here. PPCs are beneficial, because the owner of the ad ONLY pays when someone clicks on their listing. So you’re only paying for surfers to come to your site who’s interests were sparked by your ad.

Most PPCs allow you to write your ad and bid on different keywords of your choice. For example, if you are running a penis enlargement review site, you might choose keywords like “longer penis” or “penis extension”. You could then bid on the keywords, specifying that you’d be willing to pay $0.20 per click. Submit your ad and away you go. Again, a word of caution. If done poorly they can take you to the cleaners. A good rule is to make sure you get sales before buying PPC.

Alternative Traffic Marketing

There are virtually no limits to where you can get traffic for your website. You can set up reciprocal links with other like websites and trade traffic (this also helps your SEO). Email campaigns, as long as they are targeted and are not spam, can work well. Snail mail mailers, flyers, and traditional advertisements can also work. Just like building your site, be creative in its promotion. This helps you stand apart from the crowd and will lead to more traffic to your site.

Product Promotion

So once you have the surfer in your site, what do you do with them? Your task is to get them to want to click on the links to our sites. Different affiliate programs have different ideas on how to do this. A lot of it depends on the products or services that they offer and the site having call to actions done correctly.

Product Matching

A big part of affiliate marketing is matching the products you promote to the site you run. If you can do this well, you can convert well.

The Informative Site

The second and more successful way to market a product is to build your website around it. An example of this is a review site. This kind website is devoted to giving the surfer as much information as it can. It gives information about the different types of products available and then reviews the different products that are out there. It will usually pick one of the products (the product with the best website – OURS!) to be its number one pick. Surfers will come to your site, become educated on the subject and move on through your link to buy a product.

This type of site is successful for a few different reasons:

1) People like to shop around. This site gives them the opportunity to shop around without ever having to leave.

2) Information builds trust. The more information you have in your site, the more the surfer will perceive your site as an authority. Trust = conversions

3) Penis Enlargement, for example, is possible. However a lot of people don’t believe it. Yet, they are still perusing your site in the hopes that it is. The more informative your site is, the more likely you’ll convince them that they CAN enlarge their penis. This will lead to more sales.

4) If you slap an enlargement banner ad on a website that has no relation to penis enlargement at all, the majority of your click-trough’s will come from surfers satisfying their curiosity, not because they are genuinely interested. The informative site mitigates this and ensures only quality surfers get through.

An informative site can be built for ANY product out there. It may take a little more time than throwing a banner up on your site, but your effort will be amply rewarded.

The Psychological Sell

The following tips are meant to help you sell your surfers on the products you are reviewing. The more you pre-sell them before they get to a product site, the higher your conversions will be.

1) Identify your audience
Ask yourself who are they? Most importantly, why are they at your site? What are their fears and what are they hoping to accomplish? The answers to these questions will enable you to write your site’s text with your specific audience in mind. The more your text speaks to them, the more likely they are to buy.

2) Identify your audience’s problem and exploit it
It may sound bad, but you want to foster a feeling of insecurity in your surfers. You must include a section on the problem your surfer’s are there to fix and it’s hazards. Highlight what happens if the problem goes untreated and its detrimental affects. Convince you surfer that it is imperative that they fix this problem.

3) Assure them that their problem is treatable
Fairly self-explanatory, but let them know there is help on the way.

4) Include as much info as you can get your hands on.
The more in depth you go, the more the surfer will trust you as an authority and get lost in your site’s information.

5) Include specific information about each product you review
Again, gains trust.

6) Build their confidence
Once you have selected a product as your #1 pick, include information about it’s guarantee, the company’s reputation, etc. Shout from the rooftops why this is the best product out there. A word of caution – do not bad-mouth any product. It’s negative, amateur and unprofessional. Read “Website Development” for more website tips…

PPC Campaigns – Product Promotion the Easy Way

Reviews.

The benefit of this new system is that instead of having to build your own informative site, we’ve done it for you!
This system is now available to you to use in any way you wish. If you are using a PPC campaign, you can plug your affiliate code and special link directly into the PPC ad’s url. Surfers will click on your ad, go to our feeder site, move on to our product site, make their purchase and you will always get credit. You can also use our feeder sites as supplements to your own site. Add a link or menu option on your site and link it to our feeder. Our site will do all of the work for you by educating your surfer on our HUGE range of products. You’ll get credit on any product they buy.

Website Development

There’s no arguing it, there’s a lot that goes into developing a quality website. Hundreds if not thousands of books have been written on the topic. Here, in a “do’s and don’ts” format, we’ll give you a few of the most important features your website should incorporate.

Do’s

1) What is your mission? Every company has one and so should you. It doesn’t have to be complex, just figure out what you want to accomplish through your site. If you want to promote ClearPores with an information site, your mission could be something like this –
“Create a website that will inform consumers in a clear and concise format about how sleep works, causes of insomnia, the detrimental effects of losing sleep and include reviews and suggestions of products that are available that can help cure sleep disorders.”

2) Just like writing a paper in college, map out what you want to do first. Get a good idea of the layout of the site, where buttons and images will be located, and how you’re going to organize your information. Once you have an idea of this on paper, move onto doing the html.

3) Make information easy to get to and organized logically for your surfer. One word – usability. Nothing is more frustrating than being on a website and not knowing where to go.

4) Check out other product websites, including your competition, and see what they are doing well. The best places for website ideas are other websites.

5) Spend time on your text. Anyone who is interested in your website and wants to use it as a source of information will read your text. Make sure you spell check, grammar check, and use your words to your advantage. The text is what will sell your surfers on trusting you and using the products you recommend.

6) Post your site on forums and let other take a look at it. You’ll get some great advice on what you could do better.

Don’ts

1) Do not use too many colors. The more colors you use, the more amateur your website looks. Amateur = no trust = no conversions.

2) Do not use too many fonts, same reason as above.

3) Do not make a website that is one looooooooong page. Again, amateur.

4) Do not have HUGE blocks of text. Break up your text with key points. Use headers, bulleted points, etc. for the major statements you don’t want your readers to miss. Surfers will skim through looking for your main points and will be more likely to read your text if you spice it up and make it look interesting. Besides that, breaking up your text makes your site look better.

Alright, now you’ve got the basics. There’s a lot to know about this business and always something new to learn. It’s a dynamic marketplace and those who survive, learn to roll with the punches. Learning, changing and adapting are the keys to making it. If you’re trying something and it’s not working for you, stop, get some advice and try something else.

Copenhagen-based ad agency Bates Y&R created this realistic painting of a giant constrictor snake squeezing a city bus. Very nice. Link here.

For the past two years, there has been a fair amount of talk concerning shared sacrifice. In theory it is a reasonable concept, but in practice it is non-existent. Republicans think it is reasonable for 98% of the population to share the sacrifice so the wealthiest 2% can avoid sacrificing anything. However, there is another class of Americans who avoid sharing or sacrificing and it is high-time they start contributing to America and stop living off the government dole. As more Americans are telling the government to increase taxes on corporations and their wealthy owners to pay down the deficit, create jobs, and rebuild America’s struggling economy, a silent cult of welfare recipients escapes the public’s ire regarding shared sacrifice.

Americans are complaining that the wealthy and corporations pay too little in taxes, but at least they pay something. The religious community though, is paying nothing and it is time they start contributing to their community, state, and Federal governments for the resources they consume and damage they have wrought on this country. It is finally the time to eliminate the tax-exempt, non-profit status of every church in America whether it is the vile Southern Baptist Convention affiliates, Islamic Mosques, Jewish Tabernacles or Buddhist monasteries. At the same time, the tax code must be revised to eliminate the double-dipping statutes that allow the clergy to avoid paying the same rate of income tax as the rest of the American population. Religion has taken welfare from the American people long enough and with communities laying off fire fighters, police officers, and school teachers while struggling to make ends meet, churches of every denomination are enjoying government entitlements working Americans never receive.

There is absolutely no valid reason to give churches tax-exempt status; in fact it is unconstitutional. Religious fanatics and normal people alike give myriad reasons for why churches should not pay property tax or income tax, but they are all based on the belief that religious people are special and deserve taxpayers’ largesse. Many Americans say that churches and the clergy are doing god’s work and warrant special privileges. If they are doing god’s work, then let god give them welfare now or make them wait till they die and go wherever they think they’re going for their reward. There are other Americans who claim Christian churches deserve welfare because they are doing good work in their communities. Nurses, teachers, fire-fighters, and police officers really do good work in their communities but they are not exempt from paying their fair share in taxes.

In nearly every city in America, there are giant churches sitting on prime real-estate or agricultural land and they pay absolutely nothing in property tax even though they benefit from taxpayer-funded services like roads, law enforcement, schools, and fire protection. In most cities, when churches sponsor evangelical activities, they demand and receive police officer-assisted traffic control and often block off public streets for their events. Who pays for the police officer’s overtime pay for such events? Taxpayers foot the bill with property and sales tax dollars that they are not exempt from paying because they are not special and are not doing god’s work.

There are members of the clergy who argue that not all churches or preachers are wealthy and it is unfair to portray all churches as equal. That argument does not hold water because all taxpayers are not equal either and regardless if a family lives in a $50,000 home or a million dollar palace; they have to pay property tax based on the assessed value of their property. Some of the mega-church complexes are worth millions of dollars and they pay no taxes. Other members of the clergy argue that regardless the size of the church, they do not profit from their god-work and should be exempt from taxation. It is patently absurd that a preacher who gives one or two sermons a week, owns a home and drives a luxury car is not profiting from their work. Except for the extremely wealthy and drug dealers, there are very few Americans who have no job or visible sign of income and still own their own home or drive expensive cars. Someone is profiting from selling superstition and campaigning from the pulpit to elect conservatives who give welfare to the wealthy and religious groups. It is time to end the tax-exempt, non-profit status for these swindlers.

Any two-bit charlatan with a bible and a cross can sign a piece of paper and avoid paying taxes on the money they fleece from their congregations. The tithes and contributions from congregations are also tax-deductible because the government sees fit to give write-offs for religious contributions because churches are non-profit organizations. The clergy not only avoids paying tax on profits from their fear-mongering sermons, they get tax breaks on their income because they are…special and do god’s work? A while back, the wretched Southern Baptist Convention preacher, Rick Warren, complained that working Americans who pay no taxes want to raise taxes on 50% of Americans who do pay. Warren is a scumbag for his un-Christian hatred of the poor, plus the obscene preacher gets tax breaks working-class Americans never see, but Warren never mentioned that in his attack on the poor.

America has a revenue problem and it is unfair that churches and their clergy are not paying their share for the resources they use. In Sacramento California, the sheriff made public service announcements telling residents to arm themselves and pray if they were assaulted or robbed because the city and county had to lay-off officers because of budget cuts. Instead of revoking church’s tax-exempt status and making them pay their share of taxes, county officials issued firearm licenses so taxpayers could protect themselves. Many people claim that if churches and the clergy are not campaigning from the pulpit, they should not lose their tax-exempt status. That is nonsense because whether or not a nurse, teacher, fire-fighter, or police officer works for a political campaign, they still have to pay taxes.

Churches and the clergy have had enough welfare from taxpayers and it is time to cease the obscene non-profit, tax-exempt status. The ridiculously unconstitutional practice must stop immediately and churches should be audited and taxed retroactively from the time the church filed the non-profit form with the IRS. In communities and states, teachers, nurses, police officers, and fire fighters who actually perform a service and do good work are being laid-off while churches and the clergy get tax-exempt status and breaks for preaching fear and discrimination. The Constitution is quite clear that religion is not privileged and should not receive anything from the government; that includes exemption from paying taxes. However, as long as Americans revere the clergy and their obscene mega-churches for doing god’s work, nothing will change and that is the biggest outrage of all. It is time to correct this outrage by eliminating tax-exemption for all churches starting with Rick Warren and his mega-church for being an insensitive dirt-bag and deviant anti-tax crusader.

Credit to: http://www.politicususa.com/en/churches-taxes

The United States Postal Service has long lived on the financial edge, but it has never been as close to the precipice as it is today: the agency is so low on cash that it will not be able to make a $5.5 billion payment due this month and may have to shut down entirely this winter unless Congress takes emergency action to stabilize its finances.

“Our situation is extremely serious,” the postmaster general, Patrick R. Donahoe, said in an interview. “If Congress doesn’t act, we will default.”

In recent weeks, Mr. Donahoe has been pushing a series of painful cost-cutting measures to erase the agency’s deficit, which will reach $9.2 billion this fiscal year. They include eliminating Saturday mail delivery, closing up to 3,700 postal locations and laying off 120,000 workers — nearly one-fifth of the agency’s work force — despite a no-layoffs clause in the unions’ contracts.

The post office’s problems stem from one hard reality: it is being squeezed on both revenue and costs.

As any computer user knows, the Internet revolution has led to people and businesses sending far less conventional mail.

At the same time, decades of contractual promises made to unionized workers, including no-layoff clauses, are increasing the post office’s costs. Labor represents 80 percent of the agency’s expenses, compared with 53 percent at United Parcel Service and 32 percent at FedEx, its two biggest private competitors. Postal workers also receive more generous health benefits than most other federal employees.

Feuding politicians
The Senate Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee will hold a hearing on the agency’s predicament on Tuesday. So far, feuding Democrats and Republicans in Congress, still smarting from the brawl over the federal debt ceiling, have failed to agree on any solutions. It doesn’t help that many of the options for saving the postal service are politically unpalatable.

“The situation is dire,” said Thomas R. Carper, the Delaware Democrat who is chairman of the Senate subcommittee that oversees the postal service. “If we do nothing, if we don’t react in a smart, appropriate way, the postal service could literally close later this year. That’s not the kind of development we need to inject into a weak, uneven economic recovery.”

Missing the $5.5 billion payment due on Sept. 30, intended to finance retirees’ future health care, won’t cause immediate disaster. But sometime early next year, the agency will run out of money to pay its employees and gas up its trucks, officials warn, forcing it to stop delivering the roughly three billion pieces of mail it handles weekly.

Mail volume has plummeted with the rise of e-mail, electronic bill-paying and a Web that makes everything from fashion catalogs to news instantly available. The system will handle an estimated 167 billion pieces of mail this fiscal year, down 22 percent from five years ago.

It’s difficult to imagine that trend reversing, and pessimistic projections suggest that volume could plunge to 118 billion pieces by 2020. The law also prevents the post office from raising postage fees faster than inflation.

Cutting costs hard
Meanwhile, the agency has had a tough time cutting its costs to match the revenue drop, with a history of labor contracts offering good health and pension benefits, underused post offices, and laws that restrict its ability to make basic business decisions, like reducing the frequency of deliveries.

Congress is considering numerous emergency proposals — most notably, allowing the post office to recover billions of dollars that management says it overpaid to its employees’ pension funds. That fix would help the agency get through the short-term crisis, but would delay the day of reckoning on bigger issues.

The agency’s leaders acknowledge that they must find a way to increase revenue, something that will prove far harder than simply slicing costs.

In some countries, post offices double as banks or sell insurance or cellphones. In the United States, the postal service is barred from entering many areas. Still, the agency is considering ideas, like gaining the right to deliver wine and beer, allowing commercial advertisements on postal trucks and in post offices, doing more “last-mile” deliveries for FedEx and U.P.S. and offering special hand-delivery services for correspondence and transactions for which e-mail is not considered secure enough.

Mr. Donahoe’s hope is to cut $20 billion of the $75 billion in annual costs by 2015. To do that, he wants to close many post offices and slash the number of sorting facilities to 200 from 500 and trim the agency’s work force by 220,000 people, from its current 653,000. (A decade ago, the agency employed nearly 900,000.)

The postal service has the legal authority to close facilities, although community opposition can make the process difficult. To placate critics and cut costs, officials say they would seek to run some postal operations out of stores like Wal-Mart or to share space with other government offices.

No layoffs clause
Cutting the work force is more difficult. The agency’s labor contracts have long guaranteed no layoffs to the vast majority of its workers, and management agreed to a new no layoff-clause in a major union contract last May.

But now, faced with what postal officials call “the equivalent of Chapter 11 bankruptcy,” the agency is asking Congress to enact legislation that would overturn the job protections and let it lay off 120,000 workers in addition to trimming 100,000 jobs through attrition.

The postal service is also asking Congress for permission to end Saturday delivery.

Given the vast range of stakeholders, getting consensus on a rescue plan will be difficult.

Senator Susan Collins of Maine, like many lawmakers from rural states, vigorously opposes ending Saturday delivery, which would trim only 2 percent from the agency’s budget. Ms. Collins, the ranking Republican on the committee overseeing the postal service, said the cutback would be tough on people in small towns who receive prescriptions and newspapers by mail.

“The postmaster general has focused on several approaches that I believe will be counterproductive,” she said. “They risk producing a death spiral where the postal service reduces service and drives away more customers.”

The post office’s powerful unions are angry and alarmed about the planned layoffs. “We’re going to fight this and we’re going to fight it hard,” said Cliff Guffey, president of the American Postal Workers Union, which represents 207,000 mail sorters and post office clerks. “It’s illegal for them to abrogate our contract.”

Senators Carper and Collins do back several of the postal service’s main ideas to avoid default, including recovering around $60 billion that some actuaries say the agency has overpaid into two pension funds. Although the Obama administration is working closely with the senators to find a solution, it has signaled discomfort with the pension proposals, questioning whether the postal service really overpaid.

Meanwhile, Representative Darrell Issa, the California Republican who is chairman of the House Oversight Committee, says the pension proposals would amount to an unjustifiable bailout that would not solve the agency’s underlying problems. He is pushing a bill that would create an emergency oversight board that could order huge cost-cutting and void the postal service’s contracts — a proposal that not just the unions, but Senators Carper and Collins oppose.

Fredric V. Rolando, president of the National Association of Letter Carriers, warned of disaster if partisanship keeps Congress from acting.

“This is about one of America’s oldest institutions,” he said. “It survived the telegraph, it survived the telephone, and we have to do everything we can to preserve it and adapt.”

Honda said Monday that it will recall 1 million cars globally to fix an electrical problem and a software glitch.

The company is recalling 936,000 cars worldwide from its Fit and CR-V lines to replace the master switch for the cars’ power windows. A design flaw can allow residue from window cleaners to accumulate, which over time can degrade the switch’s electrical contacts and potentially cause a fire. No injuries have been reported from the problem, which affects 80,111 cars in the United States from the CR-V’s 2006 model year.

Honda (HMC) is also recalling cars from its CR-Z compact hybrid line that are equipped with a manual transmission. A software bug could allow the motor, under some conditions, to rotate in the opposite direction from the transmission’s gear — allowing the car to, for example, roll backwards when the transmission is in forward gear. No injuries have been reported. Honda plans to fix the problem with a software upgrade. The recall affects 26,000 vehicles worldwide, including 5,626 cars in the United States.

This is the second major recall for Honda in recent weeks, and a further setback for the Japanese carmaker as it struggles to recover from a run of bad news and sluggish sales. Honda recalled 1.5 million cars in the U.S. in early August to fix a transmission issue, and drew a scathing Consumer Reports review for the 2012 model year of its ultra-popular Civic compact car.

The interview may be over, but your chance to make an impression is not. Here are 10 strategies to continue boosting your candidacy.

1. Show that you’re still interested

Leave no doubt in the interviewer’s mind about where you stand. Ask for the job at meeting’s end with a phrase such as, “I would really like to contribute to this company and am hoping you select me.”

Also, don’t leave the room without a clear idea of what will happen next in the hiring process. Will select applicants be invited back to meet other people? By what date do they hope to fill the position? Such questions demonstrate enthusiasm for the job, and knowing the hirer’s timeframe will help keep you from panicking if a week has passed without a phone call.

2. Set the stage for further contact

Nobody wants to be a pest, but could your silence as days pass be misinterpreted as indifference? Avoid the guesswork by finding out before heading home what the employer prefers in terms of checking in. Lizandra Vega, author of “The Image of Success: Make a Great Impression and Land the Job You Want,” suggests asking the recruiter about her preferred method of follow-up communication and whether it would be okay to touch base again.

3. Be punctual

If you tell the interviewer you’ll send a list of references tomorrow morning, make sure you do it. Keeping your word and answering requests in a timely manner speaks volumes about the type of employee you might be.

4. Know when to sit tight

If an interviewer requests that you follow up by phone in a week, respect her wishes. Calling the next day can be construed as pushy and desperate.

5. Send a prompt thank-you note

A positive, nonintrusive way to stay on an employer’s mind is to send a thank-you note. Vega recommends emailing one within 24 hours of the interview, then following up with a handwritten note that arrives one to three business days later.

6. Send each interviewer a personalized, powerful follow-up letter

This piece of communication is another chance for you to shine, so don’t waste space with generalities. Ford R. Myers, a career coach and author of “Get the Job You Want, Even When No One’s Hiring,” recommends including specific references to each person you met and tying your accomplishments directly to the company’s stated challenges.

You also can use the letter to introduce achievements that didn’t get discussed and to elaborate on interview answers that you felt lacked punch.

7. Address one of the company’s needs

Another effective way to follow up is to act more like a consultant than an applicant. “During the interview, you learn a lot about a company’s weaknesses and/or areas where the company wants to expand,” states Linda Matias, president of CareerStrides.com and author of “201 Knockout Answers to Tough Interview Questions.”

“Consider creating a proposal on how you would address one of those areas. Doing so will demonstrate that you have the knowledge and also the enthusiasm to make a significant contribution.”

8. Keep thinking and learning about the company

Be prepared for additional interviews or follow-up phone calls by continuing to research the organization and the field. Gain new information about a topic brought up in conversation. Think of additional questions you’d like answered. These actions show the hirer that you didn’t stop caring about the company after the interview was over.

9. Leverage outside resources

Networking should never stop. “If you have contacts and connections with anyone who might influence the hiring decision, or who actually knows the interviewer, ask her to put a good word in for you,” Myers says.

10. Accept rejection with grace

Finally, keep emotions in check and don’t burn bridges if someone else gets hired. One never knows what the future might hold. The accepted candidate may not work out, or a different position may open up.

“If you are rejected, the first thing you should do (ironically) is send a thank-you note,” Myers says. “This will help distinguish you from other rejected candidates and put you in a positive light.”

1. Walk away from bargains

Just because you can buy a cashmere sweater for $20 or three bottles of ketchup for the price of one doesn’t mean you should. “Ask, ‘Do I have something similar?’ and ‘Where am I going to store it?’ before making a purchase,” advises New York City professional organizer Julie Morgenstern, author of “Shed Your Stuff, Change Your Life.”

2. Make peace with imperfection

Efficient people give “A-level effort” to the most important projects (say, work assignments or a kitchen redesign), and for the rest they do just enough to get the job done, says Renae Reinardy, PsyD, a psychologist who specializes in hoarding disorders. Maybe you give yourself permission to bring store-bought cookies to a school bake sale or donate a bag of stuff — unsorted! — to Goodwill. “Trying to do every task perfectly is the easiest way to get bogged down,” says Reinardy.

3. Never label anything “miscellaneous”

You put a bunch of things into a file or box and write this catchall across the front. “But within a week you’ve forgotten what’s in there,” says Morgenstern. Instead, sort items into specific groups — “electric bills,” “lightbulbs,” and so on.

4. Schedule regular decluttering sessions

Rather than wait until an industrious mood strikes (we all know where that leads), have a decluttering routine in place — whether it’s spending 15 minutes sorting mail after work or tackling a new project every Sunday afternoon.

5. Stick with what works

“I have clients who will try every line of makeup, every cell phone — it’s exhausting,” says Dorothy Breininger, president of the Delphi Center for Organization. Don’t waste time (and money) obsessively seeking out the best thing.

6. Create a dump zone

Find a space to corral all the stuff that you don’t have time to put away the moment you step in the door, says Breininger. Once you’re ready to get organized, you won’t have to hunt all over the house for the dry cleaning or your child’s field trip permission slip.

7. Ask for help

“The organized person is willing to expose herself to short-term embarrassment and call for backup,” says Breininger. Which is to say, that elaborate four-course dinner you planned? Change it to a potluck.

8. Separate emotions from possessions

It’s healthy to be attached to certain items — a vase you picked up in Paris, your grandmother’s pearls. But holey concert tees or cheap, scuffed earrings your husband gave you years ago? Just let them go.

9. Foresee (and avoid) problems

You wouldn’t leave the house on a gray day without an umbrella, right? People who appear to sail through life unruffled apply this thinking to every scenario, says Breininger. Have a cabinet packed with leaning towers of Tupperware? Organized folks will take a few minutes to short-circuit an avalanche before it happens. (In other words, rearranging that cupboard now is easier than chasing after wayward lids as they scatter underneath the fridge.)

10. Know where to donate

It’s easier to part with belongings if they’re going to a good home. Identify a neighbor’s son who fits into your child’s outgrown clothes, or choose a favorite charity. “It will save you from searching for the perfect recipient every time you need to unload something,” says Morgenstern.

Like some kind of industrial magic trick, this design by Casulo challenges our very ideas of compact, portable and transforming furniture. It seems impossible that a bookcase, wardrobe, bed, mattress, multiple stools and more could all start out tucked away in a simple rectangular box just31 by 47 inches in size – but here it is: an all-in-one interior design with everything needed for a living room, bedroom and office packed into one small box.

The entire system can be deployed in just ten minutes, requires no additional tools and (as you might have guessed) every single part of the box is used in one way or another in the final design. Every time you move, or want to reconfigure a space, or have to put something into storage … would these steps not be much easier with a furniture system that simply collapses back in upon itself when not needed?

Leadership is one of those nebulous terms — you hear it all the time but it has various definitions. The traits that make up a good leader can vary depending on the organization, team, manager and work environment.

Leadership can also vary in style — are you someone who dictates the group and doesn’t listen to anyone else’s opinion? Or do you lead with a more bureaucratic or democratic style?

“Every leader has a particular style of leadership that is innate. However, the behaviors, attitudes or methods of delivery that are effective for one staff member may in fact be counterproductive for another,” says Michael Burke, account supervisor, MSR Communications, a public relations firm.

“Great leaders are aware of their own style and make the effort to learn how their style actually comes across to their team. They learn to flex their leadership style to individual team members so that they communicate and behave in ways that motivate and inspire.”

Here is what five leadership professionals consider to be traits that make up a good leader:

Rachael Fisher-Layne, vice president of media relations, JCPR, a public relations agency

1. Honesty. Always do the honest thing. It makes employees feel like they know where they stand with you at all times.

2. Focus. Know where you’re going and have a strong stated mission to lead people on. If you’re not sure, how can your people be sure? You have to have strong focus and stay the course.

3. Passion. Whatever it is, you must have passion for what you’re doing. Live, breathe, eat and sleep your mission.

4. Respect. Not playing favorites with people and treating all people — no matter what station in life, what class or what rank in the org chart — the same.

5. Excellent persuasion abilities. People have to believe in you and your credibility. Image is everything and the belief people have in you, your product, your mission, your facts or your reputation are key to being a great leader. You have to persuade people of this — it doesn’t just happen.

Darcy Eikenberg, a leadership and workplace coach, Red Cape Revolution

1. Confidence. If you don’t believe in yourself, no one will. I hear leaders worrying that if they show too much confidence, others will think them arrogant. The reality is people want to know what you know for sure — and what you don’t. Having the confidence to say “I don’t know” is a powerful skill.

2. Clarity. The only way you can get confidence is by becoming really, really clear about who you are and what is most important to you. New leaders fail when they try to become all things to all people, or try to do too much out of their area of excellence. Clarity helps you say “yes” to the right things — and “no” to others.

3. Care. The strongest, most effective leaders I’ve met care not just about the business, but about the people in it and the people impacted by it. Plus, they show they care through their words and actions, even proving how they care for themselves and their family by taking unplugged vacations and continuing their own professional development. Care shouldn’t be a four-letter word in our workplace today — and the best leaders know it.

Tom Armour, co-founder, High Return Selection, a recruitment firm

1. Integrity. They are people who are respected and worth listening to. I find in general due to all of the economic difficulties, employees prioritize and seek leaders and organizations that are honest and meet their commitments.

2. Compassion. Too many leaders these days manage with the balance sheet, often times at the expense of their employees and long-term customer relationships. Talented people want to work for leaders and organizations that truly care about their employees and the communities in which they operate.

3. Shared vision and actions. People produce real business gains and smart people need to understand what is needed and be part of the solution.

4. Engagement. Great business leaders are able to get all members of their teams engaged. They do this by offering them challenge, seeking their ideas and contributions and providing them with recognition for their contributions.

5. Celebration. In today’s work environment, people are working very long hours and they need to take some time to celebrate their successes in order to recharge their batteries. Those leaders who fail to do this create burnout environment overtime.

Mike Sprouse, CMO, Epic Media Group, and author of “The Greatness Gap”

1. Humility. True leaders have confidence but realize the point at which it becomes hubris.

2. Empowering. True leaders make their associates feel emboldened and powerful, not diminished and powerless.

3. Collaborative. True leaders solicit input and feedback from those around them so that everyone feels part of the process.

4. Communicative. True leaders share their vision or strategy often with those around them.

5. Fearlessness. True leaders are not afraid to take risks or make mistakes. True leaders make mistakes born from risk.

Nancy Clark, author of “18 Holes for Leadership”

1. Genuine. You need to be clear on what your values are and must be consistent in applying them. As part of that, you need to have the courage to hold true to them. You must not lose sight of reality. Lost values may be one of the biggest causes of downfalls.

2. Self-awareness. You need to be clear on what your strengths are and what complementary strengths you need from others. This includes understanding others and learning how best to utilize their strengths. Many unsophisticated leaders think everyone should be like them; that too can cause their downfall. They surround themselves with people like them. “Group think” can blindside them and cause failure.

3. Leverage team strengths. Part of awareness is don’t expect people to change. If you think you can change someone, think again. This doesn’t mean you can’t help them grow and develop. But don’t expect to change anyone (even yourself) behaviorally. We are who we are. Your job as a leader is to understand each person’s strengths and place them in positions where they can flourish and grow. If you are good at that, you have a huge part of the equation for success.

4. Leadership transitions. Going from individual contributor to supervisor is only the first of many transitions along the leadership pipeline. You need to understand the business model, how it applies to your current position, what you need to do to provide the greatest value, and how to leverage your strengths at this level. This requires building competencies and focusing on the right things. No one ever tells you that there are many levels and many adjustments you need to make along the way.

5. Supportive. You need to foster a positive environment that allows your team to flourish. Also by aligning the reward and recognition systems that best match your teams profile and deliver results.

If your company sends out an e-mail newsletter to customers, you may find yourself suffering from a new problem I call “spam trap poisoning.”

Spam traps are e-mail addresses that antispam groups post on the Web but don’t use for sending e-mail. Instead, these addresses lie in wait until they’re found by “harvester” programs. These harvesters are key tools for spammers: they scan millions of Web pages, scooping up every e-mail address that’s visible.

If a spam trap receives any e-mail, therefore, antispam groups assume the message must be spam. This can automatically put the IP address on a “blocklist” that keeps the sender’s messages from getting through to some mail servers.

Unfortunately, spam traps are starting to bite legitimate businesses. I’ll explain how and what you can do about it.

How Spammers Can Poison Spam Traps

I discussed spam trap poisoning with Julian Haight, the director of a controversial blocklist called SpamCop.net. In an interview, which formed the basis for my column last week on SpamCop, Haight said he’s reduced his reliance on human spam complainers and has dramatically increased his use of spam traps. “80 to 90 percent” of the reports he receives are now generated by such bots, he explains.

Spammers, however, are learning how to discover which e-mail addresses are spam traps. How can this injure your company’s reputation and e-mail deliverability?

• Spam Traps Lead To Swift Blocklisting. Because spam-trap addresses can react immediately to any e-mail they receive, as little as a single message can add a sender to a blocklist within minutes. Spammers don’t much care about one individual source of spam being blocked, of course. The top professionals in the spam business use a massive network of hundreds of thousands of PCs they’ve infected with Trojan horse programs that actually send the spam. Some infected PCs may be blocked, but spammers have many others that aren’t.

• A Process of Elimination. Because the biggest pros send millions of junk e-mails a day, they can segment their lists and send messages through different computers to try to identify spam traps. If one sender was added to a particular blocklist at 10:00 a.m., for example, it was probably due to a spam-trap address that received a piece of spam after 9:30 that same morning.

• Poisoning the Spam Traps and Your Company’s Good Name. By watching mailings that are sent out on subsequent days, spammers can soon isolate a few addresses that are almost certainly spam traps. The spammers then sign those addresses up for legitimate e-mail newsletters to ruin the effectiveness of the spam traps. Now the addresses are receiving legitimate e-mail, not just spam.

• Reliance on Spam Traps Backfires on Blocklists. To best “poison” the spam traps, spammers use the newsletters of the most respectable companies possible. When mail servers that use blocklists start to reject mail from these large, respected brand names, the blocking services lose credibility. Many end users had wanted to receive those company’s mailings and blame the blocklists for being wildly inaccurate.

If your company’s newsletter is used in these exploits, the pain can be severe. Your routine e-mail messages can suddenly start to bounce — or simply disappear, deleted forever by mail servers that blindly relied on the blocklists.

Choose One: A Terrible Problem or a Horrible Problem

Haight is adamant that companies can avoid damage to their reputations by requiring all newsletter subscribers to “double opt-in” as opposed to “single opt-in.” He also considers double opt-in to be a requirement because it prevents one person from signing up another person’s e-mail address to an unwanted list.

Let’s take a closer look at what single and double opt-in mean:

• Single Opt-In. A single opt-in newsletter allow customers to sign up by entering their e-mail address in a Web form and clicking “Subscribe.” The publisher usually sends an immediate message welcoming subscribers and telling them how to unsubscribe if a mistake has been made.

• Double Opt-In. This method, also called “confirmed opt-in” or “verified opt-in,” doesn’t initially send any newsletter to customers who subscribe. Instead, the subscribers receive a message saying they must “verify” their e-mail address. The message usually instructs the recipient to click a hyperlink or generate some kind of e-mail response.

There’s a big problem with double opt-in, however. The newsletters of most Fortune 500 companies don’t require it, because a huge number of customers simply don’t understand why they have to verify their address — “I just gave it to you, it’s valid, you idiots.” Other consumers don’t respond because they’ve been told never to follow any instructions that an e-mail requests, as a precaution against “phishing.”

“I’ve seen the rate as low as 40% confirmation,” says Paul Myers, publisher and editor of TalkBiz News, a newsletter for business owners. His own publication, which uses double opt-in, has a very targeted audience and gets almost 100% confirmation, he says. But he doesn’t believe double opt-in should be a requirement for every company. “There shouldn’t be any reason why people miss the mail they want because they didn’t understand the confirmation process — or that one was required.”

The Battle Over Opting-In

Anne Mitchell is CEO of ISIPP (the Institute for Spam and Internet Public Policy), a whitelist organization that works with Internet service providers and spam filtering companies. “The push for double opt-in was really by the antispammers, not the ISPs,” she says. “They [the ISPs] don’t care how you build your list, as long as you don’t send spam.”

ISIPP maintains online scoring systems that are used by SpamBouncer and other antispam filters. One ISIPP scoring formula for trusted senders gives a maximum of 90 points to those who require double opt-in. But single opt-in newsletters can still achieve 80 points. The difference is small — because single opt-in newsletters aren’t spam.

As far as the percentage of cases in which one person is subscribed by another person to a single opt-in newsletter, the number is “miniscule,” Mitchell says.

How Many Mistakes Are Made, and Who Makes Them?

AWeber Communications is one of the world’s largest e-mail service providers. Literally thousands of different customers use the firm’s technology to send opt-in e-mail newsletters, according to company CEO Tom Kulzer.

AWeber requires the double opt-in method for new subscribers to get its own newsletter, Kulzer says. But his firm allows its individual publishers to choose to use either double opt-in or single opt-in. “More of our customers use single opt-in, fewer use double opt-in,” he explained in a telephone interview.

Confirmation rates for the double opt-in newsletters he’s monitored range from “nearly 100%” to “as low as 20%.” Meanwhile, cases in which an innocent person has been signed up to a single opt-in newsletter without consent are very rare, in his experience. “We see that maybe once a month,” Kulzer says.

“Usually the only time we see problems with somebody maliciously typing in someone else’s address is vehement antispammers who are signing people up to a list,” he continues. “When we track that down, the newsletter’s been sent to a ‘postmaster’ account that only these [extreme] antispammers would know about.”

Conclusion

You’re caught between two awful choices. If you require a double opt-in policy for people to subscribe to your company’s newsletter, you may lose half of more of the people who want to sign up for it. That’s bad customer service. On the other hand, if you use single opt-in, as most companies do, anyone can add spam-trap addresses to your database of subscribers. Your company could suffer e-mail deliverability problems for days after every issue of your publication goes out — activating the blocklists each time.

The answer is to carefully monitor which blocklists point to or don’t point to the IP addresses that your company uses to send mail. OpenRBL.org is one free service that allows you to enter any IP address or domain name to see whether it’s on any of 30-some real-time blocklists.

If your company does get whacked by a blocklist for a few hours or days after your newsletter goes out, use some of the same tricks that spammers use to identify spam traps. Segment your e-mail list into 24 groups at random. Send mail to each group, one hour apart throughout the day. If one group triggers a blocklist, segment it even further until you’ve isolated the potential problem addresses.

Finally, consider dropping subscribers who, according to your server logs, haven’t clicked a hyperlink in months — they could be robots disguised as ordinary newsletter readers.