The significant challenges that we face today cannot be resolved by the same level of thinking that created them.

Hi and welcome to today's issue of KIT. So what do you think of the new Home 4 Success logo? My husband figured I needed something a little more lively for my channel logo so he added a little pizzaz to my website logo for me. He's definitely the one with the creative talent in this family.

As problems with spam, unsolicited bulk email, spoofing and phishing increase - weblogs, blogging and rss feeds are playing a more important role in our internet businesses. In my opinion this is a good thing. The spam that attempts to gain entry to my Inbox each week is growing steadily by about 2,000 additional messages each and every week.

The irony is that since the CAN-SPAM Act was implemented at the beginning of this year, spam instances have increased. Programs like MailWasher® Pro and my mail program are constantly working on updates to their software to help us combat the problem but it may not be enough.

For instance, an address I have used exclusively as a subscribe address for my own ezine subscriptions has recently fallen into the hands of the spammers and the only way for this to have happened, was one of the publishers has abused my subscription. It's truly disappointing.

Those of you who are serious about your business will most likely have at least taken a look at what a web blog can do for your business. Marketers and advertisers are beginning to understand the value of using weblogs and rss feeds as well for the simple reason that the people who have subscribed to the weblogs or rss feeds want the information you offer.

One of the biggest advantages for the marketer is that once an ad has been placed in the Quikonnex system, it becomes part of a searchable database. So even once the ad itself has 'expired', the ad is still there in the database thereby increasing the value of your advertising dollar as well as your reach.

Most of the publishers I know are fed up with being unable to deliver to high percentages of their lists as well as the list maintenance tasks that go with it. Since email is steadily losing its effectiveness, there is far too much valuable time being wasted on trying to send your message by email.

Search engines like Google love blogs so if you are smart, you'll do more than just log your personal feelings and start using a weblog for your business. The content on a weblog is constantly changing and being updated. So if you are using yours to publish your ezine for instance, the search engines will stay on top of it. That's what they look for - regularly updated content.

Syndication is another plus and it's easy to do. If you want regularly updated content for your website, take a look at Home 4 Success Syndication. You'll have a number of options for syndicating content to your own web pages here. And at no cost to you.

I don't think weblogs, blogging and rss feeds are just a fad. I strongly believe they are here to stay and it can only get better when you have people like the creators of Quikonnex going the extra mile to help you make your blogging efforts a reality. They've even made the whole signup process easier as well - Quikonnex Easy Signup.

The beauty of Quikonnex is that you don't need a techie degree to be able to start using it. You also don't have to search around for extra software to get everything up and running. The QuikView sidebar acts as your reader, gives you access to your members area, your QMTP messaging center, your web conferencing room, your stats, your channel manager and it's an unbelievable bookmark server as well.

If you haven't taken advantage of the bookmark server feature yet, you don't know what you're missing out on. Most of us started out with a desktop computer. Jimm and I now have laptop computers as well since he's on the road so much and I try to travel with him when I'm able. With the QuikView sidebar, you can import all your Favorite links and have them at your fingertips each time you login to Quikonnex. Now it won't matter which computer you save your favorite links to - they are all there on the sidebar every time you login. Be sure to use the keyword feature when you create a new link and Quikonnex will help you find what you are looking for even if you can't remember the name of the site. What a terrific time saver that has proven to be.

Without a doubt, Quikonnex is one of the easiest 'direct-to-desktop' publishing services available today. It's cross-platform and cross-browser friendly which is another big plus in my book. Corey Rudl just introduced his own aggregator system and it relies on Internet Explorer. Now that is a dumb move in my opinion, considering the cost to his publishers.

Skip Lombardi wrote today's Feature Article, Want to Get Your Message Out? Start a Blog. I chose this article to help show just how many people are getting involved in blogging and why they are doing it. I think Skip does a good job telling you why he's implementing weblog together with the numerous advantages. Since it's a rather lengthy article, I've split it and continued it where the Special Feature would normally be.

On a more personal note, I've really been enjoying this trip with Jimm. I've never travelled through the Crow's Nest Pass in British Columbia nor have I travelled through Washington or Oregon. The views have been fabulous. Sorry we missed touching base with you Bobette. And Gary, as of yesterday morning I was going to be contacting you and Jaye to say 'let's meet for coffee' - unfortunately, dispatch changed our trip so hopefully next time.

Have a great day and keep smiling.

Publisher, KIT and the Home4Success Channel
Contact Me Directly

KIT Online Archives
http://www.home4success.com/kit2004.html

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An Effective Alternative to eMail

Want to Get Your Message Out? Start a Blog
Copyright © Skip Lombardi

What would you think if I told you about a guaranteed method to reach 100% of your target audience? Beyond that, what would you think if I told you that you could develop a base of prospects who would look forward to hearing from you? You can do this, and more, by starting a blog.

Since the landmark CANN-SPAM legislation, I think the spam situation has gotten worse instead of better. I continue to get more new spam than I can effectively filter, and the "marketing gurus" who send me newsletters from time to time, are bemoaning the fact that as much as 46% of their outgoing e-mail is never getting to its intended recipients because of spam filters; either on desktops, or at ISPs.

Worse, in an effort to get through the filters and into your inbox, those same gurus are reduced to sending their messages using words like `s*p*a*m', or `f'ree', or `guar*an*teed'. For me, this is a turn-off that makes their messages look unprofessional, and in my eyes, costs them credibility. And here is where a blog begins to solve those problems.

The word is a loose contraction of the term, "Web Log." A blog is--at a minimum--"a journal that is available on the web. The activity of updating a blog is "blogging" and someone who keeps a blog is a "blogger," according to the WWW Dictionary.

Blogging offers the opportunity for people to tell the world what's on their minds, to share their passions, or to simply inform them of current events--no matter how uniquely focused. Or…to tell them what's going on in their business. A blog is a hybrid e-zine/newsletter that keeps you and your contacts in touch with each other.

Who can you name? While technically not blogs, all the major newspapers have created data feeds. Columnist Dave Barry has a very popular blog. Now that Google has bought Blogger, it has developed a blog to keep searchers up-to-date with ongoing activities in Palo Alto. And in this election year, political pundits are finding new and receptive audiences in the "blogosphere."

To find out who's blogging in your field, do a search at Bloglines (http://www.bloglines.com) for some of the keywords that you use on your own web site. I'm sure you'll be astonished at the results.

Blogging would be of little value if you had to depend on the traditional methods for getting traffic to your Web site. But a new piece of technology gives you the capability of reaching tens of thousands of readers with the click of a button. RSS--Real Simple Syndication—is a means by which the content on your Web site--and not restricted to blogs--can be translated and distributed to thousands of users who have access to a "News Feed." All at no charge.

Perhaps the most amazing feature to come to the internet in years, and the feature that allows your readers to make a distinction between news and spam, is the news aggregator. This is a software application that polls the world of blogs at user defined intervals, and updates itself whenever it sees something new. Cori Rudl is touting this free technology as the next "big thing," and has apparently already figured out a way to make a buck at it.

With a news aggregator, you choose the sources you'd like to read, and the software will poll those sources hourly, daily, weekly--as you've specified--and it will notify you when one of them changes.

As you might imagine, several companies provide products or services to give you access to news feeds. They fall into two categories:

Two of the popular aggregators on the Web are Bloglines (http://www.bloglines.com), and Blo.gs. (http://www.blo.gs) Simply register with either or both services--at no charge--then browse their database of blogs, and click the "subscribe" link for any that interest you. They'll be added to your personal space on the Web site, and you can make a bookmark to view them at your leisure.

If you'd like to have news delivered directly to your desktop, you can download a news reader like Sharp Reader, or Feed Demon (http://www.bradsoft.com/feeddemon/).

Like their Web-based counterparts, these products enable you to specify which blogs (or news sources) you'd like to follow, and they will update them when they sense any changes. There is no charge for Sharp Reader. Feed Demon costs $29.00.

And if you'd prefer to get your updates via e-mail, News Gator (http://www.newsgator.com/) integrates itself with Microsoft Outlook, and will notify you about updates via a familiar interface. News Gator too costs $29.00.

Creating a blog requires special software that is available either free, or for a nominal monthly fee. Even better, though, blogging software is designed to flatten the learning curve for all who have the urge to share their thoughts with the rest of the world. It requires virtually no knowledge of HTML, or CGI programming. Updating a blog is as simple as typing words into a text editor, then clicking a button to publish your blog to the world.

Among the most popular blogging applications in use today, are Blogger (http://www.blogger.com), Movable Type (http://www.movabletype.org/), and Type Pad (http://www.typepad.com/).

Further removing the need to know HTML, blogging software allows you to choose a template (which you can customize) that gives all of your messages a consistent look. This could help you in branding yourself.

We can only give away to others what we have inside ourselves.

This is the challenge of writing. You have to be very emotionally engaged in what you're doing, or it comes out flat. You can't fake your way through this.
- Gordon Atkinson, RealLivePreacher.com

It's not that some people have willpower and some don't. It's that some people are ready to change and others are not.
- James Gordon, M.D

Develop interest in life as you see it; in people, things, literature, music -- the world is so rich, simply throbbing with rich treasures, beautiful souls and interesting people. Forget yourself.
- Henry Miller

Whatever software you choose will have built-in functionality that will allow you to:

* Specify how many messages to display on a page * Specify the Archive interval (daily, weekly, monthly, etc.) * Provide an area for readers to leave comments at the end of each blog post.

You can even configure the software to send you e-mail notification when a reader leaves a comment. This gives you the ability to provide timely responses, and to reassure your readers that there is indeed a human behind the blog.

In addition, the software automatically attends to housekeeping chores like creating directories, archiving old posts, and displaying a particular number of messages per page, based on your specifications.

If you have your own domain name, you very likely have your own server, so you can host your blog there. If you prefer, though, Blogger will host your blog on their "Blog Spot" server at no charge. If you've subscribed to Type Pad's service, they will host your blog there.

Thanks to the news aggregators, blogs are available to a staggering number of potential readers. Your task--at least initially--is to see to it that your current and potential customers have news aggregators, and that they have your blog listed in them.

When they see that you've updated your blog, you can have a high degree of confidence that they're going to read what you've written, because they voluntarily subscribed to your news feed. As I said earlier, they will very likely be glad to hear from you.

Beyond that, the blog world is loaded with "techno-geeks" who enjoy nothing more than watching to see whose blog has been updated recently. So you can count on some random traffic there too.

Finally, the blog world is inhabited by a talkative bunch of folks. Blogs, after all, are vehicles for communication. So it's very likely that if you begin to post worthwhile content to your blog, the word will get around. This is indeed the case where "if you blog it, they will come." But then it's your job to keep them coming back with high-quality content.

Once you've attracted a following, people will begin to seek out your blog for your expert advice and commentary. Your blog will become the go-to source for timely information about your area of expertise. And it will be only a matter of time before people will be compelled to drill down into your sales page, or go to your sales site to buy your product.

If it is indeed true that a sale rarely gets made before the seventh contact with a buyer, a blog can shorten the interval between contacts from weeks to days.

So what is the precise interaction between you and the blogging software that holds the potential to reach thousands of readers? Well, when I post a blog entry, I begin by writing it in Microsoft Word, text format. That way, I'm confident that I'm going to get all the major spelling and grammar mistakes out of the way quickly.

When I'm happy that I have a reasonably polished piece, I log-in to my blogging service, and I click on the "New Post" link. This gets me to a small text editor. From here, I go back to MS Word, copy my text, and paste it into the text editor.

Then, I select "Preview"" to view the document in a window that, while not browser-quality, is better quality viewing than raw ascii text editor. If I'm happy with what I see, I click on the "Publish" button. If not, I can go back to the text editor and make changes. And that's all there is to it. My latest post, formatted, dated, and ready for comments, is now in residence at Skip's Italian Food Blog (http://www.skiplombardi.com).

At this point, Blogger notifies a service called Weblogs.com (http://www.weblogs.com), and they post a message on their site, that Skip Lombardi has updated his blog. But that isn't even close to the end of the story.

Weblogs will tell all the people in their database that I've updated my blog, but there are many, many more services that do the same thing, and I want to reach all of them.

Seeing a need for bloggers to notify the blogosphere that they've updated their blogs, a couple of like-minded bloggers created a service called Ping-O-Matic (http://www.pingomatic.com). This is a free service that "pings" or notifies the most important news aggregators on the web that you've updated your blog. Now, you have the potential of being noticed by over 500,000 people. And not one of them will even consider the possibility that you're sending spam.

You don't even need to have a Web site to begin blogging. Simply subscribe to a free blog hosting service and have at it. Google will list your blog the same way they list every other Web page. And you don't even need keywords in your tags.

And speaking of Google, I've not seen any factual reports, but I've seen a ton of speculation on SEO websites that the spiders visit blogs more frequently than they visit traditional Web sites, because the blogs are updated so much more often. It certainly appears to be the case with my own blog. I've made postings, and seen those pages in Google within days afterward. So, at least by anecdotal evidence, blogging offers the possibility to improve your page ranking in the search engines.

Finally, blogs offer the ultimate opportunities for networking. The attitude among bloggers is that "we're all doing this together." So exchanging links with like-minded sites is the norm rather than the exception.

Also, a company called Blogrolling (http://www.blogrolling.com) makes it possible for people to link to you "on the fly." You get a small piece of javascript code from them, place it in your blog template, and when people come to your site, they can click on the "Blogroll Me" link, and they immediately add your link to their site.

A blog will never replace e-mail—on a purely personal level. But a blog will help you to reach a larger audience than you thought possible with opt-in e-mail. Whether you sell information products, candles, or baseball cards, you'll find folks in the blogging world who are seeking exactly what you have to offer.

For me at least, a blog has provided the quickest way to reach the largest number of people. And every one of them is interested in hearing what I have to say next.

About the Author:
Skip Lombardi is the author of two cookbooks: "La Cucina dei Poveri: Recipes from my Sicilian Grandparents," and "Almost Italian: Recipes from America's Little Italys." He has been a Broadway musician, high-school math teacher, software engineer, and now, a fledgling blogger. But he has never let any of those pursuits get in the way of his passion for cooking and eating. Visit his site to buy either or both of his cookbooks.
http://www.skiplombardi.com or mailto:info@skiplombardi.com

The first time this happened to me, I checked all my electronic connections but that wasn't the problem and I didn't have a clue as to what to do. The laptop just wouldn't turn on.

Fortunately, a friend of mine uses a laptop regularly and when I told him what was happening, this is what he told me to do:

• first, disconnect the power supply, wait a few seconds and plug it back in
• if it still won't boot up, then disconnect the power supply and remove the battery - wait several minutes, then put the battery back in and reconnect your power supply

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