About a week ago I was given a free ticket to attend a seminar in Sydney.  The topic, Business Is Booming.

The speaker was Bradley Sugars, entrepreneur, business coach, educator, seminar presenter and business advice expert.  He is also the author of the Instant Success series and CEO of ActionCOACH Business Coaching.

Now for me to attend the seminar I have to drive about 1.5 hours from my home to the venue, then another 1.5 hours back home afterwards, not to mention the fact the seminar started at 7pm and ended at 11pm after chatting afterwards.  That makes it a total of at least 7 hours of my time just to attend a FREE seminar.

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Internet marketing is the business of both advertising and selling goods and services over the internet. This form of business is ever-increasing in popularity, with millions of people now making purchases on the internet. Internet marketing began in the early 1990s as primarily a means of product description, consisting merely of text descriptions. As technology progressed, internet marketing rapidly advanced to include pictures and other rich graphics as part of advertisements for products and services. After realising the remarkable potential of this means of marketing, internet-based companies started opening their virtual doors for business. As opposed to what are now known as “brick and mortar” operations, these e-businesses offer their products and services to a growing number of consumers, conducting all, or nearly all, of their business in the virtual world of the internet.

There are many forms of marketing on the internet. Among them are video marketing, social media marketing, article marketing, blog marketing, e-mail marketing, search engine marketing (to include search engine optimisation), banner ads, pay-per-click ads, and pop-up ads. It is important to note that each of these forms catches the attention of the target market in different ways, and some may be more effective than others depending on the product or service, the target market, and the strategy and goal of the business marketing itself. Among the business functions that may require use of different means in their strategies are customer service, sales, public relations, information management, and others.

Internet marketing has also become an integral component of many “brick and mortar” operations, but online-only businesses have offered some challenge in the arena of retail sales, an example of business-to-consumer (B2C) marketing, business-to-business (B2B) marketing, and peer-to-peer (P2P) marketing. However, other online-only businesses have specialised into newer approaches, such as online auctions, sites that allow you to find the best price on what you’re shopping for, and also sites that allow you to name your own price. Further, affiliate marketers have emerged, offering marketing solutions to virtually all types of business. These firms typically receive what is called pay for performance. Even home-based businesses now flourish thanks to internet marketing.

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Building a website can be a bit of an intimidating and challenging task, especially for someone who has never done it before. Wordpress offers a quick and simplified solution to build a website of your own. It is essentially a start-up blogging package that gives you a pre-built website so that you are able to customise it for your needs and desires.

Using this Content Management System (CMS) has many benefits, but here are the Top 5 benefits of using Wordpress for a Website.

1. It offers an Installation Process that is Quick and Easy. Many web hosting companies offer a control panel with a link to Wordpress. You will merely need to enter some general information and install it. The whole process takes a matter of minutes.

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The online marketplace can do much to help promote your business and bring loyal customers to it. However, if you want to keep succeeding and stay up with the competition, you will need to maintain a good online reputation. Just as much as the social media networks can help your business, they can also do a lot of damage quickly. Rumours can spread like wildfire, and if you do not take the time to deal with them quickly and efficiently, your success could be threatened. So you must learn not only how to spread the word about your business, but also how to maintain a good online reputation.

Have a good customer service: As a business owner, you probably already recognise that issues are going to arise. Legitimate or not, customers will have reasons that they are not satisfied with some area of your service. And when this occurs, you need to have a team on hand to respond quickly and take care of the matter efficiently.

Handle the negative comments with extreme politeness: In the real world, you know that not everyone is going to be happy with your business. So if someone starts to leave some negative comments about you, This is an opportunity for you to take a problem and turn it into positive business marketing. It is important to answer them on the spot with a positive, polite, and humble attitude. Often those people will quickly back down when they recognise that you are on top of the issue, and it will save your reputation with many.

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I thought I would share something different with you today and show you some amazing photos.

Photography is something I would like to do more of and I have been told by some that I can “snap a good moment in time”.

But I have to give praise when it is due and it’s obvious why these photographers work for National Geographic because these following photos are simply amazing.

By the way, the last photo is one I took so let me know what you think.

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