Old Time Radio (OTR) is not dead. In fact, he is alive and well on the Internet. The Internet has really helped to revive the old radio. After the RTO day was over, that the only way to get one of these shows was to find them on the old wheel on the wheel and band to listen to this format. Some people like to convert these files to prove and later bands. There was a small group of OTR fans used to do this and do their own shows. Very few people have enjoyed these shows was aware of these small clubs, and therefore could not watch. When computers became available to more people and more, smart PC users have learned to convert those old shows in digital format. 70 minutes, watch could be placed on a CD. With the advent of MP3 compressed audio format, distribution is now possible via the Internet.

So many people can now enjoy the fun and adventure of OTR through the efforts of all those who have made the shows and posted on the internet. With fast Internet connections up to enjoy today, can be downloaded as showing how much you want in a short period of time itself. Well, now we know that these great old radio shows are available again, how do you go about finding them? There are several ways to get these programs. The most expensive is to buy the watch in a bookstore in audio format. Of course, this audio CD will play in any CD player, including his car, but there are only 70 minutes of the sample in each CD. On the other hand, are quite expensive. You can search online and buy old records of radio play time in mp3 format. These are the tablets and thousands of hours of shows can fit on a CD or DVD. They do not play in most CD players, but you can listen on your mp3 player or your computer.

Or you could join a club download OTR and pay a monthly fee to download one of the shows they have on their website. It is much cheaper and good option for those who have computers at home. The best way to get the old radio programs mp3's time to find a site that offers them for free. These sites are rare because there are costs associated with starting and maintaining a website. There is the cost of registering the domain name, with a monthly fee for Web hosting and paying for the disc to the old radio series. Thus, these sites offer only a few of many hundreds of concerts in styles limited. The best sites for old radio time are those that are managed as a recreational club. This is where visitors donate ten or twenty dollars U.S. to pay once for the site and listen to more songs.

Why is a hobby club better than a download site? Some people, not all, who ask for a monthly fee are more of a business than an old time radio lover. A hobby club is usually run by someone who loves old time radio and just wants to share it with as many people as possible. This is the reason for the small donation fee instead of asking ten or more dollars per month as some sites charge. By combining their resources, all of the club members can listen to many more shows then they could afford on their own.

The customers are coming. Are you ready?

If you operate a retail store, you have less than one month to make a big success of this holiday season.

I’m sure you know how to run your store but I’d like to give you some tips to contribute to your success.

1. Few stores have enough staff working the floor. Schedule more staff than you need to work the registers and stock the floor. It’s stupid to operate with only sufficient staff to ring up sales. The goal isn’t to get the customers out the door as quickly as possible. Shoppers at this time of year have no idea what they want and are highly suggestible. You should schedule enough staff to keep the lines short at the cash registers and have sales people circulating the store suggesting items to customers. The goal is to sell as much as possible. If everyone is ringing up sales, no one is selling. Adding staff to work with customers will produce more sales. Retail help is CHEAP. A floor person can generate at least $100 per hour. Don’t be cheap, be smart.

2. Train your people. Retailers make the mistake of treating the holiday season as a “busy” time. It’s not just a busy time. The rules of engagement are completely different in November and December than they are for a busy Saturday in August. First of all, people are not buying for themselves at this time of year as they are during most of the year. This changes the whole shopping dynamic because people know what they like for themselves but find it much harder to choose something for someone else. The customers need more assurance. They want to know that their selections are good ones.

Teach your staff to help people shop for other people. NEVER ask, “can I help you?” Try this, “Hi, may I ask who are you shopping for? I might be able to suggest something great.” Do you want to knock your customers over with great service? Ask them “Is there anything I can do to make your shopping easier?”

Another big difference about this time of year is men will be shopping in stores or departments where they do not normally shop. Help them. Men are looking for a way to buy their way out of the season. There’s an old expression in retail that says women browse for a pair of pants and men hunt down a pair of pants.

Lastly, budgets mean nothing in December. People who had carefully planned to spend $50 on mom will spend $100 to get mom checked off their list.

3. Keep the goods on the sales floor, not in the back room. The store’s shelves must be full. When the amount of goods on the shelves begins to thin, the available selection looks picked over. That’s another reason to keep plenty of staff working. Small stores tend to stock and organize when things slow down. That’s the Sears way of doing things. You want your store as nice and full as possible when the most people are shopping in your store. As obvious as that sounds, you’ll seldom see it in practice. As soon as things slow down, around 9:00 p.m., everyone is folding sweaters and bringing out goods. Don’t bring carts on the floor during the busy time. But you can bring out goods in a constant flow of small boxes. When you bring a box out, watch the crowd flock to it.

4. Shock your customers with service. Offer to carry bags to their car. Offer separate receipts for each item. Sure, that’s a pain for you but it’s a wonderful service for the customer. Have envelopes handy and offer to put receipts in envelopes. You could run off some nice stickers for the envelopes saying something like, “gift receipts from Mandy’s Boutique”.

Get a pile of $5 cards from the food court or a near by coffee shop. You can probably get a big discount from your own food court vendors. If a customer spends over a certain amount, give them a card and tell them to take a break on you. Don’t advertise this. Just do it. Building goodwill through service is a lot cheaper than marking everything down 3 weeks before Christmas. Make it so fun to shop in your store your customers will tell their friends about you. Sell everything and you won’t have to take mark downs.

5. Offer gift boxes before the customer reaches the register. Show them a particular item in a box. You are selling convenience. Customers see your wonderful staff doing half of the project of wrapping their purchases. That’s much better than asking customers if they want some boxes at check-time and then just putting flat cardboard in their bags.

If you don’t have gift boxes, go get them, dummy! ANYTHING in a box will sell as you get closer to the end of the season. Display lots of items in boxes. Guys especially will appreciate seeing things boxed. It completes the picture. They see a robe hanging and think, “maybe she’ll like that”. They see a robe in a box and think, “I’m done shopping”.

You don’t need to box everything in the store. You can box samples for display. Next to the hanging robes, put one in a box. Your staff can switch it for the customer’s correct size and color. That’s a service, right? You should have a box for everything you sell. When people see a boxed item, they buy it.

5a. More about the box thing. If it’s in a box, suggest it. When guy buys a robe, suggest a nice boxed pair of gloves. Add-ons are easy to sell when boxed. Go to Sears and look around. They put screwdrivers in boxes during the holidays. Sears gets that part of the season right.

All 5 ½ of these items relate to giving good service. If you train your staff to provide extraordinary, remarkable, outstanding and incredible service, you won’t be discounting your inventory as early as your competitors.

Holiday shoppers want to finish their shopping, not to shop. Make it easy and fun to shop at your store and people will try to finish their shopping chore with you.

Do not run out of boxes. That’s inexcusable this time of year.

Have a great season!

Chris Reich, Author of TeachU’s Business Talk Blog
Chris@TeachU.com

Guidelines For Keeping Customers Interested In You

Search engine marketing is a way for your company to draw and keep consumers interested in your products and / or services. By properly including these guidelines into your web design your market will respond.

Appeal To Your Audience

In regards to written information on your site you want to appeal to your audience. For example if your site is marketed towards kids you wouldn’t use large or complex words, or to the other extreme, if computer engineers are your targets, you want to write to their level. This will ensure that you draw the right audience and that your content relates to your market. This guideline is the most important and stressed topic for search engine marketing. If you do not design information and content to your targeted audience, surely there will be no success.

Give A Reason To Act

Once you have targeted your audience, give them a reason to act now instead of later. This can be done through offering free products or shipping with purchase or offering a newsletter subscription with frequent discounts and current information. With this type of search engine marketing you want to be sure your not overweighing incentives, meaning selling is the high point to marketing but it should not take over your entire site.

Offer Competitive Advantages

Do research and find out how your competitors are advertising on their sites. Use this to your advantage by finding what works and what doesn’t. This can go as far as web placement, design and content. Viewers are drawn more to pictures and art than they are text-links. Stay true to your brand while designing competitive and unique advertisements.

Incorporate Keywords

Keywords are important when consumers are searching search engines. Again do research and see what keywords are used for the best search results of your competitors. Write them down and apply them to your sites content and design. The more keywords that are placed throughout your site the more likely you are to gain higher search results. For further keyword optimization view my article The Simple Basics To Search Engine Optimization.

When designing your site think simple and straightforward. No one likes to skim through endless text or be distracted by large advertisements. Appealing to your audience, giving them a reason, offering competitive advantages and incorporating keywords are all excellent guidelines to optimizing your market.

While you may think that having your own website is all that’s essential if your home based business is to succeed, any successful Internet marketing email home based business needs another asset just as much. What is it?

If you have a mailing list of people who have purchased a product or provided a response to one of your ads, with verifiable email addresses, you are in possession of something that will make you the envy of many Internet marketers. But it will take a while for you to build it. What are your best methods for getting a list big enough to set you up with a profitable Internet marketing email home based business?

1. Article Directories

If you want to build a list of email addresses genuinely interested in whatever your home base business is selling, write, or pay to have written, articles on your product. Then submit hem to article directories, where you‘ll be given a resource box at the end of each article. Use the resource box to include a newsletter signup, and if your article were good, you’ll get the email addresses of readers who’d like to follow up.

2. Free Reports

Most people can’t pass up a free offer related to something in which they are interested, so by writing and offering free reports about your products to those who join your mailing list you’ll be following in the footsteps of some very savvy Internet entrepreneurs. Just make sure the information in your free reports is current and accurate, because they may be the first impression you give to potential customers. You certainly don’t want them to be the last!

3. List Building Sites

List building sites are matrix programs which require you to refer people to join after you. The referrals of your referrals become your second level referrals, and you can send your mails to them and everyone whom they refer. It’s typical matrix stuff, and works fine as long as you get in near the top and have referrals who are willing to share their lists of referrals.

Listbandit.com has a twist in that every twenty-four hours it randomly flips the positioning in the matrix so that some days you have a lot of email addresses to which you can send your mailings, and other days you’re on the bottom of the list. You have to be prepared to do your mailings on the good days, and that’s not the most efficient way to promote a business!

4. Become a Blogger

You almost have to have a blog if you want to succeed at marketing, because a blog gives you an opportunity to build real rapport with your prospective customers. You can place sign up forms for your free reports on each page of your blog, and if your readers are impressed with your blog’s contents, they will probably sign up to learn more.

There are plenty of other ways to begin building a list for your Internet marketing email home based business, but whichever method you choose, it’s key to build trust with your customers by keeping their information private and by making sure that you give them quality information!

Accepting payments through credit cards online is a huge plus factor for any online merchant. Customers and potential clients, first and foremost, look for convenience and credibility when browsing websites they want to buy products or get services from. To gauge these factors, potential clients and customers look at one of the most basic components any reliable online merchant should have – an efficient and secure payment system.

When people talk of payment systems, nothing is more reliable than a PayPal account. Online merchants like you can benefit from setting up a PayPal account in order to accept credit card payments directly online. Below are the steps in setting up and accepting credit cards directly to your PayPal account:

1. Sign up with PayPal.

Register for a PayPal Business Account to get started. Signing up is easy as PayPal will walk you through the registration process.

2. Verify sign up information details to activate your account.

You will need to verify your information by clicking the link sent to the email address you provided during registration. This is done to ensure the website’s security.

3. Opt for the Website Payments Standard option.

This is the basic option for most online merchants. You can look up information on the other payment options to see which best suits your website’s needs.

4. Choose your shopping carts and buttons.

PayPal offers custom-designed shopping carts that are free and a variety of HTML buttons you can put on your website to facilitate the payment process. You can choose from a variety of buttons for different functions like “Buy Now,” “Add to Cart,” “Subscribe,” “Donate,” and “Buy Gift Certificate.”

5. Start accepting payments online.

PayPal accounts work this way: Customers browse your site and look for products they want to purchase. When they have added all the products they want in their shopping carts, they will proceed to the checkout counter where they will be directed to a secure and encrypted PayPal page designed to match the look and feel of your own website. The credit card payment transactions as well as those for PayPal are done here. After the transaction, the customer is directed back to your website.

One advantage of accepting credit card payments through your PayPal account is letting go of the things you do not really need to attend to: customer problems (they do not need a PayPal account to use your service), separate gateways, fees for setting up, application, or monthly rates, long-term contracts, and security of financial information. PayPal can solve and manage these tricky areas for you with additional benefits of efficient monthly sales reports.

You can use your PayPal account as it is or choose to work with a third-party internet marketing and affiliate network to better facilitate your online financial and payment transactions. This type of network is provides basic and extra business features online merchants like you may need. Aside from having facility in processing financial transactions without waiting for days and weeks, joining internet marketing and affiliate network like Click2Sell.EU can also boost your sales since you can benefit from its extensive network and stable of internet marketing tools.