There are many ecommerce solutions available, but today we will be talking about 2 of the leading 3rd party ecommerce solutions available today. These 2 leading ecommerce platforms are Magento and BigCommerce.

Magento
Magento is a feature-rich, professional open-source eCommerce solution that offers merchants complete flexibility and control over the look, content, and functionality of their online store. Magento’s powerful marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), and catalog-management tools give merchants the power to create eCommerce sites that are tailored to their unique business needs. Magento was founded in 2001 and has made a recent partnership with eBay that has enhanced its growing community of developers who are constantly improving and creating new features, extensions, and modules. Magento has been praised for having the best technical support teams of any eCommerce platform available in today’s market.

Sidenote: x.commerce is the combination of eBay, PayPal, and Magento

BigCommerce
BigCommerce is a PHP-based eCommerce software from BigCommerce, Inc. The licensing for BigCommerce is proprietary and ranges in cost from $24.95 per month to $299.95 per month. There are five versions available within the above price range: Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, and Diamond. BigCommerce claims that users can “Open your online store in 5 minutes” and that “more than 1,000 businesses sign up for BigCommerce every week.” BigCommerce is a web-based application that boasts over 450 features.

Magento vs. BigCommerce
- Both are created by SEO-minded people, so the SEO functions are among the best in shopping cart platforms.
- Both ensure free future software updates
- Both offer marketing tools, such as coupon codes, discounts, and gift certificates
- Both boast easy-to-use front-end features, including simple admin panels and extensive customization options
- BigCommerce provides the next level in social media integration
- Both can handle unlimited products, but the price increases drastically for BigCommerce
- Wide range of plugins (and features) available at extra costs from both BigCommerce and Magento
- Magento’s layered navigation increases usability
- Magento offers multi-lingual, multi-currency capabilities out of the box
- Able to create and manage multiple storefronts from one admin dashboard
- Magento is a more comprehensive solution with more available add-ons, while BigCommerce is a simple store that will get the job done
- Magento has much better technical support and community following over BigCommerce

No matter what platform you currently use, Brazen Web Design, LLC. can migrate your site over to industry-leading Magento eCommerce or BigCommerce without needing to worry about data loss, duplicate data, or any other possible problems. We can successfully migrate all imperative information from your previous site, such as categories (including category structure), products (including products options), customers (including multiple shipping addresses), orders, and manufacturers. Check out www.brazenwebdesign.com for all of your Magento eCommerce or BigCommerce integration needs.

If you need to build an online store from scratch, we can certainly provide that as well along with a complete custom professional design with unlimited design revisions. We can implement or customize all the functionality you require to help make your online store a real success!

For more information about Brazen Web Design’s expertise with SEO, eCommerce platforms, web design, mobile site development, iphone application development, and custom web development, please email or call us toll free at (877) 219-4678.

Also, like us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter http://twitter.com/#!/brazenwebdesign for the most up-to-date information on Brazen Web Design! If you Become a Fan of our fan page (LIKE US) we will provide you with a free web design mockup as well as detailed quotation!

Publishing your press releases online can provide valuable inbound links, drive traffic and increase your chance of being found by the search engines. However, it can also be a complete waste of time if you do not know what you are doing.

We have experimented using many of the services and other ways of getting press coverage and this is what we have learned:

* Make sure you have something that is newsworthy to say. Keep it under one page long. Never use a press release as a blatant promotion for your products or services. For important news get the copy written by an expert. Remember to put your contact details at the end of each press release

* Concentrate on the headline. Journalists scan hundreds of headlines a minute. It is your only chance to grab their attention. Next, summarize the whole story in the first paragraph

* If your press release is truly newsworthy, send it directly to newspaper and magazine editors by email. Paste the story into the body of the email; don’t have it as an attachment. Make sure the story is very relevant to what they cover and follow up with a phone call. Your long-term goal should be to build a relationship with the key journalists in your sector

* Add your press releases to your own website or blog. Then email the relevant bloggers in your niche to draw their attention to your press release. Make the approach personal. Never undertake mass distribution. (NB. Never put a press release on your site as a pdf. Most people won’t bother waiting for the file to open)

* For important press releases use one of the paid PR distribution services. The ones that I have used are PRNewswire.com, BusinessWire.com, PRWeb.com and PRLeap.com.

* For minor, regular press releases distribute via one or two free reputable press release services. The three that we have found work for us are prlog.org , pr.com and pressrelease365.com . Experiment to see which ones works for you. There are over 75+ press release sites that have some level of value. I have made another post on our blog about more of these free PR sites.

Using Press Release Websites

There are dozens of press release websites. Most have a free service with a premium upgrade. There are a handful of paid PR services which are head and shoulders above the rest. Our list is shown below, but before you look at it there are a few guidelines you should take into account.

Only use PR sites that:

* have a Google Pagerank of 4 or above. Sites with no Pagerank will give you no benefit or may even have a negative impact because they may have been blacklisted for spamming. You can check the pagerank at www.popuri.us

* are built to allow you to optimize your articles for the search engines using tagging, anchor text links, header tags, etc. If you don’t know what these are, look on the PR website for a statement about articles being optimized for search engines (SEO)

* don’t use NoFollow tags. For those who haven’t heard about Nofollow tags, they are inserted into website code to stop the search engine spiders following the links. If the spiders can’t follow the links in your press release, you get no benefit from having it on the PR website

Below I have listed the free sites that we have looked at. Many of these free sites also offer paid plans with extra features. I have then listed the handful of pay sites which I think are worth paying for.

The free press release sites below are listed in order of pagerank. Most of them have a free basic service and a paid upgrade. We have found that a high pagerank PR site doesn’t necessarily result in more traffic, but the higher the pagerank the more valuable the inbound links.

The paid press release sites below are in our preferred order. You should look at all of them to see which one best meets your needs.

Free Press Release Services

* Free-Press-Release.com – Pagerank 5/ Alexa 3,547 – Not a great looking site, but it has high traffic and a good Alexa ranking. Also, you can place your banners on the press release submitted, pointing to your site. Only the paid service has better ranking and SEO benefits. Easy press release distribution for free, more features for paid accounts.

* PRLog.org – Pagerank 5 / Alexa 16,551 – Ordinary and functional looking website, but it delivers results. Free distribution to Google News and other search engines. Allows inbound links and is optimized well for the search engines. Press releases can be scheduled.

* PR.com – Pagerank 5 / Alexa 27,482 – Fantastic domain name, disappointing website. Free basic service. Two paid options of $199 and $499. Paid options include a full company profile.

* OpenPR.com – Pagerank 5 / Alexa 42,088 – Service based in Germany started in 2004. Free submission and distribution.

* 1888PressRelease.com – Pagerank 5/ Alexa 58,760 – Good pagerank and reasonable traffic. They allow active links. Their paid services gives you better placement, image galleries and permanent archiving.

* NewswireToday.com – Pagerank 5 / Alexa 51,449 – Very poorly designed site which is difficult to read and navigate. All the usual free distribution tools, premium service includes logo, product picture and more.

* PR-Inside.com – Pagerank 4 / Alexa 17,995 – The main reason for including this service is it is one of the few PR distribution sites focused on Europe

* 24-7PressRelease.com – Pagerank 4 / Alexa 46,460 – Free press release submission with limited distribution for the free service. They allow active links. (Upgrade package $49).

* EcommWire.com – Pagerank 4 / Alexa 107,600 – This fairly low traffic site is good for eCommerce related press releases. You can include an image, three keywords and a link with anchor text. OK.

* TheOpenPress.com – Pagerank 4 / Alexa 64,691 – Gives free distribution for plain formatted releases. Charges for HTML-coded releases.

* PressMethod.com – Pagerank 4 / Alexa 66,727 – Very ugly site, but appears to get reasonable traffic. Free press release distribution to limited list. Have additional paid-for services which are not worth the money.

* Free-Press-Release-Center.info – Pagerank 3 / Alexa 56,516 – Nice, clean looking site. Pagerank likely to increase with current traffic levels. Enables PR submission and distribution. Includes one link with anchor text embedded in the article. Upgrading to Pro will give you three links, permanent archiving and more.

* I-Newswire.com – Pagerank 3 / Alexa 69,619 – Free distribution to sites and search engines. Premium membership differs only slightly by adding in graphics.

Don’t Bother With These Sites Unless You Have Lots of Spare Time!

* PR9.net – Pagerank 4 / Alexa 6m – Alexa numbers suggest there is a problem with this site

* PRbuzz.com – Pagerank 3 / Alexa 212,213

* PRCompass.com – Pagerank 3 / Alexa 75,237 – Distribute your press release with a free or paid version. Has Digg style voting

* PRUrgent.com – Pagerank 3/ Alexa 80,402 – Some useful advice about writing press releases. Good looking site. One to watch

* Press-Base.com – Pagerank 3 / Alexa 389,117 – Submit your release for free and get on their front page and the category of your choice

* TheMediaSyndicate.com – Pagerank 3 / Alexa 115,910 – Free site that has been around for years. Poor pagerank and traffic

* ClickPress.com – Pagerank 5 / Alexa 46,078 – Cluttered, ugly site. Distributes to sites like Google News and Topix.net. An upgrade to their Gold level will also get you onto sites like LexisNexis.

The Paid Press Release Sites For Important News

* PRNewsWire.com – Pagerank 8 / Alexa 7,508 – For our paid releases we tend to use PRNewswire. Not a great looking site, but it is the newswire used by the largest number of journalists. The annual subscription is $195 with additional pricing for additional exposure.

* BusinessWire.com – Pagerank 8 / Alexa 16,730 – Tends to be used by bigger companies often to meet their SEC full disclosure requirements. Prices on application.

* PRWeb.com – Pagerank 8/ Alexa 9,822 – Good reputation for reaching local news sources so worth considering if you have a good story for a single region. Prices start at $80 and go up to $360 per release depending on the level of visibility you want to achieve.

* PRLeap.com – Pagerank 6 / Alexa 55,935 – We used this site for the first time and did the $99 paid plan. The results were average, but not impressive. It might be worth $99, but it still does not compare to PRWeb or PRNewswire which still seem to give the best results globally. PrLeap is a a nice clean site. Price per press release – $49, $99 and $149 depending on level of service. Distribution to search engines, newswires, and RSS feeds.

Conclusion

Getting press coverage is one of the best forms of marketing there is. An article, review or mention on a third party website, magazine or news source is much more powerful and valuable than a paid advertisement. However, it takes time and effort to get good coverage. This article should help you get started, but your ultimate goal should be to build personal relationships with the key journalists, bloggers and influencers in your niche.

Social Media is rapidly becoming the most cost effective way for companies to market themselves. And with over 500 million users, Facebook has established itself as a required destination for any business looking to use social media to expand its marketing reach. And yet, with all those users it is still difficult for a company to turn a profile into a customer. Premium Fans helps its partners by getting people to become ‘fans’ of the company. When a business signs up a ‘fan’, they are able to send messages, promotions, information, and specials to all individual ‘fans’ at once. And unlike most other Facebook Fan marketing companies, Premium Fans uses absolutely NO black hat techniques or fake profile farming. Each profile that Premium Fans delivers will be specifically targeted according to the partner company’s intended demographic. Utilizing the full capabilities of Facebook by improving your ‘fans’ and followers is one of the simplest and most valuable methods a company can do to improve sales. Offering packages to buy Facebook fans ranging from 1,000 friends to 10,000 friends, Premium Fans has the capability to fill any company’s needs.

Premium Fans dedicated staff has over a decade experience working in web design and social media marketing. Based out of the United States, Premium Fans is a recognized leader in the developing field of Facebook marketing. By offering an unmatched money back guarantee, they are setting a new standard for accountability and results in the social marketing arena. And while the explosive growth of 2011 is not unexpected, it is nothing compared to the goals Premium Fans intends to achieve going forward.

Through Facebook fans marketing it can quickly increase lead generation and also multiply leads through their network as well. Buy Facebook Fans for your Facebook fan page to increase page visitors, which in turn improves profitability. Once accumulated with your new Facebook fan base, you can promote your services by publishing advertisements, promotions, and special offers for your new audience to take advantage of. “Buying Facebook fans is one of the smartest marketing investments TheSocialPulse.com has made and it immediately provided additional exposure to potential clients” says Jason Gray from TheSocialPulse, a valued client of PremiumFans.net.

By increasing fans for Facebook fan pages it widens the audience for promoting a company’s product or service. This service is particularly intriguing to online marketing agencies who wish to improve brand awareness for their own clients in a quick timeframe. If looking for a premium resource to buy Facebook likes, then PremiumFans has been highly recommended by many companies. PremiumFans employ an experienced marketing staff that is always available to assist potential and existing clients in a professional manner.

PremiumFans can target thousands of real Facebook fans that will engage with your Facebook fan page to gain a valuable customer base on the most popular social networking site in the world. There are several different Facebook fan packages available ranging from 1,000 to 10,000 Facebook fans at an incredibly affordable price. PremiumFans is also one of the only social media marketing agencies offering a 100% money back guarantee, which makes it a risk free opportunity! Improve your brand awareness and buy targeted Facebook fans today.

It seems that we are still having to convince business owners that tapping into the social media market is not an option anymore, but an absolute necessity. Believe it or not there are still many business owners that do not see any value in facebook, twitter, or the many other social networking platforms available. This is simply due to the lack of understanding and education on the real value that these social media sites have to offer or how they work in general. If used properly facebook can be one of the better inexpensive ways to increase branding, promotion, and awareness of your products/services almost immediately.

I mean do you honestly think that Walmart, Best Buy, Petco, Target, Apple, Sony, and thousands of other corproate giants have facebook pages because they enjoy talking to their old highschool buddies? Come on now, these corporations understand the value and increased exposure they can receive from these gigantic social media sites; and most likely they realized it before you did. Whether you like it or not, social media is not only here to stay, but it will continue to evolve until it takes the place of some other very popular forms of media communication such as traditional email. Thats right! You heard it here first! So if you are one of those stubborn people that do not want to learn new tricks or have another task on your plate, simply hire an affordable freelancer or marketing agency to maintain and update your social media sites for you. It will be well worth it, that is a promise.

It’s great for marketing your products, services, and interacting with your customers to gain valuable feedback in REAL TIME.

I am making a list of 20+ ways Facebook can be a useful tool for your business:

1. Make sure to completely fill out your profile to earn trust. If you have a facebook page or business page then make sure to fill out your profile completely.

2. Create a business fan page if you don’t already have one.

3. Install appropriate applications to integrate feeds from your blog and other social media accounts into your Facebook profile. (If you are reading this on our facebook business page then ITS WORKING! We have our blog synced to facebook so that our blog entries feed to facebook as well as ALL OUR social media accounts)

4. Keep any personal parts of your profile private through Settings. You will have a wide audience (or at least you should if actively participating in facebook) and you do not want to get bothered from anyone but people interested in your business, and you only want your business contact information to be used. You do not want people showing up at your home or calling your cell phone asking when you are going to ship their order or provide them services at ridiculous discounts.

5. Create friends lists such as “Work,” “Family” and “Limited Profile” for finer-grained control over your profile privacy.

6. Post a professional or business casual photos of yourself or business logo to reinforce your brand.

7. Limit business contacts’ access to personal photos.

8. Post your newsletter subscription information and archives somewhere in your business fan page profile. Connect and share this with your connections, fans, and friends.

9. Obtain a Facebook vanity URL so that people can find you easily. You can learn more about this on facebook’s FAQ section.

10. Add your Facebok page URL to your email signature and any marketing collateral (business cards, etc.) so prospects can learn more about you. Make sure you have have a facebook icon on your website that links to your business facebook page.

11. Post business updates on your wall. Focus on business activities, such as “Working with ABC Company on web site redesign.”

12. Share useful articles and links to presentation and valuable resources that interest customers and prospects on your wall, to establish credibility.

13. Combine Facebook with other social media tools like Twitter. For example, when someone asks question on Twitter, you can respond in detail in a blog post and link to it from Facebook.

14. Before traveling, check contacts locations so you can meet with those in the city where you’re heading. Research prospects before meeting or contacting them.

15. Upload your contacts from your email client to get more connections that will spread like wild fire!

16. Use Find Friends for suggestions of other people you may know or be interested in what you have to offer to expand your network even further. Request that they become a fan or a friend and engage with those people.

17. Look for mutual contacts on your contacts’ friends lists.

18. Find experts in your field and invite them as a guest blogger on your blog or speaker at your event.

19. Market your products by posting discounts and package deals. Run some contests and watch people come out of the wood work and participate!

20. Share, survey, or research data to gain credibility.

21. Use Facebook Connect to add social networking features to your web site. You can read more about facebook connect on their website. We will be doing a case study on facebook integration next month in which we will share the pre-results and post-results of the integration.

22. Suggest Friends to clients and colleagues — by helping them, you establish trust.

23. Buy Facebook fans from marketing services to target your exact audience. Think about buying facebook ads as well.

24. Use Network, Group, and Fan Pages to create a large network of followers.

25. Start a group as well as a fan page for product, brand or business.

26. Add basic information to the group or fan page such as links to company site, newsletter subscription information, videos (if you have one), and newsletter archives.

27. Post upcoming events including webinars, conferences, and other programs where you or someone from your company will be present.

28. Update your group or fan page on a regular basis with helpful information and answers to questions. BrazenWebDesign.com has created a method to sync our blog with ping.fm and hootsuite.com to feed all our blog entries from our company site to all social media accounts we own, such as facebook. It requires little work to update all social media sites using this method, but still allows us to engage with people from all social media sites. If you want to know more then please contact us at info@brazenwebdesign.com

29. Join network, industry, and alumni groups related to your business.

30. Use the search function to find groups and fan pages related to your business by industry, location and career.

How do you use Facebook for YOUR business? Do not create a business fan page and then just leave it for dead! Take a little time each week to work on the above suggestions or hire a firm to help you make it easier and less time consuming to update by syncing your blog to facebook, twitter, and other social media platforms!

More to come…

Your target audience defined:
It is important that you know your desired market. It also helps everyone working on your website to keep everything aligned to the brand so that your market gets the same message even with different Internet marketing efforts. You can go the extra mile and include a detailed profile of your target market. Based on insights and behavioral information that you have collected, you can paint a better picture of your niche for your team.

Categorize Your Blog:
Being able to define the category your blog should belong to is just as important as being able to define your target market. When you figure out the market battleground you belong to, it becomes easier to identify your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and possible threats. Being part of a definite category also makes work easier for everyone. You’d be able to know what is expected of you and how far should you go to deliver something better for your market.

Content Type:
When you already have your market and your category on paper, it becomes easy to come up with rules and standards for your blog content. At first, this sounds limiting. But after a few posts, it becomes natural for you to know how to give a little extra to keep things interesting. Remember that your marketing plan serves as a guide. It’s not made to limit creativity and ingenuity. Rather, it seeks to challenge your team to come up with fresh ideas while maintaining the essence of your communications and marketing objectives.

Chosen Keywords:
While most sections of your marketing plan stay as they are, the keywords section should undergo constant updates. The base personality of your market remains consistent. However, market details (where media and culture are huge factors) are bound for changes—like vocabulary and the things that they spend time on in the web. Stay on top of your keyword list so that your content is always optimized for the right keywords.

Link Associations:
Your blog marketing plan should define the type of associations you want to allow for your brand. Although you cannot guarantee zero negative publicity, having a guide will make everyone extra-conscious of to which sites they link your blog, and in which forums they participate on your behalf.

One thing to keep in mind as you are growing your subscriber directory is that quality is more important than quantity. Yes, we all want a big list, but adding random names and email addresses or forcing unwilling people to subscribe will actually hurt your newsletter. A list of 100 eager readers will bring you better results than a list of 1000 anonymous strangers who have little interest in your product or service.

Here are a few ways to start building your newsletter list:

1. Get email addresses of ALL past and current clients. From now on, you should always get new clients’ email addresses as part of your regular information gathering. Put a space on your contract for this. Call all past clients and let them know that you’d like to offer them a free subscription to your valuable newsletter.

2. Print a sign-up form and bring it with you to every networking and business meeting. Ask everyone you meet if they’d like a free subscription to your valuable newsletter.

3. Add a newsletter sign-up box to your web page. Most newsletter service providers will give you a personal code that you simply need to copy and paste onto your homepage. If you don’t have a website, put the sign-up box anywhere that you have a web presence, like Facebook, Myspace, online portfolio, etc.

4. Tweet about your newsletter. Social networking is a great way to build your list. As you build relationships and make connections with people around the world, invite them to subscribe to your valuable design newsletter.

5. Use your business card. Instead of just listing a few services and products, use your card to create a call to action. “Get your free subscription to our valuable newsletter by going to…”

7. Write articles. Sound Familiar? Yes, we just covered this in a different scenario. This has been one of my quickest list-building tools. You can write an article and have it published in someone else’s newsletter – someone who is in a similar business with your same target audience, but who is not a direct competitor. Make sure you end the article with “Click here to get your free subscription to…”

A few good email marketing services available are constant contact and icontact.

Follow these steps and your own your way to creating a high quality newsletter list!

Some of the ways in which article writing can be used to help benefit your site:

A. From the Resource

When an article is published on an article directory or ezine, so too is a link to a specific page on your website. This is a very powerful way of getting links back to specific pages within your site, and you can use it to improve the Google PageRank of any page you choose.

That link comes from the URL you provide in your ‘Author’s resource’ section of the article in which you can publish a link to any page that you want from your website. Most people just give the home page URL, and while that is useful, you should also include a link to another page in your website that is more relevant to the article you have written.

Most directories permit at least two links in the resource, and I always use a link to my home page and to a page that offers more information on the title of my article. That’s what your readers will expect, so make sure they get it! Always give your readers what they expect to see when you submit articles online, so if you write an article about seo services, send them to your seo services page when they click on your Resource link.

Don’t just send them to your home page! You want to help improve the search index ranking for all pages of your site not just the home page!

B. From Readers Visiting the Directories

When you submit articles online they are published on article directories, and people that visit the directories definitely read these so again, make sure you are writing these for people’s reading pleasure and not just to satisfy search engines.

C. Copies of Your Article

Many people copy articles from the directory to their websites. Sure, many cheat and remove your resource, but lot more keep it there, and you get the benefit of any clicks made on your links and also a share of the Google PageRank of the web page to which it has been copied.

D. Search Engine Listings

This could be your greatest benefit – the directory page on which your article has been listed is a regular web page, and can be listed on Google and the rest just as any other web page.

If your page has been properly optimized for its keyword, then you can get it listed. I submit articles, and some of my submitted articles are listed on Page #1 of Google. Just imagine the traffic that this can provide you with. Imagine if you have hundreds of articles listed on the first page of search engines for a specific topic related to your product or service which links TO YOUR SITE?!! Just think about that for a minute and the power behind it!

So these are some of the benefits of article writing.

Finally, here is a list of the top 25 places to submit your article directories by traffic and pageranke:

1. knol.google.com
2. ezinearticles.com
3. ehow.com
4. hubpages.com
5. squidoo.com
6. articlesbase.com
7. buzzle.com
8. suite101.com
9. technorati.com
10. helium.com
11. brighthub.com
12. goarticles.com
13. gather.com
14. articlesnatch.com
15. articlealley.com
16. thefreelibrary.com
17. bukisa.com
18. ezinemark.com
19. xomba.com
20. selfgrowth.com
21. articledashboard.com
22. ideamarketers.com
23. amazines.com
24. articlecity.com
25. searchwarp.com

There are also some tools and applications available to make this process easier and faster, but unless you know exactly what you are doing you can do more harm than good. I recommend doing this process manually!

Get to writing!

The 9 methods that we will cover are:
- Article marketing
- Blog marketing
- E‐mail marketing
- Search engine marketing (SEM)
- Pay per click campaigns (PPC)
- Search engine optimization (SEO)
- Banner advertisement
- Mobile marketing
- Social media marketing

Let’s kick it off with Article marketing! Article marketing is a great way to get the word out about your product or website as long as you write your articles with valuable content. You will attract and grab the attention of people searching for information about your particular industry or product. What is really attractive about this form of marketing is that search engines love seeing a variety of well written “keyword optimized” articles on your site. When you submit articles online, you are using one of the most powerful methods available to you to gather backlinks to your web pages. The first step is to create articles that are helpful, creative, accureate and specific and you will attract many new site visitors.

Depending on your skill level and budget you can attempt to write these articles yourself or pay someone else to write them on your behalf. There are MANY talented article writers available at various different price points. If you are not sure where to look for article writers, a good place to start is the digital point forums, or find a freelancer site.

Once you have your articles written, proofed, and edited you are ready to start putting them to work for you! Where do you submit them? How do you submit them you ask? Ok I will tell you the secrets, but not until tomorrow in PART 2………………..Stay tuned!

With that said, instead of sharing marketing strategies, cool new internet widgets, web design tips, or some exciting social media tactics today I would like to talk about something more personal. Whether your a business owner, entrepreneur, or dedicated day jobber trying to make your website flourish with success in hopes to tell that corporate jack%@s YOU QUIT!; all of us know how easy it is to lose an entire day with our face pressed against the pc monitor. You might know your working too much if your waking up 6 days out of the week with the letters A-Z imprinted on your forehead from passing out on your keyboard yet again.

I believe in working hard and taking pride in your work, but sometimes you have to make sure you are working to improve your life and the life of your family; and not living just to work. Life goes by quickly, so make sure you balance the work in your life and don’t let it balance you. My oldest son is nearly 5 years of age now and I swear it happened in the blink of an eye. Although success does not come easy, it is important to make time for our loved ones or what good is all this hard work anyways? Waking up with keyboard imprints on your forehead isn’t going to be nearly as cute if you do not have someone to share that funny moment with and no one to hand you that cup of coffee in the morning to get through it!

Where is all this coming from you ask? Well, tonight my oldest son came into my home office and asked if I would play Harry Potter with him on the “puter”. Without having to even translate what he actually said my programmed brain quickly replied, “Not right now son, I am working”. As he turned around to leave the room with his head hanging down he muttered for the first time to me “But your always working…”. A mix of emotions started coursing through my veins; anger, sadness, and regret were all fighting to take control. I was angry that it was so easy to give an automated response, sadness that I know how this feels, and regret that I handled it poorly.

In order to succeed with an online business venture you have to be dedicated, confident, and you must LOVE WHAT YOU DO. And I LOVE WHAT I DO, but make sure you make time to enjoy life and love those who love you.