Smart Tips for Using Your Debit Card

INTRO

Debit cards function similarly to credit cards except that debit cards allow you to withdraw funds directly from a checking account. In other words, when you use a debit card you are spending money you have already earned. Responsible debit card use can help you avoid fees and dangers that may end up costing you money

Check Your Account Balance Regularly

Since debit cards draw money from a checking account, you can only draw as much money as you have in your account. Overdrawing your checking account may result in fees from your bank. Many banks allow users to check account balances online, which can make it easy to keep tabs on how much money you have to spend. Some accounts also offer overdraft protection to protect you from fees if you happen to draw more than your balance.

Cancel Lost Cards Immediately

Debit cards and credit cards are easy to misplace. If you lose your debit card, call your bank and cancel the card as soon as possible. Unlike credit cards, it may be difficult to recoup fraudulent debit card charges because money is withdrawn directly from your checking account. For this reason, consider using a credit card instead of a debit card for normal use and online purchases and then use your debit card to pay off the credit card.

Destroy Old Cards

If you never use a certain card or receive new cards in the mail, destroy your old cards. New debit cards may have new expiration dates and security codes, but the card number will usually be the same.

Memorize Your PIN

Debit cards allow users to set up a personal identification number (PIN) that must be entered when withdrawing funds from an ATM. Set up a PIN as soon as you receive your debit card and commit the number to memory. Bankrate recommends that debit card users never write their PIN on their card.

Keep Your Card in a Safe Place

You should treat your debit card as if it were cash. You probably wouldn't leave $3,000 in cash sitting on the kitchen counter, but that's essentially what you are doing if you leave your debit card on the counter with a checking balance of $3,000. Keep your card with you in your wallet or purse when you are out and put it in a safe, drawer or other hidden location when you are not using it. Never leave the card sitting out where others can see it.

Why You Should Be an Intrapreneur at Work

Wikipedia defines intrapreneurship as “the act of behaving like an entrepreneur while working within a large organization.” In my view, intrapreneurs are people who, whether they make coffee or run the show from the top of the food chain, have a vested interest in thinking outside the box, pushing new and disruptive ideas forward in their companies and speaking their mind.

Taking this road isn’t usually a popular choice. It’s easier to go with the flow, collect your paycheck and call it a day. However, the benefits of being an empowered, vocal employee are huge. Becoming an intrapreneur at work can help your career — and even the careers of people around you — in a variety of ways.

It demonstrates leadership.
Speaking up when something isn’t going as you think it should — even if it’s just the way a project is being approached — demonstrates confidence and forward thinking. If you’ve never viewed yourself as a leader, this might seem very daunting at first. And many people, women especially, might even feel as though they need permission to make their voice heard. The following quote opened my eyes and shifted my perspective on this many years ago:

“The thing women have yet to learn is nobody gives you power. You just take it.” — Roseanne Barr

Feel how you may about Roseanne, but this idea is simple and empowering. Those who are comfortable speaking their mind are more likely to be seen as having the potential to lead others, a must if you want to move up to a managerial role.

You’ll be more respected.
Even if they disagree with you, your colleagues are more likely to respect you as a professional if you demonstrate assertiveness and independent thinking. Respect yourself and your own ideas, and others will respect you in turn.

You’ll be happier.
Intrapreneurs understand that their careers are in their own hands. If they’re unhappy at work or don’t like something about their workplace or responsibilities, they don’t complain about it; they take steps to change it. Being active instead of passive about your goals and personal vision will make you happier — with your job and yourself — in the long run.

Your company will become a better place for everyone to work.
Vocal employees are more likely to produce a culture where everyone believes they can contribute to a larger conversation about the company and its future. This is key to producing a truly collaborative culture that fosters loyalty.

It’s also vital to ensuring that companies act in ethical ways. Take the example of Carmen Segarra, who was hired by the New York Fed to inspect banks like Goldman Sachs following the financial crisis. According to tapes Segarra secretly recorded, the New York Fed was too afraid of damaging relationships with the big banks, causing them to look the other way more than they should have.

Government regulation of the financial industry is an extreme example, but it can happen anywhere. Company cultures that discourage workers from contradicting the status quo can lead to stagnant progress at best and corruption at worst. Intrapreneurs understand that sometimes ruffling a few feathers is the right thing to do.

Pioneering new and bold ideas is how innovation happens.
Intrapreneurs don’t think of an idea and then shelve it because “the boss will never go for it.” They push forward and ensure their ideas have a voice. They also think creatively about finding a way to make the idea fit within an existing initiative or program. Without people who’re willing to go to bat for their ideas, nothing new and innovative is likely to happen.

Wouldn’t you rather be that person?

Read more : http://www.ehow.com/ehow-money/blog/why-you-should-be-an-intrapreneur-at-work/

Quick Guide on How to Earn Passive Income by Writing Tutorials

The freelancing lifestyle is defined by one word, uncertainty! As a freelance designer or developer you are building a company as a service provider, and that means you’ll experience times when no income is coming from your service. You aren't going to have steady client work all the time. So how do you go about to prepare for this, CREATE SOURCES OF PASSIVE INCOME! And what better way to do that than creating tutorials?

Creating tutorials is great even outside passive income because it gives you a chance to grow your brand, showcase your talents to potential clients, and gets you active in the community. This is enough talking about doing, lets get to it!

Getting Over Your Fear To Get Started

I know starting to write tutorials seems very intimidating. You’re probably thinking to yourself, “who in the world would ever want to learn from the way I do things?” Right? In actuality in our field everyone, to a degree, has an obsession with reading and learning from others. This is partly due to how fast everything changes and needing to keep up, and understanding that we can learn from each others experiences and mistakes. So don’t stress it, just get to doing.

What You Need To Get Started

Now that your fear for getting started is gone, lets get going. If you are just planning on creating tutorials for popular blogs like 1WD, then getting started is a cinch. It’s as simple as figuring out the typical content they publish, create something similar to that, and email them about it with your pitch. Simple as can be. On the other hand, doing this with your own blog is a lot more work.

Lets take a moment and look at what you need to get your own blog up and running. With your own blog you don’t really need much. All that’s essential is an easily remembered domain, good name, good design and UX, comfortable with a CMS of choice (WP, Drupal, ExpressionEngine, Refinery, etc.) figuring out how often you’d like to publish articles/tutorials, and most importantly, the content itself. Everything listed is an essential item, but content will always be king on your blog.

So here is a more direct check list to look over.

• Memorable domain
• Good blog name
• Good design and UX
• Being comfortable with your CMS of choice
• Deciding on a publishing schedule
• Content, content, content

All that seems really easy right?

Generating Passive Income From Your Tutorials

So now you’ve gotten over your fears of getting started, you know the simple formula of how to prepare tutorials for top blogs, and have an idea of the basic necessities needed to get started as well. So now lets take a quick detour to discuss how you’re going to generate income from your tutorials.

For the most part, all those people you see writing tutorials on blog sites don’t have any real plan. All they’re doing is trying to create a new revenue stream from writing tutorials. In fact most of them don’t even have a portfolio site set up. Whether you’re going to be writing tutorials for your own blog or another site, you need a plan. Lets get to making one.

For Guest Posting

Now if you’re doing tutorials for another site, then you should have some sort of related product you do or could offer. It doesn’t have to be anything major, maybe a theme or a plugin. The smart thing would be to leverage the publicity from doing tutorials on other sites to bring more attention to your products. No extra work put into marketing, and you get to turn readers into possible buyers.

For Your Own Blog

This is a little harder here. This takes a lot of work in the early stages. You’ll need to put a lot of work into marketing, original content, social network interaction, and a whole lot of areas. Too much for a little short description to do it justice, so we’ll talk more about this in the next section.

Getting Your First Taste of Traffic From Affiliations

Many blog sites have some sort of affiliation program that they offer. It could be with the blog itself, or a product they offer, either way it is a great way for you to piggy back off their community to grow yours. This method is great because it takes very little effort on your part. Lets look at a quick 5 step guide in doing this.

• Step 1:  Start your own blog.
• Step 2: Take the time to create a good body of content for your blog. I’d say 10 quality tutorials and/or articles would do.
• Step 3: Find a select group of industry blogs that are popular in the area you write on, and offer them a tutorial to publish.
• Step 4: Negotiate, negotiate, negotiate. Ask them to allow you to include at least one link to a specific post on your blog – you can even go as far as waive the fee that they would normally pay you for your article.
• Step 5: Discretely promote yourself in your post, see below for example.

Alright, so in this tutorial we’re going to teach you how to create WordPress themes. Now I don’t just start from scratch with every product, that is a major time drain, instead I start out with this framework I created [framework name]. I created from the basic foundation I found myself creating for all the sites I build.

Improving Reach with Affiliate Promotions

No matter how hard you try, your tutorial and/or article will have linkage to another’s product because you use it in your process. Why not use that to your advantage? Here is a quick guide to getting affiliate promotions from the products you mentioned and using them to your advantage.

• Get in touch with the product owner who’s product who you’d like to promote in your post
• Negotiate some sort of arrangement where your promotion, or your site, gets featured on their site
• Repeat process with other product owners who’s product you’d like to use in other articles

Easy as can be right?

Side Effect: You’ll Get More Clients!

The longer you run your blog with great content, for more noticeable you’ll become. This notice doesn't just include other creatives, but clients too! Your blog will offer another source of validation a potential client may need to be able to decide if they want to hire you for their project.

Further Reading Material

Although there was a lot of great information for you in this post, it is always a great idea to continue reading to find different ideas. That is why I’ve gathered up some great articles from the 1WD and FounderTips vaults that should really help you get going. Below that, you’ll find some great books and sites that  will help you with understanding passive income and marketing. Happy readings!

• How To Get People To Read Your Blog When You’re A Internet Nobody 
• Real People, Real Money: How 7 Web Designers Who Earn Passive Income
• Why Web Designers and Web Developers Should Have Blogs 
• 5 Reasons Why Blogs Fail Hard
• How To Write Great Blogposts (Even Though You Are Not A Writer) 
• Questions to Ask Yourself Before Becoming a Blogger (still gotta ask if its right for you)

Other Resources

• Turn Your Blogging Skills into Successful Affiliate Promotions 
• Likeable Social Media 
• 500 Social Media Marketing Tips 
• Web Designers Making Thousands of Dollars of Passive Income 

Make Money With Google AdSense

Interested in making money with Google?

Here's your complete guide to getting started along with some info on how to maximize your earnings, why some accounts are disabled and even alternatives to AdSense.

What is Google AdSense?

AdSense is a nice way to monetize your traffic, and very easy to implement. It's one of my top earners and has been since 2003. (See the video about my earnings further down.)

Google.com earns most of its revenue by allowing other website owners to advertise on their search results pages.

All this is managed through a program they call AdWords (pay per click marketing).

You see these ads displayed above the free/organic results and along the right side of the page on Google.com.

These are called Sponsored Results, and the advertisers are paying a certain amount of money per click for these ads.

It's an auction-based system that allows advertisers to compete for those spots. Whomever has the highest bid and most "quality" ad, gets the top spot and so forth.

Now you can earn a share of the revenue that Google earns from AdWords by displaying these same text or image ads on your site. When someone clicks, you earn roughly 68% of the click and Google gets the rest.

This program is called AdSense.

It's a great program that can help you drive additional income to your website -- especially if it's mostly content based.

So if you are one of those people that doesn't like the idea of paying for a site, this is an excellent way to earn your money back and then some.

Please make sure you read this entire article. AdSense is not a get-rich-quick scheme and it takes a lot of work to make money. Don't think that just because you join, you are guaranteed to make big money.

How Does AdSense Work?

Here's a video I did some years back. The reason I still show it here is the concept is still exactly the same.

The biggest difference is it takes more work to build up traffic. 

How Much Can You Earn With AdSense?

The commission you receive per click depends on how much advertisers are paying Google for the particular ad. You will earn a share of that amount.  I've heard of earnings anywhere from 2 cents to $15 per click.

Getting over $1 is probably very rare, although it does happen from time to time. However, you will find that most of your earnings will be on the lower end of the spectrum.

It's important to note that I cannot estimate how much you will earn based on your traffic. People always want to know what the average amount is per click.

No one knows the answer to this except Google, so don't let anyone try to tell you any different. It would be impossible for myself or any AdSense publisher to give this information because the ads all cost different prices and we have no idea what advertisers are paying.

However, there are some niches that obviously pay more. So it is logical to believe that keyword phrases like sex, make money, etc. may earn you more per click since these are highly competitive keywords that are searched for quite a bit on  

The more competitive the search term, the more the advertisers pay and the more you earn as a publisher.

Even though Google will not reveal how much you are earning for each ad that is clicked from your site, you can still login to your account at any time and see the total amount of revenue you've generated that day, week, month, year, etc.

For example, if you see that you've made $12.60 today from 9 clicks then you can calculate that your average click-thru commission was $1.40 per click.  That's as detailed as their stats will get.  Also remember, that's only an average.  You won't know how much each specific ad brought in.

The amount you'll earn also depends largely on the amount of targeted traffic you receive to your own site, how well the ads match your audience's interests, the placement of the ads on your pages, and of course the amount you receive per click.

Ideally, you should create a site on a topic you know a lot about.  That way you'll have a much easier time creating a generous amount of content on that subject. 

My Google AdSense Earnings

I have been receiving monthly checks from Google since 2003 (yes that's me holding the same check from above), and I've read numerous success stories of websites earning 5 digit incomes per month with AdSense. 

Now, I will admit, a 5-digit commission in a single month is not the norm for most participants, especially today because it is more difficult to get traffic than it was years ago.

My sites have been around for a long time and I have a great deal of traffic so that's a big reason why I earn 4 digits per month.

I promote my sites on social media, create YouTube videos etc. Making a lot of money with AdSense is all about numbers. The more traffic you have, the greater the earning potential.

My checks weren't always this large.  I think my first month's earnings in 2003 totaled less than $20. However, as my traffic increased, so did my checks.

I cannot emphasize this enough. AdSense is NOT an overnight get-rich-quick opportunity. Even though this may look easy, please don't underestimate the amount of work I've put into my sites over the years.

Creating Your Website for AdSense

Before you even begin your site, make sure you've come up with a topic that you feel you know plenty about.  That way it will be easiest to write a lot of content. 

The more content you have, the better chance you have getting accepted into the program.  Also, the more content and traffic, the greater the earning potential. 

If you want to make a lot of money, prepare to write a lot of content and learn how to market your site. Don't expect to throw up a 10 page site and make $1,000 per month. That's unrealistic.

Now let's talk about building your website. 

Creating Your Site

Get a domain (yoursite.com) and then sign up for a web host and build your  pages. I highly recommend using WordPress to create your site because you just pick a theme and your site is up and running.

Once you have selected your theme, you can add AdSense ads by either using a free AdSense plugin or you can use the WordPress Text widget to easily add ads to your sidebar.

How to Join AdSense

Once you have 20-30 pages on your site, go tohttp://adsense.google.com to apply.

When you are accepted, simply copy and paste the provided HTML code into any page that you'd like to show the ads. You can opt to display text ads, image ads, or a combination of both. It's up to you.

You can either display the ads vertically along side the page like Google does or in a banner-like formation horizontally across your pages.  You can even customize the colors to match your site's theme.

Tips on Succeeding With AdSense

Here are some tips for achieving success with Google AdSense.

Build Traffic

You're not going to make anything with AdSense if you don't have enough traffic. Please don't think this is some easy, get-rich-quick program. This takes work and it all starts with getting visitors.

Experiment

Test ad sizes, images vs. text, play around with colors, you name it. I personally like to have my ads match the background of my site so they blend more.

Some people prefer to make their ads stand out by using bold/contrasting colors, but that never worked well for me. I think it's because they look so much like ads.

To display the ads vertically along the right side of the page, just copy this code into your site and paste your AdSense code where indicated.

You can change the width of the table to suit your needs, just remember that it needs to be wide enough to fit whatever AdSense code you selected. You can also switch the alignment by changing the align attribute from "left" to "right."

Create Channels

Channels allow you to see what units are working best. So if you are adding an AdSense unit to your header, you should create a channel called (name it Header, for example) so you can track its performance in your reports.

I think it's important to maximize your click through rate (CTR) so you can attract more advertisers (just my opinion based on logic.) So I remove channels/units that perform significantly lower than others.

Advertisers want to advertise on sites that will give them the most clicks, right? So it makes sense to optimize your account's CTR as much as you can.

So how do you create channels?

When you are creating a new ad unit, you are presented the option of creating a custom channel on the first screen...

Set Units to "Targeted"

When you target your custom channel units, you make them available to Placement advertisers who may want to advertise on your site directly. These advertisers pay more so you earn more per click.

It's super easy to set this up.

Just click "My Ads" from your account, then select "Custom Channels". Click the channel you want to target and click the box for targeting as illustrated below...

Avoid Free Hosts

I know times are tough economically and a lot of you don't want to pay for a website. But the facts don't lie. Successful website owners invest money. Period.

I have yet to open up a magazine and see a successful site featured hosted on Blogger.com or another free host. Never. And I've been out here since 1998.

If you want the search engines and people to take your site seriously, you have to own your site. And if you don't do this, I question your dedication.

Even if it means you have to wait and save your money for 6 months to buy a domain and hosting. I'd rather you do that then take shortcuts with free hosting.

The other problem with free hosts is they can remove your site without warning. This happened to a gentleman just last week who emailed me. There was nothing I could do. If you don't own your site, you don't own your income.

How Come I'm Not Making Much Money With AdSense

People often ask me why their earnings are so low and there are many reasons for that.

1. Not enough traffic

If your site has less than 500 visitors per day, it's going to be difficult to make much with AdSense. You have to remember that only a small percentage of people will click on your ads (1-2%) so if you have 500 people coming to your site in a day, that's 5 clicks.

Also, most clicks will earn you less than $1, so hopefully you can see that it takes a great deal of traffic to build up income with AdSense.

2. Not enough relevant ads displaying

Some niches have more, relevant ads that Google can display. This will drastically impact your click through rate. If the ads aren't relevant to your content then your visitors aren't going to click.

That's why it's important to make sure your site has a lot of content so you can help Google display the most relevant ads. Granted, sometimes there aren't relevant ads available, and there's nothing you can really do about that.

However, just having a few sentences with some images is not helping Google find the best ads because you have so little content.

3. Low paying niche

Let's face it. Some niches pay more than others. If you have a finance site, the ads will probably pay more than the ads on an entertainment site.

So the niche you are in plays a big role in how much you can make. That's why it's hard to estimate how much anyone can earn with AdSense. There are just too many different variables.

Not Getting Approved?

People often ask me why they can't get approved for AdSense. It's tough to answer because I do not work for Google, so I can only guess.

Many times it's because there are not enough pages on your website. I tell people to shoot for at least 20-30 pages at the very minimum, and make sure your content is very niche -- centered around ONE topic.

Google doesn't like sites that cover too many different topics because it's hard to target ads. The more focused your content is, the better.

In addition to more content, aim for longer articles (at least 700 words or more). Google does not like "thin" content sites that look as if they were created just for AdSense. Put some meat on those bones and make it look as if you put some effort into your website!

Also, check your grammar, spelling, layout etc. Remember you are partnering with Google and they don't like to see messy sites with poor/confusing navigation structures.

Getting Disabled From AdSense

Recently, a lot of publishers have been getting their accounts disabled for "fraudulent or potential fraudulent click activity."

This has frustrated a lot of AdSense publishers because many claim they have done nothing wrong and how in the heck does Google define "potential" click fraud?

No one really knows.

Remember, Google earns most money from advertising. The ads that appear on your pages are costing someone money every single time a click is registered.

Google monitors clicks very closely -- especially if your account is new.

So if they sense A-N-Y-T-H-I-N-G out of the ordinary or feel you are getting traffic from places that may may produce bot/automated/fraudulent clicks, they will disable your account to protect their advertiser's money.

They used to disable when they confirmed fraudulent clicks, but now they will disable even if they see potential risk with your account -- whatever that means.

Then they refund the advertiser their money -- which is why you don't receive a check for money earned if you are disabled.

Unfortunately no one really knows exactly what the threshold is for determining your account has "potential fradulent clicks."

And to make things worse, their communication when you are disabled is automated and there are usually no warnings -- which is unfortunate and frustrating for people who have done nothing wrong. There's also no way to reach out for definitive answers and appeals usually fail.

Nothing is Guaranteed With AdSense

As frustrating as it is to get disabled from AdSense, keep in mind, Google never promises us anything and they will do what they can to protect their own revenue.

If that means disabling accounts they feel are at risk of producing click fraud, they will do it.

I know that's a tough pill to swallow and I can imagine it does feel horrible to get your account disabled, but when we all "accepted" the terms and conditions upon signing up, that is basically what we were agreeing to.

There are no guarantees with AdSense and we are all at risk of losing our accounts.

Now I do believe that the system has kinks, and I believe some innocent people are disabled, but that's why you cannot put all your income eggs in one basket. Google has to protect their advertiser's money.

No one is safe from getting banned... not even me... and it's just one of those things that comes with the territory if you decide to join the AdSense program.

Google will always safeguard their advertisers because they are their customers -- not us. And if they feel their money is being wasted on fraudulent clicks (even if it's only potential), they won't stand for it.

Google AdSense Infographic

Here is a basic summary of key information that will help you get approved and manage your AdSense account.

Google AdSense Alternatives

If you were disabled from the program, here are some alternate programs you can try...

Media.net
Chitika
Kontera
Infolinks
Clicksor

Don't ever depend on AdSense as your main income source. 

Investment in alternative energy

Investments in Alternative Energy

It is possible to have a portfolio which profitably (that's the key word, is it not?) invests in alternative energy funds. “Green” energy production is expected to be a multi-billion (in today's dollars) industry by 2013.

The most recently developed wind-turbine technologies have brought us wind-produced energy which is more cost efficient as well as more widespread. More state-of-the-art wind energy technologies are typically more market competitive with conventional energy technologies. The newer wind-power technologies don't even kill birds like in days of old! Wind energy production is a growing technology, and companies engaged in it would make up an excellent part of a growth or aggressive growth portfolio.

Next to consider are solar cell, or photovoltaic cell, technologies. These are to be found implemented in pocket calculators, private property lights, US Coast Guard buoys, and other areas. More and more they find their way onto the roofs of housing and commercial buildings and building complexes. Cost is falling. Their energy efficiency (the ratio of the amount of work needed to cause their energy production versus the actual energy production) is steadily on the rise. As an example, the conversion efficiency of silicon cells has increased from a mere four percent in 1982 to over 20% for the latest technologies. Photovoltaic cells create absolute zero pollution as they are generating electrical power. However, photovoltaic cellls are not presently as cost effective as “utility produced” electricity. “PV” cells are not [capable at present for producing industrial-production amounts of electricity due to their present constraints on space. However, areas where photovoltaic cell arrays could be implemented are increasingly available. In sum, costs are going down while efficiency is rising for this alternative fuel technology.

Many alternative energy investment portfolio advisors are confident that alternative energies derived from currents, tidal movement, and temperature differentials are poised to become a new and predominant form of clean energy. The French are actually fairly advanced at hydro power generation, and numerous studies are being made in Scotland and the US along these sames lines. Some concerns  center around the problems with the deterioration of metals in salt water, marine growth such as barnacles, and violent storms which have all been disruptions to energy production in the past. However, these problems for the most part seem to be cured through the use of different, better materials. Ocean-produced energy has a huge advantage because the timing of ocean currents and waves are well understood and reliable.

Investments in hydro-electric technology have grown in the last two decades. Hydro-electric power is clean; however, it's also limited by geography. While already prominent as power generation, the large, older dams have had problems with disturbing marine life. Improvements have been made on those dams in order to protect marine life, but these improvements have been expensive. Consequently, more attention is now being paid to low-impact "run-of-the-river" hydro-power plants, which do not have these ecological problems.

The reality is, the energy future is green, and investors would do well to put their money out wisely, with that advice in their minds.

Simple, yet effective ways to make your small business a success

Are you a small business owner?  If you are, you likely already know that you have tocompete with a large number of other businesses, many of which may be larger than your business or have more money to “toss,” around.  While you may think that your size automatically puts you at a disadvantage, it doesn’t have to.  There are a number of ways that you can go about making sure that your small business is a successful, profitable one; ways that actually require little or no work on your part.

One of the simplest, yet most effective ways that you can turn your small business into a success and keep it as one is by smiling.  Yes, smiling. Many people, possibly even you, do not actually realize just how far a smile really goes.  When it comes to buying a product or a service, from both large and small business owners, many customers want to feel appreciated or at least like they are being noticed.  After all, without the customer, you and your small business employees wouldn’t even have jobs.  That is why it is important that you and your employees always smile at your customers and always put on a happy front.

Small talk is another simple, yet effective way to make your small business a success.  Small talk can be something as simple as asking any of your customers if they need help finding anything, if you run a retail store, or asking them about the weather outside.  Small talk makes your customers feel important.  It makes many consumers feel good that there is assistance available if it is needed, as well as the fact that some actually values their opinion or insight, even if it is only about the weather.  That is why you and your employees are always advised to strike up a conversation with your customers.  This conversation is what will likely keep them coming back for more.

As stated above, there are many people who tend to forget how much a smile can brighten up a person’s day.  In addition to smiling, it seems as if some customer service workers have forgotten the importance of a simple thank you.  When running a small business, your customers have the options of shopping with you or with a larger company, a larger company that have more products for sale, at lower prices.  What often sets you and your competitors apart is your customer service.  That is why it is advised that you and all of your employers thank all of your customers for their business and ask them to come again soon.  Your customers do not have to shop at your store, but they do chose to do so; therefore, make sure you thank them for it.

Another way that you can help to ensure that your small business is a successful one, one that consumers love doing business with, is being polite on the phone to all callers. While this may seem like common sense, there are times when it can easily be forgotten.  Sometimes it seems is if potential customers call with questions about store hours or a product at the worst possible time, often a time when you are busy.  Although this may be frustrating to you, you are advised to stay calm, cool, and collective.  If you need to, ask the caller to please hold on for a minute, but try not to keep them on hold for too long.  Your actions or the actions of your employees on the phone will have a significant impact on whether or not the caller decides to become a paying customer later on.

As outlined above, being friendly, patient, and pleasant to deal with are simple, yet effective ways for you and your business to make a name for yourself; a positive name.  That positive name is what may help to keep your business running strong and profitable for years to come.