The founder of Mary Kay Cosmetics, Mary Kay Ash once said, “It is better to be tired and successful than to be a failure and feeling quite rested.”

Serious Entrepreneurs NEVER quit!

But then, we can never avoid moments when we are bone-weary.

But the next day, once the sun’s rays hit the earth, we’ll get up and do anything and everything to have our name pop up as the number 1 business on Google or make a huge sale.

A serious entrepreneur’s blood sizzles with the challenge of beating the competition in business. Every breath is dedicated to conquering the impossible!

All my adult life, I have always believed that “Second Sucks!”

Give up? I don’t know the meaning of the words.

Truth be told, all of the big entrepreneurs struggled like hell before they hit the big-time.

Walt Disney? As a young man, he was fired from the Kansas City Star Newspaper because his boss thought he lacked creativity. He was forced to shut down the first company he formed, could barely pay his rent, and

Even resorted to eating dog food!!

J.K. Rowling? Before finding fame as the author of the Harry Potter books, she was rejected by 12 publishers. The small publishing firm which reluctantly purchased Rowling’s first Harry Potter manuscript told her that she really ought to “get a day job.”

When she was in the process of making her first novel, she was going through a divorce, living in a tiny, cramped flat with her daughter, and living on government subsidies. In short, her life was a total mess.

She is currently the second-richest female entertainer on the planet, behind Oprah.

Most of you reading this are probably struggling to succeed in your home businesses.

If you’ve been told that online marketing and direct sales is a FAST, EASY, PAINLESS way to make millions

Well, you have been tricked!

To gain much success takes plenty of time.

Success takes a lot of trial and error.

Success takes dealing with negative people who expect you to fail.

Don’t quit! Hang in there.

Walt Disney gives a wise suggestion to those who are determined to become serious entrepreneurs, “The way to get you started is to stop talking and take action.

On-page optimization is where you should begin and SEO campaign. What you do on your web site and various web pages has a significant impact on search engine results. Even though off-page optimization is a critical component for higher rankings, on-page techniques are essential for building a strong SEO foundation.

Here are a number of on page optimization tips and strategies you can apply immediately to enhance your website and make is truly search engine friendly. As search engines crawl your website, they can apply the proper weight to different content.

Optimize Your Web Site URL. When planning to build a new website, be very careful about the domain name you choose. Select a name that will be memorable and is something you want to build your business around. You obviously do not want to limit your options significantly. Do so can limit the future development of your business. You should however, include your keyword or keyword phrase into your URL if possible.

Optimize Your Page Title. Develop a website title that is relevant to your site and is limited to only 60 characters in length. The reason you want to limit the size of your title is because larger titles cannot be fully displayed on search engine results. You do not want your titles to be cut off when browsers are searching.

The first title or headline that appears on your web page should include your keywords. It is best to have this title display with an H1 tag which signals each search engine as to the importance of the content being displayed. The sub text should be presented with an H2 or H3 tag. This shows the search engines how important your keywords are and helps them promote the key elements of your web page.

Optimize Your Meta Tags. Search engine optimization experts debate the value of meta tags for search engine ranking enhancement. I can tell you that meta tags include a variety of tags including title, description, and keywords. Even though meta tags are less important that it was many years ago, it still plays an important role in optimization.

Meta tags are used as a starting point and reference for search engines seeking to rank your website. Your meta tags need to be aligned to web site content and include your most important keywords. I suggest limiting your keywords to twelve and limiting your description to about 150 words. By doing so you eliminate the chance that a search engine considers your content as questionable.

Optimize your keyword density for Google, Yahoo!, and MSN. Creating a keyword rich content page is essential but do not get carried away. Your keyword density should be between three and five percent in order to appeal to all major search engines. Some people believe that you could go as high as six percent for Yahoo! optimization but Google seems to like pages that have a smaller keyword density. In addition to keyword density, focus on H1 and H2 tags and place keywords at the beginning, middle, and end of your web page. This variety is helpful when signaling search engines as to the keywords that are important to your web page.

Varying Your Keyword Phrase. Each time you list your keyword phrase, change it up a bit. Rather than stuffing your site with the same keyword phrases again and again, use keyword variety. One way to do this is to add a word or two before your keyword phrase and after it. Creating variety is critical because it shows each search engine that your site is really about the core content you are promoting.

The most important part of any search engine optimization campaign is to make your site appear natural, present valuable content, and follow on-page optimization best practices. If you use the above suggestions as a guide, you will be well on your way to a fully optimized website.

Remember the late 90′s? Back then, there were tons of startup dot coms which seemingly spent all of their money advertising offline in the effort to bring in visitors. These usually brought in a short-lived surge of traffic, with few of these visitors returning and even fewer becoming paid customers. The whole idea was that if you kept your content fresh, repeat traffic would follow naturally.

For some websites this is certainly the case (news sites, for example). However, this is not true for many other types of websites.

A lot of the lead generation work we do on behalf of our clients involves building websites geared towards getting new clients for the business. Once a prospect becomes a paying customer, the need to have fresh content to net repeat visits is dramatically less; the website has already performed its function.

One of the adages often repeated in the marketing world is that it takes seven contacts to make a conversion; but in reality, this depends on the nature of the product or service on offer. The more complex (or expensive) the wares, the more visits it will usually take to make a conversion.

Using a lead capture technique is the best way to make conversions from these repeat visitors. This can be a newsletter (with opt-in form) or in the form of providing contact information in return for a freebie such as a report, whitepaper or e-book.

This allows you to educate prospects about the value that you offer as well as stay in touch. Your followup contacts will keep prospects coming back to your site to dip back into your content.

We use this strategy extensively, both on our own website and on client websites. Whether or not you use a lead capture mechanism as a means to keep prospects interested and returning to your site will depend on how tough it is to convert a website visitor into an enquirer.

However, don’t think that adding new content to your website doesn’t matter; it’s just not the ONLY thing that matters.

Keeping your content fresh can do great things for websites, particularly niche focused websites. Adding informative, niche-driven content can help these websites to establish themselves as authoritative sources of information. If your site is one of these, then a dedicated articles section may be very helpful in getting repeat traffic.

This is a good thing, but it will take some effort, as you’ll have to write this content (or have it written for you) and keep your site updated – and it’s no guarantee of success, either.

Many business owners we talk to are eager to include a “latest news” section on their sites in order to bring in repeat traffic. There are two reasons why I don’t generally recommend this.

1. If you aren’t truly an authority in your field, then these news sections may not be all that well, newsworthy.

2. This section will involve posting regular updates; something which is often neglected. I’m guessing you run across “latest news” pages all the time which haven’t been updated in years.

The message here is to plan ahead. If you’re building a website which will need weekly updates, then make sure that the resources are in place ahead of time so this will be done. If you can’t make sure that this gets done, low maintenance is the way to go.

SEO, or search engine optimization is something which a lot of people find intimidating ? after all, the name sounds like something which isn’t going to be a whole lot of fun. However, it doesn’t have to be an ordeal; once you learn a bit about SEO, you might find that SEO can be a lot of fun. Search engine optimization is essentially the practice of using keywords (the words people type into Google or other search engines) in the text of your website, articles and other material online. Let’s put it this way ? say that you have a website which sells camping tents. If you want people to be able to find your site easily by using search engines, you’ll want to optimize your website for the words and phrases which people use when searching the web for camping tents.

SEO doesn’t have to be terribly complicated and you can have fun doing it. The secret is to look at optimizing your text as something fun rather than a chore. Once you practice a little and gain some skill at it, you’ll find that it’s something you enjoy doing. So what can you do to make SEO fun? Make a game of it. Here’s how ? start by just writing down everything you’d like to say on your website. Don’t worry too much about your keywords yet, just write! After you get your first draft down, go through it and identify all of the keywords and key phrases you’ve already included. Next, go back and try to work in other keywords which you didn’t include the first time. One trick is to try replacing pronouns like “it” that refer to a keyword. Make sure that your text still makes sense though!

SEO can be something you have fun with, but be sure not to go overboard with it. You can definitely use too many keywords in your text. You’ve probably come across a website or article yourself which did this ? it wasn’t really that great to read, was it? It’s best to keep your keyword density to between 1-2%; meaning that your keyword should appear once or twice per 100 words. If you’ve written a 500 word article, then your keyword should appear between five and ten times. Try thinking of writing this content as a game; see if you can manage to get the keyword density on target in your first draft. This will become easier the more practice you get at it.

SEO isn’t completely effortless, but with some practice you’ll find that you know something a lot of other people don’t ? that SEO isn’t as hard as many think and can actually be fun to do. Just remember to keep your keywords balanced and you’ll be able to get a better ranking for your website while writing content that people will actually want to read.

Electronics manufacturer LG had to pull an ad for its TV recording devices from Australian TV recently. Was it too racy for television? Not at all; the problem was that the advertisement listed the greatest benefit of the product in a way sure to get the attention of any TV viewer ? the ability to skip commercials!

This was something anyone could appreciate. The ad read: “When you replay, you can skip the ads.”. After having its ads pulled, however, the company changed their ad, using instead the far less powerful: “And when you replay, you can skip straight back to the action.”

While the networks may have won this time, it’s obvious that TV recording technology is here to stay and that the power balance, at least ostensibly, will shift in favour of consumers.

1. Greater use of product placement, sponsorship and ads that aren’t ads.

I recently watched the HBO series The Wire and I couldn’t help but notice the very clever product placement of Heineken in the series. Anytime the beer was on-screen, it was with the label facing the camera ? very clever marketing; it leads you to wonder exactly how much money changed hands. In Japan, where I spent some time recently, there is nearly no escape from advertising on television; the ads and programming are nearly indistinguishable! While most of us would probably prefer to keep ads and programming separate, this is a concept which is rapidly going the way of the dodo.

2. More precise targeting of messages, even mass media ones.

Following the inevitable rise of TV recording technology, some industry experts have commented that advertising is not dead, but that advertisers will be forced to target their ads more precisely at viewers to make them want to watch the ads.It’s also fairly easy to conceive of a system that serves ads according to individual viewer habits and preferences, perhaps on a “pay per impression” or pay per action” model (mmmm? the Google Adwords of TV marketing?)While this concept would obviously be many times more effective than current mass-broadcast technology, it’s still “push” marketing. While there’s some mileage in this concept, search-based marketing is likely to return higher conversion rates and ROI (cf. Google Adwords Search conversion rates vs Content conversion rates – search is almost always higher).

3. The rise of education-based lead generation and marketing.

Many businesses are using DVDs, podcasts, reports and the like as a way of generating leads and raising the profile of their company as of late. This lets their marketing departments focus their efforts on the best prospects, creating a better return on investment for the company’s marketing efforts. I’ve seen companies who once would have never used direct marketing turn to these methods (and I should know, I’ve been running information based lead generation campaigns for some of these same firms).

4. Accountable marketing will become a necessity.

If you don’t do it, you’ll be eaten alive (or at the very least, have a few limbs savaged by hungry corporate alligators). The web obviously facilitates accountable marketing like no other medium, but “offline” direct marketing will also experience a boost at the expense of above the line advertising.

5. PR and spin will surpass traditional marketing tactics.

Companies are already putting more of their marketing budgets into making a news worthy stories out of their offerings.

6. Even narrower niches.

Gaining greater “share of mind” will become even more difficult, and we can expect more focus on more highly-specialised niche markets as opposed to line-extension or diversification strategies.

7. Blue Ocean Strategies.

You’re definitely going to see companies choosing to stop battling it out toe to toe with their rivals for a piece of the general public and instead working towards building an uncontested market niche, though difficult to achieve.