Getting Back To E-Business

It's that time of year again, folks. The calm after the holiday storm.
All your relatives have finally gone home. You've settled back in at
work after far too few days off. The kids are back in school. The
neighbors have finally taken down those 1,253,890 Christmas lights that
kept causing brownouts in the neighborhood all December. And, most
importantly, you finally have time to get back on the internet.

Of course, after a long strenuous holiday season, it may not be possible
to just jump right back into your previous internet routine. You may
need a little assistance from a Trained Internet Professional. Someone
who knows the 'ropes', and can get you back in the cyberspace 'swing of
things' in no time. Unfortunately, unless you're willing to pay $24.95
and download several e-books, it looks like the only help you're going
to get will be in the form of:

The Online Jester's Getting Back To E-Business Checklist 2003

(1) Get That Email Caught Up

First and foremost, you'll want to get caught up on your unread email.
Resist the urge to just delete all the thousands of emails in your inbox.
After all there may actually be a few important emails hiding in there
amongst the spam and the hundreds of emails from every website you've
ever visited wishing you 'happy holidays' in a desperate attempt to get
you to visit their website again.

For instance, you may have received an email or two from old friends who
care about you so much that instead of doing something insincere like coming
to visit you, or calling you on the telephone, they, being the real friends
that they are, have sent you a free e-card that takes 3 minutes to load and,
quite possibly, contains a virus. These are the types of emails you want to
be sure you don't delete.

You'll also want to be sure and save any emails that have unreadable subject
lines, or no subject line at all, as these emails are usually from your
mother.

I recommend getting your email caught up ASAP, even if it means skipping a
few meals, because until all the email is read you cannot move on to the
second point on our checklist, which is:

(2) Checking All Your Statistics

Since it's a new year, and you've been away from cyberspace for awhile,
you'll want to find out where you stand financially online. This means
checking your statistic pages and account balances for all the
affiliate and paid-to programs you have ever joined. This means
remembering a LOT of passwords. Unless you're like me and use the same
password for everything. Then all you'll have to remember are all your
different login and user IDs. These are even harder to recall than
passwords, because, whereas your password is usually something sensible
like your mother's maiden name backwards-in German or your age, weight,
and favorite vegetable combined, User IDs have a tendency to get out of hand.

One problem is that the first three IDs or logins you choose will
already be taken. This never fails. Even if you are the first person
to ever sign up at the website, your first 3 (or more) choices will be
'already in use'. So now you have to rack your brain for more. So usually
you come up with something weird like 'crzyychick02', or 'stud78man4', or
in an extreme case-'mike'. All of which, needless to say, you will lose
countless brain cells trying to remember. So while you still have the
amount of cerebral activity left that is needed to read, we will move on
to our third point on our checklist, which is:

(3) Tweak Your Website For The New Year

As a serious internet marketer you realize that you can't expect
visitors to your website to be subjected to the same content they saw
in 2002. Therefore it is necessary for you to review all your
webpages and find ways to change, and hopefully improve, the 'look'
and 'feel' of your website. I would like to give you some pointers
here, but I, personally, don't know how a website is supposed to 'feel'.

It may also be a good idea to re-submit your website to the major
search engines. Before you do this you will, of course, want to
optimize your website so that the search engines will like it. This
may involve incorporating things you do not, and WILL NOT, ever understand
like meta tags, doorway pages, and various HTML tags into your website.
This may also involve putting actual content on your website instead of
just banners and pictures of you and your pets. And now before I get
nasty emails from all you pet lovers out there, we'll move on to the next
item on our checklist, which is:

(4) Find New Programs To Join

The fact that you made NO money online last year should not deter
you from looking for more programs to join this year. The beginning
of the year is a great time to do this because there are always lots
of new programs in 'Prelaunch' around this time. When a website is
in prelaunch it basically means that the owners of the site are out
of money and are waiting for your money to finish developing the
website or to finish paying for their son's college tuition. It does
not mean that there will ever be a 'Launch'. But never hearing from
a website again is a small price to pay for getting in early.

You'll also want to be on the lookout for any new programs that include
a 'forced matrix'. No one really knows what that term means, and you
may be able to get a few confused newbies to sign-up under you. And
on that note we head fearlessly into our final item on the checklist
which is:

(5) Remember To Have Fun

Just because you can't seem to find a good way to make money online,
and your website hosting service has raised their prices, and your
ISP has raised their prices, and the only affiliate program you ever
made money with went belly up, and Ebay canceled your membership,
doesn't mean you can't have fun online this year. There are plenty
of websites and ezines on the World Wide Web that can provide you
with hours of fun and enjoyment. And as soon as I find out where
they are I'll let you know about them. For now though, I've gotta
go. I've got a few belated e-cards to send out...

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Want More Tim Ward? Subscribe to his monthly ezine,
The Online Jester's Humor Ezine. Each issue contains
a fresh column written by the Jester himself, as
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