You have been working hard, day and night and believe that it’s high time you ask for a hike or rise; well you are not wrong. Everyone deserves to get a hike, if he/she completes their duties on time, and put in his/her best at work. Asking for a hike or raise is your right, but only if you perform well at work. If you are in such a situation, we will help you. There are many resume sample sites that give you ideas about your career, resume samples, etc. but we will go a step ahead, and discuss some different topics like ‘how should we ask for a raise?’

Unlike any other sample resumes websites we provide 360 degree guidance to you. Thus, today we would discuss about ‘asking for a hike or raise’. To ask for a raise you need to be ready with some data, facts and figures, and with loads of confidence to speak about it. You can ask for a designation hike, which will automatically bring in salary hike, or ask for a salary hike only, if there is no chance of getting a designation hike (when there will be no higher position vacant, you cannot expect  a designation hike) here is what you need to ask for:

• Know your worth yourself first. Make a list of your contributions to the organization goals, your achieved targets, initiatives, efforts, duties, etc. Think carefully and list down everything. You should first know how you contributed to the organization, only then can you tell this to the management. Also, mention what skills you possess, what skills you have developed by learning, and what you could bring in more. This is the document that will speak about all that you have done for your organization.
• Inquire about what you can expect. Find out how much hike or what hike can you expect. Is there a possibility of a designation hike? What hike in figures is apt for you and what can the organization offer you? Gather all this information; talk to someone from the human resource department, your colleagues, but of course only the people you can trust. This information will help you know what you deserve, and what the right hike you can ask for is. This increases the chances of getting your hike approved.
• Wait for the right time. Know when your senior or team lead is in a good mood. When you think he/she is happy with your performance and perhaps in the best of mood, which can be a rare chance, but the right chance or time to talk to him/her. The best way is write a letter. Request your hike in written, with all the credentials attached with it. Taking an appointment or asking him/her when would it be appropriate to talk to him/her is also the right approach.
• Always ask a little more than what you want. The management will never approve what you ask for. They tend to give something less than what you put forth. So be on the higher side, and they would definitely come up to the figure you exactly wanted.
• Keep realistic expectations. Do not keep expectations that are very high and then leave yourself shattered, when not approved. Also, be practical and honest to yourself. If the organization is going through a tough time, you better wait for the right time.
• Do not change your attitude or behaviour if denied. After all, you have to work with the same people, so do not show that you are not happy, you can always move on and join some other organization.

Thus, you can ask for your hike if you feel you deserve it.

Websites have become an important aspect of business functions with both online and offline marketing channels. In fact websites have become a must have for businesses and personal ventures. Everyone from a business owner to a college student wants to have a good website.

Why is website so important then? Answer: websites give you maximum exposure and opportunities to make serious money. But both these things can happen only if your website is successful, if you can get the traffic in, get good ads and execute your online business plan well.

In my years of experience I have found that achieving success online is considerably easier than doing it offline. It however, requires the utmost creative and aesthetic skills. There is a ladder which you have to climb, it is an easy straightforward ladder but still you have to climb it.

5 Steps to having a useful website

Here are five simple steps which will make your website a success, guaranteed. Assuming that you don’t have a website yet, here are few tips to follow:

Construct a website/business idea that you love

No, I’m not being wishful or dreamy. Even I have learnt this trick my making mistakes. There is opportunity to do virtually everything online and there is enough client base on internet to make even the most bizarre and odd businesses prosper. It is important therefore that you come up with an idea that you like, something you would give your one hundred percent without getting tired out of it. This cliché has worked for many people including me. The golden rule: do not follow the online trends; put your heart and soul into what you like.

Guest posting, blogging and link building

Now we leave the psychological and as some would say philosophical aspects of having good website alone and come to more practical ways. Guest posting can only be done effectively if you target industry specific niches. Posting articles in article directories aren’t as useful as posting them on industry related blogs. For example, if you are selling cameras, do not post your article in a directory, there are millions other there, instead find a blog on cameras with good rating and try to get your article published there.

Link building, slightly different from guest posting is another story. Leaving a link to your website URL on forums, blogs and other commenting areas is called link building. In link building, always go for the quantity. Aim for thousands and thousands of links, I admit this will take time but believe me it is worth it.

Promoting the website on social media

It is a no brainer that you should start promoting your website amongst the people you know well. In recent times social networking sites have provided an ideal opportunity for promotion. Take Facebook for example, you can make a page of your business and you can promote it all around. Do you know a person who doesn’t have Facebook? I hardly know anyone who doesn’t, this means there is opportunity. On social networking sites, everybody gets a chance to look into your business; otherwise only interested people will visit your website.

Do some ‘offline’ marketing as well

This worked wonders for many people I know. If you print some pages, some brochures or even simple notes and distribute it around your college or workplace, it would help. Verbal offline marketing is also a very effective channel. Just make sure that everyone you talk to hears about your new online business. SMS marketing also falls in this category which is a good way of promotion as well.

Interact with your customers as much as you can

Design the website in a way that you can monitor your customer’s closely. You must be able to interact with them and they must be able to interact with you. Giving your visitors a warm personal feeling when they visit your website can just be the difference between you and your competitors. You can do this by making your website more interactive by making forums, a responsive email system or anything that suits your style of business.

With online businesses, it is all about getting one step ahead of everyone. The above mentioned tips will help you in achieving that.

What use is a business if nobody knows it, and what good is a website if nobody can find it? Just like a brick and mortal business needs to market itself in the real world, the bits and bytes businesses need to market themselves at the World Wide Web as well. And internet marketing is a lot more than increasing your searching engine visibility and getting some links. A complete internet marketing strategy needs to take care of the SERP’s, social networking, conversion, and even customer service.

There are two approaches to go for any of these targets and the SEO guys classify them as white hat and black hat methods. In simple words, white hat approach is gradual but long term and sustainable, it will take time before you are rewarded, but the reward will be long lasting, which is not the case with black hat, it may give a short term solution, but you are always running a risk of getting penalized by Google, or even worse, getting no sales whatsoever. Certainly not worth it, if you ask me.

Many internet marketing, or SEO firms have flowery promises to entice customers, like guaranteed traffic and rankings, those who are well versed with the ins and outs of internet marketing knows that both rankings or increased traffic next to ineffective (unless you are ranking for the right keywords and your traffic consists of targeted customers). So, stay wary of such shoddy operators who are starting from misleading promises, because lower rankings are better than getting the kick (AKA penalty) from Google, or even a ban.

As stated in the title, these Internet Marketing firms can do more harm to your website than good, why? Because they will be using spam, unethical techniques, and black hat methods. Because these companies don’t have the patience, knowledge, or expertise to carry out a proper internet marketing campaign, they will rely on short-cuts, which are extremely risky in the longer run. Let’s take a quick look at what kind of risky short-cuts they may take …

1. Buying links: A big no, as far as Google guidelines are concerned. If you are an online business, you’ve got to respect Google, and play by the Google’s rules. Buying links can produce quick results but sooner or later, big ‘G’ is going to find out and your rankings will fall like the building that goes down by controlled demolition.

2. Placing links on their own network of websites: Some of these firms have low quality websites, made solely for giving their clients’ website a quick boost in SERP. Problem with this method is that as soon as you stop working with these companies, they will remove your links, the outcome is going to be the same; a sudden drop in ranking that will be extremely difficult to reclaim.

3. Cloaking: Showing different contents to users and spiders, and this one is not even that effective. There are a number of ways of cloaking but no matter which method you use, stuffing keywords in hidden text is spam, black hat, unethical, and warrants punishment.

4. Spam: Apart from stuffing your website with keywords, these agencies will use run of the mill, low quality content to get the back links with the methods like article marketing or blog commenting. Not only these methods are of little or no use, but also your business name accompanying such content will give your business a bad reputation.

5. Social Media Spam: The companies will use the social networks like Facebook or Twitter by creating fake profiles and sending marketing messages to random people. Again, a futile practice that will do more harm than good.

The purpose of stating these methods was to warn that if you are not careful while choosing your marketing firm, or not overseeing their practices, the company will resort to these tactics instead of doing SEO the proper way. The website might do well for some time, but as soon as the website gets caught, it will defeat the whole purpose of marketing. It is tempting to go for a company that is talking big and promising wonders, but beware of the consequences when you are trying to get maximum results while opting for the cheapest options. Sneaky practices are short termed and will stop working eventually, even if your page or site manages to avoid penalty.

Social media can play an important role in advertising a small wholesale business. Social media websites can serve as a free source to advertise your small wholesale business and can help you in reaching an immensely large audience. As the competition in wholesale business is becoming intense day by day, it has become extremely important to use cost effective marketing techniques through which you can advertise your wholesale business and know your customers in a better way. These goals can be best achieved by social media websites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Newsvine, Sphinn, Hypediss, Hubspot, Fast Pitch and StartUp.

Of these Facebook is probably the most popular and widely used. With its more than 500 million users, Facebook offers excellent opportunity for advertising a small wholesale business. Creating a business page on Facebook can greatly help a small wholesale business.  Facebook can select users for you on the basis of the information they give in their profiles. You can choose as many as 25 countries, certain ages, likes and interests, location and education. You are lucky if your audience is between the ages of 18 and 35, because of majority of active Facebook users are between these ages. If you wish to advertise your wholesale business domestically, you can choose to access people within your own country.

In order to make use of social media marketing for your wholesale business, you can create your company profile on any of the above mentioned websites. The profile may include a brief description of your business, products, services and the motto of your company. You can include the logo of your wholesale business in your profile page and give back links of your website.

You can send your message on the community via texts, videos and photographs. Owner of a small wholesale business can also choose to send his message to a selected group belonging to a particular age or gender.

Signing up at social networking websites enables you to form a community of your own consisting of your customers, prospects and vendors. This community can provide you with useful insight on improving your wholesale business through discussions about your products, the shopping experience at your website, the type of customer service expected from you and performance of your competitors. In this way, social media websites not only help you in advertising your wholesale business but also assist you in serving your customers in a better way.

Have you considered using email marketing to promote your blog ? Email marketing is one of the best ways to grow your blog or any other online business.It’s affordable,cheap and best way to grow your blog quickly.

This is the only way to attract your blog readers to coming back again and again on your blog to read more.

I have noticed number of professional bloggers marketing their blog/s using email marketing campaigns.

If you want to grow your blog,you must build your email marketing list.Their are thousands of online email marketing tools to promote your blog but I am suggesting most popular websites which are using by number of professional  bloggers to promote their blog/s.

Aweber

Aweber is one of the best and most popular online email marketing tools.It has lot of awesome features like html templates,interactive user signup forms,post to twitter and facebook widgets,cool stats dashboard,email personalizing and many more.It charges on monthly based and according to your needs.You can try it in a $1 USD for first month.

MailChimp

MailChimp is another email marketing tool to promote your blog.Mailchimp is totally free for lists below 1,000 subscribers, so give it a try. You’ll be amazed by all the powerful email marketing features.

ConstantContact

ConstantContact offers a free trial in starting for 60 days, because even the base package requires that you pay a monthly fee.  The base starts from $15 per month for a list 0-500 email addresses and enables you to send emails, manage your email list, upload up to five images, and track results.  ConstantContact provides easy to use templates for customizing your emails but branding requires an extra fee.  You can send email messages, surveys and forms using ConstantContact, and online tutorials are available.  Also, ConstantContact follows procedures to boost mail deliverability.

iContact

iContact’s Managed Services offering, iContactPlus, leverages iContact’s proven email marketing platform while affordably delivering customized account management. It’s premium email marketing without the premium price tag.

iContact team guided you through strategic planning, email campaign setup, execution, reporting analysis, and more.It’s monthly price starts from $9.95.

VerticalResponse

The starting or base price to use VerticalResponse is $10 per month for a list of up to 500 addresses, and you can mail to that list an unlimited number of times. VerticalResponse offers some customization, easy template modification, list management, tracking, and Google Analytics integration.  If you want to send surveys, you need to pay a separate fee.  VerticalResponse does use email authentication to increase deliverability rates.

Fiverr is a fastest growing website where you can make money online by buying or selling your services or gigs as they are being called for a sum of $5.Sounds interesting!

Fiverr is not only limited to website designing i found that article writing, graphic design and social networking products are among the popular services.

Customers don’t need to pay anything for the services however service providers will have to pay $1 for every gig you sell.The payment is made via paypal and now the withdrawl limit of $40 has been removed so the sellers can withdraw money even if they have made one sale.

Some of useful gigs which i found are-

Whereas the funny ones are-

Internet marketers can use the services which they sell in Fiverr as a sample to promote their business.Fiverr is a great place to start your online money making journey.

Have you used Fiverr?What would you do for $5,share your views!