I watched an interesting short news item on the problems facing the area in Kazakhstan that was used by the USSR to test nuclear weapons. I was actually quite surprised at the tone used by people in the area, as I would have thought that they would feel more cautious talking to a foreign reporter about things like this. Anyway, catch it over at Yahoo News.
I just rechecked the video, and for some reason it is now playing at 50% of the intended height. This was in FireFox, I checked the same link in Internet Explorer 7, and didn’t have the same problem… If you have issues with the video, try switching browsers.

Any company that wishes to be taken seriously these days needs to have a site that presents professional face to ever increasing section of their prospective clientèle that are net savvy. However, simply have a cracking web site is not enough… You need to make sure your visitors can actually find you in the first place. A good website optimization firm will assess your needs, take into account your current site, and deliver a quote on how much investment is required to start turning visitors into customers. ThinkBig is such a company; whilst they are proud that their charges are amongst the lowest in the market, they also can project their professionalism by simply directing people like you to their existing portfolio. Take a moment, click the link, and check their previous work to grasp an idea of just what this website optimization firm can do for your company. Not only do they specialize in ensuring your site is optimized well, to ensure the major search engines (Google, MSN, Yahoo etc.) rank you well for your chosen search terms, they can also, if you so wish, assist in driving organic traffic your way. They accomplish this via social and business networking tactics, with corporate blogs being a speciality.

If we ever move back to Britain again, one of the first things that will need to be sorted is employment for both Ira and I. To be honest, many of the job vacancy sites I have used in the past have not impressed me very much. They seem to swing between over-specialising in certain job markets, or not having much more than the job board down at the dole centre.
I have now found JumptoJobs.co.uk the search engine for jobs, which seems to hold a pretty comprehensive database of jobs. I searched, using technical support and Cheltenham as the terms, and came up with a whole host of opportunities.

Their Press Release is as follows…

JumptoJobs.co.uk

JumptoJobs.co.uk today announced the launch of their innovative search engine for jobs. Their system allows job-boards, recruitment agencies and corporate HR departments to easily deliver very targeted jobseeker traffic to their websites.

The system requires no administration from the recruiter’s because the jobs are indexed from their current location on the internet, JumptoJobs.co.uk simply makes it possible for jobseekers to find the jobs more quickly and easily.

Recruiters have the option to pay per click or pay per application. In each case they can guarantee that they are only paying for results delivered. This removes the risk element usually associated with recruitment advertising where recruiters have to pay for the advertising whether applications are delivered or not.

Pay per click and pay per application are revolutionising recruitment advertising in the same way that they have revolutionised many other types of online advertising through Google, Yahoo, MSN and many other major online advertising media.

JumpToJobs.co.uk’s fanatical account management team will do all of the technical work for the recruiter and absolutely no technical expertise are required to use the system. Comprehensive statistical reports are frequently emailed to the recruiter so that they can easily monitor the success of their campaigns.

Emailed Job alerts and RSS feeds allow Jobseekers to monitor a large number of recruitment websites for all new jobs that match their criteria. This system also offers recruiters an additional advertising opportunity.

www.jumptojobs.co.uk

JumptoJobs.co.uk is a new product by saongroup.com. saongroup.com have more than 10 years experience in online recruitment. The group has job boards in UK, Ireland, China, The Middle East, The Caribbean and India.

www.saongroup.com

Whilst this post’s title may seem obvious, it is amazing how many budding internet entrepreneurs spend a lot more than is needed on PPC (Pay Per Click) campaigns. This can be due to a variety of reasons, from being simply too overloaded with work to take the time to performed the detailed analysis necessary to track performance, costs and profit from their campaigns. Or, it may simply be the case that they do not know a great deal about the industry, and are effectively just groping in the dark, hoping to find gold. (As an example, a self employed business man we know in London was told he should run an AdWords campaign, and did so without any research. The end result? He spent around $800 and perhaps gained two extra contracts via the campaign!)

In either of those situations a scheme exists that is perfectly suited to increase profits, decrease work hours needed, and improve your position within any competitive PPC market. Interested? If so, check out the KeyTrail site right now. OK, maybe finish reading this post first, just open the link in a new tab or window for now, just don’t forget to return to it in a moment The basic idea is this: Inform KeyTrail of which campaigns you want it to monitor, you then add a small line of code generated, to your current affiliate link(s), which enables KeyTrail to check exactly what is going on with your PPC campaigns. That is it! Other than checking for the actual reports generated, you need do no more work yourself, KeyTrail does all the hard work for you, all day, every day.
If you happen to use a less well known affiliate scheme than the major players (Commission Junction, ClickBank, (sometimes referred to as CJ and CB respectively), or LinkShare) then contact the author, and they will check if it can be added to the setup for you.
I was granted access to the site for the purpose of this review, and the news is good; although I have only dabbled with affiliate sales up until now, none of the terminology or work flow was in anyway beyond comprehension; until I decided to check it for the sake of completeness, I had not even referred to the comprehensive PDF manual.
So what exactly can you do with the information presented? You will find you can concentrate on keywords that are profitable to your business. There is little point in entering into a bidding war with one of your competitors over a keyword(s) that does not often convert to a sale for you. Should you use more than one PPC scheme (Google AdWords, Yahoo, MSN etc.) to promote your product, the reports KeyTrail generates will enable you to check which is converting the most clicks to sales for you, and therefore which are performing well, and which should be tweaked, or even dropped.

If there is the smallest of doubts left in your head right now, then hopefully the no quibble, no namby pamby exception 8 week guarantee will go some way to reassure you?

This post was a paid review.

Whilst the internet can be a great place for meeting a wide range of people, sometimes the opportunity to mix and date with people who share similar interests and heritage can be appealing. One such opportunity is afforded by the Black Personals web site. It appears to be an off shoot, or at least supported by, Yahoo Personals. This means you know the team behind the service have had experience in ensuring the smooth running of this sort of enterprise before. As ever, feel free to leave any comments on this.