Just 1 in 4 Know Heart Attack Signs

Only about 1 in 4 Americans know the warning signs of a heart attack and what to do first, according to a new government report. That's a decline in knowledge since the last survey in 2001, which showed nearly 1 in 3 to be well informed.The study's lead author, Dr. Jing Fang, called public awareness in the new survey "alarmingly low." Fang is with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which surveyed residents of 13 states and the District of Columbia.

Heart attack warning signs can include one or more of the following five symptoms: shortness of breath; pain or discomfort in the chest; discomfort in the arms or shoulder; a feeling of weakness or lightheadedness; and discomfort in the jaw, neck or back. Chest pain is the most common symptom. Women are more likely than men to experience some of the other symptoms, particularly shortness of breath and back or jaw pain, according to the American Heart Association.




Anyone experiencing these symptoms should call 911, the heart association advises. The groups best informed of heart attack warning signs and what to do about them tended to be white, highly educated, and women. Also scoring well were residents of West Virginia, which has some of the nation's highest heart attack death rates. Each year more than 900,000 Americans suffer a heart attack, and about 157,000 of them are fatal. About half the deaths occur within an hour of symptoms occurring, experts say.

Because different people experience different symptoms, it's important to be aware of all of them, doctors say. "It's not always massive chest pain," said Wayne Rosamond, a University of North Carolina epidemiology professor and expert on heart disease statistics. Of course, knowing is not the same as doing: Although most of those who got the heart attack symptoms right said they would call 911, other studies show that only about half of heart attack victims go to a hospital by ambulance, Rosamond noted.

Patients' concerns about lack of health insurance status or other matters may explain why so few go to a hospital, said Rosamond, who was not involved in the new study. The CDC's findings were based on a random-digit-dial telephone survey of about 72,000 people in 2005. In West Virginia, more than 35 percent of respondents from that state knew all five warning signs and that they should call 911, compared with 27 percent in the overall study population.

Iowa and Minnesota also were at the top of the list. The gap between West Virginia and the two other states was not statistically significant. West Virginia consistently ranks among the states with the highest heart attack deaths rates, and also is a leader in smoking, obesity, high cholesterol and other heart disease risk factors. But it's not clear whether personal experience was the reason the state's residents were so well informed. Public health education campaigns or other factors may also explain the result, experts said.


from Yahoo Health

5 Medical Tests That May Keep You Well

An article from Yahoo Health


Like a scene out of Star Trek, someday our doctors may simply wave a handheld device over our bodies and instantly diagnose any malady. In the meantime, however, it’s important to keep abreast of the latest tests that can help us stay healthy - especially those that uncover risks before symptoms actually occur.

The following five tests are not yet considered as routine as cholesterol or blood-sugar tests, but chances are your doctor already is familiar with them. Not every test is necessary at every visit, and your insurance company may not pay unless it considers a particular test "medically necessary." Still, ask about them. Here’s why they may be important to you.

CRP, or C-reactive Protein

This is a simple blood test that measures the amount of inflammation in your body. In many ways, CRP is the best "crystal ball" of health ever devised in a single blood test. Elevated CRP levels have been shown to precede and predict heart attack, stroke, colon cancer, diabetes, high blood pressure, Alzheimer's disease, aneurysms, sudden cardiac death, abnormal heart rhythms like atrial fibrillation and even macular degeneration, a leading cause of blindness.

CRP is a protein made by our immune system that fuels the fire of inflammation in our bodies. The higher your CRP level, the more at risk you are to develop problems. Optimal levels - less than 0.7 milligrams per liter - predict good health.

It's important to understand that CRP doesn't diagnose any particular conditions - it's not specific. It just identifies whether you're at risk for illness. It's best to check your CRP during your routine annual physical, when you feel fine. If you're sick with something, your CRP probably will be elevated.

The good news is that CRP levels can be lowered by exercise, modest weight loss, taking a multivitamin, eating a diet rich in fruits and vegetables, and certain medications such as aspirin and statins (cholesterol-lowering drugs).

Vitamin D Level

Vitamin D is essential for healthy bones because it's needed for calcium absorption. But new research also is identifying an important role for vitamin D in the immune system and in the prevention of cancer, including breast and prostate.

Studies show that more than half of American women don't get enough vitamin D. It's known as the "sunshine vitamin," because your skin makes it when you’re out in the sun. That's why people who lack daily sun exposure or who use sunblock when outdoors may be deficient in the vitamin. It's almost impossible to get adequate amounts from foods, despite fortification of dairy and some soy foods. All multivitamins contain vitamin D, but for most people even that is not sufficient. You may need to take a vitamin D supplement. Most people should get between 1000 and 1500 IU of vitamin D3 daily. (D3 is the natural form of vitamin D. It’s more easily absorbed and stays in the body longer.) The best way to know if you’re getting enough vitamin D is to get a blood test.

H. pylori Test

About 20% of Americans may unknowingly be infected with the bacteria responsible for stomach cancer, heartburn, ulcers and even eye disorders. The discovery of H. pylori (Helicobacter pylori) infection as the primary cause of stomach ulcers worldwide earned Australian researchers Robin Warren and Barry Marshall the Nobel Prize in medicine for 2005. The bacteria also have been found to cause stomach cancer.

H. pylori is a chronic, potentially lifelong infection of the stomach. It can cause stomach pain, heartburn or indigestion, but it's often silent, causing no symptoms. Infection typically occurs when a person eats contaminated food and ingests the bacteria. The infection can be cured with a combination of antibiotics and antacids.

A blood-antibody test can show if you've ever been infected, and a stool test or breath test can identify if you currently have an active infection. Fortunately, successful treatment of H. pylori eliminates the increased risk of stomach cancer, ulcers and related disorders.

Aspirin Check

Aspirin has been shown to be a powerful preventive measure for people at risk for heart attack and stroke as well as for colon cancer, and it's estimated that as many as 50 million Americans take aspirin daily to prevent a heart attack. What's not clear is the optimal dose of aspirin for prevention. Most people are taking a baby aspirin (81 milligrams), but research has shown that 10% to 20% of people are resistant to aspirin and require higher dosages in order to benefit from its protective effects.

An aspirin check is a test that determines the effectiveness of the daily aspirin for an individual. This is important for people who are taking aspirin therapeutically for cardiovascular disease as well as those at increased risk for heart disease who are taking aspirin for prevention. The test can be ordered by your doctor but also is available directly from an online lab.

Insulin Level

Type 2 diabetes is characterized by an excess of insulin production in response to eating. The glucose tolerance test has long been the standard way to identify someone with diabetes. Until recently, glucose tolerance tests measured only blood sugar, or glucose levels, which are raised when a person has diabetes. But measuring your body's insulin-production levels improves the test by being able to identify your risk of diabetes long before symptoms emerge.

Typically, to do the test, your blood is drawn twice - first after fasting, then again two hours later after a glucose drink. Your insulin levels are recorded. If the results indicate that you're at a higher risk for diabetes, the good news is that you also have time to take action. Type 2 diabetes can be prevented by adopting a lifestyle that includes daily exercise, weight control and a low-glycemic diet that reduces the intake of sugar, refined grains and starches.

How to Keep Spyware From Hijacking Your Business

An article from Homebusiness.com

A recent survey by Consumer Reports® reveals that 1/3 of all the Internet users have been hijacked by spyware. As a home business owner, you should know what spyware is, and you should tell your customers. Spyware is computer software that sneaks onto your hard drive while you surf the Web. Once you log off, the spyware remains on your computer (for good until you get rid of it), stealing valuable information from your computer while you work.

Symptoms of spyware on your computer can be as innocuous as sluggish performance or can be as lethal as having credit card information stolen. No matter what way you cut it, spyware is harmful to your home or small business.

How to Prevent Spyware:

• Never open spam or read e-mails from unknown senders or solicitors
• Avoid clicking on banner ads
• If you download free software, read the license agreement carefully, If the download package contains “data collecting” software, do not agree and do not download.
• Finally, the most effective way to prevent spyware is to use anti-spyware software. The leaders in the business are listed below. Visit their Web sites for more information and to purchase their spyware protection software.

• Norton AntiVirus® (Symantec)
• McAfee®
• Microsoft®
• Pcpitstop.com
• Download.com

Offline Promotions For Your Blog

All the talk these days seems to focus around ways to promote your blog. Most of them center around online methods such as Ezine advertising and banner ads. But there are some excellent, offline methods you can use to promote your blog, too.

And they're FREE !

Local Business Magazines

Many towns have locally published business-oriented magazines. These deal with local interests as well as more broad topics relative to all businesses.

Contact your local magazine and offer to write a monthly or weekly guest column for them. Your credits will be provided with your article including your domain name.

Newspapers

The same idea used above for local magazines can be used to approach your local newspaper.

While papers do have staff writers, they are also looking for experts who can provide excellent insight into specific areas. You might consider contacting the Business Editor to get more information. Of course, include your blog address with your bio.

Association Newsletters

Most local chapters of associations offer printed newsletters that are mailed to their membership. Open your telephone book and look through the listings to find associations that fit with your target audience.

Approach these publications about contributing an article on a regular basis, provided your credits (with domain name) are included.

Create A Promotion

If your business has a product or service that can benefit the listeners or viewers of a TV or radio station, create an idea for a promotion and bring it to the Promotion Director's attention.

You might tie it in with a holiday or event. Perhaps during National Small Business Week, you can offer to give away products or services in a drawing.

The exposure you receive will far outweigh the cost of your freebie.

These are just a few ways you can promote your online business offline for free. If you look around your community, you're sure to find many others. Keep your eyes open and watch for other outlets that can bring promotional .

The Three Reasons Why You Need To Read Your Traffic Reports

If you' re not normally a computer person, the entire process of setting up a business website can be a terrifying process. Not only is coding difficult to understand, but it can take months or years to learn. With new site building services, you don't have to worry as much about how to put the pieces together; however, you still need to think about what happens once your site is up and running. How many people are stopping by to see your site is imperative for your success.

Your website needs to be an active part of your business. Think of your site as a virtual shop where visitors are the customers who come in to browse your selection. If you don't have a steady stream of people coming in, you won't have anyone staying to make a purchase. This is measured as traffic on your website. When you have a lot of traffic, you have a higher chance of getting more revenue. This makes sense, but how does reading about your traffic report help you?

Watching the Traffic Helps You Make Changes

If you've just made an adjustment to your website, the traffic report can tell the tale of whether your new site is a success or not. Because you will be keeping track of your traffic over the course of the time before you make changes, you can see what happens immediately after the changes take place. If you notice that the traffic counts sharply go up, this can be interpreted as a surge in curious visitors.

But when the surge doesn't stay up or it begins to fall very low, you might want to reconsider the changes you've just made. While not every drop in visitor traffic is a signal for you to make changes in your website, it is good to note when the count drops significantly. Try to keep a chart or a list of the traffic numbers that you can look over at the beginning and the end of each week. This will help you see trends in the website traffic as you change items on the site as well as for certain times of the year.

A Sharp Decrease in Traffic Might Signal a Server or Host Problem

When you're closely monitoring the traffic counts on your website, you will be able to tell when there is a significant problem with your site. If you suddenly notice that your site is showing no traffic or very small traffic numbers, you should become alarmed ' immediately. These are usually signs of a server or a hosting problem that you should know about before you see these low traffic counts, but sometimes you will not. By taking the time to look over your traffic counts regularly, you will notice this problem as soon as it happens. And then call your hosting company to see what is happening. Sometimes the servers will crash on occasion, but when you notice that it may have happened a few times in the past ' it might be a sign that you need a new hosting service.

Seeing Rises in Traffic Can Help You with Sales Plans

By keeping track of how many visitors go to your site on a weekly basis, you can begin to see when more visitors are on the site on most weeks. This can help you know when to put up sales and other discounts. You have two options in this situation. You can put the sales 'signs' up when more people are on the site or you can place these sales up on the site on days when traffic is slower in order to start to boost traffic on those days. Either way works, or you might want to create a schedule that switches back and forth between these two options.

An article from Scott Oliver

JR.com Weekend Sale: Save more on Cameras, TVs, MP3 Players, and so much more!

Get 50% off Shipping on Orders of $75 or More through 12.8 at NBAStore.com!

Google Discounts And Promotions For US Google Checkout Users

Global online search engine company Google has announced that its Google Checkout payment system is allowing buyers to benefit from exclusive discounts and free shipping and earn frequent flyer miles, as they make their holiday season purchases. According to Google, Google Checkout users registering from now until 31 December to participate, will be able to earn frequent flyer miles for every dollar (USD) spent through Google Checkout, valid for US residents only. It confirmed that those airline reward programmes taking part include Alaska Airlines, Continental Airlines, Delta Airlines, Midwest Airlines, Northwest Airlines, US Airways, and United Airlines. In addition, Google said users will be able to benefit from various holiday promotions from over 100 different Google Checkout retailers, with offers such as free shipping and discounts of USD10, USD20 or USD50 off certain purchases. The company also provides a Google Checkout Purchase History, allowing users to access information such as shipping status and store contact information, while iGoogle users can keep track of purchases from their iGoogle homepage. Google Checkout for Non-Profits enables users to donate to charitable organisations such as the Salvation Army, Red Cross, March of Dimes, One Laptop Per Child and the William J. Clinton Global Initiative quickly and securely. What can I say, for a company that currently causing a '' commotion " among bloggers for the drop of pagerank recently. More information on the promotions can be found at http://www.google.com/checkout/promotions.html

10 Blog Traffic Tips To Increase Traffic To Your Blog

In every bloggers life comes a special day - the day they first launch a new blog. Now unless you went out and purchased someone else's blog chances are your blog launched with only one very loyal reader - you. Maybe a few days later you received a few hits when you told your sister, father, girlfriend and best friend about your new blog but that's about as far you went when it comes to finding readers.Here are the top 10 techniques new bloggers can use to find readers. These are tips specifically for new bloggers, those people who have next-to-no audience at the moment and want to get the ball rolling.

It helps if you work on this list from top to bottom as each technique builds on the previous step to help you create momentum. Eventually once you establish enough momentum you gain what is called "traction", which is a large enough audience base (about 500 readers a day is good) that you no longer have to work too hard on finding new readers. Instead your current loyal readers do the work for you through word of mouth.

Top 10 Tips

10. Write at least five major "pillar" articles. A pillar article is a tutorial style article aimed to teach your audience something. Generally they are longer than 500 words and have lots of very practical tips or advice. This article you are currently reading could be considered a pillar article since it is very practical and a good "how-to" lesson. This style of article has long term appeal, stays current (it isn’t news or time dependent) and offers real value and insight. The more pillars you have on your blog the better.

9. Write one new blog post per day minimum. Not every post has to be a pillar, but you should work on getting those five pillars done at the same time as you keep your blog fresh with a daily news or short article style post. The important thing here is to demonstrate to first time visitors that your blog is updated all the time so they feel that if they come back tomorrow they will likely find something new. This causes them to bookmark your site or subscribe to your blog feed.

You don't have to produce one post per day all the time but it is important you do when your blog is brand new. Once you get traction you still need to keep the fresh content coming but your loyal audience will be more forgiving if you slow down to a few per week instead. The first few months are critical so the more content you can produce at this time the better.

8. Use a proper domain name. If you are serious about blogging be serious about what you call your blog. In order for people to easily spread the word about your blog you need a easily rememberable domain name. People often talk about blogs they like when they are speaking to friends in the real world (that's the off-line world, you remember that place right?) so you need to make it easy for them to spread the word and pass on your URL. Try and get a .com if you can and focus on small easy to remember domains rather than worry about having the correct keywords (of course if you can get great keywords and easy to remember then you’ve done a good job!).

7. Start commenting on other blogs. Once you have your pillar articles and your daily fresh smaller articles your blog is ready to be exposed to the world. One of the best ways to find the right type of reader for your blog is to comment on other people’s blogs. You should aim to comment on blogs focused on a similar niche topic to yours since the readers there will be more likely to be interested in your blog.

Most blog commenting systems allow you to have your name/title linked to your blog when you leave a comment. This is how people find your blog. If you are a prolific commentor and always have something valuable to say then people will be interested to read more of your work and hence click through to visit your blog.

6. Track back and link to other blogs in your blog posts. A track back is sort of like a blog conversation. When you write a new article to your blog and it links or references another blogger's article you can do a track back to their entry. What this does is leave a truncated summary of your blog post on their blog entry - it's sort of like your blog telling someone else’s blog that you wrote an article mentioning them. Track backs often appear like comments.

This is a good technique because like leaving comments a track back leaves a link from another blog back to yours for readers to follow, but it also does something very important - it gets the attention of another blogger. The other blogger will likely come and read your post eager to see what you wrote about them. They may then become a loyal reader of yours or at least monitor you and if you are lucky some time down the road they may do a post linking to your blog bringing in more new readers.

5. Encourage comments on your own blog. One of the most powerful ways to convince someone to become a loyal reader is to show there are other loyal readers already following your work. If they see people commenting on your blog then they infer that your content must be good since you have readers so they should stick around and see what all the fuss is about. To encourage comments you can simply pose a question in a blog post. Be sure to always respond to comments as well so you can keep the conversation going.

4. Submit your latest pillar article to a blog carnival. A blog carnival is a post in a blog that summarizes a collection of articles from many different blogs on a specific topic. The idea is to collect some of the best content on a topic in a given week. Often many other blogs link back to a carnival host and as such the people that have articles featured in the carnival often enjoy a spike in new readers.

To find the right blog carnival for your blog, do a search at blogcarnival.com.

3. Submit your blog to blogtopsites.com. To be honest this tip is not going to bring in a flood of new readers but it's so easy to do and only takes five minutes so it's worth the effort. Go to Blog Top Sites, find the appropriate category for your blog and submit it. You have to copy and paste a couple of lines of code on to your blog so you can rank and then sit back and watch the traffic come in. You will probably only get 1-10 incoming readers per day with this technique but over time it can build up as you climb the rankings. It all helps!

2. Submit your articles to EzineArticles.com. This is another tip that doesn’t bring in hundreds of new visitors immediately (although it can if you keep doing it) but it's worthwhile because you simply leverage what you already have - your pillar articles. Once a week or so take one of your pillar articles and submit it to Ezine Articles. Your article then becomes available to other people who can republish your article on their website or in their newsletter.

How you benefit is through what is called your "Resource Box". You create your own resource box which is like a signature file where you include one to two sentences and link back to your website (or blog in this case). Anyone who publishes your article has to include your resource box so you get incoming links. If someone with a large newsletter publishes your article you can get a lot of new readers at once.

1. Write more pillar articles. Everything you do above will help you to find blog readers however all of the techniques I’ve listed only work when you have strong pillars in place. Without them if you do everything above you may bring in readers but they won’t stay or bother to come back. Aim for one solid pillar article per week and by the end of the year you will have a database of over 50 fantastic feature articles that will work hard for you to bring in more and more readers.

I hope you enjoyed my list of traffic tips. Everything listed above are techniques I’ve put into place myself for my blogs and have worked for me, however it's certainly not a comprehensive list. There are many more things you can do. Finding readers is all about testing to see what works best for you and your audience and I have no doubt if you put your mind to it you will find a balance that works for you.

This article was by Yaro Starak, a professional blogger and my blog mentor. He is the leader of the Blog Mastermind mentoring program designed to teach bloggers how to earn a full time income blogging part time.

an article from Dashing traffic to your blog

An Important Message For You

This is a very good article. I read this article from this website

http://www.knowledgebase-script.com

I'm not an health expert but I believe I should share this to all my reader how important this message can be. Not only about the warm water after your meal, but about heart attacks. The Chinese and Japanese drink hot green tea with their meals, not cold water, maybe it is time we adopt their drinking habit while eating.

For those who like to drink cold water, this article is applicable to you. It is nice to have a cup of cold drink after a meal. However, the cold water will solidify the oily stuff that you have just consumed. It will slow down the digestion. Once this "sludge" reacts with the acid, it will break down and be absorbed by the intestine faster than the solid food. It will line the intestine. Very soon, this will turn into fats and may lead to cancer. It is best to drink hot soup or warm water after a meal.

A serious note about heart attacks - You should know that not every heart attack symptom is going to be the left arm hurting. Be aware of intense pain in the jaw line.

You may never have the first chest pain during the course of a heart attack. Nausea and intense sweating are also common symptoms. 60% of people who have a heart attack while they are asleep do not wake up. Pain in the jaw can wake you from a sound sleep. Let's be careful and be aware. The more we know, the better chance we could survive.

A Cardiologist says if everyone who reads this message sends it to 10 people, you can be sure that we'll save at least one life. Read this & Send the link to a friend. It could save a life. So, please be a true friend and send this article to all your friends you care about.

Article Source

• http://www.healthoma.com/a-glass-of-hot-water-after-meals-reduces-cancer-risk/
• http://enit.wordpress.com/2007/03/04/heart-attacks-and-warm-water/

Some people say that it is just an old myth to drink warm water to prevent heart attacks and I'd also like to point out that snopes.com declares this information as an urban myth and many other people agree that cold water is not related to cancer or heart attacks in any way. So, I have no idea if this is true and there is no research to support this theory however I still wanted to share this information about "heart attacks and drinking warm water" with all of you because its always better to be safe than to be sorry.

A heart attack occurs when the blood flow to a part of the heart is suddenly and permanently cut off, causing permanent damage to the heart muscle. Chest pain is typically severe and does not go away with rest or medicine that is effective with angina. Symptoms may indicate your heart is in danger many months or years before a heart attack occurs. Persistent symptoms, such as shortness of breath, nausea, great fatigue, angina/chest pain, fainting spells and gas-like discomfort, are red flags.

An Article by Lesley Spencer

10 Tips for Avoiding Home Business Scams

by .Lesley Spencer, MSc; Founder & President HBWM.com Inc

Starting a home business has become a wonderful and attractive alternative for parents across the country. With the advent of the Internet, email and cell phones, working at home has been a very viable option. No other alternative allows parents the opportunity to create their own hours and work around their children's schedules while earning an income. But before investing in any home business opportunity, it is wise to take appropriate steps to research the opportunity and the company. Unfortunately, there are deceitful businesses ready to take advantage of parent's deep desire to be at home with their children. These steps will help you to avoid potential problems:

1. Research the company and always check them out with the Better Business Bureau http://search.bbb.org/search.html located in their city.

2. Ask for at least three references of people they have worked with. Call each person and ask about his or her experiences with the company.

3. Be cautious of any company that asks for money for a work-at-home job

4. Don't be fooled by ads claiming you can make large amounts of money in short periods of time. And be cautious of companies that require you to sign up immediately. If it sounds too good to be true, it usually is.

5. Avoid those ?Type from home scams? that claim you can earn ?$40,000.00 a year typing from home.? As Diana Ennen, author of Virtual Assistant ~ the Series, Become a Highly Successful Sought After VA (http://www.VA-TheSeries.com) states, ?These are usually scams. They promise you a listing of companies looking for home-based typist and normally these companies aren't even aware they are on the list and seldom need help. Starting a secretarial business at home is a great work-at-home opportunity. However, you need to do it right and start one on your own. Our site offers suggestions at http://www.virtualwordpublishing.com.

6. Get specific information in writing from the company such as how long they have been in business, where they are located (not just a P.O. Box), how many customers they have, what their refund policy is (read it thoroughly); how long it takes to get paid and if there are any restrictions on payments, etc.

7. If you do invest in a business opportunity, use your credit card instead of cash. It may be easier to dispute the charges with your credit card company rather than trying to get your money back from a fraudulent company.

8. Research current scams on web sites such as ScamBusters at: http://www.scambusters.com. Report any scams or fraudulent companies to the Federal Trade Commission http://www.ftc.gov, your state's Attorney General and the National Fraud Information Center, PO Box 65868, Washington, DC 20035, (800) 876-7060.

9. Call the National Fraud Information Center at (800) 876-7060 for information or visit their web site at: http://www.fraud.org.

10. Don't invest in any opportunity that you are not sure about. Instead, find something that you are interested in and will enjoy doing. (Do what you love, and the money will follow.)

An Article From Bina Omar

by: Bina Omar

Starting an internet business can be as simple as opening a Yahoo Store. And as complicated as building your own dynamic e-commerce web site. But no matter how you go about it, you need 7 key ingredients to ensure the success of your internet business. 1. Demand You can have the most awesome product and the most hi-tech web site, but if you can’t generate demand for your product, your business is doomed from the start. There are many ways to generate demand in the online world. You could advertise in ezines, start an affiliate program, encourage word of mouth, referrals, do joint ventures. Remember, without demand, there will be no sales. And without sales, where does that leave you? 2. Order When you start getting visitors to your web site, it’s now just a matter of turning them into your customers. Okay, maybe it’s not as easy as it sounds. This is why, once your visitor has decided to become a customer, you have to make sure that it is easy for them to do so. Make sure that your ordering process is easy and straightforward. The less clicks to secure an order, the better. 3. Payment This is one process of your internet business that you’d definitely not want to get wrong - how money is actually transferred from your customer to you. The most popular means of doing this online is through credit card transactions. Credit cards makes full use of a person’s ‘buy now think later’ attitude. So, your sales would be a lot higher if you accepted credit cards than if you didn’t. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t have alternative methods. The more payment methods you offer, the easier your customer will find it to pay for your product. 4. Fulfillment After payment has been made, don’t make the mistake of thinking that the coast is clear. There’s still the matter of delivering your products. If you sell digital products, it is now normal standard to have it delivered instantly. People now expect this, so make sure you set this up. If you sell physical products that needs physical delivery, make sure that you communicate with your customer every step of the way. Ensure them that their goods are on the way. If possible, send them a means to track the movement of their package. Your customers should never feel insecure. 5. Service and Support Once the sale has been made, it doesn’t stop there. You have to provide excellent customer support. Your internet business customer support will determine, to some extent, whether your customer will request a refund and whether or not they will make repeat purchases. Support abilities of an internet business is getting more and more efficient. So don’t get caught behind. The least you should do is provide timely e-mail support. If you have a busier site, then consider other support methods - online helpdesk, FAQs, live chats, ticket system, knowledge base …. 6. Security The Internet community is getting more aware of what to look out for in order to protect themselves from many of the net’s less desirable activities. One of which is e-commerce frauds. It is, therefore, up to you to prove to your visitors that they can trust you. Things like using secured server to process payments, can go a long way. Purchase a digital certificate, if you can. Add a physical mail address or a phone number where they can contact you. Anything at all, to give your visitors some peace of mind. 7. Community Once you’ve received more than just a handful of sales, you should think about starting a community. Making your customers a part of a community, gives them a sense of belonging. Have your community be a part of your product development. Listen to their suggestions. Not only will you get product ideas for your internet business, your sales ratio will increase with every new product release and you will have a loyal customer base. There you go. Work on these seven keys and you’ll be way ahead of most internet businesses out there on the net today. About the author: Bina runs the WebBriefcase at http://WebBriefcase.comau,a site filled with web building tips, tools and tutorials for home business owners. Sign up now for your free video enhanced course on "How to Make Your Own Web Site in 7 Easy Steps" mailto:subscribe@webbriefcase.comau