Making Your Product Descriptions Ready For Business

How far would you have to go to find a poorly written product description or unclear, confusing content? There is a good chance that some of you need to go no further than your own website.

I guarantee that if you browse ecommerce sites selling multiple products, such as beauty items and electronics, you will find example after example of poorly written, confusing, unintelligible, even laughable descriptions of products.

Have you ever been confused by poorly written descriptions or bogged down in unintelligible information? The writers of this web content did not intend to confuse you. These writers no doubt intended to convey clear, interesting information. They simply did not have the skills to do so.

Your product descriptions should be written using what we call "product description grammar".

Don't worry, this grammar will be written in everyday English. Basically, you will find this grammar to be the same you learned in school, However, there are a few things removed to give it a professional business-like tone and style.

In addition to a business-like style, product description grammar also means the language in your description is:

• Crisp
• Clear
• Concise
• Accurate
• Appropriate for the intended audience

The grammar used in the descriptions of your products is basic and should be used for all your products.

When we start writing your product descriptions, it will be in a conversational tone. It is written as if you were telling a friend about the features and benefits that your products have and why a customer might want to purchase them from you. Since you are telling someone about your business and products that means your description is written in the first person.

Since your description is in the first person, the pronouns "I" and "we" will be the subject of most of your sentences. When the description is finished the first person pronouns, articles, helping verbs and being verbs are removed. You will find that your description will have a crisp business-like tone to it, all your tenses will be correct and you will have a great, readable version of your description. You will see that writing a description using this grammar will produce content that can be read and understood without effort.

Everyone marketing online needs content and anyone can make mistakes that lead to misunderstanding. Follow the rules of product description grammar eliminates most mistakes. Your descriptions will be clearer and you will prevent misunderstandings between the seller and the buyer.

First-rate product description copywriting is one of the most overlooked, underused and cost effective weapons in your online marketing arsenal. It has the power to stop you in your tracks or contribute to success beyond your wildest dreams. Have you considered a professional team? Maybe it's about time.

Source:http://ezinearticles.com/?Making-Your-Product-Descriptions-Ready-For-Business&id=7412049

Increase Visibility of Your Business Enlisting it in Local Search Engine

In this global market it is very tough for the local businesses to attract new customers or retain their existing customer base. Every form of media is crowded with different advertisements and your effort to get noticed via media promotion will be lost in the clutter. Moreover, the local players have limited promotional budget in comparison to national or international companies. So, what a local business man will do to promote their business?

Previously, people refer to Yellow Pages to find a local business. Such days are quickly disappearing. Now people turned to internet for every sort of information. Therefore, the best way for the local businesses is to enlist themselves in the online directories.

When people think of search engines the first three names that come to mind are Google, Yahoo and Bing. Even when the term local is attached with search engine, the thought process moves in the same direction. It is true that these big players list local businesses also. If a person tries to search a thriving local business in Google he or she will have no difficulty to see a listing for that business in this big platform. Suppose that person, without any knowledge of the businesses of the area, is looking for a local service provider in Google. He or she will have a good number of business listings which will include many national companies. The information will be of no use to that person. It will be better if there is a local search engine providing location specific results.

Businesses that are struggling to gain an edge in the local markets can optimize their presence on local search engines. It is an excellent way to attract web traffic towards your site. When the online users will discover that there is a search engine meant solely for a geo-location, they will stick to it instead of referring to Google. There are several such local search engines satisfying the requirements of the customers. My Quick Search is one of them that specifically cover the local businesses of Chhattisgarh and satisfy every need of people located in that area. 

Benefits that you can enjoy listing your company with local search engine:

Reach your Target Audience: The target audience of a local business stay in their close proximity. The businesses that depend on local clientele like restaurants, salon, plumbers, carpenters, mechanic, dentists, lawyers, make-up artists, and several others aim to approach the these target groups. The businesses usually consider different media for promoting their business. It is true that local media is an effective way to make people aware of your existence.

However, when need arises they may not remember what you have once advertised. They will then search online to satisfy their requirements. The local listing plays a significant role at that situation. 

Extensive coverage: The small and medium companies are often absent from the listing of top search engines. Even if they are present, there are high chances that they will be lost amidst the big names. Contrary to it, the local search engine carefully includes all the existing service providers of a geo-location from where the customers can pick up the business as per their requirements. Since, in a specific area there is comparatively limited number of service providers, all the companies are visible.

Cost Effectiveness: An online listing is pretty cheaper compared to other kinds of advertisements. Spending only a little amount you can increase the visibility of your brand. Another benefit of listing on the major local network you have to compete with far lesser number of businesses.

Mobile phone friendly: Whenever, there is an informational requirement a person hardly awaits search them from their computers. They instantly connect internet from their Smartphone to access the required information. When you are using a Smartphone, it is very easy to scroll through the listings. Most of the mobile phone users searching information at first refer to business listing. A local listing gives adequate information whenever and wherever they require about the businesses in the vicinity just with the touch of finger.

Therefore, claim your listing in the local search engine and let it work in favour of your business.

Source:http://blogs.siliconindia.com/myquicksearch/Business/Increase-Visibility-of-Your-Business-Enlisting-it-in-Local-Search-Engine-bid-kR9y3q2740616186.html

Law of Cards: Beckett Sues Two More for Scraping Data

The recent trend in trading card cases focuses more on protecting trading card data than on trading cards themselves. Beckett has filed two more lawsuits over alleged data scraping.

Collectors Universe (CU) started this trend with lawsuits against MWP Software/Matthew Perry and SaintSoft LLC/John Kountz. In both of these suits, CU alleged the defendants copied CU data available only to paying CU subscribers, and then unlawfully (and in violation of CU's terms of service) used that data on the defendants' websites or in their own apps.

Pokémon then followed by suing the Pokellector (a website which attempts to provide a comprehensive list of all Pokémon cards, along with images of those cards) for allegedly reproducing copyrighted images of its cards without permission, trademark infringement and unlawfully rebranding the images of Pokémon cards with a Pokellector trademark.

Beckett continued the trend by bringing a trade secret lawsuit against Check Out My Cards (COMC) which, among other things, made a big deal out of COMC's "scraping" of checklists and pricing data (although COMC alleges such scraping may have been authorized).

On April 24, Beckett filed two more lawsuits focusing on pricing and checklist data. This time against Custom Plush Productions Inc's The Card Collector and Derek Miller of Miller Cards.

These two new complaints cannibalize a lot of the COMC complaint and are nearly mirror images of each other as well.

It also looks like Beckett might have let an intern from the marketing department edit these complaints. Paragraph six of both state, "Beckett is the preeminent company and most trusted source operating within the collectibles industry, and it has been since it formed in 1984."

Sounds more like a PR piece than a lawsuit, right?

For The Card Collector case, Beckett alleges The Card Collector accessed Beckett's pricing guides through the Beckett website and unlawfully "scraped" Beckett's copyrightable checklist and pricing data. Allegedly, The Card Collector now offers Beckett's card checklists, grading and pricing data on its own website and through a CD-ROM it sells to others. For that Beckett brings claims for copyright infringement, common law misappropriation, "accounting" (bring out the accountants!), unjust enrichment, a violation of Computer Fraud and Abuse Act, trespass and a Harmful Access by Computer Under Texas Penal Code.

A little bit of everything, right?

For the second new suit, Beckett alleges Miller Cards operates several websites (such as millercards.net and freebaseballcardspriceguide.com) that provide checklists and pricing guides for card collectors. Beckett contends that Miller accessed Beckett's price guides through his Beckett membership, violated the membership agreement by "scraping" this data and then unlawfully reproduced the data on his websites. It brings the identical claims against Miller Cards that it brought against the Card Collector.

Giving all of this scraping going on, I guess, the next planking or Tebowing-type meme should be the "scraping" Beckett meme. I'm looking forward to seeing your pictures on what that should look like.

Now, we've only seen Beckett's side of the story, but it looks bad for both defendants. Sure, there are issues about how much copyright protection should be afforded checklists, but these cases are not just about publicly available checklist data. The checklist and pricing information from these cases was allegedly scraped from behind a pay wall at and then distributed to others in violation of Beckett's terms of service.

Allegedly stealing something from behind a pay wall to give or sell to others just doesn’t look good.

Given this, in all likelihood, these cases will disappear (settle) quickly before we get into any real issues.

These two cases (and the COMC case) have another implication for the industry. Beckett has a template complaint that it looks like it's going to recycle again and again against scrapers. And it's policing the Internet looking for infringers. I predict then we'll see this complaint filed again this year, perhaps multiple times.

If you'd like to review a copy of these complaints, click here for the Card Collector complaint and here for the Miller Cards complaint.

The information provided in Paul Lesko's "Law of Cards" column is not intended to be legal advice, but merely conveys general information related to legal issues commonly encountered in the sports industry. This information is not intended to create any legal relationship between Paul Lesko, the Simmons Browder Gianaris Angelides & Barnerd LLC or any attorney and the user. Neither the transmission nor receipt of these website materials will create an attorney-client relationship between the author and the readers.

The views expressed in the "Law of Cards" column are solely those of the author and are not affiliated with the Simmons Law Firm. You should not act or rely on any information in the "Law of Cards" column without seeking the advice of an attorney. The determination of whether you need legal services and your choice of a lawyer are very important matters that should not be based on websites or advertisements.

Source: http://www.cardboardconnection.com/news/law-of-cards-beckett-sues-two-more-for-scraping-data

Tips to Use While Picking Online Data Recovery Services

Most of the businesses use technology every day and night to make their daily tasks easier and faster. Eventually, keeping technology at fingertips makes our lives simpler, and we can get the best opportunities to carry out business processes under smartest technology advantages. The gradually advancing technology will soon make it possible for every individual to virtually use comprehensive services within easy distance from their living or work place. Irrespective of the distance and type of technology services, every technical problem will be resolved in minimum turnaround time so as to not let work hamper. And similar concept goes for the data recovery solutions!

No matter whether you are using a new PC or a hard drive, it is not going to work perfectly throughout your life. You might face technical errors in your machine that should not be ignored; instead, they must be diagnosed and fixed soon so as to avoid any work hamper and data losses. There are times when your bad luck brings computer viruses on your hard drive or some other external damage occurs to it causing data loss. In such a scenario, it is impossible to get back the original data on your own, and you surely need to rush to a professional who can handle the data recovery emergency. However, to acquire most trusted online data recovery services, it is important to hire a reliable data recovery provider.

Below are few helpful tips to find a reputed data recovery service.

•    Look for Recommendations

As mouth-to-mouth campaigning is considered as the most trusted conventional method of marketing, it is recommended to look for valuable suggestions from your business partners, colleagues and friends to find a reputed service company. If similar tragedy happened with some other business owner and they were successful in retrieving their data. What would you do? You will try getting the contact details of the data recovery company, if you can ever need to call them. This is how recommendations help you a long way in acquiring expert online data recovery services.

•    Perform Internet Research

As every data retrieval service provider has online presence today, it is easy to differentiate the good ones from all possible options through Internet. Type relevant keywords on the Google search box and look for the best search results. When you prepare a list of potential service providers, check out the offered set of services and their detailed description. This is how you will be easily able to shortlist the best data recovery companies without compromising your comfort.

•    Do Homework

When you are unable to receive any referrals, you need to look for more companies and check out which ones are offering services that fit well in your price bucket. Most of them might be in the industry for too long and others may have involved recently. Ensure you measure and analyze all the parameters before making the final investment and getting right data recovery solutions.

Source:http://blogs.siliconindia.com/Techvedic/Technology/Tips-to-Use-While-Picking-Online-Data-Recovery-Services-bid-FTE076KD72078993.html

Screen scraping: how to stop the internet's invisible data leeches

Data is your business's most valuable asset, so it's never a good idea to let it slip into the hands of competitors.

Sometimes, however, that can be difficult to prevent due to an automated technique known as 'screen scraping' that has for years provided a way of extracting data from website pages to be indexed over time.

This poses two main problems: first, that data could be used to gain a business advantage - from undercutting prices (in the case of a price comparison website, for example) to obtaining information on product availability.

Persistent scraping can also grind down a website's performance, which recently happened to LinkedIn when hackers used automated software to register thousands of fake accounts in a bid to extract and copy data from member profile pages.

Ashley Stephenson, CEO of Corero Network Security, explains the origins behind the phenomenon, how it could be affecting your business right now and how to defend from it.

TechRadar Pro: What is screen scraping? Can you talk us through some of the techniques, and why somebody would do it?

Ashley Stephenson: Screen scraping is a concept that was pioneered by early terminal emulation programs decades ago. It is a programmatic method to extract data from screens that are primarily designed to be viewed by humans.

Basically the screen scraping program pretends to be a human and "reads" the screen, collecting the interesting data into lists that can be processed automatically. The most common format is name:value pairs. For example, information extracted from a travel site reservation screen might look like the following -

Origin: Boston, Destination:Atlanta, Date:10/12/13, Flight:DL4431, Price:$650

Screen scraping has evolved significantly over the years. A major historical milestone occurred when the screen scraping concept was applied to the Internet and the web crawler was invented.

Web crawlers originally "read" or screen scraped website pages and indexed the information for future reference (e.g. search). This gave rise to the search engine industry. Today webcrawlers are much more sophisticated and websites include information (tags) dedicated to the crawler and never intended to be read by a human.

Another subsequent milestone in the evolution of screen scraping was the development of e-retail screen scraping, perhaps the most well know example being the introduction of price comparison websites.

These sites employ screen scraping programs to periodically visit a list of known e-retail sites to obtain the latest price and availability information for a specific set of products or services. This information is then stored in a database and used to provide aggregated comparative views of the e-retail landscape to interested customers.

In general the previously described screen scraping techniques have been welcomed by website operators who want their sites to be indexed by the leading search engines such as Google or Bing, similarly e-retailers typically want their products to be displayed on the leading comparison shopping sites.

TRP: Have there been any recent developments in competitive screen scraping?

AS: In contrast over the past few years, recent developments in competitive screen scraping are not necessarily so welcome. For a site to be scraped by a search engine crawler is OK if the crawler visits are infrequent.

For a site to be the target of a price comparison site scraper is OK if the information obtained is used fairly. However as the number of specialized search engines continues to increase and the frequency of price check visits skyrockets these automated page views can rise to levels which impact the intended operation of the target site.

More specifically, if the target site is the victim of competitive scraping the information obtained can be used to undermine the business of the site owner. For example, undercutting prices, beating odds, aggressively acquiring event tickets, reserving inventory, etc.

In general, we believe there is a significant increase in the use of automated bots to gather website content to seed other services, fuel competitive intelligence, and aggregate product details like pricing, features and inventory. Increasingly this information is used to get a leg up over the competition, or to increase website hit rates.

For example, in the travel and tourism industry, price scraping is a real issue as travel sites are constantly looking to beat out the competition by offering the 'best price'. Additionally, the idea of inventory scraping is becoming more common. The concept of bots being used to purchase volumes of a high value item to resell, or to increase online pricing to deter potential buyers.

With the high availability of seemingly legal software bundles and services to facilitate the screen scraping process, and the motives we've just described, it's really a pretty powerful combination.

TRP: How long has screen scraping been going on for and is it becoming more or less of a problem for companies?

AS: Screen scraping has been going on for years but it is only more recently that victims, negatively impacted by this type of behaviour, are beginning to react. Some claim copyright infringement and unfair business practices while in contrast, organizations doing the scraping claim freedom of information.

Many website owners have written usage policies on their sites that prohibit aggressive scraping but have no ability to enforce their policies - the problem doesn't seem to be going away anytime soon.

TRP: How does screen scraping impact negatively on a business's IT systems?

AS: Competitive or abusive Screen scraping is just another example of unwanted traffic. Recent studies show that 61% of Internet Traffic is generated by bots. Bad-bot scrapers consume valuable resources and bandwidth intended to serve genuine web site users, this can result in increased latency for real customers, due to large numbers of non-human visits to the site. The business impact manifests itself as additional IT investment needed to serve the same number of customers.

TRP: Ebay introduced an API years ago to combat screen scraping. Is creating an API to provide access to data a recommended form of defense?

AS: Providing a dedicated API allows "good" scrapers access to your data programmatically and voluntarily observes resource utilization limits however it does not stop malicious information harvesting to be used for competitive advantage.

Real defense can be obtained by taking advantage of technology that can identify and block unwanted non-human visitors to your website. This would allow real or 'good' users to access the site for their intended purposes, while blocking the bad crawlers and bots from causing damage.

TRP: How else can an organisation defend itself from screen scraping?

AS: Using techniques such as IP reputation intelligence, geolocation enforcement, spoofed IP source detection, real time threat-level assessment, request-response behaviour analysis and bi-directional deep packet inspection.

Many organizations today are relying on Corero's First Line of Defense technology block unwanted website traffic including excessive scraping. Corero helps identify human visitors vs. non-human bots (e.g. running scripts) and blocks the unwanted offenders real-time.

TRP: Are there any internet rules governing the use (or misuse) of screen scraping?

AS: Screen scraping has been the topic of some pretty high-profile lawsuits for example Craigslist vs. PadMapper, and in the travel space for example, Ryanair vs. Budget Travel.

However, most court cases to date have not been fully resolved to the satisfaction of the victims. The courts often refuse to grant injunctions for said activity most likely because they have no precedent to work with. This is primarily due to the fact that there few if any internet rules really governing this type of activity.

Source:http://www.techradar.com/news/internet/web/screen-scraping-how-to-stop-the-internet-s-invisible-data-leaches-1214404

Internet Marketing - A Beginners Guide

Every new website owner is faced with the problem of getting visitors to their site, and if the website happens to be a commercial venture it needs to happen fast, even non commercial sites need visitors to survive. A quick look at some of the online tools to find expired domains show just how many websites fail every hour of every day. To help prevent your site joining the daily list of failures effective marketing is essential.

Marketing does not necessarily mean spending lots of money, however if fast results are needed then some money will have to be spent. As this article is aimed at beginners, I'll only briefly look at paid marketing and concentrate mainly on the free or low cost options to promote your site.

Paid Marketing:

In many respects online marketing is not dissimilar to offline marketing and many of the tactics used to promote an offline business will work equally well for websites. For example newspaper or magazine adverts although sometimes expensive can produce excellent results for websites, and occasionally magazines will supply cover cd's with links back to your site, an excellent way to get more visitors.

For larger campaigns television or radio ads can work, and with the expansion of satellite TV stations costs for this type of campaign are coming down all the time. For most new site owners however these options will prove to be too expensive and specialist online advertising will be the preferred choice. In the online paid sector directory listings and Pay Per Click (PPC) are probably the most popular. PPC quite simply work as the name describes and you pay a set amount every time a potential customer clicks your link. This has the advantage you only pay when someone visits your site and the obvious disadvantagethat it's open the click fraud where others click the links to increase your bill.

Most of the providers of PPC offer protection against click fraud and block multiple clicks from the same IP address, although for the site owner this is difficult to monitor, and suspicion is always there that the PPC provider has little incentive to police their policies as it would lead to loss of revenue. From experience PPC advertising can become very expensive and although it's quite easy to set up yourself through companies like google, it can sometimes be worth paying a specialist to run your campaign, as they will know how best to target the clicks to make best use of your money.

Free Marketing:

In business like all walks of life the general rule is that you get nothing for nothing, with Internet marketing this rule somewhat goes out the window as there are many free resources for promoting your website. In this section I'm going to take a look at a few of the most popular, this is of coarse only scraping the surface and as you develop your strategy further you'll find new outlets and tools that will get lots of visitors popping by your website.

Search Engines:

Without question the most effective free source of visitors are the many search engines like Google, Yahoo and MSN... the list really is almost endless. Most new website owners believe to get listed in these popular search engines the best thing to do is submit your site to them, this is not the case. All the main search engines these days use crawlers which automatically browse the web and store the contents of the sites they visit.

The search engines then use this content (along with 100's of other criteria ) to rank sites for specific search terms. Search engine optimization (SEO) is a whole different subject, however in brief what you need is links from other website, and some of the marketing tips below, along with attracting visitors to your site will help with your SEO efforts. The truth is that many people use website marketing solely to increase ranking in search engines, in my experience however I've found that if you promote your site for real visitors the search engines will follow.

There are many SEO companies who specialise in getting your site up the rankings, you do need to be careful as many will make great and exaggerated claims, some of which are simply not possible. The best advice I can give here is to research thoroughly and look at, and if possible contact past customers for a reference. Good SEO can be the most cost effective way to promote your site but you do need to work hard at it or employ someone else to do it for you.

Forums:

Internet forums can be very useful for getting visitors to your site, the biggest advantage with forums is that you can target forums related to your area of interest and most will allow members who contribute useful posts and replies to have a link back to their own website in their signature. You should take care not to just post links as most good forums will consider this as spam, and even if the moderators don't delete the link, visitor looking at it will clearly see what's going on and your sites reputation will suffer.

Blogs:

In my opinion every website owner should have a blog, and for SEO purposes it's probably best to have the blog on a different domain. There are lots of free blog sites like blogger.com which offer you easy to use blogs. The biggest advantage with your own blog is you can write articles and provide links to different areas of your site, this provides different entry points and is also very good SEO practice.

Another use of blogs is comments, a great way of getting visitors back to your site is to search for other blogs relevant to your website and leave comments with a link back to your site. As with forums care should be taken not to spam the comments as it's a bad practice and unlikely to help you long term.

Article Submissions:

If you're up to it, writing an article can be a good way to get links back to your website, most good article distribution sites like EzineArticles.com will allow you to have a short bio at the end of the article, which can direct visitors back to your websites. If possible the article should be about a subject related to your business, but as you can see from my bio below it's not essential :-)

Well that's about it, as I said at the beginning this is only an introduction for beginners and as your site and business grows you'll find many new and exciting ways to market your online business.

Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Internet-Marketing---A-Beginners-Guide&id=1729653

Sample Essay Writing - What Must Be Considered

You may be looking at it or you may be required to write on it.

This is a particular type of writing essay that is often put for view by online research and writing services. As a student, you should not only consider looking at classification essay, you should also consider writing a sample essay that can be viewed as a sample paper by other students.

In most cases, students will turn to these essays because of the factor of time. Most students will keep research and writing till the last minutes before actually beginning the write-up. One of the most important aspects in any academic writing is the issue of time. In everything you do in academia, it is always necessary to make use of an outline. The outline guides you as you write from start to finish. The outline is there to ensure that you start and finish on time. Writing without an outline is what makes you get caught up by deadlines.

When an online research and writing service offers a sample paper for view, it is asking you to consider its services in writing your essay. There is nothing wrong if you rely on it, but make sure you consider the issue of plagiarism seriously. Your essay is supposed to be something ingenious. Fortunately, there are anti-plagiarism tools over that internet that you can use to check for the authenticity of what has been written for you and to also check the references linked to your reflective essay.

Source: http://ezinearticles.com/?Sample-Essay-Writing---What-Must-Be-Considered&id=1194732