1.  Read the terms and conditions of the credit card that you are applying.

-  It is important to read these things because there are hidden charges in the account.  For example, there is a CAPITALIZED O% in the brochure of the credit card application.  Be sure to read about the annual fee, the monthly interest,  late fees and finance charge.  You’ll never know what the company or bank will charge you in case you pay your bill after the due date of the card.

2.  Pay your bills on time or earlier than the due date in your bill.

- Paying bills on time is important.  For example, the monthly interest in your credit card is only 3% and the due date is on Monday.   Suddenly, you forgot to pay your bill in the said due date.  The interest will go as high as 30% by Tuesday because of the late fees and finance charges.  My advice for everyone is to be punctual and to be careful.

3.  Don’t use your credit card for cash advances

- For some reasons, many banks charge their customers 20% to 30% for this service.

4.  Take care of your credit standing.

- You will be denied for future loans if you don’t pay your bills punctually.  At the same time, good payers increase their credit limit for their future offers or loans.

5.  Keep your 16 digit credit card number protected.  Many id thefts can be found anywhere.  Some of them are online hackers, cashiers in a restaurant and sometimes even a phone specialist are the suspects for these crimes.  In case this event happens to you, call your credit card provider immediately to cancel the credit card.  Also, there is an additional credit card add on known as ID Theft.  This service will charge your credit card an average of $9.99 per month to protect your accounts from this burglars.  Every transaction in your credit card will be sent thru a text message, email notification and phone notification every hour and every minute of the day.  Now you can be assured that you will not be a victim of these practices by certain individuals.

About the Author:

written by: Christine Marie A.Bituin- Tin is a nurse both in the US and the Philippines.   Also, she works as a freelance social media marketer in the field of sales and advertising.  She hopes to make a big difference someday by inspiring many people with her life works.

Oliver was so overcome with embarrassment at having a girl to protect his scrawny neck that from that time on he made it a point to be the rescuer, not the rescued. As time passed, muscles filled out this lanky frame and those two front teeth began to sparkle. He combs his hair, and he takes a bath daily now. In short, he has become a fine specimen of manhood. The best part is, he lived up to his promise: he became my self-appointed guardian (well, I don’t know if that’s the best or the worst part). He was just always there, sticking to me like glue. It used to drive me nuts that he never let me out of his sight.

When I was 12, I ran from the infirmary on my way home. I had found out in the most humiliating way that I had become a woman: there was a big red stain on the back portion of my skirt. The jeers and the Taunts followed me through the school corridors. Oliver dashed after me and offered to accompany me home. I declined, of course. He seemed to understand my discomfiture and promised to drop later with the things left in school. When I reached home I was told that I needed to jump three times on the stairs (which I did) and to wash my face with my blood (which I didn’t do). Oliver dropped by in the afternoon, sporting a black eye and a bruise on his arm. When I asked him what happened, he said he had walked into a closed door. I believed him. But a few days later, minus the dysmennorhea, I found out that Oliver got into fisticuffs because some guy made a disgusting remark about me. Nobody had ever fought for me before that. And when you’re 12 and discussing in class how King Arthur and fairest of them all, Lancelot, fought for Guinevere’s love, you tend to get ideas. I loved Oliver then.

When we were in high school and I found out that the school’s heartthrob and one of my most ardent suitors, Richard, was involved with a bustier girl, it was to Oliver that I ran. When I didn’t graduate as valedictorian and I got so drunk, it was Oliver who took me home. He didn’t even mind that I barfed all over his dad’s car (which he borrowed without permission). When I decided to go to UP and he went to Ateneo, we celebrated by partying. When I lost my mom in a car accident, he took care of everything. When my dad followed my mom less than a year later after a heart attack, he was there again. By this time he was an appendage of my life. He used to check out the guys I came to know. Nobody dared to get serious with me–not when Oliver had a black belt. I didn’t know how to define our relationship. I didn’t know what we were. We definitely were more than friends, better even than best friends. It was like we were a couple, but formally not one. We did all the things that couples did like hang out and neck but always stopped when things got too hot. Since we never defined what we meant to each other, we never said “I love you” or whatever serious couple told each other. As a result, I remained a chaste princess while my prince caroused and sowed wild oats, but still had the energy to monitor my movements.
I didn’t mind. After all, I was so sure we’d end up together. I always thought that in the end, it would be us. I loved him. I managed to convince myself that he loved me (what else could it be?). Little did I know that love doesn’t conquer all, it only conquers the weak. I didn’t think he’d be so stupid as to get a girl pregnant on the same night they met at a party. I didn’t think he’d be so stupid as to forget to use some form of contraception. After all, he had given me a lecture on safe sex. And I didn’t think he’d be so stupid as to marry the girl. But maybe I forgot that after all he was a man, and men have been known to be stupid about these things. Their brain is located in a region other than between the ears. What could I do? Kicking him in the groin and punching him in the eye seemed like a good idea then. Don’t blame me; he was the one who enrolled me in a self-defense course. But I did not feel better. Seeing him bent over in pain only made me angrier. I wasted my life for this lousy excuse of a man? I could not believe it!

I wanted nothing more than to run to him and beg him to wake me up from the stupid dream. I wanted him to take me some place where we didn’t know anybody. No pain, no memory, no humiliation. I wanted to just forget it ever happened but since I flunked in the School for Martyrs, I couldn’t, for the life of me pretend, it didn’t happen. I couldn’t pretend he didn’t hurt me. I couldn’t pretend everything was fine and dandy and exactly the way it was before. We didn’t talk for a month. For both of us who were practically inseparable, that was like an eternity. I ducked into corners whenever I would see him. I wouldn’t take his calls. I wouldn’t see him. And for some time hate was my reason for getting up in the morning, for breathing, for living. Hate and I became good friends. `God brings men into deep waters, not to drown them but to cleanse them,” somebody once wrote. I didn’t want to be cleansed. I just wanted to drown in pain and misery and utter desolation. I wanted to wallow in the dark and deep pit of despair.

I know a thousand and one clichés that say this can be a blessing and that I should be thankful. But thankful is the last thing I’m feeling right now. I’ve always thought that there are three kinds of women: those who break, those who mend and those who are broken themselves. Before this hit me, I assumed that I belonged to the first or second category. Now I know I’m in the third–so hurt and broken up inside. My grandmother used to say that there is nothing you can do about pain when it gives you a silly grin except grin right back. All I could manage was a wry smile, a killer headache and the worst hangover the day before his wedding. Evidence of that is the disgusting sight of mashed potatoes and barbecue, thrown up not three meters away from where I was lying prostrate on the floor and the awful stench of cigarette on my hair. Frankly I don’t want to go. I want to wallow in misery in my messy room, crying, retching and stinking, surrounded with Michael Learns to Rock (whose songs are dedicated to the broken-hearted) CDs. But I have to go and attend the wedding. I have to bathe and prepare and put on that atrocious peach (it’s not even my color!) gown. I’m not doing it for the groom, my one true friend and love, Oliver. Neither am I doing it for the bride, my younger sister, Sandra, who needs me. I’m doing it for my unborn niece who has the great fortune of having me as her aunt. Call me stupid, but I’ve always known my place. If it isn’t beside the man I was destined to marry, if it isn’t behind my sister, who will take his name, wear his ring and bear him a child, then it must be with my niece, cradled close to my heart so that she will know both of our love.

Well, no more, I say!

For those bloggers out there who have decided to start their blogs, or launch their blogging careers, in 2007 I salute you — and present to you with 41 ways to kickstart your marketing efforts. Kick back, grab a cold one, and check it out. And if, in a year’s time, you’ve cracked the Technorati 1000, don’t forget where it all began!

Get Your Own House In Order

1. Write well, write consistently, don’t give up: All the marketing in the world won’t help you if you have a lame-duck blog. In your search for more traffic, more promotion, and more publicity, never forget it starts with great content — and needs to continue with great content on a regular schedule. There’s no question that maintaining quality and regularity is difficult while you’re starting out, particularly if you’re time strapped … but hang in there, because if you sacrifice this, all of your marketing efforts will be for naught.
2. Become an expert on something: Develop a keen interest, continue to read and write intelligently, and after a while, your experience will grant you this informal title; bloggers will seek you out, your reknown will grow, and it will be easier to be noticed, linked to, and get cross promoted (see below)
3. Design is more important than you think: Your mother’s right — first impressions count, and they can count for cash money. If you’re serious about blogging, don’t stick with a n unaltered top10 WordPress theme no matter how cool you think it is. You want to separate and elevate yourself from the blogging masses, and its impossible to do if you look exactly the same as them. Easy to say, hard to do, but absolutely necessary if you don’t have the money to pay for a private ground-up theme: learn CSS and a photoeditor of choice, and learn to tweak your theme yourself, so that your blog looks professional, stands out, and screams “yes, I am worthy of your attention!”.
4. Get Your SEO On: An entire post in and of itself — get your own domain name, host your own blogging software, enable permalinks, create keyword rich headlines, create unique title tags, enable trackback and ping functionality, ensure your blog pings pinging-services.
5. Publish full feeds: A controversial topic. Publishing full feeds puts you at the mercy for content scrapers who will scrape your RSS feeds and repost your content, create traffic, and reap adsense bucks. On the other hand, some data suggests that it can also increase your traffic, and a few pundits swear by it. Feed subscriptions are critical; get your feeds burned through Feedburner so you can track how many are subscribing. People who subscribe to feeds rarely unsubscribe, and every single feed subscriber is a potential source of traffic to your blog.
6. Do interviews with other bloggers: Score interviews with newsworthy individuals (who may be linked to newsworthy content), to create link worthy content, but more importantly, create news on THEIR blog to get back to YOUR blog.
7. Break important stories: See the post on how to find news. Long story short: if you have an interest in an area, it is still possible to do this as long as you’re willing to put in the time and energy to find stuff. Benefit: being picked up by A-list blogs, mainstream news outlets and more.
8. Have a contest: Or, have regular contests, which encourage participation and buzz in your corner of the blogosphere.
9. Publish original research: If you’ve got the time, start with a question, try and figure it out with the data available, and “publish it”. For fun, I asked myself “How many of the Top 30 Diggers actually blog?” And I just went through their profiles and created a table of how many blogged. I then talked about what it meant, and tried to answer the question “why?” [answer: not many do blog, its because being a top 30 digger requires a huge time investment]
10. Put out Press Releases: Particularly if you have something new, unique, or particularly important to say (such as an important story, or research)
11. Work your long tail: A tip based on your SEO efforts; there is a free service called Hit Tail that will analyze the search terms leading to your blog traffic, and yank out high quality key words you should be focusing on that you might not immediately think of. This can help you focus your future posts as you are already getting traffic for those key words.
12. Answer your comments, in your comments, and off blog: Of course you have enabled comments on every post, right? So, when you do get comments, answer as many as humanly possible, and if its an interesting enough issue or question, contact the poster directly for a friendly follow up. Treat every potential poster as a potential subscriber to your feed, and a future friend and contact.
13. Spend time to create links and trackbacks: In every post spend as much time as you can to create outbound links to relevant and high linking blogs; many blogs automatically have trackbacks enabled, so in their comments section they will have a link back to your blog. If its a highly trafficked and ranked blog, this can mean traffic BACK to your blog, and it can draw notice from the author themselves — because, let’s face it, we’re all vain in a fashion, even A-listers, and we’re all interested in who is linking to us.
14. Get Your MyBlogLog widget and work it, work it, work it (in a nice way): MyBlogLog — know it, love it, and embrace it. Since its been acquired by Yahoo, it has the potential to explode all over the blogosphere. The two sentence run down is that it offers a free widget that enables you to build a free community around your blog, and to easily see which other bloggers have been to your blog. You can “add” friends, and generate traffic, but more importantly, your own network of like-minded blogging colleagues in a way that is relatively easy and efficient. Just go easy on the unsolicited messages. I wrote a complete review over here.

Getting the Word Out

1. Join a blog carnival: Where every blogger who joins one blogs about a topic, then each blog gets promoted. Here’s an index of blog carnivals to get you started.
2. Join blog network: Between 9rules, b5media, and others, there is networking potential, income potential, and a link-a-palooza waiting for you (through the linkroll as every member may have to link to every other member) if you’re able to get into one. Goes back to tip #1 — don’t forget to keep up your blog.
3. Participate in forums: Forums with tons of pages, huge lists of members, and a responsive community are an easy way to not only connect with other individuals, but an opportunity to tastefully demonstrate your expertise and a link back to your blog
4. Participate on larger blogs in comments: Like number three, except that by participating directly in another blogger’s comments you a) get their recognition and b) get the recognition of the blogging community. Also, here’s a tip: try and be one of the first few commenters on heavily trafficked sites to get recognized — most people won’t read past the first 10-20 comments. Here’s another tip for traffic: IF (and ONLY IF) you have posted something relevant that is pursuant to the ongoing conversation and IF the blog has a commenting policy that will allow you to do so, post a link back to a post on your own site (”hey guys, I wrote about how we can solve this problem! — check out the link over here, but let me summarize it for you … “). Sometimes you’ll be surprised at how much traffic comes back.
5. Join Blogburst: Blogburst is a type of “blog network”, which syndicates content across American newspaper’s websites, such as USA Today and Reuters. That’s right, you could get a post syndicated on Reuters. Trust me — it can happen . Highly ranked inbound links + traffic + bragging rights to your mom that your post got featured in a newspaper. Not too shabby. Also on the upside, they have a new revenue sharing scheme. The bad: read their terms of service carefully — you give up certain rights when they republish your content, and the revenue sharing works on the top100 publishers only.
6. Participate in Darren’s contests: He has enough of them, and often publishes links to all of the participants.
7. Submit to blog directories: So people can find your blog.
8. Submit to Google sitemaps: Really part of “get your house in order”, but when you do, Google will be able to find you so much easier; translation — more Google juice, more traffic, higher rankings faster. Tip: for WordPress fans, this plugin is particularly useful.
9. Submit to article directories: You might want to submit your favourite posts to article directories, where they will enable you to have a biobox / blurb with a link back to your own blog. Again, demonstrating your expertise, and moreover, the article might get picked up in a ezine or another blog, leading to more traffic and more inbound links.
10. Get interviewed: If you’ve demonstrated your expertise, or have done something newsworthy, or reported on something newsworthy, try and get interviewed. As long as its done in a fair way (doesn’t need to be a completely puffpiece) by a site or blogger with some reknown, its more traffic for you.
11. Get listed on a news aggregator, or blog aggregator: Like Techmeme for technews, or Tailrank for blogging news. Hint: some news aggregators will actually accept submissions if you ask them nicely; double hint: try and get listed by linking to a top story within your first 100 words.
12. Create free stuff for yourself and give it away: Like ebooks, digests of your favourite posts, pdfs, and so on. Make sure to include a link back in the document, back to your site.
13. Create free stuff for other people: the same, let them distribute it, get a link back.
14. Pay for pub: Efficient means of using your cash is to buy targeted Adwords, or keywords in Yahoo’s advertising network; you could get other bloggers to write about you using PayPerPost or ReviewMe; or you purchase text link ads through Text-Link-Ads.com

Connect, Connect, Connect

1. Make friends with other bloggers: Ridiculously simple, but its true. Benefits of “networking” (making friends) include more mentions on other blogs, more requests for interviews, more partnerships in future deals, more “adds” into their MyBlogLog network, more “ads” into someone else’s blogroll (and therefore links back to your blog) — it goes on and on.
2. Guest blog: Offer to do it for free, and you’ll be able to demonstrate what you know to an entirely new audience. Gives you great credibility, and of course, most will allow a courtesy link back to your own blog. A free foot-in-the-door to some communities as well.
3. Volunteer, intern, scut-monkey your way into a blogger’s graces: Maintaining a highly trafficked site is a lot of work. Offer to volunteer your time with menial behind the scenes stuff (moderating posts, acting as a bird dog for news) for free and with a smile, and you’ll get a foot-in-the-door with the blogger, their network, and future opportunities.
4. Get hired: You never know which blog organizations are looking to hire new bloggers; again, an opportunity to demonstrate your knowledge, meet new bloggers, and open tons of professional “doors” … because now that you’re getting paid? You’re a “pro-blogger”, mate!
5. Network in person: Find other local bloggers using services like Meetup, and see if they’re literally getting together to commiserate about blogging or their topic of blogging. If you’ve got the time, there’s nothing that makes an impression as actually meeting someone in person. Tip: bring a business card; Another tip: if you don’t have any, make some; yet another tip: if important people are going to be there, really — try and go. Remember, you didn’t know me before Problogger, but I met Darren in person at a function in Toronto that played a part in me writing this. Think about that.
6. Join virtual groups: Through Yahoo Groups, Usenet, and more; then bring the conversation off the group with emails and instant messages. Be friendly, be helpful, and it will pay dividends.
7. Cross promote: Once you’ve gotten to know people, you can kindly remind them to promote posts that you’re particularly proud of; or, vote for your submissions on Digg or your social bookmarking site of choice. Reciprocate.

Make Social Media Work For You

1. Facebook: Its a social network that has opened its doors behind its college beginnings. Anyone can sign up. Start connecting with old friends and colleagues, like any other social network. But, unlike other social networks (as far as I know), you can import your own blog’s RSS feed, so that your connections can see what you’re blogging. Who knows where that might lead? Update: Myspace also allows this function, i believe.
2. Join Helium: Helium is a new site that is actively looking people to head new categories of content. Think a paid “about.com” — for its authors. If you have a particular interest that isn’t yet served on Helium you might want to check it out; besides giving you cash for content, it’ll also demonstrate your authority in a topic, and you’ll be able to leverage Helium’s own traffic for your own blog through a linkback on your profile.
3. Yahoo Answers! A similar idea; but this time, you’re answering questions that people are posting. Yahoo! is quite careful about spam, however, and including a “signature” is a dicey proposition at times. There is a fairly sophisticated registry and voting system that tries to prevent “gaming”, but given how much traffic yahoo! answers gets, AND its inclusion as a separate result area in Yahoo SERPS (Search Engine Results Pages) it might be something worth looking into.
4. Create a Squidoo Page Lens: On a given related topic to your blog; participate in the Squidoo community; Squidoo has a ton of traffic, and you could funnel traffic and tastefully include links to other relevant sites and perhaps your own blog.
5. Use MySpace Marketing: Far beyond the confines of this post, but in a similar fashion to Squidoo, the idea is to capitalize on the HUGE amount of traffic MySpace gets (some interesting thoughts over here). Create a profile, create relevant content and links back. Start adding friends. Comment on your friends space. Join groups. Start enjoying the trickle back traffic.
6. Get Dugg / Netscaped / Reddited / Stumbled upon: Whole articles (and sites) are written about the intricacies of socially bookmarking. Here’s a tip: focus on creating great content, make friends on these sites if they allow you to, and submit your stories judiciously. ‘Nuff said (for now).

[Yes, I excluded "create viral videos", because I thought that extended beyond blogging and into video casting -- which, I'll admit isn't tremendously different, but hey ... gotta draw the line somewhere. ]

And at this point, we open the floor to comments, questions, cheers and jeers. If you have any further tips, share’em so we can all learn together!

*Tony Hung is the guest blogger for the week, and he blogs at DeepJiveInterests.com

So how can you satisfy your visitors’ needs and increase the frequency of visits from the same visitors? There is no magic formula or secret java scripting that will do it. However, laying the foundation of your site by answering five basic questions prior to building your site will allow you to develop an online presence that meets your business goals and encourages visitors to return to your site time after time. The five questions to be answered are: 1) Who is your target audience, 2) What are the objectives of your website, 3) What does a visitor expect from your site, 4) What do you want the visitor to leave with, and 5) Why should a visitor return to your site?

Defining the Target Audience

The web gives people access to, and control of, information at their convenience. Knowing who your target audience is a crucial step that needs to be clearly defined prior to developing site content or design. By knowing who your audience is you can answer the five questions that lay the foundation for your website with greater accuracy. In fact, the better you know who your audience is and what they expect to get from a visit to your site, the more relevant you can make your site.

Many websites are designed to cater to the needs of a nondescript mass audience. Take a quick look at most websites and you will find the standard out-of-the-box website package with six pages – including “Who we are,” What we do,” and “Our favorite links.” In order to satisfy the dramatically different needs of a wide variety of people, web developers create a generic site that provides no real value for the visitor or the company. The visitor does not find relevant information, and decides that the website is not adequate for his needs. No bookmarks are made and the visitor never returns. The company (site owner) gets some level of activity as measured by hits and page views, but never builds any loyalty to the site so nearly all visitors are first-time, last-time surfers.

Who is your target audience?

Defining the target audience and their needs is an important first step in building your website and a critical element to increasing the loyalty on your site. Who are the people that will use your website? Engineers that require technical data or students looking for specific information for a term paper project? How do they like to receive and use the information they collect on the Internet? Is the visual impact more important or less important to effectively delivering your message? How can your site help satisfy the needs of your target audience? You can see that knowing your target audience is much more than figuring out the demographics like gender, age, education level and income. Knowing your audience is the only true way to provide relevant content the way your audience wants to receive it. Define your target audience and get to know them better than your competitors. After all, the only sustainable competitive advantage is the understanding you have of your customers that your competitors do not have.

What are the objectives of your website?

Is it already obvious to you why you need a website? For many companies it is not so much a clear strategy as it is wanting to keep up with the Jones’. “Our biggest competitor has a website and we don’t want to seem like they can do something we can’t.” If this is your reasoning for embarking on an e-commerce initiative, you need to take a step back and consider what a website could offer your customers that is of true value – rather than to forge ahead with no direction.

There are many reasons for building an online presence that compliments or enhances your existing offline presence. For many companies, the primary justification for launching a website is because everybody else has one. Although this thinking is somewhat myopic and inward looking, because everyone else does have a website may mean that without a web presence your company is led out to pasture in the future.

One of the most basic reasons for building an online presence is that a website serves as one more tool for communicating with your internal and external audiences cost-effectively and conveniently. Cost-effective in the sense that the Internet has allowed small, capital-limited businesses the chance to look a lot bigger than they really are – opening the door to an expanded marketplace. Small businesses are no longer restricted by their location and ability to touch the customer personally. Now, with an online presence that delivers targeted communications you can drive in traffic and connect with customers that would have been cost-prohibitive to reach using traditional marketing tools.

There are many reasons why your company should have a presence on the web. However, the only ones that matter are those that are customer-focused. This alternative channel of communication saves time for the visitor and permits her to access the information at her convenience. It also provides the ability for your company to capture information on your site visitors to build customer profiles and better serve your customers.

What does a visitor expect from your site?

If you have already developed a visceral understanding of your target audience, realizing the expectations of your site visitors becomes second nature. However, it is important to take the customer’s perspective to adequately define what your visitors expect from your site. Most Internet users will expect ease-of-use (referring to the navigation ease) of your site as well as relevant information that makes their lives easier. These expectations go hand-in-hand with the assumption that your site will download quickly. The average Internet user will wait no more than eight seconds before jumping to another page or stopping the transmission if the page is too slow to open.

Beyond this, depending on your business and target audience, some users will want to be entertained and be dissatisfied if the entertainment value does not meet their expectations. Others will look for ordering information, pre-sales services, and company information. The expectations will vary from person to person, but if you have defined your target audience into the smallest homogenous segment possible (with the goal of a market segment of one), you will be able to meet your visitors’ expectations in both content and design of your website.

What do you want the visitor to leave with?

Once you have a solid understanding of what your site visitors expect from your site, you need to determine what it is that you want the visitor to leave with after visiting your website. Are you attempting to reduce the sales cycle time and want to ensure that your customer’s questions about your product’s performance and specifications are answered? Or are you looking to improve your brand image and need to find ways to enhance your offline brand online? Depending on your goals, you will want to develop different strategies for different goals.

Ask yourself what it is that you want your visitors to leave with and then consider whether you can address those needs with a focus on content or on design of the site. Most likely you will want to provide a combination of rich content that helps satisfy customer needs complemented by a good website design that allows the user to find the information or conduct the transaction quickly and easily.

Why should someone return to your site?

Is there any good reason that a visitor should bookmark your site so that he will return again? If not, what needs to be improved within your site plan that will encourage repeat visits? Although this question is last in this article, it is equally important to targeting the right audience. Whatever the objectives and reasons are for creating an online presence for your company, if you are not driving people back to your site, your website efforts are in vain. After all, why spend the time and money on developing a site if its only purpose is to keep your competition up to speed on what you are doing and how you market your business?

By asking yourself, “Why should someone return to my site?” you are forcing yourself to take a hard look at your website initiative and the justification for the investment. Developing loyalty from your customers through your online activities will be seen in your offline revenues and profits. Providing relevant information, making it easier for your customer to do her job, and creating a compelling site are some basic tactics that will encourage people to return to your website. Determining what it is that is of value to your target audience will be the cornerstone of your web activities.

Five Questions, Five Answers

There are many excellent books, magazines, and e-zines available that describe in great detail the points presented in this article. However, for those of you who are considering building a website, the questions posed here will help to layout the roadmap for your site. Laying the foundation of your site by answering these five basic questions prior to building your site will allow you to develop an online presence that meets your business goals and encourages visitors to return to your site. The key to getting off on the right foot is to complete your homework prior to launching your web initiatives. Because the Internet is in a constant state of change, those of you who have already created your site can easily take a step back and apply these five areas to your existing site strategy to ensure a solid foundation that meets your customers’ expectations.