Social Networking: Myspace - a Popular Social Networking Website

Do you surf the internet, listen to the radio, or watch television? If you do, there is a good chance that you have heard of MySpace before. MySpace is on online social networking website that has literally taken the world by storm. This is because, in what seemed like no time at all, MySpace has grown to become one of the most popular online websites, in the entire world.

The first step in joining this popular online social network is to register for an account. This can be done in a matter of minutes. Although you can view a number of different MySpace pages without registering, it is advised that you do. Registration will allow you to not only create your own MySpace page, but enjoy many of the other features that can be found on the site. What you may like most about MySpace is that it is completely free to use.

Once you join MySpace, you can create your own profile page. Although this is optional, it is the best way to communicate with others and make new friends. To make the experience easier, MySpace has a fairly large collection of profile templates. These templates not only have an impact on the background of your profile page, but the text fonts as well. In addition to using the pre-designed templates, you can also create your own, especially if you have basic knowledge of HTML.

Many MySpace users have sections that allow them to describe themselves and their likes and dislikes. In addition to these preset sections, you can also add your own. A large number of users have posted clips from their favorite movies, television shows, or music videos. You can also add you own pictures and your own videos, if you choose to do so. Although MySpace does have some rules, which can be found in their terms of use agreement, you basically have unlimited freedom, when it comes to creating your own MySpace page.

After you have created your own MySpace page, you can easily search for others. You can search for others with a wide variety of different keyword phrases. If you are looking for someone who lives near you, you can search for your town. If you are looking for someone who shares your love of animals, you can search for pet lovers. Once you have found the MySpace page of someone who you would like to become friends with, you can invite them to join your network. In addition to inviting others to join your network, there is a good chance that you will be invited to join others.

Although MySpace has been in the media because of its popularity, attention has been given to the popular social networking website, attention it probably didn’t wish that it had received. With MySpace, as well a large number of other networking sites, internet safety has become a big issue, especially with children. If you are the parent of a child, you may wish to monitor their MySpace activity or ensure that their profile is set to a private listing. MySpace has a number of safety features is place, but to make use of these features you must know that they exist.

In addition to being a traditional social networking website, one that lets you meet and speak to other members, MySpace is well known for its additional features. These features commonly include music videos, horoscopes, chat rooms, careers, and instant messaging. If you are interested in using these features, as well as the many others that can be found on MySpace, you are encouraged to register for your free membership today.

By Nicholas Tan

Social Networking: Orkut - Google’s Social Networking Website

Are you interested in meeting new people online? How about people that share the same interests as you? If so, one of the best ways to find those individuals to use online social networking websites. Social networking websites are often compared to neighborhoods or communities, but ones that are online. If are interested in making use of these popular websites, if you haven’t been already, you will need to find a social networking website to become a member of. One of the websites that you may be interested in joining is Orkut.

Orkut, sounds interesting doesn’t it? With other popular websites such as Yahoo! 360, Friendwise, Classmates, and MySpace, there are many who wonder how Orkut became the name of this popular online community. Orkut is named after the individual who created it. That man was an employee of Goggle and he is known as Orkut Buyukkokten.

If the name of the website doesn’t automatically draw you in, there is a good chance that the website features will. Like many other social networking websites, Orkut has a number of different member benefits. These benefits are what makes it worthwhile to become a member of this popular social networking website. As popular as Orkut is and as much as you would like to join, there are special procedures that you must follow. Unfortunately, Google does not allow just anyone to become a member, you must be invited.

Current community members are the only ones who can extend you an invite. This means that you should not waste your time trying to convince Google to let you join. Being invited to join Orkut really isn’t as difficult as it may sound. Orkut is so popular that there is a good chance that you know someone, if not personally than online, who can extend you an invite. By performing a standard internet search, you should also be able to find Orkut members who would be willing to extend you an invitation, without even knowing who you are.

Although many internet users refrain from joining Orkut, just because of the invitation requirements, there is a good reason for limited membership. Orkut is a social networking website that is free to use. Unfortunately, free means that many people would wish to use the website. Many online social networking sites, that are free to use, have literally become ridiculous. A large number of internet users get joy out of creating fake accounts and causing online controversy. Google decided to make Orkut a special membership online website to prevent instances like that from happening.

Orkut, like many other online social networking websites, has a number of different purposes. Of course, the main purpose of Orkut is to allow you to connect with your friends, especially the ones that have extended an invitation to you, but you can do much more than that. Once a member of Orkut, you can easily familiarize yourself with other website members who share the same interests as you do. This will not only help you make new friends, but it may also result in the finding of your next romantic partner. That is what is nice about Orkut, once you are a member, just about anything is possible.

If you are interested in learning more about Orkut, before trying to obtain an invite, you will want to visit their online website.

By Nicholas Tan

Social Networking: Popular Social Networking Websites

Do you love using the internet to meet and talk to new people? If so, there is a good chance that you have heard of social networking websites before. If you have not, you will want to familiarize yourself with them because they are rapidly becoming the most popular way to communicate with others online.

If you weren’t already aware, social networking websites are website that essentially act as an internet communities. While all social networking websites have their own rules and restrictions, many websites operate in a similar way, with similar goals. Their goals are to allow internet users to connect with other internet users online, often from all around the world. What is nice about social networking websites is that they come in a wide variety of different forms. There are many websites that are considered “general,” websites. These websites do not really have any particular focus, but there are social networking websites that do have a particular focus. Those focuses often include dating, religion, and school.

If online social networking seems interesting to you, you will have to find a community to join. You can easily do this a number of different ways. By speaking to those that you know, on and offline, you could be alerted to popular social networking websites. You can also find these websites on your own by performing a standard internet search. Whether you perform your own search or rely on recommendations from others, it is likely that you will find a fairly large number of social networking websites. Just a few of those websites that may find include Classmates, Orkut, Yahoo! 360, and MySpace.

Orkut is Google’s version of a social networking website. This website was created and officially launched in 2004. Orkut has a large number of member, form all around the world. What is nice about Orkut is that the system is easy to use, that is once you get in. To protect their social networking communities, a large number of social networking websites, including Orkut, have restricted access to the site. If you are interested in joining Orkut you must know someone who is already a member and they must invite you to join the community. If you do not personally know any Orkut member, there is a good chance that you could connect with and obtain an invitation from someone you meet online.

Classmates is an online social networking website that is rapidly increasing in popularity. This website focuses on connecting long lost friends or old classmates. Classmates is free to use, but you must become a paying member to enjoy many of their member benefits. These benefits include, but are not limited to, searching for old classmates, reading their profiles, requesting more information from your classmates, or even contacting them.

MySpace is another popular social networking website that can be found online. In fact, MySpace is known as being the most popular online social networking website. They currently have over one hundred million members! MySpace, like many other social networking websites allows you to create your own profile, in fact, your own personal page. Once your page has been created, you can easily invite other members to become a member of your network and visa versa. In addition to having a traditional profile page, with your personal information, you can also display a large number of pictures, video clips, and music clips. Although there are a number of features that makes MySpace so popular, the most popular reason for its popularity is that fact that it is completely free to use.

As previously mentioned, MySpace, Classmates, and Orkut are just a few of the many social networking websites that you can find online. Additional sites include FriendFinder, Yahoo! 360, and more. To learn more about each of these sites or to join their community, you are advised to visit their online websites and request additional information. You should be able to find these websites by performing a standard internet search.

By Nicholas Tan

Website not Performing as it Should? Ask These 7 Questions to Find Out Why

In preparing to design and write my new website, I visited hundreds of other sites to get a feel for what I did/did not want.

For example, "squeeze pages" are all the rage these days. You know, those pages which require you to enter your name and email just to get a peek at the actual website (or you can check the always-too-tiny "enter site" button to skip the squeeze page).

I've decided, at least for now, not to have a squeeze page, but fully understand why you would want one (it strongly encourages, we won't say "forces", people to get on your mailing list in order to see your website).

Regardless of whether or not you choose to incorporate a squeeze page on your site, here's a list of the top 7 questions you need to ask your website in order to determine if it's performing as well as it could.

1. What problem(s) do you solve and what result (s) can I expect?

Your website must focus on the results, not the benefits that you offer -- your prospects want to know how you can help them solve their problems. Include results-based testimonials sprinkled throughout your site if possible.

2. Do you offer an email newsletter or "tip-zine"?

If you offer an email newsletter, be sure to have your sign-up box with privacy policy on every page and on the "top" screen (in the event your readers need to scroll down to read your full page).

3. Is your site "clean"?

By "clean", I mean is the text easy to read without TOO much formatting? Do all your links work? Are your navigation buttons easy to find and understandable? Is your site free of typos?

4. Is your contact information easy to find?

I recommend putting your contact information on the bottom of every page -- you want it to be easy for your readers to find you if they have a question. Do this even if you have a "Contact Us" page.

5. Is your domain name intuitive?

When it comes to domain names (your URL, what people type when going to your site), it's more important to be intuitive than to be cute. You could have the cutest name in the world and it means nothing if people don't "get it" and visit your site. Keep it simple.

6. WIIFM

In addition to your email newsletter or tip-zine, what do you offer your readers? What's In It For Me (WIIFM) as a reader of your site? Do you share a no cost special report, audio tips, e-course? Give your readers the chance to get to know you through your giveaway item.

Note: You should still get your email newsletter up and running even if you don't currently have a giveaway item -- you can add that afterwards.

7. Do you have a picture?

If you are a solopreneur (single, small business owner) and you want to generate leads or sell products through the internet, it helps to have your picture either on your site or in your email newsletter/tip-zine.

When working "virtually", your readers will come to know and trust you through the words that you write. It helps for them to have a picture to connect to -- as people, we like to do business with people, not with faceless companies.

These are just a few strategies to insure that you have a client attractive website which enhances your online presence.

An Assignment For You. . .

Your assignment for this week is to take a hard look at your website and see if it measures up. Forget all the work you've put into it, forget that your best friend helped you put it together and look at it as a prospective client who wants to know more about your business would.

By Sandra P. Martini

What is Affiliate Marketing?

Affiliate marketing is a business practice where affiliates bring in business to a provider and the provider, in turn, rewards the affiliate. It often involves using one website to drive viewers to another, website. This Internet Marketing strategy isn't as commonly used as relying on search engines to bring interested customers to a site, but it is an effective way to increase the traffic for your home page.

Sometimes a publisher is required to make the address to the affiliate website available and the publisher is paid. This is referred to as cost per mile whereas cost per click pays the publisher according to how many people actually click on the link to visit the affiliate website.

What Is the Advantage to this type of Marketing?

For many merchants, this method of "advertising" is a lot less expensive since they only have to pay when a viewer visits their site. They aren't out any money to advertise to customers that aren't interested in their product. The only drawback to this system of marketing is that there is no way to predict its success or failure or to be prepared for major growth in a short time span.

For consumers, this type of marketing is one of the ways you can find what you are looking for on the Internet. If you don't have your words just right, using a search engine to find what you're looking for may not give you optimal results. Now you have a more refined way of searching for the specific type of product or service that you have in mind.

What Is Affiliate Marketing Used For?

There is no limit to the types of products and services that it is used for. If you do a search for a weight loss program and go onto the site for one of the results, you may find links to specific programs or diet aids. If you are looking for a new computer, you might be led to a variety of computer companies as well as those with software to accompany your new PC. When you look up almost any subject, Amazon.com appears with a link to find a book that they have which is in the same category as your search criteria. All these are examples of what affiliate marketing is.

What Is An Affiliate Marketing Network?

You may have several different affiliates advertising your site while they may be advertising for others. It's just marketing on a larger scale.

The next time you are on the Internet and you go onto a site that leads into another site by clicking on a button, you will know that you are about to go to an affiliated site.

By Wayne Cooper

Profit From Creating Free Reports

Have you ever downloaded a free report from a website you’ve visited?

If you’ve surfed the internet for any length of time, you would have already found hundreds, if not thousands, of sites offering free reports on almost every subject imaginable.

Why would anyone spend so much time and effort writing and creating enough information to fill a report only to give it away? Surely, it would be logical to sell the report and earn some income from all that effort instead of just allowing anyone to access it.

Of course, there is a brilliant kind of logic behind the popularity of website owners giving away free reports.

Let’s look at some great reasons to create a free report for your visitors to download.

- Free Traffic

By offering a free report for visitors to download, you can seriously increase the amount of traffic to your site.

Of course, there will always be some people who are only interested in the freebie, but there will be a percentage of people who will become curious enough to stay and scour the rest of your site.

- Reputation

Creating a reputation as an expert within your own niche topic is becoming difficult.

Internet users are bombarded with thousands of false gurus and bogus offers that it’s harder to find quality information from someone you can trust.

By offering a free download, you can begin to build a relationship of trust between you and your readers. This step can go a long way toward building a credible reputation with future customers.

- List Building

If you’re going to offer a free download, you could display the download link proudly right there on the front page of your site for all to see. Thousands of people will download it and leave your site in search of something else.

In order to keep in touch with those people consider advertising your report prominently on the home page, but don’t allow people to download it directly. Instead, ask visitors to join your private mailing list.

By harvesting the email addresses of each person who downloads your report, you now have a way to market directly to future customers. These customers already know and trust you and they know your information so you will be increasing the chances of them buying your next report from you.

- Free Advertising

Offering a free report to your visitors is the obvious focus for most webmasters. Why not approach other website owners and offer them the chance to give away your report to their visitors as well?

By having your report available on several different websites, you reach a much wider audience and you’re benefiting from the marketing efforts of other webmasters.

- Word of Mouth

People always talk about things they like to other people. Word of mouth between friends and acquaintances can form a great marketing tool when used correctly.

If your free report has given visitors information they didn’t expect or that they really enjoyed, then they’ll be tempted to forward it over to friends to view as well.

Every time a person sends your report on to someone else, they’re introducing you as the expert to that next person. Once again, you’re increasing your traffic and you’re building your reputation – but this time someone else has done it for you.

- Free Profits

At this point, most people begin wondering if they can fill their free report with paid ads or affiliate links.

People download free ebooks and reports all the time and they already know there’s going to be a certain amount of advertising included in the material.

In order to retain their trust and increase your chances of getting a sale from your readers, be absolutely certain you’re offering content inside your report that has real value. If you
do this part first, then your readers won’t mind being directed to an ad or an affiliate link.

Just be sure the products you’re advertising are related to your report’s topic!

Hopefully, you understand a little more behind the marketing benefits of creating a free report to offer visitors to your website.

If you’d like to learn more about creating your own free report, visit: http://success-methods.com/jackpot/index.htm today and get a free e-course that will show you step-by-step exactly how to create your own free reports for profit today.

By Billy Mitchell

Role of Intelligent Marketers in Internet Marketing

If you do then my guess is that you probably market to one main niche. Whether you sell your own products, work as an affiliate or run a marketing newsletter, I would be willing to bet that the main target area for your online activities is the make money online niche or helping others to earn a living online.

The "make money online" is a great niche to work in and can yield fantastic results, enabling you to make enough money to eventually ditch your 9-5 and go it alone, working from your own home and to hours that suit you.

There is one main problem though and that is the fact that pretty much every other online marketer is working in this niche as well, and with so many marketers targeting the same group of people online to it is becoming increasingly hard for the smaller, lesser known names to get their products and services seen amongst sea of other offers from competing marketers.

The make money online niche is very very overcrowded.

Let me ask you a quick question.

What does an intelligent online marketer do to increase the chance of getting seen by crowds of information hungry customers?

Have a think about that for a second....

Well, they could:

* look for more places to post links back to their website.

* set up PPC ads and pay a lot of money to attract customers.

* approach the more respected and well known marketers to ask if they could help promote your products (let me tell you, they get hundreds of these requests a month).

* Create more and more minisites, blogs and articles in an effort to drive traffic.

They could do all this and much more in an effort to make decent money, But there is one main problem with this approach.

It involves a hell of a lot of work, time and money to put in place.

But you shouldn't let this spoil your dreams of making it online as there is a much simpler way to get your offering seen by crowds of hungry customers.

You should......... Target Less Crowded Niches!

There are many many niches that can be just as profitable and are not marketed to as aggressively as the make money online niche.

For example fishing, weddings, health and beauty, home improvement. The list goes on and on.

Of course there are also many sub-niches or "micro-niches" that can be explored as well.

For example in the fishing niche you could take a look at bass fishing, fishing lures, fly fishing, fishing bait, etc, etc

In the wedding niche, you could consider these micro-niches - wedding flowers, honeymoons, wedding dresses, wedding speeches, cheap weddings, wedding favors, etc, etc.

Of course once you have found a niche that you want to market to, you need to consider how to monetize it.

Creating a product or content yourself that is of suitably high quality to make you money involves a lot of research and development time (anything from a few weeks to many months).

If you are selling a product as opposed to making money through advertising such as Adsense then you will also need to write salescopy, create graphics (ebook covers, webpage graphics), create a salespage, download page and more.

All of this time and work before you have even made a dime.

You could outsource this task, but will end up paying anything upwards of a few hundred dollars just for one single product.

There is another much cheaper and easier option available to you that will allow you to get your product live and earning money a lot quicker.

By using ready made products that come with private label rights you will be able to get you’re offering up and running within hours instead of weeks, enabling you to get a much faster return on your initial investment.

By Chaman Dhiman

Role of Time Management in Internet Marketing

"Time is more valuable than money. You can get more money but you cannot get more time.".
Earning an income on the internet is a process that in broad terms involves three stages:

1. Getting your product (acquisition)

2. Developing your product presentation

3. Promoting the product

In this article, "product" means any tangible product, digital products (ebooks and software) and services such as membership sites, web design and development, hosting, "print on demand" for ebooks, fulfillment for orders and so on.

By necessity you will spend time in each of these stages. Each stage will involve a learning phase and an action phase. It's important to identify clearly what stage of development you are currently working on and to focus on completing that stage.
1. Getting your product (acquisition).

Choose between your own product and an affiliate product.

Key Point: Once you have your product you can stop spending time looking at other product possibilities for the time being.
2. Developing your product presentation.

Once you have chosen your product you will need to develop a presentation.

This will include your website primarily and can also include autoresponder sequences and a newsletter.

3. Promoting the product.

"We have to become better at promoting what we do than doing what we do."

This is where it is also important to be clear about what stage you are in. Remember, time is limited, so if you have already chosen your product and developed your presentation it is not productive to keep looking for products or spending a great deal of time "tweaking" your presentation.Time can always be spent tweaking sales copy, images, layout, web presentation, upgrading or trying new software, investigating new product opportunities (before the current one is complete), improving design skills, keeping up with the changing web "standards"... The list can seem endless.Key Point: Time is better spent developing a clear promotional strategy and putting it into action. For more details visit to Only when you are seeing results from your promotional activities should you consider altering your presentation (such as modifying headlines and sales copy) to assess how that affects conversion of prospects to customers.

Here are a few tips to keep you on track:

1. Name your project

You may name your project as a final name of the product or you may just give it a code name that means something to you.

2. Understand what part of the three step process you are in: Acquisition, presentation or promotion.

Here is a simple question to ask yourself to check if you are on track with your time budget, "What is this activity designed to do?" or perhaps, "What is the outcome of this activity?"

This will help you to identify if you are spending time in the wrong area at the wrong time.

3. Set up check lists to make sure everything is covered. Focus on completion.

4. Promotion: Clearly define your action steps.

5. Track the results or your promotional campaign in terms of traffic, click through rates, subscribers and purchasers. Include costs of conducting your campaign and compare that to your sales to determine your return on investment. For details visit to It is only by tracking the results of the promotion that you will know how to effectively change the presentation for further testing.A spreadsheet is an invaluable tool as a template for specifying your promotional campaign and also for tracking results, costs and return on investment. Adding in columns for each day of the week allows you to allocate your time so that all your promotions are covered in a time effective manner. This becomes your business gauge by which you assess the effectiveness of your promotional campaign.

By Chaman Dhiman

Starting a Internet Business Step by Step Instructions

The main means to earn money on the internet is by selling something. You can either sell your own product if you have one, or someone else's product for a commission.

Chances are, that if you are in the beginning stages of starting a internet business, you most likely do not have a product of your own. So what we are going to do, is show you how to sell other peoples products.

For starters you are going to need a product to sell. To do this you can open a free account with Click Bank. There you will find thousands of products to market. I would recommend that you read their getting started section to acquaint yourself with how the system works.

Then the next step is to open an account with Google Adwords. You will need to have a credit card to create your account. Without Adwords you will not be able to get anywhere so the minimal setup costs are well worth it. You will need this account to advertise the products your are selling as well as Keyword Research.

When your Adwords account is set up. Do a bit of reading to get the feel of how the system works. But here are the basics. The Adwords system is keyword driver. You bid for the keywords you want to use for your ad. In other words. Let say someone does a search for widgets. If you have placed your ad and used widgets as one of your keywords. The chances are pretty good that you ad will be seen. However the popularity of the keyword will determine the bid amount to get the ad on page one of Google.

Now for the product. Go to the market place in Click Bank and have a look at the various categories available. You can choose any product but what is important is the commissions offered and the conversion rates. Select 5 to 10 products with good conversion rates and that pay a commission of at least $20.00. For a lesser commission, it may just not be worth the effort, unless there is a very high conversion rate.

Once this is done, you need to do some research to find out if the product may be profitable. To do this you will use the Google Adwords keyword Tool. Enter the exact title of the chosen product and do a keyword search for all the keywords related to you product.

Go through all the related keywords. What you are looking for are keywords that have more then a 1000 searches per month. And that do not have too much competition. Bare in mind that the higher the competition, the higher the minimum bid needs to be to get you ad on page one of Google. The estimated required bid will give you an idea if the keyword is usable or not.

As an example, let's say someone wants to find out how to prune roses. To do this they would enter the keyword "how to prune roses." Now if this is the keyword phrase you are using for your product. The chances are very good that they will click on your ad to find out more. Now let's say that from 100 clicks you make one sale. This would mean that on a minimum bid of .10c, you would make 100% profit on just one sale. More then one sale would be clear profit.

You may think at this point that this will not make much money. But think about it. 20 to 30 products marketed in the same way, each with a profit of $200.00 plus per month. Not bad for starters.

Enough said. From the keyword list as explained above. You need to find 5 or 6 keywords that describe the product you are selling. Ad these to your keyword list. Remember. The title of the product is the main keyword. You also do not need 1000's of keywords. A select few with low minimum bids will fit the bill perfectly.

Now for the ad. If "How to knit Gloves" for example is the product, then that would be my title. Simple. For the body of the ad, have a look at the competition ads for your keyword. Use the top ones and change them slightly so that your ad is the same but slightly different.

Job done. Run the ad. A word of warning though. In the world of Google Adwords. If you do not carefully monitor your expenses against profits. It could become a very expensive exercise. What you also need to know is which of your keywords are making you money and which are not. If this is done properly. Then starting a internet business could be a very pleasant experience.

By Cecil Heim.

The Future of Stock Photography is on the Internet

When my brother John started his photography business about 35 years ago...there was no such thing as an answering machine! Nor did individuals have fax machines...He remembers being very excited about getting a fax machine...because now an Art Director could send him a layout without using a bike messenger or Fed Ex!. Now, here he is shooting without film, digitally enhancing his images on a computer and delivering them via the internet.

For twenty years he shot assignments. A huge part of the business was marketing him self to ad agencies and design firms. Thanks in large part to his foray into digital manipulation of his images; he was very successful at his marketing. He was selling stock photos through "Tony Stone", later to become Getty Images, and through "The Stock Market" along with my line of greeting cards being sold through Portal Publications. He was shooting assignments, but he was very picky and only took assignments that really interested him.

If you were an advertising agency you went to Tony Stone, The Stock Market, or a tiny handful of stock photography houses. There was no internet and thus no way for small businesses to easily purchase stock photos for their advertising needs.

After the dot com bubble burst he found him self without assignments for a couple of months...but it didn't matter because he was making plenty of money with stock photography. One gig ended and another took over. Of course, today that industry is in turmoil...first royalty-free stock photos impacted the business...and now micro-stock. I even see pay per click ads that cost the advertiser money...advertising free stock photos! I guess he doesn't have much to worry about that now because the prices can't go any lower than that free!

I remember when it took a week and buckets of money to get a good print from a photo lab! Now, if I want to print a funny animal picture I just hit command-p on my keyboard and get almost free prints that are of far better quality than anything I used to get from the lab! I can make fine art prints that are even more archival than what the labs could offer right in my own office...and these prints are in my hands in just a matter of minutes.

A few years ago my brother bought a house...a beautiful house on a hillside overlooking a valley. He was surrounded by horses, deer, wild turkeys, and even bobcats and coyotes! He planned living in that house till the end of his days. A close friend cautioned him though, that he should not count on living there forever. "One day you will sell that house" he said. My brother laughed. As I write this He is planning on selling the house in the spring.

John's greeting card business was growing like crazy. Each quarter his royalty checks were getting larger and larger. People loved the cards...the company was thriving and he was their number one greeting card artist. Still, a business consultant friend of his suggested that he create a worst-case scenario plan for his business just in case something went wrong. John found it difficult to do because he could not possibly see any worst case scenarios on the horizon. Eventually he forgot about the backup plan for his stock photo business.

Fast forward five years...the greeting card company no longer exists. It was purchased by a venture capital firm that made some bad decisions and the business for all practical purposes died. He is now with a different greeting card company and they are slowly rebuilding the business. One thing is different this time...he no longer assumes that the greeting card business will be around forever.

Two new 35mm digital cameras have just been announced...one by Nikon and one by Canon, that both shoot, in addition to extremely high quality digital stills, HDTV motion. Videos are becoming increasing popular...as evidenced by Youtube and other internet sites for sharing video clips. There is an emerging market for stock video clips.

The stock photography business is changing rapidly. More and more small business's are turning to the internet and purchasing their stock photos online and even getting free stock photos! Digital cameras are not only prolific, but producing better images and in some cases they produce images of higher quality than you could shoot with a film camera.

I believe the future of stock photography is online. Photographers need to adapt to changing times and learn to market their work on the internet.

Who was it who said the only constant is change? That is so true...but he does have a method for coping with all this change. His secret is a good attitude and continuously reminding him self of the need to stay open and flexible.

By William Lund