Marketing Courses

Some Facts About Juices - Online Shopping Tutorial

When it comes to the World Wide Web it is sometimes referred to as the Wild West, because it is a land where just about anything goes. If you want you can get a website then make a claim to some of the online real estate available. Certainly in some cases it may feel like a free for all because of some of the nonsense online that is trying to look like something genuine. So let’s take a look at online shops offering juicers. If you like juices than you must have a juicer. Here are few advices on buying the right juicer.

More and more people are discovering the health benefits of juicing and creating a raw foods lifestyle. In a nutshell, juicing allows you to extract all the vital nutrients and live enzymes directly from raw fruits, vegetables, leafy greens, wheatgrass, nuts, berries and more. The pulp and fiber is left behind and the concentrated juice is consumed so that the nutrients can be absorbed immediately by the body. You’ll enjoy a greater sense of energy, vitality and health when you incorporate juicing into your lifestyle.

There are special masticating juicers available which give you better quality juice but invariably these can only be found online and are certainly growing in popularity with those around the world concerned about their health. There are many online traders who have picked up on this and so there are going to be opportunists who will try to sell you an expensive juicer. But there are plenty of dealers around who have a real passion in relation to juicing.

But you need to be aware that there are many manufacturers and traders around who because the internet is pretty much unregulated can publish claims that aren’t all they really are in order to get your money. Therefore when you are considering buying one of these expensive masticating juicers it is a good idea to arm yourself with the right information so you can make a more informed decision and avoid all the hype.

What type of juicing will you be doing?
How serious about this are you and how much do you want to spend?
What features are important to you?

When shopping for a juicer, there are many issues to be considered so that you can make an informed purchase. Many people are tempted to buy a cheap juicer to start out because they are not sure they are going to like juicing and they may not be sure they will stick to a juicing regimen. My suggestion would be to visit a health foods store, spa or grocery where you can purchase fresh, raw juice from a juice bar and try some of the juices first. If you find that you like fresh fruit and vegetable juice, then you’ll probably be more likely to enjoy making your own juice at home.

http://bestjuicers.info/store?product=B0002VAFVG

Assuming that you are ready to begin your quest for a juicer, the first thing to know is that there are different types of juicers depending on what it is you want to juice. For example, citrus juicers are typically designed exclusively for juicing citrus fruits such as oranges, lemons, limes, grapefruits and possibly pomegranates. Some models are manual and some are electric. Some brands are constructed of plastic while others have stainless steel components. When shopping for a citrus juicer, here are some popular features to consider. Many come with a large reservoir to catch the juice and pour directly from the container. Many have a variable pulp control so that the juice can be made to be more or less pulpy. Some electric models will spin the juicing cone in forward and reverse directions in order to get the most juice from the fruit. Some come with different sizes of juicing cone to accommodate different sizes of fruit such as small limes and large grapefruit. Citrus juicers can range in price from around $20 to over $100.

Next are wheatgrass juicers. Again, they can be manual or electric. They are typically designed for juicing wheatgrass, sprouts and leafy greens. Some brands or models are plastic while others are stainless. You’ll want to make sure that the blades are stainless steel. Wheatgrass juicers are not suitable for juicing other types of fruits or vegetables, except for maybe soft fruits such as grapes, blueberries, strawberries and the like. Wheatgrass juicers start at around $85 and up. There are some powerful multi-purpose juicers (described below) that will also do a great job with wheatgrass. If you think you may want to juice other things besides wheatgrass, you may want to consider stepping up to a multi-purpose juicer.

Multi-purpose power juicers are designed to juice just about everything. Most can juice a variety of fruits and vegetables, even including the skins, seeds, and stems of many fruits and vegetables. Some can even make sorbet, pate, baby food and nut butters. There are three main types of power juicers:

Centrifugal Juicers
Masticating Juicers
Triturating Juicers

I will describe each type of juicer in more detail.

Centrifugal Juicers

Centrifugal Juicers are typically the least expensive type of power juicer. They all work on the same principle in that they have a spinning mesh basket that is designed to extract the juice from the food item. Typically, there is a tube that you feed the fruit or vegetable into. When you push food down into the tube, the food item comes in contact with the bottom of the spinning basket where it is grated up into very fine pieces or pulp. Because the basket is spinning at a fairly high RPM, the tiny grated pieces are thrown against the sides of the basket where the juice is extracted by centrifugal force. The pulp is then either contained inside the unit or expelled from the unit, depending upon the design.

Centrifugal juicers have some pros and cons. On the pro side, they are fairly inexpensive, ranging in price from as low as $40 to over $200 for high-end models. They typically work well with a variety of fruits and vegetables. However, here are some potential downsides of a centrifugal juicer. First, they typically don’t do as well with leafy greens or sprouts. Second, because they are spinning at high RPM, the juice can get foamy and thus it oxidizes rapidly. When the juice oxidizes, a lot of the enzymes are destroyed, so the health benefits are diminished. Finally, some designs may be a bit harder to clean and all models require the basket to be cleaned immediately so that the mesh screen does not become clogged. When shopping for a centrifugal juicer, here are some popular features. Some models have continuous pulp ejection. This is a good feature if you are doing a lot of juicing. I will usually do enough juicing to handle 2 days worth of juice, so I need to be able to continue feeding the vegetables into the juicer. If the juicer design does not have continuous pulp ejection, then I would end up having to stop the juicer possibly several times to clean out the pulp. The size of the feeder tube should also be considered. Some models have a small feeder tube. With a small feeder tube, you have to cut up the fruits and vegetables small enough to fit into the feeder tube. Larger feeder tubes let you fit in much larger pieces. However, I have found that with a larger feeder tube, some of the smaller food pieces fall down inside the tube and never get ground up properly, so there is more waste and hence less juice. Finally, check the RPM rating of the various juicers. While a higher RPM yields a bit more juice, it can also cause more oxidation and foam. I personally would opt for a lower RPM and a smaller feed tube.

Masticating Juicers (also known as single gear juicers) Masticating juicers work a lot like our teeth. They have an auger that grinds up the fruit or vegetable into a pulp just like when we chew our food. The pulp is squeezed up against a mesh strainer so the juice is extracted while the pulp remains behind and gets ejected. Masticating juicers are more efficient than centrifugal juicers in that they yield more juice from the same amount of raw food. They also run at much lower RPMs, so the foam and oxidation is much less. Most models do well with a variety of fruits and vegetables and some can even make sorbets, nut butters, pates, baby food and more. However, some models don’t work as well with leafy greens and sprouts as they do with other types of fruits and vegetables. Masticating juicers range in price from about $200 to $300. With masticating juicers, the size of the feed tube does not affect the waste as it can with centrifugal juicers, so a larger feed tube may be beneficial for juicing larger pieces of raw food.

Triturating Juicers (also known as twin gear juicers) Triturating juicers are the most versatile and also the most expensive juicers. They range in price from around $300 to $600. As the name implies, twin gear juicers have two interlocking gears that grind up the raw food. They are the most efficient juicers, and they also run at the lowest RPM so the effects of foam and oxidation are very low. They work great with practically any fruit or vegetable including wheatgrass and leafy greens and they can be used to create sorbet, pate, baby food and more. They can even grind up nuts to make nut butters such as almond butter, cashew butter, etc. When feeding raw food into the juicer, a bit more force is required to push the food items down into the twin gears than is required for a masticating juicer. Again, a larger food tube is beneficial. Clean-up is slightly more involved for a twin-gear juicer than for a single-gear juicer because the twin gears must be properly aligned when re-assembling the unit after cleaning.

http://bestjuicers.info/store?product=B000FHQJ6C

To summarize, first determine what it is that you want to juice. If you just want fresh-squeezed orange juice in the morning, then a citrus juicer is fine. If you want to juice more than just citrus fruits, then take a moment to decide how much versatility you want from a juicer and decide on the price range you feel comfortable with. Once you’ve made those two choices, then you can narrow down your search for a specific style and model of juicer. Regardless of which juicer style you choose, you should know that the health benefits still exist. Many people have experienced such benefits as weight loss, elimination of acid reflux, increased energy and vitality, and elimination of body odor and bad breath to name a few.

Types of Juicers - Summary

Masticating Juicer - Masticating Juicers are the top of the line for the home juicer. These juicers operate by gnashing/grinding the vegetable/fruit to extract the juice. They tend to be more expensive, but are more versatile and offer several benefits over the other types of juicers.

Centrifugal Juicer - Centrifugal Juicers are probably the most common juicer purchased by the average home juicer. As the name implies, these juicers operate through centrifugal force. The vegetable/fruit is channeled into a spinning basket containing a grater/shredder. As the vegetable/fruit is grated, the force of the spinning separates the juice from the pulp. They tend to be less expensive than their Masticating cousins.

Manual Juicers - Similar to a masticating juicer, but operated by hand. There are several types: the old stainless steel “meat grinder” styles that your grandmother used, and several modern versions patterned after the electric masticating juicers.

Citrus Juicers - Citrus Juicers are designed specifically for citrus fruits. They come in both electric and mechanical models and operate on the principle of pressing the juice out of fruit.

Wheatgrass Juicers - Wheatgrass Juciers are designed specifically for wheatgrass and other leafy greens. They come in both electric and mechanical models. Highly specialized. If you are in the market for a wheatgrass juicer, you are beyond the target audience for this article.

Features/Benefits of the Masticating Juicers

Masticating juicers operate at lower RPMs than the Centrifugal Machines - the juice extraction process takes longer, but the there are many advantages (listed below) from this design

Quieter operation than the Centrifugal Machines
Produces juice that has a higher nutritional content and a longer shelf life - the slower, gnashing process results in juice with a lot less air in it, so oxidation (which destroys the nutrients) takes longer
Yields more juice per vegetable/fruit - you use less vegetables/fruit, less cost over time
Better able to handle green-leafy vegetables (e.g., spinach, parsley, cilantro, and most are capable of handling the all-important wheatgrass)
Many come with attachments to make peanut butter, baby food, fruit sorbet and other frozen desserts - some models even contain pasta and noodle attachments

A couple of additional points on Masticating Juicers - they typically come in one of 2 extraction designs: 1.) Single Gear, and 2.) Twin Gears. The Twin Gears are the grandaddy of the home juicer machines. They typically are the most expensive. They operate at the slowest RPMs (thus the juice has even less air than a single gear masticating juicer). They produce the most yield from vegetables/fruit and have the driest of pulp.

Features/Benefits of the Centrifugal Juicers

Generally, more affordable than a Masticating Juicer
Juice extraction is very quick - due the to the high-speed grating/shredding design
Noisy operation - again, due to the high RPMs required by the grating/shredding process
Juice contains more air, less nutrients, and does not store well (best to drink right away)
Produces less juice per vegetable/fruit than a Masticating Juicer - you especially will notice this with the green-leafy vegetables
Not designed for wheatgrass

Features/Benefits of the Manual Juicers

Based on masticating design so they have the benefits of producing longer shelf-life juice, are able to better handle green-leafy vegetables, and yield more juice than the Centrifugal juicers
Uses no electricity, takes up less space than its electrical counterpart

Summary

If you are entering the juicing world for serious health/diet reasons, you probably should focus on the Masticating Juicers, you will have a higher initial cost, but they will serve you better by producing a higher nutritional value juice. They will yield you more juice per vegetable/fruit and better handle the green-leafy vegetables your diet will require.

If you are simply looking to introduce an occasional juice into your life, focus on a Centrifugal Juicer. Your initial investment will be less. You will have the convenience of quickly producing an enjoyable healthy drink. If you find that you are turning into a more serious juicer, you can always trade up to a Masticating Juicer to better meet your newly-expanded needs.

If you are a purist, look to the Masticating Juicer to realize the maximum benefits of juicing. Money’s no object? Go after a twin-gear Masticating model. On a budget? Think seriously about a Manual Juicer as a way to enter the fold.

Whatever your juicing needs, take the plunge and get started. Juicing is an enjoyable, healthy habit to introduce into your life.

Enjoy - and go get a juice!

Strategic Link Building

Two men are walking through an African game reserve when they come across a lion, one of the men calmly puts down his backpack and slips on the running shoes he has been carrying.
The other man chuckles and says, “You’ll never outrun a lion.”
To which the other man calmly responds, “I don’t need to outrun the lion; I just need to outrun you.”SEO is like running with lions. In general, you don’t need to outrun lions. You only need to be better than your competitors.

How to Help Uninteresting Pages Rank Better

There is a great video on Search Engine Journal by Rand Fishkin of SEOmoz. He has some fantastic tips on how you can help the boring pages of your site rank better.

Cool Monitor for Google AdSense and Amazon Associates

Everybody involved in internet marketing knows about Google AdSense and Amazon Associates programs. AdSense is probably the most popular PPC program for publishers, while Amazon offers an affiliate program for their huge online store. Both programs are used worldwiew. Most websites use at least one of those programs to earn some money. For some webmaster these programs represent only a minor income source. But there are many people who run websites just to make money. And for such people it is essential to be up to date with statistics and earnings.

It is not uncommon for Internet marketers to log in many times per day to AdSense or Amazon accounts just to check earnings. For such marketers there is an elegant solution. An application that does this time-consuming job of checking earnings and other statistics. This application is TinyMonitor. This is a PHP application that can be installed on any web server, either commercial hosting or home desktop computer with AMP package installed. This means that TinyMonitor works on any platform: Windows, Linux and Mac. TinyMonitor is a framework that currently supports plugins for Google AdSense and Amazon Associates. Both monitors display all essential data in few compact reports and charts.

AdSense monitor and Amazon monitor are displayed on the same web page. This is very convenient for quick overview of the situation. In addition to this both AdSense monitor and Amazon monitor generate RSS feed with the latest data about current earnings. There are many fancy features including color highlighting of channel rows according to defined threshold values. In fact, almost every report or display is fully customizable so you will be able to make a one-page monitor according to your taste. Unfortunately, TinyMonitor is not free. The price for bot monitors with upgrades available during two year period is $49.95. However, if you are making money with AdSense or Amazon, you should be able to invest a tiny fraction of your earnings for a professional online monitoring solution. TinyMonitor is definitely worth much more than it’s price tag.

Definitions Of Some Marketing Terms

Customers are the people or firms who buy products; consumers actually use the product, or consume it. Frequently customers are also consumers, so the terms might be used interchangeably, but often the person who buys a product is not the one who ultimately consumes it.

A need is a perceived lack of something. This implies that the individual not only does not have a particular item, but also is aware of not having it. This definition has nothing to do with necessity; human beings are complex, and have needs which go far beyond mere survival. In wealthy Western countries, for example, most people eat for pleasure rather than from a fear that they might die without eating – the need for enjoyment comes long before there is a necessity for food.

A want, on the other hand, is a specific satisfier for a need. An individual might need food (hunger being awareness of the lack of food) and want a curry. Wants become demands when the potential customer also has the means to pay for the product. Some marketers have made their fortunes from finding ways for people to pay for the products, rather than from merely producing the product. The demand for a given product is therefore a function of need, want, and ability to pay.

A product is a bundle of benefits. This is a consumer-orientated view, because consumers will buy a product only if they feel it will be of benefit. Diners in a restaurant are not merely buying a full stomach; they are buying a pleasant evening out. Customers in a bar are not buying fizzy water with alcohol and flavorings in it; they are buying a social life. Here a distinction should be made between physical goods and services. For marketers both of these are products, since they may well offer the same benefits to the consumer. An afternoon at a football match, or a case of beer, might serve the same morale-raising function for some men. Services and physical goods are difficult to distinguish between, because most services have a physical good attached to them, and most physical goods have a service element attached to them. The usual definition of services says that they are mainly intangible, that production usually happens at the same time as consumption, that they are highly perishable, and that services cannot be owned (in the sense that there is no second-hand market for them).

Publics are any organisations or individuals that have actual or potential influence on the marketing organisation. This is an important definition for public relations practitioners, because they have the task of monitoring and adjusting the firm’s activities relative to all the firm’s publics, which can include government departments, competitors, outside pressure groups, employees, the local community, and so forth.

Markets are all the actual and potential buyers of the firm’s products. Few firms can capture 100% of the market for their products; marketers more commonly aim for whichever portions of the market the firm can best serve. The remainder of the customers would go to the competition, or just be people who never hear of the product and therefore do not buy it. Even giant firms such as Coca-Cola have less than half of the market for their product category. For this reason marketers usually break down the overall market into segments (groups of customers with similar needs and characteristics) or even niches (very specific need and product categories).

Price is the amount of money a product is sold for. Value is what the product is worth to the customer or consumer. The value is always higher than the price, or no business would result, but individual customers will make a judgement as to whether the product is good value or poor value. If the product is poor value, the customer will try to find alternatives; if the product is good value, the customer will remain loyal. The decision about value for money is, of course, subjective: what one customer considers a great bargain, another customer might see as a waste of good money.

A Dawn Eclipse of the Moon

Mark your calendar to get up early on Saturday, December 10th, if you’re anywhere in central or western North America. That morning the full Moon goes through its last total eclipse until 2014.

In North America, the farther west you are the better. In the Pacific time zone you can watch the Moon slip into Earth’s shadow completely, while the Moon is sinking low in the west-northwest. In the Northwest you can even see the Moon start to emerge from Earth’s shadow before moonset and sunrise end the show.

From roughly Arizona to the Dakotas, the Moon sets while still totally eclipsed. Horizon obstructions and the brightening dawn may end your view somewhat before moonset. In the Central time zone, the Moon sets while still only partially eclipsed. The East misses out completely. Observers in the Pacific, Australia, and eastern Asia have it better. Seen from there, the whole eclipse happens high in a dark sky from start to finish. For Europe and Africa, the eclipsed Moon will be lower in the east during or after dusk on the evening of the 10th.

When the Moon is totally eclipsed, it glows eerily orange, red, or dark bloody brown. Although the Moon is completely inside Earth’s shadow at that time, it’s still dimly lit by sunlight that skims the edge of Earth and is refracted into Earth’s shadow by the atmosphere. What you’re seeing on the Moon’s face is light from all the world’s sunsets and sunrises at the time that you’re looking. How bright or dark the eclipsed Moon will appear depends on the cloudiness along Earth’s sunrise sunset rim and, especially, on the amount of dust high in the upper air globally. For this eclipse the Moon barely skims inside the southern edge of Earth’s umbra. So we can expect the Moon’s southern rim to remain brighter than the rest — creating a lovely 3-D effect and drama for photographers. To get a good image scale, use a wide-field telescope or a long telephoto lens.

If it’s cloudy, the next eclipse of the Moon will be a partial one before and during dawn next June 4th, visible from most of North America except the Northeast.The next total lunar eclipse doesn’t come until the night of April 14–15, 2014. But then the Moon will be high in a dark sky all across the Americas.

Internet Marketing: Product, Place, Promotion, Price

To understand internet marketing you need to know and understand marketing as a general term. Marketing is the term given to those activities which occur at the interface between the organisation and its customers. It comes from the original concept of a marketplace, where buyers and sellers would come together to conduct transactions (or exchanges) for their mutual benefit. The aim of marketing as a discipline is to ensure that customers will conduct exchanges with the marketer’s organisation, rather than with the other ‘stallholders’. To do this effectively, marketers must provide those customers with what they want to buy, at prices which represent value for money.

The two most widely used definitions of marketing are these:

UK Chartered Institute of Marketing

Marketing is the management process which identifies, anticipates, and supplies customer requirements efficiently and profitably.

American Marketing Association

Marketing is the process of planning and executing the conception, pricing, promotion and distribution of ideas, goods and services to create exchange and satisfy individual and organisational objectives.

Both of these definitions have been criticised. The Chartered Institute of Marketing (CIM) definition has been criticised because it takes profit as being the only outcome of marketing, whereas marketing approaches and techniques are widely used by organisations such as charities and government departments which do not have profit as their goal. The American Marketing Association (AMA) definition has also been criticized for failing to take account of the increasing role of marketing in a broader social context, and for appearing to regard consumers as being passive in the process. The same criticism could equally be applied to the CIM definition.

To the non-marketer, marketing often carries negative connotations; there is a popular view that marketing is about persuading people to buy things they do not want, or about cheating people. In fact, marketing practitioners have the responsibility for ensuring that the customer has to come first in the firm’s thinking, whereas other professionals might be more concerned with getting the balance sheet to look right or getting the production line running smoothly. Marketers are well aware that the average customer will not keep coming back to a firm that does not provide good products at an acceptable price, and without customers there is no business.

Competition in many markets is fierce. If there is room for four companies in a given market, there will be five companies in there, each trying to maximize their market share; the customer is king in that situation, and the firms that ignore the customer’s needs will go to the wall. Marketers therefore focus their attention entirely on the customer, and put the customer at the center of the business.

As the marketing concept has evolved from production orientation through to customer orientation, the role marketing occupies relative to other business functions has also evolved. Under a production-orientated regime marketing usually occupies a departmental role; the marketing role is contained within a marketing department which carries out the communications functions of the firm.

Marketers deal with the marketing mix, which was described by McCarthy as the four Ps of marketing. These are:

• Product. The product should fit the task the target consumers want it for, it should work, and it should be what the consumers expected to get.

• Place. The product should be available from wherever the firm’s target group of customers find it easiest to shop. This may be a high street shop, it may be mail order through a catalog, from a magazine coupon, online store, or it may even be doorstep delivery.

• Promotion. Advertising, public relations, sales promotion, personal selling and all the other communications tools should put across the organisation’s message in a way that fits what the particular group of consumers and customers would like to hear, whether it be informative or appealing to the emotions.

• Price. The product should always be seen as representing good value for money. This does not necessarily mean that it should be the cheapest available; one of the main tenets of the marketing concept is that customers are usually prepared to pay a little more for something that really works well for them.

The 4-P model has been useful when applied to the manufacture and marketing of physical products, but with the increase in services provision the model does not provide a full enough picture. In 1981 Booms and Bitner proposed a 7-P framework to include the following additional factors:

• People. Virtually all services are reliant on people to perform them, very often dealing directly with the consumer: for example, the demeanor of waiters in restaurants forms a crucial part of the total experience for the consumers. In a sense, the waiter is part of the product the consumer is buying.

• Process. Since services are usually carried out with the consumer present, the process by which the service is delivered is, again, part of what the consumer is paying for. For example, there is a great deal of difference between a silverservice meal in an upmarket restaurant, and a hamburger bought from a fast-food outlet. A consumer seeking a fast process will prefer the fast-food place, whereas a consumer seeking an evening out might prefer the slower process of the restaurant.

• Physical evidence. Almost all services contain some physical elements: for example, a restaurant meal is a physical thing, even if the bulk of the bill goes towards providing the intangible elements of the service (the decor, the atmosphere, the waiters, even the dishwashers). Likewise a hairdressing salon provides a completed hairdo, and even an insurance company provides glossy documentation for the policies it issues.

Each of the above elements of the marketing mix are dealt with in greater detail in many marketing books, but it is important to recognize that the elements need to be combined as a mix. Like a recipe, one ingredient of the mix will not substitute for another, and each ingredient must be added in the right quantities at the right time if the mix is to prove successful in achieving consumer satisfaction. Each organisation will tend to have its own approach to the mix, and therefore no two firms will follow exactly the same marketing approach. This is one of the features that distinguishes marketing from the other business disciplines such as accountancy or company law.

According to Schultz and Schultz marketing has gone through two distinct phases since 1950, and is about to enter a third. In the 1950s and 1960s markets were dominated by manufacturers, who used market research to find out what consumers wanted and used intensive promotional campaigns to control markets or at least have the strongest influence in them. During the 1970s and 1980s retailers began to dominate, because they were closest to the market. They have been able to determine which products are offered to consumers and which are not. The third phase, brought about by the increasing use of IT and internet by consumers, is consumer domination of the marketplace - the birth of internet marketing. To illustrate how the internet marketing concept is implemented in practice, just take a look at the top 10 catalog which lists top 10 products in various categories.

Overall, marketing in the 21st century presents many new challenges. Shrinking markets, green issues, runaway advances in communications technology, and rapidly changing public attitudes towards consumption and communication predicate major changes not only in marketing techniques but also in corporate strategy. The role of marketing is still, at the end of the day, to meet customers’ needs in the most effective, efficient and sustainable way possible for as long as it is possible to do so. Marketers will need to re-examine their models of marketing strategy many times; in an era where change is the only constant, marketing cannot afford to stand still. Ultimately, the firms who take the greatest care of their customers’ interests are the ones most likely to maintain their competitive edge in a cut-throat world.

Print PDFs to Dropbox

You probably know that you can turn any document into a PDF from OS X’s standard Print dialog box. But you may not know that you can customize the PDF drop-down menu so you can easily save those PDFs to specific folders. If you use Dropbox, that means you can easily create PDFs that are available on all of your Macs and iDS devices. To start, go to File > Print and click on the PDF button Choose Edit Menu at the bottom. Click the plus sign (+) button, which will prompt you to select a folder. At this point. you can select your main Dropbox folder; alternatively, you could create a subfolder within Dropbox specifically for PDFs and then select that. Click OK and you’re done.

The next time you click on that PDF button in any Print dialog box, it will include an option to save a PDF to your newly added Dropbox folder. To customise the menu option’s name - which. by default. will be just the name of your selected folder - rename the alias to the folder, which you’ll find in youruserfolder/Library/POF Services.

Finding Out What People Think About Your Music

Using sites, services, and statistics to find out who’s playing your music and what they think of it

Less than a decade ago, when musicians would create music and release it into the world, the only feedback they’d get was from album reviews in the press, concert numbers, and sales figures. They were always one step removed from the actual fan. Now that the internet has connected us, those days are over. Use the methods below to find out what people are already saying about your music.

One way to find out who’s listening to you is to visit Last.FM and search on your name. You may already have an artist page with a list of people from all over the world who have listened to your music. This information can give you new ideas of where to tour or where to concentrate your next PR campaign. Be sure to sign up as a “label” to claim your artist page. This allows you to tie it to your blog, get more stats on your “plays”, and lets you friend listeners to ask them what they think. Plus, you can upload more music and receive royalties (more here). Since Last.FM uses the ID3 tags to record the song plays of each of its users, make sure you tag your MP3s properly.

Last.fm is not the only way to find out when you’re being played, though. Sign up for Next Big Sound, and get a regular notifications via email whenever someone is listening, friending, or talking about you in sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Last.FM, MySpace, iLike, and YouTube.

Want to know what music listeners really think of your music? Try SoundOut.com. This service creates an instant focus group by presenting your music to fans of your music genre. They are asked to listen to the song, rate it on a 10-point scale, and write a review explaining their opinion. The next day the reviews are consolidated into a detailed report with information about what they thought of your music, age and gender information, and quality ratings for the reviewers themselves so you know who’s opinion to give more weight to. The report also tells you where your song rates as compared to other songs reviewed in your genre. If you upload multiple songs to the service, stagger them over a few days to get different reviewers, and use the report as an objective way to decide which song should be the first track on your album or used in a radio campaign.

To find out who’s talking about you on the web when it happens, set up a free Google Alerts account, enter search terms such as your name and your album titles, and get selecto to receive an email whenever you’re mentioned anywhere on the web. You may be surprised at how many sites might already be talking about or reviewing your music. Do you use Twitter? Sign up for a free account at SocialOomph.com and it will notify you via email every time your Twitter account is mentioned. Like Google Alerts, you can add search terms for your band name, albums, or other keywords you want to track. Even if you don’t have a Twitter account, use Twitter’s advanced search page to find who’s mentioning your music in their Twitter feeds.

Since these mentions quickly disappear, don’t forget to save them so you can use it later in your press kit, press releases, or PR campaigns. One helpful tool that can save these locally on your computer is the Scrapbook add-on for Firefox’s browser.

If you’re not using these sites, services, and tools, you may be missing out on what they’re saying about you. It’s worth your time to find out, and to reach out to the fans that you might not even know you have.

Popular Web 2.0 Websites

Effective off-page optimization and website promotion can be achieved also by using some popular sites where you can publish your articles. Short and informative articles not only promote your websites but can also increase your authority. Quality articles will attract other web users and people usually like to link to quality informative pages. So there are many benefits in using articles as a way of promotion. Below are listed some popular websites where you can publish various types of content. Most sites require no knowledge about HTML coding with the exception of manually creating links in some cases. Squidoo

Squido is a very popular place where you can publish lenses—articles about anything. You can add images, videos, feeds and many other resources to complement your article. Top 10 Juicers Squidoo lens shows how it is possible to create an attractive page without knowing anything about HTML, CSS or PHP. HubPages

HubPages is another great place where you publish hubs—articles with pictures and various widgets. Very similar to Squidoo, HubPages allows you to create attractive articles about anything. Business Management Jobs is an example of a hub. Weebly

Weebly allows you to create a website for free. You get a subdomain and you can create many pages to publish anything you like. An example of a simple Weebly website is the Recording Studio Software project. Posterous

Posterous is similar to other free blogs where you can publish your content but has two important advantages. The first advantage is that you can post from email. All you have to to is to sent your article to the Posterous email address and in a few moments your article will be published. Another advantage is automatic publishing to other Web 2.0 sites. Niche Marketing is one example of Posterous blog. Tumblr

Another free blog where you can publish your ideas is Tumblr. An example is the Spare Fuse blog.Ezine Articles

This is probably the most respectable article directory. Each article is reviewed by a team of editors so the quality of published articles is high. Ezine Articles is also a popular source of articles for publishing at individual websites. This way you not only get your information spread around the web, you get also many links to your pages. An example is the article about Blekko Search Engine and SEO.