A lot of successful websites depend on returning visitors to account for a major part of their traffic. Returning visitors are easier to convert into paying customers because the more often they return to a site, the more trust they have in that site. The credibility issue just melts away. Hence, keep your visitors coming back to your site with the following methods:

1) Start a forum, chatroom or shoutbox

When you start a forum, chatroom or shoutbox, you are providing your visitors a place to voice their opinions and interact with their peers — all of them are visitors of your site. As conversations build up, a sense of community will also follow and your visitors will come back to your site almost religiously every day.

2) Start a blog

Keep an online journal, or more commonly known as a blog, on your site and keep it updated with latest news about yourself. Human beings are curious creatures and they will keep their eyes glued to the monitor if you post fresh news frequently. You will also build up your credibility as you are proving to them that there is also a real life person behind the website.

3) Carry out polls or surveys

Polls and surveys are other forms of interaction that you should definitely consider adding to your site. They provide a quick way for visitors to voice their opinions and to get involved in your website. Be sure to publish polls or surveys that are strongly relevant to the target market of your website to keep them interested to find out about the results.

4) Hold puzzles, quizzes and games

Just imagine how many office workers procrastinate at work every day, and you will be able to gauge how many people will keep visiting your site if you provide a very interesting or addicting way of entertainment. You can also hold competitions to award the high score winner to keep people trying continuously to earn the prize.

5) Update frequently with fresh content

Update your site frequently with fresh content so that every time your visitors come back, they will have something to read on your site. This is the most widely known and most effective method of attracting returning visitors, but this is also the least carried out one because of the laziness of webmasters. No one will want to browse a site that looks the same over ten years, so keep your site updated with fresh bites!

Want to save money but don’t know how?  Feel like depriving yourself when it comes to saving money?  Don’t be disheartened.  Try these five money saving ideas, without breaking up a sweat!

Reduce or eliminate magazines.  If you are a typical American family, your mailbox gets its regular fill of magazines: business, sports, home and garden magazines.  Can you imagine how much each of these subscriptions cost?  Annually, it is an average of about $20 per magazine.  If your family is subscribed to 5 different magazines, that’s already $100 savings per year!  If you still need the information from such mags, try to check out their websites and you’ll be surprised at how much free information is available!

Buy in bulk.  How can warehouse and discount clubs drastically lower their prices?  Because they buy and sell in bulk.  And so should you! Consumables that are non-perishable can be purchased 10-15% cheaper when bought in bulk.  Be sure to stock up only on fast-moving items such as kitchen towels, cleaners, canned goods, etc., to avoid wasting money on rancid food.

Eat at home.  Eating out has become an American lifestyle.  What used to be an activity to celebrate special occasions has become part of the daily, fast-paced life.  But did you know that eating out could chomp as much as 40% of your budget for food?  That’s as much as $40 weekly, saved just by eating in!

Plan your meals.  Eating out 4X a week need not be your solution to a dynamic lifestyle.  Menu planning is! Take time on weekends to plan for the following week’s meals.  Every night, before you hit the sack, take out the ingredients for the meals of the next day from the freezer, and store them in the refrigerator.  By the time you get home from work, everything is thawed and ready to be cooked.  And because eating out is part of the American way of life, you would have saved enough money to spend for dining out on special occasions!

Homemade skin care.  Is your dermatologist eating up your budget? Don’t you wish you can be beautiful and save money at the same time? The answer is yes, you can!  By using ingredients from your pantry, you can take care of your skin and still save a fortune.  Try the following:

- Honey and oatmeal can exfoliate dry skin.

- Ginger seeped in a bath softens your skin.

- Cucumber and milk softens tired skin.

Without drastically changing your lifestyle, you have started your path on saving money.  Secure your future by using these money saving ideas, today!

In an effort to start stashing away some additional money for Christmas, I’ve decided to go back to couponing. I dread this.

Don’t get me wrong. I love coupons.  Clipping them out, sorting them, naming them. But that was PRE-baby.  I am absolutely terrified of again starting up my “coupon habit” with a colicky, fussy, hardly-ever-happy baby.

I was a couponing pro with my son.  He let me clip ‘em till no end.  I was proud of my neatly organized coupon holder and my happy, easy infant son. I saved money and my son got to shop with me.

This time around?  I literally have nightmares about having to shop with my daughter. This weekend I plan to see how it goes.  I really, really want to start putting extra cash away, and using coupons is the easiest way for me to go.

Let’s hope I don’t have a panic attack in the store.

I would SO love to do once-a-month cooking.  I found some great recipes and I wish I could give it a try.  Why didn’t I think of this, like, a year ago?

A lot of teens nowadays do not understand the value of earning and spending money. They were not oriented that investing is necessary even if they are still students. As parents, you play a crucial role in this area.

You should be able to teach your kids on how to save money. They should be able to understand the concept of money and investment as early as childhood. This will prepare them to learn money management, as they grow old.

Here are some tips on how you can teach your children how to save money:

1. Your children should be educated of the meaning of money. Once your children have learned how to count, that is the perfect time for you teach them the real meaning of money. You should be consistent and explain to them in simple ways and do this frequently so that they may be able to remember what you taught them.

2. Always explain to them the value of saving money. Make them understand its importance and how it will impact their life. It is important that you entertain questions from them about money and you should be able to answer them right away.

3. When giving them their allowances. You need to give them their allowances in denominations. Then you can encourage them that they should keep a certain bill for the future. You can motivate them to do this by telling them that the money can be saved and they can buy new pair of shoes or the toys they want once they are able to save.

4. You can also teach them to work for money. You can start this at your own home. You can pay them fifty cents to one dollar every time they clean their rooms, do the dishes or feed their pets. This concept of earning little money will make them think that money is something they have worked for and should be spent wisely.

5. You can teach them to save money by giving them piggy banks where they can put coins and wait until they get full. You can also open bank accounts for them and let them deposit money from their allowance. You should always show them how much they have earned to keep them motivated.

Money and saving is not something that is learned by children in one sitting. You should be patient in teaching them and relating the value of money in all of their activities. Children will learn this easily if you are patient and consistent in guiding them and encouraging them in this endeavor.

•       List goods that should always be found in the kitchen. Examples of which are coffee, milk, sugar, soy sauce, vinegar, salt, onion, garlic. These goods are necessary, so they are always being bought.

•       Plan your weekly meals ahead of time. This would avoid you overspending on goods invaluable or missing some ingredients that are needed. This would not just clear your worries but it would also save your time.

•       Don’t buy branded goods; instead choose a product that has the same quality of those expensive goods. You’ll get the same benefit without spending more.

•       Buy goods that have dual purpose. A good example of which is mayonnaise. You can use it as a sandwich spread or make macaroni salad instead. In a way, you could enjoy eating both without spending too much.

•       Buy less expensive cuts of meat. List recipes that the cuts won’t matter. At least, you won’t be sacrificing the taste of the food and at the same time you’ll have the chance to buy a larger quantity.

•       Pay in cash. You might be tempted to buy unnecessary goods. This would avoid you from going over your card limit.

•       Try to be inventive and creative at the same time. Leftovers could be precooked in a way that it would look appealing again to your appetite.

•       Bring some snacks whenever you travel. This could be a good reliever for your hunger along the way and chances of being tempted to stop in a mini store; if not be impossible, at least be lessen.

•       Keep a list of prices of goods you always buy. At least, with those products you’re sure of how much you’ll be spending and you could do just a small amount on goods you wish to buy.

•       Shop only once or twice a month. In that way, less time will be spent on going to a grocery store and at the same time, chances of overspending will be minimized.

Here’s a really fast way you can make some extra cash. Please note that you’ll need a bit of cash upfront, and a bit of time for research purposes.
Go to www.slickdeals.net and click on “Forums”. Now visit the “Hot Deals” section.  You will see a bunch of deals that may (or may not) be good.  Choose one that interests you (and one you feel is a great deal), then go to Ebay.com and research it. (My method of researching on Ebay consists of searching the ‘Completed Items’ and seeing if it’s worth your time to purchase and resell.)

If you are really at a loss on what to get someone for a gift this holiday season, try this out.

Go to restaurants.com and purchase a local gift certificate.  They have AWESOME prices on their gift cards.  For example, I have purchased two $25 certificates for $5 each!  That’s an ENTIRE $50 meal for just ten bucks!  Seriously, you just can’t beat that.

If you like to save money and search for deals online, here’s a pretty good source to do it.

www.fatwallet.com

Lots of stores are listed and you can get a lot of cash back from your purchases. This site is going into my bookmarks for Christmas.  (Stay tuned for my favorite Christmas shopping tips and online resources - probably posted mid or late November.)

It’s now the beginning of November and I realize that I absolutely NEED to make a solid goal checklist for the month. Otherwise, surprise!, I don’t get much of anything at all done.  For now, a pretty basic list will do (and I’ll probably be adding to it as days go by). Damn, I can’t wait till this colic passes - I have so much more I want to get done.
Anyway, for the month of November, in no particular order:

Business Goals

-  Get new niche websites uploaded, new articles added to them
-  Post to this blog each day, for the entire month of November

-  New blog design for MomRocks (why? I just don’t know)

-  Update current selling info products (carried out till December)
-  Release 5 info products on eBay (10 by the end of December)
-  Start my VRE training