Linkswitch #12

The Most Powerful Way to Presell Any Product or Service:

“Preselling is the art of conditioning potential customers and making them more likely to buy products/services. It is usually performed at your website before you send the visitor over to the vendor’s store or landing page. The goal of all presell tactics is to get prospects into a frame of mind whereby they not only feel comfortable about making a purchase but desire to do so.”

25 Creative Retro Styled Website Designs:

“My goal is to make sure the showcase posts that I create are ‘out of the box‘ and something that will spark your creativity. So, in this article I am going to showcase 25 creative websites that have a retro theme. They range from the use of old-time photos to retro patterns, colors and graphic elements. I hope you enjoy it ”

Branding 101: How to Promote Your Blog Like the Big Guys Do:

“When you think of your blog as you would a brand, you have to create a consistent message and have everything you do — on and off the blog — send the same message. And you have to repeat the message as often as possible to your target audience until it’s stuck in their head.”

Freelancing with Wordpress: Using Wordpress to Manage Contacts:

“In the course of your freelancing career you’ll run into plenty of people for every project you work on. It can be pretty hectic to keep everybody organized in your head so it’s highly recommended that you use some form of contact management system. For some of you that might be Outlook or Gmail or Thunderbird. Others might use 37signals’ Highrise or manage contacts within Basecamp and others still might use a simple notebook.”

10 Critical Cash Flow Rules:

“Cash flow problems can kill businesses that might otherwise survive. According to a U.S. Bank study, 82 percent of business failures are due to poor cash management. To prevent this from happening to your business, here are my 10 cash flow rules to remember.”

What a Drunk Swiss Guy Can Teach You About Handling Criticism:

“Back in 1999, my brother and I went to visit our sister in Switzerland. Somehow, we all ended up in this basement room at a pub in Interlaken with some locals. For some reason, the lights started going on and off, and I caught this look on my sister’s face. There had been some groping during one of the dark intervals.”

10 Excellent and Free Blog Editors for the Desktop:

“It’s often convenient to have an offline blog editor if you often work in places without ready access to the internet. Even if you do have an internet connection, desktop blogging apps can give you a host of features that the normal UI of your blogging platform simply can’t offer.”

Top 10 Blogs for Writers:

“The 27 finalists have been carefully examined, with the greatest weight on the quality of their content.  What follows are the top 10 blogs for writers for 2009/2010.”

Why Online Friends are Important to Freelancers:

“What a total waste of time!” The sharp words the hung in the air between us. My offline friend had just watched me check in at some of my favorite social sites. Of course, her sentiment shouldn’t have been a surprise to me. She’d mentioned before that she didn’t see any value in sites like Twitter and Facebook. To say that my friend didn’t get social media would be a complete understatement.”