How Do They Look 10 Years Younger Than They Really Are?

We all want to look young, right? We have all wondered how those celebrities manage to look 10 years younger than they actually are. Do they just have good genes and look young naturally? For most, the answer is no. The average celebrity uses ways to look younger that are incredibly time-consuming and expensive. How can the average person stay young looking too? Here are a few celebrity secrets for you, plus some tips on how you too can get younger-looking skin.

The ever-popular Botox
According to dermatologist Tina Alster of Washington, D.C., in the April 2007 issue of Harper’s Bazaar, “Botox remains the gold standard for treating crow’s lines and wrinkles.” Botox literally paralyzes the muscles beneath wrinkles. If used too much, its use can become obvious – witness the “unmovable forehead” jokes aimed at actresses including Joan Rivers, Halle Berry, and Nicole Kidman.

Botox runs $300-$500 per treated area, with results lasting three to six months.

Injectable fillers
To treat crow’s feet, forehead wrinkles, and deep smile lines, celebrities inject hyaluronic-acid fillers such as Restylane, Juvederm or Juvederm Ultra Plus. Sounds painful to me.

This is a professionally-performed procedure with the cost running $600-$1,000/needle. Results can last up to six months (note the word “can”).

Chemical peels
Beyond face and eye lifts to remove bags and wrinkles lies the chemical peel. Celebrities remove several years off their faces in under an hour with a professional chemical peel. Chemical peels work by removing the damaged top layers of skin.

A mild, glycolic acid chemical peel runs $150-$300, however, similar results in one month can be achieved with MD Skincare Alpha Beta Daily Face Peel. On the average, it costs $68 for 30 daily applications.

The infamous laser
As we age, our collagen production slows down significantly, making our faces appear gaunt. Boosting collagen production is big business in Hollywood and more and more celebrities are turning to laser skin resurfacing to boost theirs. Lasers such as Fraxel – currently the most popular laser on the market – are used on the face to create microscopic tears deep within the skin, triggering the body to naturally produce more collagen to aid the healing process.

The cost is about $1,000/session. Three to five sessions are required, spaced about a month apart.

Stay out of the sun
The sun is the number one cause of prematurely aging skin. We all can avoid the sun by wearing hats and by wearing sunscreen every day, regardless of the weather.

Depending on your favorite sunscreen, this one is way cheap in comparison!

Back to that collagen again
Creams and lotions that either have collagen in them or a retinoid-base (stimulates the production of collagen) can be used to keep fine lines from becoming wrinkles. Many dermatologists have stated that of all the antioxidants, peels, scrubs and injections available, the stimulation of skin-saving collagen is the best way to help your skin to look younger.

In summary, we see the anti-aging, look 10 years younger market is HUGE, and people are willing to spend exorbitantly on its products and procedures. For us average folks who want to look young, staying out of the sun and using a good collagen or retinoid-based cream is the sensible way to go. From a business perspective, people will always want to look young, making this market recession proof. And with an aging population, the “I want to look younger” demographic will continue to expand.

You Have Your Product and Your Website, Now How Do You Actually Make Money Online?

Okay. You want to make money online. You have a product or service you really like, a brand new website from which to sell it, and all the motivation in the world to launch your new business venture. How do you go about finding people to sell to, to really make money online? Today’s interactive web environment has dramatically changed the way people experience the internet, a fact the prudent online business owner should always keep foremost in mind. Unlike yesteryear, when most people in the market for a product or service either physically showed up at the brick and mortar store or reviewed print ads, television ads, or hard copy catalogues prior to shopping, today people start shopping or doing their due diligence with the click of a mouse button.

A potential buyer’s typical first step is to “Google” the product or service desired (or use whatever search engine they favor) and begin comparing what is out there. Who sells for less? Is the store convenient or should I order online? Does the store have it in stock? They can even see what other items are popular with people who have purchased the same item they are looking for.

What to do when information about different products and vendors is available without the potential customer even having to interact with your company directly? If your website is not appearing in the search engine being used, typically on the first one or two pages of search results, then you aren’t going to be competitive.

The problem? By the time they may eventually reach you, they are much farther along in the sales process than before, but you know next to nothing about them. In order to succeed online, a business, regardless of what products or services it provides, needs to:

• Drive quality visitors to its site (that search engine ranking helps!)
• Capture these visitors as leads (web page design and compelling message)
• Convert the leads into customers (again, design and message. If no initial buy, follow up)
• Continually analyze all site activity to evaluate what marketing is working, and what is not (example – use Google Analytics, a free service)

Luckily, just as consumers now have impressive tools to shop and compare with, the same search engines give businesses the opportunity to reach out to customers effectively and potentially in-expensively with targeted messages that customers are actually looking for. The traditional sales funnel no longer applies; it has evolved to consist of the following elements:

• Search engine optimization (SEO)
• Pay per click (PPC) advertising
• Social Networking (to include blogging, spinning off Social Bookmarking at sites like myspace.com and facebook.com, from which you can spin off “buzz” marketing)
• Targeted landing pages (AKA “splash” pages, “capture” pages, “squeeze” pages)
• Site activity analytics and customer conversion tools

If your volume of business is not what you would like it to be, odds are you are either not incorporating some or all of these elements in your business model at all, or they have been incorporated ineffectively and should be reviewed.

To make money online, it all begins with getting the customer to your site. In future articles we will discuss the relative merits and pitfalls of both search engine optimization, to get search engine “spiders” to rank your site high; and pay per click advertising, to catch the customers eye via paid listings. If you want to make money online, stay tuned. More to follow.

What is Web 2.0 and why should business builders care?

If you do a web search for definitions of Web 2.0 you’re likely to get a bit overwhelmed. Don’t get concerned – its impact, especially in terms of Social Bookmarking and Social Networking, is indeed overwhelming for business. Social Bookmarking for traditional or network marketing businesses is allowing them to grow at previously unseen rates by rapidly identifying or developing “social networks” of peers and prospects, finally providing the marketing and relationship building tools the internet has always promised.

The terms “Web 2.0” and “Social Bookmarking” or “Social Networking” were created by those who were describing a paradigm shift in the way people use the internet for both personal and business pursuits.

To Simplify: Web 2.0 Is a User Involved Internet Experience

The internet is no longer a digital library that we visit to read; it is an ever changing and responding archive we are impacting with every action we take.

Sure, internet users have always been able to contribute to the old 1.0 library in that we could buy a domain and build a website or contribute on bulletin boards or forums – but 2.0 sites take things farther. Websites that incorporate 2.0 principles literally respond and can change shape according to the needs and input of its users.

What do you think of when someone uses the term ‘Web Two Point Oh”?

Blogging? RSS? Tagging? Comments? Social Bookmarking? Social Networking?

These are all aspects of 2.0 and we will look at them individually in a moment.

How Do You Incorporate 2.0 Tactics In Your Online Business?

To embrace 2.0 in your online business you’ll approach it from two directions.

• From an internal point of view, you’ll create a web presence that is designed to interact and respond (technical “stuff”) to users.
• From an external point of view, you’ll want to come out from behind your website and have an active presence where your target market can be found (Social Bookmarking).

What Makes Web 2.0 and Social Bookmarking Possible?

First, don’t let the terminology and technology get in your way. If you either can’t or don’t want to understand it on your own, there are resources out there that are more than happy to assist your progress into the 2.0 world. In the past, building a web presence involved creating an ‘online brochure’ or ‘website store front’, a site that visitors could come to learn from or buy from. Interaction was rare and usually involved calling a telephone number or sending an email.

Today’s technology makes it possible for a website to be truly interactive.

For example, Customer Service scripts allow site owners to monitor visitor’s movements on their website. Contact can be initiated by the visitor or the site’s representative to ask or offer answers to questions.

Many ecommerce websites, including massive Amazon.com, have made it easy for users to create wish lists and recommendation lists that other users can view and respond to. The sites even incorporate ratings scripts, allowing website users to give an instant thumbs up or thumbs down on books and products. Not only are user reviews asked for, they also ask other users if the review was helpful or not. Every step of the user’s experience is molded by the last step taken.

Dynamic Content Changes Everything

In a CMS (Content Management System) content is managed by a database and can be accessed via RSS (Really Simple Syndication).

Keeping things basic, RSS is a file created by your CMS that makes your content “broadcast-able.” This lets your online content reach out beyond the pages of your website to touch users wherever they access the RSS feed.

There are a wide variety of RSS directories that allow users to search for content they are interested in. Users can also subscribe to your specific RSS feed through a feed catcher or by subscribing through a web-based feed service that will allow them to track feeds of their own choosing.

RSS also allows for the use of tags. Tags identify the topic of the content and are a large part of what makes using RSS so attractive. Entire websites have been developed around scripts that search RSS feeds for common tags. You can visit a site like Technorati (http://technorati.com/tag/ ) and see which tags are being used most in real time in the form of a “Tag Cloud.” The larger words and phrases indicate the tags that are being used more often.

Technorati and similar services also allow users to set up RSS enabled search strings that will notify them as soon as content is posted on topics that interest them.

Good Grief, What Does This Mean?

What this means is that there is now far more to attracting your target market than ranking in search engines. If you use RSS enabled web pages and make sure that your RSS feeds are submitted to as many RSS directories as possible, your target market now has far more ways to find you than merely “googling.”

Beyond RSS, a CMS based website or blog (a blog is a CMS) provides an interactive element that allows users to make comments on your site content. Any level of privacy can be chosen, from letting anyone post comments, to requiring user registration.

Comments build content for you – and provide you with valuable user feedback, both good and bad.

Plug-ins and modifications for many CMS systems invite even more interaction. Polls gain information from users. Forums invite the formation of a community. The options are increasing all the while and if you don’t find something that does what you want, you can hire a freelance programmer to create something for you.

Social Bookmarking

Sites like Delicious (http://del.icio.us/) provide us with a way to share our favorite links and blog posts with others. Instead of adding a ‘favorite’ to your browser, you create a bookmark in your Delicious account. You can then make your list public to others and see how many others have also bookmarked a particular resource.Items that get a lot of bookmarks rise up in popularity and gain exposure on the website.

Digg (http://www.digg.com) allows users to add stories to the site so that other users can give it a vote of confidence (digg it) and if it gets enough diggs, it rises in popularity and hopefully reaches the main page. Top stories get discussed on the popular Diggnation podcast.

OnlyWire (http://www.onlywire.com/) has a large list of social bookmarking sites and provides you with a way to add items to all of them at once if you have accounts with them.

Enough of that! Why should I care? The External (Customer) Point of View…

Web 2.0 Social Bookmarking allows for greater connectivity over greater distances than ever before.

You can find a friend, a spouse, an employee, a new boss, a business partner…just about anything.

The key to initiating and benefiting from successful connections online is seeking out the right networking environment.

Social Bookmarking – The Latest Business Building Tool!

Social Bookmarking is the primary aspect of Web 2.0 that has made social networking easy and that is allowing savvy online marketers to network with peers and prospects to build big business quickly.

Social Networks of every kind have popped up on the web, making interaction and connection easier than most would have imagined possible just five years ago.

Social Networking allows users to initiate relationships for friendship, romance, information, entertainment, and careers. Most importantly (for our purposes, anyway) Social Networking is used to foster and grow business relationships.

Here is a quick overview of some of the most highly traveled Social Networks on the web today.

Linked In – http://www.linkedin.com

This site’s purpose is to equip members with the means to grow a list of people (Connections) they meet and learn to trust in business. As your list of connections develops you can view their connections (known as 2^nd degree connections) and ask them to help you with an introduction.

Linked In is used to locate work, make new business partnerships, find employees or freelancers, etc.

Xing http://www.xing.com

XING is a multilingual business network. They offer personal profiles, groups, forums, events, and other social networking features. Basic membership is free but full features are only available to premium members.

Ryze – http://www.ryze.com

Ryze is a widely used business network that allows you to create a page for free that can be customized with your own HTML. You can activate a guest book that lets other users comment and you can also communicate with each other via private messages. Gold and Platinum level members can host networks and set limitations on who can contact them based on level of membership.

Networks incorporate traits of an email list and a forum and network owners can communicate with their networks through broadcast emails.

Meet Up – http://www.meetup.com

Meetup.com is an online social networking site that helps members connect via offline meetings all around the globe. You can find groups by searching for a common interest and your ZIP code or city out of the US. You can find MeetUp events even in smaller communities.

My Space – http://www.myspace.com

MySpace is famous for social networking. The website offers users the ability to create highly interactive web profiles and a network of friends to share it with. They can post to blogs, participate in groups, share photos, music and videos.

Since MySpace is ranked as the fifth most visited website on Alexa.com and because it is relatively easy to create a large network of contacts using automated tools like ‘adder bots’, MySpace is constantly targeted by social network spammers. (Even though using these bots are against the MySpace terms of service.)

Friendster (http://www.friendster.com), Bebo (http://www.bebo.com) and Facebook (http://www.facebook.com)

These sites are all similar to MySpace in that they attract a young crowd focused on making social connections and are generally unfriendly to business networking.

Windows Live Spaces http://spaces.live.com/

Live Spaces looks and feels quite a lot like MySpace. You can create a profile, post to a blog, post photos and videos, make connections, etc.

Yahoo 360 http://360.yahoo.com/

Yahoo 360 again, has a similar feel to most of the other social networking sites out there, but if you’re using Yahoo Mail or a member of any Yahoo Groups you’ll soon find that your 360 connects you with these areas, making it quite useful

An exhaustive list of social networking sites can be found here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_social_networking_websites

What about Squidoo?

Squidoo (http://www.squidoo.com) is certainly a Social Networking website but it does differ from most of the resources listed above in that it focuses on the creation of valuable web content more than on the development of individual connections.

Squidoo members create “lenses,” as many as they like, to display their expertise on the subject and in many cases, to draw traffic to their individual projects. Squidoo lenses can be monetized in a variety of ways.

Lenses can be tweaked to allow commenting and Lens Masters can connect their lenses through Groups according to the topic of content they are focusing on.

How do I decide where to network?

It is time consuming to build a worthwhile presence on any of the above networks so it would be a mistake to jump into all of them at once. It’s smarter to take one at a time and give it your focused attention for a period of time.

If you have a multifaceted business, you should choose one aspect of your business to highlight and promote on a network. Profile pages that list every business you’re involved in and every website you own is not likely to be effective as visitors are faced with too many choices.

The Good, the Bad & the Ugly of Social Networking for the Internet Marketer

Business owners in the offline world know the value of networking. There are many opportunities locally, nationally and worldwide for meeting new people who share similar business interests and will benefit from these contacts.

The value of networking only increases when you take it online. It’s easier to reach more people and it usually costs far less.

There are a wide variety of networking opportunities on the web – as you’ve seen from the list above, some are free and some come with features that involve a fee to use.

Good networking opportunities bring you into contact with those who are potential:

• Customers
• List Subscribers
• Source of Word of Mouth Referrals
• Affiliates
• Cooperative Partners
• Media Contacts

Good networking behavior includes:

• Showing interest in others.
• Asking questions that help you to learn about your target market.
• Offering to help others with useful introductions when possible.
• Answering questions when appropriate.
• Respecting moderators and rules.

Bad networking behavior includes:

• Only talking about you.
• Spamming with links or ads.
• Offering non-constructive criticism.

Ugly networking behavior includes:

• Pushing business opportunities on those who haven’t asked for info.
• Harvesting contact information without permission.
• Flaming competitors.

Online networking can move beyond interaction on social networking sites. There are a growing number of opportunities for networking via audio and even video through services like Skype (http://www.skype.com), Co-Op World (http://www.coopworld.com) and Go To Meeting (http://www.gotomeeting.com).

Measure Results and Embrace Limits

Social Networking can be addicting, especially for those who are otherwise spending a lot of time working alone on a computer. Take care that you don’t lose track of time and end up spending more valuable business hours on it than you should.

Take steps that will let you measure the results of your networking efforts. Use special landing pages, ad trackers or redirect links to count the number of responses to a particular offer you promoted.

If you’ve spent five hours each month networking to promote a particular project, yet haven’t seen related subscribers or purchases – it’s time to re-evaluate what you’re doing. You may be networking in the wrong places or if you are reaching your target market, you may have just learned that they don’t want or need what you have to offer.

I Don’t Have Time For This!

Don’t let a lack of time keep you from benefiting from Web 2.0. Many aspects can be outsourced, or you can find an online partner that already has a Web 2.0 system in place.

In point of fact, you found this article via a Web 2.0 technique.

If you would like further information or the opportunity to partner with an online marketing group already employing Social Bookmarking and Social Networking techniques and profitably positioned within a growing, recession-proof industry, feel free to look over our business. Today’s online world requires business people to be marketing savvy. You don’t have to reinvent the wheel or go it alone.

Profit From Looking Younger

Through a variety of economic times, the anti-aging skin care market has provided a time tested, recession-proof industry for entrepreneurs, and there is every indication that the market will continue to grow into the future. Thousands of the 75 million Baby Boomers born between 1946 and 1964 celebrate their 50th birthday each day and are looking for ways to stop the effects of aging.

The Boomers command market attention by putting their wallets where their mouths are, so to speak, as they are the primary contributors to the projected $12 billion increase in money spent on anti-aging products and supplements in the next year and a half alone.

Additional facts that make the anti-aging market attractive to entrepreneurs:

• There are 77 million Baby Boomers in the U.S., 53 million between the ages of 40 and 50.
• There are 11,000 Baby Boomers turning 50 everyday and this trend will continue for the next 10 years.
• By 2012, 50 percent of the population will be over age 50.
• People over 50 years of age control 70 percent of the financial assets in the USA and 50 percent of all discretionary income.

These statistics make the anti-aging market one of the biggest opportunities in the U.S. today. Do the math: Boomers have money, the most comfortable generation in U.S. history; they don’t like the prospect of looking old; therefore anti-aging products are what they want – products that help them retain or rediscover the look, feel and health of their youth.

As the size of the market has grown and matured, so too has the science that is the foundation of anti-aging product development. Today’s best anti-aging skin care products take advantage of a wide array of naturally occurring substances for their impact on skin. Examples include the rejuvenating effects of Glycosaminoglycans, Elastin, and Collagen as they firm and tighten skin. These key ingredients also help to moisturize skin by increasing skin’s hydration levels, essentially “plumping” the skin to help fill in wrinkles, providing a more youthful appearance.

With ingredients like Aloe Vera gel, CoQ10, and some of the world’s most powerful natural anti-oxidizing extracts, the aging process can be reversed and skin revitalized back to a youthful radiance and beauty. These ingredients condition the renewal and production of new cells, while helping to improve and eliminate skin imperfections including discoloration, age spots, and rough texture to reveal clearer, more radiant looking skin that continues to improve with each application.

Cutting edge products in the anti-aging industry also include the use of a unique combination of natural extracts from vegetables and fruits to provide the maximum anti-oxidant and age defying blend of nutrients for the skin. Phytonutrients are known to be the strongest in the most colorful fruits and vegetables. One such product uses a wide array of phytonutrients from 13 different fruits and vegetables in order to create an optimal formula. Acai berries, Goji, Noni and Mangostene are no longer just associated with fruit juice. The advanced pace of the science of anti-aging is producing constant innovation.

The facts are in. The anti-aging market is enormous and growing. Companies recognize this and innovative, cutting-edge products are hitting the shelf every day as the science underpinning anti-aging product development attracts the attention of the best and the brightest in the field – and the entrepreneurs that recognize opportunity when they see it.

The opportunity exists. All that’s left is the decision to take advantage of it. For more information and a lead on an anti-aging product that is new and cutting-edge, CLICK HERE NOW!