Enjoy this guest post from Anna Watson~~

The top priority for any laptop is its security which is endangered by virus, phishing attracts, rootkits, Trojans, malwares, key loggers etc. Both the external factors and the high use of internet put the security of your laptop in significant danger. Laptop Repair can be done with minimal threat to the security but once a virus hacks into your laptop your confidential data becomes venerable. To fight this menace nothing is better than efficient anti-virus program.

You have two options while purchasing an anti-virus you can opt for the free version, or go on and buy full protection for your laptop. Wondering what factors make the anti-virus best. Take a look at the points mentioned below for the same.

Snippet for a Good Anti Virus for laptop

Speed should be its Deed – this just means that a sloppy and lazy anti-virus cannot act at the right time, so definitely a fast speed anti-virus program should be your first choice.

Active Stealth Mode – whatever Anti-virus Program you choose, it should have the capability to detect every hidden virus and malicious scripts and codes running.

Price Virtually Saves – Of course we cannot spend oodles of money on anti-virus program. If we need to buy, then it should be cheap and within economical price range.

Excellent and easy configuration – It should never be a hassle or complication to install a Anti-virus Software.

Updates Regularly – An anti-virus for laptop should get updated regularly, otherwise chances are that its database will get out of date and will loose its power to protect your system.

Comprehensive Support – The Anti-virus you choose should have an excellent set of after sale support, so that if you require prompt assistance you have one immediately.

Nick of the Time action i.e. Real-time Provision – The real time scanning is what it actually means. If anti-virus software acts sporadic and often fails to act at the right time then it is useless.

Top 5 FREE Anti-virus Programs – Laptop Repair for Virus

It is rightly said that the best things in life comes free. The list below contains 5 best anti-virus programs which provide excellent protection for laptop. Plus they have both the free and the purchase versions. The free version has many features enabled which satisfactorily protect the laptop.

1.             BitDefender Anti-virus

2.             Kaspersky Anti-Virus

3.             Webroot Anti-virus

4.             Norton Anti-virus

How To Determine What Kind of Online Business Suits You

Starting an online business is simultaneously simple and challenging. Working on the internet eliminates many of the problems that sink businesses, like overhead costs, employee insurance and location selection. But at the same time, it provides its own set of obstacles.

Enjoy this guest post from Mike Seddon

It’s a fact that many businesses are loosing money through a leaky web purchase process. Most of these businesses choose to ignore the problem and will prefer to look at increasing traffic as the way to grow sales.

The analogy I like to give is to imagine you had a bucket with holes in it that you needed to fill with water. What would you do first? Fix the holes or just try to fill the bucket with water faster than it is leaking? Believe me; many businesses go for the faster filling leaky bucket solution!

What I want to do is show you five ways you can fix those holes and just by doing that you will boost your sales because you’ll close all the sales that were originally escaping you. In other words, you make more money from the buying traffic your website is already getting.

Step 1 – Stop Hiding that Buy Button!

You’ll be amazed how many businesses seem to hide the buy button. They make it blend in with the colour theme of their website or they put it below the fold (ie: you have to scroll down the website to find it).

Just making your buy buttons stand out and putting them in a prominent place will boost sales. Trust me. Try it.

Step 2 – Don’t ask for stuff you don’t need

Why is it that some websites ask for my inside leg measurements when all I’m trying to buy is an ebook! Why do they need that information?

Okay so I am exaggerating but you know what I mean. We’ve all been to sites where we have to fill out screens of questions before we can just get our credit card out and buy the darn thing.

So take a good long look at your payment screens and make sure you are only asking for information that you need to make the sale. Keep it short. Keep it brief and get the money!

Step 3 – Reinforce the Benefits

When most website owners install their shopping cart software they tend to only concentrate on setting up the pages so that they can collect the data they need to process the sale. They miss an opportunity here to help ensure the sale. If they were to add benefits of the products onto their payment screens they would find that less people abandon the shopping cart. Seeing benefits of your purchase as you go through the sales screens reinforces your desire to own the product and keeps you in the process.

Step 4 – Use Testimonials

This is the same approach I just outlined with benefits. Make sure your sales screens have testimonials. It helps reassure your purchaser that they are making the right decision in buying from you.

Step 5 – Guarantees

Do you offer a guarantee with your product? If you do make sure you repeat them on the purchase screens, especially the one that asks for the credit card details! What’s the point of having a guarantee if you don’t shout about it and use it to make sure you close as many sales as possible?

If you don’t have a guarantee then shame on you! Offer one.

The better your guarantee, the more chance you will have to make the sale. So make sure you offer a compelling guarantee. You may worry about the cost of honoring your guarantee but let me assure you that the increase in sales will more than cover any slight increase in costs due to covering a guarantee.

So there you have five easy ways you can quickly fix the holes in your purchase process and boost your sales as a result.

Once you’ve done those then you’ll be ready to increase the traffic to your website safe in the knowledge that you will maximize the sales from that extra traffic. You’ll find lots of free advice on increasing your web traffic using website promotion at the KKSmarts website.

What’s that have to do with growing your business?  Well quite a bit after you hear my little story.

I was in need of an extra key for our house, so I went to the local hardware in my little town.  Now let me paint you a picture, I live in a “mayberry” town without Floyd the Barber.    It’s just a small little place, but we love it here and most folks are either related or go to church with you.  So it’s one big family.  But back to the story…

I walked into the hardware and spoke to the sales person at the counter whom I have chatted with many times.  I said, “I need a key made.”  She told me that the owner was the only person that could make keys and he wouldn’t be in until the afternoon, but to try down at the drug store.

So I got back into my car and drove less than a quarter of a mile to the drug store, where I was greeted by a cute little blond girl and I said to her, “I would like to get a key made please.”  She smiled sweetly and said, “The lady that makes the keys is on vacation for the summer.”  The Summer!!!

So I just started laughing and got back in my car and went to the local Wal-mart to have the key made.

This is a very funny story, but not so funny if it is happening to your business.  When you are away, who is making the keys?  Do you have an assistant that can take care of “anything” that comes along?  Or are you the type of business owner that must do everything themselves?  Do you realize how much business you are loosing when you are away and nobody else is trained to make the keys?

Whether you are a brick and mortar business or an online business owner, you must build a team of trusted and trained individuals that will be there when you can’t be to keep the company going.  You can use a virtual assistant, an online business manager or a social media manager to help run your business.  Or you can use part-time interns from the local college to make sure all the keys are made in your shop and not at the nearest big giant shopping center.

Isn’t it time to evaluate your business and focus on its growth instead of keeping all the trade secrets to yourself?  But without a trained key-maker, you will be just another stop on the way to getting a key made.

In years gone by, direct mailers were the premier form of business to business and business to consumer advertising. Direct mail consists of flyers, newsletters featuring advertisements, and coupons mailed directly to the consumer’s home. This required businesses to investigate all kinds of shipping services, gather quotes, and compare shipping companies. While this is still a valuable resource for targeted markets, people seem far more interested in exploring online technology and viral marketing and advertising options.

With the advancement of technology, the Internet has given small and large businesses alike a nearly equal playing field. Though not completely dead and forgotten, direct mailers as advertisement has taken a backseat to the more popular and effective advertisement forms the Internet has made available.

Businesses today all have the opportunity to use the web and social media to promote their services. High tech or ecommerce businesses, for example, would benefit more from using the Internet opposed to using direct mail due to its global potential of customers. Blog articles, appealing websites offering online discounts, Internet printable coupons, and savings offered on social media sites have allowed businesses to reach out to a broader base of consumers.

Due to the rapid advertising the Internet provides, businesses no longer have to wait for consumers to receive direct mailers and then wait for them to respond. The Internet has given businesses a prime opportunity to reach out to customers through social media sites and email advertisements the same day the company is having a special sale or savings offer.

Business owners additionally have a chance to email, share, or tweet to thousands of potential customers and essentially recruit new customers or encourage them to look at and contact your company.

Long term success for any business in today’s world generally means participating in some sort of Internet advertisement and campaigning. Inexpensive advertisement can be readily had through the Internet and creative and optimized websites. A company that is diligent about advertising on the Internet as well as knowing when to use direct mailers will have far more success than a company who relies on only one method for their primary form of marketing and advertising to the public.

I was speaking with a friend today about our businesses.  We chatted for a while about groups we belonged to and acquaintances and how we loved to help others succeed in life and in business.  Toward the end of our conversation, we moved more toward what drives business to us.  And I wanted to share her story.

She admittedly is not a social media butterfly.  She use to get on Facebook, maybe once a month to just check in and see what was going on.  During one of those once-a-month visits she saw a post from someone she had met at a conference earlier in the year.  They had gotten to know each other and “friended” one another on Facebook.  And that was the end of the story.

However, on this day my friend noticed a comment from one of her Facebook friends and it really resonated with her.  She felt a strong connection to the post and the person.  So she began to communicate with her and learned more about her business and the services she offered.  Which eventually turned into a working relationship between the two of them.

My friend now has a support person that she get’s along great with and can bounce ideas off of, but also someone that will help her to grow her business in the way she visions.

This little story is just a great example of how social media should work. You post things on your Fan Page or your personal Wall and people read them and hopefully share them with their friends.  You just never know what post might bring you the next big customer or client.  So post great information, thoughtful comments and encouraging words, it will boost your business!

Happy New Year!  I hope you had a wonderfully blessed holiday season.  I certainly did.  I love spending time with family and friends and of course, my birthday is two days before Christmas, so I just celebrate non-stop for a couple of weeks!

With the new year comes the task of changing calendars, updating our accounting software, making sure we write the correct year when we are dating things and changing our copyright date on our website and blogs.   What?  You didn’t realize you needed to change the date?

Have you visited a website that looked great and answered your questions exactly and then looked at the bottom of the page to find it was 10 years old???   Then you begin to wonder, is this answer still relevant today?  Does anyone even keep this website updated?

Chances are the answer probably is still relevant, but the website owner or webmaster of the site failed to change the copyright date and the site appears to be un-kept and outdated.

Here is a little snippet of html code that you or your webmaster can add to the footer of your site that will take care of that problem forever!

<p>Copyright &copy; 2007 – <!–#config timefmt=”%Y”–><!–#echo var=”DATE_LOCAL” –><?php echo date(“Y”); ?> by Terri Brooks</p>

All you need to do is change the date (2007) to the date you started your site and change my name to your name or business name. (Thanks to Cathy Stucker with Blogger LinkUp for sharing this little tip with me)

Hope this helps keep your site looking updated and takes away the worry of flipping your copyright date each year.

How many times do we ask ourselves that question?  What is it that I’m supposed to do on this earth?  What’s my purpose?  How can I make a difference?

Lately, I have really been pondering that question.  I have been struggling with what I’m truly supposed to be doing on this earth and for mankind. As I begin to find the answers to my questions, it is obvious to me that I am here to serve God and God’s people.  He has given me so many gifts, abilities and talents to share with others.  And what I have to offer are things that so many other people need.  I’m sure you are the same way.  We each have unique gifts and I think it’s our purpose to share those gifts with others.

This video is a great reminder of what we are here to do.  Take a look.

Maybe you are thinking about building an online business, but don’t know what kind of business it would be.  Think about what it is that drives you.  What’s your passion?  What would you do, even if you didn’t get paid for it?  You can build a business based on that.  There’s always people looking for what you have.  What is your unique gift that you could share with the world?

Don’t you just love free stuff?  I sure do, so I thought I would start sharing the free tools I find with you every Friday.  Is that Ok with you?

Today is the last day to take advantage of my friend and fellow-blogger, Michelle Schaeffer’s free offer to get any one of her free online business reports just for completing a very short survey.  I just completed the survey and it took me less than 5 minutes! Then I got to select one of Michelle’s products for free and I got a report that is showing me more ways to drive traffic to my website.

Here’s the link for the survey – http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/TKQGPMF

Basically, you will be helping Michelle develop new programs and products that will help all of us in our business and for taking the time to complete the survey, she is giving you one of her valuable reports.  So get over there today, because tomorrow will be too late!

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/TKQGPMF

If you are trying to run an online business, you will find that the longer you are in business, the more often you will need resources that can make your life easier. And of course, online security resources should be at the top of your list. Are you consistently setting up new profiles in social media sites and struggling to remember all your passwords?  How about filling out forms, applications, surveys, or other forms online, it can become very time-consuming.   And it’s not a wise idea to keep the same password for all your sites. There is a solution to all of your problems. It’s called Roboform.

Roboform is a piece of software that you can download and install on your computer which allows you to keep your passwords safe, and stores the information you need for online forms. Once you have this installed, completing online forms will be a breeze! Each time you need to fill out your name, address, etc., it will fill in the information for you with a simple click of the mouse.  While it may take some time initially filling in all the information, setting your passwords and online information for safety is well worth the time that will be saved from your busy schedule.

There are many reasons you may find beneficial from the features offered in this software such as

• Safely manage all your passwords in one secure location
• Help to generate hacker-proof passwords
  
• Prevent Identity Theft
• Save you time
• Super easy to download and use

There are also versions of Roboform for iPhone, Android and different Internet browsers like Chrome and Firefox.  So if you are looking for a way to ensure your online security, this might be a system for you.  There’s a 30-day free trial available, so give it a try!