NetBiz.com.com, based in Portland, Oregon, is giving away $1000 in free search engine advertising to one  small business.  All you have to do is ask us your Internet marketing questions! Small business owner, entrepreneur, freelancer, or solopreneur. Regardless of what you call yourself, you’re busy managing your business and you don’t have time to maintain [...]

Most Sparkplugging readers are…well, small.  Call it consultant, micro-business, or whatever you like.  Freelancers are small businesses that can benefit from a very small amount of business.  Today I’d like to show you how to snag some highly targeted web traffic that will get you some great business – and it’s something you should be [...]

Someone once said, “all search is local.”  In most cases, whenever someone goes online to look for something, they are looking for a local service or product from a company that they (hopefully)  recognize.  To that end, Google has created the Local Business Directory.  You’ve probably seen in action.  Do a search for a service [...]

My wife now knows not to ask me “Have you seen that web site?” since my response the majority of the time is usually similar to “It’s terrible”. Here’s my problem: I started coding HTML right around the same time it became a standard. I gamed Google successfully when they were just starting out (I’ve [...]

Bing has been all over the news since Microsoft announced its launch last week.  They’ve also done quite the commercial blitz.  Rumor has it that Microsoft has earmarked more than $80 Million for marketing their new search engine. As a small business owner or freelancer, why should you care? That’s a pretty tough question. Google [...]

There are millions of small and growing businesses around the world. Only 1/3 of them are on the web. The rest believe that it’s too expensive or it’s too difficult to get online. Every business must have their own web presence to compete in todays economy. A website is simply an electronic brochure that helps your [...]

There are quite a few ways to gain new traffic to your website. Google Pay Per Click or PPC is one of the fastest ways to gain immediate targeted traffic for your site. It’s also the fastest way to drain your bank account if you don’t set it up correctly. Don’t make that mistake. When [...]