There is a battle in Call Centers. The teams are Quality vs. Quantity; two performance factors that don’t seem to get along.

• Representative Super Speedy says, “I’ve taken more calls than anyone on the team today. My average handle time is the lowest on the floor.”

Coach Level Head breaks it down for him, “But your quality scores are below everyone else on your team.”

• Representative Detailed Dan says, “My quality scores are top notch. I give every one of my customers the detailed attention they deserve.”

Coach Level Head breaks it down again, “Your Average Handle time is through the roof, and there are customers waiting in queue for attention to their needs.

Where is the happy medium? True quality means being effective and efficient; meeting the customer’s needs fully in a reasonable amount of time.

As a call center supervisor in a Customer Service department I managed a team of 20 representatives. Like many teams there were “top performers” or super stars, “middle of the road performers” or most of the team and “low performers” or the folks that needed help to the middle of the road. My goal was to work with everyone to bring them up to the next level and ensure quality and efficiency as a group.

I remember one team member who fell into the low performer category. She was very detailed, very good with customers and her quality scores were outstanding. So, what put her in the low performer category? The amount of time she spent on each call. In one work day she would complete only half the number of calls completed by her team members. Her average handle time was off the charts. We had to work on this as soon as possible.

I coached her on several occasions and we found ways for her to cut time off of her calls. She did more typing while she talked to the customer; she learned the system more thoroughly so she could offer the answers to the customer’s billing questions. Still her efficiency was not there. So, we continued the coaching.

Her argument was that her quality scores were so high that the quantity should not matter. She would receive 95% to 100% on each monitoring score. She was providing the customer with a quality interaction. They would go away feeling good about the company and the services they purchased. So, why did it matter if she took a long time talking with each customer? This discussion changed my explanation of quality and quantity forever. I explained to her (and everyone else, on every team I ever coached going forward) that Quantity is not a separate goal from Quality.

Quantity is actually efficiency, and efficiency is part of Quality. Instead of focusing on the number of calls we took in a day, we must talk about this performance goal in terms of how efficiently we took those calls. Did we use the time we had with them appropriately? We can not say that we offered the customer a Quality Interaction if we kept them on the phone for 25 minutes trying to solve their issue. On each call we owe the customer courtesy, information, honesty, answers and EFFICIENCY. A customer who received the answer they called looking for in 3 to 4 minutes will be happier than one who reaches their answer after 10 minutes.

In addition to the individual call, the time one representative spends on a call with one customer can also affect the perspective of the customer who is waiting in queue. I’m not suggesting that team members rush through calls to answer the next, but it is important to be aware of the impact of the time you spend on each call. The more efficient you are on each call, the more effective the department will be as a whole.

We ensure the efficiency part of Quality by being prepared for each call. Preparation includes knowing the tools and systems we use to answer the customer’s needs, being up to date on new products, services or issues the customers may be calling about, and having our best Customer Service attitude ready to talk to each customer.

All this has become my Quality message. I have been known to pull up a soap box in the break room and spread this good word. Quality is built on quantity or efficiency. Offer clear, helpful, efficient customer interactions. My team learned it and improved in each one of their performance goals.

Let the Quality vs. Quantity battle end. Your customers will thank you.

About the Author

Jenny Kerwin is a contributing writer for Interactive Quality Solutions. She experience in training and leadership development positions. If you are interested in reading more of Jenny’s articles visit: http://www.callcentercafe.com and http://www.righttolead.com For details on creating a performance management process for your team visit: http://accountabilityprocess.righttolead.com/

When Google launched their referral buttons, Darren over at Problogger.net raised a pretty interesting point. He speculated on whether Google’s link-up with Firefox marked the start of a range of affiliate products for publishers that Google were planning to roll out.

Now that the buttons have been around for a while, I have to say that I’d be pretty surprised if Google decided to try out any more.

I’m not aware of anyone making any serious money out of them. The ad units are great. The link units can do pretty well. The image ads not so much. And the referral buttons might buy someone a small coffee once a month… provided they have an audience which has never heard of Firefox.

The real problem with the referral buttons we were offered was that they just weren’t very competitive. There’s a whole range of different affiliate programs that we can sign up to online and the payment terms that Google was offering just didn’t beat what was out there — a dollar for a download? One hundred dollars when someone you’ve signed up for AdSense breaks a century? You’ll probably do better sending people to some dating site or pushing books at Amazon.

The buttons don’t do any harm. But I don’t think anyone really expects them to do a great deal of good either.

The fact that we haven’t seen any additions to these programs suggests that Google has picked up the message that affiliate programs just aren’t their strong points. In fact, I don’t think AdSense has produced anything yet that beats the basic ad unit. That was a killer idea… and no one’s beaten it yet. We’ve had a few false starts when companies have brought out some attractive new products but the bottom line is that it’s still the good old AdSense ad unit that’s keeping those fat checks coming in.

That doesn’t mean that Google shouldn’t be looking for new ways to make us all a little richer. But they need to be original if they’re going to make it work, and do something that no one else has done.

Or they can just focus on rolling out new formats and adjusting the Smart Pricing so that my prices go up. I’d be happier if they just did that than offer more affiliate buttons.

Joel Comm is The Internet Revenue Expert. Online for over 20 years, Joel teaches people how to make money in the digital age. The recognized authority on Google AdSense, Joel teaches how to multiply your AdSense income at The AdSense Code. To ask Joel Comm a question about making money online, visit http://www.AskJoelComm.com Joel invites you to download a free copy of The Internet Money Tree at http://www.internetmoneytree.net

If you have just put up a website, you probably all ready have heard words like: keywords, Google Adwords, GoogleAdsense, SEO. Adwords, Adsense, SEO have one thing in common -
Keywords. How important are keywords? Very Important.

Google Adwords

Adwords, be it through Google, Miva, or any pay-per-click search engines, you need keywords. With Adwords, you create a three-line ad - 25 word title, with two 35 word lines of ad copy - then you create your keywords. To get the hits, you have to brainstorm for different keywords, that are different but relevant to your target audience. Sound easy? It’s not. It takes time, patience, constant tweaking, and hoping that the product you are selling is not already saturated — to much competition, makes it a little more difficult for the novice to make a profit.

Google Adsense

Google Adsense is an advertising program created by Google, and which is beginning to be explored by other search engines, such as Yahoo and MSN - that allows you to put targeted ads on your
website. If someone clicks on the ad, you earn a small amount of money. These ads are keyword driven and are relevant to your webpage or website.

Sounds simple? Well, not really. There is more too it than just putting an ad on your website and expecting someone to click on it. What’s involved? Let’s see - color, position, style, to name just a few.

SEO

Search engine optimization - this for me has been a time-consuming process - since I am still learning. SEO is keyword driven - the search engines pull the keywords from your web copy - not, to my surprise, from the meta keywords tag. Granted, I still use the meta keywords tag, but maybe in the near future, I will slowly eliminate the tag from my webpages…
The search engines do, however, pull information from Meta Description, Meta Title, and the content of your webpages. Thus, content does reign supreme.

Since content reigns supreme, each page should contain useful content and most importantly, your most relevant keywords that you want to emphasize. Secondly, it is best to try and base your keywords around a central theme. I have found that when the keywords diverts away from the main theme - that sends a red flag to search engines. So, if you want to look at your keywords and the density of the keywords on your webpage or webpages - You can get a quick rundown at:
http://www.ranks.nl/tools/spider.html . It’s a free tool, and very helpful.

To conclude, keywords is one of the main ingredients that leads people to your website, product, service and/or ad. …AND, keywords based around your quality content will help with your
positioning on your website.

Vickie J Scanlon has a BBA degree in Administrative Management and Marketing. Visit her site at: http://www.myaffiliateplace.biz for free tools, articles related to affiliate marketing, ebooks, how to info, affiliate opportunities - all aimed toward the affiliate marketer and the marketing process.

Almost every day I face one burning question. It hits me via email, blog or forum post, phone, and even face-to-face. I hear it from friends, co-workers, readers, customers, students and even strangers.

What do you really need to start an internet business and how much will it cost?

So in answer to that question I developed my own 10-step process to start an ebusiness on a shoestring:

1. Find Your Niche

2. Name Your Ebusiness and Make It Stick

3. Locate the Host with the Most

4. Carve Out Your Internet Territory

5. Plug in the Cash Machines

6. Write Your Heart and Soul

7. Create An Article Marketing Campaign

8. Spread the Word Near and Far

9. Put Your Business On Autopilot

10. Set Up The Till

If you’d like to know more about the 10 steps you can sign up for our free tutorial available at AnswersAboutDoingBusinessOnline.com/shoestring.php . You will receive a step a day for over 10 days, but if you can’t wait to get started you should buy our ebook “How To Start Your Own Ebusiness On A Shoestring” which includes the full version of each of the 10 steps plus “Why Starting Your Ebusiness With Too Much Money Can Be A Bad Thing”, “Tally The Cost”, and “Recommended Resources”. Plus you’ll receive your ebook within minutes of placing your order so you can start on the road to running your own successful ebusiness today! Just visit: AnswersAboutDoingBusinessOnline.com/shoestringebook.php .

Submitted with Article Distributor.

Looking to start a home based business online for some extra $Cash$ and are looking for ideas on How-To get started as quickly as possible with as little or NO start up costs?

Well… let me share with you my idea on how ‘Anyone’ can get started online within the next 24 hours without a website or product of their own.

Are you ready?

The quickest way ‘Anyone’ can get started online is by becoming an - Affiliate Marketer.

What is a Affiliate Marketer you ask? The answers simple. You simply market others peoples products for a cut(usually between 30-70% commission on every sale made by you).

That’s as easy as a definition gets, so I hope you get the picture.

Now that you understand what the quickest way to get started online is its now time for me to explain to you the “TOP 5 Reasons WHY” this is the answer.

Reason #1. NO Domain Costs.

The beautiful thing about being an affiliate is they supply you with a unique Domain with your affiliate ID for you to promote. Though some affiliate domains are quite ugly, the fact remains that you don’t have to worry about paying to register any domains to get started with your promotions.

There are advanced affiliate marketing techniques using domains but I won’t get into that here.

Reason #2. NO Hosting Costs.

By being an affiliate you don’t have to worry about web hosting because once you sign up as an affiliate you get your own unique URL which simply redirects your potential customer to the main affiliate website.

Again there are advanced affiliate marketing techniques that require hosting but that’s a whole other article in itself.

Reason #3. NO Product to worry about creating.

Once again the advantage to being an affiliate is that you don’t have to worry about creating your own product. That’s why you became an affiliate in the first place.

Reason #4. NO Website or Salesletter to create.

Creating a profitable Website and Salesletter can be quite the costly task especially when it comes to your salesletter.

By being a affiliate you can choose a good converting affiliate product and not have to worry about all the Trial and Error and testing involved when setting up a direct response website.

Reason #5. NO Refunds to deal with.

This again is another benefit to being an affiliate and that is you don’t have to worry about dealing with any refunds from customers who are unhappy with their purchase.

The less headaches you have to worry about the better.

Well, that’s it. Those are my “TOP 5 Reasons WHY”.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying don’t start your own website, I’m simply sharing with you the quickest way to get started online.

You definitely will want to set up your own website once you feel comfortable with what you want to do online as your own business.

Affiliate marketing is just a EASY way to get in the game and see how things are done online.

If you really want to see how the affiliate marketing Pro’s do it online then I have a special Free report I’d like you to have that will show you a simple ‘7 Step Formula’ for getting started.

http://www.internetwondersezine.com/7-step-formula.html
(Right click this link and select ‘Save Target As’ to download)

Well, I truly hope you see the benefits to being an affiliate marketer and see my point as to WHY getting started online as an affiliate marketer is the most cost effective and cautious way to start your online home based business.

Cory Threlfall is the Editor and Publisher of a online
webmaster publication called… The Internet Wonders eZine,
where you’ll receive ‘Daily’ via the Web or RSS syndication
Expert Articles, Product Reviews, HOT Tips, and More on how
to Promote and Build your business online. Go NOW to ==>
http://www.internetwondersezine.com

Copyright 2006 Tale Chaser Publishing, Inc.

Virtual real estate is becoming more and more lucrative as the
“overnight successes” (spam sites) are disappearing due to
search engines “sand boxing” all new sites and de-listing
spammers.

Gone forever are the days where anyone with moderate experience
could come into a market and dominate it within a month or two
in the search engines. Since Google and other engines no longer
reward new sites of any kind with immediate results, only the
mature, savvy e-real estate investor will win the day in 2006.

Smart niche site network publishers have been gearing up for
2006 with solid, well-thought-out site designs, content
strategies, and niche research to place content rich sites up
with no other goal than to let them grow and season into very
valuable properties in 6-8 months time.

Having a site entrenched in the search engines means you have
been around for at least 3 months - and that is stretching it.
Rewards are coming to those who wait patiently. And only to
those content site publishers who build real sites, not the
spammy sites we were all waiting anxiously to disappear from the
engines last year.

Finally, content, which has been referred to as “King” for
years, (but treated in reality like a cheap whore until
recently) is truly the focus of smart investors looking to build
a network of sites on special niches to attract lucrative
advertising and product sales revenue.

Many virtual investors and developers who have built now popular
sites are selling their networks for millions today.

And this is the real “out.” Smart virtual real estate investors
not only build to profit in the short term, but are building
popular sites and networks of sites with an eye to cash out big
in the coming year.

All it really takes is good research, creativity in isolating a
market, and most of all - patience. The longer you let your
network grow and season and the more popular you make it with
strong promotion tactics, the more it is worth to investors who
are looking for any site network that moves traffic.

The second level of virtual real estate investing is buying up
networks of content sites and focusing the traffic on profitable
product lines, affiliate product sales, services of all kinds,
and for advertising revenue.

Investors who sell traffic via banner advertising, pay per
click, and any number of text linking schemes always seem to
have a higher demand for ad space than traffic supply. This will
continue to be the case in the coming years and smart niche site
publishers are banking on the advertising industry’s insatiable
appetite for good targeted traffic.

Once people get over the Adsense boom and bust period of 2005,
they will start to realize that Adsense is merely “funded
research” and the big game is the virtual properties themselves.

Biggest mistake in 2006?

Spam sites! Once they are dropped out of the engines, and they
all have been or will be soon, they are totally valueless.
Complete and utter failures from the domain name to the time and
money poured into them.

Yet publishers who go the extra mile and exercise a modicum of
respect for their industry are still floating the wave of
profits by creating real sites.

Think about it this way: A publisher who starts from nothing
today and builds one rich content site per week in 2006 is going
to have about 52 sites this time next year.

With a good marketing plan for each site which includes no SEO
tricks and nothing even “grey hat” in the mix, she should have
the ability to isolate 10 sites in her network worth spending
more time on than the others. This is given that the revenue
model for each of the 10 sites is producing at least $10 per day.

Turning those 10 sites into $30 a day earners can pluck up over
$100,000.00 in revenue in a year’s time! With good research on
profitable niches to provide with good content, and a simple but
solid marketing plan for each site, anyone with the proper
training and patience can get into the game.

Now the publisher in the above example is pulling in $300 per
day with just 10 sites. Last year it took upwards of 100 or more
spam sites to do the same thing with no hope it would continue
from day to day depending on when the engines caught up with
them and de-listed them.

The publisher in the above example can keep that money rolling
in indefinitely without fear because her 10 sites are perfect
content sites that search engines love. No tricks and no spam
software involved.

A publisher can then go on to find the next 10 winners in their
network or continue to focus on the current 10 with an eye on
drastically improving one or all of the sites’ profit margins
with ramped up marketing and content development.

Now comes the great part. A publisher who finds their 10 winners
and develops them into sites that average 300-500 visitors per
day each now has a network of sites pulling in 3000-5000
eyeballs each and every day.

Depending on the markets served with the 10 winners, a site
network like this, which has proven revenue and traffic, can
easily value from $150,000.00 and up these days.

Why? Because of the traffic, proven profits, and the quality of
the sites themselves. This is something that was totally
forgotten in the Adsense spam site days. The guys who built 5000
sites with no more value than a single, traffic-less affiliate
casino site have lost everything they worked for. Once they were
out of the engines, they were out of business.

And they have nothing to sell. No assets. No content means no
value. No search engine rankings means no serious traffic and no
revenue.

But the publisher who built just 10 content sites last year that
are now doing at least $30 each per day is sitting on not only
$109,500.00 gross yearly revenue, but also a network worth far
more than that which they can sell to rabid investors looking
for just such a deal to land in their lap each and every day.

Again, all it takes is knowing the niche publishing industry and
the tactics for creating and marketing content rich niche sites
and a little patience.

This is what the market wants. All you have to do is give it the
elbow grease it deserves to reap massive profits down the
relatively short road to success.

Are you frustrated with your affiliate programs?

I used to be. Very frustrated! One day, in sheerdesperation, I wrote to one of my affiliateprograms and suggested that the market was nowsaturated with their product - it was no longerpossible to sell it.

The next day I received a very nice reply. “TheInternet is HUGE”, they said. “We predict it willbe five years before the market is saturated withour product. And long before that, we will haveintroduced our next product.” They were right, ofcourse. The problem was not with the market (theInternet is huge). Nor was the problem with theirproduct. The problem was in the way I waspresenting it.

Since then, my affiliate sales have soared. Why?Because I learnt a few secrets to winning theaffiliate game. Here they are:

1. Choose affiliate programs that relate veryclosely to the theme of your website. Let me giveyou an example. Of the three affiliate products Isell from my web site, the one that does best bya long way is an eBook that shows people how togenerate free Ezine advertising. Why does it doso well? Because my website is a directory ofezines and most of my visitors are alreadyinterested in Ezine Advertising before they evenarrive at my website - I don’t have to persuadethem very much.

2. Buy the product yourself! Research acrossdozens of affiliate programs shows that at least70% of sales in any affiliate program are made bythe small percentage of affiliates who actuallybuy the product they’re selling. It makes sensedoesn’t it (how can you recommend somethingyou’ve never used)?

3. Banners - they don’t work anymore, and someexperts believe banners will actually damage youraffiliate sales.

4. Personal recommendation. The human factor isvery important on the Internet - people want toknow that someone else has bought the product andthat it worked for them. But to write aconvincing personal recommendation, you’ll haveto buy, read and use the product you’re selling.

5. ‘Over-selling’ - this is the most commonmistake of affiliates. Keep in mind that all youneed to do to succeed with affiliate programs isto get your potential customer to click throughto the affiliate website in an ‘open-to-buy’mindset. If the affiliate program is good, theaffiliate website will make the sale. So don’ttry to sell the product from your website - justaim to get a click on your affiliate link.

5. Standard Ads. When you join an affiliateprogram, you’ll probably be given some standardads to use. Don’t use them! Why? Because yourpotential customer has probably seen those exactsame ads on dozens of websites and in dozens ofEzines. And if that standard ad hasn’t led themto buy the product so far, it probably won’t now.Something new and original is required.

6. Back-end sales. Once you’re succeeding in oneaffiliate program, join another program thatoffers a related product and use the techniquethat marketers call ‘back-end’ sales. It’s a wellknown fact that people are much more likely tobuy from someone they have already bought from.So when someone makes a purchase from youraffiliate link, send them a nice follow-upletter. At the end of the letter, tell them aboutyour other affiliate product and how it can helpthem.

————————————————————
Michael Southon has been writing for the Internet for over 3
years. He has shown hundreds of webmasters how to use this
simple technique to build a successful online business. Click
here to find out more: http://ezine-writer.com/
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