How many of you made as much money as you wanted to last year? Don't be shy; raise your hands. Hmm, I don't see too many hands out there. What would you say is the cause of this gap between your goals and your earnings?

While you could certainly name the economy or inadequate marketing as the culprit, I'd like to suggest a third alternative. It may be the constraints of the billable hours model that keep you from your financial goals.

Internet is a terrific resource containing billions of web pages dedicated to thousands of topics. Since the amount of information available on the Internet is so vast and mind baffling you may feel lost.

Selling your services to corporations is an attractive proposition. The contracts are larger than with small businesses and individuals, and often longer-term. There's the possibility of repeat business worth many billable hours at respectable rates.

But the best clients are not always the easiest to get. If you don't grasp the realities of the corporate environment, you may sabotage even a hot lead. Here are five important keys to working with the corporate buyer.

Do you know how your web site fits into the overall marketing strategy for your business? Do you have a strategy for your web site as a marketing tool? If you're like many entrepreneurs I speak with, you probably don't.

All over the world, small business owners are spending thousands of dollars on building and maintaining web sites without being able to answer one big question: What do you want your web site to do?

In many ways, the in-game economy is similar to a real world economy - goods and services are traded to mutual advantage and are mediated in currencies(gold,platinum,credit,etc.).

An online broker, who goes by the screen name Rolala, was not a fan of online games until his 15-year-old son became interested in Final Fantasy XI(FFXI).He then noticed that a large number of gils(currencies used in FFXI) were for sale on eBay.

I often wonder how the practice began of pretending to be someone else in order to market your business. You know what I'm talking about -- it's the marketing face, the selling voice, that you often put on in order to attend a networking event or make a sales call. Who taught you to do that?

A few years ago, Bruce Smith experienced a slowdown in his Salt Lake City-based travel agency. Airlines had eliminated his sales commissions. The recession and recent terrorist attacks also took a toll. And because the travel industry was ultra-competitive, he knew he had to find ways to distinguish his company from thousands of other travel agencies.

A manufacturer complains. His customers rarely return the "customer satisfaction survey".

A leading resort gets back just 30% of the "comment cards" left for guests inside their rooms.

One government agency had a response rate of only 6% when they sent out an 11 page survey.

What's going on here? Why is the response rate so poor? Why don't customers complete and return your "customer satisfaction surveys"?

When things go wrong, customers get upset. Sometimes they blow up in anger. Here are five steps to sanity when your customer is ready to "explode"!

Loyal Relationships of the Future... are Built by Your Actions Today!

What makes a company successful over the long, long term? What characterises the service relationship between companies and customers who do business together for decades, even centuries? How can your company stay close to your customers even as times change, technologies change and expectations keep steadily rising?