Shakespearean Travel Decisions.

Whether 'tis nobler for the bank accounts of travel businesses to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous payments for directory listings and click fees or to take all of the free services offered by TopTravelSites.com and TheTopTravelClub.com...to be smarter in this web-world or not to be...that is the question.

Once more into internet marketing, dear friends, once more. Close the wall on expensive and ineffective directories. Nothing so becomes your marketing efforts as our modest but effective travel club... Follow your senses with regard to your fiscal expenditures, and upon this charge into offering net prices to our members and visitors when they handle their own bookings directly with you. Cry 'What a concept, Global promotion, and No costs!'

To be or not to be listed at TheTopTravelClub...that is not a question...that is a KISS for your advertising, marketing and promotion...Keeping It Super Simple!

This is not an advertisement, as we do not sell anything and never charge anything to any travel business anywhere in the world...this should be considered as a 'Public Service Announcement' for the global travel trade. If you know someone in the travel trade either as friends, clients or you have travelled or stayed with them and would like to see them on our site...from the smallest b&b or day tour operator to the grandest lodge or international tour operator...we will offer all of them any of our services at no cost when they join our direct booking program using our innovative TopTravelVouchers... help them out by telling them of our 'never charge' services and you can contribute in a small way to economic recovery and support of many small businesses everywhere...travellers spend everywhere... it is now your call to the global stage.

Tony Humphrey, tony@thetoptravelclub.com. www.TheTopTravelClub.com

Psst!...wanna free membership?...this is a clue...are you Single, Happy, Interested or do you know anyone who is Single, Happy, Interested? Apologies to WS.

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Over 300 Travel Businesses banned...

Has this subject garnered your attention? According to the song - "bad news travels like wildfire and good news travels slow."

Over 300 travel business operators offering travel selections in over 80 countries have been banned from buying any of the internet advertising, marketing and promotion services available from TheTopTravelClub.com, TopTravelSites.com and LastMinuteDirect.net.

All of these businesses have only been able to list and link their services at the three websites if they agree not to pay anything for the internet marketing services and direct links to their own websites, ergo...nothing is being sold by this email or on the websites to any travel business anywhere in the world.

These global travel businesses that want to be successful internet marketers are now encouraging consumer direct bookings from members and visitors by offering special direct prices to the club members and to visitors using the innovative TopTravelVoucher program.

Members of The Club have access to 10's of 1000's of TopTravelVouchers for accommodations, airport transfers, adventures and specialty tours with travel insurance savings of up to 40% on retail prices. All vouchers are free of charge to members. A family membership at $99usd allows unlimited use of the vouchers. Often, if a member only uses the direct travel insurance rates they can easily recover their annual membership dues with one trip.

The Club does not sell travel or make reservations for members...they have to handle their own arrangements directly with our listed travel providers.

If you operate any type of travel-related business and have a website, you can also get your services listed and linked at these websites but if you insist on paying for the services you will be refused access to the members and visitors.

You can go to the front page of TheTopTravelClub and make your own assessment of how you may be able to improve your own internet marketing with your own direct links by checking out some of the current clients...select by destination or activity category, or if you want to see all of them...simply scroll to the bottom of the page for a randomly listed online brochure.

To join the program...click on 'add site info' at the top of the front page and create your own placement...you will be contacted to approve the links...and then you will be up and running and you will never be asked to pay anything.

The Club does not earn any advertising, affiliate or click fees for any internet marketing services... 100% of savings go back to members.

If you really don't believe this, you can contact us or check out www.TheTopTravelClub.com / www.TopTravelSites.com

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ONLINE BUSINESS NETWORKS (OBN's)
by: Anthony Francis

In the years before Online Business Networks (OBN's) existed, most of the efforts used by small to medium sized businesses to get their marketing messages 'out there' required a lot of dosh attached to a lot of risk of low return.

We used agencies for advertising, pr, marketing, local newspapers, national newspapers, local TV & radio, national TV & radio, magazines, billboards, flyers, direct mail, inserts, email campaigns, ezines, SEO (search engine optimization), SEM (search engine marketing), article submissions, door-knocking and so on and so forth. ( author's note: I've tried all of the them).

Thus, these business operators have always had a very small chance of ever getting found by the requisite amount of real buyers at the right price for the promotion of their services.

Today we have some amazing opportunities with Online Business Networks such as Linked In, Bttradespace, Talkbiz, Startupbiz, Ecademy, Nuworld, et al.

Linked In for example, has over 200,000 groups and over 30,000,000 'networkers' and there are a few other similar OBN's with healthy numbers or new sites such as Bttradespace with great potential for small to medium sized businesses.

Today, entrepreneurs and any business of any size can join a selection of relevant OBN groups and clubs and harness the potential power and reach of these networks for their own businesses.

Most OBN's offer a free membership with options to upgrade to some form of premium status but before you pay them, try them out to see if their networks and networkers are interested in helping you.

Once you have joined a relevant OBN group there is no need to send your message to all of the individual members in the group but simply send a group or club message using the discussion features available. In the past this would be an expensive exercise in buying advertising space or sending press releases.

These discussions give other members of the group an opportunity to comment and contact you and you can also assess how many of your posts are being read or ignored. Some OBN's seem to have lots of discussion topics with very few follow-up comments. If this happens to you, simply do not waste time in further discussion activity but stay with the other groups that are taking an interest in your messages.

If you have selected a professional group of like-minded business operators you will hopefully receive some positive feedback and pro-active critique of your discussion, business promotion or blatant commercial. Sometimes you may get a cryptic reply but just eliminate the negative and go forward and network again and again in different groups and clubs. You will find groups that will welcome your commercial and others that will not. Quit the latter or do not send any more commercial messages for discussions.

For businesses that operate on an international scale this new networking force can save a considerable amount from your budget for Advertising, Marketing, Promotion and Sales. BN (Before Networking) we had to try and try again using expensive methods that often did not produce enough business for us. With networking it is just your own time and creativity that is your cost factor but please remember that the time spent by other networkers on your behalf, which is their cost factor.

Think of an OBN as a pyramid. From the top down it consists of many other networkers who know other networkers and who can help and may help you. If they truly want to help each other become more successful and contribute to the health of their local and national business communities they will offer positive and pro-active feedback to your messages. If not, move out and on.

Be sure to select groups and clubs that welcome commercial business messages and discussions. Stay away from the sites that merely want to chat or socialize or build huge numbers of contacts for the ‘sake of contacting.' Do the biz and do it at low cost but remember to reciprocate by helping others achieve online networking success.

With the appropriate networks even the smallest online business can operate on a global basis. However, if you do not want or need to operate globally you should try and select a group nearer to your own requirements and locale that may even offer local meetings and social functions.

As an example of OB Networking and because it needs to spread its message to every corner of every country, one online business, TopTravelSites.com, has begun networking with a number of OBN's. It is requesting help by asking networkers to inform or contact anyone that they know in the travel industry that might want to get more domestic and international website promotion at no cost.

Although in the early stage of this new way to ‘spread the word' to the global stage the company could never contemplate the potential reach in the old BN world because of the costs of public relations, advertising, marketing and promotion.

Networking requires individual networkers in networks to actively network on behalf of other networkers who may, at a later date, require another networking network to network – that's business networking for networkers folks!

Networks and Networkers have an opportunity to be valuable contributors to economic recovery by promoting local businesses and getting involved in global communications that were once only available to major corporations.

When you start networking your messages you may detect the occasional negative aura such as 'why should I help you to make a profit?' Get used to it and move on to other networks and networkers where 'profit' is not a dirty word. Work with those who see the benefits and synergy of cooperation and the opportunity to help other business networkers.

Help someone today and you may get help tomorrow because, "If Business Networkers in Networks do not Network with other Networkers in other Networks, what is the point of Networks or trying to Network with Networks and Networkers". A little humour (or humor) to close this article. Try and say it out loud.

A follow-up article will be written after testing the effectiveness of a few Online Business Networks for their acceptance and usefulness of commercial business networking.

Club Marketing Team,
www.toptravelsites.com

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