Tools for Internet Marketing have been rising to popularity these days because of cost-effectiveness and the possibility of measuring increase in profits and sales. Now, I am going to give you how to maximize website promotion and earn big money from your website through Ppc Online Advertising along with ppc bid management system.

READ THIS: If you are truly serious about Ppc Online Advertising. You’ll discover the secrets of how to build highly profitable ppc advertising campaigns here.

Pay Per Click Advertising (or called Ppc Online Advertising) is a means to advertise business through the use of keywords/phrases in the search engines. The advertiser is required to only pay for each click that sends a visitor to his website. Search engines such as Overture, Google Adwords, Search Yahoo and Miva are just some examples of search engines. They offer top positions among the sponsored listings for particular keywords/phrases you choose. The idea for bidding is you have to buy/bid on keywords/phrases relevant to your business. The highest bidder gets to be on the top of the search result listing and the second highest bidder, of course, gets the next top listing and so on. Every time a visitor clicks on your website, you will have to pay the same amount that you bid on that particular keyword.

Ppc Online Advertising can be very costly, time consuming and sometimes not worthy. But if you know how to go about the step by step procedures, Ppc Online Advertising is a welcome change to traditional advertising.

If you do your searches for products, articles and auctions in the net, you usually type in a keyword or a set of phrase to guide you in your search. Either you use Google or Yahoo! Search Marketing depending on where you are most comfortable at and where you usually get the best results. As soon as you key in the search button, immediately a long list of keywords or phrase will be displayed containing the keywords you key in. The first or the top link that you saw is most likely the one who bids the highest for that keyword you type. In this way, businessmen will produce the desired results; they get to be advertised, at the same time, saving and spending only for the clicks they need that might translate to potential sales.

The right way to start Ppc bid management system is to identify first the maximum cost per click (CPC) you are willing to pay for given keyword phrases. CPC varies from time and even search engine to search engine too. Maximum CPC can be measured by averaging the current costs of bids (bids range from $0.25 to $5). Average of these bids is to be used as the maximum CPC to begin with. As your ad campaign progresses, the actual conversion rate (visitors turning to potential buyers/sales) will be determined and you may have to adjust your CPC (bidding rate) accordingly.

When you start to bid, see to it that you adopt different bidding strategies for various search engines. Search engines have their own Ppc Online Advertising systems that require different approaches. It is also worthy to identify different bids for the same keyword phrases in various search engines.

Additionally, it is wiser not to bid for the top spot (or general keyword phrases) for two reasons: 1) It is very expensive and impractical, and 2) Surfers usually try different search queries in various search engines before they settle on the right one that fits to what they are looking for. This hardly results to conversion. I highly recommend you to try to bid for the fifth spot instead and work your way up.

If you are now going steady on your Ppc Online Advertising biddings, it is time for you to develop your own bidding strategy accordingly. It is important for you to track down which sites bring the bulk of your traffic and identify the ranking of your paid ads. This will help your bidding strategy to be effective and you should also decide where you want your ad to be positioned. Usually your maximum CPC will limit your choices.

Bid gaps (e.g. $ 0.40, 0.39, bid gap, 0.20, 0.19, 0.18) occur when there is a significant price increase to move up one spot in the Ppc Online Advertising rankings. It is best if you take advantage of the bid gaps by filling them in so you can save up your cents to other bidding opportunities. Often there are keywords worthy of lesser bids to get the appropriate ranking on the list and produce a good number of clicks and higher conversion rate rather than bidding higher but having a poor conversion rate. You have to put in mind that overbidding too is not good but rather the best position for the most effective bid.

Using ppc bid management system in promoting your website will only be successful if you take time building many lists across many engines and studying the performance of every listing. In this approach, you can make the most value from what you spend in the bidding process. The key is to use the necessary precautions to stay ahead of the competition.
PPC Bid Management Systems

In ensuring best results, you may use ppc bid management systems. There are accepted and approved management tools that will help you in your bidding. They are categorized in two different types: 1) Web based (services by monthly subscription) and 2) PC based (purchased software)

Monitoring tools too may help in the tracking down of your keywords/phrases and search engines as to which among them often generate sales, overall and in relation to your cost per click. This is what you call return of investment (ROI) monitoring.

ROI value is the most significant factor for your success in Ppc Online Advertising. All you have to do in Ppc Online Advertising is to keep your eyes on ROI and try to maximize ROI as much as possible.

These ppc bid management systems may include additional functions that may not get from online marketing tools that are readily available. Other tools can monitor competitor’s bids, produce reports for different parties and offer the ability to interface with multiple Ppc Online Advertising engines. This is particularly helpful to those who manage more than a hundred keywords across several PPC engines to boost productivity and save time.

The ppc bid management system is ideal for the effective promotion of your home based internet marketing business online without the hassles of draining your financial keeping too much. It is now fast catching up as a means used in marketing your goods and services to reach to as many consumers as possible.

Final thoughts, many success stories show that ppc bid management system is one of the most effective and significant for your success in Ppc Online Advertising. All you have to do is to maximize your ROI with ppc bid management system & strategy. Without the proper ppc bid management system or strategy, it is difficult to earn big money in Ppc Online Advertising.

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Learn more about the internet marketing online advertising PPC search engine and start earning big money on the internet at home now. You’ll discover great articles, news, tips, techniques and secrets of how to build highly profitable ppc campaigns.

*Reprint Policy: Reprint in full with writer’s name, contact information, active links and brief bio.

All construction contractors and construction estimators use an estimating form. These forms contain all the necessary information to provide an accurate estimate. With an estimating form, there will be no forgotten information. All the information that is needed to provide an estimate is right in front of you, all you have to do is fill in all of the information. A complete estimating for should contain the following information;

· Unit cost of materials

· Amount of estimates

· Square and cubic foot estimates

· Unit price of estimates

· Assembly estimates

This information will assist you in putting a bid together to send to general contractors who will consider your services if your bid is within their budget. A bid form is another form that all construction contractors should have readily available. Often times, if the General contractor is interested in your bid, he or she will send you a contract form from their office for you to fill out. You will still use your bid or proposal for the numbers, however it will be transferred to the General Contractors letterhead. Standard operating procedure states that the following information be included on your proposal;

· Your company name, address, telephone number
· Contractor license number including expiration date

· Current date

· Job name and location

· The title of your scope of work

· A description of what your range of work includes, including material. If a joint check is mentioned, make sure you include it on your bid or proposal

The total of your proposal should always be written in words as well as numbers. It is important to include any type of payment arrangements that are made. Make sure that you sign the form, and print your name so that it can be read easily. Make sure that you restrict the number of days that your bid or proposal is good for. This will create a faster response time, and finally, make sure that there is a place for the General Contractor to sign providing he is in agreement with your bid or proposal.

There are many different contract-estimating forms available to meet the needs of any project. There are standards and guidelines that need to be followed by all contractors that have been developed by the American Society of Profession Estimators (ASPE) and the American Association of Cost Engineers (AACE). The forms that are provided allow the contractor to make adjustments to fit the project they are bidding on.

Construction bidding and estimating software is available on the market today, this software contains all of the information and necessary forms to create an accurate bid or proposal. It will contain Contracts, bid proposals as well as change orders for remodeling, new construction and Time sheets and Material jobs. It will also contain Process billing sheets, purchase orders for all materials needed, along with time and material invoices.

This is the fourth in a short series of articles from Learn to Write Proposals examining how to write a proposal.

If you compare sales people and project managers yu may conclude that you wouldn’t want your project managers going out selling and writing bids and you wouldn’t want your sales people running your biggest projects. That’s a huge generalisation and probably not fair to the many exceptions to the rule, however, writing sales documents is a different type of writing that many internally focused staff aren’t familiar with.

   

But the point is that quite often, sales people aren’t the best at planning and managing detail, especially when it relates to project plans and the like.There’s a good reason for this – they are often out on the road, visiting clients, managing relationships and don’t have time to micro-manage a complex development project…even if that project is a written proposal. Plus, dealing with the detail isn’t what drives sales people.

With the advent of proposal centres and bid team support in many organisations the onus has been taken off a lot of sales people when it comes to planning the detail of a bid, managing those who need to contribute to it and actually writing the business proposal. Where bid teams exist they often take over the project and the account manager becomes a contributor to the combined effort.

But what about in smaller organisations where there is no bid team? How do they manage the production of sales documents? Ideally you need someone to manage the project (of writing the proposal) and that person should have commercial awareness to do it. Look at the job advertisements for bid team managers and you’ll see some of the skills required.

So if you don’t have a bid team behind you, or you are managing a bid for the first time, what do you need to do?

Firstly, check all the requirements of the RFP or tender documentation – know exactly what you have to submit and when. Just like any project planning think about the goals and work backwards, considering all the project dependencies.If it’s a large bid with a lot of people working on it, then get some help off a project manager in putting a project plan together.

Learn to Write Proposals has a whole bid management toolkit to support the bid preparation. Our bid planner includes key things that you need to include in your bid planning including the Proposal Development Schedule. This requires some basic planning, such as:



Key Event

Start date / Finish date

Who is responsible?

Deliverable Status


The Bid Management Plan should pull in the relevant strategic overview from the capture planning document for this opportunity and look closer at each section of the proposal and allow you to allocate ow- nership of the different proposal sections. It should look at other areas too – it is there as a practical tool to help you be successful, so develop it, keep it updated and circulate it with updates to everyone involved. Other things that you should consider are:



Detail of each specific requirement: summarise or copy the requirement from the RFP

Your response to the requirement: How do you meet the requirement and add value in your solution. (Use strategy and win themes from the bid capture plan)

Documents: are there any other documents to read or to refer to?

Graphics: would your response benefit from graphics (the answer is yes, so make a list of the graphics you need and schedule time for them to be prepared)

Who?: Which individuals are responsible for drafting the relevant sections for the proposal?

When? What date is the response required?: update this if a draft has been completed and the individual is now working on the next version – it can be checked off when verified as finished



A common mistake is not allowing enough time at the end of the proposal for proper review. Anyone who has been involved in writing proposals has had the experience of the late night trying to get a proposal finished because it has to be handed in the next day. That might not be such a problem if your are making last minute changes to perfect the fourth draft, but if you are just trying to finish the first draft, the chances are you’re in trouble.

As England’s law of proposal writing states: “The chances of winning a proposal are directly in proportion to the number of hours between finishing it and the time it has to be submitted.”

There are some very good reasons why you should give yourself time for the proposal to be reviewed properly – and we will look them in a later article on quality reviewing a proposal. For now, just ensure that you give yourself plenty of time for this in your proposal schedule – I recommend at least four days and schedule the people you will need to review it for that time.

Lastly, when thinking about proposal planning, bear in mind those times when you have multiple proposals to prepare. It makes life harder and it means getting more people involved. Sometimes it may even require a decision that you can’t bid for some of the smaller, lower-probability opportunities. That’s when opportunity qualification and making bid/no-bid decisions really comes to the fore of your business development strategy.

Next…what information do I need to include when I write a business proposal.

For more proposal resources visit http://www.learntowriteproposals.com

And you thought it was expanseive to run for political office? Was! It’s now outrageous. The US presidential candidates are heading towards the $1,000,000,000.00 mark in campaign fundraising, shattering records as Wall Street and corporate America pump cash into the race for president. And if Michael Bloomberg has yet to enter the fray. If he decides to make a thrid-party race, the one billion will be the entry level!.

There’s a lot at stake in this years election cycle!

Corporations and wealthy individuals know it. And there’s a lot more money to throw around these days, or at least there was as of last year. A deep recession might put some hurt on the big givers but I doubt it will give them too much pause. The Barack Obama landslide in South Carolina proves that new people are coming out- getting involved.

And, the highly competitive field has forced corporate interests to generously spread their contributions to ensure continued good standing with potential future presidents. You need to have made a contribution to a winner and sicne who that was to be isn’t now who it looks might win. Hillary is on the run and Rudy has dropped out.

“This election can’t be compared to any other because it started so early with so much money right out of the box,” said Massie Ritsch, communications director at the Center for Responsive Politics, which analyses campaign finance data. “This was fuelled by the fact that this is the first open seat in 80 years and you had no single candidate who had the obvious advantage from day one.”
After months of campaigning, the field has now been narrowed to four serious candidates and new money now will come in for these four, well maybe three, and definitely two (both Democrats). Then we can move on to the general election and maybe a third-party bid or two.

Barack Obama, the Democratic senator from Illinois, said he raised $32,000,000.00 in January alone. Hillary Clinton, the New York senator and Mr Obama’s chief rival, said she raised $27m in the last three months of the year. And she will pick up the pace now for sure. Candidates had to file their full-year fundraising reports with the Federal Election Commission by Thursday.

Campaign finance groups will spend the weekend compiling industry-by-industry contribution totals. The figures are likely to show that the candidates raised well in excess of $500,000,000 for the year after netting a combined $420,000,000 through September. Soon we’ll know for sure.

In contrast to previous years, Democrats are solidly outraising Republicans, reflecting stronger enthusiasm for their candidates and some fatigue on the GOP side following eight years in control of the White House. John McCain, the Arizona senator and Republican frontrunner, raised $32m in the first nine months of last year, compared with $91m for Mrs Clinton and $80m for Mr Obama. Guess which party is in trouble!

Hang on to your wallets!

Bid Link Directories is the latest concept that helps to build text links and if you own a website it is the best way to improve web traffic. With the help of bid link directories the website owner can bid for his position in the listings. This has helped the web owners tremendously and has set a new wave in the world of web directory. However one needs to be careful enough to use web link directories as this technique will surely generate a huge mass of targeted visitors to your website. The traditional web directories were typical where the links were listed in fixed criteria like alphabetical order, listing date, Google rank page. Now that the traditional web directories have been modified by giving less consideration to one that are listed at the top of the current category, it has become easier for the new website owners to gain popularity and generate a good amount of web traffic. Almost all the paid traditional web directories display featured listings and they generally list ordinary links. Bid for position web directories to bid an amount for their listing. The highest bid amount is placed right at the top of the listing page and others follow in decreasing order. Bid link directories display listings in various categories like Shopping, Movie Rentals, Games, Business etc. or may be listed alphabetically. You will find the top 10 or 20 highest bids displayed on the homepage of the web directory and this is the place that immensely benefits any business. Obviously a web link from homepage directly will carry more PageRank and will be noticed by a lot of people rather that form the pages in the web directory. Mostly people wonder the benefits of bidding for a position web directory, well the two main benefits are: Firstly, a link from any other website to your website will be highly regarded by search engines and will be considered that your website is been voted or chosen by many. Also remember, better the PageRank of the website that links to your webpage, greater is the significance of the vote. And if your website has higher number of vote counts and quality web links, greater is your appearance in search engines results. Secondly, most of the visitors follow the links and come across your website, and this factor is beneficial in bid link directories as compared to traditional directories as bids with highest amounts have a better visibility. As already told, the highest bid gets the top position on the homepage or in the category chosen. Usually in the traditional web link directories, links are hidden under several ages in category and thus have a poor visibility, so it is smart to pay higher bid amounts to improve your visibility by rising to the top of the list either on the homepage or category list. Thus, in today’s tough competitive market conditions, one needs to improve his presence in the web world and generate the prospective customers to their web page and to get an effective business and earn good returns one must wisely choose bid link directories, which is the smartest technique to drive the targeted web traffic. You should also consider other techniques like traditional web directories, keyword search and articles directories along with this latest most effective technique to improve your web presence, Bid Link Directory.

Despite Chicago being considered the front-runner for the 2016 summer Olympics, the city of Tokyo in Japan is confident that they will secure the athletic spectacle. Their confidence and hopes are placed in making a bid for the ‘compact’ games; all the venues will be within a six mile radius. Athletes will be housed in the traditional village, composing of five high-rise buildings, and a 100,000 seat Stadium set on the Tokyo waterfront will be the highlight of the bid.

On Friday 14th September, one day after the deadline for submitting formal applications passed, the IOC announced that it had received applications from the cities of: Chicago, Baku (Azerbajan), Doha (Qatar), Madrid (Spain), Prague (Czech Republic), Rio de Janeiro (Brazil) and Tokyo.

The Japanese capital’s bid is being led by exuberant nationalist Shintaro Ishihara who used the Olympic bid as a key election manifesto item while running for his third term in April’s elections. Now that he has successfully been re-elected the Olympic bid is in full flow. The flamboyant politician and president of the 2016 Olympic bid said: “winning the bid will be no easy task, but Tokyo is determined to demonstrate its capability to successfully host the games, and will vigorously promote the bid campaign with the full support of the government and the public.”
However, Shiro Asana who lost out in the election to Ishihara is not so convinced that hosting the 2106 games in such a good idea. He said: “My concerns are with the cost and timings. I don’t believe that the IOC will wish to return to Asia so soon after the Beijing games. That’s why it is too risky to spend any significant sums on any bid at this point.” In what may sound like bitter words after losing out to his political rival, Asana at his press conference in a hotel in Tokyo added: “this has more to do with Ishihara’s ego than inspiring Japan’s youth, as he claims.”

Despite Asana’s fears about cost, under the Olympic plans only two new competition venues are specifically slated to be built for the games, and Japan’s central government has offered to pay half the total construction costs.

However, Tokyo is still considered an outside bet to host the games. Even though the city boasts the necessary amount of existing venues, many were used in the 1964 Tokyo Olympic Games and will need extensive and costly renovation; something that the Japanese government will not help with. Plus, there is the Ishihara factor to contend with; even though he may be popular in his homeland many of his comments have angered his neighbours in Asia, and he is unlikely to win any support for the games from them.

In hot markets, multiple offers and bidding wars on properties can quickly become the norm. In such markets a home may be on the market for less than a week or sometimes only a day before it sells. Often homes will sell even before they are registered in the MLS. As a buyer looking in a hot market, it’s important to have the proper ammunition as you enter into these situations. As you can imagine, stress and tension can run high in these fast, high pressure deals, but so long as you are prepared and know what you’re getting into there should be no problem winning the home of your dreams. Here are some helpful hints:

Price and terms are the two things that really matter to a seller. Guaranteed, they’ll want to fetch the highest price possible,with the best terms available. Both of these areas leave room for negotiation. So, don’t think you don’t have a chance, just because you’ve entered into a multiple offer situation. Just know, you want to aim to hit the right note with the seller. You’ll want to work with a trusted real estate agent to determine the seller’s “hot” buttons. From here you can act accordingly, and of course within your budget and your own needs, to lay down the most appealing offer possible.

In a multiple offer situation it is paramount that you offer the best price you can. In such situations, bidders who really want the property are often willing to bid above the asking price. You need to consider how badly you want this home, how much competition there may be and what you’re willing and able to pay for it. If you’re in a situation where you can offer something attractively above the asking amount and have agreeable terms, you’re definitely putting yourself ahead of the rest.

While price is part of the equation, consider that if you can incur some of the vendor’s costs, this too bodes well with your offer. In certain instances a lower offer might win out. One such example might be if a bidder offers to take on the vendor’s existing mortgage as part of their offer. Such a condition can eliminate the seller’s discharge penalty costs and a lot of hassle. Again, this is a situation where you’ll want your agent to get the inside scoop- then you’ll know what the seller really wants and have the power to make an offer they can’t refuse.
If you’re serious about winning a home in a hot market you’ll want to have your financing pre-approved and have a pre-qualification letter in hand from a well reputed mortgage broker. This letter should be attached with your offer. Vendors favor buyers who can best demonstrate that they’re in a good financial position to close the deal. In this vein, offer the largest down payment you can. The money there is up front, the more confidence the vendor’s will have in your intentions.

Finally, don’t add unnecessary conditions. It makes sense that the more conditions there are, the less appealing an offer becomes. A vendor wants to choose the offer that looks like it has highest probability to close and without too many glitches. Approval by the in-laws, or the sale of another residence are both conditions that will delay and possibly create a loophole for the buyer to bow out of an agreement. Of course, standard conditions such as financing and inspection should not be waived, unless you fully understand the risks.

If you want to win, don’t give anyone else a chance to beat you to it. To own the home of your dreams in a hot market, propose an offer with an undeniably great price and terms that appeal directly to the vendor’s needs.

The trend of property bidding has taken a significant position in the last decade or two. Just like the other auctions of valuables take place across the world property is also let out and auctioned off. The whole scenario works in accordance with the State laws which differ for different countries regarding the bidding of properties. People usually auction off their properties when their values became extraordinarily high and costly. They simply invite interested bidders and buyers to come and offer prices more than what the property owner has to offer. The rules of property bidding have to be abided by because if bidders ever agree to pay a certain price and the deal is considered sold and he backs off then he can be sued by the owner for his turning away from the contract. It is not a small deal but a lot of future contracts depend on it.

Resale laws hold many different rules concerning how the bidding of these properties should be carried out. Properties are a state affair thus laws are stated. One of the sources of the government revenue is taxes. While properties are auctioned away to the highest bidder these tax payments should be made along with the payments of the house. Once the biding starts there are no compulsions regarding the prices offered by the owner and no limit set as to how high can the bid go. Property bidding enables people to gain properties they wouldn’t be able to get otherwise. Residential properties are not the only ones that are auctioned off. All sorts of properties are auctioned off including factories, hotels, markets, rest houses, hostels, campuses. It is completely upon the buyer himself that he holds out all kinds of investigations concerning the property he is about to bid on. The owner is free off any blame which might be thrown upon him concerning his property afterwards. If there is anything that needs to be checked it should be checked before the sale take place.
Estate agents are contacted regularly for these deals and they are relied upon. The reason is that people know these middlemen possess a thorough insight in these property dealings. They may invoke bidders to bid for already sold properties that may have been sold previously at cheap rates. In order to make people make higher payments than others.

The market of dealers and bidders has now a stronger position than it had before. From reports it has been apparent that both the parties equally use each other and cleverly hold out auctions of properties. Overall property dealing is held out throughout the world with fast changing deals. It entirely depends on the demand of such properties to give rise to property bidding.

Bid-for-position web directories, or simply “bid directories”, are an exciting new way to buy text links. As the name suggests these directories allow site owners and visitors to bid for a higher position in the listings. Traditional web directories, by contrast, list links by some predetermined criterion, such as alphabetical order, Google PageRank, listing date, and so on. Bid directories allow people not only to bid for a top position but also to increase their bids as needed to maintain the position.

Why buy text links? A site without links is like a business in the middle of nowhere. Links are the electronic roads that connects your site with the rest of the world. If “location, location, location” is the mantra for a building a successful brick-and-mortar business, then “links, links, links” should be one for a successful website. Besides being a source for direct traffic, text links help drive traffic to a site indirectly by increasing a site’s rankings in search engine results.

Although natural links, i.e. links placed voluntarily by other webmasters to your site, are preferable to purchased ones, it may not be practical to rely on natural links alone, especially for a commercial site that competes with countless others offering similar products and services. Unless your site is truly unique and useful to people, a category to which most sites do not belong, buying links may be your best option to increase your link popularity.

The rules for buying text links on bid directories are similar to those on other sites. Simply put, you should buy links in a way that simulates natural linking. Your link profile looks more natural when your inbound links come from directories with a range of Google PageRanks (PR). Although there is natural tendency to target only high-PR directories, a link on a promising new bid directory, which may or may not have a PageRank, can be a good investment down the line. Besides, PR means nothing to other search engines, including Yahoo!, MSN, and AOL.

Perhaps the most important factor for deciding whether or not to buy a link on a certain bid directory is how aggressively it is marketed. The first question to ask is, how many other sites link to the directory in question? But marketing goes beyond the sheer number of inbound links. The next question to ask is, where are the links are coming from? You can get an idea of a site’s link profile by querying “link:www.domainofinterest.com” (without the quotes) on Yahoo!. While inbound links from competing bid directories is certainly one way to build links to the directory, it should not be the only way. The directory’s links look more natural when they come from diverse sources, including article directories, social bookmarking sites, blogs, and forums.
The Google PageRank of a directory is often a good indicator of how aggressively it is marketed, but PR could also be one of deception. For instance, an unscrupulous webmaster might replace the content of an existing PR-7 site with a potentially more lucrative bid directory and market it as a “PR-7 bid directory”. A tell-tale sign that this has occured is when the domain name of the directory has nothing to do with web directories or search engines. Another good sign is when its category subpages are PR-0 or do not have PRs at all. That is not even to mention the many ways bogus PRs might be obtained.

Most bid directories are made from commercially available scripts customized to the siteowners’ tastes. The level of customization is indicative of the directory owner’s effort to stand out from the crowd and often their commitment to do whatever it takes to make their site succeed. So, all else being equal, it’s better to go with a bid directory with a highly customized design than one that looks like a hundred others.

Many bid directories categorize links alphabetically by the first letters of their titles, as a telephone book lists people’s names. These directories are not particularly useful to visitors looking for sites on a particular topic, say gardening. Visitors should not have to click on every letter from A through Z to find sites pertaining to gardening. Considerable time would be saved if the sites were categorized by topic, e.g. “Home and Garden”, rather than the first letter of their titles. More importantly, links that are grouped with others of similar content are viewed as more relevant by the search engines than those grouped with unrelated sites. As an advertiser, you’ll get more for your money from a directory that sifts sites into topical categories than one that uses alphabetical categories– all else being equal.

Let me end this article with a word of caution. While bid directories should be a part of your link building campaign, don’t put all your eggs in one basket by relying too heavily on them. There is a bit of a novelty factor in bid directories, and no one knows whether they will set a new trend in advertising or eventually die down as another fad.

This has got to be the number 1, top question in sales ‘as a salesperson I had to ask myself this daily; and when I was a sales manager, I was certainly asking my team often enough to keep them on their toes. In sales the most valuable resource we have is our time, and our biggest and most important decision is how we use our time most efficiently.

When you’re in a new sales role, naturally you want to be active and will talk to anybody who’s willing to listen, and you’ll work on any projects that come your way.

However it shouldn’t take long until your pipeline begins to fill and you start feeling busy. Now you’ve got important decisions to make about who you’re going to invest your time with. You’re decision is made all the more urgent when you need the support of other people within your organisation, and you have to consider the impact of their time and the opportunity cost of their efforts.

The decision to bid always requires the expenditure of time, money, and energy that could be invested elsewhere. So your call to either bid or no bid should not be taken lightly or made carelessly.

Sometimes the decision to go ahead or not is a already made, or it’s a “no brainer” because of existing relationship or the nature of the potential contract.

But when you have the choice it’s an important decision to me and to be successful in sales it’s vital you make this assessment intelligently and weigh up your prospects properly.

Here are 10 crucial questions you need to ask yourself when deciding to Bid or not:

1. Is this a “must Bid” opportunity?

2. Is the prospect really ready to buy? And honestly are you really in a position to be able to supply if they do buy?
3. Is the prospect looking for service and value over a simple price comparison? If they are deciding purely on price and you’re not the cheapest then save yourself a lot of hassle and effort and bow out now – No Bid!

4. Can you introduce some extra added value to the opportunity? Can you move the goalposts and alter the specification in your favour?

5. Do you have a good relationship in place with the client decision makers?

6. Can you meet the requirement in full?

7. Do you have a defined competitive edge? Do you have a technical or commercial advantage that can add value to the opportunity?

8. Are you competitively priced? Either you have a cost competitive offer or you can tangibly offer added value?

9. Can you meet the timescales of the project?

10. Will this lead to further opportunities?

The more times you can answer ‘Yes’ the better this prospect is – 10 “Yes” answers and you’ve got a hot prospect here! Less than 7 and you need to think real hard if this is the best use of your time…