At the time of this writing, the country is facing real and growing fear ? on Wall Street and on Main Street. The Congress, without shame, has passed the bailout plan along with a whole bunch of pork. In other words to get enough votes, individual members of Congress traded their ?conviction? for their pet projects designed to do what ? get more votes and insure their own political longevity. This is Democracy?

So what can you do? I say control those things that you and only you can control; your business and for the purposes of this writing your online business. For more details go to Pay even closer attention to your business. Analyze all areas of your business. Don't cut cost just for the sake of cutting costs. Concentrate on efficiency ... getting more done with less! Through careful analysis you can always increase your efficiency and productivity in all areas of your business ... sales, marketing, customer service, finance and accounting, manufacturing, research and development.

1. The former involves "coming at the potential customer" almost always when not welcome. These methods are considered wildly successful if just a success rate of 1 in 200 is achieved ... not very efficient or cost effective.

2. The latter involves the targeted visibility achieved through Google, Yahoo and the rest where the potential customer initiates the contact at a time and place of their choosing. They are ready when they decide to search for your products and services. Predictably, the success rate is much higher than, sometimes as high as 15-20% if your website is easily found and is further optimized for converting the visitor.

Being found by those potential clients and buyers at precisely the time and place of their choosing ? where else in the world can you more efficiently get the highest quality, the most qualified new business? While traditional advertising uses a wide and inefficient net to hopefully reach the right buyer mainly by the math of a tiny percentage of the market that will see your ad, open your mail, answer your phone call at precisely the time they are interested and ready to actually act, Internet Marketing is targeted and Search Engine Visibility in the organic or natural listings is only seen by the buyer when they want to see you. How many times have you called on a prospect or advertised traditionally where the buyer says ?I'm amazed, I was just about to call you? ? very rare, indeed. ALL searches that find you on the search is amazing in that you are being found exactly when it is ?at the top of their list? of things to do.

So, if you find that your marketing dollars are restricted and therefore more precious than ever, you need to make the most out of every marketing dollar. So cut the inefficiency of traditional advertising and focus your marketing dollars on targeted traffic through the power of the internet and specifically the search engines. My message: In these troubled times, the best investment you can make is in yourself and in your business. Focus on efficiency and productivity to maximize your profitability. Yes, cut costs where you can; but stay on offense more than on defense.