Remember game Hide & Seek? Just like game, websites can be hiding from you on Internet while you try to seek out particular information, services, or products. How do you find what you are seeking?

The Internet is like KING of all Libraries. Among stacks you seek. Among librarians (search engines and directories) you perform a query. But if you don't know language, search criteria, or your way around, you can get lost playing endless hours of hide & seek.

In order for you to locate information or site you're seeking, several things must have happened:

>> The site owner must register or submit their site with directory in which you are doing a search. Then a real person goes and checks out their site and decides if site is worthy of getting listed in their directory.

>> The site owner must register or submit their site with search engine in which you are doing a search OR search engine's robots or spiders must have * crawled through * their websites which will rank them by many different factors. The most important factor is use and weight of site owner's use of keywords.

When you do a search or a query, you type in a word or phrase of words, right? Here is where you might not find what you are looking for because site owner or webmaster didn't put in keywords you are typing in search window.

Therefore, site owner or webmaster must determine what keywords are important for each page on their website and what word(s) you will type in a search window to find their site. The words you type in might not be webmasters keywords, so you don't find what you are looking for.

To make matters worse, each search engine and directory can have their own search criteria; however, most are very similar.

Using particular search strategies can help narrow your search and hopefully find stuff more relevant to what you are seeking.

Seven Searching Techniques to try:

>> Read help section of search engine or directory

>> Put word(s) in quotation marks; tells most search engines you're looking for that exact term

>> Type in lowercase letters; many search engines are case-sensitive

>> Be specific - instead of typing in organizers, type in professional organizers

>> Type in plural form of word

>> Type in word(s) misspelled, such as organizers or organisers or orgnaizers

>> Type in a longer variation of word, instead of organize, type in organizing.

Most of us have also heard saying, "If it seems too good to be true, it probably is..." We know in our hearts that 'get-rich-quick' can't possibly work, yet we can't help but be intrigued by it.

Instead of pursuing fruitless search for a quick and easy way to make money on 'net, drill following into your brain right now: There is NO SUCH THING as 'get-rich-quick'. You CAN earn a solid income from Internet, if you're willing to put in time, effort, and money.

Here's a quick summary for those of you who are thinking about starting a business online. Let's start with disadvantages first, to get them out of way...

- Hard work and long hours. Just like any business, building one online requires a great deal of effort. Most people do it while still working a full-time job elsewhere; you may find it hard to keep doing what you have to do when you're always 'exhausted'. - Always changing. What works online today might not work tomorrow. When you do business on 'net you have to constantly 'keep up' or you may find profits beginning to lag. Educating yourself is a continuing process. If you hate change then Internet is probably not for you.

- Need to be able to cut through 'hype'. You'll find plenty of misleading promises on Internet, many of which will tell you that there's some sort of 'magic bullet' to getting sales. There isn't. Sorting through marketing techniques that work and those that don't can be very time-consuming.

- Definitely *not* a quick-rich-quick scheme! Regardless of what you may read, Internet is *not* path to quick, easy money and not everyone will be successful online. An online business contains an element of risk, just like any other business.

- "Build it and they will come" does NOT apply to 'net. Your web page is only one of billions. Learning how to get *right* people to see your site is a tough job.