We were also hungry and this was no time to hook up stove and go rifling through stacked boxes to find our kitchen supplies. With no phone installed, dad and two-year old daughter decide to try out brand new Taco Bell everyone was talking about.

The parking lot was full but with babe in arms we filtered into one of LONG lines of eager first-time fast-food seekers and Sara had her eyes fixed on busy counter. As children have uncanny ability to do, during a dead silent moment in crowd, she screamed at top of her little lungs, "Daddy, look at that 'wary' big brown lady!!", pointing at counter person in charge of our line.

Look, I don't know how many shades of red a person can really turn, but I know I must have sported them all. I can still hear both boisterous laughter and silent gasps of sheer shock at this innocent revelation. All I know is I felt terrible that it was MY "out of mouths of babes" that rocked this joint.

When we finally reached counter, I could only offer my most profound apology to who would be this wonderful, large Afro-American woman who said "No problem at all, I laughed too!". Phew!:-)

Well, 'Marva' and I starting chatting about her new job and other things, and I told her I owned a drycleaning company in town. Now, I admit that I still enjoy some Taco Bell fare, so I continued to visit this location on occasion for over a decade. Each time, Marva remembered my name, asked me how business was, and of course, how Sara was!!

The point of this true story is very simple. Albeit a strange and innocent way to make an impact, my two-year old tyke did just that. And, in a big way. A strong impression that lasted more than ten years. Each time I was there after that, I stood in Marva's line and whenever management wasn't looking over her shoulder, I slipped her a nice tip which she always refused to take (but I always won).

Although this particular fast food location is now gone, I will always remember Marva and that day, and I'm quite sure Marva (and many of patrons, at least those with a sense of humor) will never forget it either.

And so, we all should strive to make a profound impact on people, especially in business, on our customers. Let me explain.

The very best way we can make an impact on customers is by making sure our product or service itself makes one. Trust me, I'm not trying to be boastful here, but by time I was finished writing my first book, The Ezine Marketing Machine, I knew in my heart that *if* I could get it to sell well, it would help an awful lot of people and make a strong impact on those folks who wanted to use best Internet promotion method available in order to make a good living online.

What are you doing about this statistic? Most sites do nothing about it. Other sites add a link somewhere that says something like "recommend this site to a friend". The former is a marketing crime, latter is not enough. Internet users are busy and impatient. If they see a link somewhere on your site that asks them to recommend your site to a friend, they most likely will not click on it because they are in a hurry (and are lazy, too, sometimes). But they do definitely want to recommend your site. So what do you do? You should somewhat force them to recommend your site, but make it very easy to do so and pleasant. And you should remind them at least once, in their face, on every visit to your site. That will take a little JavaScript.

What we are going to do is this: we want our visitors to our web site to come into our site as usual, use site uninterrupted as usual. If at any time they decide to leave site from any page, a new browser window will launch on side and thank them for their visit, wish them a nice day and invite them to come again. That is all in two or three short sentences. Then comes killer. Below those kind words, you should have a simple way for them to tell their friends about your site! It should be absolutely simple, and fun for them, and they will do it for sure. You have two choices:

1. You can use a form that simply asks them for their friends' email addresses and any personal note they wish to include. Then take that information and insert it into a template that holds an invitation letter you have written out and sends that letter plus personal note to all email addresses entered. To accomplish this I recommend that you use AlienForm CGI script, which is free at http://cgi.tj/scripts/alienform/. I personally prefer this method because it is easier and faster for user. 2. You can use Recommend-It's service at http://www.recommend-it.com/, which is also free and sometimes runs competitions whereby your users stand a chance of winning something if they recommend their friends (which increases recommendations). This method is easier for you but a little harder for user because they have to click on a button, go to Recommend-It's site, fill out a form, and then they are done. The more steps they have to go through more likely they may abort whole thing and not recommend new friends next time.

This is a very powerful formula because whenever your visitor is done visiting your site, they are automatically given an absolutely easy way through which they can recommend your site to their friends. And it is in their face so it has their undivided attention.

Now we need to build this capability into our web pages.

Step 1

Build a fast loading web page that thanks your visitor for their visit, wishes them a nice day, and invites them to come again. That is all in two or three short sentences, not a whole paragraph. Below that, have your recommendation form or button from Recommend-It. That's it. Save it somewhere in your site. Let us say URL to this page is http://www.yourcompany.com hankyou.htm.

Step 2