Just like TV soaps, search industry has a strange and illogical history. We started with a particular cast of search engines, new ones soon rose up and tried to usurp market share from originals, some engines jumped into bed with each other, some of well known characters died or were killed off by newcomers, "good" engines decide to turn "evil" in grab for market share, new industry darlings were born and so on.

Those of us who have been watching this particular soap opera for past few years are quite addicted to all plot twists and turns. The thing is, search engines seem to have finally come full circle. Most started up originally with a simple premise: to provide a useful service to persons surfing Internet; a way to search millions of web sites and find specific, relevant information, 24 hours a day.

However once a few key players became heavily trafficked, search engines became viable advertising vehicles, attracting mega bucks from companies willing to pay them for privilege of displaying banner ads to significant number of eyeballs viewing their sites on a daily basis. Soon everyone wanted in on act. New search engines developed overnight, driven mainly by profiteers, hungry for their piece of dot com boom. The "Who's Got Biggest Index" game began and searching public began to demand more relevancy and fresher results. Under pressure from over-inflated company valuations, Dot Com bubble soon burst and everyone was left covered with sticky mess of financial accountability.

Meanwhile, savvy webmasters had begun to study how search engines worked in order to understand how to structure their web site code to improve their ranking for target search queries. A whole new industry developed from this activity: search engine optimization. Webmasters who didn't have time or inclination to learn search engine optimization techniques simply paid others who did. Popular directories such as Yahoo! and LookSmart took advantage of consumer demand for listings by introducing first paid submission services. Industry players took note of developments and introduced commercial search engines where web site owners could simply pay their way to top of rankings rather than rely on ranking algorithms - voila! - first pay per click search engines were born.

Over years, I had developed what I thought was a fairly slick proposal template for my search engine optimization business. But still document lacked an edge. I knew I had lost a couple of recent pitches to my competitors and I wondered if there was something about their proposals that I was missing in mine.

You know that a good proposal can make or break a sale. This is particularly case when your only communication with potential clients is via Internet. But how do you know you've covered all important aspects of your services? How can you be sure you've covered all project estimates? What if you need to include some legal contract information in your document but you can't afford to hire a lawyer? How do you make your proposal stand out from your competitors if you don't have any graphic design skills? Are you forgetting an important section in your proposal that your potential client was expecting? I found myself asking all these questions when preparing quotations for potential clients.

The banner ad from Proposal Kit offered a solution to my problem. It advertised "Turn-key contract, estimating and proposal kits for today's Internet professional". That's exactly what I was looking for, so I clicked on banner ad, fully expecting to find some ultra-hyped, over-rated, disappointing backyard software. Boy was I wrong!

What I found was probably most cost-effective and useful tool for online business that I have EVER come across. Seriously!

Sample Proposal Kit Table of Contents Template

Proposal Kit takes guesswork out of drafting a proposal or contract. It automates chore of putting together a complex business proposal. Basically, Proposal Kit provides a comprehensive range of templates to suit any business requirement and helps you build a framework for your proposal to match virtually any product or service offering. You then flesh out templates with your own data and contact details. Templates are particularly suited to online businesses and include documents for initial sales pitch, planning stage, estimating, contracting, project timelines, analysis and even invoicing.

Want to include a Cost/Benefits analysis in your proposal? How about a Production Schedule or a Web Site Design Storyboard? With Proposal Kit, you have a huge range of professional documents available within instant reach to make up your perfect Proposal, tailored specifically for each client. You can even choose a colour scheme or graphic design theme to match your corporate image or that of your client. The style you see in screenshots on this page is just one of almost 30 different styles available.

The Proposal Kit Wizard Interface

But Proposal Kit is not just about creating "knock 'em dead" proposals. Use included Contract Pack and you have access to legal binding contracts, sign off forms, copyright agreements and more. Find a web site stealing your content? Use Contract Pack's "Cease and Desist" letter template to draft your response. Want to provide users of your software with a easy way to report bugs? Use Contract Pack's Bug Report Template. Once I read Quick Start Guide, it took me less than 5 minutes using Proposal Kit Wizard to set up a sophisticated Master Proposal framework to suit my business, incorporating 31 different templates from recommended list.

Here's a summary of different products Proposal Kit offers:

Proposal Kit Pro and Proposal Kit Standard

Proposal Kit Pro and Proposal Kit Standard are bundles of several products, including most commonly used packages. Each collection (proposal, contact, estimate, planning, samples) can be purchased separately, or together in a bundle at a lower cost. These are designed specifically for web, CD-ROM, multimedia and tech professionals. Current retail price for Proposal Kit Pro is USD 197. A stripped down starter kit is available for USD 97. The starter kit is mainly designed for web developers doing small scale projects. The Pro version suits companies with larger projects and a wider range of specialized areas.

Proposal Packs