Since, I wrote this blog originally on a iPhone, and copying it to the PC from my blogging account, I find the mapple Simpsons video below to be very funny.  Anyone being honest and making fun of Apple is a good thing, everyone needs a shot at it.  Here the is the post first, then video. 

Video SEO Tip - Using SWFObject 2.1 to Provide Alternative HTML Content (Part 1 of 2)

The title attribute vs the alt attribute which is the better choice for SEO? most individuals in the SEO arena know about the importance of the alt attribute for images. It describes what an image is to a search engine and is useful in creating better accessibly for text based browsers by providing information that make contextual sense instead of completely ignoring the image.

The title attribute is used to hold the “tooltip” in a link or image.

Title attribute in a link: <a href=”http://linkurl” TITLE=”LINK TITLE” />
Title & Alt attribute in an image: <img src=”/path /to/image/image.jpg” TITLE=”LINK TITLE” ALT=”ALT TEXT” />

compare the alt attribute to the title attribute you can see that both provide information, but which one is more useful for SEO? Aaron Wall from SEO book has written an article where he relays his experience with alt and title attributes. His assessment is that that alt attribute is weighted more heavily than the Title attribute
read Aaron Walls the full article in context.

**sponsored by VRBO, Employment Screening, & Website Design St. Louis**

Using SEO to target a specific geographic areas are key in hitting some niche markets, especially for small SEO campaigns competing against large players in a market. lets look at one way to do this.

we’ll assume that is an established company out there who was running a website selling Vacation and Vacation Rental packages. The company is based in California and is currently running a national SEO campaign. for Vacation Rentals They recently found that there was a particularly large market of people in St. Louis, MO who were buying up vacation and vacation rental packages. now what could they do to enhance their SEO campaign in St. Louis, MO. **sponsored by VRBO, Background Check, & Website Design St. Louis**

Lets get Relevant!

the company is planning to create a dedicated page that only deals with vacations packages and vacation rentals in St. Louis to increase their relevancy.
Their keyword research shows that the best set of keywords is “vacation rentals st. louis”
create a new page to hold the relevant content the page
1) The new page has the URL of http://companysite.com/VACATION-RENTALS-ST-LOUIS/

2) Next they tweak the pages title tags, they add some location information to their TITLE meta tag with their keywords
<title>Vacation Rentals St. Louis, Mo - Company Name</title>

3)they now create content that is relevant to vacation rentals in St. Louis they figure out what vacationers are looking for when they visit St. Louis and present that content, perhaps weather, the favorite local spots, tourist attractions, etc. The page essentially becomes a real resource.

4) they link to this new page from the homepage of the current site with “Vacation Rentals St. Louis Mo” as the anchor text of the hyperlink. The company also starts a local link campaign for the same set anchor text. they target local businesses that are related to vacation rentals, restaurants, transportation, tour companies, etc.

this would be a great start to creating a geo targeted SEO campaign. I encourage YOU to comment on this post!

Take some time and watch this Matt Cutts interview. Matt answers the following:
**sponsored by VRBO, Background Check, & Website Design St. Louis**

1. Find out what was Matt’s first encounter with spam,
2. What does Matt think are the biggest problems that search engines will encounter in the next 5 years
3. Matt gives his take on how small webmasters can compete with large players in their market
4. Matt tells us what every webmaster should know
5. Matt talks about how google interacts with webmasters in other countries.
6. Does Matt check for paid links that pass PageRank on each site he visits?
7. Find out one of the funniest questions that Matt recieved at a conference
8. What would Matt do if google killed all the spam.

enjoy!

SEO Myth #1 - SEO is about secret tacticspeople that are in the know about SEO can tell you, there are no secret tactics in SEO, but they may not tell you all their methods the reality of doing SEO well is to cover your basics. using the information that your analytics provides you is a nice place to start. Start with your home page and work your way through out your site. Looking for SEO basics also look at Google’s Guidelines.

SEO Myth #2 - SEO means only optimizing for GoogleWhile we all know that google has most of the search traffic on the web, we shouldn’t forget about MSN, Yahoo, and niche/vertical search engines.how would one do that? CONTENT!! optimize your content for the audience you are intending to read it use the phrases key terms and catch phrases that your audience would use. these things are in addition to creating search engine friendly site.

SEO Myth #3 - Submitting your site to thousands of directories will help your rankingsWhile directory submissions can help your site rank better, be picky. Choose directories that are established, and are relevant to your site. doing directory submissions on a large scale can hurt your SEO efforts. here are some guidelines to use:

1) Quantity of inbound links

2) Quality of inbound links

3) Age of domain

4) Topical relevancy to your site

5) Human-edited is better than automated because editorial control tends to lend itself to quality

6) How frequently the directory gets crawled (check the Google cache)

7) The directory itself ranks in the search engines — this can be a sign of authority and can drive click through traffic

8.) Are their links direct, static links or are they redirected to your site?

SEO Myth #4 - SEO is free While SEO is not pay per click there are upfront and on going costs associated with SEO.possible costs include, SEO consultant, programmer, designer, link campaign and Most importantly YOUR TIMEdon’t forget about what your time costs to SEO your site your self. whether you hire out or do it your self SEO does cost. make sure your getting a good ROI by tracking your rankings, traffic, brand awareness, etc.

SEO Myth #5 - Keywords need to appear everywhereIn the past SEO protocol for ranking in a keyword called for the Keywords to be everywhere in the content. This is not true anymore because of relevancy algorithms. Google’s relevancy algorithm now favors more natural writing style. typically it’s not natural to have the same keyword appear in your page content 30 times all linked to your site. but it would be natural to add in modifiers to your keywords for example if you are tying to rank for the term “credit card” you might modify it in the following: “compare credit cards online”, or “apply for a credit card today” and then link these terms in your content in addition to your specific keyword. also try mixing in plural versions of your keywords. This strategy will help your site not to get filtered out and will broaden your reach to be found on multiple search terms.

SEO Myth #6 - SEO is a one-time event for a companyThe nature of SEO is a changing landscape, search algorithms, competitors, the current market “buzzes” are some of the things that you have to contend with. SEO consists of one-time and on-going efforts. Some of your one-time SEO efforts could entail keyword research, website structure and layout. On-going SEO efforts may include analysis of sites effectiveness, link campaign strategy, page editing and optimization. After you’ve set your site up to be search engine friendly make sure you are tracking your SEO efforts and adjusting them to create the best ROI.SEO Myth #7 - SEO will take years to return resultsThis not true, and SEO campaign could return some results within 30-90 days and lets qualify that statement. Results could mean moving up just a few spots in the rankings or even just showing up on page 100 for the intended search term when you were no where to be found. use common sense If someone tells you i’ll take years to get you ranked, get another opinion.

SEO Myth #8 - Page rank is the critical measure of a site’s successpage rank is 1 of 200 indicators that Google uses in search. while it does carry weight, if you are only focusing on page rank you are missing the boat, more importantly focus on your sites tools and content to being relevant to particular search terms you would like to be found for.

SEO Myth #9 - Accessibility doesn’t really mattercreating accessible webpages should be a forethought when creating a site. If googlebot and users cannot access your site because it is too slow or too much multimedia then the best SEO will not help. consider a user browsing from an iphone, can they use your flash navigation? nope. or the business user that is on the go and connects through a low bandwidth to make a purchase. If a site can’t be seen or loaded properly then no actions can take place. some best practices are:

1) make the bulk of your content and navigation text with multimedia dispersed throughout

2) test your page in mobile and a text base browser such as lynx, more details can be found on the google webmasterblog. check out these two links. Best uses of flash and a search engine spiders view of web 2.0

SEO Myth #10 - Google has an adversarial relationship with webmasters and publishersGoogle has done a great job with their webmasters central blog to help webmasters and publishers make the most of their sites. take a look and Webmaster Central, and take advantage of support from google.This was a summary of Michael Estrin’s article 10 SEO myths debunked from imediaconnection.com**sponsored by Rent Expert.com’s VRBO system, People Search and background check services by Peoplefinders.com, and website design St. Louis and web design St. Louis.Do something good for the enviroment, Air Purifiers @ greenisbetter.org. If you are interested in learning more about Internet Marketing, SEO, and the power of blogs, don’t be afraid to buy our Marketing book, and definitely create a blog on our free blog platform at MyTypes.com main page.

I am working on a bigger post on SEO versus SEM, so be patient. But, I get this question from a lot of people, should I SEO first or focus on Adwords and SEM? The key difference between SEM and SEO is that SEM includes Advertising, and mainly advertising on search engines, which makes it Search Engine Marketing. There are main differences such as SEM is very expensive in the long term, SEO takes longer, but they both have something in common. Which is?

SEM and SEO both have to optimize keywords, and do a lot of keyword analysis. The ability to target keywords is the key, to change them, and to make sure the most appropriate keywords are being used. SEM has higher click through rates, and faster Return on Investment. But, SEO has a great returns if/when you get ranked in an ethical manner in the top 5 on Google. It’s very important to know that the base commonality of SEO and SEM is the same, which is Keyword Analysis. SEM is very easy to execute, Google Adwords and eFrontier or Aquantive from Microsoft can help you optimize your Ad campaigns. SEO (search engine optimization) is a very difficult and time consuming process. It’s very difficult to master, much more than SEM. Enough of the not so long SEO vs SEM post hunh? I can’t stop writing, I love writing blogs:-).

SEO vs SEM here is the big key, when you rank in the top 10 for a keyword, and you advertise on the same page on Google for that keyword, guess what happens? My experience with the above example is validated and confirmed with SEM managers who spend millions on Google Ads.

Now for some shameless promotion of our friends companies such as the people search company PeopleFinders.com, our clients such as Cross Jewelry and Designer Jewelry by LoveRelic.com, and our own Silver Jewelry properties. And, let’s not forget the great Green Products site, Greenisbetter.org which sells energy Infrared Heaters and one of the best brands of Air Purifiers on the market. I can’t believe I am involved in selling products such as air purifiers and infrared heaters, but since they are energy saving and good for our health, I am actually excited about it. For a not so similar reason, I am equally excited about my friend’s company PeopleFinders.com which has one of Web’s largest people search databases. For a a very competitive keyword Silver Jewelry we are also inching up and moved to #14 on the big G.

Why are we promoting these sites on our blogs? Hello, we are an SEO Services company that is the business we are in? We have to SEO these clients and writing about them on our blogs is the what we get paid to do. But more importantly, we have to provide valuable content to you our readers, and I believe we do a good job of that. Thanks for reading!

Facebook Publishes “Insider’s Guide To Viral Marketing”

Here is an article from TechCrunch, obviously the folks at Facebook know a thing or two about Viral marketing.  You are not seeing a lot of SEO tips and blogs from us, as I Vipin Singh have been working on our own marketing book called “Marketing is a contact sport”.  Yes we dedicate a whole chapter to Social networking, as it is one of the most important aspects of Internet Marketing.  Content is still king as far as over all promotion, but it has to focused to the proper keywords and written well.  Especially blogging content, which is what we focus on with all of the special attention to SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

After you have done all of your education of what SEO(Search Engine Optimization) is, what it takes to do the right thing, to avoid doing the wrong thing, and if you still don’t have the top rankings in Google? What to do? Worse yet, you don’t even see yourself in the top 100 in Google for your keywords, what to do? The world of SEO rankings, blogging, and Internet marketing can be very troubling and stressful, just like the real world. I have certainly have had my ups and downs, lost top rankings gained them back, and lost them again. I have been very successful, and have dismal failures. But, one of my biggest assets is that I never, ever give up. And, this trait of mind over matter stuff works, not just in business or life, but also in SEO.

Now days, I have less of this trouble of inconsistent rankings, why you ask? We consistently rank in the top spot or the top 10 of many keywords we target. How do we do it? And how can you, the small business owner, or a just starting out SEO consultant, how can you be the best in your world? Or at least rank high on Google for your keywords? It’s simple, you have to consistently apply the rules of success in your field, in SEO it’s about great content and contextual links. You may have noticed that Amazon, eBay, and craigslist pages get’s ranked higher than most other websites. This is a result of google respecting these online marketplaces, because of their deep embedded contextual linking systems. We are working on a similar system with our marketplace, if you have noticed that within our front page of MyTypes.com.

But the question becomes how? It’s usually never the What and Why? But, how? I want to talk a little inspiration here, I did blog at 7am today on our new Spirituality blog, about the spiritual laws of success. The ancient secrets are as true today as they were back then. Success is not rocket science, it takes action, proper actions, focused actions. Success in any endeavor requires patience, persistence, hard work, and most importantly consistent effort. Now where is this more prevalent than in SEO, no where, but I am sure you can find your field to be tough. Any way, SEO is a very, very tough business, with competition breathing down your neck and constantly changing, it can also be a very difficult business.

Some times the competition on keywords is very tough, so many companies trying to achieve high rankings in the sake keywords. And the mechanics of SEO are constantly changing, Google is always trying to enhance it’s system. Sorry, I don’t care about Yahoo and MSN too much. I just play the numbers game here, and try to go for the most traffic. The other search engines just don’t have the traffic, and they usually copy what Google does any way. So be consistent with your efforts, don’t give up even if you don’t see results in weeks and months. Do try to learn what is happening, with your circumstances, with Google’s algorithms with the current keywords, who is coming up, who is going down. In Internet marketing and in the world of technology things are happening at a very fast pace. Reading journals, reading amazing blogs, and reading special books are important to keeping your rankings and maintaining your edge. No matter how tough it is don’t ever give up, just do whatever it takes, and to do that you need to keep your spirits up. By the way, when I say do whatever it takes, don’t ever be unethical, it will come back to bight you, Karma goes both ways always.

I want to give you an edge, because SEO business can get you down, and it can be very addicting. One minute you are doing really well, the other minute you are not in the top 10, in fact you may loose all of your rankings. What to do, you ask? Just like anything and everything, always do the right thing. Try to never break the Google rankings, it’s easy, don’t try to cheat the system, create great content, and own your own link sources. This way, if you ever need links, go blog about certain topics, own your own blogs and you will have your links. Create great and interesting ways to write great content. I have been a fan of blogging for ever, since I learned about it back in 2003. I have been preaching about the use of it in SEO, this is nothing new to SEO consultants, but the simple person doesn’t seem to get how easy and how difficult it can be.

So my message again, is blog a lot, on different platforms such as ours, ebay, blogger, and use your proper keywords, and hyperlink them to the sites or blogs you are trying to SEO. It’s that easy, but if you are not ranked in the top 10 or top 100 for those keywords, it’s simple, it’s because you don’t have more Contextual links coming to your blog/site than your competitors. The more contextual links from blogging type sources, news sites, from high Google PR rank sites you have, the better. And, to make sure you have sources for those links, you need to have enough blogs and places where you blog. It’s best if they are yours, it’s good to have partnerships, but the more you own the better you can control your destiny. If you are trying to SEO a site, you need to blog and add links every day, and if you just blog for about 2-3 hours a day, and go to certain sites of your own, you will accomplish your goals. This is for some of the most challenging of sites, but only an hour or less is required if your keywords are not very competitive.  You see SEO is simple, just like the beauty in the picture.  Keep it simple, blog a lot and add contextual links.

You see the power of accumulation of links, of blogs, of SEO rankings comes from the ancient secret wisdom of the law of success. Which is, tada, drum roll please, CONSISTENCY!

To get ideas for a blog post for today, I was reading Seth Godin’s book “The big Moo”, it’s quite good, not just for Internet marketing, but for SEO too.  But I really wanted to write about our new Market Place, that has built in SEO so your online businesses get promoted.  So much of SEO is rooted in Internet Marketing and vice versa, did also know that the Keywords are almost searched just as much, about 1.8 million searches a month or more.  So my idea for writing a blog on SEO was about our Online Marketplace, but I have to write about the Yahoo Keyword Search tool.  So do go read the Seth Godin book, he is a marketing genius and quite inspiring.  One of the ideas that I got from him, was that comprise often slows down innovation.  Leaders and management have to deal with issues of compromise all the time, especially in the era of employee retention.  The key is to innovate and be unique, can’t please all of the people all of the time, so go be a rogue cowboy or whatever suits your fancy, go Innovate, but promote your online businesses in our online marketplace.

And this SEO blog you are reading is ranked #42 for “SEO” in Google as of today. Why is that, because so many of your download these wonderful SEO blog templates and give us links back, and visit this blog often. So keep doing that, and we will keep providing you valuable insights and tools to help you promote your businesses.

Here is a tip for the day, some of you know that Yahoo’s Search Marketing Keyword tool became defunct last year. They have launched a new version at Searchmarketing.yahoo.com, check it out and click on the #3 Tab on the right, for the budget tab.  Than you can type in your Keywords you want to SEO and it will give you a specific number of how many impressions, clicks and budget you should forecast for. I noticed it two days ago, so I am thankful for the keywords search tool. While the old tool was much better, the fact that it broke and had outdated information, it was of no use at all.

Why do I like the Yahoo SEO search tool better than the Google ad words tool?  I don’t, but it does have one fair advantage, it gives you specific information about the keywords you are searching for. For Example on the Yahoo tool, it says SEO is searched for about 596,000 times today, times that by 5 and you get the idea. What is the hottest thing in Internet marketing, SEO, and our blogging website? It’s our Online marketplace in collaboration with ITEX Barter System. We are starting to get ranked in the top 15 in Google for Online Marketplace, b2b marketplace, business marketplace etc.  The key to promoting your business is to be found on the search engines and to sell products where the buyers are, such as eBay and Amazon, that is why they are so successful.  Yes, this is a weakness of our system, but we are less than 1 month old on this project.  The items for sales in the online marketplace has over 5,000 items from 24,000 businesses.  Just so you are aware, these items are all barter items for trade or exchange from ITEX members, you can join ITEX and start trading today for no cost.  Or you can place your items for sale or list your business in our directory and it will get an amazing level of SEO value and traffic to your website. This marketplace is not just for Barter items, but for all online businesses, suppose it can be for off-line businesses too, but why would an off-line busenesses promote online?   Ah, it’s called promotion, duh:-).  We built it with Search Engine friendly URL’s, title tags, and a ton of SEO promotion, because we get indexed and rank high many ways. You will find out online marketplace to be ranked in the top 5 within Google and start to get traffic to your site.

We are starting to launch the first three categories of local businesses such as massage therapists, lawyers, dentists, and restaurants. Here are some pictures that we will use within each online marketplace landing pages and categories, enjoy. They are from StockExpert.com and SXC.hu, as some of you know we use them all the time, as Sxc.hu is free for blogging sites and individuals to use. So if you want to promote your online businesses, you certainly want to place a free listing in our online marketplace, but if you want to try Barter check out ITEX.com too!

As I have mentioned before, the most important base for SEOing any site or blog is site structure. It actually can also help you get the most contextual links, without even trying. Here is a real life example. We are just in the process of helping to SEO a very popular small business cashless marketplace. It’s a Barter network of 24,00 small businesses with many more thousands of barter items in it’s trading community. It’s a trading community where cash is not required, but it’s a secure private business network that is professionally managed. Why am I mentioning so much about the details, well they have at least 24,000 web pages, and they could all be very valuable link inventory. This asset needs to be indexed by search engine friendly URL’s, title tags, description tags, content keywords, and footer text, all of them can be done by a proper site structure.

Guess what folks, you already know that, as you are probably big fans of Wordpress, and it’s incredible SEO site structure capabilities. Do you have any idea what 24,000 contextual links will do for your SEO rankings? If you could get 24,000 pages worth of links, you would get top Google rankings for sure, pretty much for any category. But, guess what in this case, these pages are not being indexed properly by Google. Don’t worry we will soon fix, that through Mod Rewrite, SEF, and proper Title Tags and Descripton tags, etc. I wrote this blog earlier today, on my small business blogs, really folks Barter works, I think we might be getting a client, and we have only joined the ITEX bartering network for 2 days. Wow!

Barter Network, Trade Exchange helps small business
January 3rd, 2008 at 04:10 pm by Admin in Barter Items, Small Business Marketing

How can a Barter Network and a trade exchange help small business achieve success? Bartering has been around for a long time, and a Barter Network such as ITEX with thousands of Barter Items and a Trade Exchange community can help any small business by Increasing sales and increasing cash flow. How? Read on, as you already know we have been talking about Barter and online marketplaces such as ITEX barter network for a couple of weeks. We want to hear from you about your small business success stories, if you have tried Barter or not. Or if you ever belonged to a business networking group such as Business Networking Intl. or La tip.

What are you doing ot increase your small business sales and to reduce your small business marketing costs? We also want to hear about any other ideas for your online marketplace ideas any barter items that you would like to see more of or anything else you have in mind as a small business owner.

Here is a press release from ITEX CEO Steve White about the value his trade exchange provides small businesses. I am going to add my comments in italics and reinforce some main points.

A Message From the Chairman of ITEX Corporation
Thursday December 6, 9:00 am ET

BELLEVUE, Wash., Dec. 6 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — ITEX Corporation (OTC Bulletin Board: ITEX - News), The Membership Trading Community(SM), a leading marketplace for cashless business transactions in North America, today released a letter from Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Steven White to shareholders reporting on 2007 achievements and looking ahead to the Company’s future.

                    THE YEAR IN REVIEW AND A LOOK FORWARD

    December 6, 2007

DEAR VALUED SHAREHOLDERS:

I am pleased to report that ITEX has continued to maintain its solid record of performance. Today, I will summarize our fiscal 2007 achievements, our strengths and challenges, and the steps we are taking to move the company forward.

What we do

For 25 years we have helped our members attract new & small business through our trading business community. Our identity is encapsulated in our slogan: “ITEX, The Membership Trading business Community(SM) is a leading marketplace for cashless business transactions across North America.” We generate revenue by charging members percentage-based transaction fees and subscription fees. These two revenue streams generated 99% of our $14 million in revenue last year.

Initiatives

Every day, we work to grow our business and maintain a profitable marketplace that assists businesses in becoming more successful. As our members succeed, they are motivated to transact more business and refer new members to our trading community.

This past year we endeavored to more clearly refine what we do, improve our processing methods, and attract more business. Surveys and focus groups provided valuable insight into the needs, wants and expectations of the small business owner: our core customer. We sharpened our message to existing and potential members. We analyzed our value proposition and determined we could offer more. New revenue streams were explored and the groundwork laid to start testing our ideas.

As a result of our efforts this year, our messaging to existing and potential members is more concise, our marketing material and website has been redesigned, and we introduced the Executive Privileges Program. I wonder if there will be any initiatives to help grow small businesses, by building a more powerful online business community.

We seek to expand our presence in the small business services sector and accelerate the velocity of transactions in our trading online business community. In a challenging national economy, we are convinced small businesses can benefit even more from the valuable services we provide. We believe a credible and effective online marketplace for small business is still one of the most needed, it certainly an area deficient within the small business marketing segment.

Strengths

ITEX has three primary strengths — our 24,000 member business base, our proprietary payment processing and trading platform (”Trading Platform”) and our ability to manage our capital and the operations of our business efficiently and profitably.

Our Trading Community has grown more than 50% in the last 30 months. We believe the relationship with our member base is underused and undervalued, but is a significant asset with tremendous potential. To enhance this asset, additional partnerships and services are being explored. Hello, does an online marketplace, and an online business community, of benefit to any one in small business marketing?

Our Trading Platform provides excellent tools for our members, our best franchises network and our corporate staff, and benefits from a steady stream of enhancements and support. This platform can be expanded to attract many payment processing or private currency systems. In the future we may license our Trading Platform to other businesses to manage their private, closed-loop business models. We do not anticipate licensing the Platform to competitive barter exchanges, rather to the growing business opportunity of cashless, private enterprise transactions.

We manage our capital efficiently and continue to generate strong cash flow. Our cash flow in 2007 exceeded $2.5 million. We retired the acquisition debt that originated late in fiscal 2005, funded a new acquisition we completed August 1, 2007, and repurchased and retired shares of common stock. Both acquisitions increased our member base and our revenues, and are expected to contribute to net income. In the near term, we plan to use our capital to either pay off the recent acquisition, buy back more shares at an opportunistic price or fund new acquisitions.

In addition to our cash revenue streams, we generated more than $4 million ITEX dollars in fiscal 2007 and expect to generate more than $5 million in fiscal 2008. The ITEX dollars were primarily used as revenue share and sales incentives with franchisees, and for incentives for existing members. This year we will utilize some of ITEX dollars to offset cash expenses and provide opportunities to enhance our trading community.

Challenges

Our primary objective is to increase member count and generate broader acceptance by the small business sector. Although our revenue has grown 34% and member count by 50% since 2003, this growth has occurred primarily through acquisitions. We are focusing on organic growth, which will help continue our overall successful track record. I am pleased to report we are seeing signs of this growth in the first fiscal quarter of 2008.

    Achievements in the past fiscal year include:
    -- Strong profits, allowing us to realize a sizeable tax benefit
    -- Introduction of Executive Privilege Program
    -- Launch of free online member registration
    -- Placement of educational videos on website - useful for members and
       prospects

A look towards our future

In the almost five years since I began serving as Chairman and CEO, we have overcome several hurdles and mended legacies inherited from the past. I am proud and grateful for the support that has been afforded me by shareholders, our staff and our broker offices. We continue to build a stronger company and find ways to grow and prosper. And, yes a big thanks to all of our small business members in our marketplace and business community!

Many have fore casted onerous economic conditions for the coming year. During times such as these, our Trading Community can flourish as businesses utilize services to not only survive, but prosper as we assist them in selling their goods and services. There is a dynamic energy in our Trading Community that keeps commerce rolling, their ITEX dollars working and their calendars full.

It is our mission to put ITEX on the financial map and to see its greatness achieved. Whether by organic growth or further acquisitions, or both, we will strive to become an expanding force that will benefit our trading community members, assist our franchisees and increase value for our shareholders. Being successful in business requires a lot of endurance, tenacity and resolve, not to mention constant care for your clients, in our case small business barter network. We are resolute in continuing our efforts to maintain your trust and confidence.

On behalf of ITEX Barter Trading Community, I would like to thank our diligent employees; the best franchise network (and their staff), whose dedication and drive is a vital component in our success; our small business members, to whom we strive to deliver value and service; and our valued stockholders for your continuing support and interest.

    Sincerely yours,

    Steven White
    Chairman of the Board
    Chief Executive Officer

This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties concerning our expected performance (as described without limitation in the quotations from current management in this release) and comments within the safe harbor provisions established under The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from the results predicted and reported results should not be considered as an indication of our future performance. We believe that these potential risks and uncertainties include, without limitation: the continuing development of successful marketing strategies for our concepts; our ability to increase revenues and sustain profitability; the availability of adequate working capital; our dependence both on key personnel and our franchise network; and the effect of changes in the overall economy and in technology. Statements in this release should be evaluated in light of these factors. These risk factors and other important factors that could affect our business and financial results are discussed in our periodic reports and filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our Forms 10-KSB and Forms 10-QSB, which are available at http://www.sec.gov., including under the caption, “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations.” All information set forth in this release is as of December 6, 2007, and ITEX undertakes no duty to update this information.

For more information, please visit http://www.itex.com

**This News Release was modified with minor comments in “ITALICS” for the purposes of this small business blog!

Barter Network, Trade Exchange helps small business

January 3rd, 2008 at 04:10 pm by Admin in Barter Items, Small Business Marketing

How can a Barter Network and a trade exchange help small business achieve success? Bartering has been around for a long time, and a Barter Network such as ITEX with thousands of Barter Items and a Trade Exchange community can help any small business by Increasing sales and increasing cash flow. How? Read on, as you already know we have been talking about Barter and online marketplaces such as ITEX barter network for a couple of weeks. We want to hear from you about your small business success stories, if you have tried Barter or not. Or if you ever belonged to a business networking group such as Business Networking Intl. or La tip.

What are you doing ot increase your small business sales and to reduce your small business marketing costs? We also want to hear about any other ideas for your online marketplace ideas any barter items that you would like to see more of or anything else you have in mind as a small business owner.

Here is a press release from ITEX CEO Steve White about the value his trade exchange provides small businesses. I am going to add my comments in italics and reinforce some main points.

A Message From the Chairman of ITEX Corporation
Thursday December 6, 9:00 am ET

BELLEVUE, Wash., Dec. 6 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ — ITEX Corporation (OTC Bulletin Board: ITEX - News), The Membership Trading Community(SM), a leading marketplace for cashless business transactions in North America, today released a letter from Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Steven White to shareholders reporting on 2007 achievements and looking ahead to the Company’s future.

                    THE YEAR IN REVIEW AND A LOOK FORWARD

    December 6, 2007

DEAR VALUED SHAREHOLDERS:

I am pleased to report that ITEX has continued to maintain its solid record of performance. Today, I will summarize our fiscal 2007 achievements, our strengths and challenges, and the steps we are taking to move the company forward.

What we do

For 25 years we have helped our members attract new & small business through our trading business community. Our identity is encapsulated in our slogan: “ITEX, The Membership Trading business Community(SM) is a leading marketplace for cashless business transactions across North America.” We generate revenue by charging members percentage-based transaction fees and subscription fees. These two revenue streams generated 99% of our $14 million in revenue last year.

Initiatives

Every day, we work to grow our business and maintain a profitable marketplace that assists businesses in becoming more successful. As our members succeed, they are motivated to transact more business and refer new members to our trading community.

This past year we endeavored to more clearly refine what we do, improve our processing methods, and attract more business. Surveys and focus groups provided valuable insight into the needs, wants and expectations of the small business owner: our core customer. We sharpened our message to existing and potential members. We analyzed our value proposition and determined we could offer more. New revenue streams were explored and the groundwork laid to start testing our ideas.

As a result of our efforts this year, our messaging to existing and potential members is more concise, our marketing material and website has been redesigned, and we introduced the Executive Privileges Program. I wonder if there will be any initiatives to help grow small businesses, by building a more powerful online business community.

We seek to expand our presence in the small business services sector and accelerate the velocity of transactions in our trading online business community. In a challenging national economy, we are convinced small businesses can benefit even more from the valuable services we provide. We believe a credible and effective online marketplace for small business is still one of the most needed, it certainly an area deficient within the small business marketing segment.

Strengths

ITEX has three primary strengths — our 24,000 member business base, our proprietary payment processing and trading platform (”Trading Platform”) and our ability to manage our capital and the operations of our business efficiently and profitably.

Our Trading Community has grown more than 50% in the last 30 months. We believe the relationship with our member base is underused and undervalued, but is a significant asset with tremendous potential. To enhance this asset, additional partnerships and services are being explored. Hello, does an online marketplace, and an online business community, of benefit to any one in small business marketing?

Our Trading Platform provides excellent tools for our members, our best franchises network and our corporate staff, and benefits from a steady stream of enhancements and support. This platform can be expanded to attract many payment processing or private currency systems. In the future we may license our Trading Platform to other businesses to manage their private, closed-loop business models. We do not anticipate licensing the Platform to competitive barter exchanges, rather to the growing business opportunity of cashless, private enterprise transactions.

We manage our capital efficiently and continue to generate strong cash flow. Our cash flow in 2007 exceeded $2.5 million. We retired the acquisition debt that originated late in fiscal 2005, funded a new acquisition we completed August 1, 2007, and repurchased and retired shares of common stock. Both acquisitions increased our member base and our revenues, and are expected to contribute to net income. In the near term, we plan to use our capital to either pay off the recent acquisition, buy back more shares at an opportunistic price or fund new acquisitions.

In addition to our cash revenue streams, we generated more than $4 million ITEX dollars in fiscal 2007 and expect to generate more than $5 million in fiscal 2008. The ITEX dollars were primarily used as revenue share and sales incentives with franchisees, and for incentives for existing members. This year we will utilize some of ITEX dollars to offset cash expenses and provide opportunities to enhance our trading community.

Challenges

Our primary objective is to increase member count and generate broader acceptance by the small business sector. Although our revenue has grown 34% and member count by 50% since 2003, this growth has occurred primarily through acquisitions. We are focusing on organic growth, which will help continue our overall successful track record. I am pleased to report we are seeing signs of this growth in the first fiscal quarter of 2008.

    Achievements in the past fiscal year include:
    -- Strong profits, allowing us to realize a sizeable tax benefit
    -- Introduction of Executive Privilege Program
    -- Launch of free online member registration
    -- Placement of educational videos on website - useful for members and
       prospects

A look towards our future

In the almost five years since I began serving as Chairman and CEO, we have overcome several hurdles and mended legacies inherited from the past. I am proud and grateful for the support that has been afforded me by shareholders, our staff and our broker offices. We continue to build a stronger company and find ways to grow and prosper. And, yes a big thanks to all of our small business members in our marketplace and business community!

Many have fore casted onerous economic conditions for the coming year. During times such as these, our Trading Community can flourish as businesses utilize services to not only survive, but prosper as we assist them in selling their goods and services. There is a dynamic energy in our Trading Community that keeps commerce rolling, their ITEX dollars working and their calendars full.

It is our mission to put ITEX on the financial map and to see its greatness achieved. Whether by organic growth or further acquisitions, or both, we will strive to become an expanding force that will benefit our trading community members, assist our franchisees and increase value for our shareholders. Being successful in business requires a lot of endurance, tenacity and resolve, not to mention constant care for your clients, in our case small business barter network. We are resolute in continuing our efforts to maintain your trust and confidence.

On behalf of ITEX Barter Trading Community, I would like to thank our diligent employees; the best franchise network (and their staff), whose dedication and drive is a vital component in our success; our small business members, to whom we strive to deliver value and service; and our valued stockholders for your continuing support and interest.

    Sincerely yours,

    Steven White
    Chairman of the Board
    Chief Executive Officer

This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties concerning our expected performance (as described without limitation in the quotations from current management in this release) and comments within the safe harbor provisions established under The Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results may differ materially from the results predicted and reported results should not be considered as an indication of our future performance. We believe that these potential risks and uncertainties include, without limitation: the continuing development of successful marketing strategies for our concepts; our ability to increase revenues and sustain profitability; the availability of adequate working capital; our dependence both on key personnel and our franchise network; and the effect of changes in the overall economy and in technology. Statements in this release should be evaluated in light of these factors. These risk factors and other important factors that could affect our business and financial results are discussed in our periodic reports and filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including our Forms 10-KSB and Forms 10-QSB, which are available at http://www.sec.gov., including under the caption, “Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations.” All information set forth in this release is as of December 6, 2007, and ITEX undertakes no duty to update this information.

For more information, please visit http://www.itex.com

**This News Release was modified with minor comments in “ITALICS” for the purposes of this small business blog!