As our site grows every day we want to share some information with you on the way we are operating the project. We call this section «Business Blog» as it is similar to doing a log book where data is recorded in a chronological order. «Blogging» is gaining popularity with more and more people picking up the habit of publishing their experiences and thoughts on the Internet. Our Blog covers various topics — from TOEFL, TOEIC, MBA, GMAT, ESL/EFL test preperation to cultural traditions and current political events.
There will also be some Internet marketing terminology and if you have any questions regarding the information simply let us know.

The Business Blog is written by Torsten Daerr and edited by Alan Townend.

2003 — October 30
We have received an email from the editor of a new journal called «Progressive Improvement in English and Personality Development» telling us that they find our stories and articles very useful and would like to re-print some of the material in their next issue. Of course we will allow the articles to be included in the journal because this way we will reach people who don't have access to the internet at the moment. Maybe, Mr Puri can send us a copy of the next issue so we can get an idea of what the journal is about and we could probably collaborate in the future too. We have already asked Mr Puri (to be honest we are not sure whether he is male as we only know his or her initials) to write a short article about their journal for our website.
This is the exciting thing about the internet and the English language — a combination that connects people from all around the world be it on — or offline. I'm sure that there will be more offers like this in the months to come and we will get very busy…

2003 — October 29
We are planning to offer a variety of products that focus on TOEIC test preparation, effective language learning, Business English, CV writing and other topics. For starters we will be making our tests available for download. This means you will be able to download all the tests onto your hard drive so you can use them on Your local PC saving the cost of internet access.
Also, the tests will come without any advertising and you can take each test as often as you like. You will be able to arrange your own training programme. For example you can take one test a day from Monday through Friday for 12 solid weeks .
Do you think you will improve your English with this approach? I do. And it will take just 2 minutes of your time each day. In addition you can log on to our website and download new tests or contact Alan, the author of the tests to get grammar explanations and share your learning experiences with other students on the forum. What do you think of this proposal?

2003 — October 28
Very good news for us today: Google has awarded our site with a PageRank™ of 6/10. To be honest, I'm very proud of this result as it usually takes up to one year to achieve this type of importance and many websiteS never get to this level at all. We have managed to increase our PageRank™ from 0 to 6 within a very short period of time — less than 4 months. This is due to various factors. First of all Alan has been writing new tests and other materials almost on a daily basis and obviously the number of pages a website has influences Google's PageRank™ . Also, the more links a website receives from pages with a high PageRank™ the better. Every day more and more people find our website and use the tests and a lot of our visitors like our site so much that they share our address with their friends via email. Didn't I mention «viral marketing» a couple of days ago. This of course also contributes to new links from other webpages which Google classifies as «important» in return…

2003 — October 27
Internet business and internet marketing follow the same principles that operate in any situation where people interact. Take search engines for example: They cater for one particular human trait — the wish for convenience. You are writing your school essay on Shakespeare and your need more information on the great poet's life. What do you do? Go to the library? That's one option but that means you've got to leave your comfortable home. So why not type in «Shakespeare» into your favourite search engine (Google in all probability) and up come all the many places where you will find every little detail about Mr William Shakespeare, the creator of thousands of new English words such as «midnight» or «lonely».) A recent search on «Shakespeare» returned a total of move than 7 million entries in Google. Sure, you can still go to the library if you really like that quiet yet busy atmosphere only a library can provide. But then again remember the internet has its own atmosphere too…