Archive for August, 2011

Risky Business

Wednesday, August 31st, 2011

Winning business and keeping business are far from a shoe in. Even the most talented people and reputable companies still have to fight for their stake in the marketplace. And unfortunately there are many more factors in play than just raw talent and ideas.

The Harvard Business Review listed 2 ways you shouldn’t pitch an idea as their management tip of the day. They noted that coming up with ideas is easy, pitching them however, is very difficult. HBR suggests that sales people find some middle ground between being too much of a pushover – “caving in to criticism doesn’t demonstrate flexibility, it shows you don’t care about your idea” and being too aggressive “don’t act like everyone should think your idea is great. Be realistic about what you proposal will do for your audience.”

Whether motivating your employees or your prospective clients it’s always good to be enthusiastic about your ideas. Explain why they are good and why they will work. Remember, your clients are not experts in the same field as you. They may have some preconceived ideas about how and what things should look like, but not necessarily a solid market analysis. It’s your responsibility to take their business objectives and brand and create a relevant and successful method for selling it.

While you don’t want to be stubborn about your ideas, you’d be silly to consider compromise surrendering. Listen to your clients and integrate their ideas into your proposal.

Another important point to bear in mind is that winning business, or persuading people in general, is an ongoing process. Great things tend not to happen over night. If a prospective clients asks you to come in and pitch an idea for them, have a few prepared. Even if you only end up showing them one, the point is if asked, you can show that your ideas are varied and your skill set, widespread. You may not get the job on your first try, but if you have sufficiently impressed them you are likely to be invited back again. The most important thing is that you show that you’re listening, testing their ideas with your own and then refining them.

Generally speaking, businesses are going to go with the safest bet, and that may be using what they already know works, going with the less expensive solution or the most basic one. Unless a client has asked for it, it may be best to start with something simple. Simple but easy to roll out and is adaptable to a number of different audiences and markets.

Adaptive Consultancy is a London-based digital agency specialising in web development, design, ecommerce and internet marketing. Services include SEO, paid search, email and social media marketing. More on online marketing consultants visit http://www.adaptiveconsultancy.com/

6 Small Article Marketing Tips That Can Make A BIG Impact

Wednesday, August 31st, 2011

This article is a collection of 6 small seemingly unrelated article marketing tips, but they have one thing in common–as small as they are, they all have the potential to change or improve the way that you write and submit articles in a big way.

Here they are:

1 – The article summary plays a bigger role than you think.

You might not pay that much attention to the article summary, but it is showing up in search engines and on article directories. Also, when people use your author RSS feed on their blog or website, it’s your title and article summary that are displayed. When someone looks at your article summary and title by themselves, are they strong enough to reel a reader in?

2 – Writing is a process with logical steps, not something to gut your way through.

So many times people say, “I need to write an article, and I’m not coming up with anything.” The pressure to write an entire finished article in one sitting is a bit overwhelming. Instead, break the writing process into steps. First do a writing warm-up. Then write a first draft. Then a day or so later review and edit your draft. You’re not supposed to be able to do it all in one sitting, so stop expecting yourself to.

3 – Questions are powerful, interactive, attention grabbing, and help convey that you as an author are interested in the thoughts of your readers.

If someone feels like you are interested in their ideas, then you become more interesting to them. Experiment with putting questions in your title, your first sentence, your last sentence, and wherever appropriate in your article.

4 – What you put in the keywords field when you’re submitting your article matters.

When you look at your published article, you probably can’t see where those keywords that you’ve entered are appearing, but here’s where they’re often used by publishers:

* in the web page URL where the article is published (this helps with SEO)

* in the meta keyword tags on the page where the article is published (this helps search engines determine what your article is about)

* to help search functions in some directories

5 – Never fail to test out the links in your resource box before submitting your article.

No matter how many articles you submit, you’re never past the danger of slipping up when typing and accidentally entering the wrong URL. It happens all the time, and it can be incredibly frustrating. On the bright side, there’s an easy solution–for every single article that you submit, just click the links in your resource box and be sure they’re going to the right site.

6 – The easiest types of articles to write are those aimed at beginners.

I also think that these are some of the most enjoyable articles to write, as it’s fun to teach someone who is brand new to the field. Also, if you think about it, there are usually many more beginners than veterans, so your audience is the largest it can be too. It’s fine to write for all levels of readers, but don’t neglect the newbies! Also, if you’re feeling like you’re running out of topics, go back to your basics, and teach people who are brand new to your niche.

Sometimes it’s the smallest tweak to your article marketing strategy that makes the biggest difference. Did you see yourself in any of these tips?

Online Home Business: How Anyone Can Become An Affiliate Marketer

Wednesday, August 31st, 2011

By Brad Tomkins

In this article I’ll be telling you who can make money from affiliate marketing in today’s online environment. The short answer is that absolutely anyone can make money from affiliate marketing these days. I mean everyone, not just a lucky elite few who have some specialist technical or educational background. You might be a young person still at school or studying at college or university. In that case you will definitely have some spare time to devote to this money making opportunity. Don’t try to deny it. I’ve been a student and I know that even serious students have a lot of spare time.

You might be an older person, perhaps a pensioner. You, too, can be a successful affiliate marketer. You can be a successful affiliate marketer even if you don’t know how to use a computer. That’s because it’s not really that had to learn how to use a modern computer. They are much more user friendly than they used to be and there are many ways to learn to use a computer. There are subsidised, even free courses at your local library or your employer might pay for you to go on a course. Don’t be disheartened or scared of using a computer. They don’t bite and you won’t break it by pressing a few keys! Everyone had to learn sometime and it won’t take that long to learn the basics either. Even if you don’t decide to be an internet marketer you should still learn to use the internet because it is an incredible modern resource that you can only benefit from.

Anyone can be an affiliate marketer. You can be educated or perhaps you didn’t complete high school. You may be male, female, young, old, healthy, poorly, an internet whiz or a total technophobe. It doesn’t matter. These things aren’t important.

How Long Will It Take To Become An Affiliate Marketer?

Well if none of those things matter, what do you need to be a success in this game? One of the key resources that you need is time. You do need to be able to devote some time to your new business if you want to be successful. Sure, the profits will pour in whilst you sleep once the system is set up but you do need to devote some time to setting it up properly. You will need to make time to learn the basics of affiliate marketing and some basic web skills.You will need to make time to educate yourself or let someone else educate you (recommended). You will definitely need to invest some of your time regularly in order to learn these elementary fundamentals or you won’t achieve what you could and should.

Don’t tell me that you don’t have any spare time. Everyone does. We just often choose to spend our time watching mindless television that, in all honesty, we’re probably not that interested in. Television is your enemy. It is a thief. It steals your time and you have probably become conditioned so that watching half an hour of mindless nonsense on TV is what you do out of habit rather than true desire. What you really desire is passive income and financial freedom and you should never ever forget that. Not for one minute. Financial freedom equals free time and choices. The choice and opportunity to spend time with your children, friends and loved ones rather than doing a job just to make a few measly bucks. That’s why you are searching for an opportunity to make money online. Don’t lose sight of the goal. With that in mind, try telling me again that you don’t have enough time. You do. You can make time. You can.

Spend a little bit of time every day and you’ll be amazed at how much you can learn in a relatively short space of time. Investing your own time to learn something won’t have to be repeated. With affiliate marketing I think it’s fair to say that “Once learned, never forgotten” is very true. The new skills you will learn will help you to grow and develop both as an individual and as a provider for yourself and your family.

Now you’ve learned that you are exactly the kind of person who really can succeed as an affiliate marketer and you’ve realised that you do have the time to devote to your success.

Now visit The Six Figure Mentors to claim your amazing FREE 7 Day Video Bootcamp revealing the secrets of affiliate marketing and discover a genuinely quick and easy way to make money online today.
Uncover the most profitable tips and strategies in affiliate marketing with my help at The Six Figure Mentors.

Is Continuous Education Necessary For Achieving True Personal Success?

Wednesday, August 31st, 2011

Nearly everyone will agree that they are looking for more success and achievement in their personal and business life, but not everyone will agree on what the necessary steps and ingredients are to accomplish this. One of the most important ingredients for achieving a real measure of personal success is continuous education. This does not mean that you need to enroll in a new degree program, but it means that you need to continue to learn new and exciting things on a regular basis, which is usually best accomplished by reading new books and articles daily.

Every one of us has 24 hours in a day, however not all of those hours are created equal. The first hour of each day after you wake up is the most important hour of the day, because it sets the tone for the rest of your day. Therefore if you can focus on good, healthy habits in the morning, as well as reading an informative non-fiction article or book to start off your day, you can be sure that it will be a productive business day. You also will learn something new by reading and get your brain moving in the right direction so that you can contribute to your own personal success.

We can all agree that a healthy diet is important, but what may be even more important is your mental diet. By maintaining a positive focus and giving yourself a steady mental diet of books and audio books related to personal and business success, you can use continuous education as a tool to make sure your time is always spent as productively and positively as possible. A simple principle of continuous education to follow is that you should try to learn something new every day, which can be particularly effective if you can do this in the first hour of each new day.

While continuous education is certainly not the same thing as formal education, it does require reading new material and information related to your business on a regular basis. Making yourself read through dense books and material can sometimes be a struggle, and it requires a large amount of mental discipline because sometimes you might dread mental exercise just as much as you dread physical exercise. The good news is that repeated actions will eventually form a habit, so by having the mental discipline to make yourself act correctly by reading new information, over time this will become a habit and it will be much easier.

Not only is it important to use continuous education as a tool to learn new things, but the quality of the information is also very important. By choosing to focus on books that are actually dedicated to building successful businesses or learning the principles of achievement, you give yourself the ideal mental diet of positive information and build great new habits that will serve you well in the future. By remembering the simple definition of continuous education as learning something new on a daily basis (usually by reading), you can use this as a tool to improve your personal success and become as successful as you can possibly be in your life.

Improve Your Affiliate Commissions By Tracking External Links On Your Website

Wednesday, August 31st, 2011

A popular way for website owners to make money is to earn affiliate commissions promoting different products on their site by using their affiliate links. One thing that is very important for website owners is to have accurate and detailed web analytics data that can track how your website is being used, and most web analytics software such as Google Analytics will tell you what your visitors click on once they arrive at your website. If you are a webmaster that has access to this kind of web analytics data, there are a number of ways you can use this information to make sure you are getting the highest amount of affiliate commissions possible.

One way that you can improve your affiliate commissions while tracking your visitors’ behavior is to see how many people click on a given affiliate link on one of your pages versus the total number of people that view that page. This will give you the click-through rate of a particular affiliate link, and it will show you exactly what percentage of your viewers are clicking where you want them to click. With this data you can make small changes to the layout of your webpage to try and increase your click-through rate, which will increase the number of people that are redirected over to the product you are promoting.

An external link on your website is a link that points to another location on the internet, so regular links to other websites and affiliate links are both external links. Your web analytics software should be able to track both of these kinds of links, including how many clicks each link gets, and a good way to use this information is to track how many clicks one of your affiliate links gets and compare that to the data that your affiliate company is providing.

There are different ways to track affiliate commissions, and there is always the possibility that an improperly formatted link might not give you credit for the referral. By checking your data against the data that is provided by the affiliate company, you can make sure that you are getting credit for all the visitors that you refer and not leaving any money on the table. If the data between your own web analytics and your affiliate company does not match up, you should be able to identify the problem and fix it, or you should speak to a representative at the affiliate company to get things straightened out.

As in any business, the more information that you have about your customers, the better prepared you are to make decisions that will help to increase your profits. Affiliate marketing on the internet is a unique industry because you can encounter difficult problems that can subtract from your profits, such as not actually getting credit for the people that you are referring to an affiliate website. By tracking the external links on your own website you can make sure that everything is working the way that it should be so that you are earning the highest amount of affiliate commissions possible for you.

A Bad Keyword List Can Damage Your PPC Advertising Campaign And Waste Money

Wednesday, August 31st, 2011

One of the most important features of your pay-per-click advertising campaign for your website is your keyword list, because it is this alone that determines where your ads will show up in the search engines. If your keyword list is perfectly suited for your advertising campaign, it can be of tremendous benefit and profitability because it will allow your ads to show up for all the right targeted search results. If you do not have a good keyword list however, it has the potential to completely destroy your advertising campaign and lead to wasted advertising dollars without any substantial increase in business.

When you are running a pay-per-click advertising campaign on a search engine, your specific ads will only show up for the search terms that you designate in your keyword list. It is not possible for your ad to show up on a search that is not related to your keywords, therefore it is important that your list includes all of the important search terms that are targeted to your business, and search terms where the person looking on the search engine will likely be interested in what you are offering. A good tip for picking excellent keywords is to find search terms with the word “buy” followed by a product in your industry, since you already know that this person is interested in making a purchase.

Creating the best keyword list possible not only puts your advertisements in front of the right people, but it seriously influences another important metric in your ad campaign called click-through rate or CTR. This tells you how many people are clicking on your ad based on how many times it shows up in the search listings, which basically tells you how popular it is compared to all the other ads. When your ad has a high CTR, it will have a more prominent listing in the search results and the cost per click that you need to pay will also be cheaper.

Another important aspect of using your keyword list correctly is to test how all of your different keywords are performing after you have been running your advertising campaign for a while. Now that you know how important it is to put in the initial effort to build a detailed list of search terms related to your website or business, you can make this list even better by seeing how each of your terms are performing and which ones are generating the most sales. This can also be an opportunity to split-test different versions of your ad copy to see which versions of your ads perform the best.

In conclusion, while pay-per-click search engine marketing has the potential to create massive amounts of website traffic, you might end up wasting your advertising dollars if you do not put enough time and research into creating a good keyword list. Many advertisers make the mistake of skimming over their keyword list without giving it the attention it deserves, and therefore they end up seeing a smaller return on investment with their advertising dollars. By putting in the time to create a targeted and well thought out keyword list, you can ensure that all of your advertising budget is spent with maximum efficiency for growing your business.

Understanding What Your Focus Should Be When Becoming An Affiliate Marketer

Wednesday, August 31st, 2011

Website promotion through newsletters is a great inexpensive, often free, way of generating traffic to your website. A website promotion is one of the main focus of any business owners. Increasing the traffic is a tough job especially if your site is still relatively new. Search engines like Google have their own formula in indexing new URL’s and it is something we don’t really know. But what we do know is that we can help promote our website patiently to increase its traffic and that is through website promotion. While it may take some time before our site is actually crawled by search engine spiders, we can already do consistent traffic generating methods which will pay off in the long run. As soon as your site appears on search engine results, it might not produce exactly the same traffic you expected. Do not fret, just continue your promotion efforts because consistent traffic building efforts can lead to maximum, ideal results.

Many have overlooked the golden opportunity provided by newsletters. The process is very simple; you write a short article about a relevant topic which will contain a plug to your website. Since online newsletter editors are constantly looking for new information especially from new businesses cropping out, this is a golden opportunity to get your website published. They don’t usually like paying for your articles but they will offer a byline or a small advertisement space for your webpage. This can help you spread to quickly get the word out while you are still waiting for search engine spiders to crawl into your site and save your data to their system. Newsletters provide easy and free promotion for your site. As soon as your site gets indexed, you can still publish newsletters from time to time.

How do you go about writing newsletters?

It’s very simple. You can write only one newsletter and submit to numerous Ezines. Remember to not transfer the copyright of your post but only allow the right to print your newsletter. That way, your article can reach many more prospective clients. The most important part of a newsletter is the resource box. Make sure that when you are plugging for your website, put in there the complete website address so people can just click on it or you can use html or BBC codes to incorporate a hyperlinked keyword. The easier you make it for your readers to be directed to your site, the better.

In affiliate marketing, a newsletter publication is a great tool for your elementary websites. It’s an amazing method to start up your website’s presence online and help increase your traffic. The main player here is your resource box. How you construct it will greatly affect the direct results. Do not make it sound too promotional because most readers would read it as a spam or a sales talk. Write it in such a way that calls someone to action. Play with their curiosity and interest. Make it sound intriguing. That way, the readers are compelled to click on the link. An overly promotional resource box would not only ruin the entire article but would ultimately waste your effort.

David C. is an avid internet marketer who has several websites of his own, and has learned from trial and error. He shares his knowledge so that you don’t have to waste your time and money. To learn more visit http://www.mygoldenrolodex.info.

Offline Marketing – Helping Local Business Can Certainly Make You Rich

Wednesday, August 31st, 2011

The changing economy and the growth of the internet have led a lot of us to try to make an income online. Marketing your own items or those of someone else has become the way chosen by almost all people. It may perhaps be that you have discovered that making money online is challenging but that you actually know a lot regardless of how much you have earned. In your local region, you will find that there are businesses that need help getting noticed online. The need for more prospects is their main concern regardless of if they give any attention to the internet. This will often be the case and if you can assist them do that. You can build yourself a rather nice business.

The advantage of marketing in the brick and mortar world is that you have the ability to have more control over your final results. There are obstacles to overcome which will require action on your part such as being prepared to make contact with local businesses to offer your services to them. If you currently have an idea of where you are experienced, you can begin to plan what you will actually be selling when you do get to approach a small business. A business requiring a website or better online search engine rankings have been the standard services being marketed. Whenever you can, find your own particular area because even though those services are relevant, you may have another skill to get your foot in the door.

In respect to services you could make available, here are some ideas. Facebook and Twitter are currently probably names that almost everybody is aware of as well as business owners. The notion that they are just for interpersonal chit chat is a more common belief than you might expect. The method by which social media can improve business is an area we have familiarity with through marketing online. Facebook page and social media consulting is a viable marketing model which can get you noticed by local business owners who need help. You will discover that businesses start approaching you when you have gained a reputable name as someone who understands how social sites can improve their sales.

If you have the ability to set up a wordpress blog, an additional option for you is to focus on a keyword that is specific to specific local businesses. The type of business and community or town would be in the domain for your site and you would then develop it to rank high in the search results. This gives you the opportunity to obtain regular payments from a company for either renting your website or advertising on it. The online site could even be used for lead generation which could be made available for business owners to buy. If you do this the right way, recurring cash flow is a distinct likelihood.

If you just want to own a real business using the online skills you currently have, then offline marketing may be the answer you are looking for.

How To Make A Decision On How You Are Going To Make Money Online

Wednesday, August 31st, 2011

By Bernard Teo

While a lot of people have the need to work from home, not many actually know what to do to get started. The fact is that the opportunities to work in the home are many and it can all get a little confusing to someone without any experience. The hardest part is going to be how to make a decision on how you are going to make money online. The following information will help you to make one of the most important decisions in your lifetime:

Even though there are a lot of ways to make money online, they all generally revolve around three different things: the sale of products, the sale of services, or earning income from an informational website. Which one is right for you?

Selling products is going to require that you do a lot of marketing. A lot of people think they have what it takes to effectively promote a product, but after a few weeks, they become impatient. Patience is going to be your biggest problem, as some of the marketing you do is not going to drive traffic quickly. If you lack patience, this may not be your best bet.

On the other hand, the sale of services will still require you to market the business, but it is going to be different than selling products. Instead of trying to show someone why they need a product, you have to show them how they can benefit from your service and, more importantly, why they should hire you. While it is still sales, the process may not be as stressful for you, as once you have proven yourself to a client, you can be assured they will keep coming back.

As for the information websites, most of the income you earn is going to come from advertising. Getting hooked up with ad revenue sites is a simple process or you could actually sell the advertising space yourself. The key to making a good income in this particular business-type is to make sure you have a lot of traffic to your site. If you can show the numbers to potential advertisers, you can be assured a better outcome.

In order for you to decide what you are going to do to make money online, you have to know what you are interested in. Do you have the skills to provide a service to others? Would you prefer to join a company and sell their products? When you know a lot about a specific subject, you could earn that income from an informational website, but you would also have to like the subject. Take all of this information into consideration when making your final decision and you will find that you will make a much wiser decision.

Learn How To Make Money Online And Get Started Fast!

Choosing the Right Web Designer for Your Site

Wednesday, August 31st, 2011

The hot topic on my plate right now is website design. I have two clients going through a website redesign, plus we are in the midst of a total redesign here at JJS Coaching. Picking a designer for a business website can be a daunting task. It’s easy to feel intimidated when shopping around for a designer. Here are some guidelines to help you in your process.

1. Take a look at the web designer’s portfolio. Every designer has their own style and you will see if that style fits your needs. If you LOVE the company’s website and their portfolio then this may be your designer. If you don’t love the look and feel of the designs, then move on.

2. Dig a bit deeper than the looks. A web designer understand your website goals if they are going to create a site that works for your business. So find out about their process. a. Do they have a client assessment of some sort to help define the style? b. Is there some sort of discovery call where you discuss the website goals and how they can help you achieve them? (On a side note, have you already defined your website goals – aka what you want your website to DO for your business) c. Does their package include time to train you how to edit and update the site? d. Is there a limit on revisions of the initial design? (3 or 4 designs are typical, revisions – changing that design till it’s just right – are usually included) As the business owner you need to give as much input as possible to make this site a success.

3. Make sure you will own what you paid for. At the end of the process you should own all copyrights and files. You are paying a designer for their design work. Just like you still own your car after you take it to the mechanic, you should own everything from your website after its design.

4. Own your domain name. If this is a new site make sure YOU own your domain name. You can purchase that even before you contact a designer.

5. Manage your own site. Y you should be able to go in and update the text on your site whenever you want without having to pay the designer to do it. Make sure they are using Content Management System (CMS) or blog software, so that you can control updates.

6. SEO – Search Engine Optimization. While not all designers specialize in SEO, make sure your designer understands your SEO goals. You want them to install whatever plugins are needed to achieve those goals.

7. Get references. Do not hire a web designer without talking to their past clients. It’s not just about how beautiful your website looks. You want to know things like a. Was the site delivered on time? b. Were there any problems with the site? c. If there were problems, were they quickly and satisfactorily resolved? d. Was the designer unable to do anything requested of them?

8. Connect with your designer. You must have a connection (synergy) with your website designer. They are going to take your thoughts and ideas and turn them in to something concrete (graphics and layouts). If you interview a designer and you don’t “click” they won’t be able to translate your thoughts in to something you love.

There are a lot of great web designers out there. Spend the necessary time to find the one website designer who will work the best for your business. A great relationship will give you tons of benefits for many years.

Small Business Coach and Marketing Strategist, Jennifer Davey, is the author of the “14-Step Formula for Getting Clients, Building Business and Making More Income”, Grab a FREE copy of her Report “What you Need to Know to Be Successful at Getting Clients” visit: http://jjscoaching.com/free-report/


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