5 New And Lesser-Known Online Business Ideas

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1. Ask people to find a hidden link in your ad copy. If they find the hidden link, tell them they will get a prize or freebie by clicking on it. This will increase the chance that they will buy your product or service because they will read your whole ad copy.

2. Start a members only web site. Tell visitors what’s in your members only site and what it costs to get access. Offer them a free membership, if, in exchange they link to your web site, post your banner on their home page or agree to advertise your web site in their e-zine for a set period of time. Usually they will agree to the free advertising to save money. This is a powerful way to get free advertising.

3. Want a popular discussion board? This technique is based on the number of postings made by any one person. You could give away a free product or service to any person that posts ten or more messages on your discussion in a month. It could be a free e-book, report, e-mail consulting etc. Just keep track of everyone’s postings each month. This could also work for e-mail discussion lists.

4. Give your visitors an instant article directory. Tell your visitors they can instantly add a free article directory to their web site by linking to yours. Just place your ad or banner ad on top of the article directory for your main product or service. All those links can add up to a large amount of traffic for your web site.

5. There a millions of web sites on the internet. Instead of marketing your web site as a web site. Market it as a free web book. Design your web site with a title page, table of contents, chapters, etc. Just place your ad or banner for your product or service on the top of each web page. —-

June 17th, 2008 - Posted in Online Marketing | | 0 Comments

10 Super Charged Ways To Spark Your Sales

1. Add a free interactive game to your web site. You could hire someone to create it. The game should be related to the theme of your web site.

2. Train your employees as a team instead of just individuals. Everyone must do their job in order for the others do theirs.

3. Make people feel like it’s their idea to buy, they will be less hesitant. Tell them in your ad “You’re making a smart decision for buying our product”.

4. Promote yourself as well as your products. Write articles, ebooks, reports, etc. When you endorse products, people will think your statement is credible.

5. Show your prospects a group of testimonials that stand up for your product. People are more likely to agree with a group than have a different opinion.

6. Maximize your advertising budget and don’t go broke like the big web sites. All you need is a small group of loyal customers to sell back end products.

7. Sell to the people that join your affiliate program. They are more likely to by your products because they are interested in selling them for commission.

8. Offer a deluxe product or service as an up sell or back end product. You won’t have to create a totally new product just add on to your main one.

9. Tell people what they’re thinking and feeling as they read your ad. Most people will actually do it. Your statements should help sell your product.

10. Make your product offer very rare. People perceive things that are rare as being more valuable. You could use a limited time offer or free bonuses.

June 17th, 2008 - Posted in Online Marketing | | 1 Comments

10 Ways To Improve Your Customer Service

1. Stay in contact with customers on a regular basis. Offer them a free e-zine subscription. Ask customers if they want to be updated by e-mail when you make changes to your Web site. After every sale, follow-up with the customer to see if they are satisfied with their purchase.

2. Create a customer focus group. Invite ten to twenty of your most loyal customers to meet regularly. They will give you ideas and input on how to improve your customer service. You could pay them, take them out to dinner or give them free products.

3. Make it easy for your customers to navigate on your web site. Have a “FAQ” page on your Web site to explain anything that might confuse your customers. Ask them to fill out an electronic survey to find out how make your web site more customer friendly.

4. Resolve your customers complaints quickly and successfully. Answer all e-mail and phone calls within an hour. If possible, you the owner of the business, personally take care of the problem. This will show your customers you really care about them.

5. Make it easy for your customers to contact you. Offer as many contact methods as possible. Allow customers to contact you by e-mail. Hyperlink your e-mail address so customers won’t have to type it. Offer toll free numbers for phone and fax contacts.

6. Make sure employees know and use your customer service policy. Give your employees bonuses or incentives to practice excellent customer service. Tell employees to be flexible with each individual customer, each one has different concerns, needs and wants.

7. Give your customers more than they expect. Send thank you gifts to lifetime customers. E-mail them online greeting cards on holidays or birthdays. Award bonuses to your customers who make a big purchase.

8. Always be polite to your customers. Use the words your welcome, please, and thank you. Be polite to your customers even if they are being irate with you. Always apologize to your customers should you make a mistake. Admit your mistakes quickly and make it up to them in a big way.

9. Reward customers a point for every one dollar they spend. Let’s say customers can get a free computer for 300 points. That means customers will spend $300 dollars on your products and services to get enough points to get the free computer.

10. Build strong relationships with your customers. Invite them to company meetings, luncheons, workshops or seminars. Create special events for your customers like parties, barbecue’s, dances etc. This will make them feel important when you include them in regular business operations and special events.

June 17th, 2008 - Posted in Online Marketing | | 3 Comments

Express Yourself With Blogs

The freedom of speech and expression has a new facet now - blogs. No matter what you have on your mind, you can talk about it and have discussions, through your blog. Whether you want to talk about current affairs, have debates or discussions, talk about your favourite books or movies - no matter what you want to talk about, a blog is a great way to talk about it.

You can freely express your opinions and say exactly what you think through blogs. You might find people who vehemently oppose what you have to say, but then, you will also find people who feel exactly the same way. Even if you just want to rant about something annoying that happened during the day, you will find kindred souls.

Some bloggers make their points through hilarity, while others can be bordering on the offensive to some, because they are brutally honest. Nevertheless, blogging is a great way for everyone to express themselves.

Comparatively, there are blogs which talk about daily incidents in a ‘reader-friendly’ tone, which visitors can participate in, pitch in with their opinions and generally make the blog lively and interesting.

Of course, keeping your blog updated and interesting is not easy - you will have to work at it. This is especially true if you deal with current affairs and hard news. This usually makes such blogs take second place to personal ones.

You can have the same kinds of conversations you have over the phone or with your friends , on your blogs. If you want to talk about how your annoying neighbour plays the drums in the middle of the night, or how the landlord simply refuses to have a leaky roof fixed, all you have to do is make it fun, and it will make a great blog. Even if you want to let out your anger and scream, a blog is a great way to do it.

To do all this, you don’t need to have your own blog. You can simply sign up with an already established blog and become a guest blogger. Also, you can simply join in by sharing your viewpoints about anything that’s discussed in the blog. Expressing yourself through a blog and letting the world know how you feel can be liberating and enjoyable.

Personal interest blogs are gradually becoming more popular among the web-savvy community and so, make the best of it through becoming a participant yourself.

June 16th, 2008 - Posted in Blogs | | 0 Comments

Pick Out Private Label Articles for Your Maximum Marketing Result

There are many places where you can purchase private label articles. Some places don’t supply good quality articles but they can be used as a starting point for writing your own articles. Also many of these private label sites have a high membership which means you will see the same article being submitted time and time again to an article directory. The article directories frown upon this as they want every article submitted to be unique, if you submit an un-edited PLR article you risk getting your publisher account suspended.

When you get articles from a article membership site, you should take some time to edit your articles by at least thirty percent, to ensure that there is plenty of unique content within your articles. That could be quite a time consuming process especially if you have 1,000 PLR articles a month to edit or spin!

You will need to edit your articles to make them unique, and if you are not able to do this yourself, then you should consider outsourcing your tasks. This will add to the cost of buying the PLR articles, and you might want to consider buying unique articles, these unique articles will be more expensive than standard PLR articles but it may work out cheaper in the long run when you take into account the time it would take you to edit the non-unique PLR articles.

One of the major benefits of PLR articles is that someone else has spent the time researching the subject and then writing the articles, this research takes days even weeks so there is defiantly some time to be saved in that respect. But since there are many articles are poorly written, and this is where you need to do your due diligence to ensure good quality articles, a bad article won’t have nearly the same impact on your audience as an intelligent, well written article.

If you decide to use private label articles then you will also need to decide how to use them. You can use the articles for part of your research on a topic or niche. You can also use them to write brand new articles rather than rewriting them.

If you are rewriting an article then you will need to understand what the original article is trying to describe and then write it in your own words or add some new sections or paragraphs to the existing articles. When you spend more time doing this, you will find it easier and easier. Like with anything, the more practice you have the easier it becomes. The beauty of rewriting articles is that you can continue to use the same formula until you are satisfied with the final results.

The final thing that a lot of people forget is article needs to be interesting. Sure you want the search engine to index the article, you want the article directory to accept the article, but if people find it dull and boring then they will not end up on your website or clicking on your other articles. Use the article to tease them, let them know about the gems waiting for them on your site. Let them know that they won’t be disappointed if they arrive at your site to learn more about the subject that interests them. Make sure you don’t turn your article into a pitch fest for your website, try and find a happy medium between pitch-fest and an informative, entertaining article.

June 13th, 2008 - Posted in Online Marketing | | 0 Comments

Online Cash Gifting Attract the Leads to Succeed

Brand new marketing system has just launched. Prospect Blazer is the answer to attracting thousands of leads to your online cash gifting business. Success in your home based business is based upon your ability to attract a huge volume of targeted leads to your website.

You are about to learn the secret of attracting leads for your online cash gifting business that can make you into an overnight success.

The ultimate lead generation system was created by 4 top online marketers. Prospect Blazer will create tons of qualified visits to your website. This marketing sytem will help you create traffic and paid leads you could only dream about.

Home based business owners have now realized to go global you have to be on the worldwide web. The number way to market your product or service is to reach out and think globally.

Prospect Blazer has over 30 capture pages that have virtual models to promote the service. Bonuses that will help you drive more traffic to your website are valued at more than $1,800.

The Prospect Blazer system is a marketing system that is turn key. Simply direct your autoresponder to the landing page of your choice and you are ready to start generating leads and getting people to view your product or service.

The online cash gifting business owners will find that this system is really a unique marketing system to help you get paid leads. The Prospect Blazer has so many different ways to obtain good high quality leads. One test resulted in over 12,000 leads in 1 week!

Prospect Blazer has a 100% return policy if you are not fully satisfied. The bonuses you receive are valued at over $1800 and they are yours to keep.

June 8th, 2008 - Posted in Online Marketing | | 0 Comments

Part Three Of A Blogging Masterclass

More Traffic Sources

Getting links from other websites is not the only way to attract visitors to visit your blog. This time, we are going to explore alternative methods to attract high quality traffic with both free and paid methods.

The first thing you can do to generate traffic is to recycle all the content you have written on your blog. What I really mean is to turn your blog posts into little “manuals” or articles that help people solve their problems or offer valuable information and submit them to article directories. These article directories are like aggregators that collect articles of similar themes together in one place, so they receive thousands and thousands of qualified visitors every day.

When you submit your articles to these directories, you are exposing your name to the thousands of pairs of eyes visiting them for free! On most article directories, you are also permitted to include a “resource box” where you can include your contact details, a simple biography and so on. This is where you can truly leverage the traffic of the said article directories.

Some good article directories to get you started are www.eZineArticles.com, www.ultimatearticledirectory.com and www.submityourarticle.com.

Another excellent way to gain traffic is to join internet forums that is based on your niche. To find these kind of forums, just go to any search engine and enter ” +forum”, without the quotes. You would want the most focused forum with a substantial number of active members, and preferably always bustling with activity. Just check the dates of the threads posted on the forum.

When you join active forums that focus on your field of discussion and post very useful and valuable posts, your peers will start noticing you and paying attention to what you have to say. In most forums, you are also allowed to append a link to your site in the signature line, which is under every post you make on the forums. People will click and visit your blog if they find your posts helpful and informative. This way, your credibility is built even before they land on your blog, so traffic from the forums would be easier to turn into profits if your blog is selling your own products or recommending others’ as an affilliate since they are already convinced you’re an “expert” in the field.

The strategy we’ll discuss is word of mouth. Let’s say you already have a daily visitor count of 100. What if you compiled a small report or gift and posted it on your blog, saying that if a certain visitor can refer three of his/her friends to visit your blog the gift will be his/hers for free? If your small report or gift is lucrative enough, it will generate a small buzz among your blog readers and they will surely refer their friends to this blog that they frequent!

You can also utilize the “blog and ping” technique that everyone’s talking about. Basically, when you update your blog, you can let blog portals such as www.technorati.com know by pinging them. You can ping a lot of portals at once by using the free www.pingomatic.com.

Besides the techniques described here, there are also paid methods like buying links from high-ranking pages or buying banner advertisement space. A thing to keep in mind when buying paid traffic is to always weigh your profits generated from the paid ads. If your profits do no offset the expense, you will end up losing money, so choose wisely.

Monetizing Your Blog

You have been working hard to produce good-quality, original content on your blog and you have attracted a decent amount of traffic by doing so. However, money is not going to appear out of thin air just because you have traffic. You have to turn your traffic into money.

There are several ways to generate profits from the visitors of your blog, and Google’s Adsense programme allows you to do so with ultimate ease. First, visit their website at http://adsense.google.com/. You’ll find out more about their advertising programme there, but here are some extra bits I’d like to tell you.

First, Google’s Adsense programme is a really useful way to monetize your blog because when users finish reading your newest post, chances are they want to leave your blog because they have nothing else to do on your blog. If your Adsense advertisement block is visible on your blog, they might see advertisements relevant to them and click on them to exit your blog. Ka-ching! You’ve just cashed in on your first virtual cents!

But yes, your profits will only be cents if you don’t “do it right”. This involves placing your Google ads in the right places and ensuring they blend in to your site so that they appear more like links rather than advertisements to your visitors. Consult the page https://www.google.com/support/adsense/bin/static.py?page=tips.html to see the “heat map” of your blog. The “hotter” a certain area, the greater the chances of someone looking at your blog.

Once you get a Google Adsense account, you can change the colour of your advertisement text and links. You will want them to match the colours on your blog. If your blog’s text is black and the links are red, do the same for the ad blocks too! It’s that simple.

Another way to earn profits from your blog is to recommend products to your readers. When your visitors buy from the merchants you recommend, you get to keep a little commission too. This is known as affiliate marketing and it is very easy to start because you don’t have to create your own products or services.

Anyway, let’s refer back to our technological gadgets blog example. Let’s say you discover this Gadget X on a merchant’s website, and they offer an affilliate programme. What you would do is to create a post in your blog and do a mini-review on this Gadget X. Rip it apart and point out its benefits and bad points, if any, and include a link (which is given by the merchant) for the visitor to purchase the Gadget X online.

If your visitor clicks and purchases the gadget, the merchant will track from the link that the purchase is referred by you, so they will send you your share of the profits. Imagine if 1 out of every 100 visitors you get purchases this product, and you earn $27.00 commission from each purchase! If you get 10,000 visitors in a month that would be a $2,700.00 paycheque for you just for writing about ONE product.

Now, affiliate programmes are very nice ways to generate profit, but how do you find affiliate programmes that are related to your blog’s theme? Easy, just go to Google and search for +”affiliate programmes”. Another slightly better way is to go to http://www.associateprograms.com/search to look for affiliate programmes in your niche. The two ways mentioned above are basic ways to generate profits from your blog. We’ll be discussing other great, profitable ways, so keep your eyes peeled!

More Monetizing Options

We’ve discussed about using Google Adsense programme and other merchants’ affiliate programmes to generate profits from your blog. However, we have a lot of other options ot monetize your blog, so we’re going to look into that today.

The first option we’ll be looking at is Chitika (www.chitika.com). Chitika is a very innovative contextual advertising programme because it can serve very detailed advertisements. For example, on your technological gadget blog, Chitika will show advertisements for tech gadgets such as iPods. The way they show it is in different tabs: one for “Best deals”, another for “details”, another for “reviews” and so on. This way, it is more of an informational section for your visitor rather than an advertisement, and naturally the click-through will be higher. You can apply here: https://chitika.com/application.php?type=mm

You can also be an affiliate for Amazon.com. Amazon offers a wide range of products but its predominant domain is in books. Whatever your niche is about, you can probably find a book about it on Amazon.com. Join their Associate programme here: https://associates.amazon.com/gp/flex/associates/apply-login.html/

Once you join them, you can refer visitors to them and earn up to 10% commission. It’s not a lot but if you can manage to refer big volumes of visitors, Amazon is for you. This programme really shines when it comes to the ways you can refer visitors: you can use their predefined templates to pull up recent items that match a certain criteria you set, you can target your ad to show a specific item on sale or you can just simply weave your referral links into your blog posts.

Last but definitely not least, you can sell advertising space on your blog if your blog is truly popular. Just take a look at blogs like http://xiaxue.blogspot.com. That blog receives over 10,000 pageviews every day and naturally merchants will want to strike a deal with the blog’s owner to post their advertisements there. If you manage to pull in huge amounts of traffic like that blog, you can definitely get people to buy ad space on your blog for prices from $150/month upwards, depending on your blog popularity. To gauge how much pageviews and visitors you get everyday, just use the free tool available at www.statcounter.com. They have a very detailed setup guide there so I won’t go into it.

If your blog has not acquired large amount of visitors yet, you can still sell ad space on your blog on a per click or per impression basis. Just visit sites like www.adbrite.com. For a complete list of these sites, visit http://performancing.com/node/60.

Hopefully, that will help you maximize earnings and profits from your blog!

Interactions Between Blogs

As your blog’s content increases, people in your niche will definitely mention you for intelligent or interesting discussions. This is, in a sense, an initiation of an interaction. When people speak of you, you should thank them for the mention and build up the interaction! When you use a traffic tracking script such as the free www.statcounter.com, you can see where traffic comes from. If a large number of visitors come from a certain blog, you can be sure they have mentioned you in their latest post or linked to you from their sidebar or links page.

What you should do is pay them a visit, leave constructive comments on their posts and build up a conversation! As you continue doing this, you will start to gather a lot of friends in your niche. This is helpful later on when you decide to do collaborations such as interviews. In fact, when you’re out of ideas for writing on your blog, you can interview other blog owners in your niche! Human beings are curious creatures, so naturally they would like to know more about a person whose writings they read so often.

If you’re using Wordpress, Textpattern, MovableType or any other advanced blog engines, you can also post trackback links on your posts. This means you can post an article about what other people have posted! Your particular post will then appear as a link on that post you have written about. This is definitely a great way to get traffic if you post brilliant insights about a post on a very famous blog.

Since the famous blog already has a pre-existing pool of readers, this is like a shortcut to hog their visitors! The only thing you would want to observe is to keep your posts sensible and insightful, or you’ll be viewed as a spammer.

On the other hand, if you’re using Blogger, you would not be able to use trackback links. However, you can post insightful comments on other people’s blogs and subtly include a link back to your blog. You can make it seem like you’re pointing to your blog as an extra reference to the subject of discussion. Of course, this technique is not only limited to Blogger users and users of other blog engines can employ this strategy as an additional traffic source.

Finally..

Is blogging for you or even for everyone? I guess it all depends on how we define blogging. For instance, if we include social network blogging, blogging is indeed for you and for everyone, as a good percentage of Internet users operate some form of social networking blog. Currently, over 60 million people in the United States alone do that with Myspace.

So is blogging for you or everyone? If we consider commercial endeavours, it certainly is not for everyone. Only about 7% of Internet users operate blogs for commercial purposes.

The question of “is blogging for you or everyone?” also applies to entrepreneurs. Blogging can be an excellent tool for an entrepreneur - especially those who are sole proprietors looking for a good and inexpensive venue for promotion, but that doesn’t mean that everyone should necessarily do it. In some instances, a private forum will be a better means of recorded, Internet-based communication between a group of people. In other instances, a website will require less maintenance and will be a better stand-alone traffic puller, especially if the would-be blogger does not have the time to constantly update and promote a blog.

However, there definitely are a number of good reasons to blog. One of the best reasons is that it’s really easy. Building a good website can take hundreds of hours. This is not so with a blog. With a blog, you can simply open up an account with Blogger and begin posting. No coding or HTML-editing is required. You don’t even need to learn how to use WYSIWYG program - or how to upload your uploads to your website.

So is blogging for you or everyone? It isn’t for everyone, especially if we’re considering commercial blogging; some people don’t own businesses, have nothing to promote, and have no interest in starting. But there’s a good chance blogging is for you if you want to a low cost means of promoting your business. It’s cheap, comparatively easy and quick to start.

June 7th, 2008 - Posted in Blogging | | 9 Comments

Part One Of A Blogging Masterclass

Setting Up Your Blog

Blogging is a lucrative source of profit and blogs are easy to set up and maintain. Imagine a life where you are paid to write on stuff that interests you, whenever you want, wherever you are. The mere flexibility of blogging makes it easy for you to just kick back, relax and go on a vacation whenever you feel like it.

In this article, we are going to look into the profitability of a blog and set up a blog of our own at no cost! Interested? Read on!

First, we need to obtain a blog. There are several options - host a blog on your own domain or get a free blog. For starters, let’s talk about the free blogs. You can obtain a free blog at www.blogger.com or the newer (and better!) www.wordpress.com. If you are a techie, you must have heard of Wordpress, a free blog engine that is robust and infinitely expandable.

Blogger.com is actually owned by Google, so it will be detected on Google’s radar faster and you will be indexed faster. Wordpress.com, however, is a relatively new option so I have no comparison on the speed of getting indexed by search engines. However, Wordpress is better in the sense that it has more advanced features such as Trackbacks and Categories. You can also manage your sidebar links more efficiently (more about this later).

Get a free blog at either Blogger.com or Wordpress.com. Then, familiarize yourself by posting your first post on your blog and tinkering around with the options and templates.

Here are a few common “blog-related” words to help you out:

1) Permalink - Permalink stands for permanent link, which is a URL (uniform resource locator) that leads to an individual post that you make in your blog.

2) Trackback - When you post about someone else’s blog post elsewhere, your post will show up in their “trackback” section. This feature, however, is not available with a Blogger.com account.

3) Pinging - Blogging seems to be paired with pinging almost every time either one is mentioned nowadays. Pinging is actually the action where a certain aggregator is notified whenever your blog is updated, so that the aggregator may show the newest post of your blog on their website. This is a useful way to gaining traffic, which we shall discuss later.

Blog content

Now we’re going to discuss the type of content that is suitable for your blog in order to make it profitable. First off, I want you to understand that there is no fixed scope that your blog should have, which means you can write about whatever you’re interested in.

However, the difference between a profitable blog and a non-profitable blog is the way the blog is written. Just imagine, would you prefer to read your university professor’s lecture notes or the latest novel by your favourite author?

You may prefer to read the novel because it appeals more to your interest, or because it is not as mind-numbing as the lecture notes by your professor. However, the most important point is people like to read “light” stuff most of the time. You see, when people log on to your blog, they are not only looking for information - they are also looking for information they can obtain easily, and better still in a relaxed manner.

So, to attract more visitors as well as to keep your current visitors coming back for more, it is very important to add a human touch to your blog posts. This can be done by simply imagining you’re talking about a certain topic with your personal friend. An extra bonus for your readers would be a great sense of humour, so try to add funny comments in your articles where they are suitable.

Another important key point is to avoid addressing your reader as a plural unit. What I really mean is you should not write as if you’re preparing a speech. Instead, you should write as if you’re having a conversation to a single person because this will make your visitor think of you more as a personal friend rather than a person of higher authority.

Besides that, it is also very useful to establish your own personality through your words. Human beings are very curious creatures, so naturally your visitors would want to know as much about you as the information you’re offering them.

Having a distinctive personality in your blog would make a world’s difference between your blog about gadgets and all the other blogs about gadgets out there. This is a lot like creating your own brand name, where people immediately remember your blog’s name when they need to find out information about gadgets, just like how people immediately think of McDonald’s for fastfood or Nike for sportswear.

So, the lesson for now is to simply write as an equal friend to your visitors, write to them as if you’re talking to a single person and establish your own personality on your blog.

Blog Content Brainstorming

Face the fact - your blog needs to be regularly updated to maintain its readership! Hence, you must always find fresh topics to write about, and we’re going to discuss how to do just that in this article.

We have discussed how to write attractively, so now we are going to discuss what we are going to write on. The very first option that I think a blogger should write on is a topic that he or she feels passionate and interested in. You’ve chosen to make blogging your career because you want to escape a mundane job - forcing yourself to write about something that you’re not interested in is as torturous as as your mundane job!

The other reason I ask you to write about something you’re passionate about is because your feelings and emotion shows through your writings! If you feel indifferent to a certain subject but still write about it just for the sake of it, your readers will notice it. Remember the advice about writing with a personality? Forcing yourself to write will not establish a welcoming style at all.

Once you have chosen your main theme, start posting to your blog about it and make it a habit to post at least once every day, even if it’s only a comment on the newspaper article you read today. Think of yourself as a gigantic train. It takes a lot of effort to get you moving. First, you might just budge an inch, and later trudge slowly on until you finally reach your full speed. Then, it’ll take a lot of effort to stop you instead!

However, no matter how well you know your topic, your brain is bound to get exhausted over some time, so here are methods to brainstorm for content for your blog.

1) The very best way to brainstorm is to see what other bloggers have to say about stuff happening in your field of discussion. And the very best way to find related blogs is to use http://blogsearch.google.com/ or www.technorati.com. There are other decent search tools too, you just have to look around. From other blogs, you can gather more knowledge on your subject and you can also comment on what others have to say on your own blog!

2) Once you’ve established contacts with other bloggers in your field, you’ll have quite an unexhaustible “conversation” ongoing, so you’ll not need to actively search for content to write about. However, if you’re still stuck, search for news articles related to your niche in the local newspaper or online through sites like http://news.google.com and http://news.yahoo.com.

3) You can also have conversations with people with the same interest as you in the particular niche you choose, so you will eventually build up a bank of questions and answers and interesting discussions to write about in your blog. To do this, join forums related to your niche, but don’t join every forum there is out there. Stick with one or two with the biggest number of members or the one which is most focused on your niche. This will also come in handy much later in gaining traffic and generating profits.

Remember to keep up your momentum of posting at least once per day (or more if you have a lot of content to write about) so that the major search engines will know that your blog has fresh content everyday. This will attract the search engines to spider your page on a more frequent basis, hence gaining you extra traffic.

Don’t worry about generating traffic and search engines, because we’re going to talk about that in more detail later. For now, remember to keep a consistent effort everyday and build up momentum like that of a locomotive!

June 7th, 2008 - Posted in Blogging | | 2 Comments

10 Killer Ways To Keep Your Profits Rolling

1. Give people a free online utility. When you offer a utility that can solve a person’s problem, people will definitely visit your web site.

2. Offer a free affiliate/reseller program. When you offer people a free opportunity to make money they will line up to visit your web site.

3. Supply news stories related to your site. People want current news on the topics they are interested in. You could also include new “how to” articles.

4. Offer your visitors a free community. People like to have a place were they can have discussions with others on a particular subject.

5. Make people feel safe when they order. Explain to them you won’t sell their e-mail address and all their personal information will be kept confidential.

6. Offer free samples or trials of your product. This will let people experience your product and attract people to your web site.

7. Make your ad copy attractive. Your ad should lists benefits before the features. Include guarantees and testimonials in your ad.

8. Remind people to come back and visit your site. They usually don’t purchase the first time. The more times they visit, the greater the chance they’ll buy.

9. Let people know anything about your business history. They’ll feel more comfortable if they know who they are buying from.

10. Give people as many ordering options. Accept credit cards, checks, money orders, and other forms of electronic payments.

June 6th, 2008 - Posted in Online Marketing | | 2 Comments

10 Upsell Strategies That Will Increase Your Profits

As you know it can be very expensive to attract new customers. You can cut down on those expenses by “upselling” to those new customers. For example, let’s say you’re selling a computer with a 15″ monitor for $1200. You tell people they can upgrade to a 17″ monitor for only $200 more. That’s upselling! Your goal is to get more money out of the first sale. Below are ten upselling strategies you can use to increase your profits.

1. Deluxe Upsell-You could sell a basic product and tell people for a little more money they can receive the deluxe edition.

2. Money Upsell-You could offer people the rights to sell the product they are buying from your business. You could charge an extra $30 dollars to get the reproduction rights.

3. Discount Upsell-If you’re selling a product people may order again in the future like shave gel, you could offer them a second can of shave gel at a discount.

3. Discount Upsell-If you’re selling a product people may order again in the future like shave gel, you could offer them a second can of shave gel at a discount.

5. Quantity Upsell-This is similar to the discount upsell. The only difference is you increase the discount by how many products they order. If they order 3 it’s a 10% discount, if they order 5 it’s a 15% discount.

6. Package Upsell-When you’re selling a product you could offer similar products in a package deal. Tell the people the other products are cheaper with the package deal versus purchasing them separately.

7. Affiliate Upsell-When you’re selling a product you could offer someone else’s product as an upsell. You would have to make a commission on the product in order to profit.

8. Free Upsell-You could offer a free sample or trial of your product (your first sale would be free) and then tell people if they order the full version right now they will get a discount.

9. Extra Upsell-There are many things you could charge extra for at the time of sale. It could be gift wrapping, imprinting, custom designs, etc.

10. Extended Upsell-If your product comes with a warranty, you could ask people if they would like to extend the warranty one more year for only $30.

In conclusion, you can use one or all these strategies to increase your profits at the point of sale. Don’t be afraid to use your imagination to come up with other upsell strategies.

June 6th, 2008 - Posted in Online Marketing | | 0 Comments