Archive for the 'business-online' Category

Mailers Your Powerful Message For Success

Auto responders are a powerful marketing tool, saving you time and bringing you money. Mailers are one of the ways you can use this tool to its fullest potential. Firstly choose a reliable auto responder and know that not all auto responders are the same.

What is a mailer? It is a sequence of messages set up to sell a product or service. They are a series of messages sent to your list at timed intervals. A good timed interval for information about a product or opportunity is about 7-10 days on a daily basis. This would be to leads/prospects that need more information.

Another mailer can be set up for your newsletter list (subscribers) This should be information on a certain product/service that will be useful to them. Remember your newsletter list is your most valuable one. Always make sure that you offer them information on products and services that they can really use. Treat your subscribers like the loyal readers they are. Another way of timing for this type of information is to send 1 then another 2-3 days later another after a week.

Mailers to your customer list can be very profitable. This is called backend selling. It is most important when you sell a product to follow up with your customer. Your first mailer will be your thank you note, within 24 hours of purchase. It would be thanking your customer for their purchase and asking them to contact you should they have any help. You can also refer to them to your FAQ page, for further assistance. In 1 week you can check up with your customer and this time you can include a flyer or note about a useful related product. You can also offer a special discounted price.

Who are you sending these messages to? You will be sending them to prospective clients/leads/customers. A word of caution, never send messages to anyone on a random basis. This is Spam and can get you into more trouble than you can ever imagine. Always send to your opt in list, those who have specifically asked to get information and emails from you, or your established customers.

Mailers are very effective tools for closing the sale, and getting repeat sales. They are simple to set up; save you time and can make you a lot of extra sales when set up correctly. With these points you have the means to utilize a powerful tool, which will continue to make you money.













Growing Your Business with Online Marketing

As a business owner, you know that one of the keys to a successful year is promoting your business. No matter what size your business is, marketing and promotion need to be addressed. Marketing has become a daunting task with the increasing number of online start-up businesses.

And now, along with the traditional offline marketing methods, there are many online marketing tools and methods available.

Online Marketing is also known as Internet Advertising, web marketing, web advertising or e-marketing.

There are many benefits to marketing your business online. Here are a few.

Lowering Your Costs

A recent eMarketer article (http://www.emarketer.com/Article/aspx?R=1007064) sites that \”in the wake of the global economic downturn, marketers worldwide are shifting more of their budgets into cheaper, more-measurable categories. In most cases, that means online.\”

Your marketing budget is only so big and online marketing can stretch it even farther for you. TV and radio spots are expensive, printing costs for corporate and product brochures are expensive and traditional mailings cost not only in materials and postage, but deplete the environment as well. Why not direct potential customers to your website for information on products and services? Your website is your brochure, a marketing tool available 24 hours a day to prospective customers. Your revenue potential will increase while your costs diminish.

Offline marketing ads for newspapers, TV and radio are for a limited time and you pay for the time slot and space. In online marketing, your ads potentially can stay up longer and over time you end up paying less. Using article marketing, you could either write an article yourself or pay someone else to write it. When that article is distributed online, it stays on the Internet for many years. For a small cost, you’ve placed a marketing proposition that stays around indefinitely, pointing potential customers to your website and your products and services.

Compared to traditional marketing or telemarketing, email marketing costs very little. These targeted messages go directly into the homes and offices of your potential or existing customers.

Reaching a Larger Market and a Targeted Market

The Internet allows people from all over the world to do business with each other.

From another recent eMarketer article, (http://www.emarketer.com/Article.aspx?R=1006988) in 2009, more than 65% of Americans are Internet users. They’re not only checking e-mail and Twittering, they are shopping for products and services.

With traditional media, your ads are restricted to a specific location for a limited time. When you promote your business online, you reach a larger audience than you would ever be able to reach otherwise since your marketing activity is not restricted by location. More potential customers always equal more sales opportunities.

Online marketing allows you to target specific demographics such as age, location, gender and income levels and in many cases allows you to track the behaviors of these groups as they interact with your online marketing.

It can also bring a branding campaign to life in a new way. This unique consumer interaction with your brand can leverage emotional links to your brand. Instead of a brand talking to a customer, your customer can interact with and experience your brand. This is intelligent brand marketing. You can influence people at the perfect time - their time, right when they are looking for information, comparison shopping and possibly buying.

Flexibility and Tangible Tracking

Online marketing can include email, newsletters, blogs, microblogs, podcasts, video and social media sites. All of these outlets have the ability to be flexible. An ad placed in a magazine or newspaper can’t be changed until the next submission. With online marketing you’ll know very quickly if a campaign is working and you can change wording or graphics and adapt product information to match changing market conditions.

The Internet also removes any guesswork from measuring campaign results. Using web analytics, you can measure the number of visitors that a campaign brings to your website, how long they stay and the average number of pages they visit. This important information along with the flexibility, allows you to improve the conversion of your campaign and to increase your return on investment.

Instant Conversion Ability

Online marketing allows you to convert a shopper to a customer instantly. A potential customer reading a traditional newspaper ad does not have the ability to click a mouse and buy your product or service immediately. Offline marketing involves more time and money to convert a shopper into a sale.

Online ads allow direct response. Consumers can click to learn more about a product, sign up for a newsletter or RSS feed, or buy right then and there. This will in turn create a database for you, which, with email marketing, will allow you to reach people who have already expressed an interest in your product or service. And online marketing allows you to sell to anyone, anywhere and at any time. You’re not restricted by time, geography and location considerations.

Internet marketing includes strategies such as search engine optimization (SEO), pay per click marketing (PPC), article marketing, blog marketing, online brandcasting, social media marketing and many more interactive marketing services.

While these strategies may seem daunting at first, with a little research, you can use some of these tools to help you optimize your website and increase web traffic. Or, if you have it in your budget, there are companies that specialize in many SEO services.

There are many benefits to both online and offline marketing. A mix of the two might be just what your business needs to grow.

















































Write a Book and Catapult Your Company to New Heights by Branding Yourself As an Expert

Taming the recessionary tiger is not as difficult as you think. Forget the old patterns of spending big bucks to buy advertising or blast postal mailings to thousands of possible buyers. The dollars aren’t there to spend in a broken economy. Today every penny has to count, and that happens only when you define your market exactingly and tailor a message that is meaningful to it.

We are in a world of specialization. People in every niche seek information both on and off line. You can be the person to whom they turn to find that information. There is a way to brand yourself as an expert and to make your business or professional office the place customers or clients think of first. When reporters need a quote or perhaps some background material for a story they’re working on, make sure they turn to you, not to one of your competitors.

Raising Your Reputation

It is almost axiomatic that your reputation rises to new heights when you write and publish a book. And in today’s world, for the first time it is easy, fast and inexpensive to turn your words into print.

New printing technology has give birth to a new generation of publishers. Publishing on Demand (POD) has swept through the industry, churning out thousands of books and boosting the reputations of their authors. With this process, books can be printed in any quantity you need to use as promotional tools. They can be rapid-reading booklets of 30 or 40 pages or they can be full blown books of anywhere from 75 to 200 or more pages.

Journalism today has moved strongly into specialization. You can send the book to members of the press and to broadcast journalists who write about topics related to your product. They may review your book or simply write a blurb about it, sending hundreds of readers to your web site, office or store.

Once recognized as a leader in your field, you may well be asked to speak at various functions, adding further to your reputation. All of these possibilities are part of the program of branding yourself…identifying yourself as an expert.

Getting Assistance

Perhaps you have a talented staff member who can write the book with you. Or even for you. You certainly have the option of turning to a professional writer to ghost write the book. It is done frequently. If you don’t require that degree of assistance, contact a Book Coach to help you over the occasional bumps.

It is highly likely that your business is already represented by a web site on the Internet. Add a page to the site about yourself and about your book. What a wonderful opportunity to sell your book from the site and not have to pay commissions.

You may want to piggy back on the book and write articles for distribution throughout the Web. Hundreds of thousands of people will see your piece and hopefully a percentage will respond. You can distribute these articles at no cost by using online article distributors.

Once your book has been written, you can take portions of it and either rewrite them or run them as excerpts. In either case, your workload is minimal because you are drawing on something you have already written.

Writing for Trade Journals

You undoubtedly read some of the trade journals published in your field. Editors of these publications are hungry for informative, meaningful articles. They care far less about your writing style or ability than they do about the content you can provide. Their staffs can polish what you write and turn it into quality pieces, but they must first rely on you to supply the content.

Every article you write offers a perfect opportunity to attract business. The article itself must be informative. It can’t be a press release or a selling tool for you or your product. But at the end, as you have seen so many times when you read, the bio box about the author becomes a free advertisement for you.

Fill the box with information that invites your reader to visit your web site or buy your product. Provide enough information to allow the reader to trust you because of your credentials. Never forget that trust is a major factor in attracting a potential and closing a sale.

By following this approach you quickly build confidence in your expertise and as a result in your product. Print and broadcast journalists today search the Web for likely stories and for experts who can be used in those stories. A few references to you or your business in print or on the air will raise your rate of sale to unexpected heights.

If you are running a practice or a business, you are a knowledgeable professional or an informed businessperson. Harness that unique background and turn it into one of the most inexpensive, but most effective methods of branding yourself as an expert and promoting your company as one of the leaders in its field. It is an ideal way to offset the depression blues.





































5 Reasons Why Most Internet Marketers Fail

When it comes to starting any endeavor, whether it be learning a new hobby or starting an online business, we all have to start at ground zero. We all have to start at the very beginning from the very same place. Granted, we each bring different skills and backgrounds into the mix, but for the most part we are all on equal footing at the starting line.

If this is the case, then we really have to ponder why is it only a choice few go on to succeed, while most people don’t. Just what are the reasons why most online marketers fail? This is the core question that has to be answered if you want to fully understand Internet marketing and how it works.

What are these basic reasons?

What are the causes or stumbling blocks that hold many marketers and webmasters from reaching their full online potential? If we know these factors, we can learn how to avoid them and even overcome them in our own online marketing. These reasons can be a solid reference point or even a source of inspiration for any online marketer just starting out.

Speaking from the viewpoint of someone who has started from the very beginning with little to no knowledge of computers or even marketing for that matter, I can honestly relate to the beginning marketer. I even had to learn HTML from scratch in order to construct my own webpages. Probably my only advantage, I did have a background in art but designing webpages was completely different from anything I had done previously to starting in online marketing.

Nor did I have any formal training in business or marketing, just an art teaching background which really doesn’t help with the day to day running of an online business. I had to learn as I went; struggling with hundreds of marketing decisions before my sites became profitable. Don’t get the wrong impression, I have probably made hundreds of mistakes along the way and I am still making them!

But from my own experiences I have drawn some general conclusions about Internet marketing and why some people succeed while most people fail. So here in my honest opinion, are some of the main reasons why many online marketers fail:

1. Overwhelmed With Information

Perhaps, one of the biggest obstacles I faced when I first started my website - I was bombarded with so much information on how to proceed I didn’t have a clue which direction to take or who to believe. Thousands of different info products telling you to do this, not to do that… so much marketing information to absorb that you end up scratching your head and looking like someone auditioning for a zombie movie.

Completely overwhelmed with so much information, many marketers or webmasters enter a state of paralysis where nothing gets done. You go from one course to another or from one method to another, without any real understanding of how to proceed or how to get a detailed blueprint to follow.

Been there, done that!

Information overflow can effectively crush all that novice enthusiasm and literally kill even the most eager of entrepreneurs. Anyone starting out must be aware of this obvious but insidious pitfall you have to avoid at all costs. One of the best remedies, simply try concentrating on just one or two marketing plans/marketers for all your information. Try to eliminate the clutter by just working on one marketing system. Just have a few key marketing resources you go to for information, not a hundred! And do your homework, only pick marketers who can back up their claims with observable results on the web. One obvious checkmark - just see if those marketers have top rankings for their sites for popular profitable keywords associated with their sites or products.

2. Lack Of Key Marketing Basics

There are some key marketing basics or fundamentals you must learn about marketing online. Internet marketing has some key elements you must get right or you will have a difficult task in succeeding on the web. Just simple factors you must get right or it’s game over before you even get started.

Most marketers fail to realize the web is \”information driven\” and you must supply quality information or content in order to truly succeed. You must provide a valuable service or function to your visitors. You must help solve their problem. You must give them a solid reason to use your site or product. Quality content is and always will be King on the web.

You must also understand much of the web is \”keyword driven\” and you must construct your webpages to take full advantage of these keywords. You must have at least a rudimentary understanding of SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and how you can use it to get top rankings for your keyword phrases.

3. Lack Of Time And Resources

Another major reason why many marketers fail is because they simply can’t afford the time to learn and build their online business. Most people just can’t stop everything and work full time online because they have bills to pay and families to support. It may take months, probably years, before you can build up a successful online business that gives you a comfortable living. The average person just doesn’t have the time or the resources to spend months learning how all this works.

Keep in mind, getting a business or website going is probably the most inexpensive way to start your own business. Domains are cheap. Web hosting is cheap. Web design is cheap if you can do it yourself… compared to starting a business in the \”real\” world, creating an online business will only cost a faction of the normal expenses connected with starting a business. But the main problem is having the resources to pay your living expenses until your online business is profitable. Many beginning online marketers don’t have these resources and the main complaint from these marketers: \”I Simply can’t afford the time to work at this online stuff.\”

One solution is to work at your online marketing in your spare time and gradually build up your business until you can afford to do it full time. It will obviously take longer but you can still get to the same end goal.

4. Lack Of Necessary Skills

Actually, you don’t need many skills to succeed online. However, one of the major skills you must have or you must learn is communication. You must learn how to communicate. The web is all about communicating your points to your visitors or viewers so you must acquire good communication skills.

It really helps your marketing if you are a good writer because you can easily get your points across with written text or copy on your site. Writing skills can be learned but many beginning marketers don’t fully understand how important their writing skills will be to their success. You must be able to communicate on your site, in your newsletters, with your customers… might sound a bit obvious but you would be surprised at how many marketers lack this simple, yet necessary skill.

But don’t fret, because once upon a time, the written word was king online - but not any more. Videos are rapidly taking the place of the printed word so anyone with a camera can now be a success online. Of course, you still need good communication skills even using videos, but many marketers have found this is a much easier way to communicate information about their site or product.

5. Lack Of Persistence

For me, one the most significant reasons most online marketers/webmasters fail, is because of a lack of persistence. They simply give up too soon. They try something for a few weeks, even for a few months and then they conclude this is not working and they give up.

Building a solid online business or viable website takes time, a lot of time. Just because your business is online, doesn’t mean everything will fall into place overnight, it takes time to establish a customer base. It takes time to build your business relationships and partnerships with others in your field.

Sometimes, it may take years before you see some solid returns. It was three years before I saw any significant revenue coming from my online ventures, and another year before I could summon enough courage to do this online marketing full time. If I had given up and not persisted at this web stuff, I would not be writing this article right now.

Building top rankings for your keywords in the search engines (especially Google) can take months, even years before you see any results. The real key is to be persistent and keep at it, day after day, until you get those top rankings. You simply must be persistent or you will fail.

In conclusion, having said all that, you must also realize there are plenty of exceptions to all of the above. There have been countless success stories on the web where someone has come up with a novel idea or product and become successful overnight. The web can offer immediate success for some but for most of us, it will take some time and hard effort on our part to build a successful online business. Just try to avoid many of the pitfalls or reasons listed above and you will have a better chance of placing yourself in the success column.



























































Developing Original Articles: The Human Touch vs. Computer Software

With the increasing demand of high quality content on the web, finding original articles and carefully stylized content is a priority for companies to retain credibility. With today’s fierce search engine ranking competition, a steady supply of original articles has become a necessity. Websites need to be designed to increase traffic, and sites updated regularly with fresh information are more likely to receive higher search engine placement than those updated less frequently. As a result, companies need to find sources of new and original content as often as possible. The challenge is finding human writers who can provide original articles with the right tone, voice, and quality that the company needs, and also at the right price.

Before the emergence of computer programs that could ‘create’ articles and pieces of web content, human writers were responsible for developing all the original content for websites. However, with the rise of blogs and websites for independent publishers, several applications are now available that simply churn out content made from a computer program. While these have the potential to create several articles on a given topic, they do have limitations. Semantics, sentence structure, meaning, and even punctuation are often overlooked with these content spinners and programs, and if they are caught by a search engine, the risk of website blacklisting runs high.

Human writers provide reliable, authentic, and original content on a regular basis. By making use of natural creative processes to develop and present an idea, they can develop a series of original articles for any website or company.

The Value of Authentic Content and Original Articles

All website and business owners know how valuable original content is for search engine placement, website validity, and credibility in their industry. Without a steady supply of original articles, it is difficult to keep visitors returning to the site and maintaining interest in the company. The increasing popularity of blogs is just one example of why ‘content is king’ still rings true on the web today. Human writers can develop articles and unique ideas far better than any computer software and application. Unfortunately, many companies choose applications that lead to poor quality content and a decrease in their credibility.

What Content Creating Software Does

Content creation software is designed to string words and sentences based on a topic and basic article. These programs run several variations of an article by substituting synonyms and words throughout the page, and reconstructing sentences to generate a ‘new’ or original article. Today’s leading content duplication and content creation software programs include: Article Content Spinner, Jetspinner, SiteEqualizer, ArticlePro, and Article Output.

While these article and content spinner programs offer many promises of ‘well-written’ article and original content, they are not always accurate enough to catch duplicate sentences, and they often have trouble even putting together sentences that make sense. In many cases, their processes are considered to be forms of copyright theft, especially if the original article used as the input was not generated by the owner. Search engines that can find even one sentence duplicated from an article can bar the website from being listed on the rankings, and a single sentence ’stolen’ in this way is at risk for copyright infringement.

Why Companies Need to Pursue Quality Human Writers

Google is the leading search engine on the internet, and specifically outlines its duplicate content policy in the user terms. Article spinners that help generate ‘original articles’ can create significant damage to a company’s page ranking and credibility online, putting them at risk for copyright infringement and other penalties. Submitting just a single article to an article directory can be shared across multiple web pages and websites, but using a content spinner to create ‘fresh’ content from this very same article puts all of the content at risk.

Article marketing has become an industry in itself, but finding high quality human writers is the most efficient, and safe, method of generating valid clicks and increasing visitors to the site. Human writers can provide benefits beyond the limitations of article content creation services. These include completely original article batches, clear and consistent messages, an author’s voice, powerful words and phrases that are easy to read by all visitors, and simply and efficiently provide unique and creative ideas in an original format. Human writers can often provide a fresh perspective on a topic or idea, something that cannot be achieved with automated article writing software packages.





















How To Reverse Engineer My #1 Google Rankings

To many online marketers, getting a #1 listing on Google for your target keyword phrases is “heaven.” It does lead to many times more traffic than being even #2 or #3. If you’re not on the first page of Google, you may as well forget getting any significant traffic in many niches. At least you should plan on generating your traffic via other channels since few searchers look past the first page of search engine results.

Google the terms “joint venture expert” or “land for $100″ and you’ll see that I rank #1 for both terms and have for a VERY long time.

LOA: The Secret and The Law of Attraction Doesn’t Work! 3 Reasons Why

Okay, we’ve all heard the reviews from friends and family.

\”Oh, The Secret, my friend read it and said it was a joke so I didn’t bother,\” says Mom.

\”It worked for a while and then I gave up because I didn’t get the car I wanted,\” says Uncle Larry

\”It’s just a lot of metaphysical hokum,\” says Steve your best friend.

Let’s be quite honest, each and every one of those statements is absolutely true. Look at the search results there are just as many con articles as there are pro articles written about The Law of Attraction and The Secret. So we must say that the statements are true. FOR THEM!

Yes for them. They got out of it exactly what they put into it, and I am sure that what they put into it was exactly what most people put into it. \”I’ve read the book, now where’s my Ferrari.\”

The fact of the matter is, there is a Secret to the Secret and The Law of Attraction, in fact, make that 3 Secrets. The first will leave most people kicking themselves. The second is perhaps something that most people fail to recognize. The third, well the third takes some work but there are two professionals who are ready to help you!

Let’s start with the first Secret. What does the Secret warn you about straight away in the book? The Universe manifests our thoughts and it cautions us to focus on our thoughts and remain positive. It’s kind of a scare tactic. Think bad thoughts and bad things will happen to you; think good thoughts and you’ll get good things (The Ferrari).

There is a better way to explain this because of the simple fact that in many ways, we do what most children will do when faced with this dilemma. We’ll act good until we get what we want and then go back to normal after we get it. Think I’m wrong? Ask yourself why all the little terrors in your neighborhood become angels around Christmastime!

The same goes for us if we don’t get what we want. We’re good positive people and we think about the new house or money and after a while we don’t get what we want and feel foolish and cheated and revert back to the glass is half-empty realists we were. We are ignoring a singular fact here that eludes all of us. When I read that book, I was a tremendously positive person. Everything was possible and I was going to get it. But it seemed to take a while and then I got discouraged and reverted. What did I miss?

I was happy! My friends said so, my wife said so, my parents thought so. I was a positive person for a change and people liked to have me around. And then I woke up one day and forgot. It happens. I forgot that nothing happens to me unless I act. If I don’t do anything how can I ever get what I want?

Let me give you an example. A while back I worried about losing my job so I started staying up late at night working on side projects. Then I overslept and the boss fired me. You can say that it’s my fault because it was, but you can also say that by thinking negatively about my job I put myself in the position where my boss had the excuse he needed to let me go! Every time I had trouble at work, it’s because I was worried about my job or needed an excuse to leave. I got my wish every single time!

The moral here is that if I had just remained positive that something better was going to happen and remained a joyful person I might have enjoyed my job more or at least been someone that another company would kill to have work for them! So be positive for the only reason that I can think of. IT FEELS BETTER. Don’t do it for the car do it for yourself to feel better.

The second Secret is something that most people fail to realize. If you look at the DVD and the book you notice that it’s extremely basic. Why, was it so simple? So that everyone could get the basic understanding of what The Law of Attraction was all about!

The Secret is, AN EASY READER. It’s only the beginning of a much larger course of study that delves both into our connection with the world around us and entreats us to look deeper into ourselves to become better people. The answer here is that for the Law of Attraction to work, it must become a lifestyle and not a phase.

The third Secret does take some work. I’ve been hinting at it throughout this article, I wonder if you’ve picked up on it yet. The reason why the Secret didn’t work for you is YOU! Yes with all our hang-ups and pre-conceived notions we stopped the Universe from working for us and turned it against us. How?

Let me ask you if this sounds familiar. You’ve had a great day, you’ve said all the right things, and you’ve thought all the positive thoughts but its taking a little while to manifest. So, late at night as you sit in the dark you do what countless people do. You quietly sabotage yourself back to what you think is reality.

You know that thoughts I’m speaking of: \”This can’t possible work.\” \”There’s no such thing as free.\” You can’t help it but you did it didn’t you? Come on be honest for a second and admit it. You did set yourself up to fail. Don’t worry I did too. That’s why I decided that the positive feeling I had was something I needed to have or I couldn’t survive and decided to invest in my own well being.

I sought out help from two of the experts who helped write The Secret, Dr. Joe Vitale, and Bob Procter. These to gentlemen have forgotten more about The Law of Attraction than most people know. Their programs are designed to help us get past the barriers we erect inside our minds and help us do what the The Law of Attraction was meant to do. Help us be happier and more content with our lives! There programs are in depth and include methods that are designed to combat all of the negative emotions we carry around with us. I do not have room to go into more detail about their programs; however you can read more about them by reading about The Law of Attraction on my website, shown below.

Remember, it’s never too late to feel better about your life and to act in ways that WILL make it something you’ll want to live. Don’t give up hope when help is just a click away!

Good Luck.