This post is a follow on from the post I made a few days ago, click here to read it first

Get That Business Coming Your Way!

You like the idea of an online newsletter, and you are beginning to see how this will help you bring in more business to your website. But you do have a few concerns, which is perfectly natural. You need to know that everyone who starts something new, has their own concerns and fears.

Some of the most common question are;

1. What if I don’t have anything interesting or relevant to write?
2. Can I keep the quality up over a long period of time?
3. How do I make links from my pictures to my website?

These are just a sample of the questions that are asked…but never fear! This is so much easier than it sounds.

The thing you need to be concerned about IS WHEN you are going to DO IT! Stop with the excuses, just begin and you will realize how simple it really is.

1. You do need to remember that you must always offer something that is of interest or very useful to your reader.
2. Keep your newsletter fairly short. So many these days have more than enough emails to read, and they don’t have time to read a long newsletter. They will like the fact that they can read it quickly and get something from it.
3. You want the best format possible for your follow up emails, so put some thought into this process. You want a model that you can use week after week, which by the way makes your job easier.Below are a few ideas that you can use as your standard format, choose one or combine them, whatever fits your personality.

   I. Tip of the Month

   Here you will come up with some great tips that focus on your main products. Do a bit of brainstorming giving you two or three months of content. If you are focusing on an area that you are familiar with, it should be easy. Some of the topics can be offering and explaining the problem, then offer a tip that will solve the problem.

   II. The Famous “Top Ten” list

   This format is so popular because it works. If you are an expert in Doll Collecting, then write your article about “Top Ten Reasons to start Doll Collecting”. Keep your sentences short.

   III. Three Different Ways to….

   Sometimes it can be difficult to find ten ways to do something, but you can always find three ways to do it. This can be done alternately with your Top Ten newsletters.

   IV. The “Before and After” approach

   You can use this much like you would the “Tip of the Month” format. You will introduce a problem with the solution. This format works best when you can include case studies which is an excellent way if interacting with your customers on a direct level. You may even ask your customers for some examples of their ‘before and after’ and if they will give their permission to share it with your readers. If your format is in text only, you can include a link to show pictures on your website.

   V. What about “Checklists”

   If you want to share something new with your readers, a great way to do this is with checklists. Be sure to include all the steps, and these check lists will help save your readers a lot of time, which they will love. You will begin by writing a short paragraph which introduces your topic, include your list, the end it with some final tips. You can format your entire newsletter on the checklist formula, or present it randomly.

   Now you can see that online newsletters aren’t as difficult as you first thought. Get your list and get started, no excuses.

Bring in Even More Business!

Today I want to talk about online newsletters and how these can bring in even more business for you. This is a very cost-effective way to market and will not eat up all of your time.

Whether you are mailing your newsletters out through the post office, or sending them out via email, this is a great way to increase the recognition of your brand, bringing in repeat business and sharing your experience and story and success with your readers.

1. You are going to first put your list together of your current customers along with any potential customers. Any names that you have collected from inquiries, direct mail response cards, etc…that you have from the beginning of your marketing endeavors, will be the start of your list. If you don’t have a list, and you have some money set aside, you can purchase a list, giving you names of the best potential customers.

1. If you are doing an online newsletter, it is best to include a content manager system. This will make your editing much easier with a newsletter template, your graphics and giving it your own style. You will have a little bit to learn, but you will have a lot of fun doing it. If you need help through the process, call a college student, they will be a great resource. Another option would be to hire somebody at Guru.com at great cheap prices.
2. Next you want to have a feature that allows you to track bounce back emails to help you manage. your list, deleting these names from your list. It is really important to keep your list up to date. Now, your goal is to increase sales, but you need to make this an easy process for your readers because they all have very busy schedules, so you need to show off your products in the very best manner.\Below are some tips to help you do this and achieve greater financial success from your email marketing.

• Include pictures all throughout
• Show details in these pictures
• The pictures need to be bright and cheery
• Make the picture a link to the sales page or product information page.
• Be sure to add a text link which is associated with your product picture which links to the online product page
• Include the ability to order directly from your newsletter with purchase buttons
• When you have a new product, make sure you have direct links in the website, making it easy for them to get there without any extra navigating.If you still have concerns about your new online newsletter, …just know you can do it…I will go over tomorrow some of your biggest questions..such as “What do I say?”, or “How much time will this take?”, or “How do I set up the links?”. Well, we will answer these questions in our next blog. Stay tuned…..

Affiliate Programs and How They Can Boost Your Income

What Do You Know About Affiliate Marketing?

As you already know, Internet marketing uses the Internet to market products as well as their promotion. You can be using this method to promote your own products or the products of others.

This is where we get into the affiliate programs and how they can benefit you financially by earning commission on the quality products you are promoting for others.

There are several avenues of marketing that you can use such as your website and web pages, personal blogs and Email Opt-in lists. You are going to promote the product with a squeeze page or promotional letter, In your letter, you will include an affiliate link which will contain the affiliate identifier.

With your affiliate identifier link, your visitors will click on the link, be sent to the product sales page or website, and with their purchase, you will be given a percentage of the sales price. This is very similar to sales in brick and mortar stores, however with an affiliate program, your part is very simple and self running. All you need to do is do the initial set up and optimize the traffic.

You need to realize though that Not All Affiliate Programs are the same, so choose wisely.

What you need to know and look for in choosing the right affiliate program:

1) Training and Support

Affiliate programs will usually provide training and support, which is crucial for those just starting out on Internet Marketing. This is so important as it will be the only way for you to become effective as well as profitable. You need to look for affiliate which offers sufficient training and the know how in selling their product. There are however, Internet marketers who have experienced great success in affiliates without the training and support, but wouldn’t it be nice to have that training and support?

2) Look for High Commissions

You are going to put in the effort to bring in the traffic to the affiliate product with your sales pitch, then directing the customers to the affiliate sales page, and for your well earned efforts, you will receive a percentage of the sale in form of commissions. As you look at the different Affiliate programs to market, look at the amount of commission they offer, some are hardly worth your effort.

The most popular site to promote affiliate programs is Clickbank. You will soon see that Clickbank is the largest online marketplace on the Internet. Clickbank places hundreds of thousands of products which are sold on a daily basis. There are some that pay up to 75% of the purchase price.

3) Affiliate Referral Programs

There are a few programs that will offer you a chance to recommend their affiliate programs yourself. This sill ultimately award you with a greater percentage of all the sales generated for the program you recommend. This is where your viral marketing techniques will come in effect, the more you recommend, the more money you will make.

4) Triple Combination; Affiliate Training and Support, Referral Commission and Product Commission

You will be happy to know that there are some programs out there that offer the best of all three worlds of affiliate marketing. You can have all of these with training to help you in your marketing efforts. A wonderful example of this is the Internet Marketing Center’s Affiliate program. With this combination, you can reap huge commission benefits.

You can make some good money with Internet marketing bringing you closer and closer to your goal of financial freedom. But remember, you need to be willing to put in the time and effort.

Can I Use RSS FEEDS To Increase Traffic?

Traffic is something we all want when it comes to our websites and blogs. There are a variety of ways to do this, but the one method that is rising to the top is through RSS FEEDS.

I recently wrote an article on ‘what is an RSS feed, and how to Set them up“. Here is the followup article to that. If you haven’t read the first one yet, click here to do so now.

What does RSS stand for? RSS stands for Really Simple Syndication or Remote Site Syndication. They both mean the same thing, so it doesn’t really matter what you call it. No matter the name, it works as a great traffic generating tool. You could go to any popular news website and see the feed options. This is a great way to stay on top of the latest headlines and news all over the world.

How Do You Get RSS Feeds?

You subscribe by clicking on the RSS button, then you will automatically get the news into your reader, or a reminder on your homepage. This is a simple way to stay in touch with your favorite websites and blogs. Are there advantages to RSS over Email Marketing?

Yes, and the main advantage is there are never any spam complaints, you have a 100% deliverability without any of the problems. You can usually count on your message being delivered to the readers.

When you have set up your RSS feed, you should submit it to the RSS FEED directories. Your message will have greater exposure to readers. You can do this in a matter of minutes then gain all the benefits.

A great site to read up on this is rssfeedgenerate.com. Here you will find some great instructions on the “How To’s”.

Another recommendation is to check out Mashables RSS Toolbox.

Does RSS Help Search Engine Rankings?

RSS is a fantastic tool for increasing rankings on the search engines, that is if you have it on your website. You probably already know that search engines love the websites that are continually updating their content, and the RSS Feeds will help your website to accomplish this. You will therefore achieve higher rankings on the search engines as well as increasing your website traffic. This is a win-win situation!

The keys to making money on the Internet is to increase your traffic and build up a mailing list. You can do this by using RSS Feeds, if you don’t take advantage of this great tool, you will be missing out and tons of opportunities.

There are 5 Key Points in using RSS Feeds to help you monetize your website and bring in lots of traffic.

1. Learn how to use RSS Feeds, If you aren’t sure how they work, educate yourself, start using this great tool and become familiar with it.

2. Attach links from other blogs and websites which will increase your your own popularity and traffic to your links.

3. Once you set up your RSS Feed, submit it to the RSS directories. This will increase your search engine ranking and increase the popularity of your link.

4. Keep your RSS Feed up to date which will have your site indexed by the search engines frequently.

5. Take advantage of the RSS Press Release. You will be able to use this instead of email marketing, helping you to spread your information and news to your readers the moment it comes in.

6. This is great for real-time advertising. Let’s say for example that you have a client that wants a particular product that you currently out of. You can use RSS to notify him when it comes available. Your customer will be well served and this will increase their loyalty to you. You will be taking care of your clients which will bring more money to you.

7. It is so important to create your own Brand! You are establishing your own credibility which is huge in this business. You will be putting your name out in front your readers just by using RSS Feeds. You will eventually become a trusted source of information.

You should now have a few ideas on how RSS Feeds can be used to generate traffic which is the key to your success.

Affiliate Programs and How They Can Boost Your Income

What Do You Know About Affiliate Marketing

As you already know, Internet marketing uses the Internet to market products as well as their promotion. You can be using this method to promote your own products or the products of others.

This is where we get into the affiliate programs and how they can benefit you financially by earning commission on the quality products you are promoting for others.

There are several avenues of marketing that you can use such as your website and web pages, personal blogs and Email Opt-in lists. You are going to promote the product with a squeeze page or promotional letter, In your letter, you will include an affiliate link which will contain the affiliate identifier.

With your affiliate identifier link, your visitors will click on the link, be sent to the product sales page or website, and with their purchase, you will be given a percentage of the sales price. This is very similar to sales in brick and mortar stores, however with an affiliate program, your part is very simple and self running. All you need to do is do the initial set up and optimize the traffic.

You need to realize though that Not All Affiliate Programs are the same, so choose wisely.

What you need to know and look for in choosing the right affiliate program:

1) Training and Support

Affiliate programs will usually provide training and support, which is crucial for those just starting out on Internet Marketing. This is so important as it will be the only way for you to become effective as well as profitable. You need to look for affiliate which offers sufficient training and the know how in selling their product. There are however, Internet marketers who have experienced great success in affiliates without the training and support, but wouldn’t it be nice to have that training and support?

2) Look for High Commissions

You are going to put in the effort to bring in the traffic to the affiliate product with your sales pitch, then directing the customers to the affiliate sales page, and for your well earned efforts, you will receive a percentage of the sale in form of commissions. As you look at the different Affiliate programs to market, look at the amount of commission they offer, some are hardly worth your effort.

The most popular site to promote affiliate programs is Clickbank. You will soon see that Clickbank is the largest online marketplace on the Internet. Clickbank places hundreds of thousands of products which are sold on a daily basis. There are some that pay up to 75% of the purchase price.

3) Affiliate Referral Programs

There are a few programs that will offer you a chance to recommend their affiliate programs yourself. This sill ultimately award you with a greater percentage of all the sales generated for the program you recommend. This is where your viral marketing techniques will come in effect, the more you recommend, the more money you will make.

4) Triple Combination; Affiliate Training and Support, Referral Commission and Product Commission

You will be happy to know that there are some programs out there that offer the best of all three worlds of affiliate marketing. You can have all of these with training to help you in your marketing efforts. A wonderful example of this is the Internet Marketing Center’s Affiliate program. With this combination, you can reap huge commission benefits.

You can make some good money with Internet marketing bringing you closer and closer to your goal of financial freedom. But remember, you need to be willing to put in the time and effort.

DO YOU HAVE A KILLER MARKETING STRATEGY?

By WAGH3

What is your wonderful and well thought out marketing strategy, what is your main objective?

The reason I ask this question is due to the amount of small business owners that do NOT have a marketing strategy. So many of us neglect the all important strategy for our business, but we put all our eggs in the basket of tactics.

What does the word Strategy mean? A plan, method, or series of maneuvers or stratagems for obtaining a specific goal or result: a strategy for getting ahead in the world.

You need a strategy to help you obtain your business goals, to obtain the results you are working toward. Your tactics are are your methods, but not a specific plan.

Here are a few reasons why you need to have a plan, a strategy to implement your tactics and reach your business goals.

• Strategy will keep your marketing effort on track
• Strategy will help you define your goals and move you towards your goals end
• Strategy will help you create a budget and help you to abide by it

Why are so many small business owners gun-shy of marketing plans? Do they think that it is a bunch of huge charts with graphs, huge stack of documents, never-ending finances? Maybe so, and it may include that if you are building a strategy for funding your project. But typically, if you are in business for yourself, your marketing strategy is nothing to be afraid of, rather it is something that can be so simple to do.

What should your Marketing Strategy Include?

By AimsInternetMarketing

Here is a list that you need to consider;

• Your objective, how you see your business in its final stages
• Your unique selling and value proposition
• Marketing budget
• List your strengths as well as your weaknesses in regards to the customer side of your business
• Use a marketing calendar to list the steps you will take

Now there are three ways that you can apply to increase your business revenue;

1. Increase amount of transactions
2. Increase customer numbers
3. Increase customer purchase frequency

You can do this with the following ideas and objectives;\

-It is important you not just focus on the customer numbers, but you need to focus on the amount of transactions you incur over a period of time.

-You are not going to be focusing just on PR and advertising, you need to make your strategy include he whole experience that your customer will have with you.

-You may want to change the way you answer the phone, or making more follow-up calls, you may want to offer free bonuses, how to lists, maybe you want to have a customer satisfaction survey.

-Take a look at your product presentation, can this be improved or changed to create more interest? Can you make a new product brochure?

-Have a plan with specific tactics and have a budget for each and every one.

-Plan for the unknown! There are going to be things that are not expected or predicted, plan on it. If you need to change your marketing strategy then be ready and willing to do so, don’t be afraid of revision. Capitalize on any new opportunity that comes your way.

-Be consistent, keep your objectives in focus, by doing this you will be in pass by your competition at a strong and steady pace.

Should You or Shouldn’t You Disclose Your Price

By richie

Price is a big deal to you your customers!

There is a big controversy along with questions around the topic of price and whether it should be disclosed from the very beginning. Have you ever gone to a local gym to inquire about a membership, you ask the price, and they say, “sorry, I can’t disclose that until you have been on the tour of the gym and have met with one of our salespeople”. I don’t know about you, but this is a sudden turn off. If you instead go into a gym, ask the membership price, they give it to you right then and there, I would be ok about joining that gym. I do not like working with businesses that try to be sneaky in their pricing or any other issues regarding their services. The first gym will not

get my business, but the second one will…why?

Because they are missing a couple of very important key points in sales;

1. You want to be ready to sell when a customer is at their peak of their emotional level to buy. If you wait till later, when they are ready now, you are going to lose the sale.
2. If you cannot gain the trust of the customer, then just give up. If your customer wants to know the price, then tell them the price. You do not want to give any reason for them to suspect or distrust you.

If you have done sales in the past, you know that sales can be very complex, especially when it comes to advertising and giving your prices. There will be some that say, “just tell me your price”, and in this case you would give the price, but you also want your client to know the value of your product and why it’s priced that way.

So many times a client will compare products on price alone, when they really don’t know the value or quality of one product versus another. They may look at the price and think that it’s too high and move on.

If you client wants the information, don’t hold back, but don’t try to give them a cheap pitch, instead, have a natural conversation with them, telling them honestly what the benefits are of your product and how the value far outweighs the price.

Find out their questions regarding the prices, help them to feel comfortable in talking with your, develop trust. Carry on a conversation with them, show that you understand their concerns, and ask them to express their concerns. Then you want to take the opportunity to explain your product and the pricing. Keep the dialog going, be able to back up your reasons for a higher price compared to the competition.

By Jeff Holbrook

The same goes for your prices that are less expensive than the competition, have your prices to compare with the higher prices along with the high quality that matches or exceeds that of the competition.

There are some that will look at lower prices and think the value is less, for this reason you need to explain why your prices are lower, and how you are able to do this without sacrificing the quality of your merchandise.

There has been a test where people were given three choices of a similar product, each having a different price. The majority of the test subjects chose the product with the middle ranged price.

Have you ever been to the new shopping store called IKEA? Well, the next time you go, look at their signs. You will see how they explain their lower prices by purchasing their stock in bulk, using self-service, and shipping everything in flat boxes. With their price promotion, they have built a very successful reputation for providing high quality items at a very low price.

Also, be your own customer, take a look from their perspective, would you trust YOU? Would you pay your price for your products? Be honest, develop trust and be open about your price, but back be ready to back it up.

Let’s Talk About Outsourcing…

One of the biggest blessings to SEO is the ability to Outsource from doing everything yourself. You may be a one person business or a small company, either way, you can greatly increase the growth of your business. You can obtain many of these services through specialized websites. Some of the tasks you may want to outsource are;

1. Directory submission
2. Link building
3. Search engine Optimization
4. Writing content for websites
5. Article writing
6. Keyword analysis
7. Competitive research
8. Website analysis

You will find that outsourcing will provide many benefits, leaving you more time to work on the things you enjoy and do best. Also, outsourcing allows you to put your focus on the business end of things rather than the many little things that take up so much of your time.

As you know, Time is something that seems to slip away from us so quickly. We as Internet Marketers have had to learn how to budget our time wisely since we are working on our own schedules without having to punch in a time clock.

There are many Internet Marketers who have been able to build great success by focusing on the important tasks of generating income. You will outsource different tasks, hopefully having them completed in a timely manner, making your business run smoothly.

When using SEO Outsourcing, you need to make sure you do it correctly, and there are some limitations, as there are with anything. You will find that you will have certain expectations, but in the real world, not everyone will meet those expectations. Plan for the bumps in the road, give yourself some time for ‘corrections’ or ‘do-overs’.

You will notice that SEO Outsourcing in on the rise which is due to the ongoing growth of Internet Marketing. More and more marketers and companies are outsourcing different jobs, and therefore, there are more specialty companies or persons who are offering their services online.

Once you find a great Outsourcing help, hang on to them, they will help your business grow and let you put your time where it’s really needed.

Someone I use for outsourcing and highly recommend is: Annette Jensen

Other options are: Guru, Elance and oDesk

Contests are used by bloggers to get extra exposure. This is proved simply by me making this post:

CarlOCab is running a contest to celebrate his blog turning 1 and to do so he has been very smart. Instead of putting up his own money or prizes, he has contacted lots of people and asked them to submit a gift. I have put up a 1 month 125*125 banner ad spot valued at $50.

He is awarding ‘tickets’ for part taking in actions. I am linking to the post and also chasing package 7 so am linking to Bloginads Website! This is a clever contest as it gets  exposure for the people and blogs that take part as well as huge exposure for Carl’s blog. how much does it cost him? – time… that is all. If you are willing to spend the time to get a contest together, then go for it and start boosting the incoming links and traffic to your blog!

I plan on running a contest in the near future when I am ready for more mass exposure to my new, little blog

Head over to CarlOCab and get your entry in as well

How can you benefit and get the most out of SMM (Social Media Marketing)? You find tips and tricks all over the Internet and I came across a blog, netbusinessblog that covers this topic beautifully. According to this writer, there is a one and only secret to using SMM properly. He first states…

The Problem:

The problem is by the ways SMM is being used. There are a lot of articles voicing the benefits but very little on how to use it properly. There was an analysis done by Gary Ruplinger on the SEO side of PR back-links, getting instant exposure, and the potential for viral marketing success overnight. If you set out playing this game without knowing what you need to do, you may end up hurting your reputation.

The Solution:

The only way to make use of SMM is by really participating in the community. Become a real contributor, using the services offered the way they are meant to be used. This is the key, become a member of the community you want to be known in.

Do you want to make the frontpage of Digg? Then do it buy building your reputation with good stories and content. The same goes for Reddit with your articles, or YouTube with your videos. Submit your best and your name will be known, coming up through the ranks, all built upon your honest and sincere reputation and contributions.

By taking the shortcuts, you won’t make it. You need to be actively engaged in the community, become a genuine user. Don’t try to play games with people, eventually they will see through it. Remember, Social Media is done by using it, becoming a part of it.

How To Do It:

*Do you want to gain a reputation on Digg?

Then submit some great stories, and vote on the stories you like.

*Do you want people to go to your MyBlogLog?

Visit their blogs, if you like what you see, let them know, join their community.

These are simple questions with even simpler answers. You need to dive into these social media site and learn how to use them. You cannot go into the social media with the mindset of what you can gain from it, you need to know how to use it and enjoy it. Then you will naturally build a good reputation, gain some new readers, and be the winner in the end.

The question; is there a market for another PPC network for bloggers?

Simon Emery and I were having a chat on MSN as has recently become the norm, and we were talking about needs in the blogosphere marketplace when it dawned on me… We have PPC text ads for bloggers, but we don’t have a dedicated network of PPC ads for 125*125 banner boxes that has now become popular as well as the other common banner forms by bloggers, for bloggers.

I was looking on my blog, and as it is (at time of writing this) new there is a lot of unsold ad inventory. What if my banners on the side, and my featured banners at the top, could be populated with Default ads that earn me a CPC every time someone clicks it.

Then if someone wants to buy the ad on my site for a month, like is the norm, they can and it will automatically replace one of the CPC spots.

Next, from an advertiser point of view, what if, instead of paying each blog to get my ad shown, I can bid a CPC amount, select geotargetting such as the niche of the blog, country of the visitor and possibly even age demographic and have my banner ads serviced on many blogs that fit my filter! These blogs will be of a high standard due to the fact that we plan to review each blog before accepting it into the network.

I got excited and pitched this idea to Simon. Guess what, turns out he was thinking along the same sort of lines for his OIO plugin that allows you to sell your ad inventory and cut out the ‘middle man’. He wanted to allow users to service default ads with CPC ads until that spot was sold.

Now we were talking, both of us thought it was a great idea and now we are at the stage of finding a viable platform to add-on to. Simon has published some research on the current ad platforms he has found. He has omitted some of the higher range stuff (One platform as high as $30,000 + 5%) which we may need to consider too.

If you think that we should not be publishing our ideas for the world to see at such an early stage, worry not, we have some very unique and clever ideas for the network that will of course not be reveled until we launch in Beta.