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Archives for the ‘ Business Ideas ’ Category

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, Upwork and upWork

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 I 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.