Small Business Online

By now I think most people in the world know about blogs.

What most don’t know as there is a great income to be made as well for free.

Rob Benwell is only a mere 24 years old and has already made several million dollars. Early in 2006 he shared his secrets with the world in his highly successful Blogging To The Bank ebook and has made making money online a whole lot easier for everyone.

Just over two years after the success of his first book and over 20,000 copies sold of it and the 2007 2.0 update he is now releasing his third version of Blogging to the Bank helping to wet our appetites and keep the fat bucks rolling in.

I got this book as soon as I could and it covers quite a lot of new information and techniques to adapt your blog to the new demands of the major search engines. Many of the techniques in the old book are now dated and don’t work so well. This is why Blogging To The Bank 3.0 is a godsend.

Also this guy doesn’t consider himself to be a guru?, he’s just a normal guy who wants to help the little guys out. I find this a nice change as he doesn’t talk down to you like most of the other guys do. He explains everything in a nice simple manor so everyone can understand.

Saying that when he goes off on one, it may take a few reads until you get it but when you do it’s just shear genius. Some of the topics in my opinion could have been covered a little more, then others went into great detail. You also get his 5 Blogging Commandments For 2009 that you must follow to give you blogs the greatest success in 2009 and keep them future proofed. This should be printed out and put on the wall of every online marketer without a doubt! His book starts off with market research (so that you are making the most of your time) to building your blogging empire. Everything is covered in this new outing that helps bloggers withtodays online issues regarding making the all mighty search engines happy.

Final Verdict: if you are out there in the blogging world and want to make money the easy way then I highly recommend Blogging To The Bank 3.0.

Why work harder than you need to as the new techniques are there ready for you to simply implement.

Matthew Loop :: Nov.25.2008 :: Internet :: No Comments »

Writing articles is an important aspect of promoting your website, authoring a blog or even if you want to become a professional writer.

Remember that “Content is King”. The better way you organize your ideas, the more publicity you get. Two basic points to be kept in mind while writing an article are:-

1. Use the simplest language possible You want your writing to reach the most reader possible. For this reason, it should be written in the simplest language possible that can still get your point across. Writers in magazines and newspapers generally write to a 4th grade level.

It means that they are using the simplest possible language to express their reporting news and opinions.

This does not mean that they don’t possess the capabilities to write in hi-fi language, they just wish that the news should reach to more and more people. But surely, using simple language is not possible for all types of publications. Many of the magazines related to technical issues, social commentary or politics will use such complex language to put the audience away from the actual facts. But for such kind of writing, appropriate level of complexity is needed. Apart from such magazines, it’s always preferred to use simplest and straightforward writing style.

(2) Represent your ideas in an interesting manner Your ideas should be represented in such a way that they are useful to the audience. The better you frame your ideas, more readers will be attracted towards your article. Organize your ideas in such a manner that it entertains the readers. Make sure that don’t write whole descriptive stuff so that the readers feel bored. Most of the articles written for the internet or for magazines are in classic style known as “five paragraph essay”, which is an ideal format for writing articles in brief. If this style is followed then you can express your ideas in a very beautiful way with the good and interesting start and end.

How To Write Using The Five Paragraph Essay Format

1. First paragraph - A brief introduction to the topic of the article and related ideas.

2. Second, third and fourth paragraphs - Expand on the introduction and support your ideas, giving more detailed information about the topic of the article.

3. Fifth paragraph - Conclusion, including a summary of the points in the article.

When you learn how to use the five paragraph essay format effectively, you’ll be able to write for magazines or the internet. Basically, you want to use the simplest language you can while organizing your ideas effectively. Do that and you’ll be a successful writer in no time!

Theo McLanahan :: Nov.23.2008 :: Business :: No Comments »

There are basically two types of bloggers in the world - reporters and experts - and some people perform both roles (usually the experts, it’s hard for reporters to become experts, but it’s easy for experts to report).

If you have ever taken an Internet marketing course or attended a seminar specifically for beginners, you have probably heard about the two different methodologies. Whenever the business model is based on content, and if you blog for money then the model is based on content, people are taught to either start as reporters, or if possible step up as experts.

I”ll be frank; you want to be the expert.

Reporters leverage the content of the experts and in most cases people start off as reporters because they haven’t established expertise. Experts enjoy the perks of preeminence, higher conversion rates because of perceived value, it’s easier to get publicity, people are more likely to seek you out rather than you having to seek others out, joint ventures come easier, etc? experts in most cases simply make more money and attract more attention.

Most Bloggers Are Reporters

The thing with expertise is that it requires something - experience. No person becomes an expert without doing things and learning. Bloggers usually start out without expertise and as a result begin their blogging journey by talking about everything going on in their niche (reporting) and by interviewing and talking about other experts (reporting again).

There’s nothing wrong with reporting of course and for many people it’s a necessity at first until you build up some expertise. Unfortunately the ratios are pretty skewed when it comes to reporters and experts - there are a lot more reporters than there are experts, hence reporters tend to struggle to gain attention and when they do, they often just enhance the reputation of the expert they are reporting on.

Don’t Replicate Your Teacher

If you have ever spent some time browsing products in the learn Internet marketing niche you will notice a pattern. Many people first study Internet marketing from a guru? (for lack of a better term). The guru teaches how he or she is able to make money online, and very often the view that the student gleams is that in order to make money online you have to teach others how to make money online.

The end result of this process is a huge army of amateurs attempting to replicate what their teacher does in the same industry - the Internet marketing industry - not realizing that without expert status based on a proven record and all the perks that come with it, it’s next to impossible to succeed.

Even people, who enjoy marginal success, say for example growing an email list of 1,000 people, then go out and launch a product about how to grow an email list of 1,000 people. Now I have no problems with that, I think it’s fine to teach beginners and leverage whatever achievements you have, the problem is that people gravitate to the same niche - Internet marketing - and rarely have any key points of differentiation.

How many products out there do you know of that all claim to teach the same things - email marketing, SEO, pay per click, affiliate marketing, and all the sub-niches that fall under the category of Internet marketing. It’s a saturated market, yet when you see your teachers and other gurus making money teaching others how to make money (and let’s face it - making money as a subject is one of the most compelling) - your natural inclination is to follow in their footsteps.

If the key is to become an expert and you haven’t spent the last 5-10 years making money online, I suggest you look for another niche to establish expertise in.

Report on Your Process, Not Others

The secret to progress from reporter to expert is not to focus on other experts and instead report on your own journey. When you are learning how to do something and implementing things day by day, or studying other people’s work, you need to take your process and what you do as a result of what you learn, and use it as content for your blog.

It’s okay to talk about experts when you learn something from them, but always relate it to what you are doing. If you learn a technique from an expert it’s fine to state you learned it from them (and affiliate link to their product too!) but you should then take that technique, apply it to what you are doing and then report back YOUR results, not there’s. Frame things using your opinion - your stories - and don’t regurgitate what the expert said. The key is differentiation and personality, not replication.

Expertise comes from doing things most people don’t do and then talking about it. If you do this often enough you wake up one day as an expert, possibly without even realizing how it happened, simply because you were so good at reporting what you did.

You Are Already An Expert

Most people fail to become experts (or perceived as experts) because they don’t leverage what they already know. Every person who lives a life learns things as they go, takes action every day and knows something about something. The reason why they never become an expert is because they choose not to (which is fine for some, not everyone wants to be an expert), but if your goal is to blog your way to expertise and leave the world of reporting behind you have to start teaching and doing so by leveraging real experience.

Experience can come from what you do today and what you have done previously; you just need to take enough steps to demonstrate what you already know and what you are presently learning along your journey. I know so many people in my life, who are experts simply by virtue of the life they have lived, yet they are so insecure about what they know, they never commit their knowledge to words for fear of, well fear.

Blogs and the Web in general, are amazing resources when you leverage them as a communication tool to spread your expertise because of the sheer scope of people they can reach. If all you ever do is talk to people in person and share your experience using limited communication mediums, you haven?t much hope of becoming an expert. Take what you know and show other people through blogging, and you might be surprised how people change their perception of you in time.

Reporting Is A Stepping Stone

If your previous experience and expertise is from an area you want to leave behind or you are starting from, scratch?, then reporting is the path you must walk, at least for the short term.

Reporting is a lot of fun. Interviewing experts, talking about what other people are doing and just being part of a community is not a bad way to blog. In many cases people make a career of reporting (journalism is about just that), but if you truly want success and exponential results, at some point you will have to stand up and proclaim yourself as someone unusually good at something and then proceed to demonstrate it over and over again.

Have patience and focus on what you do to learn and then translate that experience into lessons for others, and remember, it’s okay to be a big fish in a small pond, that’s all most experts really are.

Yomi A :: Nov.22.2008 :: Internet :: No Comments »

Professional blogging is still a very new concept, one which many entrepreneurs look towards as containing a great deal of promise and the potential to generate an appreciable revenue for those with a vision and able to stick with it for the long term. As of now there are very few who would call themselves professional bloggers, with even fewer bloggers making their writing their sole source of income. However, there are an ever increasing number of people who are monetizing their blog as a means of supplementary income.

There are a lot of bloggers who are excited by the possibility of blogging for profit. After all, many of these bloggers spend more than an hour a day updating their blog for no financial reward whatsoever; if they could build some sort of revenue stream for their efforts, they certainly would do so. There are a few viable ways of making money from a blog; the most common of these is to sell ad space on one’s blog either through the popular Google AdSense program or directly to a company which wants to target the niche which reads the blog. The number of people able to support themselves solely through the sale of ad space on their blog, however, is very small.

A majority of blog readers are themselves bloggers, given that those who use the platform themselves are the most likely to have an interest in what other bloggers are doing. This is one of the reasons that the most successful bloggers, at least in the financial sense are those who have invested a lot of time in learning and writing about blogging itself.

As blogging grows, professional blogging is certain to change greatly and become far more complex than it is today. As of now, the bloggers who are having the most success monetizing their blogs are those who speak to an audience of bloggers on the topic of blogging. As the audience for blogs expands, this will change and professional blogging will have to change along with this shifting landscape lest they be left behind.

It is nearly impossible to predict exactly what the future holds for professional blogging - the blogosphere is in constant flux, which is one of the things which makes it so interesting.

Marenda :: Nov.19.2008 :: Business :: No Comments »

Clickbank is one of the easiest ways to get started promoting products as an affiliate. Unlike other affiliate networks, you don’t have to have a website in order to be approved as an affiliate. In fact, you don’t have to do much of anything to sign up aside from have an email address. You can use clickbank.com as a means to generate easy links that you can use in any number of different internet promotion strategies.

Affiliate networks are another source of finding products to promote. These types of sites coordinate the relationship between the advertisers and the publishers. This may be a great way to get additional products and services to sell, but should be used after you’ve already gotten your feet wet elsewhere. Some more popular affiliate networks are Commission Junction, Link Share, and Share a Sale.

Another popular type of affiliate marketing is called CPA which stands for Cost Per Acquisition. This is a scenario in which the company whose products or services you’re promoting is going to pay you for a lead. So, when a visitor to your site completes some action, you get paid. This may be as simple as someone putting in an email address all the way through someone completing a survey or multi-page application.

You can promote affiliate programs through classified ad websites. Some easy ones to use for affiliate programs are backpage.com, usfreeads.com, adoos.ca, and check out as many local classified ad sites sponsored by either local newspapers, tv or radio. The benefit to these types of sites are that they have built-in promotion. The radio, tv and newspaper will typically promote through advertising their own classified sites which means they will get traffic. Craigslist is also a good option but must be used with care simply because Craiglist will “ghost” your ads which basically means they won’t make it to the category listings on Cragislist which will severely limit their visibility.

Article marketing is one of the best ways to promote affiliate products. Depending on which article directories you use, the idea is to write the article on a topic that is related to the product you’ll be trying to promote and submit that article to article directories. The idea is to submit unique articles so that the search engines rank those articles which gets traffic to the articles and clicks to the links in your “resource box” or “author profile”. I’ve found from personal experience that the click through rate for people who click on the links in your resource box is anywhere from 5 to 15% depending on the article and the specific call to action in the resource box.

Social networking is becoming more and more popular and can be leveraged to help you promote your affiliate program. Some sites, such as squidoo.com and hubpages.com allow you to create a page talking about and promoting whatever you want to promote. Other social networking sites can be leveraged significantly for getting your main website into the search engines as well.

Another way to promote affiliate products is through blogging. Some people use the blog to specifically sell their products, other people will use a blog as a means to get traffic usually for some controversial topics or instructional topics then promote products as advertisements on their sites. Blogging can be a great strategy to help you get traffic to your affiliate promotions.

A more “traditional” or “old school” website can work as well. I wouldn’t recommend this method for most people as the automation and upkeep is typically not very easy and your ability to leverage other people’s work is diminished significantly. If you want to run your own website, I’d still recommend that you consider a blog platform, such as wordpress that will help you manage your content, but not have to rely on knowing any html and the look and the feel of the site is very customizable.

Once you have a site or decide to start promoting products, you should consider pay per click. This is one of the most solid and guaranteed ways to get traffic to your site. The only down side to this is that it costs money for each visitor. This is where the tracking of what keywords you’re bidding on and which keywords or which ads are producing results really pays off. If you track which ads are converting, you’ll be able to do more of the same and you can also eliminate advertising expenses for ads that aren’t converting. Consider tracking a foundation for success when it comes to pay per click.

This article is meant to simply introduce you to some of the ways to promote affiliate products and services. If you’re serious about pursuing any of these methods, use the internet to find great content. Spend some time on some affiliate marketing forums and ask around what other people are doing and how they’re successful. Remember, though, nothing can replace actually getting out there and trying these things for yourself. There’s only so much you’ll be able to do without trying this first hand. Good luck with your efforts.

Brian Armstrong :: Nov.11.2008 :: Business :: No Comments »

If you’re a small business owner, you have undoubtedly considered using internet marketing to drive sales. The opportunity that is present with the internet is too great to overlook, but many business owners fail to consider how they will accomplish this. They get involved without ever making a plan and sticking to it. So how exactly do you succeed with internet marketing in your business?

Traffic is what sustains your online presence. If a website is to be a viable part of your business strategy, you need to ensure a healthy amount of web traffic.

The whole point of internet marketing is to convey your message to a wider audience. Therefore you have to make your message consistent. You probably won?t convert people into customers the first time that they see you. You have to condition them to trust you. The best way to do this is to be consistent with your online marketing and create a brand.

There are a number of different online marketing strategies which can work for your business. You can use pay per click ads, blogging and email marketing, among others. With pay per click ads, there is the benefit of having a nearly immediate increase in your traffic, but also the downside of having to pay for each hit on your site. While email marketing can allow you to reach thousands of people in seconds, you have to use this tool very carefully to avoid being seen as a spammer.

The biggest mistake that many new internet marketers make is investing everything in one method of traffic generation. When you’re trying to build an online business, you need to employ several different methods to bring visitors to your site. When you only use one method, your success depends on the success of a particular item. This means that you don’t really have guaranteed web site traffic.

For example, if you only use pay-per-click advertising, what happens when you reach your daily budget? If you’ve maxed out your marketing budget for the day, you can’t make any more sales. If you didn’t manage to make a sale with your pay-per-click advertising for the day, then you just wasted that money.

However, don’t discount pay per click ads; they are a good traffic generation technique - but it should not be the only one your business uses.

You should also avoid losing focus by casting too wide of a net. Choose a few methods and stick with them - this will make sure that you are getting the maximum return for your efforts. The more work you can put into each, the better results you’ll see.

To a newbie in internet marketing, this can all seem a little overwhelming. You might not have any idea where to turn to get started. The good thing about this process is that you have resources available to you. Check out http://www.frequenttraffic.com for all of your traffic generation questions. They will guide you in the right way to build your online business.

Aaron Dudenhofer :: Nov.07.2008 :: Business :: No Comments »

Now that you have begun developing your online small business and have set up your website to sell your product or service, what do you do next? Internet marketing can be a huge asset to your business. In simple terms, unless you can get people to visit your website and purchase your product, your business will not do well. Consumers, unfortunately, do not magically rush to your website to take part in what you have to offer. You must embrace the entrepreneurial spirit and market your product.

An internet marketing plan for your small business is extremely important; however, your website must first be ready for online viewing. This means thinking about the design you want, in order to present your company it in a way that will draw in the individuals you are targeting. In most cases, this will be the only interaction that consumers have with your company. What they see on the website is what they know about you. Make sure that it is well designed and optimized for peak performance.

When you start marketing your online business, you will want to start with the basics. First you will want to define your target audience. For example, if the product you are marketing is made for young mothers with small children, then you will not want to concentrate on men in their fifties. Knowing the demographic for your product helps give you an idea of the best way to market it online. Once you are able to recognize your demographic audience, there are several ways that you can begin marketing to them. You may choose to use banner ads, email campaigns, e-zine ads, pay-per-click advertising and SEO techniques to promote your site.

If you have never done any internet marketing, then you might not be sure exactly what will work the best. This is actually going to be found out through trial and error. Some marketing techniques that have done well for other businesses, might not work well for well for you. If you are looking to start a small business and you aren’t sure about how to go about marketing your site, then try getting some business advice from someone who has already gone through the process. There are lots of people online that have started a small business and would be more than happy to help you. Try consulting some online forums that deal with marketing and seek information from those who have been there.

Mr Pub :: Nov.07.2008 :: Business :: No Comments »

biz4ry :: Aug.06.2008 :: Business, Computers, Internet, Retail, Uncategorized :: No Comments »