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By Terri Seymour in Featured

businessOne of the most common questions asked by internet business owners is “How can I increase sales?” Many articles, ebooks and reports have been written on this subject and trying to absorb that information just tends to make us more confused than ever! Below are some easy, innovative ideas to increase sales that anybody can implement into their online marketing strategies.

By Eric Gruber in Featured

I’m going to let you in on a very dirty secret:

There is one question that is being dodged by experts in EVERY market. Answer that question and you’ll corner the market, be worshipped forever and get more customers and sales.

If it was that easy, why aren’t other experts answering these questions?

It’s because they fear an informed audience. That’s outright silly! But, we’re not going to tell them that. While your competitors run scared, you’ll be getting more sales since you’re going to follow the steps I outline in the article below. You will educate your targeted audiences, get more website traffic, teach people how to buy from you and increase your sales.

Now, are you ready?

Step 1: Find the questions that are being dodged by other experts in your industry.

I can’t tell you what these questions are. It will vary from industry to industry. . So, how do you find these golden questions to answer?

  • Go to Yahoo Answers and type in your keyword. Examine the questions carefully and see which ones keep popping up. If people are asking the same questions, that means that people have the same questions. There’s a need that’s NOT being fulfilled.
  • Go to forums and watch what your audience is discussing
  • Survey your clients, customers and list of prospects

Step 2: Answer the questions in as many formats as possible

For each question create a blog post. Do NOT date these blog posts – you will see why later on. Once you create your blog post, expand it into an article. Then, turn your article into a video, special report, podcast and audio interview. You should also create online press releases. If you need help with writing your articles and blog postings, I have templates that will help you write your articles in 30 minutes or less. Just go to http://www.StartWritingArticlesFaster.com

Step 3: Answer the Questions in As Many Places As Possible

  • You should submit your blog posts to as many RSS feeds as possible
  • You should bookmark your blog posts using Digg, Technorati and De.li.cious
  • You should submit your articles to the top websites, ezines and article directories that accept article submissions. We can do this for you at http://www.IWantMoreProspects.com
  • You should submit your videos to YouTube and Viddler. You may even want to think about investing in the TrafficGeyser.com video submission service
  • You should post links to your blog, articles and videos on Twitter, Facebook, Myspace and Linked In.
  • You should post your articles on social marketing websites sites like Scribd and Squidoo
  • You should submit your press releases through PR Web or Webwire. If you use Webwire.com, all you have to pay is $20. But, I do suggest comparing the two services and see which one matches your needs.
  • Videos teaching people how to buy from you or how to use your product should be on your website.
  • When people opt-in for your special reports, ebooks or other free offering, you should have an auto-responder series that gets people to go back to your blog or website. If you have lots of blog postings that answers your prospects’ top questions – all you have to do is create a summary for each blog posting and send people back to your blog every day. This way each blog posting will get the visibility it deserves. And, by not showing the date, these postings become evergreen.

Follow these steps and you will increase website traffic and get more sales, because you’ll be educating your prospects, answering their questions and teaching them how to buy from you.

About the Author:

Article Marketing Expert Eric Gruber uses the power of articles to create online opportunities for Internet marketers, small business owners, authors, entrepreneurs and speakers who want more publicity, prospects and profits. Now, you can get his instant article writing templates that will help you write your articles in 30 minutes or less. Get 3 of his favorite article writing templates for free at: http://www.TryMyFreeArticleTemplates.com

By admin in Featured

seoMillions upon millions of people are surfing the web every day. They search for news and information about people, places and companies. At the same time, some of these people are publishing or posting reviews about services, products and people, and not all of the reviews are good. Did you know that just one bad post can greatly harm the reputation of a Company and cause a direct impact on the Company’s bottom line?

Here is the test. Google yourself. Google your Company. What does it say? If there are negative posts about you, your services or your Company, then it’s time to get with the program – The Online Reputation Management Program.

By Dave Ashe in Featured

Forums are a great way of marketing alongside articles, email and blogging – there is no real way to compare all of these, they are just a different way of communicating. The big difference however with forums is that many many more people will see you and get to know you which builds trust as you interact with the community.

Forums have been around in many forms since the dawn of the internet, they provide a means of conversation with like-minded people in a community-driven atmosphere of helping one another with problems. If you don’t know how they work, let me just tell you a bit about them.

First off, you have to find your forum in your niche, the best way to do this is type in subject forums as the keywords (replacing subject with your topic) into a search engine. Once you have found one in the topic you’re interested in, with a nice community going on, registration is the next step.

Registration is pretty simple, its just a case of filling your details in and perhaps entering a captcha (one of those funny sets of digits and numbers that tell the site that you are not an automated spammer!) You may have to click a link in your email to register the fact that you own the email address you registered with.

There usually is many sub-forums, i would reccomend finding one that usually reads something like “introduce yourself” and post a brief overview of what you are about and say hello. I would advise against just registering and posting “buy my product now” or “come to my website” etc. type comments as you’ll end up with a flame war – if you dont know what that is please do a search on it as its not a nice thing to happen to you!

Get involved in the forum, post replies to people’s problems to help with any questions that you can – its a community-type feeling that you will enjoy. Forums which are busy have the advantage of many more people in the nich you are targeting, so you can find out about some really exciting new widget thing in your niche that is very important to you, and also reply and ask more.

Some forums have a specific buy, sell or trade section where you can sell your products, this is the place to be if you want to directly pitch your product. Another way of pitching your product is to enter links to your website in your signature, this is shown directly under each post that you make and is updated automatically – be careful however, some forums dont like this and will ask you to remove them. Some have rules on the size of images or links allowed, please read these before adding it.

Some of the more advanced forums that run vbulletin have private messaging which can be great to directly carry out business to people privately on the forum, i’ve bought many websites and domain names using this – some sites like digital point have itrader which is also a way of showing how trustworthy the user is in terms of buying and selling, similar to the ebay feedback system.

One last thing to remember, forums are a great place to communicate rather than a place to pitch-fest – if you want to advertise on a forum, but you cant find any other method other than the ones i’ve outlined, contact the owners of the site and ask for banner rates, this is a great way of getting in front of these people, then you have the right to freely talk about your product or service which is a huge bonus compared to advertising on a static site!

Dave Ashe runs Marketing Forums, a friendly atmosphere for marketers of all types – come along and register here.

By Mark Spivey in Featured

email marketingEmail marketing is one of the most effective ways for a business to promote themselves and increase sales but it must be done right in order to be effective.
In this article I will touch on the art of email marketing- (What works and what does not) and how you can get more bang for your marketing buck when selecting an email marketing service.

A word about spam.

Unsolicited email or “Junk email” also called “Spam” is living proof that email is a powerful way to reach an online audience.

Spammers know that for all the emails trashed in every bulk mail out, they will still get a few unsuspecting readers who will click on their links and make a purchase. While their shotgun approach is annoying to the majority of us they still persist because of that reason.

By Charles Jacobs in Featured

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.

If you need help writing your book, contact award winning author and book coach Charles Jacobs at coaching(at)wisewriter.net for a free consultation. His latest book, The Writer Within You, has been named one of the Best Books of the Year by seven organizations. Axiom awarded it a gold medal in the business category. It is available at all bookstores or on the Web at http://www.retireandwrite.com/

By Kimberly Reddington in Featured

Different people learn in different ways. Some people like to receive content via an email while some prefer to read blogs. Some people learn better by reading while some prefer to have the content read to them. Some people need to see you talking about the content while others don’t care what you look like.

Here are seven different ways to leverage your time and efforts by taking the same content and turning it into different products. Some of these ideas will be used to market your website while some of them will be used to bring in revenue.

1. Write some articles and submit them to article directories.

Submitting articles to directories will increase your exposure on the web and will most definitely increase traffic to your website. You write an article and submit it to a website like ezinearticles. You are allowed to include a resource box at the end of the article. Make sure to include your name, company name, mission statement or bio, and a link to your website. Submit a few articles and watch your traffic increase.

2. Use those articles in your newsletter.

If you send out a regular newsletter, you can use the same articles you submitted to directories as articles in your newsletter. Sometimes I use the articles as-is and sometimes I modify them slightly to add a more personal touch. I like to use the articles in my newsletter first and then submit them to directories later that way my subscribers get to be the first to read them.

3. Break the articles up into smaller chunks and turn them into blog posts.

I suggest breaking them up because people tend to read blog posts quickly. If your article is fairly short, just post it. If your article is longer, you could turn it into multiple posts, thus leveraging your time even more.

4. Record yourself reading the articles and turn them into audio or video podcasts.

Here is where you can tap into those folks who prefer to be read to, or who would prefer to see you to better get to know you. A good place to submit audio podcasts is iTunes, and the most popular place for videos is YouTube.

5. Combine several related articles into an e-book.

Take several articles that are related to one topic and turn it into an e-book. You may need to add some text to make your book flow from one article to the other, but essentially each article could be a chapter in your book.

6. Combine several related articles into an e-course.

A good way to accomplish this is to turn each article into a separate part for your course. Add some additional material like worksheets or add more to your article, and send each part out as an email through your email auto-responder service. If you have 7 related articles, you could have a 7-part e-course.

7. Use the articles as content on a membership site where you charge a fee to view the site.

If you have a membership site where you charge a fee for members to view different types of content, you could include your articles in an article section where members could search on information in the articles.

Reformatting the content of your articles into other sources is an excellent way to leverage your time and to reach out to more people. You will want to re-write the articles a little to make them fit their new purpose, but the main pieces of the idea and concept are already there for you.

Kimberly Reddington, Moms in Business Thoughtleader for CereusWomen.com, teaches moms how to turn their skills and talents into a successful home-based service business and to find a balance between their business and their family. Discover Kim’s popular special report by visiting http://www.CereusWomen.com

By Mel Strocen in Featured

I’ve been reviewing articles for newsletters and sites for over 10 years and about 7 years ago I launched GoArticles.com, now one of the largest free article content directories on the Web. In that time, the volume of article content being pumped out has mushroomed, but the overall quality has seriously declined. One of the main reasons for this decline has been the growing realization by webmasters and marketers that articles are an effective and free means for acquiring back links and traffic.

Article writing has become a red flag drawing would be writers from every walk of life and every area of real or imagined expertise. Just like web sites spawned search engines and a host of secondary support services (SEO, site submission, etc.), article writing has given birth to article directories, article submission services, ghost writing, and article SEO. Article directories and article search engines are now struggling with the same problem that web search engines have grappled with for years – crap content.

Here are some of the most common article submission problems I’ve seen:

1. Blatant copyright violation and plagiarism.

2. Short advertorials trying to pass as articles.

3. Articles that have a catchy title and absolutely no worthwhile content. Generally, the publication guidelines for these articles are longer than the article.

4. Recycled article content. The topic and the content has been written about ad nauseum.

5. Software generated articles. Read like the author was on drugs.

Winnowing through the mountains of useless published content has become a full time endeavor for article directories, newsletter publishers and anyone looking for useful information. The demand for quality article content hasn’t waned but the challenges for the article content industry continue to grow.

By Lindsay Glass in Featured

People always ask me how the syndication of press releases and book-marking your blog in many of the social book-marking sites can possibly generate traffic for your site.

The other day I submitted a press release to thousands of online sources for a client. As part of my regular routine, I then put the release up on their web site. Not 20 minutes later they had a new comment on that press release:

“I found your site on Technorati and read a few of your other posts. Keep up the good work. I just added your RSS feed to my Google News Reader. I’m looking forward to reading more from you.” So do these strategies work? You bet they do! Below are a few link-building strategies for you to use in your own business to help generate traffic for your site.

1. Social Book-Marking Sites

Social Media book-marking is the strategy used in the story above. It’s also usually the quickest way to get your content read. Use social book-marking sites like Digg, Delicious, Reddit and Technorati to bookmark your own blogs. Make sure to write an attention grabbing headline and use appropriate keywords so that people searching for your particular topic and/ or product will be able to find you. As the story above shows, this is a simple way to create a loyal fan base.

2. Comment on Other Blogs in Your Industry

Find relevant successful blogs in your particular niche that you can comment on. If you find a blog that already has a loyal fan base, become a part of their community and you can tap into that fan base. Start leaving comments on the blogs with a link back to your web site (or blog). Engaging with these relevant blogs is a great way to get noticed. It can also lead to valuable links back to your site. Just like with any other conversation, join in and share your opinion; however, make sure you present both you and your company in the best light possible by leaving relevant comments that will actually help others in your niche.

3. Article Syndication Sites

Start writing relevant articles about your niche and syndicate them. There a ton of these article syndication sites out there, some that we use and suggest are http://www.ezinearticles.com, http://www.articlemarketer.com, http://submityourarticle.com, http://www.articlebase.com.

Each of these sites allow you to have a byline at the bottom of your article so if someone reads your article and likes what they see they can visit your site for more information.

Submitting your article to these types of sites does several things. One benefit is that it allows you to get your information out there (through RSS feeds) on thousands of web sites and can lead to your content being referenced in other posts and articles. Also, make sure to always include your web address in your author byline because each time your article is picked up on a site, it provides a link back to your site, thus generating highly targeted traffic to your web site and also raising your search engine rankings through your increased number of link-backs.

Another simple hint: In your byline give the reader a reason to visit your web site. For example, “Want to find more insider secrets to successfully grow your business and increase profits? Check out www.yourwebsitehere.com for a free copy of Top 10 secrets to gaining ridiculous income in 6 months.” (Not to mention if they go and sign-up, then they’re on your mailing list!)

Conclusion:

Remember, if you don’t take the time to tell people about you and your business then no one will ever know what they’re missing!

Known as the “Online Celebrity Producer,” Lindsay Glass helps her clients tell their stories in the online world. Lindsay began freelance writing in 2000 and soon after launched her own PR firm that thrived by offering an in-your-face “Guaranteed PR” that was one of the first of its type in the nation. She is now a founding partiner of DNG Media Group, LLC. For more information, please visit http://www.dngmediagroup.com

By Mike Muir in Featured

We’ve discussed some of the very sound reasons why you should learn to write articles, in order to grow your online business into one of the top home businesses. It’s been established that this is an extremely effective means of drawing traffic to your website, and you’ll be surprised how easily the words will flow, once you get rolling.

Firstly, format your articles to comply with the standards required by the Directories:

  1. Use a very simple, plain font, such as Arial and use about size 12. The editors will not be impressed by a fancy font, which may interfere with the conversion into a text format.
  2. Format your lines to about 50 characters per line, including spaces. This fits the most common line sizes used by the Article Directories.
  3. Plan your article to be between about 450 and 600 words long. Remember that your readers are looking for clear, concise information. Anything too long may discourage them from reading the whole article, yet it must be long enough to cover your subject matter.
  4. Use simple, plain language that’s easy to read and to understand. You’ll not win any points for flowery language, and complicated sentence structures. As a golden rule, keep paragraphs quite short; no more than about three sentences.
  5. If you use numbers or bullet points for a list of items, separate items by using line spaces, as has been done in this article. This is to handle the auto-format function used by some directories. The auto-format box should then be un-checked.

A suggested plan is to jot down a brief framework for your article, starting with a title which clearly covers your subject matter. Remember that your potential readers are looking for useful information about something, so your title should be clear, eye-catching and should aptly summarize the content. They’ll ask themselves,”Do I want to read this?” The answer is more likely to be affirmative if the title is eye-catching, and if it implies that the content will be useful to the reader.

You’ll need to start off with an introductory paragraph, which briefly indicates the subject matter or content of your article. The introduction can also be used where there’s a need for a brief summary of the article, as required by some directories.

Proofread your article several times before submission, checking especially for spelling and grammatical errors. You have the assistance of the spell-check and word count to assist you through the process .You’ll not have your article published if it’s littered with spelling errors and poor grammar or punctuation.

Your final paragraph should be some form of conclusion, and may include a final point of information or advice.

In conclusion, proofread once more! You’ll want to be recognized for the quality of your articles, and become known by the directories. This won’t happen if components of your work are sub-standard, or if your articles don’t adhere to the standards laid down by the main directories.

I trust that this information will be useful to you in starting off in this all-important aspect of promoting your business.

About the Author: Mike Muir has personally been through these experiences and has invested both time and money in selecting those options which are most effective for getting a new online business on track. He is happy to share these with you. Please visit his site at: http://www.mikeshomebiz.com for information about online business opportunities and visit his blog at: http://www.mikeshomebiz.com/blog for more articles.

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