The Potential Of Online Business

The internet is flourishing and so are the possibilities of earning a living either working or running a business. People with special interests and passionate about a specific niche or skill, or even a hobby, setting up an online business can be a great way of turning the passion into a source of income. To succeed, you have to be zealous about what you do, be creative and stay committed.

Proper planning is Crucial Staring an online business closely resembles setting up a conventional offline business, and requires that you follow specific procedures, including a well drafted business plan. A plan is a perfect starting point as it helps potential business owners to stay focused on their business. You must outline what you would like to offer, your potentials, marketing, advertising plans, capital like money to design and host a website, among others.

Unique Sells The internet is filled with millions of website offering various products and services. You must therefore settle on a unique and viable service or product, or use a different approach. An industry analysis should be conducted to help you identify the intensity of competition, the funding opportunities, financing needs, and target market as well as business resources along with the marketing plan.

Curving Out a Niche and Marketing Choosing the right niche can make or break your online venture, and that is the reason it should be chosen with great care and consideration. Having a niche in mind is insufficient as you have to market and advertise online. Optimize your website for the search engines, use pay per click and make good use of social media. Tapping into the right niche can be immensely rewarding for businesses in the form of long-term profits and success.

Benefits Of Online Businesses One of the main advantages of setting up a business online is the amount of capital. While conventional businesses require a lot of capital to be set up, online businesses do not need the huge start up costs. There is a lot of flexibility in terms of the hours that one can work. As long as the work is delivered on time, working hours are very flexible.

With online work, the owner and the rest of the team work remotely, which saves them the stress of travelling to work every day. Further to that, there is also tremendous flexibility in terms of the size of the business. The business owner can localize the business by targeting customers from a specific geographical location or expand to wider regions, cities and even global with time. Another advantage of online business is that people with other jobs can as well set up and run them part time. This is a great alternative for residual income to supplement income on the sides until they can rely on the online business for full time income.

All these are aspects that make online businesses doable. With the right planning, commitment and business strategy, you can attain massive success doing what you love most online.

Does Your Brand Suffer From These 5 Email Mistakes?

Email is an extension of your brand. It counts as a conversation. Sometimes people even refer to it as "having a conversation" with someone.


As the manager of our personal brand, we must be diligent in insuring that this tool shows our best side and gives that great first and lasting impression.


Are you guilty of....


Long and unclear messages - with the volume of emails that people are receiving these days, we have one chance to get their attention. When they open their mail and see that it's long, there's a big chance that they'll scan it a little before deciding to save it for later reading. This is fine but there's also a great chance that they'll never get back to it. What you can do is make it clear and concise. Use bullet points to highlight your ideas to make your message easier to understand. Make it short and direct to the point.


I'm personally guilty of this. It comes from many years writing formal letters. Email is such different animal. I recently read a recommendation that we need keep emails to three sentences - anything more than that then we need to pick up the phone. There's a challenge!


Sending without checking for errors - it is important that we check and double check our message before sending it out. Readers are taking their time to know us; we don't want bad grammar and misused words to get in the way because this will reflect back on our brand. It makes us unreliable. Take that extra time to reread the message before sending it out because once you hit send, there's no way to get it back for corrections.


Inaccurate and unclear subject lines -this is important because this line is responsible for attracting our readers to open our message. If we give them generic and a poorly worded subject line, there's a big chance that they won't open the email. The subject line should be a sentence that describes your message, like a teaser and what to expect when they open their email. Writing specific subjects will also save your message from being marked as spam.


Shortcuts and abbreviations - never use shortcuts or abbreviated words for business messages. Not everyone can understand abbreviated words or shortcuts, like those that are used for text messaging. Use of such a style is also too informal and can be misinterpreted as unprofessional or unreliable. Make sure that you spell all words out correctly and eliminate grammatical errors. Any email message that has no shortcuts or abbreviated words is more appealing to readers because it displays professionalism and makes our brand trustworthy.


Not being careful with your content - it is important that we review our message and think about the content that we are going to include. If we are going to include links in our message, let's make sure that we link our customers to the right site. If we are going to attach an image or video, let's make sure that it will greatly benefit the receiver. And, leave the animated images off of any email.


These five common email mistakes can be avoided if we take the time to review our messages properly before sending them out. Ask someone how you can simplify your message so that readers will have an easier time understanding it. Then make use of bullet points to make your ideas clear. Read and reread your message. Use your Twitter skills to make the message even more concise!

2012 Social Media Marketing Industry Report

While the speculation, pontification and monetization of social media is reaching momentum of tsunami proportions, many businesses looking for practical advice are asking, “Exactly how are marketers using social media to grow their businesses?”


Michael Stelzner from Social Media Examiner has posed that same question and others like it to a sample of marketers on the front lines of the social web to help bring some clarity to what works, what doesn’t and where to focus.


When asked about the bearing of the report on the intersection of search and social, Mike said, “With Google integrating results from its Google+ network into search, we’ll begin to see an Amazon type social proofing of search results based on the activity of friends.  This will make search even more important.” We agree!


The 2012 Social Media Marketing Industry Report is out today and offers 42 pages of insights, tables, graphs and examples of tactics. Over 3,800 respondents provided their advice on the who, what, when, and where of social media marketing. They also shared where they plan on investing in the future.


Key subject matter covered in the report includes:


The top 10 social media questions marketers want answered:
The time commitment
The benefits of social media marketing
Commonly used social media services:
Social media sites people want to learn more about
Social media outsourcing
B2B vs B2C
Changes since the 2011 report




How much time should you spend on social media marketing tasks each week? It’s a reasonable question and the responses broke down as:


59% – 6 hours / week or more
33% – 11 hours / week or more
15%  - 20+ hours / week
Other key findings from the 2012 Social Media Marketing Industry Report include:


83% of marketers indicate that social media is important for their business.
Top benefits of social media marketing:
85% Generating more business exposure
69% increasing traffic
65% providing marketplace insight
76% of marketers plan on increasing their use of YouTube and video marketing
While only 40% of marketers are using Google+, 70% of marketers want to learn more about it and 67% plan on increasing Google+ activities
This report is a perfect compliment to the upcoming Social Media Success Summit online conference coming up on May 1st. You can get your basic questions answered and some alignment with what others are doing from the report and then get practical advice, tips and training from consultants and practitioners from the online conference.  It’s a great example of content marketing to promote an event actually.

3 Ways to Get Rich Online BEFORE The End of the Year (Fast, Fun and Mostly FREE!)

If you are struggling to make a full time living from home...I want this short article to serve as a wake up call.
I want to challenge you to start to think differently about your online business and the sorts of things you are doing right now that AREN'T working as well.I want to challenge you to read the simple steps below...and really think about them, before you write them off as yet another "get rich quick" system for home based success. (because all of the steps below require WORK. It's not magic. But it IS a ton of fun and you WILL have success if you apply them)


I want to share with you what I truly believe is the absolute easiest and most untapped, underutilized and under appreciated approach to earning boatloads of money in a business that will do nothing but continue to grow in the years to come. There are no gimmicks involved...and no gurus required. As a matter of fact, if you follow this system, YOU can become a "guru" in the very best sense of the word. (the kind of person who has sage and enlightened advice for others who genuinely value what you have to offer). You can use each of these strategies as a stand alone system if you wish. BUT, the real power behind it is through combining them, and using them as part of a holistic and integrated approach to building a viable, valuable and enduring business that persists (and profits!) for a long time to come.


Filed Under: Building Online Assets to Sell
The absolute easiest way to start earning money online is NOT selling affiliate products. Or creating info products. It's creating ASSETS that have value...and selling them on the open market to professional people who will benefit from them straight away. If you can install WordPress, and can afford 25 or 35 to invest in a simple premium theme, and can write 7 or 10 unique articles in a high value niche, you already have an underlying asset that is worth money. It may take you 2 days. It may take you a week. (I can do this in an afternoon) But if you've strategically and systematically done the above, you CAN sell sites like this all day long...to real people in real professions who really DO crave content, and communities that are turn key and ready to roll.


Filed Under: Building Online Assets to Hold
Where the above approach is what I refer to as a micro strategy, the MACRO approach to building online assets is larger, authority sites that you can hold onto for 12 months or more. Using a combination of content curation, social networking (like BuddyPress, for example...which is free) and blog building, you can build HUGE, user generated content communities in high demand niches that have REAL value, and require very little upkeep once rolling. (again...user generated content is key - think FACEBOOK, but in a smaller niche) Can you sell these style sites for 5 figures or MORE in less than 18 months? Absolutely...and with a good domain name and a large community of fans and followers, it's very easy to do as well.


Filed Under: Selling Marketing Services to OFFLINE Entrepreneurs
If you follow the first 2 steps above, you will be AMAZED at how easy it is to brand yourself as a "guru" (in a good sense) and be able to advice local businesses in your own community with their online marketing efforts. Think if you sell a site to a local lawyer he may want to consult with you later for SEO? Or may want your marketing advice on how to build a list, or write articles, or build a facebook presence or maintain a blog? He (or she) absolutely will. Think it will be difficult to ask that lawyer who owns a site you built to recommend your services to 5 or 7 or 10 of HIS peers for a discount on the work you do for him? Of course it's not....it's very easy to do and most will be more than happy to do it for you.


The truth is, all of the above can be part of a cohesive, coherent and consistent strategy for positioning yourself as not only a premium publisher, but an online marketing expert ("or ROCK star") in a relatively short time as well. And no matter how much (or how little) you THINK you know right now about online marketing...I guarantee you, if you can build a blog and write a few articles and are reading things like this right now, you know MORE than most other people already! (especially the professionals in the REAL world who desperately need your help)

10 Reasons for Collecting Registrations for Your Next Event Online

Have you ever collected registrations for an event? What was the best part of your experience? And the worst? Manually collecting registrations can take a lot of time, energy, and money if it requires you to bring in additional employees or if you’re working by yourself. Online registration tools can help you simplify the process and save you hours of hassles and headaches. Whether you are planning an event for 10 or 10,000, online registration will allow you to create a professional and branded tool for your business.

Before you create an online registration form there are some decisions you should make. When do you want to start collecting registrations? If you’re a planning a small event, a month in advance is a good idea. Planning a larger event, such as a weekend retreat, that is expensive and will require travel by your attendees? You’ll want to make registration available a couple of months in advance.

Consider these additional topics: Do you want to allow registrants to bring guests? Do you want to charge early/late fees or member/nonmember fees? Do you have a registration deadline? Those are just a few questions to get you started. Here are some other helpful reasons why you should take your event offline and manage your registration with an event management tool:

1. Spreadsheets vs. online registration

Managing registrant information with a spreadsheet is time-consuming and prone to error. It’s easy for the data to become stale. With an online registration system, the responses are captured and recorded in real-time, it occurs at the leisure of the registrant, and it’s available 24/7.

2. Know your registrants

There are many good reasons why you want to know who’s coming to your event, including food and beverage ordering, venue capacity, etc. The more you know, the easier the planning will be.

3. Share your registrants

Just having a large number of registrants may incent someone to register for the event. If you make the registrants visible, then potential registrants might see someone they know or want to know better. Just don’t forget to ask permission from your registrants before you make their name or information public!

4. Gain demographic information

Demographic information — such as gender, age, purchase or donation habits, or town of residence — help segment your audience. Having demographics about every prospect, customer, client, or supporter is important to every business or organization. The more information you know about an individual, the more value you can provide, and the stronger the relationship can become over time.

5. Understand your promotions

Registration can act as a measure of your social media reach. You can add a mandatory question as a part of registration that asks registrants how they heard about the event. Did they find you on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, a local newspaper ad, a postcard, or poster on display? Or maybe they heard from a friend. You can use that information to find out which of your marketing efforts are paying off, and which current patrons to thank for referring friends to your event.

6. Collect fees during registration

With an online tool, you have the opportunity to capture registration fees in real-time during registration. When individuals pay a fee during registration, this is a firm commitment that they will likely attend your event. If you’re not collecting payments on the day of your event you’ll have a lot more time to focus on your attendees.

7. Grow your mailing lists

You can use a Join My Mailing List feature that will give you the ability to add someone to a particular contact list during the registration process. This is helpful for segmentation purposes and will allow you to email announcements about future events to the registrant.

8. Ask questions

If you need a question answered, absolutely ask it during registration. You have someone’s attention, so this is the best time to capture this information. Resist the urge to ask a lot of questions unless it will lead to actionable intelligence in the future, particularly for this or future events. Don’t collect any unnecessary info. The faster someone can complete a registration page, the more likely they are to fill it out.

9. Display an automated registration confirmation page

As soon as someone registers, they will immediately see a confirmation page, which provides validation that their registration was received.

10. Send an automated registration confirmation email

This gives the registrant an email confirming their registration, which includes details of the event and their answers to the questions during registration. They can save this as a resource to refer back to for event details.

The benefits are immediate. When you move your event from an offline registration process to an online tool, you’ll notice the benefits immediately and so will your registrants. Being able to easily collect information and track it gives you time back to focus on what matters, your event.

5 Steps to Successful Facebook Advertising

Currently Facebook boasts somewhere in excess of 400 million users and growing. You’ve probably heard this line by now, but If it were a country it would be the third largest in the world behind China and India only. There’s a pretty good bet that some members of your ideal target customer reside in and visit Facebook land, but the trick is to find them.

Facebook’s advertising platform is a vehicle worth exploring. The tool allows you to place small display type ads in the right sidebar of Facebook pages and profiles. At this point it’s not as effective in pure response as well targeted Google AdWords campaigns, but it’s not really the same kind of vehicle and you won’t find AdWords in Facebook, at least for now.

Like many things Facebook, setting up and running successful campaigns isn't as straightforward as it could be. Below is a description of five steps to consider as you explore Facebook advertising. (Bookmark the Facebook Ad Help Centre and return to get answers to the Facebook Ads process)

Target

One of the best things about Facebook advertising is the ability select who sees your ad using a number of variables, including keywords. You can target by geography, age, gender, education, relationship status, workplace and keywords. (I know someone who wanted to send a birthday message to his wife and targeted so narrowly that she was the only who would see the ad.) Demographics are pretty straightforward, the real trick is expanding your keywords to the point where you have a large enough audience to get the job done. Facebook used to have a tool that let you search for the hottest topics being discussed but they shelved it as they build a more robust analytic package. Check out all of your targeting options here

Attract and Engage

The first thing you must do is decide whether you want people to be directed to your own web page or something on Facebook like a Page, Application, Group or Event. If you are already the administrator of your Facebook Page, Group, Event, or Application, you can select it from the drop down option. The thing that’s nice about using ads to promote your pages and events is that Facebook puts a “Become a fan” or “RSVP to this event” button right in the ad. People don’t even have to visit your page to take action. There are some pros to sending them to a link on your web site (better tracking options) but by sending them to assets on Facebook you have the ability to multiply their actions through the natural social wall activity that occurs when someone RSVPs to an event. (All their followers automatically see that action.)

Some users find Facebook ads a good tool to promote events or get new fans to the pages. From an engagement standpoint think in terms of using the ads to promote content and value and not so much to sell something. The most successful use of ads on social networks is to create deeper engagement so you have the ability to sell once trust is built. Think about putting white papers on your Fan Pages and promoting that content or creating a free event, like a webinar, and advertising that event. In both of these cases you’ll have the opportunity to sell a bit once you've proven you know your stuff. (One quirk of note – when you promote an event created with the Facebook event app the title of the ad will automatically default to the title of the event, so name your event wisely )

You don’t get much space in these ads so use it wisely. Your headline (25 characters) should grab attention immediately with a benefit. You’ll get another 135 characters to describe and entice in the body of the ad. You also have the option to upload an image. Take this option. It may be the most important aspect of your ad so choose wisely. Facebook users are very image driven (it’s the largest photo sharing site in the world) and the visual graphic you choose will make or break an ad. This is an element you must plan on testing (see below)

Budget

Facebook advertising works a bit like AdWords in that you bid for keywords and compete to get your ads shown. How effective you are at this depends upon the competitiveness of your keywords. You can choose between a cost per click (CPC) model where you pay only for clicks or a cost per thousand (CPM) model where you pay per 1000 ad views. Most research I've read suggests that the CPC model is slightly more effective in terms of ROI. (Here’s a nice Glossary of Facebook Ads terminology in case this is starting sound buzz wordy.)

To start your campaign you must determine a bid per click and daily budget. You can set both of these numbers very low, but don’t expect much. Initially you are just testing so you’ll want to set your click bid somewhere around the Facebook suggested amount and a daily budget you can live with, something like $50 or more to start. You can always adjust these. Learn about the Facebook Ads Manager here.

Test

No matter where or what you should always test your advertising. Online applications like this make it pretty darn simple. You can and should create multiple ad versions. Once you create an ad you will have the ability to create similar ads and run those as well. You’ll be able to easily view which ad is performing the best based on clicks. Facebook does need to approve your ads so make sure you are familiar with their guidelines.

The simplest thing to test is your image. I've seen ads go from no response to mega response with a better picture. Mind you I had no idea it was a better picture or I would have used it in the first place, but testing told me so. Here are some suggestions from Facebook on improving your ads.

Analyse

Once you create and launch your campaigns you need to start tracking and tweaking. Facebook has a tool that gives you some information on actions taken inside the Facebook platform. So, if you are running an ad for an event or Facebook page you can use the Facebook Insights tool to monitor interaction.

Facebook Insights is a nice reporting tool as it can give you information about the actual, not targeted demographics and interests of the people clicking on your ads and keywords that drew that interest. This will help you narrow or broaden your targeting. Page administration can access Insights by logging in and viewing the box titled Insights in the left sidebar. This is only visible to Page administration. If you click on See All you will get full reporting. More information on Insights here and from the very useful blog Inside Facebook.

Facebook does allow you to run ads that point people links outside of Facebook and in order to track these ads you simply and monitor them using your own analytics tool such as Google Analytics. If you are using Google Analytics simply use the URL builder tool in Analytics to create a link to your page that contains tracking parameters and place that in your Facebook Ad as the destination link.

How To Sell Yourself So Well Your Products Sell Themselves

Some companies will remain small while others will become the next Wal-Mart. Unfortunately, most businesses simply fail and vanish. Internet businesses tend to fold at a high rate. Tips in this article can set you on a successful course of online marketing. They can steer you away from failure.

The most important thing you can do when selling on the Internet is to create an attractive website. With such a large number of websites on the Internet, it is important that your site stand out. If you offer a special service, be sure to mention that. Having content that people find helpful will also attract visitors.

Doing business on the internet is often an impersonal, anonymous affair. For businesses that rely on relationship marketing or personal selling to create lifelong customers, this tool can be very effective.

To help you stay informed on user opinions, it is a good idea to have user polls along your site's content. These polls not only make visitors feel like their opinion matters, but once you know how users feel about the content of your site, you can make changes to reflect their thoughts and ideas.

Offer advertising space on your site to major, credible companies to add to your own credibility and validate your business standing. If your name is next to a big name, a user is likely to assume that you are trustworthy. This also serves to increase traffic and makes the site more appealing to visitors.

Gaining the trust of a customer is crucial, but keeping that trust is even more important; once you get a customer, you want them to keep coming back. Your promotions and marketing efforts must be based in fact. Use testimonials, expert endorsements, and results on your site to promote your products.

Advertising is necessary to sell anything, whether online or not. The money spent on advertising will pay for itself because it creates recognition of your brand, thus increasing sales. This helps get business with customers who wouldn't otherwise have found your site.

Remember to use emphasis tools when you are creating text for your website. Change up words or phrases by changing fonts or using bold or italics. This can assist you in clarifying your message and help show your customers what your company is about.

Deciding what direction to take your website and business can be a daunting task. Start out broad and list interests and niches that are important to you. Pare down the list until you have your top pick. It is best to choose a niche that you find both familiar and enjoyable. A clearly defined goal eases your ability to properly market your website.

Use incentives to encourage customers to place orders more quickly. For example, this could include expedited shipping, free shipping, or even complimentary wrapping. Why not offer free shipping to the first 50 customers who place an order for your product? This will tempt your visitors to purchase your products.

It is important that while you are working in internet marketing, you are always aware of what your competition is doing. It doesn't matter the niche you choose to work in, there will always be some sort of competition.

Think of original ways for your readers to earn prizes. You could, for instance, hide an 'Easter egg' on your website. When this happens, have a great discount or free prize ready to offer. When your customers can interact with your site, they will feel like members. They'll have fun and get to know you. Then they will trust you to do business.

More subscribers mean higher profits. You can use a split test to find out what works best. A split test offers one version of a web page to a group, and a different version to a second group. Then, you will be able to infer which version helped get the most subscribers.

The word "limited" should be used in ads wherever possible. Individuals purchase online as they are exhausted by the merchandise their area stores are offering. Online consumers seek unique products different from what they are used to seeing. Customers will feel that "limited edition" products are special, and will be more likely to buy them.

Sometimes, less really is more when designing a sales-oriented website. Interactive media like Adobe Flash can be tempting when designing your website, and website designers might try to convince you to use it. Not every person that visits a website has special software that enhances their internet experience. The website needs to function properly, without bells and whistles.

Failure in other businesses can be a catalyst to your success, so look for those open doors. By using these tips, you can devise a successful online marketing strategy. You can carry you business through to profitability.