Tuesday, February 28, 2006

eBay Secrets Revealed

It is rumored that the top affiliate at eBay made over $1 million dollars in January 2004. Who wouldn't like to know his eBay secrets? In fact, it is estimated that the top 10 eBay affiliates all earn over $100,000 per month.

In a world where average men and women commute to jobs they hate, knowing eBay secrets to generating extra income is of major interest. If at least 75% of people hate waking up to an alarm clock and commuting to work, then learning to make extra income part-time from home with online auctions is a big deal.

Can you really make extra income learning eBay secrets? Over 25,000 people make their FULL TIME LIVING with online auctions like eBay, Google, Yahoo and more. A whisper number of part timers is over 250,000! Imagine, a quarter of a million people are putting extra income in their pockets with online auctions.

Raise your hand if you'd like to join the ranks of the thousands of smart people making extra income in their own home-based business thanks to online auctions!

Thursday, February 23, 2006

Biggest Internet Marketing Myths

In every myth there is an element of truth. Read the sections below to discover the grain of truth in all of these Internet marketing myths.

Myth #1: Internet Marketing is EASY
This is probably the biggest myth of all, and let me tell you Internet marketing takes time, effort not mention money and anyone who suggests otherwise is trying to sell you a bunch of horse hockey. Granted that it's comparatively easier to brick and mortar in that there's no inventory to carry, no shipping of goods and virtually no overhead, but a lot of work is still involved.

Affiliate marketing eliminates the cost of production, construction and employees.

Myth #2: ANYONE Can Make Money Online
Folks, this is simply not true. Unless someone gets off that lazy boy recliner and download/read everything they can about internet marketing, and put an action plan in motion, they will never make a dime on the internet. DO NOTHING, MAKE NOTHING.

Myth #3: You Can "GET RICH QUICK" On the Net!
This is the trap that a lot of newbie internet marketers falls into, why because scammers make it sounds so easy and let me tell you, chasing "get rich quick scheme" is a waste of time, money and energy. It just won't happen overnight, instead do some research and find out what people really want and need then give it to them.

Myth #4: It's FREE to Do Business Online
This is one of my favorite myths because I believed it during my first year of marketing online and it just wasn't true then, it isn't true today. Compared to opening your first coffee shop or gift shop in downtown Los Angeles, internet business start-up cost and maintenance cost is pretty low. Once you have your domain set up, you only pay for internet connection, advertising and ongoing educations, that's it.

Myth #5: It's TOO LATE to Start an Internet Business
Most super affiliate marketers would love to hear people say "It's too late now, too many competitions, won't help to start an online business, I should just pack my bags and go home, the internet is too complicated, etc...". You know why? the less people they have to compete with the better which in turn will make them more money.

The fact is, it's never ever too late to start anything and that includes internet business. I firmly believe that the internet is not going anywhere and you should too. Every year the stats will show you the number of people shopping online are increasing, their spending dollars are growing also.

Myth #6: The BIG Money Talk is JUST HYPE
Have you heard of the phrase, "it takes money to make money?" Well it's true, although you will be hard pressed to find super affiliate to tell how much they spend on promoting and advertising. Sometimes, you have to dig a little deeper to find the truth in every hype you read.

If you are willing to take the necessary action to make 'big money' happen for you - it will.

Or criticize, be skeptical and sure that 'big money' can't happen for you - and it won't. If you believe that you will succeed you're right, if you believe that it won't work, you're right also.

Monday, February 20, 2006

Your Home Biz Store

To make your home biz store successful, you need to establish the following characteristics.

First. You need to cultivate the trust and credibility of others by being knowledgeable and honest about your business. Second. Don't exaggerate claims because people are wary of these tactics, and you may lose customers. Third, send email messages with at least one question that requires an answer.

Fourth, make sure the messages are short; long messages more than likely won't be read. Fifth, ask people to acknowledge that they got your message about your home biz store. Sixth, be aware of stricter spam practices as many email providers are blocking messages even if they aren't spam. Seventh, don't expect a get rich quick scheme; it takes time for a home business to grow.

Eighth, be persistent with your home biz store. Ninth, expect emotional highs and lows as there will be successes and setbacks. There are time management skills you can utilize. You can make a "to do" list. Write the list down, and leave it somewhere you are sure to look. Of course the list can be flexible; some tasks will have to be put off, and the list may need updating.

Also instead of writing everything on scraps of paper, invest in a simple spiral notebook to record what's going on. It can be a good memory jogger and can be used for future reference. There are also ways to manage the telephone. Record an effective message such as "Hello, this is John Smith. I'm not available now, but if you leave a message about what your call concerns and the best time to get up with you, I'll call you back later." If somebody can answer your calls for you, have them say the same. You want to know what the call is about to better prepare yourself for further conversations.

Your first priority in your home biz store is your customer; the old cliche "the customer is always right" is tired but true. Offer your customers newsletters to keep them apprised of your doings. Ask customers if they want to be notified if you change your website. Keep in contact with a customer after a purchase to ensure satisfaction. Send them surveys, and use rewards as incentives such as gift certificates.

If you have a website, make sure it's easy to use. Have a "frequently asked questions" or FAQ section to tell customers your policies. Send surveys asking about site navigation. Fix any problems promptly. Make your contact information readily available; post hyperlinked email addresses and toll-free numbers. A nice touch is sending longtime customers thank you gifts, emailing them cards on special occasions, and giving them price breaks. With these suggestions, your home business can thrive.

Friday, February 17, 2006

Golden Rules for an Engaging Website

35% of visitors fail to achieve their goal when they visit company websites! By following 2 simple rules, you can increase your web-derived revenue by 1/3 or more!

Renowned website usability researcher, Jakob Nielsen, published results of his latest study. His test subjects used 139 websites. On average, they failed to find what they were looking for 35% of the time. Shockingly, 37% of users couldn’t even find company location details!

What was surprising was that users didn’t give up. They generally found the information they were after – but they found it at a competitor’s site!

So how do you stop potential customers falling into the hands of your competitors? Nielsen is right when he suggests user research. Yes, it’s imperative that know what your users need at your site. But what he doesn’t say is how to structure your website so it meets users’ needs.

There are two golden rules:
1) Write first, build later
2) Write to your customer

Write first, build later
The real message on most websites is in the writing. It makes sense, then, that the writing should determine the structure.

Unfortunately, this is not the case for most businesses. For them, the writing is an afterthought. They structure and design their website first, then try to fit the writing to the structure. This flies in the face of common sense. When you speak to someone, you structure your speech around your message. You don’t decide on a structure, then change the message to suit!

For a truly usable website, you need to plan what you want to say before you create the site – perhaps even write the whole thing. The message – the writing – should determine the structure.

Write to your customer
So how do you decide what to write?

Firstly, don’t think, “What do I want to say?”. When you’re writing a website, you have to think, “What does my customer want to know?”. It’s a very subtle difference, but it’s the key to engaging writing. And that’s what you want to do… engage the customer.

Most customers will want to know the basics:
What do you do?
What benefit do you offer them?
Why should they choose your service or product?
Why should they choose your service or product and not your competitors’?
What does it cost?
How can they contact you?
Where are you located?

Your website has to communicate a lot of information. And to make matters worse, you’re going to have limited screen real-estate. Ideally, your customer won’t have to scroll – especially on your homepage (all your information will fit within a single window). And you can’t fill the whole screen with writing, either. The design and navigation elements take up about a third of the window, and you should leave a bit for white space (you don’t want to overwhelm your customer). As a rule of thumb, you should expect to have about 1/3 – ½ of the window at your disposal for the writing.

Chances are, right now you’re thinking, “How am I going to fit it all in?”. Well, that’s where your writing skills come in. Choose your words very carefully…

Websites can be an extremely powerful piece of marketing collateral. You can reach millions for just a few hundred dollars. Unfortunately, your competitors can do the same thing. It’s a level playing field, but there are a lot of players. It’s important that your thoughts are structured, otherwise your site will be a mess. If your message is clear, your site will be simple and easy to use. It’s all in the words…

8 More Reasons to Write for Your Audience…
  1. There are approximately 550 billion documents on the web
  2. Every day another 7 million are added
  3. Workers take so long trying to find information that it costs organisations $750 billion annually! (A.T. Kearney, Network Publishing study, April 2001)
  4. Reading from a monitor is 25% slower than reading from paper. (Sun Microsystems, 1998)
  5. Helpful content develops site loyalty. The average person visits no more than 19 websites in the entire month in order to avoid information overload. (Nielsen NetRatings in Jan 2001)
  6. 79% of users scan read when online (Sun Microsystems, 1998)
  7. Information gathering is the most common use of the Internet - 73% (American Express survey, 2000)
  8. 48% of people use the Internet to find work-related information as opposed to 7% who use magazines. (Lyra Research, 2001)

Services Your Online Business Can't Live Without

It doesn't make any difference if you're promoting your own product, affiliate programs or MLM programs, there are 3 services your business can't live without.

Service #1: Web Hosting
I'm not talking about one of those Free accounts where they throw their own ad in everytime someone visits your site. I'm talking about a premium, ad free web hosting package with your own domain name. Plenty of space and able to handle plenty of traffic. Free sites that ad their own banner are not very professional in most peoples eyes and turns them off real quick.

Service #2: A minimum of one Sequential Autoresponder account
Why autoresponders? First they allow you to follow up with your online visitors automatically. Most people won't order during their first visit to your website. You can set your autoresponder to send out follow up email messages.

That makes your initial goal to capture the name and email address or your visitor so you can send them more information about the benefits of your offer. At the same time you're building a list of people that you can keep in regular contact with and send special offers to. You will need to prompt our visitor to sign up for an online newsletter, a free report, or any other offer you may have to encourage them to give you their name and email.

You should have enough autoresponder accounts to promote more that one offer. Eventually, may have hundreds of different messages automatically being sent with your offers.

Service #3: An Online Adtracker
No matter whether you're using free advertising or paid advertising you MUST track the performance of your ads. You need to know what ads work and which ones are duds. You have to know which advertising sources are giving you the best results for your time and money. You can even track individual links in your website to see which ones are getting the most hits.

Sunday, February 12, 2006

Becoming A Successful Internet Entrepreneur

Everyday people ask me if they will make money with the internet. Of course i said. But it takes times and determination. You cannot expect to make a six figure income in just 30 days. But you can make a six figure income in 2 to 3 years working part time. Do you think your job at the factory gonna give you more for your money and time than this ?

It takes an average of one year to start seeing the result of your effort in the internet. Thats a pretty small price to pay for this huge market.It takes time to develop a business plan. It takes time to know wich products sells best and wich advertising give you the highest return on your investment (ROI).

It took me one month just to know how to use Google Adwords effectively. I had to take the time. But know it pays out a lot with a CTR and conversion rate of 70%. Anything worthwhile takes sustained effort. If you’re not thinking long term, you’ve set yourself up for failure. REPEAT: If you’re not thinking long term, you’ve set yourself up for failure. I can’t emphasize this enough!!!!

But let’s look at some real examples and see if we can put some perspective on this. I’ll start with myself. My success as a home business entrepreneur is well known. Having earned over $8 million, I’m sure there are some who’d vote me in to the Home-Business Hall of Fame if there were such a thing. Yet what most of those same people don’t know is that I LOST money my first two years. I only broke even in my third year. And it was only when I got to my fourth year did I see my first profit. Was it worth it? Are you kidding?!! Today I live a dream life, work from my dream home, drive my dream car—I’m blessed beyond my wildest expectations.

In other words, even the most dynamic, highest-earning entrepreneurs in the industry took MONTHS to begin seeing an income of any real significance. And the real wealth, the $100,000+ income we all strive for, took an average of almost THREE YEARS to achieve!

Do you think ANY of these gentlemen don’t think the ends justified the means? Do you think for an instant that the months and years invested hasn’t been rewarded a thousand times at least? You don't even have to think about it, do you?

If I told you that after two to three years of following our system, you’d be making more in a month than you now make in a year, could you handle that? If you were sitting across from me right now, I could look you in the eye and tell you that this is a genuine and realistic goal. But when you say to me you want to quit your job in six or nine months and live off the income from your new business, I’ll tell you that probably is not reality.

Not what you wanted to hear, right? But is what I’m suggesting so tough to swallow? Of course not. Can you think of any other endeavor where you could invest just five to 10 hours a week for a couple years and at the end of that time have turned it into a $3,000 to $10,000 residual monthly income stream? Money that keeps coming in month after month, year after year. Money that keeps coming in whether you work 10 hours a day or two. A commission check waiting for you in your mailbox when you return from yet another vacation. Money that when you’ve left this planet continues to provide for your spouse, children, or grandchildren.

Sounds extremely nice, doesn’t it? But again, these are not things you’re going to see in your first year. It just ain’t gonna happen, folks! Some of you, the go-getters, you WILL see it happen in your second year. For most of you, however, you need to be thinking two to five years. And you know what? When you get there, I guarantee you, you’ll say it was nothing!

Author: Micheal Richer

Wednesday, February 01, 2006

Cheap Effective Advertising Methods

Advertising is the life blood of any business, no matter how big or how small. No advertising usually means no business. Large companies have an almost unlimited source of advertising dollars. Small business owners on the other hand, are limited in the amount of money they have for advertising. So, the problem is how to make ones advertising dollar get the most bang for the buck. It's not enough to advertise. Your advertising must be effective. So, once you have a website or an ad to advertise, check out the following ways to advertise for little or no cost.

1. Advertising coop- Many businesses, especially work at home businesses, offer advertising coops. They will send people to your business for a fee. Usually the fee is relatively small. This is nice because you already know that these people have at least some interest in your business. Although they may not spend a penny with you, you at least get the exposure.

2. Website-The age of the internet has expanded the possibility of owning your own business to an almost unlimited number of people. It also has expanded the advertising audience to a tremendous amount of new people, world wide, who otherwise you would never have been able to reach. Although websites will cost you to get hosted, you can advertise it many ways for free. Things like link exchanges and article submissions allow you to get exposure to your website with no cost except for you time. And as we will see in a moment, your website can be advertised many other ways for free. The advantage of a website is that it centralizes all your business and products into one central location. It gives you somewhere to send people so that you don't have to do as much selling because you let your website do the selling for you.

3. Answering Machine-Change the message on your answering machine to reflect the fact that you are now in business for yourself. You could say something like," Hello. You have reached the home office of John Doe of My Business.com….." That way when you call that person back, they may ask you about your business and thus the door is open to discussing your business.

4. Put a sign in your front yard or in the yard of a friend or relative with your name and website address on it. This is a good way for your neighbors to find out about your new business as well as any people that ride by your house.

5. Place a magnetic sign or bumper sticker on your car. Now, when you are riding down the road, sitting at a stop sign, or leaving your car parked at the mall or grocery store, you are getting free advertising.

6. Wear your ad-Place your website on a sweatshirt, tee-shirt, or a hat. So, when you are out in public, people will see you ad and again it will open up the door to discussing your new business.

7. Flyers-There are many places that will allow you to place a flyer about your business. Businesses like grocery stores, libraries, laundromats, hair salons and others will let you place a free ad on their public bulletin board.

8. Business cards-Don't leave home without them. You never now when the chance to hand one out will happen. You may see an old friend, meet someone looking to get out of the 9-5 rut or who is in need of a new opportunity.

9. Free Classifieds-Use the internet and the many free classified ads on it to advertise your business. A search using "free classifieds" will give you an almost limitless number of places to submit your website and ad.

10. Ezines or electronic magazines are also a good place to advertise your business. Some charge a fee for placing your ad in the best location, some let you advertise for free. Again a web search will allow you find numerous ezines to place you ad in.

11. Place your web address in your e-mail signature.

Place a flyer or business card in your out going mail.

Word of Mouth-The least expensive form of advertising and maybe the most effective way to advertise your business is word of mouth. Simply tell those you come in contact with that you are in business for yourself. They will tell others and they will tell others and it can go on and on. Sooner or later someone will take a look at what you are doing.

Obviously, there are many more ways to advertise your business for little or no money. The point is you don't have to have the big bucks to successfully advertise you business or product. There are many people who have started and become extremely successful in their business on a shoe string advertising budget. There is hope for the small business owner. All you need is a website or add, a little creativity, a little time, and you too can advertise your way to success without going to the poor house.

Free Steps To Online Income

If you are new to the online business world and would like to get involved without risking any of your hard earned cash then this article will show you one way to get involved for free.

We are going to discuss ways to promote affiliate programs without your own site and without spending any money. Best of all if you choose a program related to your interests then it won't even seem like any work is involved.

The 5 steps are aimed at promoting a product while you go about your normal daily surfing activities.

Before we get on to step 1 you need to locate and join an appropriate affiliate program. This program ideally should be 2 tier, which means you get paid for sales made through your link as well as for the sales made by affiliates that you refer through your link.

To find an affiliate program search at Google for "affiliate directory" then visit the directories and search the directory for a keyword related to your interests. Once you have joined a program you will receive a link to promote, you may also receive a second link to promote the affiliate program itself which can be used to recruit tier 2 affiliates.

Once you have a link take the following steps to incorporate the affiliate link into your surfing activities:

  1. Add a signature to your emails, this will mean that every mail you send will have a tag line at the bottom which, in this case, will promote the service that you are affiliated with. Check the help files in your email program for instructions on how to do this.

  2. If you already visit forums related to the product add a signature to your profile. This means that every time you post your link will be added to the end of your post. Locate more forums where people interested in the product might hang out. Do a search for a keyword followed by forum at Google. Try and think of all the different related subjects that might have forums and identify as many as possible. Once you have identified your forums visit them all and join the ones that allow posters to add a signature file to their posts. Then get involved in conversations be useful whenever possible and every time you post an item your affiliate link will be displayed. This will be a lot less like work if you are promoting in a niche that is of interest to you.

  3. If you have an eBay account then create an About Me page and include details of the affiliate program there. Click help once logged in to eBay and search for About Me to find instructions on creating your page. Whenever you list an auction include a line at the top of the description that invites viewers to visit your About Me page.

  4. Locate sites that have visitors that might be interested in the product that you are affiliated with especially those that have a mailing list or an ezine. Then contact the site owner and suggest that they join the affiliate program. If they join using your link you will earn a percentage of any commissions that they earn.

  5. Repeat, Repeat, Repeat. With so many things success comes down to numbers. The more site owners you contact and the more forums that you post at the more commission you will earn.
Do all of the above and you will earn money for no investment, it may take time and might start slowly but it will happen.