Turn Your Traffic

With all the talks about SEO, PPC, and new social media platforms that seem to be popping up everyday, it is easy to suffer from the "shiny object syndrome".

One important function these tactics and platforms serve is to drive traffic to your website. If you want to see ROI on your effort in the form of sales from social media, here is a formula you need to know:

Traffic + Offer (sales page on your website) = Revenue

If you get all the social media things going, and have SEO and PPC driving traffic to your website, yet your website is not engaging your prospects, not speaking to your target market, and not featuring your offerings in a way that is attractive to your potential clients, all your efforts are for naught. People will click away and you are not going to sell.

Here are just a few reasons why you want to make your website your home base, get it up to snuff, before you go about chasing the next new thing on the internet:

You DON'T own those social media platforms. What happens if your "home base" is your Facebook fan page and one day Facebook decides to change the rules and shut it down? If one day everyone leaves Facebook for the next new "Facebook" - your 5,000 fans doesn't mean a thing if they can't see your post! (Remember MySpace?) On the other hand, you own your website and your list - make them work hard for you.

Your website gives you the "real estate" to provide your prospects with the most comprehensive information on your business, your services and your offerings. Moreover, if done right, the process of creating content for your website is a great exercise to help you get a ton of clarity on your business.

When coaching with me, my clients get a lot of insight and clarity on their message, their target market, their mission, their business model, their offerings etc. just by working through their website structure and content. It's not uncommon that they walk away from a 60-minute discovery session with a brand new business and marketing plan!

It doesn't matter if you are driving a ton of traffic from social media to your website if people don't find anything valuable on your website - they will click away and you will never see them again. Let alone getting them to spend money with you. Your website is where you can showcase all your programs, products and offerings. Without such offerings, traffic won't make you money.

Online Business Ideas

The truth of the matter is that the best online business ideas are really the most simple. If you are new to online business, or even if you do know your way around a little bit, you don't want to try and start competing with the likes of Amazon or eBay. These are established online businesses that have massive infrastructure and experience in creating new business models.

The secret for the best online business ideas are not to try and invent a new product or service but to find the ones that are most popular and sell them to the people who are looking for them. This business model is known as online affiliate marketing and is a very simple concept. You find a target market of people who are looking for something to help them solve a problem or enhance their life and get them to buy it from you. So, for example, it could be somebody looking to lose weight or somebody trying to find a partner for a new relationship. If you have the right product solution for them at their time of need, they will be more than happy to buy it from you, as you have solved a problem for them.

Your task as an affiliate marketer is to find a product that will fulfil the needs of people and let them know that the products is available. When a person buys the product, you get paid a commission by the product owner.

Why is affiliate marketing one of the best online business ideas?

Primarily, the main reason that affiliate marketing is one of the best online business ideas is that you you do not have any of the overheads that are normally associated with a new business. You do not have to spend time and resource creating a product, that somebody may (or may not( buy. You do not have to buy stock, you do not have to pay rent for any premises, you do not have to fulfil the supply of the product as the product owner will do this for you. All you need is a computer and access to the internet.

But, if affiliate marketing is one of the best online business ideas, why isn't everyone doing it? Good question. The answer is that you do need to learn how affiliate marketing works and have a certain set of skills to enable you to achieve the financial rewards you want.

You have to know the right places to find the best products to sell (hint: try Clickbank, Commision Junction or Market Health).

You have to be able to find the best place to find for customers via paid advertising and free methods.

You have to know how to build a list of potential customers and how to establish a relationship with them so that they trust you. If they trust you, they will buy from you.

You have to understand that the best online business ideas work on the principle that to give is to receive. In other words, you have to provide your potential customers will relevant and valuable information so that they will see you as an authority in your market. If you just constantly try to sell, sell, sell, it will put people off.
The online entrepreneurs who have had the best online business ideas know that they have to invest in their online education. It is possible to have a successful online business, but you do need to take time to learn as you earn.

I Sell Online

This is one of the most common questions that I get from many of my subscribers so I thought an article about sourcing products may be helpful. Many people would like to start an online business but have no clue as to what to sell. So how do you figure out what to sell? Firstly you need to decide whether you will be selling physical products or electronic products (eg: software or information). No matter what you decide to sell, the following points should be taken in to consideration before you decide.

For Physical Products
• Do you have enough space in your house to store stock?
• Have you taken postage fees into consideration? Especially for larger items.
• Will you ship internationally?
• Rare or scarce products maybe the best option - Though printer cables may be a very popular and sell well, there is also LOADS of competition which means that the price is driven down... can you compete with the big competitors?
• Where will you be sourcing the products - do you know any reputable wholesale suppliers? China is one of most popular place to buy wholesale products from but it is always advisable to get a small sample at first, just to make sure that the quality of the products are suitable.

For Electronic Products
• Are you selling your own informational product or will you be an affiliate?
• Does the product have a good reputation? Make sure the product has good reviews before deciding to sell it. Your reputation on the internet can make or break you so be sure to sell good quality electronic products. Your potential customers only need to type the product name in to a search engine to determine whether or not the product is worth buying.
• The Product Should be Timeless -Go for a product that will be relevant for a long time to come.
• Consider the competitors - Like with physical products, it is also a good idea to look at selling products which cater to a specific niche. If you try to sell a product that already has loads of competitors (and some who will have much bigger advertising budgets than yours). Your website / product may get over looked. Think outside the box. Is there a niche that you are interested in that you think other may find interesting?

Once you have decided what product you want to sell, you also need to figure out whether this product is going to be viable. One of the quickest ways to do this is by typing the name of the product into a search engine and seeing how many results come up. If the product has tens of millions of searches, that may suggest that the market may be very competitive on the other hand it may also mean that there is money to be made. Similarly if there are little search results there could be potential in being one of the only people who sell this product, but bare in mind that the product needs to have some popularity in order for it to be beneficial to you. The next time you are thinking about adding a product to your selling portfolio, take these points into consideration.

Tips for Elance Success

Freelancing on Elance can be immensely frustrating at times, and following these simple tips can go a long way in helping lighten up your day:

1. Stay away from users who have a history of giving poor feedback, especially when said feedback was given for negligible reasons. The user might write something like "good job" or even worse-"will hire again in the future"-and still leave 4.0/5 feedback, which as far as I am concerned is unacceptable. Not only is such a user likely to be an unappreciative client, these users are often the most demanding, insisting on rapid turnaround times and an endless number of drafts.

2. There is no need for a sponsored proposal on projects for which you have received an invitation. The client will undoubtedly read your proposal and "upgrading" your proposal to sponsored not only will cost you a connection, but it is likely to make you come across as painfully desperate.

3. Personalize every proposal to the greatest extent possible. This is literally the most important piece of advice to keep in mind when submitting a proposal. Every significant client that has chosen me over other qualified freelancers has done so because of a personalized proposal that conveys why I am uniquely qualified to complete their project. This can be anything ranging from previous experience to background knowledge or interest in the subject-just keep in mind that your potential client has no way of knowing whatever it is unless you write it. This is your one chance to distinguish yourself from other qualified bidders, so take full advantage of it.

4. In light of the previous tip, this means fewer and more focused bids. Five targeted proposals will go a lot further than twenty which are posted haphazardly. Make the most of each proposal, even if this means bidding on fewer projects. In the end, you'll receive the projects that you sincerely want, inspiring you to perform at your full potential.

5. Check the user's history when debating what to bid on a project. If the user has spent a relatively large amount of money on Elance, don't be shy of submitting a bid that reflects your true value as a writer.

6. On the other side of the coin, if the user has chosen zero clients from their previously posted job descriptions, then don't waste your time submitting a proposal. Why take the time to personalize a proposal that is extremely unlikely to result in a new client?

7. Stay away from overly demanding job descriptions. Providing details is completely acceptable and encouraged, but there is a fine line between offering information about a potential project and demanding that it be completed in an extremely particular format. If the user is this insistent even before a freelancer is chosen, just wait until the poor freelancer submits a draft to the client.

8. Similarly, do not bid on overly short job descriptions. If the user could not take the time to write a simple paragraph explaining what he or she would like done, then it's not worth working with them. These clients tend to be chronically unsatisfied, and worst of all they cannot be bothered to articulate what it is they would like.

9. Be sure to let your clients know explicitly that you'd be happy to work with them in the future. This is the simplest way of securing future projects, and best of all it does not even require writing a proposal. Moreover, such clients are likely to be willing to pay you more in the future, since they already have faith in the quality of your work.

10. Upgrade your membership towards becoming an Individual Member. The extra twenty connects are definitely worth the extra $10 a month, particularly for new freelancers, and you will also receive preferred placement in search results. This in turn results in receiving more invitations to job descriptions, setting the groundwork for securing more projects.

Increase Sales

1. Proper Basics

To successfully market products online, you need 2 things: a website (or blog) where you sell your products, and traffic (visitors). WARNING, your website or blog is something you will want to buy. It is not recommend to get a free one as the owners can delete or make changes to your site at any time. You need complete control over yourself and your product promotion, and owning your website is essential. For the web design or layout; see what other online marketers in your niche are doing to promote their products, and learn from them. The best design is popular design. Associate and link with people marketing the same products as you are online. That will create an image for yourself, which can eventually result in recommendations about you, and long term traffic for your promotions and products.

2. Promote Using Facebook and Twitter

This is great to let people know about you, your site, and/or what you are promoting. Provide links. There are easy and advanced strategies to set up your Facebook page and 'like' strategies to get lots of visitors from Facebook to your website. Twitter messages and Facebook combined can get the word out about the products you're marketing online, and give you an initial burst of decent traffic.

3. Marketing Your Product Online Through Articles

Write short articles of around 450 words that target search-engine-friendly keywords related your product/niche where you give tips, advise, and helpful information within the niche - then directing the readers to your website through links in the article. Submit the articles to online article directories which already get traffic and rank high in the search engines. The more articles you have submitted on these article directories, the more traffic will your website get, and you will be more successful in marketing your products online.

4. Market Products Online Using YouTube

This strategy is really powerful. Although you can (and should) market yourself in the videos, you can create reviews on power-point presentations on future product launches of other marketers in your niche, record them, and post them on YouTube. At the end of the video you redirect them to your own website through the link at the bottom of the video. See thousands of visitors and buyers coming by simply marketing your products with this strategy.

5. Advertise Your Products Online -

There are lots of misconceptions on how to properly market online using advertising, and most people do it incorrectly. However, it is very cheap and when done correctly; you can generate crazy amounts of sales.

6. Increase Sales By Learning From an Expert

If you want more sales through your marketing of products online, whether it's your own or someone else's product - you must learn from the best. Get an expert to walk you through the process, while watching his screen and following along, and make money as you progress.

Increase Sales

1. Proper Basics

To successfully market products online, you need 2 things: a website (or blog) where you sell your products, and traffic (visitors). WARNING, your website or blog is something you will want to buy. It is not recommend to get a free one as the owners can delete or make changes to your site at any time. You need complete control over yourself and your product promotion, and owning your website is essential. For the web design or layout; see what other online marketers in your niche are doing to promote their products, and learn from them. The best design is popular design. Associate and link with people marketing the same products as you are online. That will create an image for yourself, which can eventually result in recommendations about you, and long term traffic for your promotions and products.

2. Promote Using Facebook and Twitter

This is great to let people know about you, your site, and/or what you are promoting. Provide links. There are easy and advanced strategies to set up your Facebook page and 'like' strategies to get lots of visitors from Facebook to your website. Twitter messages and Facebook combined can get the word out about the products you're marketing online, and give you an initial burst of decent traffic.

3. Marketing Your Product Online Through Articles

Write short articles of around 450 words that target search-engine-friendly keywords related your product/niche where you give tips, advise, and helpful information within the niche - then directing the readers to your website through links in the article. Submit the articles to online article directories which already get traffic and rank high in the search engines. The more articles you have submitted on these article directories, the more traffic will your website get, and you will be more successful in marketing your products online.

4. Market Products Online Using YouTube

This strategy is really powerful. Although you can (and should) market yourself in the videos, you can create reviews on power-point presentations on future product launches of other marketers in your niche, record them, and post them on YouTube. At the end of the video you redirect them to your own website through the link at the bottom of the video. See thousands of visitors and buyers coming by simply marketing your products with this strategy.

5. Advertise Your Products Online -

There are lots of misconceptions on how to properly market online using advertising, and most people do it incorrectly. However, it is very cheap and when done correctly; you can generate crazy amounts of sales.

6. Increase Sales By Learning From an Expert

If you want more sales through your marketing of products online, whether it's your own or someone else's product - you must learn from the best. Get an expert to walk you through the process, while watching his screen and following along, and make money as you progress.

Making Money Online

Once you have a website or a form of presence on the online platform, I guess you would want to know of the various ways of easily making money online. Achieving this will put you in a position of having various streams of passive income.

This article shows you the various ways and places which you can take advantage of and make some decent income online.

Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising

This is a viable way of making decent income online, either as an advertiser or a publisher. If you are a publisher, you can apply with the PPC companies and make continuous income. Here are some ways:

1. Google AdSense - This way is quite common among webmasters. They earn money from each click. The value depends on the niche and the keywords.

2. Chikita - This is similar to AdSense. They don't pay as well, but they are still effective.

3. Google AdWords - Is a flip side of AdSense. Using it to drive traffic costs money, but the traffic is normally targeted to where you will make more money.

4. MySpace Ads - It has a concept similar to AdWords. Ads are created to drive traffic to landing pages, affiliate offers, blogs, etc.

5. Facebook Ads - It is similar to MySpace ads. They are great because they allow you to target specific demographics and channel the traffic to a desired product or service.

6. 7Search - This is a cheap option to AdWords. It has less traffic, but the cost is way low compared to AdWords.

7. Speedy Ads - It is also a form of PPC. I have never tried it but it looks pretty cool

Pay-Per-View (PPV) Advertising

You can use this technique to drive traffic to affiliate links as well as landing pages. The advantage it has is that they are not as strict as PPC sites. However, I would recommend doing more research before you spend on PPV.

8. Direct CPV

9. AdOn Network

10. Lead Impact

11. Media Traffic

12. Adoori

13. Traffic Vance

Cost-Per-Action (CPA) Offer Sites

CPA offers are a tremendous way for monetizing your website, alongside the use of PPV/PPC ads. CPA allows you to receive payment because someone completed an action. There are various offers which are quite lucrative and can earn you unbelievable amount. Some pay as "low" as $20 for an action like filling a form.

Most of them are selective on who they accept. This is because they want to make sure that the traffic you send to the offers is legitimate. Most of them will therefore talk to you on the phone before giving you access to their networks.

Here are some CPA networks:

14. Offerweb

15. CX Digital

16. Affiliate.com

17. Neverblue

18. MaxBounty

19. DirectLeads

20. Web Jam Ads

21. GetAds

22. CPA Lead

23. Epic Direct/Azoogle

24. Inuvo

25. Flux Ads

26. Market Leverage

27. Adfish

28. Clickbooth

29. Offer Vault - It compares offers from various CPA networks.

Interest In Websites

Designing websites that are easy to use by a specific demographic group can be an important consideration if a website is trying to target a certain group of viewers and users. This is particularly true when design experts are trying to gain the interest and the attention of teenagers, this wonderful group of individuals that account for a large percentage of the population that is on and uses the internet on a very regular basis - well, face it - a lot! There are many misconceptions about how teens actually use the internet and understanding the truth behind such thoughts is very important in order to correctly target this vast and open-minded audience.

Web Use By Young Adults

There are a lot of distorted images about teenagers and the internet, which in the marketing realm translates into wanting to learn exactly how to go about attracting the interest of this growing percentage of the population. Some studies have discovered that many of these distorted ideas about teens internet use are incorrect. It has been commonly thought that these younger people have certain common online habits such as only using social sites, using smart phones for everything, and are only interested in videos, games and online entertainment. Interesting enough, research has found this to not be true; of course teenagers are interested in entertainment and the social media but not to the exclusion of many other available apps on the internet.

Young adults use the internet more and more for activities that include reading the news, doing homework and school assignments, researching hobbies, being social, being entertained, and online shopping. So when a website is being designed with teenagers as the targeted audience, careful thought must be given to find the best ways to grab the attention of this group on the types of websites frequently visited.

Designing for Young Adult Approval

There are definitely some marketing tactics that web designers can undertake to gain increased acceptance by teenagers. While not every site needs to be a social network, some do benefit from having social elements built into them. Navigation should be easy to use, since there is a certain amount of evidence that younger visitors do not stay focused on websites with difficult navigation.

Aesthetic appeal is important as well, which translates into keeping a website current and stylish as well as having appealing content that is frequently updated. These youthful visitors will keep coming back to the same internet URL when navigation is easy to use and there is interesting, relevant content. Most importantly, content should be on topics of interest to teenagers, interestingly written but short, as too many words does not appeal to this group and they will click away very easily.

Marketing for Young Adults

One great thing about targeting websites to teenage users is that if success is achieved and they find it interesting or entertaining, it will get forwarded to all their friends who will forward it to more friends, and so it continues; this is one of the best things about younger audiences. By researching things younger people find interesting and designing to appeal to those interests, it is quite possible for websites to gain a lot of extra traffic just from social sharing. Additionally, when selling to this age group, there has to be excitement related to the products being offered to attract these young purchasers, grab their attention and create an excitement that will encourage spending.

Confirms Authority

Authority is one of the many goals achieved through good brand reputation marketing and management. In a highly competitive online business landscape, there is a lot to gain when brands can be positioned as authorities in a given niche market. Having authority means a high level of credibility with good customer trust, customers who will gladly help spread the word of any business with whom they have had good experiences. In order to build this type of trust and become such an authority, a business must carefully monitor its online reputation and continue to work on building a good reputation.

Authority - A Combination of Presence and Good Reputation

Before any company can gather enough followers to be considered an authority among its competitors, they need to be seen by as many people as possible. To accomplish such a goal, it is necessary to have a highly optimized website that is supplemented with many other ways to increase visibility and reader interest.

Social media is an important part of this equation now, providing more results for initial effort thanks to the following and sharing that viewers can actually help a business by spreading the word about good experiences. Blogs that are frequently updated with quality, useful information tie in with social media and websites as well. Positive press, product reviews, and praising testimonials provide not just another way for people to read good things about a company; they provide one more way to increase search engine rankings.

Through these combined methods, a brand name can be built so that it can become recognized, easily found in search results, and always viewable by current and prospective customers. Good and frequent publicity is the start of good reputation marketing, a way that will help build an online presence to the point where it will have established credibility and authority within a niche market.

Managing Reputation After Establishing Authority

While promoting good publicity is one of the main jobs of reputation marketing, once a business is competing and vying for customer attention, managing a positive web presence becomes a priority. Most companies will, at some point, encounter some negative online exposure, perhaps a disgruntled customer posting to social media. It is important to watch for such instances and be prepared with a plan of action to deal with any issues.

Frequent searches should be done to see if any negative references are found. If any are located, the threat needs to be evaluated and the problem remedied by responding to complaints and doing whatever is reasonable to correct any mishandling problems, to make good on the issue in the eyes of the unhappy customer. Publicly doing so can turn negative situations into positive ones, hopefully for that dissatisfied customer. If the problem cannot be completely resolved, at least others will see a company's willingness to work with clients and hopefully have a clear impression that a business truly cares about providing good service and living up to customer expectations.

That kind of publicity - even though it started out poorly - can go a long way toward increasing a company's credibility. It also provides moments for re-evaluation of corporate priorities, an opportunity to determine how things could be done better which is another sign of credibility and a step toward building that desired authority.

Reputation Marketing

In what has become a very competitive business world, companies must monitor and carefully manage their online reputation. Even if business is primarily conducted offline, it is imperative to realize that the internet is the primary tool used to find almost everything today, including shared good and bad experiences customers have had with both online and physical companies.

Knowing who is saying what is important in so many ways. It provides an opportunity to respond to complaints and address any negative publicity; it is also a way to learn where mistakes are being made. Most importantly, attention must be paid to these comments so an online presence can be managed and a business reputation kept as strong as possible.

Reputation Management Importance

There are more outlets than ever for individuals to gossip about everything from social topics to experiences with different businesses. One thing that should be clearly understood is that dissatisfied customers are much more likely to spread information socially than satisfied ones. With this in mind, steps should be taken to establish as much of a positive reputation as possible through the use of social media, regular blog and website posts, optimization, and active interaction with customers.

Another important way to do this is to request reviews and testimonials from customers that are made available to the public. Even though it should not be expected that every review will be a glowing, 5-star testimonial, a good job is nonetheless being done when there are many more positive reviews than negative ones. If not, it would be helpful to read what is being done wrong so that the situation can be remedied. The reason for soliciting reviews is to increase the number of positive statements for a company online, which is a way to have more control over what people are seeing in search engine results.

Complaint Handling Importance

An essential part of reputation management is seeking out negative online comments and then dealing with them promptly and politely in order to preserve a company's integrity and demonstrate interest in pleasing customers. This is important for all companies, not just those doing business on the web, since most offline businesses appear in online directories.

Whether a resolution is offered or the dissatisfied person is invited to make an offline contact to discuss the concern, responding quickly and positively shows that customers are important and any concerns about a problem will be handled. There is also nothing wrong with politely correcting false information found in online comments or reviews as long as it is done tactfully without trying to put the commenter in an awkward position.

Reputation and SEO

A lot of time and money is invested to get the best search engine results through SEO campaigns. How disappointing is it to a company when the first results returned after an online search are bad reviews, which will certainly create the wrong type of attention. Even worse, it may cause SEO efforts to fail, even when paying for PPC or other advertising. Why would viewers visit the website of a company that is shown in a negative light?

Since so much is affected both positively and negatively by search optimization, the previous two points should be taken very seriously. Damage control and the handling of complaints is critical, as is keeping search results pages constantly updated with positive information about the company.