The holidays are a great time to make some exceptional income. It’s also a great time to boost website traffic, opt-ins and increase awareness. So how do you accomplish all this during the busiest season of the year?

Step One:  Make sure your website is in great shape. Before you send tones of new traffic to your website, it’s important to make sure your website is ready. Here are a few questions to ask yourself:

• Is your shopping cart functioning optimally?
• Do you have any broken links?  If so, fix them.
• Is your site easily searchable?
• Does the navigation make sense?
• Are your customers’ transactions secure?
• Does your website load quickly?
• Is your website backed up?

Step Two:  Optimize your site for the holidays. The holiday season presents a unique opportunity to capitalize on a few holiday phrases and keywords. Using standard optimization techniques, research the keywords your audience might use to find you during the holidays and optimize your site for them.

Step Three:  Create holiday promotions. The holidays present a unique promotional opportunity. Here are just a few options to consider:

• A Holiday discount.
• A Free trial.
• A packaged discount.
• A free bonus.
• Free delivery.
• A buy now pay later option.
• Loyalty programs.

Step Four:  Consider creating or adding new holiday products or services. The options for creating new products or services are vast. If you’re a service provider brainstorm ways you can help your clients enjoy the holidays. What do they need that you can provide?

If you sell products, tangible or electronic, then you have unlimited options. Consider:

• Creating new information products
• Launching a membership site or promotion
• Partnering with a relevant business to create a product together.
• Packaging or combining products for the holidays.

Step Five:  Marketing your website and holiday sale. Once you have your website ready, your products and promotions ready to go, it’s time to market your holiday sale. Some marketing options and ideas include:

• Cross promotion with other relevant businesses.
• If you already have an e-newsletter, consider increasing the delivery frequency during the holidays.
• Holiday advertising campaigns.
• Social networking and face-to-face networking.
• Customer loyalty programs are a great way to motivate purchases and they offer the perfect marketing opportunity. You can create press releases and an ad campaign to market your new loyalty program.
• Enhance article marketing efforts.
• Email marketing to your list.
• Using your wonderful affiliates to market your products or services.

When throwing a holiday sale online, savvy entrepreneurs know it takes more than throwing up a sign and placing a red bow on your header. It takes preparation, research, planning and thoughtful execution. Always remember, your business is about your customers. When you make their shopping experience exceptional and consider there wants, needs and desires, your holiday sale will be a verifiable success.

Tweet This Post

While it may feel too early to start preparing your eBay store for the Christmas Holiday, you can be sure that when it comes to holiday shopping, it’s never too early to start preparing. Rest assured, there are people already doing their holiday shopping and as they say on the playground, you snooze you lose. So let’s win!

Here’s how to increase your eBay sales this Christmas:

#1  Start your holiday sales and campaigns early and end them late. Many eBay experts recommend starting your sales and campaigns as early as mid October and end around mid January.

#2  Create special promotions for the holidays. These include “Buy it Now” options, gift-wrapping services, buy one get one free type promotions and so on. The competition is stiff during the holidays and any value you can add to your store, items and promotions may give you that extra edge.

#3  Make sure you have a well-stocked inventory. That includes shipping supplies and a foolproof system to make sure orders get out and arrive on time. There’s nothing worse than ordering a gift from a store and then having it arrive a day late. Certainly, it’s not good for feedback ratings!

#4  Stock up on and promote what’s popular. If you have a particularly hot item or there’s an item that is hot right now and is appropriate for your store then consider stocking up on it or at least securing suppliers. Note:  you can check with eBay pulse to see what’s hot at any given point in time.

#5  Give your store a holiday theme. Holiday graphics and fonts give your store a festive feel. Of course you can go overboard with it so be careful. Design your store for the season and your target audience. If they love over the top holiday cheer then go for it.

#6  Improve or optimize your payment options. Online if a customer cannot pay how they want to pay, and the payment process isn’t quick and easy, they’re just as likely to go somewhere else. That’s the last thing you want. Open up your payment policies and make sure payments are as easy and straightforward as possible for better holiday sales.

#7  Update your store with a clear and easy to understand policies and procedures. Let customers know if you accept returns. What are your shipping policies? Try to answer any and all potential questions right up front so you don’t lose a customer who isn’t patient or interested enough to send you a question.

#8  Take advantage of marketing tools like newsletters, coupons and advertisements to drive traffic to your eBay store during the holidays. Create promotions just for the holidays and then promote them via social networking, article marketing and your other chosen marketing tools and strategies.

#9  Create goals for the holiday season. Goals are great motivators and they can really inspire us to push ourselves. Sales goals are particularly fun however don’t stop with a goal. Create strategies to achieve them. Lastly, don’t forget to establish a system to measure whether you’ve achieved your goals. For example, if you want to increase visitors to your storefront and item bids, how are you going to measure that?  Keep track of what works so you can repeat your successes next year.

While Christmas is still several months away, planning and preparing ahead of time will put you ahead of the competition and ensure that your holiday sales are as profitable and stress free as possible.

Tweet This Post

Are you looking forward to the Christmas season?  For many online entrepreneurs, it’s a great time to increase their bottom line. It can be a hectic, exciting and very busy season. To make the most of this opportunity, your first best step is to make sure your website is ready for the Christmas sales.

Here’s how to get your website ready for the Christmas Sales:

Step #1  Holiday Keyword Research
 
A great first step to get your website ready for the holidays is to optimize it for the holidays. Spend some time researching Christmas keywords and keyword phrases customers might use to find you. Then incorporate these keywords in your content, linking strategies and HTML coding.

Step #2  Consider adding Christmas to your website.

In addition to adding holiday products and promotions, consider adding holiday graphics too. This will help your website visitors get into the holiday spirit.

Step #3  Enhance your customer experience.

Give your holiday shoppers ever reason to stay at your website and to come back often. Make sure all your links are complete, all your graphics load quickly and all your downloads are easy to access and quick to download.

If you sell products, give your visitors a user friendly search option so they can find what they need immediately and make sure your website is pleasant to look at and easy to move around in.

Step #4  Is your software ready to support you? 

How does your shopping cart software serve you?  Is it capable of handling an increase in traffic?  Can it handle any special promotions you may have created for the holiday season?  What about your server?  Make sure all of your supporting systems and software is ready to step up to the challenge of the Christmas season.

Step #5 Transparency and authenticity

Today’s customers are perceptive and they’re careful to shop with retailers that not only provide them with a positive customer experience but also retailers who take the extra steps to protect and respect their customers. Make sure your policies and procedures are easy to find and understand. Additionally, publish your privacy statements and make customers aware of any terms and conditions involved in their transactions.

Customers expect retailers to be transparent and authentic. Publishing your policies on your website, protecting them when they make financial transactions and making sure to protect their privacy goes a long way to earning their respect and their business.

 As the holidays rapidly approach, your first and potentially most effective strategy to capitalize on the Christmas season, is to make sure your website is ready for some action. Get your website ready and enjoy the holiday season knowing profits are rolling in and business is booming.

Tweet This Post

When it comes to owning and operating a successful online business there are three very important words – Search Engine Optimization. It’s how people find your website because if they can’t find you, they can’t buy from you and that after all is what business is all about.

Step One: Understand what search engines do.

Search engines are essentially programs which index all of the pages on the internet. When someone enters a phrase into their search engine of choice, that search engine searches their database and displays their results. Different search engines store what they index differently. For example, Google stores a portion of the webpage and Yahoo stores every word on the page. How they store this information affects the results.

Your goal as a business owner is to achieve the highest results possible because people typically only look at the first couple of pages

Step Two: Finding Your Keywords

Keywords are the words your prospects use to find your products, services, and information. Keywords can be one or two words, for example, “Miami vacation.” Keywords can also be a phrase of many words, for example, “Miami Family Vacation On a Budget.” With more than 80% of internet users researching purchases online before they spend a dime, the right keywords make all the difference.

To find the right keywords:

Brainstorm ideas. What words do you think people use to find your website and your products or services?

Take advantage of keyword research tools like WordTracker and the Google keyword tool to do a bit of specific keyword analysis.

Step Three: Placing Keywords

We mentioned in the beginning that search engines scan the internet and index web pages. They look in a few key places including:

• The Title
• The Headers
•  The Body Content
•  The Meta Tags

Step Four: Add Content

Content is what the search engines search. Therefore it pays to upload relevant and keyword optimized content on a regular basis. It’ll motivate the search engines to index your site and those pages thus pushing you up on the search engine rankings.

Here are some of the types of content you might consider using on your site:

• Articles
• Special reports
• Interviews with an industry expert
• Product reviews
• Discussion forums
• Blog posts
• “How to” guides
• Tips lists
• Training courses

Step Five: Get Links

Search engines typically skip listing websites if they do not have relevant incoming links. A link is a website address which someone can click on to go to another site – in this case your site.

There are different types of links.

Standard link – typically considered a direct link which looks like a basic website address – www.yourwebsitehere.com

Text link – link where the website address is embedded in the text.

Deep link – a link to an internal web page, for example an article published on a website, rather than the home page.

In order for a link to provide value it must be both relevant and credible. Meaning, the site linking to you has a lot of visitors and a lot of incoming links the search engine will give credibility and weight to the value of that link and it must also be in a website which shares a common interest or complimentary subject matter to your website.

Take these five steps and you’ll be well on your way to making sure people are able to find your website. It’s one of the most powerful business building strategies available.

Tweet This Post

In order for your advertising to perform optimally, that is for it to generate the awareness and sales you desire, it’s imperative that you create a system to test and track your results.  Tracking will tell you how your advertisement is performing and testing will tell you which specific variables, like your headline, work the best.  Here’s how to make advertising work for you.

Step One:  Find the right tools for the job.  Google analytics does a wonderful job of tracking website data.  Creating an advertising strategy whereby you can track the click through rates of specific advertisements will go a long way toward providing the information you need. 

Additionally, if you’re using AdWords or other pay per click search engine advertising methods then they’ll provide the necessary data. 

In order to tweak an ad for optimal results, many business owners use a system called Split Testing or multivariate testing. This method involves testing the results from two different variables in the same advertising campaign.  The results are tracked over a specified period of time   There are many software programs which will facilitate a complex multivariate testing strategy however, it can also be as simple as sending the viewers of each different advertisement to a unique webpage and tracking the results. 

Step Two:  Decide what to test.  You can split test just about anything from the headline to the background color in your banner ad or your call to action.  The most useful items to test include:

• Keywords
• Graphics
• Copy
• Headlines
• Price points
• Photos
• Bonus offers
• Text links
• Calls to action

The most important thing to remember is to keep everything constant except the item you’re testing.  This means that if you’re testing to see if a particular keyword works better in a PPC campaign, the advertisement has to remain exactly the same for both keywords. 

At this point you’ve chosen your ad type, you’ve chosen a location to advertise, you’ve written your ad and you’ve created ways to test the ad to analyze effectiveness.  You’re ready to start advertising and testing and tracking your results for maximum effectiveness and return on investment.

Tweet This Post

Advertising is a viable marketing strategy to reach and influence your target audience.  It is perhaps the marketing tactic with the longest history, and online advertising in particular is a growth industry.  However, simply placing an advertisement for your business doesn’t necessarily mean you’re going to achieve results.  Here’s how to optimize your advertising efforts by choosing the right place to advertise for your audience.

Step One:  Determine where your audience hangs out – what websites do they visit? 

Blogs.  There is a blog on just about every topic under the sun.  Analyze your audience, determine what blogs they frequent and search for advertising guidelines.  Some blogs do not publish their advertising guidelines.  You’ll instead need to contact the owner of the blog.  Banner ads and text ads work best on blogs. It is important to find a blog that:

• Speaks on a relevant topic
• Has a fair amount of 
•  Doesn’t have too many competing ads

Social Networking Sites.  Social media has become a prevalent force in our personal and professional lives.  Explore the wide range of social networking sites and your target audience’s interests to see if there are any which match. 

Websites.  Websites are very similar to blogs in terms of the typical advertising format and the guidelines to find appropriate and profitable places to advertise. 

Search Engines.  Google, Yahoo, MSN and a whole slew of other search engines offer advertising programs.  They’re a highly targeted advertising strategy – you’re only viewed by people looking for information on your business products or services. 

Email.  Enewsletters and email marketing messages are still a great way to reach a targeted audience.  Enewsletter advertising is cost effective and because they are subscribed to, the recipients are generally looking forward to receiving them and more receptive to the advertising content. 

To begin thinking about ideal locations to advertise it’s important to understand the habits and preferences of your target audience.  Visit sites they visit, consider what they need before or after they might buy your product and research potential advertising locations. 

Consider your target consumer’s buying cycle, behavior, interests, and habits.  If you’re really stuck for ideas on where to advertise, research where your competition advertises.  While you may not want to advertise on the same website, blog, or social networking site, you can at least use those ideas to get the creative juices flowing.

Step Two:  Choose The Right Format For Your Audience. 

There are many types of advertisements including banner ads, text ads, pop-up advertisements, and even video advertising.  Often, it’s difficult to know at first what your audience will respond to.  This is where step three will come in very handy. 

Step Three:  Tracking and Testing Your Advertisements

The advertising of old had one big drawback, there really wasn’t a way to track the effectiveness of an ad.  Online, the whole world of advertising has changed.  You can track everything from the effectiveness of a headline to the color of the ad, the font, the call to action, the placement and so on.  Every variable is easily tracked and tested so you can maximize your advertising efforts.  Data collection programs like Google analytics and basic split testing tactics often provide all the information you need to create and perfect advertisements to influence your target audience.

Online, reaching your target audience and influencing them to visit, promote, and buy is accomplished by studying their online habits and creating advertisements which speak to them in a personal and effective manner.  Testing and tracking optimizes your efforts and helps you hone in on those messages which have the most influence.

Tweet This Post

One of the primary goals of any internet marketing business is to drive traffic to your website.  Traffic means more visitors and more profits.  Here are five ways to increase your internet presence.

Search Engine Optimization
Search engines are a great way to drive traffic to your website.  Search engines, like Google, Yahoo, MSN and so on, look at two main ingredients when indexing your website.

They look at how relevant your website is – how well you can tell the search engine what your website is about. This is called “On Page Optimization.” Keys for on page optimization are keywords, metadata, site maps and your domain name and website description information.  The majority of on page optimization resides in your website content. 

The second main category search engines look at is the number of links which point to your website and how relevant those links are.  This is called “Off Page Optimization.”   If you have relevant and quality links pointing at your website from websites about your topic and your website is well optimized for your keywords, chances are you’ll rank well in the search engines.

Pay Per Click Advertising
Another common way to drive traffic to a website is through Pay Per Click, (PPC). As the name suggests, with this style of driving traffic, you pay for each time someone clicks through to your site. 

With PPC, and with any new marketing strategy, it’s important to start small.  PPC campaigns can get out of control quickly.  Do your research, set your budget, and stick to it.  Test, track, and analyze your PPC campaign for the best long term results.

Article Marketing Article marketing is the process of writing articles and submitting them to involves writing article directories.  Publishers grab these articles and post them on their websites, blogs, and newsletters keeping the links and author information in tact.  This not only produces relevant links to your website (remember SEO) but it also drives traffic each time someone reads your content and clicks through to your website.  This method is a highly effective method for generating traffic.  Although it is free, the downside is that it can be labor intensive.

Social Networking
Social networking is the process of communicating with other business people and/or prospects on social networking sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, or industry specific forums and chat rooms.  Social networking is a very effective method of increasing your presence.  It enables you to build a profile and to connect with a large group of people or friends whom share a common interest.  A social networking profile typically allows you to list your contact information as well as your website(s).  This means when you make connections and provide interesting or beneficial information to other social networkers, they’ll be inclined to visit your website, thus generating traffic and your internet presence.

Affiliates
Getting affiliates to promote your website is a great way to get a lot more traffic and sales.  An affiliate is someone who promotes your product or services for you on an ongoing basis in exchange for a commission.  Commission can be based on click throughs or purchases or a combination of both depending on your business and affiliate model.  Affiliates are an exceptional strategy for broadening your audience and increasing your internet presence. 

You can increase your internet presence using any one of these five methods or a combination of them to really amplify your traffic and increase your internet presence.  Choose your strategy and get started growing your business today.

Tweet This Post

Working from home is an ideal choice for many. Whether you own your own business or your employer allows you to telecommute, working from home offers many conveniences and freedoms that a traditional office job does not. However, working from home also offers many challenges; the primary challenge for many is staying focused and motivated.

Step One: Create a Workspace

Staying focused and motivated when working from home requires a home office. Yes, maybe the kitchen table or the couch could work. However, placing yourself in those locations is just asking for distractions.

When you create a designated workspace, your frame of mind changes immediately when you walk into it and sit down. You’re mentally more ready to focus. Make your workspace comfortable enough that you enjoy being there yet not so comfortable that you want to be there when you’re not working or that it becomes a place to hang out.

Additionally, when you create a workspace, your family will take your working from home more seriously. It becomes easier to set boundaries. When you’re in your office, you’re working and you’re not to be disturbed.

Step Two: Create a Schedule

Okay so maybe one of the things you love about working from home is that you don’t have to create a schedule however a schedule will help you stay focused and productive. When you create your schedule, remember to schedule in breaks, household chores, time with your family and meals. It’s easy to say, “I’m going to work from 10-4” however actually sitting there and working for six hours is going to be a lot more difficult. Give yourself breaks and downtime during the day. When you schedule in your distractions, your working time is much more focused and it’s easier to stay focused because you know you have breaks to look forward to.

Additionally, make sure to schedule days off. It’s easy when you work from home to work from the time you get up until the time you go to bed seven days a week. It’s a sure way to suffer burnout quickly. Plan vacations, days off, and time for yourself to stay motivated.

Step Three: Eliminate Distractions

Make a list of distractions. Perhaps it’s laundry, your children, your friends calling you for coffee, appointments and errands. Make a list of these distractions and then find a way to eliminate them.

For example, if your children are a distraction, then how can you plan your day around them? Can you trade childcare days with other parents who work from home? Can you hire a sitter for part of the day? Can you work around their naps?

Staying motivated and focused when working from home is possible. Rather than modeling your work from home life around what you feel you should do, take a look at your reality, your needs and personality, and create a work from home life that works for you. It takes a little planning and premeditation to get the job done.

Tweet This Post

When it comes to growing an online business, one of the most common and most effective strategies is to increase your customer base.  This is often accomplished by a variety of means including, social networking, word of mouth, search engine optimization tactics and advertising.  Advertising, when done correctly, can actually be the most effective means of growing your business and your customer base.

What is Advertising?

Advertising is defined as the process of attracting attention to you business, by paid announcements in the print, broadcast, or electronic media (online). Online advertisements usually take the form of banner advertisements, pay per click advertisements or search engine advertisements, text ads, pop-up advertisements and video or audio. 

In order to increase your customer base, it’s important to choose not only the right type of advertisement but also the right location and to follow up with accurate testing and tracking.

Here are five steps to take to make sure your advertising strategy will produce the results you desire – will increase your customer base.

Step One:  Who is your Target Audience?  It’s important to make sure your advertisement is focused on an individual group of consumers.  Writing an ad that appeals to everyone is difficult and will most likely not generate the results you’re looking for.  Remember you can write 10 ads, each one directed at a specific market segment within your total audience.

Step Two:  Create a compelling ad.  Writing online ads is much different than writing an advertisement for offline print.  The goal for offline advertising is typically to capture someone’s attention and generate memory.  The goal for your online advertisement is to motivate a click to your website.  

Step Three:  What is your goal for the ad?  Do you want to collect subscribers for your ezine?  Send visitors to your website?  Generate interest for an upcoming product launch?  Make sure the copy, ad type, and location all fit your goals and then make sure you’re sending click throughs to a relevant page. 

Step Four:  How will you test your advertisement’s effectiveness?  The goal is to know how many people are responding to your ads. It can be as simple as sending them to a unique sales page.  You won’t know if your ad is working unless you have put measures into place to track it.  Additionally, test your ad copy, size, graphics etc for results.  Use two ads each with different headlines, calls to action or even size and send them to identical sales pages.  Which ad performs better?

Step Five:  Make sure each new advertisement integrates into your current marketing strategy.  That means including your promotions, press and publicity and even your email marketing into your advertisement strategy and vice versa. 

The goal of advertising, beyond motivating a click through, is to increase and expand awareness of your company.  The larger your customer base the larger your sales and profits.

Tweet This Post

Networking is a fantastic way to build your business, not only by expanding awareness and your customer base but also by giving you professional resources to enhance and strengthen your skills and knowledge.

Networking actually takes many forms including offline networking with local associations and organizations like the Chamber of Commerce.  You can also network online in forums, chat rooms and social networking sites.  Here’s how:

Step One – Understand what your networking goals are.

For many, their social networking strategy evolves around building relationships – and there are many different relationships networking can create and build including:

• Joint venture partnerships
• Vendor relationships
• Mentor relationships
• Friends and resources
• Customers

Whether you’re creating a social networking strategy to find new customers or you’re seeking partnerships or mentors, or a combination of the above it’s important to have your strategy mapped out before you begin networking.

Step Two – Create Your Networking Plan

Answer the following questions:

• Who is your target audience?
• What relationships are you looking to find and build?
• What do you have to offer them?
• What networking sites or organizations will you participate in?
• How are you going to represent yourself online?
• How often are you going to post/participate?
• Will you create specific promotions and offers for your networking audience?

Step Three – Choosing your networking mediums : websites and organizations

Whether you’re looking to join a local networking organization or an online website, the most important thing to keep in mind are your goals.  Determine if the organization is going to be able to help you reach your goals before taking steps to join.

For example: if you’re looking to create joint venture partnerships then a professional networking site, forum, or chat room devoted to your industry may be exactly where you need to be.  However if you’re looking to build your customer base and expand awareness then a popular social networking site would fit the bill.

Often, networking sites are valued by the number of members they have however it’s also important to make sure the audience matches your audience.  For example, if you’re marketing to seniors or baby boomers then MySpace is probably not the right social networking site for you since it caters to younger people.

Step Four - Participate

Networking is only effective if you participate.  Here are a few rules of interaction when it comes to online and offline networking.

Get involved. Networking is about connecting with others. This means communicating with your audience in a manner which they will respond to. This is accomplished by using their language, addressing issues which they will be interested in or concerned about and providing them with information and resources which they will benefit from.

Update frequently. Online, in order to develop a following and to stay connected to your audience, it’s important to update regularly. Because many people have made a habit of networking online at least once a day (some people maintain access to their social networking site of choice all day long), it’s important to stop in and say hello. If your time permits, update at least once a day. If you don’t have time to commit to updating daily, consider outsourcing your social networking.

Be professional. Networking is about giving and receiving – not selling.  Keep the sales pitches to a minimum.  Networking is more about offering benefit to others than making sales.

Networking, whether online or off, is a valuable way to grow your business.  Create a strategy and goals and remember you get what you give – become active in the right group and you’ll reap the rewards.

Tweet This Post