Internet Marketing

How many times have you bought something online to find a problem with it? Maybe the download didn’t work, or maybe it wasn’t what you had anticipated. Whatever the reason you need to contact the person you bought it from. But now you have a problem they have a no reply email address. You are told there is no email to the person but put a ticket on their support page and someone will come back to you.

You head to the support page, but you now have to register and what might have taken a few minutes writing an email has become a time consuming exercise.

People don’t really want to put their problems on a support page, they want to be able to send an email and have their problem sorted immediately. This is an area you need to consider before you start your business. Yes it might mean an increase in spam but with a lot of companies now you can get a good spam assassin which will normally take most of your spam. Also set up your mail server and you will see at least 90% of your spam isolated. But do check your spam folder because occasionally an email will go there which isn’t spam.

If you set up a good customer service policy at the start of your business, you will know that even if people have a problem it will be dealt with quickly and professionally.

How many times have you become frustrated trying to contact a company and failing now is the time to turn that frustration to good use? List all the things you don’t like about how you have been treated as a customer and make sure you don’t do the same things for your customers.

Aim to have the best customer service around. Then people will know that if anything should go wrong they can not only contact you but also be able to get any problems sorted in the quickest and easiest way possible. Keep an email address if needed just for customer service, don’t let it be a catchall address. Let people contact you even if some mail will be spam, and you will reap the rewards of doing that. People expect a good customer service when they go into a shop and buy, and they will expect the same from an online business. Give your customers what they require, a good service and that doesn’t end when they pay the money for your goods or services.

Filed under: Online Business by Craig

Most website would love to have free traffic, but often it is the new forms of advertising that they could be missing out on. One of the new forms of advertising is StumbleUpon. If you have never considered using this before you really should start today. It only takes a few minutes to set it up but you could be seeing a lot of traffic within a very short time.

You will need to open an account with them, and then download your toolbar which will take a different amount of time depending out your internet speed.

Once you have the stumble upon toolbar installed you can spend time adding your site and watch the traffic come in. As you write a review about your site, other people will see it and come and take a look. If you are selling a product which you have reviewed then they are a targeted group coming to see what you have found.

Within a very short time you will see people coming to your website, and sales increasing as you meet the need that they have. You might think it is a lot of work to have to write a review for every page in your website or all your websites, but do remember this is free traffic. You are selling not only your website but also your product when you write your review.

It will cost you a little time and effort but no more than writing a PPC advert. The difference is you pay for a PPC advert you don’t pay for Stumble Upon.

The other advantage is that as you write your reviews so other people will come to your site and also write a review for your product. This will escalate as more and more people are shown your site through Stumble Upon.

Consider the different ways in which you can make money through the webpage you review. You find something that people will love and you set up a page for just that. They will soon arrive to take a look and if it is a free product then they will always get it and it could be that you are being paid just to get their email address. Take a good look at how you can use this free advertising not only to get traffic to your site, but also to sell the products on your site.

Filed under: Promotional Ideas by Craig

Are you ready to be scammed? Now that might seem a strange question but many people do seem to set themselves up for every con artist around. Think about how many people go on holiday and suddenly they forget everything they have ever learnt, and end up being conned over many different things?

Is life on the internet any different? For many people no it isn’t any different. They have read so many stories about people who have made a fortune online that everything you see on the internet must be true because it wouldn’t be there to start with. Wrong! Not everything you read on the internet is correct, so don’t leave your brain behind when you are starting to look at earning money online.

If someone called at your home and asked you to give them a $100 with the promise they would tell you after you handed them the money what you would be getting, do you really think you would hand them the dollars? Maybe you would be tempted if they said that within 1 month that $100 would be worth $10,000. But you might also have lots of alarm bells going off in your head warning you about this. Scam, crook, con or other words might spring to mind.

You need to use the same common sense online as you do offline. Any business person will always tell you what they are selling before they take your money. Many people trying to sell you these get rich quick schemes are still trying to make their first sale themselves. Get to know them, and they will ask how do I make money online? Maybe it they tried to read the book they are selling, and also by following their own guidelines on their websites.

Don’t be deceived by screenshots of their PayPal, Clickbank account, because there is no proof that the screenshot is their or it hasn’t been altered. Get to know them and see how long they have been running an online business. Is what they are selling make them a living or do they have to look for alternative ways to raise finances. Don’t be caught out by being asked to hand over your dollars that you have worked hard to earn, and don’t believe it when someone says that within a month you can earn 100 times more than you have invested. Be smart, and don’t get scammed online.

Filed under: Online Business by Craig

There are plenty of places where you can get free hosting online, such as Blogger.com or Wordpress.com, as well as more overtly commercial sites that include their advertising on your websites.

Sooner or later though, if you are even remotely serious about having your website around for a long time, you are going to want to sort out your own web hosting. That means moving to paid hosting

Unless your site is very large, or attracts many thousands of visitors a day, the place to start is with a shared hosting plan

This means that you share the hosting server with other website owners, which has some advantages:

All that remains is to choose your hosting company, but which one?

You can trawl through the offers of the various companies, trying to remember which host offers which features, or you can make it easy on yourself and use a website hosting directory

Now you can compare similar plans from different hosts side by side, making your choice much easier, plus you can read reviews of web hosts and review them yourself.

So start your search for a shared hosting plan in the best way, use a website hosting directory.

Filed under: Hosting by Craig

How much have you considered affiliate marketing as a way of earning an income with your website? Have you thought about the different products you could be marketing on your website? It does take a little work to get this to work and work well but the rewards can be immense as many people come looking for your products to buy.

There are two sides to affiliate marketing and both can be beneficial to you. If you have a product that you have created then you can ask people to sell it on your behalf. They will advertise the product for you and you will get links back to your site. Each affiliate will be responsible for their own marketing campaign even if you supply some of the tools to help them, they cover the costs and all the time you are getting your site and products seen by a far larger audience and until they sell the product you don’t have to pay them anything.

The other side is when you are selling a product on behalf of the creator of the product. You will need to decide on your own marketing campaign and also fund that campaign. The problem could be if you are not getting any response to your campaign and you decide to increase the amount of money, thinking more money will equal more sales. That might be the case, but look at it carefully. You are promoting a product which costs $97 and your commission is $67. You think that if you sell 100 copies you will have made $6,700, except you have to consider how much you need to spend out. If to get your 100 sales you have to spend $6,000 will it seem such a good proposal if you have only made $700 and that doesn’t include any other expenses including your time.

Always consider carefully what product you are promoting and if you are not getting any sales then don’t spend more money, take a look and see how you need to change the campaign. You can make money with affiliate programs but only if you chose your programs wisely and then you will see you are earning not only an income but a good income from affiliate marketing. Try and ensure that the product or products you are marketing fit in with the category of your website as people are more likely to buy from you if they have come looking for related information than if they find something unrelated which might also suit their needs.

Filed under: Make Money Online by Craig

I have arrived at your website and I am trying to see what you have to offer me especially as I am not really sure of my way around the web. I don’t even know what I am looking for but I found your site now what have you got to offer me? If you keep me there, you will stand a better chance that I will return and if you try and sell me something then I might be interested, but first I need to get to know you.

I find you have a blog. I have heard about them, and now I am wondering what you have written in yours to tell me something about you. I start to read and very soon it becomes interesting to learn more about you and the way you think. I am engrossed in your blog about a problem I am facing. Maybe you understand me and even more you understand my problem.

Someone told me that some websites have a forum and I see you have one. They told me that this is a place where you are ask questions; answer questions or even tell people what you are thinking. As I look I can see there are lots of interesting comments, I don’t have time to read them all today, but I must make a note to come back here tomorrow and learn more and more.

This is amazing you have so much information at your site; it is hard to take it all in. I wonder how long this information will be available. If I come back tomorrow will I be able to finish off reading the rest of the articles that you have about my problems.

I have come back and there is the article I was reading yesterday, I am impressed there is even more information about the problem. It seems someone works hard here updating the information. I wonder what will happen if I ask a question on the forum, will anyone think less of me for asking. Hold on, nobody knows who I am so it is OK for me to ask away, and then I will see what happens.

People have answered my questions and they have been very nice about it. Here are people that understand where I am coming from, now what else do they have that will help me. A book that looks perfect, I will buy it because they certainly know what they are talking about and this will solve my problems.

Filed under: Web Marketing by Craig

One of the major influencing factors in gaining good ranking in search engines, wether it’s Google, MSN or Yahoo your aiming for is increasing the number of relevant quality backlinks to your website. To this end I’m delighted to inform you that I have aquired a new directory.

Hot Sports Links is a quality, hand edited, search engine friendly Recreation and Sports directory with sport facts included. With a current pagerank of four (predicted six in the next Google update) and inner pages with a pagerank of three. This directory can provide you with the relevant quality sports link you need.

If you have a related website visit sports links today and get yourself a permanent listing at the current prices, after the next pagerank update prices will be going up..

Filed under: Promotional Ideas by Craig

Are you someone who is always coming up with great ideas? Do you then stutter over how to make them a reality and by the time you get to the next stage find that your idea is already one of the hottest selling products around?

Ingenius ideas come to many people but advancing those ideas on to the stage of being able to create a product is work heavy. If they are only just a creative spark in your mind, how exactly do you go from thinking to creating such a great product?

A lot of creative work is involved in the development. You have to start to produce your dream. Giving up if it doesnt work out first time is not an option. Fine tuning your creation is a must and it is not easy for those who are not inventors.

You need to get something down on paper, a basic blueprint at minimum, write it down. Then you need to do something so simple but it is important if you want to claim the copyright to the product. Take an envelope, place your idea inside and then post it to yourself (I’m not crazy, no, read on). You will have a date on it. Here’s the most important step. Never open the envelope, ever. If an argument arises to do with copyright, your blueprint of the idea is firmly sealed with a lawyer waiting to open it. Even better is to hand the sealed mail to a lawyer to keep it safe for you.

You realize then that you need finance to start your project. How do you find someone who would be interested in your project? You could start by talking about your idea. You know when you have a great thought to create a product, and you can see the end result, but to convey that thought is an art.

You will need to compile a budget and a projection of what you anticipate all your earnings and costs to be. If you could imagine going to the bank and asking them to finance the project, then all you would need to give them would be what you should be offering someone else who would be putting money into the project. Consider if it is worth employing an accountant to produce professional budget, projections and any statistics you might need.

You will need to trust people with your ideas and sometimes paying for a professional could make you a far bigger profit. Consider getting somebody involved who has no interest in the project, and listen when they say that it doesnt make any sense. It might be the way you are telling them the idea, and then you could need to be getting someone to put the theory into an understandable format.

Filed under: Creating Products by Craig

When you have bought an item, wether off or online, just how many times did you buy it because a free gift was included? When receiving something for nothing peoples response is sometimes better. If the free gift is of no value though, this brings a bad response.

If you want to increase your sales, then a strategy you must have is to give products away. That doesn’t mean you have to give everything away, but people will come to know you as someone who is generous with their time and products.

Many people will create a product to give away that they will not be selling. They might find a problem that many people have and create a unique product to solve that problem but instead of selling it they give it away.

This principle was put to the test by a well know company that makes ice cream, and they continue it to this day. Throughout the year on certain occasions, they gave away their product. An example was mothers day, all moms got free ice cream. They would taste it and come to the conclusion that it was delicious ice cream and would crave more so would in the future buy more. After word of mouth advertising more people than ever started to buy and taste the ice cream which eventually exploded sales and led to a huge business.

That principle is true for any business, but the biggest problem with online business is that one will give away a product, that someone else is selling cheaply as a bonus.

If you use the strategy of giving items away then make it a relevant product, and if that means spending a few hours producing it then it will be time well spent. You will find that people will come back for more, and will buy from you when they know they can trust you.

“Buy one get one free” is a phrase often seen being used by many companies in the offline world. Many items are given as a free gift sometimes when you buy an item you also get bonus points. The strategy isn’t as clear cut as it may appear. Often it’s to clear the shop floor of badly selling items or an overstock of a line. Most of the time the customer doesn’t ask why, they don’t find the reason important, all they care about is what’s in it for them.
Don’t keep an agenda hidden when giving something away or people might not get it from you. Give away and let them decide to come back to you time and again. Use this strategy in marketing and see how effective this method is for you.

Filed under: Promotional Ideas by Craig