Administrator on October 29th, 2007
You probably already know the posting in forums is a great way of driving extra traffic to your site, but do you know the other not so obvious reasons why forum posting can help your business?
Here are some reasons why you should post your comments in discussion forums.
1. Trust and immediate hits to your page. When you help out someone in the discussion and giving a good answer to his problem, you will seem knowledgeable about the discussed subject. As long as you are giving good content and not spamming the boards, people will perceive you as someone that knows his stuff.
You’ll be able to communicate with the members and they’ll begin to develop trust with you because they get to know you on a more personal level. If you know anything about human nature, people will purchase products quicker from somebody they already know and trust.
Once the trust is there, they will see your signature file and click on your link and there’s your immediate traffic you get from the board!
2. Get indexed at major search engines. Major search engines are great at indexing highly active discussion boards. This means that you have a better chance of having your posts in the major search engines, which means more traffic if you are involved in a hotly debated discussion!
3. Your post will likely be archived. The owner of the board will usually archive a discussion for future reference. And when people go into discussion boards they sometimes want to search for a topic quickly and get an answer.
That’s when that person hits on the topic you have posted and you’ll get more hits. Wouldn’t it be great for you to get more hits just for helping someone out in the forums last year?
4. New ideas for your new products. You can post a question or concern to the board and get some very good responses about your market’s major problems. So instead of guessing what kind of problems people are struggling with, you are getting a better answer from real people with real concerns!
And once you’ve identified the problem, it is much easier for you to create the solution and sell to your market! It takes out the guesswork of finding out what the real problem is in your market and that will give you a better idea for a solution!
Once you’ve got a clear answer, you can more effectively find the solution by doing research in the right places.
5. Gather information and write a book. You can save every post you made and combine it into an e-book! Take out the posts that people thought were intelligent and truly groundbreaking and you instantly have an e-book of tips and advice.
Those are the five major reasons why posting on discussion boards are effective. You can learn important information about your market by reading the conversations they have with each other and armed with this information you can market your products more effectively.
And in conclusion, discussion boards are generally a highly targeted group of people that are more receptive to your products and services. So the kind of leads is of higher quality. So to get more hits to your site, start joining and contributing to the discussions!
About The Author
Alan Quan used to be a butt kisser for a big company in hopes of climbing the corporate ladder to success. He wised up and quickly fired his boss. Now he’s making a living on the internet and specializes in helping people build their own successful internet business. Visit his website at http://e-bizcoachalan.com and find out how he can help you quickly accomplish your goals and boost your internet profits so that you too can fire your boss.
Administrator on October 25th, 2007
Many independent service professionals nonchalantly enter the Internet marketing game by throwing together a half-baked website without any plan and mistakenly believe that visitors will find them. Initially, my online business grew from word-of-mouth referrals from other clients rather than from any true Internet marketing. My website simply served as an online brochure detailing my services and my rates for several years.
Over time, I became tired of trading time for money. Upon gaining some time and experience in business, the independent service professional has a rude awakening that there are only so many hours in the day and consequently that limits the number of clients that can be served.
Despite all the useful information I’d absorbed over the years about expanding my business reach through the development of products that I could sell on my website, I just didn’t want to devote the time necessary to create multiple streams of income for my business. However, as I began to see friends and colleagues do this successfully in their businesses, the light bulb finally went off, and I realized that this was my next step, as well. So, I bit the bullet and began to try some of the strategies and began to get quick results from what I had implemented.
In my own professional development as an Internet marketer, as well as from work with clients over the years, I’ve come to realize that there are 5 Internet Marketing Mindsets that must be in place for someone to be successful online:
1. Create content that can be re-purposed. The goals here is to create your content once and find multiple ways to use it or multiple ways of delivery. So, for example, if you have an Inspiration Line phone service in which you record an inspiring thought each day for your clients, you can record these calls and have them serve as a publicity tool by distributing them as a podcast. This will help drive traffic to your site and bring people into your marketing funnel. When you’ve accumulated enough recordings, you then sell a subscription membership so that the buyer receives a new inspiring thought each day via email or a direct-to-desktop service. Over time, you can categorize recordings by topic and then combine the recordings into multiple motivational CDs or .mp3 downloads and make them available for sale online. When you’ve been doing this for a year, perhaps you then parlay the recordings into a book or an inspirational card deck. Sometimes it helps to start with the end in mind.
2. Record everything that you do. Whether you’re doing live events, radio or TV interviews, teleclasses, webinars, etc., it pays to record and have a permanent record of everything that you do. Having a digital video recording of yourself in a one-day live event can be packaged into a “home study” course. Teleclasses with transcripts can be resold individually or packaged together for a bigger product. Radio or TV interviews can be placed on your website to enhance your credibility and convince a meeting planner to pay you big bucks to come and provide a keynote speech. Open your mind to the possibilities for re-purposing your recordings.
3. Get yourself and your customers into a sales mentality. Many of my clients simply like to have their products sit obscurely for sale on their websites and do nothing to make their list members or website visitors aware of what they have for sale for fear of offending their visitors or subscribers. If someone is going to be offended because you’re trying to sell to them, then just let them go. You don’t need a list of tire-kickers who want to sponge all the free info that they can from you and never buy anything — you’ll never be able to stay in business that way.
I have to chuckle when I do a promotion and get an email from someone on the list who chastises me for “daring” to sell to them and notes that they much prefer to “decide” when they want to buy something from me and then they threaten to leave the list. I just respond that I’m sorry that they feel that way, but unfortunately I’m not a trust-fund baby, and that my hard-earned information has the same value as any info that they might get from their car mechanic, doctor, attorney, or accountant, and I’ve never seen any of those professionals give away what they know.
Creating a sales mentality means that you need to acknowledge that you’re in business to make money through selling and that your customers need to become accustomed to having you sell and seeing things for sale all over your websites. This is no different than the trait needed for success if you were to own a brick-and-mortar retail establishment. You can still provide free and valuable information to your visitors, but reserve the right to take that info, create a unique packaging and title for pieces of info on the same topic, and put it up for sale.
4. Acknowledge that people will pay more for convenience and instant delivery online. Many times, as I’m trying to help a client determine the price for a product, they’ object to the price I suggest because they compare it to a physical product that can be purchased in the local bookstore or online bookstore for less. The “buy it now and give it to me instantly” mentality that is prevalent among online shoppers dictates that you can charge a higher price for an electronic product than a physical product because the shopper can fulfill his/her need for instant gratification and receive the electronic product in mere seconds. Wouldn’t you rather do that instead of having to get in the car to make a trip across town to buy the product or waiting a few days for the delivery of a physical product from an online store?
And, people will pay for convenience. I recently spoke with a client about selling her content that was ready available in various locations all over the Internet. She was concerned that no one would pay for the product since it was currently available online at no cost if someone were to look hard enough. I told her that many of her customers didn’t know it was available online, and even if they did, they would have to invest a great deal of their free time to gather all the info in one place. Few of us have that luxury of time today. For most of us, if it’s easy and convenient and will save us some time, we’ll buy it.
5. Plan your business growth around your marketing funnel. Independent service professionals shouldn’t live on the sale of their services alone. Trust me, at some point in your business, you won’t want to do that any longer. You need to create a marketing funnel of your products and services that range in price from free to very expensive and base your marketing strategy around that funnel. Your online business success will depend upon people being able to “sample” your expertise before deciding to purchase your service.
Remember that it takes 7-10 “touches” before a prospect will turn into a customer. Give them several ways to experience your expertise, all the way from free to expensive, with any number of price points and options in between. Keep your marketing funnel in mind in all that you do and strategize how every new activity, whether that’s creating a new product, writing another article, offering a new service, or being a guest on a radio show fits into your marketing funnel.
By adopting these 5 Internet Marketing Mindsets into your daily marketing mantra, you’ll be well on your way to positioning your online business for many years of success!
Copyright (c) 2006 Donna Gunter
About The Author
Online Business Resource Queen (TM) and Online Business Coach Donna Gunter helps self-employed service professionals learn how to automate their businesses, leverage their expertise on the Internet, and get more clients online. To sign up for more FREE tips like these and claim your FREE gift, TurboCharge Your Online Marketing Toolkit, visit her site at http://www.GetMoreClientsOnline.com.
Administrator on October 24th, 2007
If you are a home based business owner probably the largest obstacle you must overcome is finding motivation. You work at home and need to get online to work on your website, marketing, research, etc. But there are many other things going on that vie for your time. What do you do to ensure you are devoting adequate time to your home based business?
My main tool for motivation in my home based business is goal setting. This takes some planning, but if you spend a little time you can develop challenging, yet attainable goals. Why set goals? Goal setting allows you to determine where you want to go with your business. Setting targets gives you a basis for creating a defined plan and to identify those activities that are non-value added.
Goal setting is an activity used by successful business people, top level athletes, students and high achievers in all walks of life. Setting a goal and then reaching that goal gives a great sense of satisfaction and accomplishment.
There are several types of goals. You first establish your long term goals. These could be set for three to five years out. Profitability, net annual income, increase in business volume, ROI, size of customer base could all be used for long term goals.
Next is the creation of medium term goals related to the long term goals. These would be in the one to three year range. This is followed by short term goals that you want to achieve in the next several months. Finally, you develop an action plan that will lead to meeting the short, medium and long term goals.
The lifeblood of an online home based business is visitors to your website. So one of the goals should relate to how many visitors you are getting. Granted, there are ways to generate thousands of hits, so the goal must reflect “targeted” visitors. If you are new to online marketing you can set a smaller target. Set goals for one month, three months and one year. When you have met your 1 month target reevaluate the longer term goals and adjust them if necessary. Just be sure to validate or revise your action plan to keep moving toward the next target.
If you are not meeting your goals review the steps you are taking. Look for new and creative ways to market your home based business web page. Don’t limit yourself to online marketing. Business cards, newspaper ads, flyers, etc. are all great options.
If your home based business offers a product the goal could be obtaining a certain number of orders per week or per day. It could be sales or unit volumes. If you are an affiliate marketer your goal could be recruiting a certain number of affiliates per day or increase in your downline.
Once you have generated an adequate quantity of data, i.e., unique visitors per day and units of product sold, you can determine how much you sell per unique visitor. A new goal could be to increase the sales per visitor.
Make sure your goals have a time aspect, such as 500 visitors daily by the end of the next three months.
Setting achievable goals and then attaining them is a great motivator for a home based business owner. Once you get in the habit of setting and reaching goals your enthusiasm for your home based business will grow and your success will be assured.
About The Author
Timothy Spaulding is the owner of the Work At Home Business Resource Center at http://www.workathome-awesomeopportunities.com and Home Made Profits at http://www.homemadeprofits.net providing opportunities to work at home and make money online with your own home business.
