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Making money online

Making money online

There are no shortage of ideas and emails sent to your mail box on “making money online”. While social media like Face Book, Twitter, My Space, etc are effective communication tools, most small businesses have difficulties in understanding and how they can effctively use these socail media tools to promote their products or services.

Email marketing

A simpler form of socail media communication is none other than the use of a email system to connect with your visitors. Email communication is now almost universal for people to communicate with one another, and by far a better socail media tool in promoting your business. A good marketing system by email will point to some form of “email contact system” and “systematic follow-up”, regular newsletters or product promotions, etc to keep your mailing list recipients interested to remain on your list.

Keeping it simple

“keeping it simple” can be most effectively in marketing your products of services online. If you can spend a $1 and make $2 on a legitimate product that appeals to tens or thousands of interested people, you have a formula for success. The investment of a $1 is your cost for marketing – this may be your domain and hosting it, auto-responder/email contact system, markeing and promotion through adwords, banners, etc.

Most e-goods and affiliate marketeres are working on finding better ways to leverage their efforts to generate the sale revanues exceeding their cost of marketing. When your work on a system that generate the $2 revenue with $1 investment, you are on your way to building a sustainable online business.

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Internet marketing – niche market

What’s your internet marketing niche?

It is importance to have a “well-defined niche market” when planning your internet marketing strategy to achieve marketing success online. You product or service must have sufficient online search demand by visitors who are looking for information through various search engines.

Defining your niche market is important for the following reasons:

1. You are able to improve your marketing and target customers in your defined niche market. You’ll know exactly where to advertise and where to look to find blogs and related sites that are catering to your market.
2. Your website can be optimized for search engines so that your customers can easily find you.
3. Your site should be able to offer your visitors the solutions or products they are looking.
4. Your defined niche market makes it easier for you to offer new products or services that appeal to your visitors.
5. You can establish yourself as an expert and a leader in your industry.

Market niche and your passion

You passion drives your belief and motivates you to be the best in what you can offer to your visitors.  If you have a high level of passion about a hobby, lifestyle, health choice, product or service, you can make a connection to build a business online.

Most people who have a product or service to sell can easily understand how their websites can expand and build their businesses. Their online presence gives them an edge over the competition and helps to expand their client base to a wider market beyond their geographic area.

My goal in building a website on “Tofino Beach”

Choosing a niche market to build my website is the easy part. My Google  adword search for “Tofino Beach” confirmed a monthly global search volume around 22,200 and a local search around 6,600. My goal is to build a destination website, and monetize the site using PPC, banners, affiliate marketing, etc. I decided to register my domain TofinoBeach.net after confirming the domain was available.

My next task is to decide on using a website theme that can easily be customized to provide the contents relevant to my domain, Tofino Beach. I decided to pick the  popular Wordpress premium theme, “The Thesis” which is highly  recommended by many webmasters. As for hosting, I already have my existing websites hosted by Bluehost, and the the hosting of my new domain TofinoBeach.net does not cost me any extra money.

So, the stage is set for me to spend the next few weeks to build my website and provide the relevant contents. I will have to look for information, pictures, articles, postings, reviews, etc for my website. I intend to promote my website via Twitter, Facebook, articles, classified ads, etc.

Until then, I will post my progress report online to share with you and others who are interested in what I do.

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Facebook surpassed Google in weekly search!

HitWise is reporting that for the week ending March 13, Facebook overtook Google as the site to get the most US visits.  Facebook Inc., the world’s largest social-networking site, surpassed Google Inc.’s search engine in weekly hits to become the most visited Web site in the U.S. for the first time.

Facebook.com accounted for 7.07 percent of visits in the week ended March 13, topping Google.com’s 7.03 percent.  Facebook almost tripled its visits from a year earlier, compared with 9 percent growth at Google, the most popular search engine. The share of visits to Facebook.com for this week has increased 185% over the same week last year, while Google increased only 9% in the same time. Facebook and Google accounted for 14% of all US internet visits last week.

How serious a threat Facebook is to Google?

The last couple of years, Facebook has gone from a college photo-sharing site to a burgeoning business- networking platform for self-promotion, advertising and multimedia interaction. With new apps and add-ons, Facebook users can send each other a virtual drink, create and host events, advertise their businesses through social ads, and more.

When attracting ad dollars — the lifeblood of the online world — social networking advertising is not significant.  In 2007, advertisers spent $21.4 billion into ads on the Web and within e-mail, and that number was projected to reach  $27.5 billion in 2008, according to eMarketer.com. Social-networking sites attracted just $920 million in advertising revenue, an anemic 4.3 percent.  And despite the buzz, the share in 2008 will grow to only 5.7 percent.

Facebook for networking and marketing

While many people just use Facebook as a social connector, you can use Facebook – quite successfully, as a self-marketing tool. Facebook ads are pay-per-click. This means that you bid on keywords relevant to your business in an auction. Bid for keywords that aren’t as popular, and you will gain a better chance of winning your bid for a lesser amount.

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Blogging: Vancouver Small Business

Metro Vancouver small business owners have to weigh their options on online and offline marketing to promote their business.  A successful internet strategy can effectively help drive more customers and sales to your business.

In today’s faltering economy, Vancouver small business owners need to realize that having a website just isn’t enough anymore. Without a comprehensive online marketing plan, the only people that find your site are people who already know your business.

In order for your business to be found online by visitors searching for terms connected to your business, you need to optimize your Vancouver small business website so that people searching for products or services offered by your business can find you. Yellow pages and newspaper advertisements are costly, and  increasingly internet marketing is used by small business owners to market their companies.

Can your business be found online?

When your business is located in Vancouver or Richmond for that matter, will your website rank on page one on Google? If your business is related to pizza, real estate, home mortgages, pet foods or spas, will a customer searching for a generic and competitive word or phrase about your business find you on page one of Google?

How well your Vancouver small business website ranked on Google?

If your website is not ranked on page one and on the top few spots, you need to work hard on improving your search ranking.

Blogging about your Vancouver small business

Blogging can help improve your Vancouver small business page rank and internet visibility. You can work on getting your small business to be in the top search results for the products and services you offer. You can get help from a website service provider, or do it yourself to improve your online visibility.

Internet Marketing can include everything from designing a new web site to sell your products,  search optimizing to attract more visitors, link building, social media marketing, etc. When print advertisements are getting to be less effective, online marketing at less than half cost, you help increase your sale. Online Marketing is an excellent way to connect with your customers and sell more of your products and services to customers who want them

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Promote your Vancouver small business using blogs

Why use blogs to promote your Vancouver small business?

A blog can be set up in a matter of hours and ready for your first blog post.  For any business big or small, blogs hold tremendous power and can make a big different in helping the company grow and prosper. Here are some great things blogs can help to grow your Vancouver small business:

• Blogs bring traffic. Yes, people read blogs. There is no reason to think someone won’t want read yours. It’s just a matter of having something interesting or valuable your readers want to read. People visit your site or blog via search engines – a topic, or keywords that people search online, and those keywords in your blog posts link them to your site. If your readers subscribe to your blogs via RSS readers, their feed reader will show them all the new posts from your blog.

• Blogs promote your knowledge. Blog posts are a great way to share your knowledge about your Vancouver small business. When your readers are getting valuable information and knowledgeable on the topics you blog about, you gain their trust. You can make  yourself and your business stand out by promoting your in depth knowledge of your topic.  Sharing your tips, strategies helpful tidbits, detailed instructions and tutorials all help to build your credibility.

• Blogs help people. People are searching for information online all the time. Blogging helps to promote yourself or your business. It’s a way your readers learn more about your business or market. If your readers need your products or service, they are likely to contact you for help.

• Blogs build links. The more helpful your blog posts are, the more likely others will link to you. This helps your web site. As your resources get noticed you’ll start to build links and more online traffic. People will link to you in their blogs or websites or pass your information on via social media networks like Facebook and Twitter.

• Blogs create customer. The more you blog with content rich topics, the more helpful your blog becomes. More customers and followers follow you, or use your website to look for information. The more people who come to read your valuable information, the more likely they’ll become your customers when they need what you have.  By blogging, you’re building up your brand. Brand recognition is extremely important as it plays toward perceptions – Brand loyalty builds word of mouth, which in turn, builds more customers.

• Blogs increase sales. Building customers helps increase your sales. Blogs help build familiarity for your products and services. It’s primary function is to support your website, and help build more customers to your business.

FREE download “Affiliate Masters Course” – learn how to build a profitable online business!

There is no doubt that blogging takes time to write and the message put together in a compelling way. Blogging has to be done regularly, at lease once or twice a week in order to maintain a healthy blog. Posting infrequently and far in between will be counter productive.

If you haven’t started blogging for your Vancouver business you need to start now.  Start building your audience today, blogging and twittering to promote your blog!

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Using Site Built It! to promote your service business

How to use the net to attract more clients to your service business?

Most services, of course, are delivered offline. But to build your all-important client base in the most cost-effective manner ever — use the Net! Find out how SBI! can help you attract more online traffic to your business.

You really could be offering just about any service. No matter what you do…

• impressionist painter?
• the local church?
• import/export specialist for Germany?
• the local alarm company?
• investment specialist in Brazilian bonds?
• the local house painter?
• expert in Japanese netsuke?
• the local video rental store?
• a copywriter?
• the local plumber?
• plastic surgery consultant?
• the local barber?

It simply does not matter what you do. Nor does it matter whether your clients are local (ex., a fitness trainer) or global (ex., someone who indexes books) in nature…  Downloand your FREE “Service Sellers Masters Course“

FREE download “Affiliate Masters Course” – learn how to build a profitable online business!

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Getting your Vancouver small business online

How to launch your Vancouver small business online?

Online sales are rising 12% year-on-year! Online retail traffic has grown by 10% in the past year, and it will continue to grow yearly. More consumers are now searching for a product or service online.

How can you  successful promote your Vancouver small business online? More and more, your potential clients are forsaking the Yellow Pages for Google search online. It’s easy and fast to do a search for a local business, or for any product in a city or neighborhood. You need a great website to promote your Vancouver small business online.

Consumers are finding those big, heavy paper Yellow Pages too inconvenient and limiting. It’s so much easier and flexible to use Google and other Search Engines. People are now comfortable with the Net — and soon, most will be using broadband access with 24 x 7 constant, convenient and high-speed access.

So, it is important your Vancouver small business can be found online… your website that ranks highly on search engines. Online exposure and high traffic gives your business the edge over your competitors.

Building your Vancouver small business online

Now has never been a better time to get online, and build a website that rank on page one on the major search engines. You can get help from web designers and SEO service providers, or you can check out highly recommended Site Sell, Site Build It! for online traffic building ideas.

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Online And Offline Success

Consistent follow-up creates a predictable and profitable stream of prospects and customers that buy. Small businesses that capture leads and follow-up with them enjoy higher conversion rates and a higher percentage of referrals than those that don’t.

FREE download “Affiliate Masters Course” – learn how to build a profitable online business!

E-mail marketing

E-mail marketing is a form of direct marketing which uses electronic mail as a means of communicating marketing messages to an audience. In its broadest sense, every e-mail sent to a potential or current customer could be considered e-mail marketing. However, the term is usually used to refer to:

* sending e-mails with the purpose of enhancing the relationship of a merchant with its current or previous customers and to encourage customer loyalty and repeat business,
* sending e-mails with the purpose of acquiring new customers or convincing current customers to purchase something immediately,
* adding advertisements to e-mails sent by other companies to their customers.

Automation using email marketing system like AWeber or Infusionsoft marketing system ensures timely communication with prospects with a relevant targeted message.

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Email marketing system – Aweber

Keeping customers happy

Customer satisfaction – keeping customers happy

Keeping a customer happy is a live blood for the survival and growth of any business.  A happy customer will likely continue to do more business with you and refer their friends to do business with you.

Any businessman knows that it’s easier selling to an existing customer than to a new customer. But, not many small businesses have the manpower or financial resources to systematically build and grow their businesses.

Auto email follow-up systems: AWeber email system Infusionsoft system

Here are some facts to consider:

• Repeat customers are the key to future sales and profits.
• If they feel great, they will do more business with you and they will tell others.
• You can get more new business and clients by taking care of your customers than you can get out of any new business marketing plan.

Keeping past clients in contact

This is one area many small businesses often over-looked or do not hae the time or resouces to have a follow-up system wit past clients, or new prospects. As business and sales people today, we spend so much time, money and effort to generate new business, to get new customers, to grow the business. Yet, we let the customers who got us where we are slip away like it really doesn’t matter.

There are some simple and inexpensive systems that can be used to improve sales. Some of the systems like AWeber and Infusionsoft can be found on this website.

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