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Keys To Being A Successful Affiliate Marketer In This Day And Age

December 20, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Keys To Being A Successful Affiliate Marketer

Do you know what the difference between being successful today is compared to being successful 10 years ago? If you said competition, then you are right. The reason competition makes being successful today a little bit harder is because there is always somebody competing with you no matter what niche you are in or where you are promoting your affiliate products.

Now, as a successful affiliate marketer myself I know what it takes to be successful and that is what I want to share with you today. Not only am I going to share with you the keys to being successful, I am going to give you a look into what I do and why it works.

Keys To Being A Successful Affiliate Marketer

Use Different Platforms

As an affiliate marketer you can’t just promote products from a website, you need to utilize the many platforms that are available to you. Some of the different platforms that I use and you should to are; Blogger, Facebook, Twitter, Google Plus, Youtube and my own website. If you want to be successful, the it is a must to use every platform that you can to promote your affiliate links.

Something that I highly recommend is that you don’t just use one platform for a certain product and another platform for something else, you need to test out which platform will work best for each product. If you can do this, then making sales will come a lot easier for you. Just remember that with affiliate marketing, everything needs to be split tested in order to get the best conversions.

Email Marketing

This actually is a different platform but the reason I left this separately is because email marketing is a whole different can of worms. Most people think that email marketing is very simple and it is, except for the fact of collecting emails. One thing that you need to understand is that you don’t just find an email address and then send an email, you need to make sure that person is interested in what you have to say.

The problem that most people have with email marketing is not that they don’t have a huge subscriber list, it is that they don’t have an interested list. When I say interested list I am talking about people who want to hear what you have to say. Trust me, if you want to make money with email marketing, then you need to get people to sign up for your email list by offering something related to what you are going to promote.

Tip: Even if you have 10 people in your email list, that is better than nothing and you should still sent emails every so often. Something that I would do is send out an email just to see how people are doing without promoting a product and the reason you do this is just to build some trust. I know this sounds a little backwards but the truth is that you need to be trusted in order to make sales.

Continued Education

One thing I know about affiliate marketing is that everything changes all the time and because of this you need to keep on learning. If you are a stock broker, real estate agent, insurance agent or a personal banker you are forced to go through continued education and it is so that you know everything about your industry. It is because of this that I believe that affiliate marketer should practice continued education so that they know everything about their industry as they possibly can.

Planning

Something that a lot of people totally forget about is the entire planning stage of affiliate marketing. Something that you need to understand is that you have to plan on what you are going to do and why. The reason I say this is because having a plan is the only way you are going to succeed. Think about it, if you are making money online right now, then you must have had at least a general plan in your head before you got started, right?

Never Quit

I should not have to tell you this but I will anyway, you can NEVER QUIT. The reason why I say you can never quit is because you can’t become successful if you don’t put all your time and effort into something. Trust me on this one, anybody will tell you that in order to be successful as an affiliate marketer you must keep trying and never give up.

As you can see, being a successful affiliate marketer will take some work but if you follow the keys to being successful, then you should have no problem. Just know that in order to be successful you will need to put in a good amount of work upfront.

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Filed Under: Affiliate Marketing Tagged With: affiliate marketer, competition, education, email marketing, niche, planning, successful

Tips To Creating Quality Niche Websites

December 19, 2011 By 6 Comments

Tips To Creating Quality Niche Websites

Did you know that one of the best ways to make money online is by creating a niche website? This is something that more and more people are getting into simply because they see how profitable they can be.

What I want to talk about with you today is how to create quality niche websites and give you tips on the process. The reason I want to do this right now is because I am tired of seeing so many people putting their time and money into something and doing it the wrong way. Trust me, about 70% of all niche websites are setup the wrong way and because of that they are not making that much money.

Before I get to the tips, I first want to tell you what you need to do in order to create a quality website. The very first thing you need to do is find some easy to rank for exact match domains. Once you do this you need to setup the site using WordPress and then make sure that your homepage is optimized for your main keyword. Once you have done this you need to write 4 more articles and place them as posts, this is done to help theme your site and make sure that there are some longer tail keywords coming to your site.

Now, in order to get you started I have done some of the work for you. Below you will find XX keywords and exact match domain names that you can get to start building a website from. All you need to do is go to Godaddy.com and purchase your domain name.

How to clean a laptop screen – 2400 local searches – CPC $3.01 – howtocleanalaptopscreen.org

how to fix scratched games – 1000 local searches – CPC $2.46 – howtofixscratchedgames.net & .org

how to clean an over – 1600 local searches – CPC $2.56 – howtocleananoven.org

black gloves – 1000 local searches – CPC $0.95 – blackgloves.org

how to shine shoes – 2400 local searches – CPC $1.06 – howtoshineshoes.net & .org

Tips To Create Quality Niche Websites

Write Quality Articles

The most important thing that you can do when creating niche websites is to write quality articles for it. Most people think that quality is not as important as backlinks and the amount of content that they have, but it really is. The better your content is and the more of it that you have, the better your website will look in the eyes of the search engines (especially Google).

Guru Tip: Get other people to write articles for you. Many gurus advise people to pay other writers to write articles for them because the more variety you have on your site (regarding style) will benefit your site.

Interlink All Articles

Something that many website owners forget to do is interlink all their articles to relevant pages. The best way to go about doing this is using a plugin that is called SEO Smart Links. The great thing about this particular plugin is that you can setup which words will link to which pages and then it does it for you automatically. Trust me, interlinking to all your articles is a great way to spread the link juice from one page to another.

Build Backlinks

Did you know that behind content, backlinks are one of the most important things a niche website can have? When you are starting to build backlinks to your niche website you need to do a few things to make it work effectively. The first thing you need to know is that you should never do profile links, blog comments or forum posts. What I would recommend doing is building links using guest posts and article marketing. The reason why I recommend building links using these methods is because the links will have relevant content around them which will help strengthen the backlinks.

Slowly Add Content

The last thing that you need to do is slowly add content as you see your site rise on the search engines. The most important thing you can do is slowly add the content because Google doesn’t like to see 10 new blog posts up on a site that has been inactive for weeks. Trust me, adding 1 new blog post every few days is more than enough to get your niche site to rank for your particular keywords as long as you are building backlinks.

As you can see, creating quality niche websites is not that difficult. If you want to create your very own niche website, then I highly recommend that you pick up one of the domain names above and start there. The nice thing is that I already did the hard part (keyword research) and now all you have to do is buy the site through Godaddy.com and get started.

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Filed Under: Internet Marketing Tagged With: articles, content, godaddy, making money online, niche, website

The Simple Ways To Building A Niche Website Empire!

December 9, 2011 By 3 Comments

The Simple Ways To Building A Niche Website Empire

If you are just starting out with Internet Marketing, there are tons of different ways of generating an online income. The problem most marketers have when first starting out is they try everything all at once for example PPC, PPV, and SEO.

There is no problem with running all those different types of advertising but it is way too hard! To be focused on all of those traffic sources can be very overwhelming and I know it because I started out that way.  I tried to make everything work but it never did. It was way too much on my plate. I would never be successful working on all of those traffic sources.

So about 2 and a half years ago I said enough is enough. I need to focus on one method of traffic generation and focus strictly on the traffic I am generating to my websites. So I picked SEO as my main focus of advertising and it still is not easy focusing on one topic versus trying to run PPC or PPV or various other traffic sources. You need to pick a traffic source and develop a system or blueprint that you can follow each and every day.

Once I started to grasp all the basics of SEO I started ranking websites very well and efficiently. I had developed my own system to ranking my websites. Things like learning to optimize Meta tags and Meta descriptions is pretty basic stuff once you know what you’re doing. If I were still working on all the traffic sources I would have never learned what I have come to learn today.

Backlinking was another piece of the SEO puzzle that I had grasped as well. I started learning that relevant backlinks where a major part of my online success. I am always seeing people add so much spam and crap to their website and I was always wondering why. I am always trying to build things for the long term instead of using any trickery that Google may catch onto.  I wanted to build a business that would last for years to come, not just a couple months.

Relevant backlinks give my websites a huge boost in rankings. Creating relevant backlinks makes Google reward me. I was ahead of the game. I was building a lot of quality backlinks that competitors didn’t have. I was beating my competitors by building better backlinks.

Some of the best places to get these links are blogs, forums, and Squidoo lenses. When building backlinks the highest authority backlink in Google’s eyes is an in content link. A backlink that is in the content of the page on the top fold. So when a searcher is reading the article they click your link which in turn gives you traffic and better ranking because Google thinks your website is something the searcher liked. So in return better rankings for you!

It is also always important to be diverse as well. You want to make sure when you build relevant backlinks that you are building all different kinds of links. You do not want to just have all blog comment backlinks because it doesn’t look natural. You want to stay under the radar by diversifying all of your backlinks. It is very important to do so that Google doesn’t think you are trying to game there system.

Once you fully optimize a website and build diversified backlinks to it how do I rank?! Well it takes time. You cannot build an online business over night. You need to build yourself up and keep growing. For example you cannot build 100 backlinks in 1 night. It will not look natural to the search engines. You cannot build links that are made industrial. For example you should build maybe 10 backlinks a day. You could build 15 backlinks a day. You always want to stay natural and under the radar. This will ensure that you keep things fresh for the search engines.

Once you start gaining momentum and ranking and you are hitting 50 visitors or more a day then it is time to add some affiliate offers or AdSense to monetize your website so we can start making money!

It is important that you do not add affiliate links to your website until you get 50+ visitors a day because it can be distracting. Checking stats all of the time is a huge time waster. You could be growing your online business bigger instead. So it is very important that you focus on traffic generation first. Chances are if you get less than 50 visitors a day you are not missing out on much money.

If you have no traffic you will have no money. That is why it is so important to focus on traffic generation first and foremost. You want to make sure you are adding value to your niche. Write good content that is unique and informational. You don’t want to give your readers a 100 word crappy article or your visitors will not like your website and most likely will never come back. You want to add value!

 

Matt Green has been a full time internet marketers for 2 and a half years building 100’s of niche websites and working with local businesses and there online presence.  http://www/evergreeninternetmarketers.com

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Filed Under: Internet Marketing Tagged With: backlinks, competitors, forums, internet marketing, links, niche, optimize, quality, seo, website

Branding Yourself as an Expert in Your Niche

November 25, 2011 By 4 Comments

Branding Yourself as an Expert in Your Niche

Regardless of what niche you’ve chosen, it’s important that you learn how to brand yourself online. Branding yourself in your niche can be as simple as creating a slogan or a tagline that allows others to easily recognize you. You want your ‘brand’ to be viewed as the top authority. You want to be the go to guru in your industry, so choose a brand wisely.

You can start by coming up with a few keywords that people already associate with your business. Look over what words are driving traffic to your site. Do visitors happen on your site after searching for words like ‘dog training’ or ‘caring for pets?’

If you don’t have sufficient website traffic to view the analytics yet, then try asking people familiar with your business what words they’d use to describe it. Once you’ve come up with words describing your online presence, look for an easy to remember tagline.

For instance, if you run a parenting website that also discusses frugal living, you could brand yourself as the frugal mom shopper. Once you’ve come up with a tagline that you like to describe yourself or your business, start sharing it with everyone.

Sign your blog posts with it. Use it on your website. Instead of having an about page, try having a page on your website ‘about the frugal mother.’ This provides you with one more way to brand yourself.

Add your slogan to your email and forum signatures. While you may have heard that no one likes a braggart, in the case of online marketing, it’s not only acceptable to brag about yourself, but it’s a way to rise to the top of your niche.

Businesses use this technique offline as well. For example, you’ve heard the phrase ‘Finger lickin’ good’ used by Kentucky Fried Chicken restaurants. They wouldn’t say, ‘passably good chicken.’ Who’d want to eat there?

Brand yourself by building an audience that views you as a helpful resource and they’ll help spread the word about you, too. Word of mouth is very powerful in branding, so treat every prospect well.

If you’re pursuing article marketing, make sure that you add a short biography that mentions your slogan and your website. This biography should be the same for all of the articles so that visitors begin to recognize your name and associate you with your brand.

Brand yourself by guest authoring to an already established audience. Find a blog that’s similar to yours and offer to write a guest post. You can use one of your articles as a forum topic as well. Forums often rank high in Google because like blogs, they are continually updated. If you brand yourself as an expert, people will begin to think of you as one.

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Filed Under: Internet Marketing Tagged With: branding, expert, marketing, niche, online

After Nailing Down a Niche You Need to Tackle Keywords

August 15, 2011 By 3 Comments

After you’ve picked your niche, you need to do some keyword research in order to get the word out about your site. Many beginning entrepreneurs make the mistake of choosing their niche and then launching a website shortly after that with no thought to keyword research.

But entrepreneurs that grasp the benefits of well-chosen keywords take the time to research because they understand the relationship between traffic and keywords. Proper keyword research will allow you to know which words get your target audience’s attention because those are the words they use themselves in a search engine.

Keyword research will position your website or blog at the top of search engine results so that your site receives plenty of traffic. When you’re targeting keywords, even subtle things like the plural form of a word make a difference.

For instance if your niche is pet training then it’s important to know that the word ‘dog’ receives forty five million searches a month while the word ‘dogs’ receives only sixteen million.

Your goal is to select keywords that will garner you the most searches per words. What you’re looking for is something with little competition but a lot of searches. You can shell out money to pay for fancy keyword tools like Market Samurai to help you in your quest, but there are free alternative tools like Google Adwords Keyword Tool where you still get the information you need to get the traffic you want.

Using the wrong keywords means you’re missing out on important traffic and missing out on the sales you could be making. You can use the wrong keywords and bring people to your site, but it’ll be those people who are not interested in what you’re selling. You want your keywords to be relevant to your audience.

When you build your site, you also want to make sure that you not only use keywords in your paragraphs, but you also want to make sure that you use keywords in your titles. When you pick a name for your website, select one with a keyword or keywords in the URL.

Remember the better you use SEO on your site, the higher it will rank when search engines display the results. One of the mistakes entrepreneurs make is naming their pages incorrectly in general.

Be specific. Don’t have an ‘About’ page. Going back to the earlier example about pet training, have an ‘About Pet Training’ page. When you put up a contact page or box, use a keyword phrase there as well. Such as, “Contact me for more information on pet training.” This nets you additional keywords.

Click here to download a trial copy (included discount if you choose to purchase it) of Market Samurai which is the keyword research tool  I personally chose, and love.

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Filed Under: SEO Tagged With: entrepreneurs, keyword research, keywords, market samurai, niche, Position, rank, relevent, seo, SEO, traffic, url

Securing a Joint Venture with an Influential Niche Marketer

July 28, 2011 By 12 Comments

 

A joint venture is creating a partnership with someone else where it’s a beneficial atmosphere for all parties in the JV. Big businesses do it all the time. They reap visibility and money making opportunities because they understand that a JV is a way to get a bigger slice of the marketing pie.

It’s a slice you can’t afford not to go after yourself. One of the smartest marketing strategies you can put into play is have a joint venture with a marketer whose word carries a lot of weight online.

But from a profit standpoint, it doesn’t look like the more influential marketers need to align themselves with you. You might feel intimidated or like there’s some “good old boys” club that you couldn’t possibly break into. Or maybe you feel like if you don’t have a comparable sized list, they wouldn’t even consider you. But that’s not always true.

If you’re confident that you have a solid product, then you want to seek out a marketer to JV with who has an existing customer base who would be the perfect fit for your product. The size of the list doesn’t matter if the product isn’t a fit – it wouldn’t convert either way.

Don’t reach out to them by using a form letter. That’s asking for a rejection. It says, “You weren’t important enough for me to treat it as unique.”  Your contact with them is either going to sell them on the idea (and make them interested in hearing more) or it’s going to make them to turn you down flat. So you want your contact with them to be your best first impression.

You want to write a personalized (yet short) letter and give them good reasons why they should JV with you – an offer they can’t refuse. You would do this by explaining your product – how it works, what it’s done for you and who your target audience is – pointing out that it’s the same as those on their list.

Then you explain how a JV with you would work hand in glove with their niche to benefit them as well. You want to mention not only the possibility of increased revenue, but also how you can dominate the niche by joining forces.

To make it an enticing offer, you would have to give a little more on your end than maybe you’d normally give affiliates. For example – you could up the commission to sweeten the pot or give their list something no other affiliates are allowed to give out for free.

Where are you going to find that influential niche marketer? The same place you hang out online – in your business forums, through online networking opportunities, at seminars, etc.

You might never have approached someone before about the possibility of a JV and the thought might make you a little unsure of yourself, but keep in mind that every marketer was once where you were and just go for it.

Filed Under: Internet Marketing Tagged With: internet marketer, internet marketing, joint venture, JV, marketer, marketing strategies, niche

6 Ways to Make a Living From SEO

July 12, 2011 By 20 Comments

SEO

 

Megan Duckett owns a theatrical-sewing business in California that she named “Sew What?” She wanted to branch out and figured setting up a website would expose her business to new customers nationwide, and hopefully around the globe. Setting up a site, hiring one employee, soliciting past clients and cold-calling new ones did just enough to keep the business afloat; 20% of her sales were to other states, and she conducted two overseas transactions. Then Megan discovered SEO Services.

In 18 months Megan’s revenues skyrocketed 45%. Consequently, her business now employs 33 people in a 15,000-square-foot facility, and there are plans for expansion. One third of her sales are in California, 2/3 in other states, and she’s made 55 international transactions. When interviewed by Businessweek, Megan said, “It’s all been the search engine optimization and some low-budget, pay-per-click ads I’ve placed on certain industry terms…”

How Can I Do That?

1. Keyword Research

Know your competition. Use some free tools like SEOmoz Term Extractor, Open Site Explorer and Alexa Search Analytics to keep tabs on hot keywords in your niche. Take notes on what keywords your competitors rank highly for, which keywords rank poorly for them, and even the mediocre terms.

These tools also help you keep tabs on keywords that are diminishing in use so that you can update your website accordingly. Older websites, i.e., established domains, have more trust than newer websites, so older sites tend to rank higher for those mediocre terms than fresh competitors.

2. On-Page Optimization

Make sure to use keywords in outgoing links, title tags, meta descriptions, H1 and H2 headers, in bold face, and in the ALT text of images. Keep “keyword density” in mind here. Keyword density is the ratio of keywords and key phrases to the total number of words on a page. Blogs benefit from a keyword ratio of 2% to 5%, while the optimum ratio for eCommerce websites is slightly higher at 4% to 8%.

3. Content Like No Other

When writing about the latest product or event in your niche, avoid regurgitating what your competitors have written on the topic. Go into greater depth where possible with facts, stats and graphs or charts. When writing opinion pieces or reviews, do so with more clarity and depth than your competition. In short, valuable content is writing that’s easy to understand, factual (therefore reliable), and straight to the point.

4. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising

Paying to have your website at the top of the search engines guarantees more traffic, a precursor to potential sales. The PPC model is affiliate-based, and as a merchant you want solid affiliates. The cost per click (CPC) paid to search engines varies based on factors such as which search engine is used, keyword competitiveness, the day and time a visitor is surfing the web, along with visitor interest, intent and location. Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, and Microsoft adCenter operate under a complex bid-based model.

5. Linking

Building quality backlinks takes time, but the rewards can be tremendous. The goal is to have websites that rank high in the search engines link back to you. This generates a ton of traffic.

6. Blogging

Run a companion blog to your website that shows customers you are passionate about your niche. Not just passionate about what can be sold, but a fellow enthusiast, be it camping, marketing, martial arts, whatever. Use SEO techniques to get your blog ranked higher so web surfers can share in your enthusiasm for a given niche, and then find your website.

 

Amber McDougon is a professional writer and blogger with a particular
interest in the open source Joomla platform. She has been helping
companies build and maintain their online relationships with customers
since 2005. http://www.inetzeal.net/

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Filed Under: SEO Tagged With: backlinks, Business, content, keyword density, make a living, Megan Duckett, meta, niche, rank, Search Engine Optimization, seo, Sew What, websites

Branding Your Name on the ‘Net

June 8, 2011 By Leave a Comment

Branding Yourself

Branding your name (or your pen name) is very important on the Internet, no matter what niche you’re in.  You need to establish yourself as an authority in your market, because people trust authority figures.

They trust their recommendations, they trust that their products will be of good quality, and they trust that they have integrity.  It also lends credence to the buyer that you’re a real person – not just some nameless, faceless entity trying to sell them something on a static, automated website.

You should put your name on everything you create.  Whether it’s a membership site, an eBook, or something as small as a PLR article pack for sale – you should put your name on it.  Getting your name out there is so essential to your ongoing success.

Think about all of the marketing gurus you’ve heard of.  Some of them you may not have heard of yet, especially if you’re new, but chances are you’ve heard of at least a few of these.  Have you heard of John Reese, Mike Filsaime, Frank Kern, Dan Kennedy, Joe Vitale, Willie Crawford, or the late Gary Halbert?

If you’ve been in marketing long at all you’ve surely heard of at least one of these people. People know and remember the names of these people because they put their names on everything they put out.

Their names are all over the marketing forums, their eCovers, their headers, and everything else they do.  They work very hard to brand their names, because their names become the brands.  People buy their products simply because their name is on it.

Buyers think that the product must be good, because the person is so well-known.  You should do the same thing with your name.  Always use the same name on everything you do within a particular niche.

You may not want to use your real name for whatever reason, but your name needs to be a “real name.”  A nickname usually won’t cut it in most markets, but sometimes it works – like in the case of Travis “The Bum” Marketer or the “Rich Jerk.”

If you’ve signed up for forums under a nickname, ask the moderators if they can change your name to your real name or pen name.  You might not want to tell the moderator’s it’s a pen name.  That’s up to you.

Keep getting your name out there any way you can.  Host teleseminars, JV with well-known people if possible, and offer to help create content for well-known people in your niche in exchange for a Bio Box that hosts your name and link to your website.

Offer to be an interview subject for someone.  Be a “guest author” for popular websites and blogs in your niche, and create 100% original content for them. Never stop branding your name.  Even when you’re as famous as Donald Trump, the king of name branding, don’t stop.

Donald still puts his name on everything he does.  His name appears in huge, bold letters on his books.  He names buildings after himself.  Think of Trump Tower, Trump Taj Mahal, and Trump Plaza.  His name is all over everything.

Not only is it a matter of pride, but it keeps his name everywhere. You may never be as famous as the Donald, or even as famous as John Reese, but you might become known as the king or queen of your own little niche or for a particular slant that grows in popularity.

 

 

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Filed Under: Internet Marketing Tagged With: authority, branding, branding yourself, internet marketing, market, niche

10 Awesome Tips to help you grow your Fan Page

April 1, 2011 By 3 Comments

PLR Internet Marketing Fanpage

If you own a business (and I do consider a blog a business) then you most likely have either heard about the benefits of owning a fan page and using it to drive traffic to your blog, attract opt ins, interact with likeminded people, and so much more. Or you are looking into it as a future investment for your blog or small business. As someone with well over 20,000 Facebook fans I thought I’d share the various methods I’ve used in the last 8 months or so that I’ve had it, in the hopes of helping others to grow their own.

For the record, Facebook is the second highest traffic website with 135 million unique visitors each month, if you are able to siphon off even a small portion of that to your blog I’m sure you’d be happy as traffic is truly the lifeblood of a blog, and without it things can be very lonely indeed.

Here are the various methods I’ve personally used to grow my page to almost 22,000 fans in just a few short months.

1.       I added the Facebook widget right into the center of my blog, where people could see that a. I had a fan page, and b. people before them had liked the page. There is something to be said for social proof, nobody likes to be the first person to join a page that has no other members, and c. they could like my fan page directly from my website.

2.       I incorporated my 3 major points of contact into all my correspondence in the signature section of my emails. Now whenever I send an email out there is my website, Twitter account, and Fan page listed at the bottom where curious people can click over and check things out, and hopefully add themselves to my network.

3.       I write blog posts occasionally with blatant links to my fan page knowing that a few people will read the post, find value and add themselves to my network. www.facebook.com/plrinternetmarketing (hint, hint, nudge, nudge…) lol

4.       I recently ran a contest where I gave away copies of the Facebook Marketing Uncovered course from www.fbmarketinguncovered.com which had a $47.00 value for the winners. I’m still willing to give away one to anyone who can help spread the word about my fan page and help me grow my followers. I set out to pass the Problogger fan page which was 2000 fans above me just a few days ago, and is now only about 1200 fans above us. (Turns out he’s growing quite a bit daily too, who knew?)

5.       This one is actually huge, and resulted in quite a few fans joining my page. I used the free service from Social oomph and set up a direct message that said hello, and pointed my new followers to my fan page. As you can imagine I’m also actively growing my Twitter community so at over 22,000 followers I’ve sent out quite a few DM’s inviting people to join me. It’s important to note that I don’t keep it at one message but rotate it as my needs change. I might point them to my fan page one month, and my free e-book offer the next. This is one tip I’d implement if I were you!

6.       Another hidden gem that I’d highly recommend you take advantage of is Twiends. This is a social growing community that connects Twitter users, Facebook pages, and YouTube enthusiasts. You used to be able to use them to drive traffic to your blog or website also, but they’ve been slapped by Google recently and taken the feature offline until further notice. This one is powerful, so head over, tell them I sent you, and start using them to add fans and followers to your social network!

7.       Try finding fan pages that are in your niche, and liking them, mention to the owner that you too are working hard at growing a fan page community, and ask if they’d reciprocate. Most will, but don’t be upset if they don’t. Often they just might be busy with building a business and not have time to respond to every request made of them.

8.       This one I haven’t used myself, but have “liked” other pages because of it and have to say it was powerful from a consumer point of view. Pages that create videos and post them on the page with the intention of helping people toward furthering a goal. The page that comes to mind is Get 10,000 fans that ironically has close to 25,000 at the time of this writing. I was trying to reach 6,000 fans when I first found them and they inspired me to aim for… yep, you guessed it. 10,000 fans. I’ve been chasing them ever since, but they grow at almost exactly the same speed I do, so are always just out of my reach. I figure I’ll either catch up to them or hit a million fans in about four years!

9.       Make sure you interact with the current members of your page, and post quality information for them daily. Also develop a set of rules for members who wish to post links on your wall. There are unfortunately millions of spammers who target large fan pages with no other goal but to spam the internet with links to their crappy offers or affiliate pages. I personally remove the links within minutes usually, and ban the user that spammed it in the first place.

10.   If you have an email list of subscribers that you’ve built up via your blog them make a point of asking them to also head over and like your fan page. Perhaps you can even find some way of rewarding the ones that do as a way of saying thank you. These people are already fans of your blog so it usually isn’t too hard to convince them to also “like” your fan page as a way of showing their support.

A friend of mine Mark Harai wrote on his blog yesterday that what makes a blog awesome is the community you build around it, and that is so very true. What’s the point of writing great content day in and day out if there is no one there to appreciate it?

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Filed Under: Blogging Tagged With: blog, bloggers, Blogging, Contests, Facebokk, facebook marketing, fan page, Mark Harai, niche, small business, Social Network, twiends, twitter

Top 10 Reasons to Work Online

March 11, 2011 By 17 Comments

Bryant Park, late Apr 2009 - 21
Creative Commons License photo credit: Ed Yourdon

There are many differences between offline jobs and the online ones that are starting to attract so many people recently. Here I’m going to share a top ten list of reasons why you might want to consider the switch to internet marketing, and perhaps leave that J.O.B. you hate so much. (And yes, I hear the screams of “I love my job” going out at that last sentence, but you’re still here reading this aren’t you?) J

I’ve never done a list in reverse order so, thought I’d switch things up, and be a little different today!

10.          You get to meet a great bunch of people who are likeminded and are busy creating their own little niches in their little corner of the online world. I know you might be thinking of geeks with glasses sitting behind a keyboard and monitor, but trust me there is a diverse world of people out here doing their thing day in and day out from the comfort of their own home, and loving every minute of it.

9.            The freedom to set your own hours. Now if you read yesterday’s post titled “Scheduled Downtime” then you know that you can end up working too little or too much, but having the choice is sure nice, and I have faith that you are serious enough about your business that you’ll work it hard and see it grow. No more cringing when the boss asks you to come in on Saturday, or when he/she waits till the last five minutes of the work day to come ask you to stay late.

8.            Holidays where I used to work were dictated by “the needs of the business” and also by seniority, so that meant there were entire months blacked out each and every year. Now I’m free to leave the city whenever I wish, and don’t have to feel like I’m abandoning my job each time I leave.

7.            No more commute! Need I say more? I used to waste almost 2 hours out of each day driving to and from work. Now that time is spent building my business, cooking dinner for my family or doing something I feel is a valuable use of my time. Now I hate to scare you with numbers but that works out to 20 full days spent commuting each and every year. (Assuming you have 3 weeks of holidays and get all the other recognized holidays off).

8.            Location, location, location! No more stuffy cubicle, you can choose to work from the beach (not recommended), the local coffee shop, a public library, backyard, barnyard, or even train yard! My point is that you can choose to make yourself comfortable at home in an office, or dedicated space, or you can choose to take work on the road with you. I was recently stranded for three days because of car trouble (New Year long weekend) and because I had my laptop, and a WIFI connection, I was able to stay productive despite the unpleasant situation.  Try calling your boss and telling him your car broke down six hours out of the city and you will be working from your hotel room for the next three days, and see how that feels.

9.            The ability to set your own income. Now this one isn’t meant to imply that working online is easy, or that money just flows into your account when working online, it doesn’t. If you want money, you have to work for it, and work hard and smart, but at the end of the day the harder, and smarter you work dictates the income you’ll earn. There are so many income streams available to you online, and this allows you to diversify, and create multiple streams of income which will provide you with a higher level of security that you’d experience with a traditional job that has a single source which is your pay check, or perhaps the residual that you earn from your savings and investments.

10.          And finally number ten, the fact that you are building something of value and substance that is all your own, an asset that will provide for you and your family for the rest of your lives, and if built right for your children, and their children after that. People think nothing of working ten or twenty years building up someone else’s company into a profitable entity that will provide for them and their families, until they decide to finally sell it off. Isn’t it time you started building for your future?

For all of the benefits and rewards that come from working your own business from home, and the fact that I whole heartedly recommend it for anyone with the desire, I’d be remiss if I didn’t tell you it is a very serious decision that shouldn’t be entered into without a great deal of thought and consideration.

Invest the time in creating a solid business plan, and set goals that you’ve thoroughly researched. Talk with people already in the niche you’re considering, and don’t be afraid to ask advice. Often they’ve already made mistakes that they can warn you about and found the area’s that deserve the most focus in order to ensure the success of the business.

 

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Filed Under: Work from home Tagged With: building something of value, freedom, home office, internet marketing, job, location, niche, no more commute, set your own income, top ten list, top ten reasons, Work from home, work online
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