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Ten Tips for Choosing the Right Internet Business

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Ten Tips for Choosing the Right Internet Business

Use these guidelines to help you hone in on the perfect internet business to meet your skills and income needs

Ten Tips for Choosing the Right Internet Business

1. Don’t quit your day job – Since there are no guarantees in life, it doesn’t make sense to quit your day job until your internet business has proved it can replace the income your day job provides. Even then, you may want to keep your day job.

2. Understand that internet businesses fail – As proven by the dot com collapse, there is nothing ‘magical’ about having a business on the internet that guarantees success. In fact, most attempts at creating profitable businesses on the internet have failed. Even the big companies that have poured billions into their internet businesses have seen the majority of their efforts fail.

Don’t let this discourage you – just understand that failure is more frequent than success.

3. Establish your working parameters – Before you start evaluating different internet businesses, clearly establish your working parameters. Define how many hours a day, week, or month you are willing to work on the business. Define how much money you can afford to invest in start up costs. Define how many employees (if any), you are willing to take on and manage – (it was 2 years before I took on a part time member of staff), and define your exit strategy.

It is a good idea to discuss these parameters with your spouse or family partners before you set them in stone. Their input is important to your success.

4. Define your goals – Define what you want to accomplish with your internet business. How much income must the business generate before it is a success? How much a day, a week, a month, a year?

The amount of income you desire directly impacts which business models you choose.

5. Review the business models that have proven successful on the internet – The recent shakeout on the internet has left only a relatively few businesses standing. By looking at the survivors, we can see that a few business models seem to work well on the internet, while others have little chance of success.

Those business models that work well include:

* Subscription sites – charging a membership or subscription fee in return for providing access to a web site

* Applications on tap – charging a fee to use a product or service on the net

* Specialised software – developing and marketing specialized software to fit the special needs of higher end customers

* Support services – offering products, tools, templates, training on how to improve internet businesses

* eBay sales – selling items on eBay, either your own products, or working as an eBay Trading Assistant helping others sell their items.

The common denominator in all the above business models is the product is information or service based, and is delivered over the web. Choose a business model built on this and you have a much better chance of success.

6. Avoid business models that are failure prone – The massive failure of so many well-funded internet business ventures has shown the following business models should be avoided:

* Any business model that involves the physical delivery of products with minimal profit margins. Don’t try to sell dog food, groceries, furniture, or other widely available products via the net.

* Any business model that puts you in direct competition with Tesco, Amazon, Dell, or eBay. These larger companies can do it better, they can buy products cheaper, they have deeper pockets, and can sell at a loss longer than you can. The only way to win – don’t compete with them.

* Any business model where you buy wholesale, and try to sell retail. The margins are too slim, too much volume is required to make a profit. (If in doubt, ask Amazon.)

For the best chance of success choose a business model where you create or own the product you sell, the product is delivered digitally, you have little direct competition, customers can order online, and a single copy of the same product can be sold many times.

7. Evaluate your goals and parameters against each of the successful business models – Since it will be you who actually has to spend the hours working on your internet business, it should be you who decides which of the business models mentioned above best fit your time, talent, and desires. Some business models will produce lower incomes, but will require less work. While others will require much more work, but can produce much higher income.

Be sure to take into account how you might become a ‘prisoner of your own success’ if you choose a business model that requires your full time attention as your business grows.

8. Don’t overlook the obvious – You may already have the skills, expertise, inside knowledge, or niche hobby interest that could be the basis for a great internet business. For example, if you have several years experience running a bed & breakfast, then you might want to consider offering an internet based information product for those wanting to open their own bed & breakfast (a newsletter, a subscription web site, a buy/sell service, etc.)

9. Be careful who you take advice from – There are a lot of people offering advice on the subject of creating a successful online business. The only problem – the vast majority of these people haven’t had any success in creating or running their own online business. Most just jump into the advice or ‘guru’ business because it seems like an easy thing to do.

If you want to rely on gurus to lead you down the path, be sure they’ve been down the path themselves.

10. Listen to your heart and your head – Get involved with those businesses that make you happy and give you a reason to get up each morning. Avoid the ‘sounds too good to be true’ pitches, and the ‘I wouldn’t do this, but I really need the money’ excuses. Keep your priorities straight – family, health, spirit, community, and then, business.

One final tip – often it is a lot easier to get into a business than it is to get out of it.

Choose your business with as much diligence as you would choose a wife or husband. Because in the long run you may end up spending as much time with your business as you do with your spouse!

Nick James is a UK based direct marketer and product developer. During the last 5 years Nick has sold in excess of

Article from articlesbase.com



Question by Kaye B: What free internet site to start your own internet business and lots of traffic? Thanks?
Which internet site is free to start your own business and is easy to fill out.Has lots of traffic. Thanks

Best answer:

Answer by Richard
Seriously if you want to start a business selling stuff without spending any money at all your best bet may be Ebay and some of the other auction sites. Depending on your niche there may also be an auction or classified site that is very specific to the market you want to target so some searching is in order.

Richard

Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!

Top 7 Social Media Marketing Tips

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Top 7 Social Media Marketing Tips

Building on from the recent theme of preparing for the holiday season sales rush, this week I’m delving into the world of social media marketing.

The numbers around social media at the moment are mind blowing, so it should definitely be a consideration of any business before heading into the holiday period.

Before I delve into the tips, here’s a video I shared during a social media presentation I gave last week. It helps set the scene for the importance of social media for modern businesses.

1. Give your social media profiles a makeover:

When was the last time you checked how engaging your social profile is? Social media is an extension of your brand. Use the holiday season to give your profiles a make over:

1. New twitter background: did you even realise you can customise your twitter background. Check out these backgrounds to get inspired.

50 great examples of business branded twitter pages: http://www.creativeopera.com/2010/corporate-branding-on-twitter-50-excellent-examples/

2. Business Pages on Facebook: Is it time to create a Facebook business page that is more interesting than just a feed of your business’ activity and discussions?

Look at some of these company pages to see how you can take your business page to the next level.

Redbull – http://www.facebook.com/redbull
GAP – http://www.facebook.com/gap
L’Oreal – http://www.facebook.com/lorealparis

Here’s a list of 40 more: http://speckyboy.com/2010/08/15/40-highly-effective-facebook-business-pages/

3. Blog Design: Let’s not forget our good old blogs. Perhaps its time to add some new banners, change the template or even update our widgets on our blogs to give them a bit more sizzle.

2. Build your followers and connections

The size of your social media captive audience is a key influencer on the success of your campaigns. So it’s important to build your audience so that when you distribute content, engage in conversations and share offers – there’s enough people listening/watching.

1. Migrate existing clients across to social media

Use this as a time to try and encourage existing customers to connect with you via their social networks. It will provide you with another way to communicate with your clients outside of emails, the phone etc.

2. Encourage prospects and browsers to join your network

Even if you don’t convert a prospect or browser on first visit, persuading them to connect via social media gives you further opportunities to engage with them which can help you convert them later.

3. Get more reviews

Peer reviews are becoming more and more important in people’s buying process. So have you checked how many reviews your business and products have? Are they positive or negative.

It’s important to encourage your new customers to post reviews (preferably positive) on the major reviews sites. Make it easy for them and suggest where to go after the sale (either in person or via follow up marketing)

Here’s a list of the some of the review sites to focus on:

Yelp.com
Insiderpages.com
Maps.google.com
Citysearch.com
Local.Yahoo.com
Local.com
MerchantCircle.com

4. Special Offers for your followers

Use the holiday season as a chance to create social media specific campaigns and offers. IT’ll serve two purposes

Reward the people who have taken the time to connect with you in the social media sphere
It’ll give potential new social media followers a reason to connect with your company.

5. Engage in the Conversation

While social media is a great marketing tool, it’s often most effective when it’s used in a non direct marketing manner.

Commit to engaging in your social media sphere through conversations and contributions; comment, answer questions and posing opinions rather than just trying to promote products and services. You’ll be amazed at how effective this can be at driving new business if done effectively.

6. Integrate Social Media with other marketing

Social media is another one of the channels in your marketing mix. So use it in conjunction with other online and offline campaigns. It can help extend the reach of your marketing message, or alternatively provide another form of conversion from other campaigns.

7. Commit to creating some quality holiday valuable content

One the major strengths of social media is the viral nature of the medium. By creating and sharing valuable content (e.g. articles, videos, industry news, etc) – your social media audience can become your marketing force. They’ll share your content and ultimately promote your brand. The sort of marketing that money can’t buy!

So that’s my Top 7 Social Media Marketing Tips for Small Businesses this holiday season. As with most of your holiday season marketing strategies, the sooner you get started, the better the results will be when it counts.

There’s plenty of other social media marketing strategies to leverage during the holiday season, so what will you be using this year? Share your tactics with our readers below.

 

Thanks ,  Brought to you by : MSG Webmasters

By :  MSG Webmasters

Article from articlesbase.com

How Social Media Marketing and SEO Are Inter-Linked

Building on from the recent theme of preparing for the holiday season sales rush, this week I’m delving into the world of social media marketing.

The numbers around social media at the moment are mind blowing, so it should definitely be a consideration of any business before heading into the holiday period.

Before I delve into the tips, here’s a video I shared during a social media presentation I gave last week. It helps set the scene for the importance of social media for modern businesses.

1. Give your social media profiles a makeover:

When was the last time you checked how engaging your social profile is? Social media is an extension of your brand. Use the holiday season to give your profiles a make over:

1. New twitter background: did you even realise you can customise your twitter background. Check out these backgrounds to get inspired.

50 great examples of business branded twitter pages: http://www.creativeopera.com/2010/corporate-branding-on-twitter-50-excellent-examples/

2. Business Pages on Facebook: Is it time to create a Facebook business page that is more interesting than just a feed of your business’ activity and discussions?

Look at some of these company pages to see how you can take your business page to the next level.

Redbull – http://www.facebook.com/redbull
GAP – http://www.facebook.com/gap
L’Oreal – http://www.facebook.com/lorealparis

Here’s a list of 40 more: http://speckyboy.com/2010/08/15/40-highly-effective-facebook-business-pages/

3. Blog Design: Let’s not forget our good old blogs. Perhaps its time to add some new banners, change the template or even update our widgets on our blogs to give them a bit more sizzle.

2. Build your followers and connections

The size of your social media captive audience is a key influencer on the success of your campaigns. So it’s important to build your audience so that when you distribute content, engage in conversations and share offers – there’s enough people listening/watching.

1. Migrate existing clients across to social media

Use this as a time to try and encourage existing customers to connect with you via their social networks. It will provide you with another way to communicate with your clients outside of emails, the phone etc.

2. Encourage prospects and browsers to join your network

Even if you don’t convert a prospect or browser on first visit, persuading them to connect via social media gives you further opportunities to engage with them which can help you convert them later.

3. Get more reviews

Peer reviews are becoming more and more important in people’s buying process. So have you checked how many reviews your business and products have? Are they positive or negative.

It’s important to encourage your new customers to post reviews (preferably positive) on the major reviews sites. Make it easy for them and suggest where to go after the sale (either in person or via follow up marketing)

Here’s a list of the some of the review sites to focus on:

Yelp.com
Insiderpages.com
Maps.google.com
Citysearch.com
Local.Yahoo.com
Local.com
MerchantCircle.com

4. Special Offers for your followers

Use the holiday season as a chance to create social media specific campaigns and offers. IT’ll serve two purposes

Reward the people who have taken the time to connect with you in the social media sphere
It’ll give potential new social media followers a reason to connect with your company.

5. Engage in the Conversation

While social media is a great marketing tool, it’s often most effective when it’s used in a non direct marketing manner.

Commit to engaging in your social media sphere through conversations and contributions; comment, answer questions and posing opinions rather than just trying to promote products and services. You’ll be amazed at how effective this can be at driving new business if done effectively.

6. Integrate Social Media with other marketing

Social media is another one of the channels in your marketing mix. So use it in conjunction with other online and offline campaigns. It can help extend the reach of your marketing message, or alternatively provide another form of conversion from other campaigns.

7. Commit to creating some quality holiday valuable content

One the major strengths of social media is the viral nature of the medium. By creating and sharing valuable content (e.g. articles, videos, industry news, etc) – your social media audience can become your marketing force. They’ll share your content and ultimately promote your brand. The sort of marketing that money can’t buy!

So that’s my Top 7 Social Media Marketing Tips for Small Businesses this holiday season. As with most of your holiday season marketing strategies, the sooner you get started, the better the results will be when it counts.

There’s plenty of other social media marketing strategies to leverage during the holiday season, so what will you be using this year? Share your tactics with our readers below.

 

Thanks ,  Brought to you by : MSG Webmasters

Those who are successful in internet marketing world are those who take the advantage and opportunities offered by both the search engine optimization techniques and the social media marketing otherwise called the SMM. Social media marketing make use of the people as the end and the means. Social media marketing is a recent development in the internet marketing strategy. Since its emergence as marketing effort almost every known online marketer try to identify with the system, especially searchers online. It generates enough clicks through rate when site are promoted through the system.

Ideally social media were meant for help desk for customers and for branding purposes, but it has spread its tentacle to other marketing areas of the internet such that the name is synonymous with internet marketing as it has potential of linking and reaching out to all types of audience and researchers of any niche.

On the surface there may not be any linkage between the social media marketing and search engine optimization, the SMM was traditionally oriented towards off site relationship while SEO is oriented towards traffic generation to the website. However, their is potential use of social media especially the link and connection it can create between social media users, and the ability of interaction to be carried further to other discussion groups and related forums creating links in the process.  

It offered advantage in that it allows users multiple keywords as against limited keywords which were the case in SEO. It increases the chances of the website being gained access to and patronized. In this way it influences Search engine optimization.

The share relationship and mutuality involved in social media marketing help promote the site contents. Inbound links are created through mutual sharing and understanding between social media practitioners or clients. The concept of “share this” phenomenon that is characteristic of social media help create links between two friends sites thereby promoting the sites before other visitors to the social media forum or discussion group as the case may be. Bloggers can allow outsides to insert links to their post which help cement the brand credibility and solidify the community which is good for internet marketing.

However, in sharing and exchanging links markers are advised to be cautious, they should avoid incorporating and tracking codes. This has a negative effect, it does not benefit page ranking and search engine optimization results. To aid optimization in social media marketing make use of targeted keywords. To get the utmost search engine optimization values adopt the use of independent page titles.

Mobiles can also be used to gain access to social media but that can only be possible where such information is inserted in the social media tool.

For one to make it through the social media marketing network one needs total commitment. You must put in your time and power to participate actively. That did, expect a great pay off or divided from your time and efforts. It helps put your site at advantageous positions for constant indexing by the search engines. It enhances the profitability and growth of the site through constant traffic.

Through the effective use of social marketing you have, access to customer evaluation to your contents. It enhances great keywords for customer utilization. Social media marketing is great marketing tool.

A link building and internet marketing company can offer you highly professional services to meet all your SEO and website related needs. Get your FREE link building and SEO analysis at LinkBuilding.org today! Save money and get results.

Article from articlesbase.com


Question by Stranger Than Fiction: Help! Professional name for a Social Media Marketing company?
A friend and I are sitting here trying to come up with a catchy and professional name for her Social Media Marketing Consulting business and we are coming up completely empty handed…major creativity block….

Any ideas?

Best answer:

Answer by Ed Atun
THE INNOVATORS

TOMORROW TODAY

FAST FORWARD

THE MARKETING GENIUSES

SEE INTO THE FUTURE WITH US

Know better? Leave your own answer in the comments!

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Top 7 Ebay Business Tips To Help You Sell Things On Ebay ? Shared By Ebay Expert Virtual Assistant

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Top 7 Ebay Business Tips To Help You Sell Things On Ebay ? Shared By Ebay Expert Virtual Assistant

Many eBay sellers dream to become successful in eBay business, but very few rise to the top and succeed. The key to become a successful eBay seller is to provide quality products and sell them for a good profit margin.

eBay Virtual Office Assistantsshare 7 best selling tips to drive more traffic to your eBay business and explode your income:

eBay Business Selling Tip 1- Include Sticky Title:

Customers search items in terms of brand, model no, item specification, color, size etc. Make sure that you use these identifiers in your headline. Know more on how to write effective title  in ebay here. The hot and sticky headline drives more attention in the eBay business platform.

eBay Business Selling Tip 2-Make Your Description Short And To The Point:

Always keep your description simple and concise. Your description should expand on your title. Make use of the brand name, specifications, model #, color, size to your prospect. Remember the words you use will increase the sale of your product. Use them in such a way that it identifies you amongst the other competitors.

eBay Business Selling Tip 3-Price Your Product Accordingly:

Always keep on researching, of what is selling in the eBay market. Find the prices of similar products that are being sold, which in turn helps you in pricing your item. The best tactic is to cut off another 10% off of usual price and sell them in the eBay store. If you want to become successful eBay seller, without considering price, then list your item in “Buy it now” category and punch for “Free shipping”. This is the main strategy of becoming a power seller. If you are tired of finding out the competitive prices for the products you sell, delegate your work to professional virtual assistants who are qualified in Online Market Research to find out the best competitive price for your product.

eBay Business Selling Tip 4-Be Focused On Buyers’ Needs:

Repeat buyers is the bloodline of successful EBay sellers. When you ask any power seller, they will tell you that the majority of their sales are made to customers who have purchased from them before. Buyers care about your product, pricing and shipping. Once they have paid for the product, ship it as soon as you can. Always thank your customers for buying from you by leaving a positive feedback. Make your customers happy by giving freebies, if they purchase for next time.

eBay Business Selling Tip 5-Strive For High Star Rating:

Feedback plays a vital role in rating your products. You can receive more positive ratings when your positive feedback score is high. This in turn will increase your feedback rate. If you have100% rating but have sold your item to less than 100 people, then you can fairly estimate the rate of your success in eBay selling. But, if you sell to thousands of people and have a 98% rating, then you are certainly a successful seller. You can delegate this time consuming task to Ebay Business Virtual Assistants who are experienced in managing client store feedback. We quickly followup with negative and neutral feedbacks and work with customers to sort their concern and finally get the feedback revised.

eBay Business Selling Tip 6-Include Multiple Payment Options:

Multiple payment options are one of the best tactics for successful eBay selling. As eBay market is focused on a wide range of customers, eBayers use many different methods to pay for goods. Make sure that the ebay payment options should be safe and secured for both the buyer and seller. By accepting more payment methods you are attracting the attention of higher number of customers. Assure your customers with detailed info on payment options.

eBay Business Selling Tip 7-No Shipping Extortion:

Make sure your shipping rates are reasonable. Listings with free or discount shipping will encourage buyers to purchase additional items from you. Add the free shipping check box when you list your item for sale. When buyers search for items, they can sort results by price plus shipping. Items with free shipping or low shipping costs will rank higher.

Follow these simple tactics provided by our trained Online Business eBay Virtual Assistants to focus yourself as a top competitor in eBay market. If you need more assistance in successful eBay selling please contact us! We are really reliable, affordable, and efficient to make your product into profit. We never work for your competitors.

Online Business Virtual Assistant Company is a team of experienced virtual assistants. We takeover complete online eBay and Amazon business store routine operations in a budget so that the store owners can focus on core areas of their business, like business planning. Our services include remote shipping label printing, invoicing, customer service, feedback management, Supplier management, inventory tracking, return/replacement tracking, Internet research and claims and dispute management. We are also Social Media Virtual Assistant, Blog Content Writers, Article Writers, Internet Marketing Research Virtual Assistant and we offer complete small business outsourcing services. Please contact us today for a free consultation. Whether you need part time, full time or project based services, we will design the program that best fits your needs.

 

 

 

We are a team of vibrant yet experienced, creative yet professional, energetic yet insightful and highly creative yet accountable team of virtual assistants based in India. We excel at managing your online business virtually. We are great at what we do – help your small business and online store grow. Whether you need part time, full time or project based services, we will design the program that best fits your needs. Our services include complete online EBay and Amazon Store Outsourcing and customized services to online entrepreneurs and small businesses. We maintain your online presence(website,blog), Social Presence (Social Media Marketing Services), Internet Research to create database/reports,  MS Office projects and customized small business solutions for your unique business. Contact us at quote@online-business-virtual-assistant.com.

Article from articlesbase.com



How to make around 00 part-time opening up eBay affiliate stores. www.auctionexploit.com

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