Ever Enterprise Marketing

5 Ways That Articles Can Grow Your Business!

In today’s highly competitive online community, the importance of attracting highly targeted traffic to your website cannot be overemphasized. Driving visitors to your site can be your only means of survival, especially in the cutthroat world of online marketing.

However, getting a high search engine ranking can be very difficult. Fortunately there is an almost unlimited number of strategies you can use to drive traffic to your site.

These strategies include anything from ezine advertising to affiliate marketing, however the downside is that most of these techniques come at a cost. Nevertheless, there are ways to promote your website and increase your traffic without spending anything.

Writing articles is without question one of the most effective web site promotion strategies you can use and I strongly suggest you seriously consider using article as part of your overall marketing plan.

Here are the top seven ways in which writing articles can help improve your web traffic and grow your profits:

1. More Reach…

You can post your articles on your website or you can submit them to other sites such as ezines directories to leverage your reach. Submitting your articles to these sites gives exposure not only to your ideas but also to your website.

You can also submit your articles to popular ezines and take advantage of their popularity. Other sites who find your article relevant may also link back to you. Thus you increase your link popularity, which is one of the most important strategies in the internet world.

Remember that most people are looking for information online and by filling this need with your article you may reap the benefit of more exposure and higher web traffic.

2. Effective No-Cost Advertising…

Submitting your articles and allow other site owners to publish your work presents an opportunity to advertise your website without paying exorbitant fees.

Although you should avoid marketing language in your articles and make it informative and useful to your readers, you can always include your site’s link in the resource box. In addition, by making your article relevant and helpful to your readers, you are branding yourself as an expert in your niche, which could ultimately lead to a visit and hopefully a purchase.

Good quality content in an article is far better and more effective than a few lines of ad space as you have a very special opportunity to pre-sell your product or service to your prospective customer.

3. Higher Search Engine Rankings…

It’s no secret that search engines love fresh unique content. If this content is on your site and it’s highly relevant to the topic of your niche, then the search engines will reward you with a higher ranking.

So while your main aim is to make your article as informative as you can for your readers, you should also optimize it so that it acts as spider food for the search engines.

You can do this by including long-tailed keywords in your article and by fully utilizing all your on-page techniques to attract the search engine spiders.

Making your article keyword rich you can greatly improve

the search engine ranking of your site. Remember that keyword density is one of the most important factors that search engines use when determining the search engine ranking of site.

However, you should always provide relevant, useful and pertinent information. Avoid the temptation of overusing keywords just to gain a high ranking as this may turn off most web surfers.

Relevance and quality is still the most important things to consider when writing articles and it will be doubly useful to your site if you make your articles attractive for the spiders.

Never forget that content that is optimized for the search engines is a very effective strategy to gaining higher rankings - so use it to your greatest benefit whenever you can!

4. Increases Your Link Popularity…

Link popularity is one of the factors used by search engines in determining search engine rankings. In simple terms, link popularity is measured by the number of pages linking back to your site and articles are a key method of getting one-way links to your site.

But instead of looking for other sites who would want to establish reciprocal links with you, simply submit your article to other sites. When websites pick up and publish your article, you automatically get a link partner.

The key is to make your article especially useful and appealing, so that more websites will be encouraged to publish it.

5. Build Your Reputation and Credibility…

By writing excellent, original and relevant articles you not only give your site exposure, you are also creating a good impression on your prospects. Encourage more people to visit your site and do business with you by establishing an impressive reputation through your articles. Be seen as an expert in the field and your will ultimately gain more customers eager to do business with you.

In this highly competitive world, excellent credibility and trust may be the only things you need to attract new customers or make loyal patrons out of your existing customers. Original, relevant, useful and pertinent articles are important tools you should utilize to improve and grow your business.

Technorati Tags: marketing, online marketing, article marketing, generate traffic, web site traffic, classifieds

Add comment February 25th, 2007

How to Use Forums to Create Profitable Niche Products!

Niche marketing at its best helps to solve real problems that real people face and live with everyday. If you can come up with a product or service in a niche market that will help people solve their problems - and they are willing to pay for it -  then you that basis for a very profitable online niche business.

The things that people view as ‘problems’ can encompass everything from interior decorating to chronic insomnia, and more often than not, people are searching for solutions to their problems.

All you need to do is to identify these problems and provide a solution. But how can you do this?

A good way to find out what people consider a problem is to visit online forums relating to your chosen niche. People talk about anything and everything online as it gives them anonymity, so forums give them the avenue to express their concerns.

By visiting forums and taking note of what people are most concerned about you can search the internet for information that will help them solve these problems.

Once you have gather information, write articles about your topic - or have written for you. In this way you can build a content-rich website for niche marketing that helps to provide solutions to this problem.

Naturally you would monetize the pages on your site, as well as include an optin box to build your list so that you can sell them on the backend to multiply your profits.

An additional way to use forums to help you build a niche market website is to join a forum, and post a question about a popular topic that is being discussed. This way you may receive many more responses regarding your topic and you could use these to create an ebook or report on this subject.

The fact is that many people will buy an ebook that is filled with information they find useful, even if they could actually gather for themselves as it saves them time - and to most people their time is very valuable.

Technorati Tags: online marketing, marketing, niche marketing, niche, forum, forum marketing, classifieds

Add comment February 25th, 2007

Where to Find Fresh Content for Your Blog!

It’s a basic law of online marketing - if you have a blog it needs to be regularly updated to maintain a high level of readership. If you don’t provide informative content on a regular basis, you simply won’t get any return visitors - and no visitors equals no profits!

So it’s no secret that you need to continually find fresh topics to write about, and in this article we’re going to discuss how to do just that.

The very first option that you should write about is a topic that you feel passionate and interested in. Remember, you’ve chosen to create a blog or website so that you can earn an online income so you have an opportunity to escape your mundane job…

…so forcing yourself to write about something that you have little or no interest in could be as torturous as your mundane job. So the key is to create a blog about a niche topic you either have some experience with or have some level of interest.

The other reason you need to write about something you’re passionate about is because your feelings and emotion shows through your writings. If you feel indifferent to a certain subject but still write about it just for the sake of it, your readers will notice…

… and forcing yourself to write about a subject will not establish a welcoming style to your readers!

Once you have chosen your main theme, start posting to your blog and make it a habit to post at least once every day, even if it’s only a comment on the newspaper article you read today.

Think of yourself as a gigantic train. It takes a lot of effort to get you moving. First, you might just budge an inch, and later trudge slowly on until you finally reach your full speed. Then, once you get going, it’s almost impossible to stop.

However, no matter how well you know your topic, your brain is bound to get exhausted over some time, so here are some proven methods to help you brainstorm content for your blog:

1. The very best way to brainstorm is to see what other bloggers have to say about stuff happening in your niche - and the best way to find related blogs is to search http://blogsearch.google.com/ or www.technorati.com

When you research other blogs you can gather more knowledge and information on your subject. You can then make reference and comment on what others have to say on your own blog!

2. Once you’ve established contacts with other bloggers in your field, you’ll have quite a continuous “conversation” happening on your blog, so you’ll not need to actively search for more content to write about.

A great place to find additional information is to search for news articles related to your niche in the local newspaper or via any of the many online article directories.

3. You can also have contact with people with the same interest as you in your particular niche you choose, so you will eventually build up a bank of questions and answers and interesting discussions to write about in your blog.

To do this, join forums related to your niche, but don’t join every forum there is out there. Stick with one or two of the most focused and most popular in your niche. This will also come in handy much later in gaining traffic and generating profits.

Above all, you must keep up your momentum of posting at least once per day (or more if you have a lot of content to write about) to entice your readers to keep coming back each day to see what is new.

Doing this will also attract the attention of the search engines as they will recognize that you are updating your blog with fresh content everyday - and they just LOVE this.

So the added bonus is that your blog will get spidered on a more frequent basis and when this happens you have a higher chance of getting extra traffic from the search engine listings.

Technorati Tags: online marketing, marketing, blogs, create blogs, niche marketing, niche, classifieds

Add comment February 25th, 2007

How To Sell More To Your Existing Customers

Regardless of all the different traffic techniques in the world, even with proven sales copy and conversion methods in place, even with years of studying and applying various direct and indirect marketing approaches, the one thing I have found that brings in the most money to my business is the ability to upsell each individual customer on an additional item they did NOT intend to originally purchase.

For those of you who may be unfamiliar with the term “upsell,” let me use an example from one of the world’s most famous companies to illustrate this point:

When people walk into the fast-food giant, McDonald’s, to order a simple hamburger or a Vanilla shake, without fail they are presented with the phrase that has helped this company dominate the fast-food market:

“Would you like fries with that?” Other fast food outlets will ask you, “Would you like a drink or an apple pie with your meal?” This is another very effective example of an upsell.

These fast food giants sell millions of dollars worth of extra food and drinks worldwide every year because they know how to effectively use an upsell. So now you may be saying that that is all well and good for McDonalds, but I am in a totally different business. I don’t sell fast-food.

It doesn’t matter! Upselling your customers is simply providing the next logical solution to your customer’s next logical need. It’s your job to always create that next logical need and continually sell and sell. There’s always one more thing to sell.

One of the major mistakes I find in dealing with small businesses is that they believe once their business has provided their product to the customer, that’s the end of the process. There’s nothing that could be further from the truth.

Every sale needs another sale because every need that’s satisfied will create still another need sometime in the future. The conclusion you should draw is that you need to create the upsell and continue creating upsells as a neverending logical step in the launching of an effective marketing mission.

You might say, I don’t have any product or service to sell as an upsell. My answer to that is, develop one.

Even if you don’t produce the product or service, someone else does and that someone else gladly will pay you to allow them to have access to your client base so they can upsell your customers. There’s always something else to sell them.

The practical implications to upselling will most likely result in forming joint venture relationships whereby you devise a win-win for all parties.

Another key is finding your “Business Within Your Business.” A real powerful concept is to challenge yourself, your clients, vendors, and employees to constantly search for new businesses within your business.

There are an unlimited number of offshoot businesses you can create. You can have an offshoot of consulting to those people you sell to. You could then communicate and market and also do seminars and workshops.

For car dealers, they can provide extended warranties and insurance to new car owners. For a contractor, whether it’s heating and cooling, pools, pest control, or whatever, they can also provide annual service contracts.

An example would also be a pool contractor, who for instance, might use upselling through the offering of an annual service contract to clean and service a pool four times a year. This can dramatically improve his bottom line. In fact, this can actually double the value of your customers by an added income of 40% when they sign an annual contract.

Let’s say the service call for a pest control or pool service call is $100 and there are 100 customers per year. There’s a gross of $10,000, which is $100 per customer. The upsell strategy is an annual contract where you’re going to visit four times a year. The cost for each visit to the customer is $100, so the total cost at this point is $400 (before giving a discount.)

If they buy today, you give them a discount of $150, so $250 is the cost to the customer. If you close just 40% of these people, your new revenue is $10,000. 40% of 100 is 40 people times $250 which is the cost of the annual contract.

So, the new value of these 100 customers is $20,000, $10,000 for the service call ($100 x 100 customers) and another $10,000 for the 40 people who paid $250 for the annual contract. The value per customer is now $200. You made $20,000. You still have the same 100 customers. They’re now worth $200. That’s double the value.

What service can you upsell to YOUR clients? Virtually every business can add a newsletter or an extra month of a diet plan for half the original price. Maybe a consulting service could be provided. The possibilities are endless. Let your creative mind work for your business instead of limiting it to just one product or service.

Technorati Tags: online marketing, marketing, upsell, oto, one time offer, backend sales, business, classifieds

Add comment February 18th, 2007

Start Out As You Intend To Continue!

Before commencing any business, it’s wise to envision exactly where you want your business to be in the future. That’s because, everyday you should be doing something to move you closer to where you want to be long-term.

Without some fundamental things in place, no matter how hard you try, you won’t be able to deliver the type of service that will keep your customers coming back for more. So the very first thing you need to do when you commence your own online business is setup a basic infrastructure so that you can effectively manage your business.

Below are two key things you really need to know.

1) Invest in a decent web-hosting company!

If you’re serious about doing business online then forget about FREE web hosting. Trust us when we say - you’ll regret it real fast!  There’s a place for FREE hosting, don’t get us wrong - but it has no place whatsoever in the world of online business. Look at it this way, would you buy from someone who couldn’t afford to pay a few bucks for some professional hosting? You’d probably think (like most would) that the product can’t be up to much if the owner can’t afford to pay for professional hosting for it. And nine times out of ten, you’d be right!

You see - in the long run, free hosting isn’t FREE at all. Ultimately you’re still paying! You’re making someone else rich by plastering ads promoting other people’s businesses all over your website as a “payment” for the free web hosting.

So - forget FREE hosting right now it’ll only end in tears ?

I personally recommend Hostgator.com (http://www.hostgator.com) however your best bet is to ask around and find out how happy others you know are with their current web host.

Whatever you do, just make sure that you get an account with at least 200MB of storage space and at least 3GB of bandwidth. This should be enough to get you started but you will probably require more in the future depending on what it is you are planning to sell from your site. Most good hosts will allow you to upgrade as your needs increase.

A handy feature to look out for too is Fantastico. This service allows you to easily setup a whole raft of scripts on your hosting account without the need to have any indepth knowledge on how to install scripts. In most cases you’ll just need to enter a folder name (so that the script can create a directory for itself on your domain) and you’re done!

2) Automate as much as humanly possible!

There are SO many advantages to owning an online business that it’s hard to understand why anyone would want to start any sort of “physical business” these days. But the REAL beauty of owning an online business is that you can automate just about every aspect of it especially if you are simply selling a few digital products. Imagine making money while you sleep, eat or are lying on the beach! It REALLY IS possible but to prevent you from being tied to your business, you’re going to want to invest in a few things to help improve automation.

A decent Autoresponder script will save you a ton of time and is well worth the small investment.

Here are a few of the better ones:

AdTrackResponderPRO - Packed with features, this script offers true value for money and unbelievable support. The  product creator Steve Hetrick is a man after my own heart  and truly stands by his product! You won’t get better  value for money and features anywhere else. If you’re  serious about splashing out on your very own  Autoresponder script, this would most definitely be our  top pick. More details can be found at  http://www.adtrackresponderpro.com

Aweber - Packed with great features and highly respected. The downside is that you do not have any control as this Autoresponder is hosted on a domain you do not own. You’re also going to be paying a small monthly fee but if you want to break free of having to maintain your own Autoresponder then this is definitely a good option to consider. More details can be found at http://www.aweber.com

Technorati Tags: marketing, online marketing, hosting, autoresponders, online business, work from home, work at home, classifieds

Add comment February 18th, 2007