Friday, February 20, 2009

Regular Developer or iPhone Developer?

When I search around for iPhone freelance jobs, I find people willing to pay $1500 to $3000 for a SIMPLE iPhone application. Another job request, offering $20 to $60 an hour creating an app. I spoke with a guy on a message board four years ago about some PHP code and, as I was casually reading Google News this week, I noticed he was MENTIONED as the CEO of a company that wrote ONE iPhone application, listed it in the iPhone App Store, and sold 15,000 copies the first day. If you're trying to be a marketer, nothing more specific than that, you're going to find thousands if not millions of people who market better than you. There are GPS and TV guide iPhone apps. Real time tracking of the 2008 election. Tons of 3D games that respond to tilt and touch. You're targeting a demographic that's already spent $400 on a TELEPHONE... what's another $2.99 or $4.99 to them? If you're a programmer or even a marketer who likes to hire out software development, seriously consider developing iPhone applications. On the other hand, if you were an EXPERT marketer about toilet training your cat, how many people in the world could possibly be better than you? 500? 50? Even less? Find your niche. Don't be a copywriter, be a weight loss copywriter. Don't be a programmer, be a PHP programmer, or even better... a WordPress developer. Or even better, a Facebook or iPhone developer.

Thursday, February 19, 2009

Slow Down and Learn the Basics. 3 Ways to Be a Success With Information Marketing

Take the time to look at and learn the many ways to drive traffic to your website(s) and product(s). Some methods are completely free but some can drive you to the poor farm rather quickly. Decide which ones appeal to you and give you the best results while taking up the least of your time. One way to speed up the learning curve is to have a mentor. This can simply be another person whom you have gotten to know who also does information marketing that you respect and have been following. Another option for a mentor is to contact a favorite online marketer and ask them a few questions. Pick someone who's emails you have been reading and who you believe is approachable, not someone who is so successful that they won't have time to talk to you. Perhaps that person has a coaching program that you could invest in. Many newbie marketers use this particular method and find that their successes come much quicker. Watch what they do, what they say in their emails and how they say it, how their websites are set up, what business model they follow, etc. Another option for a mentor is to contact a favorite online marketer and ask them a few questions. Learning how to drive traffic to whatever website you are promoting, whether it's your own, an affiliate product, or AdSense ads, is the most important thing you need to learn. If you were in college to get a 4 year degree in 'Successfully Making Money On The Internet', the subject of marketing would be covered 3 out of the 4 years. It's that important.

Is My Replicated Website Doing my Business Any Good?

The main objective for most of these affiliate type companies is to get as many people signed up as possible into their program. The more people they have signed up, the more overall sales they will generate for the company. What if you could get around the fact that your site will never make it to the first page of your favorite search engine? Welcome to web 2.0. With these sites, you will give out valuable tips and information that will help your potential customers. At the same time you'll get your message out. Then you give them a compelling offer to go to your website. Maybe it's a discounted price on your product, freebies, or more free information they need and can only get by going to the website. A good example of this process is this very article. At the end, you'll get a compelling offer if you go to my site. This means it is a page or site that is identical to every other member also in the same affiliate program with one very small exception. The only difference between all the pages is your affiliate number or email address. If you are a member of an affiliate or resellers program, and you were given a web site or web page to promote the program, you should pay very close attention to this article. It will open your eyes to why it is almost impossible to get the search engines to give you a high ranking with regular SEO (Search Engine Optimization).

Branding Basics - The Top Five Warning Signs It's Time to Hire a Company Naming Consultant

Now you've opened the naming equivalent of Pandora's box. Everyone in the organization feels they now have input. Even if this strategy were to work, you would have one happy employee and the rest who feel snubbed. It also assumes that your employees understand your brand message, your future brand architecture, and how the whole identity piece will come together. In addition, as in warning sign number one, you've turned productive employees into part time linguists. You wonder if maybe there just isn't a good name out there and that they are truly all taken. It's at this stage that some companies decide to cut their losses and just slap on a label and move forward. Unfortunately, they often come back to revisit the decision again and again, in the form of spelling out their names each time on the phone, trying to explain a name with no meaning, or spending marketing dollars on a forgettable name in order to make it stick. The long-term cost of promoting a poor company name is far greater than the initial investment in a good brand name, with a matching .com, and a solid marketing message behind it. But now, as more and more businesses enter the market, and as the internet increases in importance, it's vital to have a unique and compelling company name with a matching .com domain name. It's no longer advisable to label your business with common descriptor words such as "Superior" or "General" or "Advanced" etc. These adjectives not only get lost in a sea of sound-alike names, but they are harder to get ranked in a Google search, competing with every other company using similar language.

Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Increase the Number of Backlinks to Your Site With Directory Submission

Most general web directories have many categories and in order for your site to be accepted, you need to submit your site to the most relevant category. Directory submission is a very simple process and you can definitely do it on your own. In order for your website to be accepted, you just need to follow their specific guidelines and spend some time in the submission process. When directory submission is done correctly, the result can be very rewarding as you will get tons of back links for your site, which will increase your search engine rankings. Therefore, it is well worth your effort to develop a list of directories that accept free listings. In this case, you should take advantage of this and use the right keyword in your anchor text and point it to the relevant content of a page. Although directory submission is simple, it will take up a bit of your time during the submission process. So if you do not have the time to invest in manual directory submission, you can always outsource this task to agencies or freelancers.In this way, you can either submit the website yourself, or outsource directory submission to a freelancer by providing him or her with the list. On the Internet, there are general directories and specialist directories. General directories usually rank higher and have higher traffic than specialist directories as they have more categories and appeal to a wider audience.

Tuesday, February 17, 2009

Finally Work From Home and Be Successful

Prioritize Profitable Projects: Very important. Never be pennywise, but pound foolish when it comes to building your online business. Sacrifice easy gains for long term, higher end value. Enjoy What You Do.....and Take a Break When You Don't'. Burnout is a big problem when you work for yourself. Learning to leave when it stops being fun is a great way of keeping your fire flowing. Just because you work online doesn't mean to ignore calling people, meeting for lunch or simply making real relationships with your readers, affiliates and promotional partners. After all, it's no fun to be sitting in the corner by yourself forever. I've run business from beautiful downtown offices, from Spartan high energy "war rooms" and from modest spaces in my own home....and can tell you, hands down, I love being 20 feet from my kitchen, TV and acoustic guitar whenever I have the urge. Always Be Leveraging. Yes, that means use software and services to expedite tasks. Doing manual keyword research? Use a tool instead. Hand building all of your blogs? Leverage a widget, or a plugin, or a person, to exponentially amp up your efforts, and fast)

Sunday, February 15, 2009

Steps to Becoming a Successful Affiliate

The most important aspect of a successful affiliate marketing campaign is having content that is engaging, interesting, and motivates readers to take action. You can either write this content yourself or outsource it to a freelance writer. You need to know who is visiting your site, where they're coming from, how long they stay, and more. Not knowing this information can lead to loss of potential income or a failed campaign. Remember that it takes time to learn the necessary skills. Have patience and don't get frustrated if you don't see early results. Certain kinds of traffic generation processes can take weeks or months to create the results you desire. Once you've found a formula that works for you, repeat it. Even if you're only making $15 per day from a campaign, if you can duplicate your success with other products. Being an affiliate is one of the best ways to earn income. Treat it with professionalism. Choose products that excite you. It's important to be "sold" on the product or service you're recommending. If you don't like it or use it yourself, your marketing campaigns will be lackluster, and people will be able to tell. Nothing is more mind-numbing than working as an affiliate on a campaign that bores you to tears.

Friday, February 13, 2009

Are You Limiting Your Business To 6 Figures?

Now you want to grow and outsource many of the key tasks and roles to your team of subcontractors (or employees) but your clients push back. Nope, they want you! They continue to work directly with you or require you as the lead on the project and you are stuck. You are the bottleneck.The Superstar You have a passion and/or strength for the service you offer. You mistakenly believe that getting down in the trenches every day is essential to train your team and build the trust of your clients. You personally take every customer service call that comes in - who else can better serve your clients, right?You spend countless hours frustrated with the pace at which they are getting things done and at some point you just give up and start doing things yourself. Any of this sound familiar? These are all seemingly harmless ways in which we have the illusion we are doing the right thing to grow, but what is really happening is we are stifling good strategies because we do not know how to execute them properly.

Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Outsourcing Your Internet Marketing: What Can I Outsource In My Internet Marketing Business?

In the past I have spent countless hours and days trying to create a website or graphic because I didn't want to spend money paying someone else to do it better, faster and ultimately much cheaper. How can it be cheaper if I'm paying someone else to do what I'm doing for free? That's the kind of thinking that'll have you frustrated and spinning your wheels for days, weeks, months or even years. What I didn't consider back then was just how much it was costing me in time. It is an important question that often accompanies a similar one - when should i outsource my marketing - a question I answered in another article. My answer to this is, quite a lot, especially most writing projects: articles, blog posts, emails and reports, web page copy, web design, SEO optimization, graphic design, etc. Often, internet marketers believe they have to become a sort of jack of all trades or renaissance man needing to know how to do everything. Problem is, we might know enough HTML code to make a website - but not a professional one. We might know enough about photoshop to make a graphic header, but not one that pops.

Tuesday, February 10, 2009

Increase Your SEO to Increase Your Bank Account

Realistically, paying for a few small things like custom written SEO articles and some social bookmarking is a drop in the bucket compared to the profit potential these tactics provide. We're talking pocket change, here. But, failing to take action can cost you big. Thousands of people everyday are losing their homes to foreclosure because they are losing their jobs and you don't have to be one of them. Getting your website up to par is something that should be high on your priority list. The competition is getting stiffer everyday and the time to position yourself for success is now. By increasing your website's search engine optimization (SEO) you can increase your income substantially to the point you no longer need a day job and can basically do as you please most of the time. With the right SEO tactics in place you can get your website to the top of the search engine results and start pouring in the cash. Using the right SEO tactics in the right way will get you to the top of the search engine rankings and help you brand yourself so that you can remain on top when the hoards of other people figure out what is going on and try to edge in on your action. Many article writing companies charge as little as $5 and article, although the median range is more like $10-$12 an article. Obviously, the more you pay, the better quality article you would expect. Make sure to review samples of past articles before you spend too much.

Monday, February 9, 2009

How Much More Money Do you think Internet Marketing

Affiliate marketing it great. You can make a lot of money. But how much more money do you think you could make if instead of you selling somebody else's product along with hundreds of other guys, you got those hundreds of other guys to sell YOUR product? Let's face it, you are never going to make the kind of money that successful product creators make by selling THEIR products. However, it doesn't just stop there. See, you can't just create any old product. It has to be something that people want. It has to fill a strong need. If the package looks great and you offer a high enough commission, trust me, you'll get the affiliates. Finally, you have to go out there and network. By hook or crook, you have to meet the players in the game. You have to let them get to know you. Show them that you're serious. Show them that you can be trusted. Let them see the products that you've created. I have earned this right because quite honestly, with all my success, I was taking the easy road to it. I was leaving way too much money on the table because I didn't want to do certain things that were holding me back.

Sunday, February 8, 2009

Article Distribution Service - Effective SEO

The writing requires effort, and so does the distribution. To distribute just one article can take up a few hours. Who has the time to continuously do that? Fortunately, you can always outsource your article distribution activities to professional service providers. For article writing, you can always hire freelance writers or ghost writers to write your content for you. t's only a matter of time. Imagine having two websites that look exactly the same - same type of content, same design, same template. Which site do you think the search engines will rank? The search engines will rank the site with the greatest number of inbound links. Today, many successful article marketers are still performing article marketing. Why is that so? You see, these experts have learned, very early in the game, that article marketing is a very effective SEO method. It is easy to understand, and definitely easy to implement.

Friday, February 6, 2009

10 Tips To Make Working From Home More Productive.

To be a successful business owner, you have to be both. You have to plan it and then you have to do it. Plan your business, plan your year, plan your month, plan your week, plan your day. Task lists and project management systems are great tools for the day to day, month to month type planning. For longer range annual planning you will want to go back to your business plan and review, revise, and reassess it annually.

Goals are much easier achieved if you set out a plan to achieve them. This includes the small daily goals like calling that contact about that new joint venture idea you have. I'm sure you have already heard this, but good goals are measurable, relevant, timely, and attainable. When the horn blows and it's time to turn off the computer and go to your child's choir concert, be there with them in the moment. If your mind is at home thinking about the task you didn't quite finish or the project you're starting tomorrow, you're not truly with your child. All of those things are fantastic pros to owning your own business and working from home. However, there is a dark side. There is the tendency to get sidetracked from the work that generates a profit and puts food on your table to the work you would maybe rather do at the moment like build that deck in your back yard, work on your car, or ugh…do the laundry.

There is also the tendency to lose track of time researching for your business or taking care of tasks that may be better suited for a different time or even handled by a different person. All of these sidetracks, and many more, will take away from your daily productivity and essentially end up affecting your bottom line.

Thursday, February 5, 2009

Why Companies Rely On Professional Employment Organizations and Outsourcing Payroll Services Today

Several time and money saving reasons including cost of payroll software, training and all the time researching tax and necessary IRS information can dwindle away countless hours that could have been productively spent on creating a profit while you focused on your own business- not the human resource details. No matter if a business has one or 5,000 employees, each of them must get paid and their employee needs must be met. When businesses outsource their payroll responsibilities the business owner and the employees all win together.

For several reasons, most growing businesses lack the need, resources or desire to have a full time accounting department and staff. Plus it's far more cost effective to outsource payroll. By trusting the payroll burden to trained company payroll professionals, employers can ensure their employees' pay is correct, on time and properly distributed. This reduces the time spent on paperwork so more attention can be given to more important aspects of conducting business.

Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Why 99% of us are Pre-Programmed to Fail at Niche Marketing

For those of you reading most of the garbage out there peddled by so many so called web gurus, I'd say just throw it away 99% of it is pure junk.Invest in your business...one way or another your going to have to invest in your niche marketing business as with any other start up, most off-line business start ups actually expect to lose money for a least the first year, fortunately you wont, you'll be making money within a month to six weeks if you get this right. You know I asked myself these very questions over and over again when I began niche marketing, it annoyed me so much to see all my efforts simply crash and burn time after time, I couldn't for the life of me understand why someone else with a site almost identical to mine made money constantly while mine made almost nothing, and in many cases absolutely nothing...ZERO. You need to get your mind in the right frame and get rid of all the doubts before you do anything else, get this step wrong and you've more than likely already failed before you even turn on your PC.

Information is free if you look in the right places, feel free to browse the articles and step by step guides on my site as their free to view, but remember mine is just my opinion, so visit similar sites and forums and take notes, but please avoid the sales pitch junk where possible.Can I recommend any genuine step by step guides...Well actually there are two that I found to be genuine and useful, unfortunately the first that I used can only really be used for a basic outline and inspiration today, as its almost five years old and sadly no longer relevant.

Link Building Tips to Market Your Website

Link Building... Time-intensive. Frustrating. Sometimes confusing. Yet Unavoidable. Because ultimately, it's still the trump card for higher rankings.but link building is still going to be the SEO trump card for the foreseeable future. 2. I wouldn't hold your breath for search engine algorithms to place less importance on link popularity until the Semantic Web arrives, or maybe when HTTP gets replaced by a new protocol. Because links are still the basic connector, the basic relationship, on the Web. .Many of us have been hoping that it would go away. In Brett Tabke's 5/18 Robots.txt entry, he echoed a sentiment that many, many webmasters hold on to as a hope:The Google algo has become much more elegant and advanced, devaluing staggering amount of links that shouldn't count, and placing more emphasis on trusted links. And the trust and juice given by those links is then verified by elements like user data, domain age, and other relatively hard-to-spoof factors.

Monday, February 2, 2009

There's still endless talk of the credit crunch and the recession and it seems to be getting worse as more businesses fold every day. Your business doesn't have to be one of them though. A recession can be a time for your business to grow and outshine your competitors.If someone offers to write you a quality article for £5 or if they promise to have your website at number one in Google over night - just say no. Websites succeed when they have quality content and if someone is earning £5 for writing you an article then it's unlikely they'll be drafting up a masterpiece. Invest in your own skills and outsource areas you don't specialise in to professional companies who will take the time to work on great solutions for your business. Classic mistakes include duplicating content, relying on poor links rather than seeking out more effective ones and filling your website up with adverts to make a few extra quid. Your visitors will be looking for quality content which can solve their problems, not a hundred flashing adverts or content which appears on 20 other websites.Think about it. People panic in a recession, just look at the mammoth pre-Christmas sales where high street shops tried to force sales up by dropping prices.

Sunday, February 1, 2009

Trickle Up Economics

If the public money we have given to those at the top is NOT getting the results that were intended like freeing up access to capital for consumers, protecting retirement portfolios, or creating financial stability for the masses, maybe this top down approach is just the wrong strategy.
For businesses, these cuts may reduce quarterly tax payments. But have little direct effect in increasing employment, R&D, and efficiencies since most businesses are already so far gone from past declines in consumer spending.National companies will purchase inventory and equipment from Asia or Mexico (sending our public money out of our country) and usually off-shore white-collar skills in development, planning, and feasibility. The majority of these funds, including the corporate profits, will flow out of local communities and pool and stagnate in a few select regions.This does nothing to create sustainable growth. Further, many of these national companies hire less than 30% of their labor locally. Thus, the majority of these funds, including the corporate profits, will flow out of local communities and pool and stagnate in a few select regions.

they will face huge demands to hire locally. This means more wages that will stay and be spent within the community. These workers will buy houses, cars, and consumer goods and services within the communities in which they live - bolstering other local businesses. These other businesses will also face greater demands to hire more and the cycle continues. As these businesses grow and lift themselves up out of the dust, so do their employees and ultimately their entire communities.