Designs By Demand

Introduction to Outsourcing Your Online Business

admin — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 08:35:18 +0000

Outsourcing is a huge part of making making money online. It allows you to scale your business in a way that you normally can’t by yourself. It takes a lot of work, and low cost labor doesn’t come easy or cheap all of the time. Depending on who you outsource to, there may be training that needs to be done, they may take 3 months before they start paying for themselves, etc.

Outsourcing your online business is a great way to continue growth. The ability to outsource mundane tasks to employees you can pay $2-5 per hour is a great way to offload your workload and increase your own personal productivity.

You have a lot of option in terms of countries in the world in which you can hire outsourcers from. You can stick with your home country where the cost per hour will be higher but communication and productivity may also be higher, so you have to weigh cost vs. productivity. There are many countries including India and the Philippines which are much cheaper in price but productivity may be decreased.

An example is an assistant I once hired had constant power outages so her work would be delayed 2-8 hours until the power came back online before she could start working again. This obviously hurt her lifestyle and productivity as much of her day was spent sitting around waiting to be able to start working.

There are many things to consider when hiring an assistant from a foreign country, but the biggest things are their pay rate, time zone, and skill.

The pay rate is always negotiable for countries in Asia and other parts of the world. The whole economy works like that (unlike the United States where it’s a set price for everything). People are willing to work for less with a potential for bonuses every month if they perform well, for example. One of the best things to do is a trial run with the person, have them do a few tasks for you for one day and see how much they get done, how many problems the have, and how much they will cost you per day.

Time zone isn’t a major factor, however it is nice to know exactly what time they will be online in your timezone. My assistant always started at 10pm my time, so I could assign him tasks before bed and know he had something to do all day for him. Make sure you know the timezones so you know the best way and time to contact your outsourcers.

Skill is debatable, some people will call themselves an expert when they are clearly not. However, most tasks that people want completed for their business can be easily trained. Creating 5-10 5 minute screen captures of what you want your employees to do, will save you a ton of time and allow you to hire “unskilled” laborers for a much lower price and train them to do the tasks for you.

Outsourcing is a changing and evolving area of internet marketing. Outsourcers are able to do more and more now and the cost is getting lower and lower for people that are skilled at what they do. Learn to harness people’s skill and use them to move your business forward toward more profits.

The Ins and Outs of Niche Products

admin — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 08:34:40 +0000

For some people, a work from home business might seem exciting, and for others it might seem like a real daunting task. Running a business from home, though, actually can be rather easy, and you hardly have to make any tough decisions at all. In fact, the hardest decision you will probably make when setting up your home business will be what product or range of products to sell and specialize in. You might think it is better to sell tons of different types of products because you have more opportunities to sell a product, but actually the opposite is true. In fact, the less amounts of products you have, the easier it is to sell them. Why? The answer is simple; you have a more targeted market to focus on advertising and selling to. It’s just like how Trix targets only children in their commercials, but your niche market can, and probably will be, much smaller than that.

The best way to pick a product or range of products is to look at what you are really passionate about, and think about what type of knowledge you might be able to pass along to others. There are tons of people that are interested in “how-to” products such as eBooks and videos. You don’t have to think of something right in your line of work or passion, because something just slightly related might be a better money maker. Now, after thinking, and you still can’t think of any product that you can make on your own, you will have to search the internet for a niche product that you are interested in or can get interested in, and that some people will share with you, meaning being an affiliate. Being an affiliate means you only make a certain percentage of each sale you make, but it might be worth it if the product sells a lot more than something you might have made.

Remember, the best thing for a product is something that you like. A project is much more likely to become a success if you put a lot of time and effort into it, and you are more likely to do that if you are interested in the product you are selling. So, whether it is your product, or someone else’s, make sure you like it, because if you like it, you can help other people like it enough to buy it.

Using Your Mailing List To Your Best Benefit

admin — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 08:33:55 +0000

One of the most important things that you can establish early on in your website’s life is a very solid mailing list. There are many reasons to do this which I will get to below, but the main reason is to market to those individuals in the future. There are a number of different services that you can use for bulk mailing and managing mailing lists, which include two of the most popular in AWeber and MailChimp.

Having a mailing list is great, but making the most out of it is even more important.

Reason One: Direct Line of Contact

Having a direct line of contact to your readers is so important, and the only real way to do that online is through email. Email is one of the most frequently used and checked things people do on their computer, and getting your content in their is even more important. It is a direct line of contact between you and your readers. A mailing list will also give you a way to go to your readers instead of having your readers come to you. Basically it can be used as a free advertisement for your website right to their inbox.

Reason Two: Marketing Other People’s Products

As an affiliate marketer or just as a friend, you can market other people’s products to your list. An example would be if you have a pizza blog and you found a website that had an affiliate program for pizza lover’s book. You could sign up, and start advertising their product on your website. With an email list, you can go one step further. You can have your normal newsletter like always, but you can throw a small advertisement into the email with the pizza lover’s book into the email and mail it to your list. This brings a whole new element to your marketing capabilities and could help you drive more traffic through your link.

Reason Three: Promote Your Other Brands

If you have more than one web property or brand, you can easily email your other site’s lists and get them the information that you want on your other products. If you are launching a new eBook you may email all your lists to notify them so they can pre order it for a discounted price, etc.

As you can see the possibilities are really endless on the ways you can leverage your mailing list, so get creative and see what works.

Keeping Your Customers, Customers

admin — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 08:33:16 +0000

In business, it is really important that you keep your customers happy so that they will remain loyal to your business and hopefully bring you more business, right?

Well that is something that people sometimes overlook when they are building an internet company, specifically internet marketing brand loyalty.

I define internet marketing brand loyalty as the ability of an internet marketer to retain customers over a period of several months and to receive referrals from those customers.

Why is internet marketing brand loyalty important though? Can’t you just find more people to buy your products instead of trying to retain them?

Yes, of course you can. But that costs money. It takes money and time to find new customers. So why not instead work on retaining the ones you have already?

The best way to retain customers is to create value. If you are selling a product or ebook give them access to a forum and a bunch of videos only available in your membership section. Give your readers a reason to stick around, not just through your mailing list, but other areas as well. No one likes to feel marketed to, so by creating value you can also create market for your future products.

Providing incentives such as an affiliate program can also help you customers to stick around. If they have a potential to make some money off of your great product, why wouldn’t they stick around, right? Provide them with a reason to stick around, whether it be money, free content, or support (such as free email questions, etc).

Maintaining a community is one of the hardest parts of internet marketing. You have to remain engaged with your audience on a regular basis or else you will lose them very quickly.

In conclusion, keeping your customers coming back should be one of the most important parts of your business strategy. Repeat business is the cheapest business, and building a solid brand with brand loyalty should be one of your biggest areas of focus. Good quality content that engages your customers and brings value to their life or business will be the best start to your relationship with your customer. From that point you must build trust with them, provide them with good additional (free) content, and not solely market to them. Give them value and in return they will purchase your future products or products you are promoting or they will refer their friends and customers back to you as well.

Getting Started With ClickBank Affiliate Marketing

admin — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 08:32:21 +0000

Clickbank is considered one of the biggest affiliate marketing programs online right now, whether you love it or hate it, there are a ton of products in almost every niche that are for sale.

Clickbank is used for digital products, so things like eBooks, membership sites, online training, video training, and more can be sold there.

When using Clickbank as an affiliate, it is important to pay attention to a few things:

Percentage of Sale

Some products have a huge percentage going to the affiliate, others have a very small percentage. When browsing through products, make sure you are aware of the percentage of the sale you receive and how much it is per sale. If you are making $35 per sale, you have a lot more room to work with in terms of advertising for the product or other promotional means such as article marketing.

Sales Page

The next thing you should be concerned about is the sales page of the product. Does it look like it came from a cookie-cutter sales page program like everyone else’s you see? Or is it unique, have a lot of information, nice graphics, and a solid pitch?

Being meticulous of the sales page is essential, as this is where you will be sending your traffic as an affiliate, so you want it to look good and send the right message to the perspective buyer, so you can make the sales commission.

Terms of Service

Some products online have much stricter guidelines for promoting them, for example, some products do not allow Pay-Per-Click, or spamming of their URL to websites, etc. You must learn all of the rules of Clickbank and make sure that you know the rules of the product you are promoting. If you get caught breaking the TOS you could be suspended and not paid out your earnings.

Don’t Pick the First Product You See

Many new users on Clickbank tend to pick the highest rated and products with the “most gravity.” The problem is that those are the products with the most competition as well, which is fine, as long as you have an enticing way of getting people to the page and to purchase it. Start out promoting products in the middle range of the field to get used to the way the process works and to not get burned spending a ton of money on an over-saturated product category.

Make Your Site User Friendly

admin — Sun, 23 Oct 2011 08:31:10 +0000

Usability is one of the most important things for your website or blog. Many people only focus on the backbone of the website or how SEO (Search Engine Optimization) friendly it is, but after the major components of the back end of the site are done and the SEO plan is worked out, it is important to have a user friendly site that people want to come back to.

I don’t know how many times I have been to company websites or product pages and wanted to find the back button as fast as I could in order to get away from it. Some website designs are just plain awful. If the website design isn’t good, the reader will often lose their place while, get lost in the clutter, or have a hard time knowing where to go next.

The reason so many sales pages for products are only one page (and are increasingly looking more and more like scam pages) is because it works. The simpleness of the design allows the user to know exactly where they need to go next, how to order, what the product does, and all of the information the designer/company wants them to see.

In contrast, a highly cluttered sales site with multiple pages, flashing lights, movies playing automatically, and an unfriendly design will have a much harder time getting their point across in a way that allows the user to feel they benefited from their visit.

There are so many reasons to keep you design simple, from a users standpoint, the ability to find the information they need without searching the entire site is a huge help. Keeping navigation straightforward and in the same area will allow users to always know they can go back there to find what they need next.

Using large enough fonts, and adequate reading room is a must. You want your user to be able to easily scan your site for content to read. Hardly do most people read an entire sales letter. So make it easy on them, use bold when appropriate to highlight the main points of the copy, etc.

Having a user friendly site will save you a lot of time and hassle dealing with issues later. Keep advertisements organized and friendly, content in an easy to read column with minimum clutter, and always have your navigation (both article and pages) close by each other so that it is easy for users to get where they are going and benefit from your site.

If the user enjoys their time on your site, they will most likely be back and could be a future customer.

Writing Good Content Sells Your Product

admin — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 06:10:06 +0000

Writing good content for your website, blog, or sales page is one of the most essential parts of the equation when it comes to promotion of your website. If your content is junk, your website is going to be considered junk. On the other hand, if your website is ugly (but still readable) and your content is great, your website will be considered a diamond in the rough.

Good writing is hard to come by, if you go onto webmaster forums or internet marketing forums there are many people claiming to be good writers. In reality, a lot of writers you write online are not worth your money. Finding a quality writer for your sales page and blog will convert you so many more sales and repeat visitors than a bunch of garbage on your site.

Some notes for for first time copywriters or those needing some refreshing on great content:

Don’t use filler content. Make your words make sense and use short and specific sentences whenever possible. Do not ramble on about a subject for two paragraphs restating the same point over and over again.
Include images in your work. Always try to include an image in your articles if possible. Including images with proper formatting and SEO techniques (including title and description) will not only draw your reader’s attention to the post or article but will also help you in ranking on search engines and can draw traffic to your site by themselves.
Use spell check and proof read. Simply going over the the article without actually reading the article again is going to bite you in the future. It looks unprofessional to use the word “their” instead of “there” on a consistent basis. Mistakes happen, I have read peer-reviewed books that have typos in them, but by minimizing your misspelling and grammar errors, you will garner more respect for your work. Well written, researched, and passionate posts are always going to sell more product and get you more views than rewritten articles that look like spam.

How Many “Bells and Whistles” Does Your Website Really Need?

admin — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 05:49:36 +0000

Do you know what’s effective on your website and what’s overkill? Do you know what features and functions your audience responds to and what turns them off? Many websites go overboard. They utilize every bell and whistle available. The goal, presumably, is to provide a great user experience. Unfortunately, they end up accomplishing the opposite. So…

How Many Bells and Whistles Does Your Website Really Need?

This may sound incredibly dull. Every single feature on your website needs to have a proven function and purpose. Sometimes that’s not so easy to identify. Generally, if it doesn’t help you achieve your goal then it’s best to get rid of it. Here’s why:

Most bells and whistles distract from your overall goal and purpose. For example, if you want a visitor to make a purchase then a flash graphic is generally nothing more than a distraction.

Most bells and whistles slow your website down. A fancy graphic or internal program slows down the upload time. If it takes too long for your site to upload then you’re going to lose potential visitors. That’s certainly not good. If your website doesn’t upload in a matter of seconds, ten or less, it’s time to shrink files and eliminate heavy graphics.

Most bells and whistles don’t offer tangible value. Think about it for a moment; what value does a fancy website graphic add to your customer’s experience? What value or benefit do they gain? If the answer is nothing, then get rid of it.

An add-on feature or function is good when it adds value to your visitor’s experience. For example, a social networking feed can be superfluous on some websites. However, if it helps build your following and create a community it can be a good feature. Some bells and whistles make sense.

Decision Time

So how do you decide if a website feature is relevant? How do you know if you should keep it or eliminate it? Ask yourself the following questions:

Does it enhance your visitor’s experience?
Does it help you achieve a business goal?
Does it slow down your website upload time?
Does it distract?

If you’re unsure, consider testing and tracking the data. Install the feature and then review the data. Take a look at how long people remain on your landing page. If they spend less time on your page, then the new feature may be the reason.

If possible, test the feature itself. Are people interacting with it? What do they do once they’ve interacted with it? If people are staying on your website longer with the new feature, what action are they taking? Are they buying more? Are they signing up for your opt-in list? Are they reading more content?

Some bells and whistles offer value. They support business growth. Know your audience, your goals and the purpose of each add-on feature. Pay attention to the data.