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Internet Marketing Reports

12 December 2009 by

More and more people are looking to start their own internet business as a result of this current economic situation. Whether to guard their family income from the threat of unemployment or worse, because they have already been made redundant, or simply to top up their current earnings to give their family a better life, they see the internet as a source of future prosperity.

When I first started marketing my business online back in the late nineties the biggest problem was so few potential customers on the internet. Competition was not a problem so I found it very easy to reach those customers who did have an internet connection. Ten years on and the world’s population has flooded onto the internet, there are so many products and services available online they are all spoilt for choice. The market is huge and the competition is intense, which makes it very hard for the new entrant to internet business to know where to start. A recent comment from Dominic, one of my readers, on an earlier post said it all, “im tryin 2 start ma own business and would like 2 no the best way 2 go“.

Well, I started this website some time ago to try to help people like Dominic but now I’ve gone further. After much searching I have sourced a regular supply of Special Internet Marketing Reports. They cover everything from setting up an internet business, including the basic technical stuff, through affiliate marketing (i.e. selling other peoples’ products on commission), setting up a website, getting visitor traffic and building customer mailing lists.

At the time of writing there are 29 reports, each report currently sells for $17 as you will see from the website.

Filed Under: Online Marketing

A Penny For Your Thoughts

23 October 2009 by

I was deep in thought about a topic for the blog when my wife uttered that well know phrase “A penny for your thoughts“, “meaning – what are you thinking about”.

The topic I was considering was how to find out what my customers would need next, a preliminary to product creation. Her enquiry gave me the blindingly obvious thought, why not just ask them! Why not just make a list of my best and most influential customers and ring them up and ask “what 3 things connected with telecoms would help you to grow or better manage your business right now?” Telecoms is my primary business as you probably already know.

Once I get a selection of typical responses from my customers, I can then look at how I might deliver what they have asked for. But better still, I can then contact prospective customers with the same question. Rather than take the usual telesales route of trying to pitch prospects on a particular service, I can ask them what they want with a fair idea of what their responses may be based on the results of my customer conversations.

Approaching prospective customers is a little trickier so a ‘softly, softly’ approach is best. I would simply ask if they could spare a minute to give me their thoughts on what 3 things about their telecoms would most help their business to move forward in the present economy.

You see, when you ask other people their opinion and express an interest in their business, they open up and are happy to talk to you. The normal ‘sales barriers’ come down leading to some very useful discussion, and what’s more – they will remember you as someone genuinely interested in their welfare not just as some salesman trying to make a buck.

So where does the ‘penny’ come in? Well, at current business phone rates (UK) that penny buys me a minutes worth of phone time, the very minute that I asked the prospect to spare me to give me their thoughts.

Of course most of them will talk for longer once they get started but by then I’ve turned a prospective customer in to a warm lead and a probable future customer.

“A penny for your thoughts“, a very inexpensive way to find out what the market will buy from you next!

Try it, let me know how you get on.

PS (shameless plug warning!) If you are a UK based business here’s where you can get your business calls at a penny a minute.

Filed Under: Marketing

Get Rich Quick (Not!)

16 August 2009 by

As a business coach I get asked about all  manner of ‘get rich quick’ scams schemes. Many so-called ‘business opportunities’ come under this heading. Genuine business opportunities require some form of effort, skill or knowledge to be able to take advantage of them and most require time to bring them to fruition. They often also involve a degree of risk if you make mistakes or just get ‘unlucky’.

The classic is the ‘make loads of money overnight with no effort’ or the ‘everything is done for you’ approach. There is no such thing as ‘money for nothing’, I know – I’ve searched for years and years :-). In the internet world the latest game is to convince you that your own personal robot or software will do it all for you. An example is a recent comment from a reader on the Forum page about an investment trading robot.

No! Software won’t do it all for you, it may take a lot of tedious or routine work off your shoulders, but it won’t make the entrepreneurial decisions or take the key business actions that are essential to success.

There are shortcuts to success in business, but they come from your aquired knowledge and experience and working ‘smart’, not from buying some ‘get rich quick’ scheme.

Filed Under: Opportunities

Business Systems

7 August 2009 by

Have you ever felt you were running harder and faster in your business and yet appear to be staying in the same place. If so you probably know the feeling; the working days get longer, the backlog gets larger, leisure time gets shorter (or even disappears altogether). Running a business can tie you down rather than give you the freedom you expected.

Way back in the dim and distant past I was introduced to the concept of working on my business instead of working in my business. This was quite a revelation and is actually the key difference between creating a job and building a business.

Working in your business means spending your time doing all the work involved in getting customers, providing them with the products or services you sell and doing all the admin stuff that goes with it all. This means that growth is limited by the time you have available. Even taking on staff to do some of the work can often involve you in more work training and managing the staff.

The magic formula for getting you as a business owner off this endless self-imposed treadmill is systems. The systems I have applied  to my business have given me time to plan strategically and, more important, given me more time for myself and family. In fact I now work only 3 days a week and yet the business keeps running just fine.

Setting up systems can take quite a bit of time initially, but will pay dividends for years to come. The first thing to do is to list all the jobs and tasks that need to be done on a day to day basis. Then for each task identify all the steps in the order they are carried out and the specific ‘how to do it’ process. Then write a detailed description or procedure for each task. The real trick is to document the procedure in such a way that anyone with the necessary skills could just walk into the business and take over that task with the minimum of training.

The next thing is to look at each task to see if it can be improved, streamlined or automated. Can the task be computerised or mechanised. Start by looking at what the end result of the task should look like and consider alternative means to the same end. Just because a task has always been done a particular way doesn’t mean that it is still the best way!

Think of it as producing, task by task, a complete operating manual for the business covering every area of the business.

Once the ‘operating manual’ is complete, look at who will carry out each task and what equipment, if any, is needed. Make use of check lists for each task to ensure quality control.

One of the most popular books on setting up small business systems was “The E-Myth” by Michael Gerber. That’s now out of print but was later replaced by “The E-Myth Revisited”.

Filed Under: Planning

Our New HQ

11 July 2009 by

I’m in the process of moving all the rest of my websites over to WordPress. The latest being my new HQ website at johnkirk.net. This site will form the hub of all my activities and co-ordinate all my websites. Since I have been steadily growing my internet ‘Real Estate’, I needed somewhere to install a full management back end to streamline the whole business and prevent duplication [particularly of effort – I hate work 🙂 ]

Be Your Own Boss will still be my main site for business development advice and support but the new HQ will manage delivery of all products and services as well as memberships, subscriptions, accounting and my affiliate program. For anyone with diverse business interests who is finding it difficult to keep track, I can certainly recommend centralisation of core business services. This is going to make life so much easier, I would have done it earlier if I could have found the right software but now I have. I’ll give you more information on it as I become more familiar with it.

Filed Under: My Websites

Selling Information

10 June 2009 by

The Mail Order industry has always had a thriving information marketing element, as has the new internet marketing arena. The best known example in both industries is the business opportunity or ‘get rich quick!’ sector of the information market. But information products are selling in huge quantities in many markets: Language learning, stock market trading, pet care, parenting, personal development, improving your golf, fly fishing, learn to play guitar, cook books, gardening books – are just a tiny few examples.

So why am I telling you this? Well, selling information is an ideal ‘work from home’ venture. Many well known information publishers started out as home based businesses and quite a large number of people would prefer to continue to operate from home. It suits their lifestyle, gives them freedom and generates a potentially good income. The attraction of information products to the mail order industry has always been the excellent profit margins to be had, but with the advent of the internet it has become even better. Marketing costs are lower on the internet, you can reach a wider market, people are actively looking for information on the internet and electronic, downloadable products are cheaper to produce and deliver than physical mail order products.

But what really sparked me off on this topic is a series of short ‘bite sized’ audio interviews I’ve been listening to on the future of information marketing. I’ve been ploughing through a series of 72  15-minute interviews with some of the most successful people in the business on their views of where information marketing is heading in the next few years. Some of their ideas have really got my head buzzing (and my ears ringing 🙂  I must give the MP3 player a rest!)

The set also comes with a 70 minute overview of the series which the interviewer has promised I can give to any of my readers who might be interested. If you would like a copy, post a comment below and I’ll see you get one.

Speaking of information marketing, the latest sponsor advert on the right of this page (bottom right of the block) is for a new book on quick cash tips for affiliate marketers. I’m a great believer in affiliate marketing, as you know, but I was amazed at some of the results people have been getting with these ideas.

Filed Under: Marketing

The Step by Step guide to Video Marketing

30 April 2009 by

You know how effective TV advertising has been in the last 50 years, the only problem has been the cost! Small businesses and especially start-ups just haven’t been able to compete with the big corporates and their big budgets for TV advertising. Promoting your business on TV was just out of the question.

Well now, thanks to the power of the internet and new video technology, anyone can promote their business using on-line video. What’s more, more and more people are watching video on the internet, turning their backs on TV with it’s mindless drivel and endless repeats. The good news is that what they are watching and enjoying is often home-made video! Just look at the popularity of YouTube, Google Video and other video websites.

So, how can you as a small business benefit from this new marketing opportunity? Surely something this new must cost a fortune. Nope! I’m using video myself, in fact I did an outside broadcast with a friend at a local business exhibition recently – just as an experiment, and the results have been outstanding. We both had stands there promoting our respective businesses. Andy was marketing his video production business, Blow by Blow Productions and I was promoting my telecom business Marketing by Numbers.

During a quiet spell after lunch we decided on impulse to take one of Andy’s cameras (any digital camcorder would have done) and I interviewed a number of other small business exhibitors while Andy filmed the interviews. Andy later edited the shots and I converted them to web video with some free software I had and put them up on both of our websites. We then emailed the links to the businesses we had interviewed and they put the links on their websites, and so did the exhibition organisers, the local Chamber of Commerce. Our interviewees are delighted with their free publicity and want some more video production work done, while Andy and I got lots of free traffic to our websites. Make no mistake – online video is going to be big!

By coincidence, just a couple of weeks later I came across a report by a guy I know who has generated a whole heap of cash for himself and his clients using online video, it’s called “The Quick Video Marketing Report” by Jeff  “Herschy” Schwerdt. You can get a free copy here:

Quick Video Marketing Report

Jeff is giving away everything you need to know to make Quality Videos and how to Optimize them for Google!

Who is ‘Herschy’?

Herschy is the callsign of an ex F16 fighter pilot, Jeff Schwerdt. Jeff retired from flying following an injury and like many ex military men really knew nothing else. He got involved in internet marketing through through a friend and took an interest in online video, eventually starting his own online video business.

Herschy has generated over $1 MILLION dollars in profits for his business and his personal clients combined in his FIRST 20 months online with multiple clients and products using Video Marketing and Free Advertising Strategies.

So how does he do it?

I’ll let you see right now because Herschy reveals everything in his latest report which he is giving away F-R-E-E for now right  here:

Quick Video Marketing Report

Go get your copy right now while you still can!

You’ll receive a 40 page report, Plus 2 hours of Training Videos, and a Traffic Generation Checklist.

The report Includes 40 Pages of Video Marketing covering How To:

– Write a Quick, Easy, Yet Powerful Video Scripts
– Maximize YouTube as a Video Hosting Service
– Rank on the First page of Google and Youtube using Video SEO
– Find the Best sites to Host Your Videos (Public, HD, and Private)
– Optimize your YouTube Videos
– Optimize Video Lead Pages
– And More…

PLUS! This weekend he’ll be releasing another set of videos showing any newbie how to increase the audio quality of their Flip video Cameras in just a few minutes. That’s Free too.

After months of testing on Google and YouTube, Herschy has developed this new strategic report on Video Optimization Strategies.

It also covers Squeeze  and Sales Page integration, exactly what to say in your videos, he’s figured out exactly what works and now he wants to make it available to you:

Download it from here:

Quick Video Marketing Report

The exciting thing is that Herschy has tested this over the past 20 months and generated over $1 Million dollars in sales for his company and clients with Absolutely Zero out of pocket costs to advertise.

Not only does video yield consistently high opt-in rates, it has increased sales conversions, driven leads, and built a stronger customer relationship.

In other words, it just works!

If you want Herschy’s tested and proven Easy Video Script, Video SEO techniques, and more go here to get it now:

Quick Video Marketing Report

Let me have your feedback in the comments area and tell me what you think of the report. I would also like to know how valuable or otherwise you would find similar reviews or recommendations in the future.

Filed Under: Online Marketing

Showcase Market and Sell

7 April 2009 by

Lincoln Showcase

I recently attended an exhibition specifically designed to help small to medium businesses to market their business to other businesses and to large corporate and public sector buyers. I was there to promote my telephone numbers business (0800, 0844, 0845 etc.) and my internet business, WordPress Websites to the business sector.

The exhibition was funded by our regional development agency in the UK East Midlands as part of their assistance to business during the present recession, which meant the entire event was free of charge for both exhibitors and visitors. There were several events throughout the region, but the one I attended was in Lincoln, where I have my own businesses.

The exhibition followed a familiar but successful format consisting of a large exhibition area containing some 50 exhibitors and a seminar room hosting short business presentations throughout the day. The seminars brought in a lot of visitors who may well not have been attracted to the exhibition on its own and, being business seminars, they brought in a very specifically targeted audience. This ensured that exhibitors had to deal with very few ‘gawpers’ and ‘time wasters’.

The format was also useful in that during the seminars the exhibition hall was fairly quiet. This gave exhibitors the time to network with one another and gain business that way.

I was next to a local video production company run by a friend of mine and during one of these quiet spells we took one of his video cameras and an outside broadcast microphone and I interviewed a number of exhibitors about their business. It was a spontaneous opportunity to network in a new and different way and, at the same time, promote the idea of marketing with web based video.

You can see the results here –> Lincoln Showcase

Can you think of a novel new way to network or promote your business?

Filed Under: Marketing

List Building

6 March 2009 by

If you’ve had any exposure to Direct Marketing or Internet Marketing, you’ll know that the most successful marketers put a lot of emphasis on building up their prospect lists. Why? Because it is much easier and much more cost effective to send offers to people who have already had contact with you than to keep advertising to total strangers.

Successful Direct Mail Order Marketers have large lists of past customers and prospective customers to whom they regularly mail out new offers. Internet Marketers find it easier and cheaper still because they build lists of email addresses rather than regular mailing addresses. In fact the ‘Success Mantra’ of most Internet Marketers is:

“The Money Is In The List!”

But how do you build that list?

Direct Marketers keep tabs on their past and present customers and every enquirer is added to the list whether they buy or not. They also buy or rent mailing lists from list brokers or exchange lists with fellow direct marketers.

Internet Marketers are somewhat limited in that it is not advisable to buy or rent email lists due to Anti SPAM legislation and the risk of their website being shut down because of SPAM complaints. However, they do have other ways to build their list. Just like direct marketers they have past and present customer data as well as enquirer data. The successful ones also make sure that they have a subscription or ‘lead capture’ box on their website.

By far the best way for the internet marketer to gain subscribers to their list is by giving away something valuable in exchange for the website visitor’ name and email address. This usually involves setting up a lead capture page with a ‘Special Free Offer’ on the website home page linked to the lead capture page. Some marketers even have the lead capture page as their home page!

This page is teamed up with an email program called an AutoResponder which collects the data and stores it in a databse for subsequent follow-up – the follow up mailings can even be automated by the autresponder. Needless to say, it costs money to set this up and run the autoresponder service.

However, I’ve just come across a Free List Building Service that will enable you to generate not just any old data capture page, but a video lead capture page attached to a sequential autoresponder service, completely free of charge. This service launches next week but in the meantime they are giving away a few instructional videos to teach you how to use list building to build your business. There is an upgrade to a more powerful paid for version which helps you to build multiple lists. But the free one is great for anyone just starting out with list building and who needs to do it on a very low budget. You can get it here:

Free Listbuilder

Filed Under: Online Marketing

Don’t Assume – Research!

3 February 2009 by

Here’s an overdue tip I should have shared with you earlier. I was reminded of it when I ran one of my regular Web Academy courses recently. This was an advanced course, and promoted as such, but I kept getting asked questions about some pretty basic stuff. Now, I never mind going over the basics with my delegates, but it occured to me that my readers may be in a similar position with their customers.

We often tend to believe that our customers know more than they actually do. We become so immersed in our own industry and take so much for granted that we forget that what we consider everyday knowledge is completely new and valuable to others.

I’ve often shared information that I considered common knowledge, only to find that it was just what a very grateful customer needed right then!

There are a number of lessons here and a couple of ways to profit from this. The main lesson is – Never Assume the customer knows what you or your product does. Never Assume that you know what the customer wants. In both cases check – research your customers and your marketplace and find out what they need and what they don’t know.

And the two ways to profit?

1. Keeping customers informed of information that could help them or is even vital to them always leads to more business, either directly or via recommendation.

2. The information you have that you could or should share may be so valuable that it is worth money. People would gladly buy it if it was packaged and promoted correctly. The ‘Information Business’ in this world is worth billions. Could you pick up your share with what you know?

Filed Under: Marketing, Opportunities
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