Archive for November, 2009
We receive lots of questions from our readers and clients, from proper capitalization to marketing tips to SEO techniques, and we try our best to answer each one. We know there are plenty of other people with the same exact concerns so we have decided to share your questions, along with our answers, as a regular part of our blog. Feel free to contribute your own ideas and experiences within the comments and contact us if you have a question you would like to see featured in a future post.
Today’s question is from Mark, a small business owner in South Dakota…
“Are there any no cost ways to market my business?”
Realistically, effective marketing requires time and effort, funding, or both – but there are plenty of no and low-cost ways to build your brand and your profits. The cheapest and most powerful way to increase sales and expand your customer base is to provide quality products and services.
Satisfied clients are the best marketing tool for any business. Concentrate on delivering value to your customers. Not only will you enjoy repeat sales from satisfied consumers, but they will also spread the word to friends and family. Referral discounts and incentives are useful as well.
Other low and no cost ways to market your business include:
- Business cards: Everyone you encounter is a potential customer – or they know someone who could be. Always carry business cards and hand them out frequently. Leave cards at your local convenience store, post them on community bulletin boards, and always leave your customers with at least 2 or 3 extras to share with coworkers and friends.
- Build an online presence: The internet has become a thriving marketplace for all types of businesses. A simple website and/or company blog can do wonders for your business, especially when you use them to establish yourself as an expert in your field. Free business directory listings can also boost your local visibility.
- Free classifieds: Take advantage of free sites like Craigslist to advertise your products and services. A well-written ad can open an assortment of new business opportunities.
- Flyers and brochures: Creative flyers and brochures can be made at home (or you can hire a freelance designer), then passed out in your local community to bring in new clients and increase sales.
- Social networking: Spend some time with sites like Twitter and Facebook to connect with potential customers and build relationships within your target audience. Here are a few tips to help you succeed with social networking.
Check out these additional posts for more business marketing tips:
Using the World Wide Web to Benefit Your Business
How to Increase Online Traffic Using Offline Promotion
5 Effective Marketing Tools That Don’t Cost a Fortune
Image by yoshiaka
This year has gone by so fast – it seems like just a few weeks ago, it was Christmas and here we’ve gone all the way back around to Thanksgiving.
It’s a beautiful time of year when everyone seems more willing to help out a stranger and most people are more aware of the amazing gifts in their lives.
As people all around the country give thanks, we’d like to take a moment to do the same here in our little corner!
It’s been an eventful year and it’s hard to believe that it’s almost over! 
I’m thankful to have a happy and healthy family – 3 terrific kids who love to learn and a wonderful husband to stand beside me. I’m excited to have had the opportunity to connect with some excellent clients this year and to explore new creative avenues within my career.
The rest of the holiday season is sure to be action-packed and I can’t wait to see what the new year will bring – I’m happy to have the chance to share the excitement with the ones I love!
I hope your holiday season is full of joy and surprises – wishing you a happy Thanksgiving, a merry Christmas, and a prosperous New Year! ~ Danielle
I am thankful for the health of my loved ones, especially my mother, who was given the ‘thumbs up’ for remission earlier this year after completing grueling leukemia treatments. I am thankful she had exceptional medical professionals and a strong support system by her side.
I am thankful for all the love in my life – my parents, brother, nephew, grandmother, my extended family, and my best friend/soul mate, Kevin.
I am thankful to have settled into an ever-evolving niche that speaks to my talents and passions, where I get daily opportunities to expand my knowledge (and get paid doing it). Also, ecstatic that it’s possible to become your own boss… and make a decent living while dressed in your pajamas.
I am thankful that technology allows me to keep in contact with family, friends and clients without ever having to pick up the phone. The online connections I’ve made over the years have been priceless…which brings me to my business partners – thankful to have met up with Samantha and Danielle – who have unknowingly helped me grow as a writer and individual over the years. Happy Thanksgiving! ~ Yona
I’m so thankful that the people I love are happy and healthy – my two children and the love of my life, Dwayne. I couldn’t go a day without their smiles and the fact that I can get a hug or share a laugh with them anytime I want really makes me thankful – I know there are some people who don’t have that option with their loved ones.
I’m incredibly thankful that I can work at home, doing what I love – writing! As I work each day with the amazing clients that have come into my life, I’m so glad that I have the opportunity to do something different and challenging each day. I’m also thankful to have such an amazing support system and friends in Yona and Danielle – and the best business meetings in the world, by the way! Happy Thanksgiving! ~ Samantha
The three of us hope that you are enjoying the holiday with the ones you love – and some amazing food. Leave us a comment and let us know what you’re thankful for this year. We’d love to hear from you and share in your joys.
“Feeling gratitude and not expressing it is like wrapping a present and not giving it.” –William Arthur Ward
Making money online can be a frustrating process, especially if you’re just getting started. Both new and seasoned internet marketers have found interesting, well-written blogs to be one of the most profitable tools in their quest for an online income. As we all know, anything that makes money takes time and attention, but creating a lucrative, income-generating blog could be a lot easier than you think – and there are several different ways to turn your blog into a source of income.
Advertise
Pay-per-click (PPC) programs like Google Adsense have been around for several years and prove to be an effective way to make money for many websites. This form of advertising requires very little effort and can easily be integrated into your blog. The focus of your blog will play a big role in determining how much income you can make from PPC and there are some niches that will not benefit at all from these programs – if your blog is one of those, there’s still hope for advertising-based income. A blog with steady traffic and good readership can sell ad space to related businesses, often bringing in more revenue than a PPC campaign could generate. This option typically requires a bit more time and some leg work, but the results can be very satisfying.
Create a Product
Depending on the topic of your blog, a unique product could be your key to a successful online income. From digital downloads to tangible merchandise, the possibilities for a companion product for your blog are unlimited. Remember, establishing yourself and your blog as a reliable and trustworthy source for your niche is essential. Create a cookbook for your food blog; sell homemade wares on your crafting website; compile a review guide for weight loss methods; make t-shirts or notecards featuring your most popular quips and quotes – get creative and build your own online marketplace for your readers.
Promote the Products of Others
Companies and individuals with their own unique products are always looking for new avenues to sell their merchandise. This form of affiliate marketing isn’t always as profitable as selling your own unique product, but it generally requires much less time and effort. Programs like LinkShare and ClickBank offer a multitude of opportunities to make sales-based commissions on everything from gift baskets to software downloads. There are also websites, like Amazon, that allow webmasters and bloggers to pick and choose products for their own online store. This technique can be a huge success for most websites if it is implemented correctly.
Develop a Membership Site
Everyone loves free information and resources but people are also willing to pay for exclusive, premium content that isn’t readily available. Lesson plans, recipes, marketing tips, and many other topics make great foundations for subscription-based sites – and can create a healthy online income for you. Like most money-making techniques, a membership portion of your blog will require steady traffic and loyal readership, as well as careful planning and regular updates. Problogger has some excellent resources to help you develop a successful membership site.
Flip It
Blog flipping is becoming more and more popular, proving to be quite lucrative for all types of topics. Some bloggers sell their websites because they no longer have the time to invest in maintaining it, while others establish their blogs for the sole purpose of turning it over to an interested investor. A blog that is worthy of flipping requires established readership and traffic numbers, a proven potential to generate income, and should already have quality content in place to continue attracting readers. Typically, a successful blog can return at least 2 years of revenue at the time of sale.
Images: hellori; iprole; meerlap
Do you need help making money with your blog? Priceless Writers offers blog management, search engine optimized content packages, and original writing services to help you generate a profitable online income from your website. Contact us for a personalized quote.
Don't Make These 'Instant Rejection' Mistakes!
Previously, we discussed how to write a query letter for your novel and now I’d like to talk just a bit about some of the things you should never do when writing a query letter.
While it’s really important to make your novel query letter stand out from the thousands an agent might get in a week – it’s also important to appear professional and educated.
1. Gimmicks – Avoid gimmicks when querying agents. You might think it would be clever and funny to make your entire query rhyme or to address it to an agent’s dog – but it’s not.
Remember that most agents have seen it all, and it doesn’t get any cuter as they go along. Just ask agent Jessica Faust what she does when someone addresses a query to her pup…
Make your query stand out with excellent, crisp and concise writing and you’ll need no gimmicks.
2. Mistakes - No one is perfect, and I think most agents realize that. However, if you’ve done your job correctly, you’ve proofread that query more than once and probably more than twice. If one mistake squeezes through (or even two), it might be okay.
However, if your query is full of mistakes such as typos, words used in the wrong context, grammatical errors and more – you’re probably going to receive a rejection. Agent Janet Reid has a lot of great advice when it comes to the things that will get you an ‘instant rejection.’
3. Begging - Oh boy. You want that agent to request a proposal package or the full manuscript! You want it so badly you can taste it, but the last thing you want to do is beg, bribe, threaten or try to trick the agent into asking for a partial or full.
Simply submit the query in a professional and confident way, and if the strength is in your query, you’re going to get asked for more. Begging will accomplish nothing except making you look pathetic to an agent – which you don’t want!
4. Providing Too Much Information – The agent reading your query wants to instantly find out what your manuscript is about and whether or not it’s good. They don’t want to know where you grew up, unless it’s relevant somehow to your manuscript.
I’m not an agent, but I’m guessing they don’t care what kinds of sports you’re into or whether you took professional tennis lessons. They couldn’t care less about who took you to prom and if you’re allergic to corn – keep it to yourself. Your bio probably shouldn’t even be more than a sentence or two. Restrict the information in the query to manuscript-related!
5. Time Limits – Giving an agent a time limit for when they should respond to you is a huge no-no. Let’s face it – we’re nobodies in the publishing world…agents work with a lot of somebodies. If they receive a time limit from you because you’re going to edit if you don’t hear from an agent within 3 weeks…or because you want to query another agent but would like to hear from this agent first – chances are the agent is going to giggle and move on to another writer.
By avoiding these mistakes in your novel query letter, you may have a better chance of having the agent ask to see more of your work!
Have you ever left your home and then had a funny feeling later that you may have left something on? Keeping your home safe while you’re traveling out of town for your business not only gives you peace of mind, but also protects your possessions and privacy. Before traveling out of town for business, get rid of ‘that’ nagging feeling before you leave by taking a quick walk around the house with a checklist to remind you of the essentials. Make sure you:
- Turn off all appliances and electronics you wouldn’t normally leave running, like your coffeepot, stove, DVD player, computer monitor, and toaster.
- Lock all the windows and doors in your home.
- Don’t forget to set the alarm as you leave (if you use one.)
While these things are pretty standard things to check, there are a few other tips and tricks you can use to keep your home safe while you travel. Thieves are very good at paying attention – especially on holidays and times when people travel, they are watching for empty houses that promise a lot of loot! Don’t fall victim to burglars – use the following simple tips to help prevent a tragedy.
1) If you have a few reliable neighbors, make them aware of the fact that you will be traveling. Most neighbors won’t mind keeping an eye on your home to be sure that there is no strange activity. Although the chances of being robbed or having your house vandalized while you’re gone are small, being safe is always better than being sorry. Another great thing you can do is leave a few lights and a television or radio on so that your home doesn’t appear to be completely empty. This will make a sketchy stranger think twice before entering your home with bad intentions.
2) If you can, have a neighbor, family member or friend pick up your mail daily. Thieves can often get the most from you without even entering your home. A bank statement, credit card statement or other financial report hanging out in your mailbox is like a payday for a thief who takes the time to investigate unattended mailboxes. They can easily obtain some of your most personal information just by swiping the contents of your mailbox. Prevent this from happening by making sure nothing is waiting for them while you’re away on business.
3) Have your grass cut while you’re gone, especially if you will be gone for a while. Hire someone in advance and ask them to cut your grass on a certain day. In the wintertime, have your snow shoveled while you are out of town. This way, everything will be neat and tidy – eliminating another clue that you’re gone which potential robbers can pick up on easily.
When you take these extra steps to make sure your home is safe while you travel, you will have more peace of mind and less to worry about. No one wants to spend their entire business trip worrying about what’s going on at home. So, go on and seal that business deal – knowing everything’s OK on the home front!
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