Membership Niche Selection Tips

Posted on May 11, 2011 by presellpro

In order to make sure your membership business is profitable, you have to select the right market. Here’s how.

Step 1 – Find a Fanatical Market

The first step in developing a profitable membership business is to find a market with fanatics in it. Fanatic is defined as someone with an irrational enthusiasm. These are the people you’re looking for because they are so enthusiastic they’re willing to spend money on their topic of fanaticism. Here’s how to find fanatics:

  • One simple idea that’s easily forgotten is to scan the magazine racks when you’re out and about. It’s becoming increasingly difficult to run a print magazine. So if you see one on the shelves you know they are making money, which means that there are enough people interested in what they’re saying to make it profitable. This is a very good indication that it’s a good niche for you to go into.
  • Watch and listen for fanatics in your daily life. Pay attention to conversations, social events, TV, restaurants, public places to see what people are talking about. People generally talk about things they are interested in. And that may also mean they’re willing to pay money to learn more about it.
  • Again, looking in the physical world for clues you can tell there are lots of people interested in something if there are clubs and organizations around the topic. Likewise, if there are enough people to hold a convention, there are definitely enough people to fill your membership website.
  • And of course there are all the things you have an interest in, too! Chances are that if you like a certain topic or hobby, other people do, too. The icing on the cake here is that you get to build a business doing something you love.
  • One simple and easy way to find out what’s hot is Google Trends. Google Trends tells you the most popular current search terms. The reason people are searching Google for info on these topics is because they are interested. And the fact that it’s made it into Google Trends tells you LOTS of people are interested. Hot topics that people are excited about make great niches for your membership website.

Step 2 – Determine the financial feasibility

After selecting a possible niche to build your membership site around, the next step is to find out if it’s a profitable niche to be in. One way to figure this out is to see if other are making money in it.

OK, how do we figure that out?

  • Find out if there are blogs or forums related to it. Just search Google for “YourNiche blog” & “YourNiche forum” and see what comes up. This means there is a large group of people already assembled for you to market to.
  • See if other people are creating and selling product in this niche by searching in Google Shopping, ebay and Amazon. If other people are creating and selling products in this niche, it means there is money to be made.
  • Monitor Google Adwords to determine if people are running the same ads for weeks in a row. If they are, this means they’re making money on these ads – otherwise, they’d stop running them. Which means there is money to be made in your niche.

Last, but not least… How hard will it be to break into this niche?

Once you’ve found a niche and figured out that there is money to be made in, you need to determine if you can break into this niche. How do you gauge the ease of entry?

  • Look at the product types in this niche. You want to find a niche where information products are being sold as the norm. The easiest membership website to create and maintain are information membership sites.
  • The next thing to look at is the competition. You don’t want to try to break into a saturated marketing, so figure out how many people are already selling in this niche.
  • Size vs. Competition. Some competition is good. It means that this is a profitable market. And as long as the size of the market is large enough to support the competition, you’re fine.
  • How quickly do people in this market make buying decisions and are the ready to buy? Depending on the market it can be anywhere from a couple minutes to a many months between when someone starts the investigation process to when they actually make a purchase.

In Summary

So far, we’ve talked about exactly what it takes to pick a great niche: One with a hungry crowd of fanatics, who are ready to spend money on information about their topic. And you’ve determined your barrier to entry is small enough to give it a go. Now that you’ve prepared properly, you’re success is 99% guaranteed. How to actually run your membership website is the only thing left to talk about…

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Traffic is King, but this comes FIRST

Posted on May 9, 2011 by presellpro

The best way to ensure your success is to build automated traffic sources to send you visitors day and night.

Before we begin

The first thing you need to do before you start going after any traffic is keyword research. This is because you will building your traffic funnels around specific keywords. Which means you need to put some thought into the keywords you’re targeting.

A couple things to keep in mind when doing keyword research:

  • Will you be able to rank for these keywords? Take a look at the “strength” of others websites (and how many) are already targeting these keywords.
  • Are these “buying” keywords? Some keywords will bring lots of traffic, but none of them will buy. What you want is buyers!
  • What about affiliates? If you want to build a huge business, you’re going to need affiliates to help you. So, it’s important to also target affiliates in the keywords you go after.

Although this is an essential step, doing it all by hand can take a very long time. Hiring someone else to do it costs a lot of money. The upside is that these two factors keep most everyone from even doing their keyword research. The smartest marketers use website traffic software to automate this and other aspects of their business. This will not only speed it up. It will give you better results, as well.

Only then can you start getting traffic

Once you’ve done your properly keyword research, you’re now ready to start targeting these keywords to draw in visitors.

Here’s a short list of sneaky traffic techniques:

  • Surveys
  • “Help” Websites
  • Video Websites

Surveys

Here’s the thing – people love surveys. It’s human nature. And if you make it interesting, other people will post your survey on their website. They benefit by getting free content for their site and you get a link to your site under the survey. Think about that – you get website traffic for free just for making a survey! Most people think surveys are just for collecting data, but in this case you don’t even care about the answers. Just make the question interesting enough that people will want to share it with their own visitors.

“Help” Websites

These sites, like answers.yahoo.com are filled with people asking and answering questions for each other. Once again, the main reason for this site is not the reason you’re interested. The other thing they can be used for is to get traffic to your site, leads for your business and sales! One thing you can do is to visit sites like Craigslist and Yahoo! Answers and manually extract contact info to contact other users. So, if you’re smart, you’ll use website traffic software to do it all for you. This allows you to do the things in your business that can’t be automated and let the software just give you the leads.

Video Sharing Sites

Video is huge and sites like YouTube and Vimeo are extremely popular. These sites generate massive traffic and people watch over 2 billion videos a day on YouTube alone . If you’re not taking advantage of this rich source of website traffic, then you are really missing out.

Even if you don’t think you can make a good video. It’s really easy to just start with an article or something you’ve already written. And use free screen capture software to record yourself reading it. And like anything else, there is software available that will turn articles into videos for you automatically.

Summary

Figuring out how to get some visitors to your site is not hard at all. Just be a creative and think outside the box a bit. And today there are tons of options for software tools that can help with every part of this process.

Get started right away:

  • Do your keyword research
  • Then create some surveys born to go viral
  • Take advantage of the “help” sites
  • And definitely include video sharing sites

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Affiliate Marketing Secrets

Posted on May 8, 2011 by presellpro

Learn Top Affiliate Secrets

If you want to get started quickly and easily in internet marketing, then affiliate marketing is for you. What “affiliate marketing” means is that you just send traffic to someone else’s website, they do all the hard work of developing the product, making the sale, delivering the product and supporting the customer, and you get a percentage of the sale price as your commission, which for digital products can be 50% of more.

These are a some of the benefits

  1. You can get started right away because you don’t have to create a product, write the sales page, design the website, come up with support tools, or do support, billing and maintenance.
  2. You have practically zero time investment because you don’t have to do the customer support or deal with billing or technical issues.
  3. There’s no risk for you, because the product owner has already done all the research , development and testing. So you know that your traffic will result in sales.

Looking at these benefits, it’s clear that affiliate marketing is the way to go!

The downside is…

After all your hard work of generating traffic to the sales page, you will never see any of those visitors again. Unfortunately, the majority of those visitors (at least 90%) will not buy on their first visit. That’s fine for the product owner because she can sell to them again and again, but you can’t.

How can you avoid this pitfall?

Simply put, you need to capture the name and email of your visitors *before* sending them to the product sales page. If you do that, you can contact them again and send them back the product website multiple times. This will increase the number of sales you make. And if you’re a super star affiliate, you’ll provide high-quality content before sending them to the product website.

Here are the benefits of doing affiliate marketing like this:

  1. By building your own list, you’re creating a renewable resource that you can tap again and again for instant profits.
  2. You’re generating good will by giving them high-quality content. This way, they are much more likely to make a purchase when you send them to the sales page.

Here’s what you’ll need to create affiliate tools like this:

  1. A squeeze page, and even better a Video squeeze page.
  2. One or more content-rich “warm up” pages
  3. An email series with at least 5 high-quality content emails

Instead of sending visitors directly to the product sales page, you’ll send them to your lead capture page first. This page is where you collect your visitors’ contact info and add them to your autoresponder, which in turn starts sending them the multi-part email series. Once your visitors have been subscribed to your email series, they are sent to your content pages.

These high-quality content pages provide value and build good will. This way your visitor is more likely to buy when they get to the product owner’s website. And at the same time, the email series begins following up with them to get them back to the sales page, in case they don’t buy on the first visit.

All of this together increases your chances of making the sale by up to 500% so it’s well worth the effort of setting it up. And once it’s set up, it runs automatically – you just send visitors to the squeeze page, instead of the product website.

If you don’t have the time or expertise to set it all up yourself, you can use something like Affiliate Silver Bullet. Services like this design the enter system (the video, the video squeeze page, the email series, the content pages, etc). On the plus side, you’ll save a ton of time and money vs. trying to build this yourself. Plus you can get started instantly. One negative is that there will be other people using this same affiliate marketing system. However, the odds of you and them both finding the same visitor are so small, that it doesn’t really matter.

Alternatively, you can use a service like Elance to “outsource” each of these compnents. Whichever way you decided to go, it’s critical to get an affiliate marketing system like this in place, if you’re at all serious about your business.

 

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How an Internet Business Can Help You Make Money

Posted on May 4, 2011 by est91

A great avenue to make money was created once the internet took hold on the world. Since the beginning there have been many internet companies that have shared time above the top of online revenue. Sites like ebay and google have stood the test of time. Making money online consistently and over the long haul must be done by initially learning from the sites that have already experienced it. This is why it is a great idea to read a book that details the secrets of those who have had success making money online.

Scott Fox is a writer who has written Internet Riches The Simple Money-Making Secrets of Online Millionaires among other books. Many of the most successful online businesses are detailed and so are the many avenues they used to do so. The idea of an instant online business is where Fox starts. This means that the business will not require you to invest any money into it up front. This business can thrive and help you to make money without needing any capital at first.

Cheaply marketing businesses online is the next part of the formula Fox begins to talk about. In order to get the name of your business out for free there are many different techniques that are available. Advertising space on your site can be offered to another site so that you can also post ads on theirs. Online blogs and forums that are related to your line of business is another way that you can market for free, but is much less traditional.

There are many areas that will grow in the next few years that Scott explores. He thinks a great opportunity is being provided by the readily available internet provided by mobile devices. The internet is accessed with ease on net books as well as most mobile phones that are sold today. Another avenue to explore are the new tablet computers that are another stream that revenue can come from. Going online with a mobile device is becoming the most popular way to access the internet, so take notice.

Internet Riches The Simple Money Making Secrets of Online Millionaires

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Coming Up With An Effective Marketing Plan

Posted on May 3, 2011 by est91

In running your own business, one of the things you will probably learn early on is that you are unlikely to meet with success in the long run if you do not have a marketing plan that gets your name into the minds of the consumer public. While you can approach a marketing plan in any one of a number of ways, there are also some core elements that you will need to make sure you consider for any marketing plan you devise.

Who: People often figure out where they are going to do their advertising before they figure out who they want to target with their advertising, but this is backwards, as the very first thing you will want to do is make sure you know who you will be targeting. There is no “right” or “wrong” answer to this, but recognize that – even if you have a product or service that appeals to people of all different ages – you will need to come up with a different marketing strategy for each demographic.

Internet Marketing Software!

Where: Where to advertise is another big consideration, and this is why it is important to figure out “who” before you figure out “where,” because the best answer to “where” you should advertise is this: Go where the people are! If you are advertising to young people, advertise using social media and in the magazines young people read; if you are advertising to an older audience, advertise on the talk radio stations they might listen to, and in the magazines they might read!

How: This area is the downfall for a lot of companies, because they imagine they are expert marketeers in their own right – when really, your best bet is to hire a true marketing expert to devise the approach you will take with each individual ad. You will be that much closer to having an effective marketing campaign once you put all these things together – and of course, this means you will be that much closer to meeting with success in your business!

Viral Marketing Frenzy!

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Is Tumblr Worth Using For My Business?

Posted on May 2, 2011 by est91

You probably realize that – when it comes to promoting your business – one of the best promotional tools is the internet. But while this seems like a simple assertion on the surface, the internet is a broad thing, and it can be difficult to know which aspects of it to use! And while there are the obvious, no-brainer options such as YouTube, facebook, and Twitter, there are also the options that are not at all no-brainers. One such place is Tumblr; Tumblr is an immensely popular blogsite – but Tumblr is also one of the online areas that businesses tend to neglect for the most part as they focus on others. And so, any business looking to branch out into new advertising areas must naturally ask, “Is Tumblr a good place for me to get involved?”

Quite frankly, the answer to this question depends on a pair of things: firstly, it depends on what you sell, and secondly, it depends on how flexible your marketing approach is.

Learn how to flawlessly advertise online!

More than any other social media platform, Tumblr is known for being completely “non-corporate,” with most of its users tending to be outside of the mainstream. So even though Tumblr has a vast number of users, it might not be the best place for you if your product is considered “corporate.” On the other hand – if your product is considered to be “non-corporate” – Tumblr can certainly be a great place for you to get involved! Or – to take things a step further – if you can give your product or service a “non-corporate” feel, Tumblr can be a great place for you even if you truly are “corporate.” And of course, this is where the consideration of how flexible you can be with your marketing approach becomes important.

Of course, you know that the purpose of any product or service – in the end – is to make a profit for the company selling that product or providing that service. But if you can market yourself in an outside-the-box manner – one that gives your company a completely non-corporate feel – you can use Tumblr to your advantage!

As many businesses have still not figured out how to use Tumblr effectively, you can find that you are getting a big head start over your competitors if you establish a presence on Tumblr before they get a chance to!

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How to Market a Business Utilizing Facebook

Posted on May 1, 2011 by est91

One of the most popular sites on the internet is the social media site Facebook. It has over 500 million users worldwide that actively use the website. Connecting with friends and engaging with others are things that an active user does constantly. For a business this means that you have an audience that is absolutely massive. The methods that Facebook allows for when marketing have not been afforded to businesses in the past. Failing to take advantage of theses opportunities can be very harmful to your business.

The main problem for most businesses when trying to promote on Facebook is the difficulties it presents. How should one go about using it successfully? This question is one of many that don’t have a definite answer to it. When you are using a site that is this new there isn’t the same blue print that everyone uses. A lot of people don’t like this about the site, but it offers some very unique opportunities in reality.

A business can experiment on Facebook since there is no set way that most business owners market on it. Once they find an effective way to promote they won’t be competing with thousands of other businesses promoting in the same way. Instead they will be able to use a method they developed on their own to make sure their business is successful. Targeting the audience they desire to attract is the only way to stay successful in the long run though.

Don’t let new opportunities pass your business by. Although many older methods are considered tried and true, many of them have run their course. They aren’t the best option just because most people use them for their business. The best way to market your business is to do so in a way that no other business uses as any marketer will attest. It hasn’t been around long enough to be fully exploited and this is one of Facebook’s greatest qualities. Keep yourself ahead of the pack of businesses by making sure that you are using new ways to attract customers!

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Can I Build My Own Website?

Posted on April 30, 2011 by est91

You need a website of your own if you want to have a business – or, quite frankly, if you want to sell anything at all! But a website is not free to build, and when you are trying to save up money for starting your business, it can be tough to spend extra on a website. Because of this, many people with their own business also want to know if it is possible for them to build their own website. If you have ever wondered this yourself, the answer – believe it or not – is that you absolutely can build your own website, as long as you know a few things.

If you want to build a website without spending a lot of money, you will need to first register a domain name. The toughest part of this is finding a domain name that will work for you, as the domains themselves are usually pretty inexpensive (as little as $10 a year). If you or your company has a unique name, this should be easy; it can be much harder, though, if your desired name is already taken!

The next step will be finding a template that will enable you to pretty much set up and run everything on your own. Find a template such as a WordPress template, and you will be able to make any changes or adjustments to your site that you want, whenever you want.

And if you want to design and run your website on your own, it will be key that you put in some time doing research. The first thing you need to research is basic HTML coding; this is not very complicated stuff, but it will enable you to have total control over many aspects of your website. And the other bit of research you will need to do is make sure you find out as much as you can about the process of building a website. For only $25 on Amazon, you can get the book Learning Web Design – which is the best resource available, and is usually $45!

You will be able to start building your website – and making it look exactly how you want it to look – as soon as you start learning what you are doing!

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If I Am Good With Numbers, What Is A Good Job For Me?

Posted on April 29, 2011 by est91

Because of the great number of job possibilities out there, it can be difficult to know exactly what job will be the right job for you. This can especially be the case for those high school or college students who are at a place where they are needing to decide where they will go in the future. The best approach for anyone who is in this place – or for anyone who has children in this place – is to settle down with something you are good at and then to find jobs that fit with that. For anyone who has gone through their whole life being good with numbers (and enjoying numbers!), these are some of the best jobs to keep in mind.

Accounting: Accounting can seem like a boring job to some, but for those who prefer to work with numbers over working with people, it can be perfect; accountants typically handle the money and taxes for both companies and individuals. While many accountants work for large accounting companies such as PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Deloitte, and Ernst & Young, others work directly for companies and businesses, and others run their own private practice.

Marketing For Accountants.

Engineering: An area that is great for those who want to work closely with numbers as well as with computers is engineering. Engineers usually specialize in one specific area, and the available areas in which an engineer can specialze range from physics to computers to biochemical to more.

Finance: If you are a great mathematician and also enjoy working closely with people, a career in finance might be the perfect place for you. Those who work in finance often deal directly with clients or – if they work within a business – often deal directly with the higher-ups of that business. And for anyone who wants to use the knowledge and expertise of finance for their own personal planning and investments, the study of finance can be hugely beneficial.

Most jobs that deal with numbers are well-paying and offer tremendous job security. If you have a knack for numbers yourself and have been wondering what you should do with it, consider the possibility of a career in accounting, engineering, or finance.

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Designing An Effective Business Card

Posted on April 28, 2011 by est91

In order to promote both yourself and your business to customers, a business card is one of the most important tools you can use.

Whenever the opportunity strikes, you will be able to hand out your business card if you have one handy to give. But while a business card can be a useful tool, it can also be a waste if you do not know how to make your business card effective. Not only should your business card list a name and phone number, but it also needs to inspire people to call the number!

Keep in mind the fact that those who take your business card will not always rememer exactly who it was that gave it to them. Depending on who the person is and the circles they typically find themselves in, they may end up with several business cards in their pocket each day. Not only should your business card clearly state who you are and how to reach you, but it should also clearly state what you do. If your company’s name does not make it perfectly clear what the company does, at least make sure the card itself makes it perfectly clear!

You should also include your logo on the card, but make sure that the logo is not so intrusive that it takes over the whole card! Remember: Even though the logo is an important element, it is only one element of the card; it should be noticeable, but it should not be the focal point.

It is worth spending a little bit of extra money to make sure your card looks professional, as a professional-looking card will inspire confidence. If someone is looking for a plumber, for instance, and they have nothing to go off of but a few business cards, they will choose the highest-quality, most professional-looking card.

Your business card can do a lot to help your business, or it can do very little; in fact, it can even be a detriment! Make sure that your card is effectively designed, and make sure that you spend a bit of extra money to have a card that looks great!

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