Kerry's Blog

A blog for homeschoolers, family entrepreneurs and scrapbookers. Includes thoughts, reviews and comments. Feel free to join in :-)

Thursday, July 02, 2009

Sell Information Online With The 5 Benefits Of Autoresponders

Autoresponders are a great way to make money when you sell information online. When you use an autoresponder the proper way there are a number of benefits that you can derive from it when promoting online business opportunities.

1. Automates the sales process
There are many parts of your sales process that you can automate with an autoresponder. It should include a link to the email address for your autoresponder so that they can get a number of exposures from you. Repeated exposures results in more visitors buying from you. Another great way to automate the sales process is to add product testimonials and descriptions to your email series.

2. Automation of Selling Advertising
If you supplement your profits with advertising, use an autoresponder to aid in this process along with using it to sell information online. You can add emails that provide a detail rate quote to go out to subscribers upon request with a link to place an order. It can follow up with those who are interested and you can also blast out special offers to the entire list of interested parties.

3. Offer an email course
People go online for information and one way to offer it is in an email course. Your email course should have information of value and not be a bunch of sales offers. Valuable information sells more valuable information. Include in the course strategies and tactics to help your prospect so that they will get a sneak preview of what the information you sell is like and why they would want it. You should clearly articulate the benefits of your product offering. Finally, you must ask the prospect to buy from you if you want to make sales.

4. Provide a trial version of your product
An autoresponder can be used to give out samples of what you offer when you sell information online. Your prospects need to get a sample in order for them to decide to buy from you. Giving samples of what you offer also allows you to get their email address. You can set up your autoresponder so that it automatically allows you to provide trial instructions as well as follow-up and closing.

5. Send out reminders
Autoresponders are also a great tool to send out reminders to your prospects of your product offering. Some people just forget what you have to offer and reminders increase the amount of people that buy from you. With these reminder emails, you can also promote other products that you offer as well as products that you might derive an affiliate commission from related to your market.

With these 5 tips you will get the most bang out of your buck with your autoresponder. It will help you to sell information online and make more money.

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Copyright Stephen Beck, 2009
You have permission to reprint this article, as long as you don’t make any changes and include the bio below.

Stephen Beck teaches families how to write pdf ebooks. Get his free website traffic report at http://www.familyebiz.com/blog/ so your family can start now.

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Wednesday, July 01, 2009

Starting A Consulting Business And Increasing Your Client Base With An Autoresponder

So you want to start a consulting business? Imagine having someone looking at your website and having their credit card in hand ready to buy from you. However, what you cannot see is the fact that the person that is ready to buy from you is about to be distracted by something going on away from their computer.

As a result, you have just lost out on a potential client, unless you first captured her email in an autoresponder. This allows you to follow up with her later. An autoresponder gives you the ability to contact your prospects by sharing with them information about your products and services, as well as driving them back to your website.

Autoresponders are a must have program when starting a consulting business and they do not just help with your email. Here are some strategies that you can use to set up autoresponders to help you make money on the internet by providing informative newsletters and articles to your potential clients.

1. Create a newsletter
Creating a newsletter is going to do several things to help you with converting your potential clients into actual clients. A newsletter builds up credibility in the minds of your prospects as well as allows your prospects to better understand what it is you have to offer.

2. Promote a newsletter for affiliates
As a consulting business owner with affiliates, a newsletter allows you to keep them up to date as to the latest news and events that is going on with your products and services. This information will help them to be able to maximize their commission and promote your consulting business more effectively.

3. Showcase your articles
Showcasing your articles is yet another powerful way to use an autoresponder when starting consulting business as articles allow you to demonstrate your expertise and attract more visitors to your website as well as make more money.

By writing articles that provide information of value, many editors (both online and off) will distribute them with a resource box. A resource box describes who you are and describes the products and services you offer. A resource box can also provide a link to your autoresponder address.

Say you authored 50 articles. By taking these articles and putting them into an autoresponder, you can create a list that contains article titles, the autoresponder address and a brief abstract of the article. Next, promote the list of articles. It should also have publishing guidelines to make it easy for your affiliates to add their articles and give you more content to work with.

These are three strategies that you can implement with autoresponders for newsletters and autoresponders. By utilizing these and other strategies an autoresponder can be a powerful tool when starting consulting business.

_____________________
Copyright Stephen Beck, 2009
You have permission to reprint this article, as long as you don’t make any changes and include the bio below.

Stephen Beck shows people how to launch a Christian home-based business. Go get his three free videos at http://www.8weekstoprofits.com so you can begin today.

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Friday, June 19, 2009

Start A Home-Based Business Successfully With Your Spouse

Here are 5 tips that will help you to work at home successfully with your spouse.

1. Have a willingness to accept criticism.
Criticism can help you improve so you should be willing to accept it even if the source of the criticism is your spouse. After all, you are now in business together and as long as your spouse reserves business criticism for the hours of operation that you run your business there is no reason why you need to be defensive about it.

2. Keep the wall of separation up between issues that affect you home-based business and issues that affect your marriage.
It is not appropriate to bring up conversations that are better served for family time while you are running the business together. It is a given that you are both going to have different opinions about issues. That said, there is a time and a place for everything. It is also not appropriate to bring up conversations that are better served for business time during family time.

3. You and your spouse should have a certain time every few months or so where you meet outside of the house to strategize for the business.
This allows the two of you to meet in a different environment. There are a number of locations that will work for this type of meeting, such as a nice restaurant, a quiet lounge or bar, a hotel and more.

4. When you have a date night make sure that business is not the topic of discussion.
Even if you both enjoy what you do this can be a very unhealthy habit. You need time to be together as a couple without the business.

5. Go to a business conference together.
You should stay one day after the conference so you can identify ways that you can apply what you learned and who you met that you might want to partner with in your the business. It is also good to have your spouse at these conferences as you tend to be more focused than if you go on your own.

When you start a home based business with your spouse it can be a rewarding and fun event, but it is important that you make sure that you keep your relationship strong both while working and outside of working.

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Copyright Stephen Beck, 2009
You have permission to reprint this article, as long as you don’t make any changes and include the bio below.

Stephen Beck shows families how to make profits online. Go get his 3 free videos at http://www.8weekstoprofits.com so you can start today.

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Wednesday, June 17, 2009

How To Start Home Business That Runs Successfully With Your Spouse

In our last article, we talked about how to start a home business successfully with your spouse. Here are some additional tips that will help you and your spouse run that business successfully.

1. Plan time to discuss how the upcoming week is going to work.
During this time you can decide who is going to work on what and determine what needs to be done this week. A great time to do this is on Monday mornings. Whatever time you decide that this meeting is going to take place, it should be at that set time every week so that it is easy to remember.

2. Separate which one of you is going to be responsible for completing each task in the business and write it down.
It is a good idea to have it in a centralized location such as a white board in your home office. You can create columns for the two of you and additional columns if you have employees or people you outsource to. It should also include calendar events as well.

3. Track business and family appointments on a large calendar with various colors.
One benefit to starting a home business is the ability to schedule business activities around family events and this will aid you in this task.

4. Use strengths appropriately.
Each of you should focus on what you are strong at and hire or outsource out the rest. If you are going to hire employees or contractors make sure you decide and make clear which of you they will work for and what they are responsible for working on so that there is no confusion.

5. Meet before you start home business to plan out household responsibilities.
You should know who is going to pick the kids up from school and take them to their various activities. You should determine who is going to do the cooking and the cleaning around the house. Determining these tasks in advance will save you lots of frustration.

6. Figure out what each of you are working on in the business and come up with a game plan for what will happen should one of you need to step away.
Think about what it will cost to hire someone to do those tasks instead. This is part of contingency planning, which is vital, especially if one of you gets pregnant or has other situations that require your attention other than the business.

The key with all of these tips is to plan, plan and plan some more. Planning in advance will make everything easier when you start home business.

_____________________
Copyright Stephen Beck, 2009
You have permission to reprint this article, as long as you don’t make any changes and include the bio below.

Stephen Beck teaches families how to start a Christian home-based business. Go get his free website traffic report at http://www.familyebiz.com/blog/ so your family can begin today.

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Tuesday, June 16, 2009

How To Research Online To Write Great Web Copy

Many business owners have a product-based focus instead of a marketing based focus. You can have the best product but if no one knows about it, no sales are made. Marketing is very important in building a successful business and a key component of marketing is copywriting. You must use good copywriting if you want to run a successful business.

Why is copywriting so important for online business opportunities? Prior to understanding its importance in an internet marketing business, I focused my efforts of product creation. Even though I launched a new product every month, it did not necessarily make me more money. I needed a way to sell all of these new products I was creating and I needed it quickly. Therefore, I decided to focus on copywriting for my business.

Joe Sugarman, a master copywriter states that the job of good copywriting is to get a person to give up their money in return for the product or service you are offering. This is what your copywriting should do. Here are some tips on how to write copy that does this.

1. Research
Failure to research means failure to write good copy in promoting your online business opportunities. What does research consist of? It begins with researching the prospective customer. You want to know as much information about the customer as possible including frustrations, fears, concerns, etc. When you take the time out to research and identify the ideal customer for your product this will help you to write good copy.

You should also find out if the customer uses certain words in language or demonstrates a bias in the buying process. Engineers are a good example because you can expect them to be very analytical in their decision making process. They also have their own language that is specific to their industry.

By taking the time out to research the customer, you will be able to write a sales letter to target that customer. This level of personalization is vital.

You should also take the time to identify all the key characteristics of your product. This includes the features the product has as well as the benefits it offers for online business opportunities. Identify these key points and put them in a list so you can refer to them. The features describe what the product does. The benefits describe how what the product does and how it aids the customer. A simple way to identify benefits is to look at the features and ask yourself, ?Why would the customer care about this?? This one step will make your copy better.

2. Index Cards
When writing good copy you should recall your school days and bring back index cards. The use of these cards is great when copywriting. Use the cards to help track the answers to the questions your customer has in his or her mind. This will give you the information you need about your customer to write better. Also, include the features and benefits of your product on the index cards.

As you create the cards, write down the sentences that you want to include in your sales letter. This gives you a head start in the writing process. You do not need to write the final draft, just the main idea as a reference point.

Taking the time to use index cards to prepare is a very effective tactic. In fact, Dan Kennedy himself uses this tactic when writing copy.

By utilizing these strategies for writing copy for online business opportunities your marketing will be more effective. If you fail to take the time to research you will fail to make the sale to the customer.

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Copyright Stephen Beck, 2009
You have permission to reprint this article, as long as you don’t make any changes and include the bio below.

Stephen Beck teaches people how to sell their knowledge. Go get his 3 free videos at http://www.8weekstoprofits.com so your family can begin now.

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Monday, June 15, 2009

The Keys To Getting The Most People On Your Teleseminar As Possible

As a promoter of real home business opportunities, the teleseminars you host need to have people on them. How do you promote them properly? One of the best ways to promote is to combine email marketing with a teleseminar registration page so that you can maximize the amount of people on the call.

The first step I take is to send out 3 emails to promote the event. For example, if I am doing a teleseminar next week, I will promote the teleseminar using a broadcast email. This is not like the follow up emails in my autoresponder. Everybody on my list gets the broadcast email all at one time.

What should go in a promotion email? Here is an example, "Hello, next week I will be holding a teleseminar. The phone number to dial in is as follows." Even though the teleseminar is free, promote it like there was a charge for it. This is why a registration website to obtain their name and email makes sense.

To promote a teleseminar when you work from home part time, use good copywriting. There should be bullet points on your emails and web pages that highlight what topics are going to be discussed.

People are very attracted to discussion topics they believe they will benefit from. So if you have a high interest topic such as "How to make an extra $1,000 to $2,000 within the next 7 days even if you have no product or list." Make sure you highlight that in your promotion. Here are some other great topic examples:

"Why some businesses generate all the leads while others stay lead poor."

"Avoid the critical mistake that most people make in addressing the needs of their customer that costs them time, money and frustration (and how these mistakes leave them in the minor leagues of business as oppose to being an all star player with the online heavy hitters)." You do not have to use the baseball example in the illustration that you use, but you can use the concept just with another illustration. You can say how it keeps them as an amateur instead of a professional.

"Discover the simple strategy that I used to put $12,935.56 into my pocket last week by changing a few simple areas in the way I promoted my products and services on my website."

The idea when you work from home part time doing teleseminars is you want to help the reader want to know more information. You can get an example of this by visiting www.fastinfoproducts.com. They do a great job at crafting powerful interest building bullet points.

Now when you set up promotion emails for teleseminars, you need to sell the reader on clicking on the link to signing up on your registration page. The first email that you send out should go out a number of days before the event with a link to the registration page. You can send out a 2nd email closer to the event and a final email the day of the event.

Following these proven strategies will increase your teleseminar attendance and help you make more money as you work from home part time.

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Copyright Stephen Beck, 2009
You have permission to reprint this article, as long as you don’t make any changes and include the bio below.

Stephen Beck teaches families how to begin a home internet business. Go grab his three free videos at http://www.8weekstoprofits.com so your family can start now.

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Thursday, June 11, 2009

How To Use Articles To Increase Search Engine Position

Articles are one of the most effective ways to get good positions in the search engines. Here is how the article strategy works. Suppose we walked into a restaurant and headed over to a table with 5 people. If you said, "Are any of you musicians?" and someone raised their hand, you may believe them. If the other 4 people pointed to that person, you would certainly believe them. This is a great illustration as to how search engines operate.

If you are selling information on saving money on weddings and you say that is what your site is about, people will likely believe you. Of course if 30 other people or even 100 other people say that your website is about saving money on weddings, Google will say, "This must be what the website is about." The search engine will believe even more if your website backs it up with titles with those keywords and content that has those keywords spread throughout the webpage.

With article marketing you will be able to get top search engine placement for a wide variety of keywords. How? When your article gets ranked in the search engines it has a link that directs back to your website. It is like having an army of salespeople at work for you 24 hours a day in a number of locations. Since your articles cover a number of keywords, you will have lots of people visiting your website. It is also easier to get ranked for these types of phrases than it is for main keywords that have millions of other pages.

By using the article strategy, you will attract tons of visitors to your website. Many of your competitors will also give you free business because they will use your articles as well. As a result, they will be helping you build your business even if they are also selling information about the same topic you are selling information on.

The end result is better search engine positioning, more people visiting your website and you selling information more efficiently and effectively.

_____________________
Copyright Stephen Beck, 2009
You have permission to reprint this article, as long as you don’t make any changes and include the bio below.

Stephen Beck teaches families how to begin a ebook business. Go grab his three free videos at http://www.8weekstoprofits.com so your family can start now.

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