Today, I went to the supermarket early for some Christmas shopping. As I was coming out of the supermarket I saw the Big Issue seller standing in his usual spot. For those of you who are not UK based, "The Big Issue" is a magazine sold by homeless people to raise money for refuges. It's a very professional publication and the proceeds go to a worthy cause.

I had some loose change and so I decided to buy a copy. It was a £2 Christmas Bumper Edition. The vendor was a big cheery guy and asked me if I'd got a christmas card from him yet. I laughed and said I hadn't, at which point he delved into his rucksack and gave me a card. We stood in the Edinburgh rain and chatted for a while - had a wee blether as we say in Scotland - and then I wished him the season's best and went home to my wife and family.

When I opened his card there was a nice message from "Tony". It was a cheap card and it was obvious that he'd bought it himself - that just made me more impressed with his initiative.
Tony - who now has a name rather than being "the Big Issue seller" - made that little extra effort. On one level, it was an excellent piece of marketing - but it also cheered me up and made me feel good during the season of unalloyed greed, rampant consumerism and general tackiness (the holiday formerly known as Christmas).


  ¶ 9:37 pm 0 comments

  Better To Give Than Receive Testimonials are widely used by internet marketers. You see them plastered all over sales pages and websites in a bid to make you feel more comfortable with whatever product or service is being promoted.

I expect that, like me, you've sometimes wondered if these testimonials are real. Some of them aren't but the large majority of them are 100% genuine. Usually you can tell the real ones because they will have a link back to the originator's website.

So what does this mean for you? Simple - the next time that you use a product or service that you're happy with think about sending the supplier a testimonial - and include a link to your website or blog. If the supplier decides to use it, it's good for them and it's good for you - you will get traffic from your link.

To give just one example, I wrote a review of an e-book and published it on my website. It was one of the few e-books that I have genuinely enjoyed and learned from this year so I gave it a good review. I also e-mailed the author to tell him how much I had enjoyed the book and pointed him at the web page where it was reviewed.

A couple of weeks later I found that a snippet from my review was being used as a testimonial (he asked permission first of course) and that a link to my site had been included. This was on a very high profile sales page.

I was one of 4 reviews and the other 3 were all by world famous internet "gurus". I don't mind admitting that I was mildly amused to see my name there along with the big dogs - but I was even happier when I checked my traffic stats later. I was receiving a steady trickle of traffic from the sales site. Obviously people who wanted to check that there was a real person behind the testimonial.

The traffic is pretty constant week in, week out, and I expect it will continue for as long as the e-book is promoted. It's a nice payback for a testimonial which I wrote in all sincerity.

So, if you are really happy with something in future, write to the supplier and let them know - include a link to your site or blog. It's nice to be nice.  ¶ 1:59 pm 0 comments

  Free Website Traffic - 4 Good Sources. Free traffic to your website - everybody wants it - everybody thinks they would do better financially if they could get more traffic. Here are 4 very simple ways to get good, targetted traffic to your site:

1. Traffic Exchanges.
2. Forums.
3. Press Releases.
4. Articles

Traffic exchanges sometimes get a bad press - but they really do work if they are used correctly. Use a "gateway" or "splash" page and you'll get results. Use an affiliate website and you'll be lucky to see a decent return on your time and effort.

Forums can be a really good way to get your name in front of people. Put your website's URL in your signature - you'll be surprised at how many visitors you attract by this method. The good thing is that they already "know" you from your posts - you can consider them to be "targeted" visitors.

Press releases can be an amazingly powerful way to market your website. You can pay for these but it is possible to get them for free. You can be on the front page of Google in a matter of days!

Don't worry that you won't have anything to say - a couple of paragraphs is all that's required. Visit the site below and have a look at some of the live releases available - you'll soon get the hang of it.

http://www.prleap.com

prleap is free and has good statistical reporting so you can keep track of how many views your release gets and which of the search engine robots have indexed it.

Writing articles is a great way to promote both yourself and your site. It's amazing how quickly these can be distributed around the internet. All you have to do is submit them to one or more of the free article banks available.

Try www.ezinearticles.com to get started - then find a few more.

Again - don't worry if you don't consider yourself to be a great writer. You can submit a list of 10 or 20 things to do in order to ....... whatever.

That's just four ways - there are plenty more.
  ¶ 8:39 pm 0 comments

  Advertise On This Site With Google Adwords If you're using Google Adsense to earn money from your website you may - or may not - have noticed that Google has now turned on their "Advertise On This Site" feature. This now places a small text link on the ad blocks on your site - it's similar in size and appearance to the "Ads by Goooooogle" link that has always been there. Advertisers can click on the new link in order to find out about advertising on your specific site using Google Adwords.

Any advertiser who clicks on the link will be transported to the Google Adwords "Onsite Advertiser Sign-up page" - also known as the "landing page", where they are given details about Google Adwords in general and advertising on your site in particular. It's possible for you to customise the landing page associated with your site - to a certain extent.

You can upload a logo, change the colour scheme of the page, the text and the links to match that of your main site. You can also edit the text message that the potential advertiser sees - possibly explaining a little about your site, the sort of areas it covers - at the moment and in future - who your target audience is, whether or not you have a newsletter etc. If you really want to, you can even turn the option to have the "Advertise on this site" link displayed off.

Here's how to modify your landing page from your AdSense account:

1. Click on the "My Account" tab, click the "Account Settings" tab.


2. Scroll down to the "Onsite Advertiser Sign-up" section at the very bottom and click "edit".


3. The "subscription" is set to include the "advertise On This Site" link by default. If you want to turn it off then just uncheck this box.
   
4. If you are leaving the link on then you can now upload a logo for your site - max size 100 X 100 pixels, in JPG, GIF or PNG formats only.


5. Decide whether you want to retain the default description or create your own custom text to highlight the main features that you think advertisers should know about your site(s).


6. Choose the colour scheme for your landing page.
   Use the "Preview page" button to check how your new landing page looks.


7. When you're happy click on "Save changes".

At the moment you have only one landing page for your Adsense account - so if you have more than one website you may need to stick with a generic design. Possibly Google will introduce "channels" for your landing page in future.

This feature is very new and only time will tell how best to use it. However, previous results from Adsense have shown that webmasters who take a little time to customise Adsense code for their websites tend to do better than those who just use the default settings. So it seems likely that some degree of customisation is desirable.   ¶ 10:46 am 0 comments

  Firefox Referral Now Available From Adsense Google Adsense has now made Firefox referral available
internationally. You will get $1 for every user who signs up from
your website. It's another opportunity to earn for very little effort.

If you already have a Google Adsense account you can download
the code from the "referrals" section. If you don't have an Adsense
account you can sign up for one at the main site...  ¶ 8:48 pm 0 comments

  Multiple Income Streams One of the great things about the web is that things change so quickly – this allows new marketers to take advantage of novel trends and new developments. On the other hand of course, if you don’t respond quickly to new market conditions, your business – and income – can be adversely affected.

That’s why you need to have multiple streams of income – so that if your current top earner disappears off Google’s radar or one of your many competitors introduces a new product that wipes the floor with your best offering, you have other income streams to fall back on.
It’s just like buying stocks and shares – you want to have a diverse portfolio to avoid any sudden spikes and glitches in the market. Or put it another way – don’t put all your eggs in one basket.

That’s all well and good, but just where are you going to find these multiple streams of income? Sometimes it can be difficult to find even one business opportunity that’s worth investing your time, energy and money in. The first logical place to look is the market.

It’s not always easy to get hold of hard facts and figures when it comes to marketing and often, when you do get some, they are well out of date. However, the figures below show the UK market percentages of directly sold goods for 2000, a year when the total spend in this area was $2 billion. These figures are sourced from the UK Direct Selling Association and make interesting reading.

• Services
  (telecoms, utilities)
  
  
• Personal 26%
  (cosmetics, fragrances, skincare…)
  
  Family 17%
  (Books, toys, games, business aids …)
  
• Household 14%
  (Security, water treatment, electrical…)
  
• Wellness 7%
  (Nutritional, diet plans, supplements)
  
• Food 4%
  (Frozen & other)

The size of the market may vary, and the relative positions may change – but the top five above will probably be able to provide consistently good income streams. The obvious omission from the above list would be online gaming, which is a relatively new phenomenon.

So how do you get started? Simple, just pick one of the areas and do some background research. Remember to use a logical approach when evaluating your options – the key areas to look at are; the company; the pay plan; the product; the level of admin; the sales methods available and the cost – both start up and running.

If this is your first business then try to start off with an opportunity that will provide you with residual income. Concentrate on only one business at a time. Work this until you get it to an acceptable level where it is growing without too much time input on your part. It doesn’t need to be making thousands of dollars every month – it’s easier to arrange for 5 businesses to return $1000 each than it is to arrange that a single business will return $5000 a month (the law of diminishing returns).

When you are achieving consistent growth month on month, pick a business opportunity in a different sector and repeat the process. Then do it again – and again. Aim for at least 3 and preferably 5 solid businesses. Try to have at least 40% of your income as residual income – this is your baseline.

It will probably take at least 6 months, and possibly more, to get each business to the steady growth phase, but it’s well worth the effort. This will provide you with a diverse income which will be stable and highly unlikely to be severely impacted by changes in market conditions.
If an opportunity arises in one particular area you can focus on that for a period of time in order to maximise your profits. And if there is a downturn in an area you can always use the income from the other sectors to weather the storm.

And when you eventually have your multiple income streams online and they’re all working well – always be on the lookout for any new opportunities to add to your business portfolio. You can never have too much of a good thing.

Hamish Hayward
Discover the key criteria you need to evaluate to ensure your business success. Now available as a free, downloadable e-book.
http://www.perfectsystem.co.uk/  ¶ 6:23 pm 0 comments