Internet marketing is a very large subject. I’m not a guru and I never met anyone who knew it all.

Something important to remember is that the market is always changing. To be successful you must be prepared to constantly test and try new ideas. Never take anything for granted and always look for improvement.

The purpose of the internet marketing 4p section is to provide you with a framework around which to build your online marketing plan.

Internet Marketing has similar principles, just a different delivery, to the bricks and mortar world.

One thing is very clear. Unless you proactively promote yourself and your product, your business will die.

OK. lets think this through. You have something you want to sell on the Internet. How should you go about it ?

There is an old formula with which to put a framework around your thinking. Its called the 4P’s. Here is a summary:

Product:

• Make sure that your product is something that is useful to your intended customers.
• Does it solve a problem or make their life better in some way?
• Make sure the product actually does what it says it does (ideally you should buy it and use it yourself)
• Check the quality, does it work ALL the time?
• Is it packaged so that its easy for you to sell and deliver to your customer.
• Is the brand recognized or is it associated with a recognizable brand ?
• Is your brand consistent with your product ?
• What about after sales service and follow-up
• Is that guarantee really a guarantee ?

Price:

• How is the product priced compared to the competition
• Are customers prepared to buy at this price
• How much commission is built into the price and do you want to lower the price by rebating some of the commission. You might rebate the upfront to get the ongoing commission.
• Price is interesting, sometimes higher pricing has a positive effect on sales, it always pays to experiment.

Place:

• How will you deliver the product to the customer. Will you drop-ship, email, have it available for download, deliver as a series through an auto-responder ?

Promotion:

• What channels will you use for promotion. Will it best sell via:
  Your mailing list
  Your Ezine
  Article Writing for other peoples Ezine
  Downlines in the programs you belong to
  A Safelist
  Pay Per Click advertisingPay To Read
  Adsense
  Traffic exchanges
  Viral marketing
  Your website
  Your Blog
  Your Ebook
  Your IM List
• When team with other people to help you sell, what is in it for them?
• What is the best methods of communicating with your customers by this I mean words, pictures, movie, splash page
• Will you make your own collateral or use the company supplied material.
• How will your promotion stand-out from your competition?
• What is your branding strategy?

©2012 Home Based Business Opportunity. All Rights Reserved.

This post is about the social bookmarking demographics reported in the Royal Pingdom Blog.

Selling  stuff, any stuff, is a lot more effective if you know something about the people you are selling to and can tailor your message to them. This holds true irrespective of whether your revenue is coming from online or offline sales.

Online marketers, looking to leverage traffic from  social bookmarking sites, will be interested in a new survey completed by the Pingdom people, which provides an insight into the male to female ratios of visitors to those  sites.

The quick statistics make interesting reading:

• The average ratio of all 19 sites was 47% male, 53% female.
• If they hadn’t included the three social news sites, all of the sites would have had more females than males.
• 84% (16 out of 19) of the sites have more female than male users.
• The social news sites Digg, Reddit and Slashdot have significantly more male users than female. The standout here is Slashdot which has 82% male users.
• Twitter and Facebook have almost the same male-female ratio; Twitter with 59% female users and Facebook with 57%.
• The most female-dominated site? Bebo (66% female users), closely followed by MySpace and Classmates.com (64%).

The full list of sites included in the study was:

Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter, Slashdot, Reddit, Digg, Delicious, StumbleUpon, FriendFeed, Last.fm, Friendster, LiveJournal, Hi5, Imeem, Ning, Xanga, Classmates.com, Bebo and the study drew data from Google’s Ad Planner service.

The original article includes a nice graph of the results.

You can check out the original post here

©2012 Home Based Business Opportunity. All Rights Reserved.

I received this article today from Diego Norte and thought you might like to read it also.

There are lots of ways to advertise your home based business and this offline method is cheap and easy to do.

Theres the article:

There are many ways to advertise your business. You can buy ads on the internet, post ads on social networking sites, or even buy ads in phonebooks or newspapers. But one of the cheapest and one guaranteed to bring traffic to your site is window markers. If it brings in at least one customer, it’s worth it. Take any advertising opportunity when it’s available. People may even ask you about it when you are getting into your vehicle. Then you have the opportunity for more interpersonal contact that generates the best business.

Window markers are cheap and can be found at any discount store. They come in a variety of colors. Some are even waterproof, but will come off with regular window cleaner. There are a variety of websites that sell these types of window markers.

You simply write the web address on a window of your automobile. That’s it! People will see it when they are behind you at a red light or driving down the road. Out of curiosity they will go to the website when they get home to see what it was about.

The only downfall to this type of advertising, is your company website. Is it short enough for a person to remember it until they get home. Is it catchy enough to bring their attention. If at least one of those answers is yes, then this advertising is for you.

People generally use the markers as a way to show support for a team or when people get married, but it is a great effective way to generate traffic. If the person does not need your goods or services, they probably know someone who does. They will refer them to your website.

Nothing beats the active advertising, like going out and talking to people to get your name out there. Getting out into the public. However, any form of advertising is helpful.

Unlike Billboards, where a driver can only see the ad for a few passing seconds or radio ads where we all change the station, the website is there on the eye level of the driver behind you. They will see your website for as long as they are behind you. If you travel the same routes everyday, then repeated exposure to your ad also, increases the likelihood that they will visit your site.

Mobile advertising is on the rise, so take the first steps in becoming part of this advertising movement. Start simple and inexpensive with the window markers. If this medium seems to work for you, then move on to a magnetic sign or window decals. If those work, move onto bigger and better things, such as auto wraps. Let your vehicle do your work. People will be talking about the car that has the huge advertisement on it. People will ask you about it when you are out doing your everyday errands.

Always ask the customer how they heard about your business.

Be prepared with business cards when they stop and ask you about your business.

Thanks Diego

©2012 Home Based Business Opportunity. All Rights Reserved.

Christmas stocking fillers will soon be on the minds of almost everyone around the world. This is an opportunity for you to add to your home business income.

All sorts of products which don’t usually get a lot of traffic start developing huge traffic spikes over this period.

If your looking for some products to promote over Christmas, then the eBay 2007 Hot Holiday List is a good starting place.

Here the top 25 hottest eBay seller are listed. They provide a good indication of what people will be looking for over the Christmas period.

We can be sure that if people are searching for these products on eBay then they will also be looking in other places.

Now is the time to get your campaigns going for Christmas. Here is the eBay list as it stands today

1. iPhone
2. Webkinz / Lil’Kinz
3. Transformers
4. Collectible Barbie
5. Dooney & Bourke Zebra Tote
6. Nintendo Wii
7. T.M.X. Friends – Ernie & Cookie Monster
8. BCBG Dress
9. Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows
10. Rock Band Video Game
11. iPod nano 8GB (Black)
12. The Simpsons
13. PlayStation 3
14. I’m Not A Plastic Bag
15. Motorola RAZR2
16. Designer Fragrances
17. Citizen Eco-Drive Watch
18. Nike Air Max 360 II
19. Abercrombie & Fitch Hoodie Jacket
20. Dept. 56 Snow Villages
21. Nike SasQuatch Sumo2
22. Gibson Electric Guitar
23. Craftsman Hand Tool Set
24. Burton Snowboard
25. Vtech Gadget

And here is the link to the list for future reference.

©2012 Home Based Business Opportunity. All Rights Reserved.

Offto.net is a free offering from Jonathan Leger which rolls a few free tools into one simple package.

For quite a while I’ve used tinyurl when shortening links or just plain hiding an affiliate url in forums, Mylot and Yahoo Answers etc.

Jonathan’s tool takes it a step further, by adding some extra features. Here’s a summary of what Offto.net does:

• Shortens URLs. For example my affiliate link to CashCrate becomes http://offto.net/e08yp9/ instead of http://www.cashcrate.com/317777 As you can see, the link is much smaller and the affiliate component is hidden.
• Tracks traffic through the shortened url. It counts unique as well as raw clicks. Tiny URL and many of the other URL shortening services don’t offer click tracking. If you know the number of clicks to a product and the number of sales made then its pretty simple to work out the sales per click.
• Each new URL created is placed on the front page of the Offto.net website. There it has the opportunity to be seen by others visiting the site and in this way potentially generating free traffic to the product your are promoting.
• Finally each time you send a visitor to the Offto.net website, you get a point which in turn guarantees a visitor to a website of your choice.

All in its a smart move from Johnathon. He has built a sticky website which should get good traffic and act as a great platform for him to promote his numerous other products.

This is a good service in its own right. I’ll use it in place of Tinyurl for the click stats alone.

Click here to find out more

©2012 Home Based Business Opportunity. All Rights Reserved.

BlogRush is a new blog “widget” you can use to generate additional traffic to your blog.

The concept is pretty simple:

• First place the BlogRush widget on your Blog.
• For every time your blog page is viewed you get one credit.
• For each credit, you get your link appearing on someone else’s blog.

but wait….there’s more  ! Its a reasonably complicated formula but you also get traffic credits for the traffic of anyone who subscribes to the service from your referral link.

This is a similar concept to a traffic exchange, except you don’t need to sit in front of your screen clicking sites to get traffic. And because the reader selects your link from a range of others to click on, the quality of the traffic will be higher than that of a random visitor.

How much traffic this will generate is anyone’s guess. The concept has been tried before but not from someone with the raw promotional power of John Reese, the guy who released it.

As part of the launch promotion, John will distribute the entire surplus of syndication credits to the initial users for a short period.  This  random distribution of all extra credits amongst the entire network is to reward the early adopters of the free service.

To test out how effective it is, I’ve installed it on a new blog in the “make Money” niche. Follow the links below to find out more.

If you’d like to find out more just follow this link. Or to see the widget in action check out this link.

I’ll provide feedback on results in a few weeks. If you have it installed on your blog I’d be pretty keen to have the benefit of your experience too.

©2012 Home Based Business Opportunity. All Rights Reserved.

Its essential for every internet home business to keep finding ways of getting free blog traffic by adding more links and to increasing the distribution of RSS feeds.

One way to do this is to submit your blog to RSS directories. There is nothing new in this advice but most people don’t do it because either it takes far too long or they aren’t prepared to pay others to do the job.

The job of completing the RSS directory submissions is made much simpler by installing a free Firefox Add-on called Submitemnow.

This Add-on makes the job almost painless, by stepping you through a database of RSS directories and for each one, automatically filling in the submission form. All you need to do is fill in the gaps (if any), hit the submit button, then hit “next url” in your browser to go to the next directory in the database.

The database comes with approximately 100 directories. A few of them don’t exist any more and a few weren’t taking submissions. Given the price of the Add-on and the ease of use this is a relatively minor downside.

Using the Add-on is very simple:

• First download and install
• Second “Click Projects” then “New”
• Fill out the details for your blog – these are used to autofill the subscription forms on each directory
• Then hit “next url”. This brings up your first submission.
• Complete the form for the first submission and submit it.
• Then hit “next url”
• Repeat

When encountering a site which doesn’t exist, or has stopped accepting submissions, click the “database” tab, mark that site as skipped then move on. Same goes for sites which charge a fee and you don’t want to submit to.

The database keeps a track of all sites including showing those already submitted and those yet to be done.

If you have multiple blogs you can save the current project and just open a new one. This allows the tracking of submissions for each.

After submitting this blog to all the directories in the Add-on it occurred to me that this may also increase RSS readership numbers, a key metric used by advertisers and blog rating sites.

Thanks to Affiliate Watcher.Com for the heads up.

©2012 Home Based Business Opportunity. All Rights Reserved.

Using free on-line classifieds can be an effective method of promoting affiliate programs

Sites like Craigs List, USFreeAds and GumTree are seen as authority sites, so an Ad placed there with a few back-links rates well in search engine listings.

So your affiliate link is not only exposed to direct traffic from the free online classified site but also to search engine traffic once your advertisement is indexed.

There a good post about this technique at Earners Blog. Its also one of the promotional methods mentioned in our free home based business page

A little while ago another free classified site entered the market. Its called Kijiji and has been launched by Ebay.

Seems eBay is keen to get further into this niche after taking a 25% stake in Craigs List and I think they also own Gumtree whose focus is outside of the US.

Kijiji is primarily for free New York Classifieds, just like CraigsList although the Ad categories don’t totally overlap.

Given who is behind Kijiji and the already high rank of many of their pages, this looks like an opportunity to get access to a high traffic site with little competition.

Looking around the site there don’t seem yet to be a lot of listings yet and search traffic is rising fast.

Craigs List still has the lions share of total traffic. However note that Craigs List traffic has been trending down since about January 2006 and its current ranking is approximately 60% of what it was then.

If current trends continue Kijiji search engine traffic will reach similar levels to those of Craigs list in about a years time.

The introduction of the new player may begin to erode CraigsList curently loyal customers who go directly to the site. If this does happen than Kijiji may become the dominant player.

The purpose of this post was to alert you to the Kijiji opportunity. If you decide to try this free classifieds site be sure to drop by and leave some feedback on your experience.

©2012 Home Based Business Opportunity. All Rights Reserved.

We all know there are literally thousands of home based business opportunities to join today. It has been said that someone joins a business opportunity every 11 seconds! Can you imagine that?

With so much competition and so many opportunities out there, how can you be sure to succeed and really set your self apart from other business opportunities and representatives of the same company?

The answer: Brand Yourself.

People now-a-days can learn, teach, and grow a business by themselves, but that isn’t most people. What can you do to attract other business builders/seekers to join up with you in your home based business opportunity? You have to sell YOURSELF, not your businesses. This way you can learn, teach, and grow together! Share with them who you are, what you stand for, what you can offer them, how you can support them, and most importantly whether or not you can bring them success in their business.

It happens so often, all the hype or buildup into a business opportunity yet no one is selling themselves. You need to work on your story, your views, and your willingness to help others succeed because ultimately it will come back to you!

Once you have branded yourself with the home based business seeker, the rest is cake. After you have sold yourself, the business comes naturally and people are eager to get started with you.

It doesn’t matter if you have the best home based business opportunity in the world; you have to be able to brand yourself with each and every person you bring in the business. It will carry your business so much further when you build relationships and network with people at a personal level rather than a business level.

So if you are really wanting to succeed in your the current or new business opportunities, work on developing your story for others to hear and get to know people on a real life level instead of wanting their money.

You brand yourself, you will brand your business in return, and the money will follow!

Troy Shanks
Home Based Business Entrepreneur
(765) 588-3120

©2012 Home Based Business Opportunity. All Rights Reserved.

A few days ago I wrote about the Technorati Favourites Exchange over at DoshDosh.

I’d decided to participate and am pleased to report the number of people who have favorited this blog has risen from 1 [ me :-) ] to 90 274. Add to that a nice bump in traffic and a number of very welcome backlinks. The results have been much better than expected.

The aim is to get it to about 150 300. I’m picking that’s what it’s going to take to get into the 40 top favorited blogs at Technorati. So we are almost there.

After following numerous threads and lists of people to favorite, I found a couple of blogs who have taken the original concept and added a twist of their own:

Garry Conn dot Com

This new list makes life a lot easier because it is automatic. Meaning if someone wants to be added to the list, they will need to add everyone already on the list first.

When a user clicks your name in the comment, the link already points directly to the Technorati Faves add form. All they have to do is click the “Finish” button and they are done.

People are now able to quickly roll thru the list within minutes. Compared to all the other lists that are scattered throughout the Internet. I have spent hours on end doing these requests because I have had to visit tons of sites. I am spending way too much time loading pages, and leaving comments.

Where with the list I have created… ONE COMMENT and you are done… people who want to be included on the list will automatically add everyone on the list before requesting to have their name included.

If you are on this list you can literally receive hundreds of people adding your site to their Technorati Faves.

MrGaryLee.com

I truly want to concentrate on is building web traffic for this site.

A great way to do both is to start a Technorati Faves Exchange with my readers as Maki has done with Dosh Dosh’s Ultimate Technorati Favorites Exchange: An Interactive Experience

An added feature that I would like to add to Maki’s exchange is to create a mini-link train.

These are both excellent initiatives to get even more leverage from the link exchange experiment.

©2012 Home Based Business Opportunity. All Rights Reserved.