This post has been read 19 times. Getting clients and sales in a small business is completely different than in a large business. In a large business, you’re looking at branding and sales teams. In a small business, you’re looking for the one activity that can get you profitable clients the fastest. What are some sure-fire ways small businesses can market their services effective? What kind of marketing tactics will generate results today, rather than having to wait months to pay off? Business Networking International Business Networking International, also known as BNI, is one of the largest organizations of professional lead sharing in the world. Here’s how it works. Let’s say in one BNI group there’s a graphic designer, a lawyer, a business consultant, a dentist and a real estate agent. If the business consultant meets a client who needs a lawyer, he refers them to his friend in BNI. If the graphic designer meets someone who needs a new website for a new business, he might refer them to the business consultant for advice. So on and so forth. Essentially, BNI is a formal way of getting together and sharing leads. Anyone who is a professional in their field [...]

This post has been read 156 times. Getting new customers doesn’t have to be an expensive endeavor. The old axiom of “it takes money to make money” just doesn’t have to be the case when it comes to small business marketing. If you want to give your business an infusion of customers without having to spend big bucks, read these ideas carefully. Here are several different ways you can promote your small business – all with little to no cash investment. Use Third Party Review Websites If you own a guesthouse or hostel, get on Hostelworld or HostelBookers. Get as many people to review you as possible. If you own a spa, get as many people as possible to review you on Yelp. No matter what kind of service you’re running, chances are there’s some kind of review system out there. People want to talk about and share experiences they’ve had with service providers in your industry. Find out what these “hubs” are and actively cultivate positive reviews. Getting ranked #1 in your category on one of these sites is all it takes to get your business completely booked up. Offer to Write for Publications If you’re an expert on [...]

Looking for small business ideas? How about an online used book store?… Used book stores are popping everywhere these days. Wherever you look, offline or online, there are new used book stores being born every day. It must be a profitable business since so many stores are being born left and right. How would you like to get a piece of this huge pie?… You may ask, why wouldn’t people just go to the public library and pick up a book for free? Well, the problem with public libraries is that most of their books are donated by individual and organizations and often times these donations don’t include current best sellers. And lets not forget the fact that going to library cost time and gas. Considering the current high gas prices, most people would rather use that gas money instead to buy a book right from the comfort of their own home and they keep the book forever. The good thing about used books is that even in this though financial situation, people will buy them. Why?… Its simple, used books offer a cheap and enjoyable way to scape the harsh reality we all are facing in our every day [...]

This post has been read 87 times. Squidoo is a social networking site. However, it’s also more than that. Users are able to create their own lenses, which are essentially web pages. You can write your lens on any topic and use it to make money. Squidoo lenses are said to receive a great page ranking with the search engines. However, there are also things you can do to boost your Squidoo lens rankings. Content Like any basic web page, the best way to boost a Squidoo lens ranking is to publish great content. Content is evaluated by a number of criteria including: * Quality – Create top quality content. That means it is well written but also provides value and interest to a specific audience. For example, if your topic is Hot Chocolate then you want to make sure you’re providing interesting and valuable information to people who enjoy hot chocolate. * Updates and frequency – Squidoo isn’t a “set it and forget it” type of site. You want to be vigilant about updating your page with new and interesting information. The more you update it, the better. It adds value and maintains interest in your page. Squidoo Account [...]

This post has been read 5262 times. Are you looking for ways to maximize your business or create another stream of income? Try a membership site. It is not easy, but it can pay off in many ways for your business. Why do people seek out your business? Well, they want what you are selling. They see it as a quality product that they can get behind. Whether you are selling content, a service or another tangible product, your brand is one that people have come to trust and find of good quality. A membership site can multiply that hard work to increase not only your profits but also your expert status and visibility in your niche market. Be aware, however – while there are many advantages to a membership site, the first requirement is that you are ready to handle the increased workload. Research all that you need to do to get and keep it up and running. If you can meet those needs, then you are golden. So, back to the reasons why you need one. Here are a few. Dedicated customers Once you convince someone to buy a membership, they will automatically renew each month as long [...]

This post has been read 647 times. Content marketing is getting more and more important every day. People today are finding more and more content through social networks and less and less through search engines. That means that creating content people want to share is becoming ever more important. Here’s how to use content marketing to your advantage. Build Your Personal Brand At the end of the day, the only thing that travels with you after every job, deal or business venture is your personal brand. A lot of people fail to consciously build their personal brands. Yet this is truly one of the most valuable assets you have. By creating high quality, unique content for a certain market, you establish yourself as an expert. Finding jobs, getting business partners and even attracting investors for businesses gets much easier if you’re a known content publisher. Build Trust with Your Customers A customer would much rather trust their money with an industry leader who provides a lot of quality content than a site that’s just out there to sell a product. There’s something about consistency that really builds trust. Anyone can put up a website to start selling a product, but [...]

This post has been read 794 times. The market selection process is one that shouldn’t be skimped on. It’ll affect everything else you do and can determine your success or failure before your website even exists. Finding the perfect niche involves weighing a lot of different factors to find the perfect one. Here’s how to find the perfect niche. The Niche Brainstorm Process Start by brainstorming as many niches as you can think of. Get out a notepad and jot down ideas. Once you run out of ideas to jot down from the top of your head, go to Amazon.com and browse some of the different magazine titles. If there’s a magazine for it, chances are the market’s big enough to support a website. Jot down more ideas, then head over to eBay Pulse. Again, browse the categories and products that are selling and see if those spark any ideas. Keep brainstorming for a few days to get all the ideas down on paper. Evaluating Profitability There’s generally a trade-off between ease of ranking and profitability. In other words, if there’s a lot of money to be made in a certain market, chances are it’s going to be fairly difficult [...]

Welcome to part three of our series of learning how to make money through manual contextual link building. This article will talk about advanced way to do you link prospecting. It is only relevant if you have read parts 1 and 2, and if you have found a few clients to start paying you to link build for them. Part 1 taught you how to make money guest posting without clients, part 2 told you how to find clients so that you can expand your guest posting opportunities that include blogs that don’t pay for content, and part 3 will talk about advance prospecting techniques. Here we go… Advanced Link Prospecting Of course there are all those amazing advanced searching operators that you learned about in part one. Operators that will allow you find guest posting opportunities by seeking out pages on websites that reach out to writers and guest bloggers, but there are many different ways to find these types of blogs. Here are few of them: Using paid link directories. In the past, submitting to a link directory was a way to increase your link juice so that you could add numbers to that linking profile. Although some [...]

Welcome to part two of the three part series of learning how to make money through building diverse link building profiles – if you missed part one click here. Part two will be all about Clients, and how you can find them and how to want to integrate with them. The guest posting/link building niche is very unique in the way you want to build your list of clientele. You will see why in the remainder of this article. Of course finding clients to a lot of Internet marketers out their simply means one thing: Creating a landing page that stands out on a website that gets great visibility; Easily said, a lot harder to be done. This is also because there are a lot of websites that are at the top of the SERPs that are probably going to be there for a long time – even in the SEO and SEM field. Those people are able to hold on to their clients because – well, what better selling point is there rather than: “Yea, we rank number one for this term – we can do the same for you.”? So building a web site is definitely one option [...]

Finding the perfect career that makes more money is a lifetime goal of many people. As an inventor, you can accomplish your dreams by creating “your perfect product” and trying to pitch it to companies and people who will buy it. People often think of inventors as odd folks who are chasing their tail. The truth is, you need a strategy plan in order to get your dreams to fruition. Sometimes inventors are too busy thinking about their idea to actually sit down and plan something that could sell. This is just a fatal error that many inventors never get past, but hopefully you can implement the tips to get yourself out of that rut. Planning for the market People have unmet needs as consumers, and that is one reason people buy things. As an inventor, you also act as a marketer, and a product developer, since you need to ascertain what consumers want. You also need to predict what businesses may need. One way to do this is to familiarize yourself with the industry you hope to enter. You ought to know that the toy industry is very difficult to break into and the timeline may take months. Don’t [...]