January 2011 - My Online Business Journey

How to Market Your Info Publishing Business

Once your product is created you’re going to spend the majority of your time marketing it. If you enjoy your topic then marketing it will be fun. If you’re not interested in your topic then marketing will be tough. Many people have the wrong idea about marketing. It’s not a hard sell. Marketing is sharing your love for your product and topic with others. If you like to write and talk about your niche topic then marketing will be a breeze. Make a marketing plan first. Here are some things to include in your plans.

Website/Blog

In order to market and sell your information product you’re going to need a website. Your website can be a single page site with a sales page and that’s it. It can also be a content rich website packed with information. The choice is yours.

The benefit to a content rich site is that people will come back to your site again and again. You can sell a number of information products. You can benefit from affiliate sales and advertising income.

The foundation of a website or blog is content. This means writing a lot of articles or blog posts. You can also create audio or video content. When you’re creating your business plan decide what type of website you want to create. While you may be turned off by the content creation aspect of a blog or multi page website remember that you don’t have to create it all yourself. You can outsource it and use PLR.

Content

Apart from your blog or website content you can use content to market your business. For example articles can be written and published on article directories. This content will generate links to your website and website visitors. You can also publish content in a newsletter. Additionally, content written and published n your website will help you get listed on the search engines.

Whenever someone is looking for information on your topic your website will show up in the results. You get visitors and potential customers. For many information publishers content both on their website and on article directories is a primary marketing tactic.

Social Networking

Social networking has become a mainstream pastime. Savvy business owners have caught on. As a social networker you can post links to content on your site. Mingle promotions with interactions to establish a genuine presence and following. You can also create a business profile on a social networking site. Facebook Fan pages have become significant marketing tools for many business owners.

Email

Email marketing has been a long time success strategy. As an information publisher you’d likely motivate people to sign up for your email list by giving away free information. For example, you might give away a report on the top ten garage organization mistakes. You now have permission to send your subscriber more valuable information and promotions. You can market your book to them through strategic email marketing messages.

Email is a great way to build a relationship with your customers and prospects. They may turn to you repeatedly for information and become lifelong customers.

Advertising

Of all of the marketing tactics discussed, advertising is the only one that really can cost a lot. However, with a strategic plan and control over your budget advertising can generate a good return on investment. There are different types of advertising: Pay Per Click, banner ads, Facebook, etc. Before you advertise make sure your ad is targeted. Maintain tight control over your budget. Test and track your ads to make sure they’re effective.

Affiliates/Partnerships and More

As your business grows you may look into affiliate programs. In this case you’d pay people a commission to promote your information products. You may also establish partnerships with other relevant companies. Partnerships work well to cross promote and to build an email list. For example, you might partner with a home organization retailer and promote their products. In exchange they would promote your book.

Resources for marketing information products:

Happy Outsourcing

Craigslist Outsourcing Secrets

Outsourcing Webinar With Rachel Rofe

Free Quality Traffic

Video Traffic Secrets

01/30/2011 by Adriana | Comments Off

Work at Home

How To Make Money With Info Publishing?

You might be surprised to know that in addition to selling your products, you can make money in other ways. Information publishing lends itself to many profit models.

Affiliate Income

You can make money on affiliate sales. In fact, many information publishers make just as much money in affiliate commissions as they do in book sales.

Affiliate marketing enables you to earn a commission by promoting products. If you’re writing an ebook on how to organize your garage then you might link to garage or home organization products. Each time a customer clicks on a link and makes a purchase, you earn a commission. In addition to including affiliate links in your information products you can also write content. This content drives traffic to your website. It also boosts your marketing and your SEO. In the body of this content include affiliate text links. It’s another opportunity to earn money.

Advertising Income

Another way to earn money is to sell ad space on your website. If you have a lot of traffic selling ad space can be quite lucrative. Generally, ad space isn’t something you can charge much for in the beginning of your business. However, as your business grows you can start selling ads. In the meantime you might consider filling the ad space on your website with on-subject affiliate banner ads. You can at least earn money when someone clicks on them and makes a purchase.

AdSense income is another possibility. AdSense pays you money each time someone clicks on an ad on your website. You can place the ads anywhere: copy and paste your advertising code and you can start earning.

Up Selling and Other Opportunities

Finally, many people find that their initial product sells so well that they decide to expand. An ebook can be the beginning of an information publishing empire. You might write more books or courses on your topic or you may choose another niche. You may also find that partnership and growth opportunities come to you. You may get offers for teaching or guest speaking. Information publishing can lead the way to a whole new future.

01/29/2011 by Adriana | Comments Off

Affiliate Marketing, Free Niche Research, Website Traffic

How to Find Keywords Quickly

This week I was checking my stats for this blog to see how I was doing ( BTW, it’s been the best month since I started the blog, with 3781 unique visitors and still a few days to go).

Anyway, back to finding keywords quickly: as I was looking to see who sends me visitors, I saw this link: http://www.semrush.com/es/info/myonlinebusinessjourney.com. And since I haven’t seen this before, I thought I’d take a peek. Let me show you what I discovered:

keyword report for my online business journey — Go ahead: click on the image to see it full size

It’s showing the organic keywords I rank for, and in which position, AdWords competitors and their positions, organic competitors, and so on: lots of great information.

But what I wanted to show you is how you can quickly get a list of keywords for your niche by checking out your competition. Let’s take an example: for example, if I wanted to promote nursing necklaces, I could go to http://www.semrush.com, enter my key phrase and see what happens.

nursing necklace keyword research — Look what I got in just a few seconds

I now have information about volume search, CPC, competition, related searches, organic results and AdWords results.

What I did next, was click on sites that ranked organically to see if I spot any new key phrases. And I do. I clicked on a few of the sites from the list above, and below you’ll see what I learned.

From this site, I learned about a couple of new keywords: mommy necklace & breastfeeding necklace.

More key phrases associated with my niche: teething necklace, teething bling, teething jewelry. While these key phrases are not exactly for my niche, they give me an excellent opportunity to write articles or blog posts for my audience.

I poked around some more and found nursing beads, breastfeeding jewelry, breast feeding necklace (see the different spelling), and even booby beads: all related to my niche.

So far, this took me all of 5 minutes to do. Now, I am going to take my new-found key phrases, and head over to the Google Keyword Tool and plug them in. Ta-da! I now have over 30 keywords I can work with: write blog posts, create a review, write a few articles to submit to directories, guest post, etc.

The niche I choose here is tiny, and even so I came up with lots of key phrase’s to use. Try it in your niche and you’ll be busy using your new information for the next few months.

I’ve done all of the above with the free version, but there is a much more information if you get the paid version.

01/28/2011 by Adriana | 2 Comments

Blogging

Dream of Being a Blogger? The First Thing You’ll Need is a Great Web Domain Name!

This is a Guest Post by Nicole Dean

More and more moms are getting into the blogging scene. Some for fun, some for profit, and some for both. Why not make money while you’re blogging about your favorite stuff, right?

It’s easier than ever to get started blogging. But the first thing you need before you begin is an idea for your domain name.

What is a domain name?

It’s the “www (dot) SOMETHING (dot) com” that people will type in to get to your blog. It’s like your address.

There are some standards for what is a “great” domain name, though, verses one that makes you wonder what on earth that person was thinking!

In order to help you to come up with a great web name that you’ll love for years, here are my unbreakable rules for choosing a domain.

No hyphens. Avoid dashes and hyphens. I’ve been there. Done that. Regret it to this day.
No numbers. Do I spell it out “seven” or is it the number “7??
Avoid words that are difficult to spell. Although I once was really excited about using a domain with the word “catalyst” in it – I found that no one could spell the darned thing.
Domain should end in .com. I don’t bother with other endings like .info or .biz. People tend to type in .com at the end of everything, so it’s usually best to stick with a .com ending.
Domain must NOT have any copyright names in it. I would not recommend using “Starbucks”, “Disney”, or any other company name in your URL or you may get a “cease and desist” email. Yes, even though you’re starting as a little mom blogger, eventually you might get huge. So, it’s best to plan for success in advance and avoid using trademarks in your URL.
If you are looking to sell your blog down the road, it must be generic enough. For instance, I wouldn’t buy “NicoleKnowsFootball.com” to talk about my favorite football team if I planned to sell the site ever, because I’d have to find someone named Nicole to buy it.
And my big, bad unbreakable rule.: it must pass the Oprah test.

What exactly is the Oprah test? Well, I picture Oprah saying it out loud. “Today I have with me, Nicole Dean, author of Blah blah blah and owner of NicoleontheNet.com”. Is it memorable? Easy to spell?

You can’t do that with MyNumber1-BestHome-Remedy-Treatments4New-Mothers.net.

Why is this Important?

A difficult domain is actually wasted opportunity and wasted traffic slipping through your fingers. If you’re promoting via audio or video (maybe on podcasts or on YouTube) – you need a domain that is EASY to remember. It has to make it into the person’s ears and to his brain and stick. Heck, even if you run into an old college friend and say “Stop by my site www (dot) somethingcool (dot) com” – you’ll want her to remember long enough to actually come to your blog, right? So, make it simple. Make it memorable. And you’ll be glad.

Plus, honestly, it’s a credibility issue. Would you really buy something from MyNumber1-BestHome-Remedy-Treatments4New-Mothers.net? I hope you wouldn’t even think of getting out your credit card for a site like that. SCARY. And would you feel comfortable referring it to your friends? Not a chance.

How do you get a domain?

You can get a domain at http://www.MomWebs.com which is also my recommendation for Web Hosting. As you sign up for your domain, you can get hosting at the same time. And… they’ll even set up your blog for you for only $10. Plus, there’s a phone number that you can call if you have any questions.

With all of that help, there’s nothing stopping you from setting up your first blog.

I hope this has been helpful. And, I really look forward to seeing YOU on Oprah!

Nicole Dean is co-owner of Mom Webs Hosting – http://www.MomWebs.com where you’ll find the host with the most. It offers everything a mom blogger needs – reliability, unlimited hosting, and customer service that never makes you feel intimidated — all at a price you can afford. MomWebs.com was created to help overcome the technical hurdles that may be preventing moms from sharing themselves with the online world. Check out the free training at MomWebs.com

01/26/2011 by Adriana | Comments Off

Work at Home

It’s Time To Create Your Information Products

Many people want to become information publishers. Yet they don’t want to write a book. Good news. You don’t have to!

However, before we talk about how to get around creating the product yourself let’s take a look at a few reasons you might want to write it yourself.

You know your niche topic better than most.
You’ll get the book/product you want.
If you can talk you can write a book.
You don’t have to write a book you can create a video series.
Writing it yourself doesn’t have to take long or cost any money. In fact, you can write an ebook in a week.

The process is simple:

Choose your topic
Create a plan/outline
Write on your topic. Don’t edit or research. Make notes about where you need more information
Fill in the blanks. Edit and polish
Add graphics, disclaimer, and copyright
Save as a secured PDF
Sell

And, if you’re not convinced, then here are a few ways you can create a product without having to do it yourself.

Outsourcing

You can hire a ghostwriter to create an information product for you. There are some truly wonderful ghostwriters. You can provide the topic and the outline to them and they do the rest. You have 100% rights to the product once it’s been created and paid for.

Before hiring a ghostwriter or contractor be sure to review samples of their work. Sign a work for hire agreement that stipulates your rights. Make sure it also covers delivery dates and fees.

PLR

PLR stands for Private Label Rights. You can buy ebooks and other information products and the rights to them. Depending on the rights you buy it generally means you can modify and brand the book however you want. You can then resell it. PLR quality varies from company to company. Some companies have a great reputation for quality. Research your potential PLR provider before you buy.

Before we talk about the money making aspect of info publishing it’s important to reiterate that you can create your own information products. If you have an hour a day for thirty days you can create your product and have it polished and ready to go at the end of the month. Faith in yourself and a commitment to the process is all you need.