Niche Blogs and Web Sites are Ideal for Home Gamers

Much of what I write about here is oriented to the “Bricks and Mortar” business person, but the Micro Business Specialist is a “Big Tent.” concept and particularly includes one person shops staking out a claim via the internet.

For a few home run hitters, the internet is a place to dominate a field. To be the top guru in pay per click, or Adsense or Article writing etc. And then to make millions selling how to books to all of us wanna bees.

A better strategy for most, is to strive to become good a just getting hits. Singles will do nicely if you can string enough of them together. And one of the best ways to get hits consistently is with niche marketing.

I have two suggestions today. One for those of you already aware of the power of niches, and a second for those who may still be getting their feet on the ground here in the less than solid cyber fields.

First the immediate and urgent. It’s one thing to identify a niche, its another to fill that niche with useful material.

One of the best shortcuts is to find and use quality private label material. Private label material is like the store brand of green beans at your local grocery store. It may have the stores label on it, but it was grown and packaged by someone else.

This is done everyday in many fields including article research and writing. You have all heard of ghost writers. Private Label Rights is the term used to describe articles and even books that have been ghost written, and are available for you to use.

Some are PLR material is better than others and some niches are better than others. I will return to this topic again. But I want to share with you my most recent niche and the source of material I will be using. Because if you hurry, you too can grab on of the few remaining rights packages.

The niche is aroma therapy. Aroma therapy is a sweet smelling niche. It’s been around for thousands of years and will likely be around for the foreseeable future. It’s also a niche that isn’t over saturated. That’s why the recent release of a quality PLR package on the subject is worth more than passing attention.

There are a lot of ways to build a successful online enterprise. But one of the surest is to focus on niche markets, and create internet properties that serve those niches. When you can find a quality PLR product that fills a niche you have a tremendous head start.

Doug Champigny, who is a PLR master if ever there was one, has just released an Aroma Therapy package. It includes a 50 page ebook that you can sell as your own, a set of ten articles and ten podcasts of those articles. It also includes a set of graphics you can use and a blank set that you can edit to rename the eBook to your own title.

You could have these added to a web site or blog in short order and add adsense ads, click bank products and a wide number of related products from elsewhere.

Now word to the wise, you will have much more success with this if you rework the content to make it your own. I spent a chunk of my yesterday doing just that. I reworked each of the articles into my own words. It wasn’t difficult as the material was well written. In the process I learned a lot about the topic, which is a plus.

I bought a new domain name, www.aromatherapyscents.com which I will launch as a wordpress blog site in the very near future. I will offer the eBook for sale and provide useful information in the form of the 10 articles on Aroma Therapy that were included in the package.

I will probably add Adsense ads on the site and offer a set of additional products from a select few of the hundreds of aroma therapy and related companies that offer affiliate programs. I will also set up a Google Alert for the term Aroma Therapy and monitor what comes my way. That should allow me to add relevant material to the blog format as time goes on.

I’m slow, and I have many diverse tasks on my daily schedule, so this may take me a few days to get set up to the point I like. But once done, I will have an internet property that will attract visitors and sales for years to come. That is what I call a single. Now if it gets really hot, and I discover that I am getting a lot of traffic I may try to stretch it into a double, but I will take a look at that once I round first.

Now heads up, Doug Champigny the author of the PLR Package on Aroma Thearpy is no fool, and he restricts his PLR material to just 100 copies. That way the internet doesn’t get over saturated with the stuff. This works to my advantage, and yours if you decide to jump on this bandwagon.

But you need to grab your copy today. This one is already largely gone. There’s a growing group of folk who grab Doug’s stuff as soon as it’s issued and run with it. I’m one of them and I think you should be too.

Go to http://askearlabout.com/champignyAromaTherapy.php

Now if this is all new to you, let me suggest that their are dozens of people who teach bits and pieces of this approach. I’ve spent tons of money over the years on eBooks and courses that covered various parts of the whole. Sometimes the parts meshed together with one another, and other times  they didn’t. They almost always had a hole, sometimes a big hole when it came to implementation of the theory being taught.

That’s one of the reasons I’ve become such a fan of the Niche Profits Classroom. If you are still struggling to find your way online, they have an extremely comprehensive training program and some cutting edge tactics that will get you up and running in the right direction fast.

I don’t know if it’s the best such training resource out there or not. It may be. It is certainly the best I have encountered, and rather than charging $1,000’s you can access it for a small monthly fee, take what you need and leave. They have a huge array of videos that walk you through the steps to almost everything you need to know. And they share some top end secrets that will make your head spin.

So in this relatively long post I have shared an immediate opportunity to grab great material for a lucrative niche, and my best recommendation on how to move forward online if you aren’t fully up to speed yet.

I hope you will take action on both.

Squidoo – Rank on Top Twice!

Squidoo – Rank on Top Twice! PodcastSquidoo – Rank on Top Twice!

Getting your web site to be top ranked on Google and the other search engines is a complicated task. Particularly, if you are one of many within a given market area.

A little known tool for many main street businesses is an internet portal called Squidoo.

It’s similar in many ways to sites like Facebook, and Myspace in that it allows people to create a web presence easily, but unlike the aforementioned, it unabashedly permits commercialization.  That means you can put up sites that advertise your business.

The easiest way to do so is to reuse much of the content you have on your web page now.  Just rephrase and reorient it to fit the new medium.

Squidoo calls it’s pages, lens.  There are a group of modules that you can create and edit in minutes once you get the hang of their system.  There are a lot of interesting things you can do with the various modules. The main thing you want to do is use your Squidoo lens as additional advertising tool for your services and as a funnel to send traffic to your main web site.

The most critical point when setting up your first lens is what you call it.

If you are a butcher in Minneapolis, you want to do some keyword research as to the best term to use for your market. It may be “butcher”, it may be “quality meats”, it may be any number of things.  What ever it is, you want your first lens to use the best of the picks and then add the words, “in Minneapolis” or what ever the top geographical term is in your market. Then after you set up a lens,  “Quality Meats in Minneapolis” set up another for “Best Brats in Minneapolis.”   Since Squidoo is free, there is no reason for you to not set up multiple Lens on your best keyword phrases.

If you do, you will often find that your Squidoo len(s) will get higher ranking than your own web page, even if you have optimized your web sites meta tags geographically, as I do for my clients.

That’s because Squidoo itself has a high PR or page rank in the eyes of Google.

Now what you want to do is include links in your Squidoo Lens to your web site’s home page.  This helps raise your web sites ranking in Google’s eyes as well.

It sees Squidoo as an “authority” site and gives more credence to links coming from it.

There is a lot more to internet marketing than just having a web site.  That’s what keeps internet marketing consultants like me in business.

While Squidoo is easy to use, like everything, there is a learning curve.  Once you master the basic mechanics you also need to learn the strategies to make it work for your particular needs.  There are a number of eBooks about Squidoo out there.  I publish one called Squidoo Basics. It is a general introduction to Squidoo.

There are other formats beyond Squidoo, like Hub Pages, but Squidoo is probably the best place to start building a broader internet presence.  To get started all you need do is open an account at www.Squidoo.com

In due course, you will not only get your web site on the top of the Google Rankings in your home town, you will also have a Squidoo page there as well.  When prospects see you listed not once, but twice, in the top of the local listings, they will begin to understand that you are the person to go to locally for home staging services.

And that’s where I intend my clients to be.  On top of their local markets.

Blogging PlugIns- Which Ones to Use.

While I have been blogging for a while now, I am far from an expert.  Luckily, I have run into Mike Paetzold who is as good a blogger as any I have encountered so far online. I have learned a lot from him and monitor a couple of his blogs on a regular basis.

In a new posting today, on his Word Press Made Easy Blog, he offers a list of the plug ins he uses.  This is an important topic and I wanted to share it with you.  Plug ins are powerful and can seem mysterious as well to those just getting started in blogging.

I will be going through his list of plug ins and comparing it to the ones I am currently using.  You may want to do so as well.

However, you need not follow his list blindly. I will be not be changing one for sure.  I prefer the audio manager plugin for pod casts to the one he uses.  That’s not to take anything away from his list though. Different plugins work differently on different themes. That ads to the Joy/frustration of Plug ins, but it is the real world.  So you will need to experiment.

You can find his list at: http://wptutorial.com/blog/information/plugins-i-am-using-right-now While you are there you may want to do yourself a favor and sign up to his list. He will reward you with a good ebook, called Blog Tracker thats worht $37. More importantly, you will find that Mike is a valuable resource if you are blogging on a regular basis. And you should be.

Internet Video Advertising is Hot!

Internet Video Advertising is Hot!

Sites like YouTube and Google Video get millions of visitors every day and many of them are looking for information on local businesses in their area. They want to find out about the pizza place down the road, a contractor, or a new hair salon. They could be looking for anything, the point is, they are looking for local businesses.

Nothing attracts massive amounts of traffic and prospective clients to your website the way that an Internet video can. But that doesn’t mean you have to spend big bucks to get a Great Promotional Video for your business! For only $149 we will produce an attractive and informative 30-45 second Video Ad promoting your business and the fine products or services you offer.

Your video ad will be produced and uploaded to all of the Top Video and Social Media Sites and will be seen by hundreds or thousands of people in your area that are looking for a business like yours.

Your Video Ad is going to give your business more exposure and will appeal to your target audience better than any other form of marketing. Your video advertisement will get people to take action and visit your website, walk in your doors or call you for more information.

Take A Look At Everything That Is Included for Only $149 and You Will See There Is No Better Way for You To Bring In New Customers!

An Eye-Catching and Informative 30-45 Second Video Advertisement for Your Business That Gets People To Visit Your Website, Walk In Your Door or Call You for An Appointment

We Will Submit Your Video To The Most Popular Video Sites and Make Sure It Get’s Picked Up By The Major Search Engines

Increased Visibility for Your Business, More Visitors To Your Website, More New Customers and Higher Profits

Easily Add Your Video To Your Website With One Simple Line of Code. We Also Give You A Hard Copy of Your Video and Easy To Understand Instructions On Adding The Video To Your Website.

Discover the Awesome-yet Simple – Secrets of Slashing Your Advertising Costs to the Bone, While Quickly Exploding your Sales, Profits and Success!

Check out this link to see some sample Videos and get more information.

Small Business Marketing: Why Market Maker?

Why Market Maker? Podcast

Home Staging Marketing: Why Market Maker?

The Market Maker program is now live and available for Home Stagers interested in getting more business from their existing web pages.

I did a survey of home stagers last year. One of the things many expressed disappointment in was how little new business they got from their web pages.  This is true of almost all small business people.  For most, their web sites are little more than electronic yellow page ads, showing address, hours and contact info, with maybe a fancier display ad.

Since I did my survey, I have held a tele-seminar, and written dozens of articles on how to turn that around. Yet relatively few home stagers have applied the secrets well known and taught in professional internet marketing circles.

I recognize the problem in myself. I often know what to do, but doing it is often another story.

Properly setting up your web page to get customers isn’t about nicer and fancier before and after pictures. It’s about attracting people potentially interested in home staging from YOUR market place, and getting them to identify themselves, so you can directly market your services to them.

The steps required include: changing some techie things about your web site; adding an opt-in box, which used to mean you needed to redo the front page of your web site; writing a special report; and then a long series of email marketing pieces.

Now none of these are too difficult, if you know how to do them, and seemingly impossible if you don’t.

And so, most people didn’t.

That’s why I developed Market Maker. Market maker will do all this for you. Develop new Meta Tags for your web site that will help more people from your town find your web site. Create an opt in form that doesn’t require you to redo your existing web site. It provides a great “ethical bribe” that will encourage people that visit your site to let you know they were there. Let you know they are interested in home staging and most importantly giving you permission to tell them more about you and your services.

Market Maker will dramatically boost your business.

Market Maker improves your marketing in two ways.

First it helps your home staging company stand out among your competitors. You will be the one that catches and keeps your prospects attention. This will get you a larger percentage of the existing business in your community.

Secondly, not everyone who thinks about using a home stager ends up doing so. With Market Maker, a larger percentage of them will, and when they do decide to use a home stager, it’s highly likely they will pick you.

To get more information go to Market Maker

And if you think that market maker will work for home stagers, let me suggest I can make it work most local businesses, even yours. Drop me an email.  enetwal@gmail.com

Market Maker is Live: Marketing Breakthrough for Home Stagers

Market Maker Launches

Market Maker Launches

I have been focused on my home stagers blog the past week as I prepared for the launch of Market Maker. Market Maker was designed to specifically address the needs of the Home Staging Industry, but it is applicable in many other businesses as well.

The fundamentals of Market Maker are little more than what I have been preaching here for some time.

Effective use of an ethical bribe, and solid follow-up. It’s easy to preach, because it works. And I get a lot of people who will nod their heads and say it makes sense, but will they follow-through? Often not, because it’s work and more importantly because it takes them out of their comfort zones.

With Market Maker I hope to alleviate most of those obstacles, by doing the work for them. I will do their keywords to get them more traffic. I have provided a great ethical bribe, and even a selection of follow-up messages. I will create a opt in box for them that won’t require them to change their existing web pages. All they will need to do is to get their computer person to upload some code. And provide some basic information about their business so I can present it properly.

I’m willing to do the same for most any other business as well. The advantage of the home stagers is that they are a scattered industry. And multiple people can use the same tools without a conflict.

The genius of the home stagers program is that I have transferred to them the ability to sell the eBook of which the ethical bribe is a sample and keep half the proceeds. It should be a no brainer, but it may take a few pioneers to lead the way.

It will be a new idea for many, and in these economic times many will be afraid to invest in their businesses. I hope I’m wrong about that. Time will tell.

Marketing to your Target Market

Constancy is the hallmark of an effective marketing campaign.

In the ubiquitous blizzard of advertising that is modern life, a single ad needs to be pretty darn spectacular if it’s to get noticed.  Even the best, the super bowl champions of ads have little staying power.  How many can you remember from the last super bowl?  Three, two, one, none?

Most businesses cannot afford super bowl sized ad budgets. So how can we compete?  Can we compete?

The answer is clearly yes.  As evidenced by the billions spent on advertising. It must be doing someone some good. But is most of it cost effective?  That may be less clear.

The key to a good marketing campaign is to have a clearly targeted audience. Finding that audience is the first hurdle.

There are two major segments to the audience. Those who you have a relationship with and those you don’t.

This sets up the need for two marketing approaches. One approach builds relationships with new people, the second maintains and nurtures the relationship with those you already have.

Each approach has its own hurdles and objectives.  Some businesses routinely confuse the two. And this can be costly.

Proselytizing to the unknown multitudes is expensive.  For starters, there are so many more of them.  Secondly, you don’t know a whole lot about them.  Third, they are already doing business with one or another of your competitors. Typically you need to use mass media to reach them in any significant numbers.  Newspaper, TV and Radio advertising is expensive. Direct mailing and coupon programs can often be better tailored to the smaller business needs, but it too is expensive.

Marketing to those with whom you already have a relationship should be easier. First they are fewer in number, and you have a better understanding as to who they are. More importantly, they have an idea who you are. (For better or worse.)  This is your primary target market.  The key to business success is to focus your marketing on your target market.

Too many businesses rely on traditional and expensive tools of mass media aimed at the broad market of unknowns when the primary respondents to their efforts are their own customers.  Instead they should be using inexpensive non traditional tactics aimed exclusively at existing customers and friends.

Many small business people know their customers by name, but lack an effective list and means of communicating with them.  This is unfortunate…and costly.

Instead of spending thousands of dollars a month for occasional print or media pieces, they could be communicating with a large percentage of their existing customers for virtually nothing.  These communications could be more consistent and nuanced. And as a result be far more productive.

The trick is to get people on the list. That should be easy enough for most businesses. A barber could offer each customer a business card, inviting them to sign up on their email system for a chance at a monthly drawing for a free haircut.  A grocer could offer a chance at $50 of groceries.  A tax preparer could offer a free tax return.  A lawyer perhaps a “get out of jail free” or a free will.

The goal being to convert that mass of people with whom you have an established relationship into a emailable list of people you can communicate with on a regular basis.

This offers a lot of additional ways to market.

For example, a Barber who will be taking a few days off to go fishing can advise his customers that he will to come in a few days earlier than normal.  Every week or so he could publish the best jokes told for the prior week, and be sure most of his emails get read.

A grocer instead of focusing on cents off ads, could spend some time talking about new products, and maybe even offer meal preparation ideas pushing a basket of products.

The attorney may wish to fill slower periods with will work or other matters people tend to defer, and when busier may just want to pass on some useful general legal insights.

A restaurant may offer a special to fill seats on slow days, combined perhaps with a weekly or monthly cooking tips feature.

The key to all this is a good dependable auto responder system.  I use and recommend www.BuildRelationships.aweber.com to serve as the engine or heart of the system.

Once a business has migrated their customer base to their auto responder list, they can communicate on a regular basis. Now you don’t want to overwhelm people with emails.  A consistent regular pattern appropriate for your type of business will solidify customer relationships.

While you may still want to offer discounts and coupons if your competitors do, you can focus on other things as well.  Give your customers an inside look at you and your business. This will result in more repeat visits, and if you use some imagination, larger total sales per visit.

Frugal Mom’s shoping for and with coupons.

In another sign of the times, it appears that more and more people are searching the internet to find coupons before making pruchases. This has lead to an increase in the number of blogs catering to “Frugal Mom’s.” This has been noted lately by the Wall Street Journal, Minyanville, and even the Financial Times of London.

Coupons are certainly one way to attract customers, and they definitely have their place as part of an overall marketing strategy.  But coupons can be expensive,  when the cost of distributing the coupon is added to the coupon cost itself.

And while a coupon may bring in a few new customers, most are probably redeemed by existing customers who may well appreciate the coupon, but probably indirectly thank their local newspaper for the freebie and not the merchant.

To the extent store sponsored coupons are involved, it makes far more sense for these to be distributed to exisiting customers as part of a loyalty campaign designed to get customers to return to the store on otherwise slow days, and or to increase the total size of purchase by the customer.

Rather than spending money on distribution, these coupons should be distributed via email to a list of customers built over time.

But not every email promotion need be a coupon. Instead, features on particular products can entice buyers to try new items, or return for old favorites and can be used to attract traffic almost as well as a coupon.