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5 Killer Tips For Creating A Profitable Online Store

 

Let’s face it; everyone wants to make money online.

You’re probably reading this article because you’re in the same boat as everyone else. The bills aren’t going to pay itself so earning money online sounds like a great way of making money while sitting in your computer and working from home.

According to online marketing guru Neil Patel, one-third of 2017 estimated that $353.68 billion in sales actually came from the mobile phone, so the opportunity to make money these days is pretty much limitless.

Below are three ways to get started in the lucrative industry of building a mobile online storefront.

1. Create an eBay store

eBay is hands down one of the largest online marketplaces in the world so if you still haven’t heard of it; you must be living under a rock.

According to Statista, eBay currently has over 170 million active users, so it’s a great place to start an online store. You can create an account on eBay for free, but you need to pay extra if you want to set up a store.

One of the advantages of selling on eBay is that there’s instant trust. eBay customers have protection against scams and lousy service so having eBay act as a third-party middle person makes customers feel a lot safer buying from new sellers even if they’ve never heard of them.

eBay also gives you the option to auction which means you can put your products up for auction to get a much higher price. It’s extremely “search engine friendly” which means that there’s a better chance of people finding your listing while searching on Google without you needing to build a website. It has lower fees – Amazon usually charges about 15% per sale while eBay only charges 10% before its fixed-price fees.

The only problem I see with eBay is that since eBay’s has such a huge market, the competition is fierce. Since its system is also built to favor the buyer more than the seller, a dodgy buyer can ruin a seller’s reputation just like that.

2. Create an Amazon account

Amazon is another excellent website to set up a seller account because it has a base of more than 300 million active customer accounts and more than 197 million monthly unique visitors. There are two types of Amazon seller accounts, and that’s “Fulfilled by Amazon” (FBA) and “Fulfilled by Merchant” (FBM). FBM sellers ship directly to customers while FBA sellers ship to Amazon distribution centers, which then sends the products to buyers. FBA sellers tend to get more benefit because Only FBA sellers can list Prime-eligible items and they tend to rank at the top of search results.

One good reason to sell on Amazon is that it’s one of the most trusted e-commerce websites of all time. Just being a seller on Amazon will automatically give you more sales than if you were not in it because Amazon has a customer base that trusts it a lot and are prepared to spend. Amazon is also the best when it comes to upselling which is usually adding an extra product as part of a bundle and cross-selling, which is when you recommend that your customer buy another product that complements their existing purchase.

Another positive thing about Amazon is that it has hundreds and thousands of affiliates who will refer traffic to your online store as long as you are selling items within their niche and the number of goods and services that are offered in Amazon are unrivaled by any other marketplace online.

The big disadvantage I see on Amazon is that if you want your product to sell on Amazon, your product has to rank on Amazon.

If someone is looking for your product on Amazon, if they try to search for your product on Amazon and your product isn’t ranking well, people will never see it. Which means that they’ll never buy it, and your stock will fail to make any money.

You have to look at Amazon and see it as a massive search engine. It’s quite possibly the world’s largest product search engine. Amazon is probably a more effective search engine than Google when it comes to selling physical products on the Internet because according to online guru Neil Patel, Amazon has three times more search volume for products than Google does.

Unfortunately, even if the potential to make money from Amazon is massive, it also follows an algorithm just like Google. This algorithm is what tells Amazon of what products should show up on the first page, second page, third page, etc..

Amazon is a business so it wants to make the most money possible which means that it will increase the rank of products that will provide the highest revenue.

Some of most crucial Amazon ranking factors are Product title and keyword, Sales volume, Quantity and quality of reviews, Image quality and number, Product detail click-through rates, Impressions, Price, Availability, Selection, Seller authority, Inventory, Referral path, Conversion rates and Customer sales history.

So if you want to rank in Amazon, then you need to please its algorithm, so you need to optimize your product listing. So how do you optimize your product listing? Here are a few tips: create the correct product title by making sure your main keyword is contained within it, provide high-resolution photos of your products to entice buyers, create a compelling bullet point description of your product, choose the right price that’s competitive next to other sellers of the same product and collect as many positive reviews as you possibly can.

3. Create an e-commerce website

Although it’s much easier to sell via established online stores like Amazon or E-bay – if an issue arises and these websites decided to remove you and ban you from its platform, then you have to start all over again.

If you have your own website, you’ll have control over everything, but then the downside is that you just need to work twice as hard on getting more traffic to your website.

There are a number of good platforms to build your website on such as WooCommerce which is a great e-commerce platform for WordPress, but I highly recommend Shopify – it’s perfect to host an e-commerce site because you don’t need coding skills to create a Shopify site.

Shopify has pretty much everything you need to set up your online store such as hosting, a web domain, payment gateways, etc.. just about all of the things you’ll require. It’s the most credible of its kind and has been used by a number of entrepreneurs to make thousands or even millions almost entirely passively. Here are five tips that are going to actually help you make money from Shopify.

– Make a decent offer. If you want more people to buy your product then you need to provide a better offer. A little discount or an extra item wouldn’t hurt because it’ll put you ahead of other sellers out there.

– You need to find a product that has a decent profit margin for you to make money from because realistically, it will take a while before you start earning consistently. Therefore, earning a dollar or two per product may not be worth your time. Unless you have money to burn, then I suggest really looking into your pricing.

– Capture your customer’s emails. Realistically, people won’t really buy anything yet if it’s the first time for them to visit your website so it’s essential for you to capture their emails so that later on you can encourage them to revisit your site. The most effective way of obtaining people’s emails is to offer something that appears to be expensive but is actually cheap. Once you’ve captured their emails, send them a reminder once in a while that your website still exists. Try not to make your email look like an advertisement – make it look like you just want to let them know you’re still around and try to strike a conversation with them to get an idea of what they need.

Now if you want to make serious money from your online store, below are six killer ways to do it:

Use Google Analytics to get to know your customers

Setting up an online store without a way to track down your progress is a set up for failure. Google Analytics is the best place to start if you’re looking into understanding your customers because it can provide you with very detailed information about your audience and it’s free.

Get active in online forums

Most online marketers would know that backlinks are one of the most significant foundations of SEO. The more links you have from reputable sites, the more Google favors your website because these inbound links tell Google that you’re an authority site.

One of the best ways to get backlinks is to start participating in forums. Two of the most reputable online forums are Quora and Reddit. Quora, similar to Yahoo Answers is a question-and-answer forum known for giving out expert answers to various questions.

Reddit is one of the most popular forums out there and is an excellent traffic driver for various websites. Just be careful with Reddit though because it has a crowd that’s relatively hard to please. If you want to participate in these online forums, try to comment on topics related to your industry and try not to directly advertise your business. Instead, focus on providing information that can be useful for the audience so you can build authority and then they would be more inclined to visit your website.

Create a blog

If you want to generate traffic and leads to your website, then the best thing to do is start a blog that is related to your niche. A site that has a blog will always get more eyeballs than a website without one because blogs are always lingering online just waiting for their customers to find them. The more you blog, the more traffic you’ll drive to your website. But you need to keep in mind that your blog posts need to be of value otherwise nobody would read it.

Get active on social media

Most businesses use social media marketing to boost their business because they know for a fact that everyone is on social media, so you need to use it to your advantage.

However, not all businesses with a social media strategy will have the same positive results. Some companies will thrive while some won’t. It all boils down to three words: social media engagement. If your business can’t get its audience to engage on social media, then you’ll be missing out big time.

Keep in mind that you don’t want to seem like a pesky and pushy salesperson online. If you want to improve engagement on social media websites like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or Pinterest, you need to start a conversation with your audience and get to know them on a personal level. You also need to post consistently, but in saying that you need to create quality posts rather than focusing on releasing a number of posts and hoping for some kind of positive result. You also need to understand what sort of content your audience responds to; you need to pick the right time to post your content and engage with your audience by responding to comments and likes.

Create a YouTube channel

For those who don’t know, Google owns YouTube which is a guarantee that it’s going to appear in search results. Video marketing has become a crucial part of digital marketing because almost 50% of Internet users look for videos related to their purchases before visiting an actual store. Big companies are always trying to find new ways to use YouTube to boost their brand because they know for a fact what it can do for their business. Keep in mind that there’s also the option of using YouTube live-streaming functionality that is similar to Facebook Live.

Establish an email list

Email is still one of the most popular marketing communication methods because every person on your email list receives an email the same way that they would receive a physical mail. Most people check their email several times a day, and it’s also a cheap yet well-documented way of reaching someone. Online services such as MailChimp and Constant Contact are two one of the most popular options so if you want to create an email list then you need to look at these two.

In Conclusion

Following these tips doesn’t guarantee success, but then everything in life is a risk right?

However, if you put in the time and build it all the right way, it’ll all work out so don’t be discouraged if it doesn’t work the first time – keep trying and testing and eventually, you’ll find success.

Business,Person,Think,Before,Make,Decision,To,Lay,Off,Employee

6 Killer Tips To Make Snapchat Work For Your Business

 

With 173 million daily users that send 400 million snaps every day, Snapchat is quite clearly an untapped social media platform that most businesses should include in their marketing plan.

If you’ve been holding off taking Snapchat seriously, you need to take the blinders off as soon as possible because Snapchat can actually help engage your followers and boost your brand’s visibility – you just need to use it the right way. Here are seven tips and tricks to use the app to your brand’s advantage.

1. Use Snapchat to Drive Traffic to Your Website

Although Snapchat was not really built to drive traffic to your website unlike like social media platforms such as Facebook or Instagram, it can still help drive traffic to your site. Keep in mind that Snapchat doesn’t allow you to include clickable links, so all you can really do is to direct your followers to your website URL – but since Snapchat doesn’t allow clickable links, you need to ensure that your URL is easy to remember for when they decide to use your link later.

A good way to engage your audience is to provide a useful tutorial in your Snapchat story, but don’t give everything away straight away – show just enough to whet their appetites and then tell your followers to visit the particular URL at the end of your story if they want to get more information.

Editorial credit: FashionStock.com / Shutterstock.com

2. Provide behind-the-scenes access to exclusive events

If you want to engage more people to your brand in Snapchat, then you need to take them on a journey with you.

I’m pretty sure your followers would love to see some behind-the-scenes footage of how your business operates on a day-to-day basis or footage of an exclusive VIP event your company went to because that will bring the action to them directly.

For example, high profile designers used New York Fashion Week to grow their Snapchat following by posting behind-the-scenes videos and photos of the event. Since these videos and photos were only available for a short period, their followers became glued to their Snapchat accounts because it made them feel as if they were part of the show.

Here’s an image that was taken from Michael Kors SnapChat story. Michael decided to increase his social media presence via Snapchat since Fashionistas following the New York Fashion Week were also using the app to cover the event.

Everlane is another excellent example of a fashion brand that’s making Snapchat a massive part of their online marketing strategy. They let their followers know in advance about new products and releases, and they also use Snapchat to take you behind the scenes inside their office. At one point Everlane even offered limited edition items to their customers via a “Secret Shop,” and it was only available on Snapchat at certain times.

Snapchat is definitely a big part of Everlane’s online marketing strategy, and it’s something most businesses can learn from.

3. Tap Influencers

It’s a highly known fact that using influencers to promote your brand is the quickest way of getting more people to follow and engage with you.

However, there’s the realistic fact that not everyone has a marketing budget to work with so tapping high-profile influencers is out of the question because it’s going to be too expensive. Therefore, your next best option is to draw B-grade or C-grade influencers because they’d be willing to promote your brand at a much lower price. B-grade or C-grade influencers aka “Micro-influencers” may not be as massive as the big guns in Snapchat with millions of followers, but they still should have a decent following that you can tap.

A great example of a popular brand using an influencer to increase their following in Snapchat was the Sour Patch Kids. Sour Patch Kids teamed up with social media star Logan Paul by asking him to take over their Snapchat account and by doing that, they also invited his more than half a million Twitter followers to follow their Snapchat account.

Digital Training Academy confirmed that Sour Patch Kids received 6.8 million Snapchat impressions and 120,000 new Snapchat followers through the campaign, so it’s safe to say that it was a successful campaign.

4. Offer Special Deals

If you’re selling a service or a product then why not use Snapchat to promote your exclusive deals?

You can promote your discounts and special promotions through Snapchat which in turn will engage your followers and at the same time enable your brand to gain new followers. You can create Snapchat stories highlighting your special deals which should encourage more people to follow your account.

Crunchwrap Sliders, for example, shared this 10-second snap with a special referral code so that they were able to track down how many people actually got their hands on their product.

5. Provide incentive to your loyal followers

A good marketing move would be to reward your loyal followers for following you so that they continue to engage with your brand.

A fun yet effective way to engage your audience is to have a hidden message targetting your followers hidden within your Snapchat Story. You can tell your followers that whoever caught the secret message and responded accordingly will get a prize – but then they have to know that only those who watch the story until the end will get the instructions on how to claim the prize.

You can even tell your followers to take a snap of themselves promoting your brand, and if they send you the snap, they’ll get a prize for their efforts. Keep in mind that you can use these photos on your social media accounts as proof that people are following your brand.

Here’s a good example taken from frozen yogurt chain 16 Handles’ Snapchat account. They offered an exclusive discount to their existing followers that can only be redeemed if they sent snaps eating their fro-yo. They gained new customers by highlighting exclusive times and store locations, and when customers snapped photos of themselves or their friends eating 16 Handles yogurt, they immediately received a coupon code for between 16% and 100% off.

GrubHub effectively used Snapchat by organizing an online scavenger hunt called Snaphunt. They asked their followers to post a snap to them and then they announced ten random winners every day, who received $50 in free takeout.

6. Assert your authority

Addressing a relevant issue in Snapchat may sound a bit too serious seeing that majority of its users are young people, but sometimes, it pays to be the voice of authority in this app.

Take for example soap brand Dove, they got 30 women to chat with psychologists and other ambassadors on Snapchat to share personal thoughts about self-esteem issues. It was a campaign that was aimed at boosting young women’s self-images. Overall it resulted in 75 conversations and a whopping 130,000 views!

In Conclusion

Snapchat has 173 million active daily users, so it definitely needs to be added to your marketing plan.

If you want to be successful in your marketing campaign using Snapchat, then you need to be innovative but at the same time, show some personality and have some fun. The more authentic you seem, the more people will follow you.

Business,Person,Think,Before,Make,Decision,To,Lay,Off,Employee

12 Killer Pinterest Tips That Will Set Your Business Up For Success

 

If you’re not using Pinterest to grow your website and your business – you are seriously missing out on a gold mine.

Most entrepreneurs have promoted their products on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter for years, which is a smart thing to do, but a number of entrepreneurs and online marketers have now started using Pinterest to reach new customers.

Why? Well, let me give you some quick facts about Pinterest, and you’ll see why.

– As of now, Pinterest has a whopping 175 million active users

– 50 billion pins have so far been used by Pinterest users

– 2 million is the total number of Pinterest users who save shopping pins on their boards daily

– 81% of Pinterest users are female

– Time magazine referred to Pinterest as one of the top five social networking sites

Looking at these insane stats, I think it is safe to say that if you’re not using Pinterest to grow your website or your business, then you are seriously missing out on a gold mine. Especially retailers that cater to women.

So for all the newbies out there, what is Pinterest?

Pinterest is a free website where users can upload, save, categorize, and manage various images known as “pins” as well as other media content such as videos through collections known as “pinboards.”

Pinterest enables users to discover new ideas and find inspiration for anything and everything. Pins are actually ideas that can help you get creative, whether you’re launching a new product or promoting your existing ones – Pins are saved to Pinterest boards, making your ideas organized and easy to find.

A lot of people use Pinterest for a number of reasons, most people use it though to look for inspiration, particularly those people looking for ideas about new products to buy. Now before we look at how to use Pinterest for your business, let’s first look at how to set up a business account on Pinterest.

How to Create a Pinterest Business Account

– First, you need to go to Pinterest for Business and sign up. Complete all the details about your business.

– Now choose five or more ideas relating to your niche then read and accept the Pinterest Business Terms of Service and click “Create Account”.

– As soon as you sign up you’ll see something like this:

To give you a basic overview of the features of Pinterest, a “Pin” is an image or video that you can choose to save to Pinterest. If you have a businesses account then your image needs to contain a link for referral traffic because every pin links back to the original source. Pinterest users aka “Pinners” also sort their pins into collections called “boards” in order to keep things organized. So far there’s been a mind-boggling 100 billion pins to date and that’s pretty incredible stats!

– Next, you need to upload your most current photo or logo, choose your username that should be a direct representation of your business, add a bio that includes keywords that are optimized for search engines, add your location then add your website. Keep in mind that Pinterest is a visual social media platform so think visual.

To change your settings click at the top of Pinterest to open your menu, click settings to open your settings, scroll down to the Profile section, click change picture, then choose file, let it upload, then finally click save settings.

– Some basic terminologies you need to know besides boards and pins are “Secret Boards” which are also boards but the difference is that they’re secret so only you or anyone you’ve invited to pin with you are able to see your pins until you make the board public. There’s also the “group boards” which functions the same as normal boards but the only difference is that it has multiple pinners sharing content within the board. You’ve got the option to “repin” someone else’s content which simply means that you can share that specific pin with all of your followers similar to retweets. You’ve also got access to the “Pin It Button” which is a widget or plugin that can be added to your website or blog.

How To Set Up Pinterest Boards

Now that the technical stuff is out of the way – it’s time to start setting up your Pinterest Boards. I recommend around 5 boards, to begin with, so you get the basic idea of how Pinterest works. Think of boards as folders containing your photos, you’re basically sharing your photos with other people.

First, you have to name your board.

Keep in mind that the name of your board should be based on your chosen keyword so if you want your board to be search engine friendly then you need to choose a name that’ll represent your niche.

Your Pinterest Board Name needs to be attention-grabbing and highly clickable, it needs to contain your chosen keyword and specifically catered to your niche. Your main aim is to encourage pinners to browse through your boards and pin as much as they can so you need to also choose visually captivating images that can link and drive traffic to your website.

Try to make your board names more fun with a bit of attitude and personality – but at the same time really descriptive and direct to the point so that pinners can immediately grasp what your boards are all about.

 Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to create a board and start with a few pins. Let’s say I want to create a board about movie trailers and link the pins to one of my websites, instead of naming the board movie trailers, I’d want to make the name sound more catchy so I’d name it “addicted to movie trailers.”

Next, you add the name of your board, in this case, it’s “Addicted to movie trailers.”

Once you’ve created a board it’s going to look like this, once you see this in your screen, you need to click on “create a pin” to start posting pins.

As soon as you click on create a pin you’ll end up with this two options – “The Web” and “Your Device.” If you want to drive traffic to your website then I recommend that you click on “The Web.”

Once you click on “The Web,” this prompt will come up. Basically, it’s asking you for a link to your website. So I go to my website, get the link to the article, then post it on this tab.

Click “Next” and you’ll be given a choice of a pin, either you choose from the photos Pinterest has extracted from your website otherwise you can choose to upload your own image.

As soon as you’ve chosen a photo to pin, you then need to provide a description of the photo – be as detailed as possible. Once that’s done you’ll be taken to the page below which means that you’ve just added your first pin. The photo will be clickable which means that it can potentially drive traffic to your website.

Add more photos and repeat the same process and before you know it you’ve created your first board and first set of pins.

How to get your pin to the top of Pinterest Search

There are three main factors that usually helps a pin reach the top of Pinterest and these three are a compelling photo,  a highly optimized board name that supports the pinned content and a compelling blog post.

Now if you want to create a pin that can go viral then you need to look at these eight elements.

Compelling Description

Your pin description needs to be compelling enough if you want pinners to repin and click through to your photos. Take some time and work on your description before you hit that publish button.

Pin Size

A pin size is a big deal when it comes to creating a viral pin. According to danzarella.com, portrait and vertical images are the best to use on Pinterest. Award-winning social media marketer Dan Zarrella studied over 11,000 pins and discovered that taller images are actually more repinnable. I recommend trying the size 800 x 1,300 pixels because this size has worked well for me in the past but really, you need to try testing things out in Pinterest so you can find out which Pin size will do wonders for you. The minimum size is 600 x 900 pixels, make sure you don’t make your pins longer than 1500 pixels because they will get truncated.

Simple and Uncluttered Images

Granted that Pinterest is a visual social media platform, you still need to make sure that you don’t post photos that are way too busy to look at it literally hurts your eyes. I recommend using bright colors on a white or neutral background. Simple yet captivating photos tend to perform well on Pinterest. The colours red, pink, and purple tend to be repinned more, while green, blue, black, and yellow has the opposite effect,

Compelling images

According to Pinterest, informative pins are up to 30% more engaging than other pins and using some simple text on top of the image to quickly describe the pin helps make the pin more pinnable. Images with multiple colors apparently get repinned 3.25 times more than the ones with a single dominant color and medium lightness is repinned 20x more than very dark images. Don’t post images that are too light or too dark, stay natural.

FIle names

Since search engines can’t really see your images, you need to include file names that contain your targeted keywords. You’re most likely get much better search performance with “pacific_dresses.jpg” than you will with “JPEG23343.jpg.” If you do it this way, when someone pins your images from another blog or website using Pinterest’s browser button, the image alt-text by default is what is going to be used as the pin description.

Clear and legible Font

Obviously, you need to pick a font that people can read otherwise no one would click on your photos. Try to pick a photo that’s not too busy that it eats up your font, the neater the better.

Compelling images

According to Pinterest experts White Gloves, images without a human face receives 25% more repins. “Lifestyle images” drive 159% more likes and repins because it helps your audience actually visualize what they can do with your products and it shows your products being used in real life.

Optimize your Board Name

If people can’t locate your board then obviously they’re not going to find the content on your board. Therefore you need to use a board name that your target audience is searching for so that they can find your content.

 Now if you want Pinterest to work wonders for your business here are twelve killer tips:

Follow your competition

What better way to find out what sort of Pinterest strategies you can implement in your own account than by following your competition and figuring out what’s working for them?

You can find out who your competition is by searching them on Pinterest or using good old Google. Once you’ve pinpointed out other businesses related to your niche then explore their Pinterest accounts.

What’s working for them?

What sort of photos is getting more engagement?

Do they have active followers on Pinterest?

You need to determine what’s working for your competition, implement those strategies on your own Pinterest account and if you can improve on it.

Turn your Pinterest Page into a Business Page

There’s no massive difference between a personal page and a business page; the only difference is that business pages have added analytics features so you can get more data to help you. You can insight like how many unique users your Pinterest account gets, or which of your content gets the most repins.

You also need to create boards that are a direct reflection of what your business is all about. Creating boards that reflect your business is great for branding purposes.

Add a Pinterest Hover Pin It Button to your photos

A Hover Pin It Button is an excellent call to action because it’ll drive referral traffic from Pinterest direct to your website.

This button actually appears over the images on your website whenever a Pinterest user’s mouse hovers over them. It’s a great way to drive traffic to your site because it makes it easier for Pinterest users to pin images from your website.

Pinterest provides detailed instructions on how to use it so you should be able to get it going in just a few minutes.

Interact with your followers

If you want to actively engage your followers, then don’t forget to engage with people that comment on your photos.

Customers love a brand that interacts with them so a quick response to a user’s comment is good public relations and will engage your followers.

Build rapport With Influencers

Building rapport with influencers is a must for every social media platform because these people have hundreds and thousands of followers that might also follow your brand.

Start following the influencers in your niche and interacting with them. Repin their content, like them and even make comments on them. If these influencers can see that your brand is reaching out and making an effort, then they might decide to collaborate with you.

Optimize your Pinterest account for SEO

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) should always be present on all your social media accounts, and the same goes with Pinterest.

Make sure your username is a direct reflection of your business for SEO purposes; your ‘about’ section should also contain keywords preferably long tail ones that are related to your niche. Make sure the file name and description of your pins are related to your niche, include relevant hashtags on your posts and of course, include links to your website.

Your business description is also a relevant piece of your Pinterest account so make sure you make it count.

Look at using Rich Pins

Pinterest has five types of rich pins that’ll enable you to add a pin that’s specifically related to your niche. These are the five:

•Movie pins which include reviews, cast members and ratings
•Place pins which include a map, an address and a phone number
•Article pins which include the link, the headline, the synopsis and the author
•Product pins which tell you where to buy and includes real-time pricing and product availability
•Recipe pins which include ingredients, serving information and even cooking times

Figure out which rich pin applies to your niche then apply for it, this should give your followers more specific information about the pins that interest them.

Invite users to a Group Board

A group board is a great way to engage with your customers and potential clients.

Create a group board then invite other Pinterest users to pin on your board. Of course, as the admin of the board, you have the power to control which pin stay and which pins go, but this is definitely a great way to gain potential new customers and followers.

Don’t be afraid to use old photos

Most people who follow brands businesses are usually keen on seeing their journey so why not dig up your old photos and do a throwback board?

Take your followers on a walk down memory lane by showing the progress on how you started to where you are now; success stories are always a hit with the masses.

Get smart when it comes to naming your Images

If you want Pinterest users to find your website photos, then you have to tweak your image names a little bit. Add keywords and hyphens, and that’ll make your image more search friendly.

For example, instead of a standard camera name like EOS SBCS0000.JPG – try “women’s-designer-shoes.jpg.” This should help make your photo easier to find online.

Use other forms of media

While we all know that Pinterest is a visually driven social media platform, there’s also the option of using other media to make your brand stand out.

Try posting videos from YouTube or slideshows from SlideShare – that should make your brand stand out more. You can also try audio from SoundCloud to make things a bit more interesting.

Don’t use too many hashtags

You need to choose hashtags that are relevant to your pin’s theme. If you’re using a hashtag that is more than one word – try capitalizing the first letter of each word to make it easier for Pinners to read your hashtag. For example, instead of #bluedress try typing #BlueDress.

Unlike Instagram where hashtags are a vital component to making your content go viral, in Pinterest, you don’t use more than 20 hashtags in your pin descriptions because it’ll look spammy and it’ll turn Pinners off. The less clutter there is in your pin description, the better.

Keep in mind just because you are using hashtags in your content, it doesn’t mean your content will automatically shoot up to the top of the Pinterest search engine because you’re still competing with other pins using the same keywords and hashtags. If those other pins are appropriately optimized with high repin numbers, those pins will always be ahead of your pins. You need to wait for at least a couple of months until you actually see a new pin’s value. SEO is a long-term game – it won’t happen overnight, but it will happen.

In Conclusion

If you’re not using Pinterest to market your products or services, then you’re seriously missing out. because more than 87 percent of Pinterest users have bought a product because of the website.

Pinterest is one of the biggest website traffic drivers in the world and is actually 80% more viral and three times more effective at generating leads than Twitter. So if you’re an entrepreneur who wants to take your business to another level then what are you waiting for??

Business,Person,Think,Before,Make,Decision,To,Lay,Off,Employee

10 FREE Online Marketing Tools That Are Guaranteed To Boost Your Business

Let’s face it; maintaining an online business can be quite expensive so as an entrepreneur, we’re always looking for free options that are readily available online.

If you’re currently stuck trying to find free marketing tools that can help you boost your business, I may have a solution for you. Here are ten Internet marketing tools that can be very useful in your marketing efforts.

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Feedly

Feedly is a news aggregator application for various web browsers and mobile devices running iOS and Android. It compiles news feeds from a variety of online sources for the user to customize and share with others. Basically, it’s a central place to organize, read, and share the information you need to stay ahead of the next big trend in your industry.

Keyword Niche Finder

Keyword Niche Finder is a fantastic tool that’ll help you find most profitable keywords in your industry. It’ll help you to categorize your keywords as well as provide you with keyword suggestions depending on your niche.

PhotoPin

Photopin is an excellent tool that sources out free images from websites like Flickr which you can then use on your site because they’re copyright free. The first 10-15 photos will be sponsored images so you can disregard those, but the rest should be free.

Content Idea Generator

Have you ever been stuck trying to come up with an awesome idea for content? Don’t fret because I’ve got a solution for you. The Content Idea Generator will provide you with a number of ideas that’ll help you get rid of that pesky writer’s block.

Google Drive and Dropbox

These tools will save your valuable files online so that you can access them later or share them with other people. Dropbox gives you 2GB space, and if you refer other people, you’ll get an extra 20GB of space. While Google Drive continuously saves your work while you are still in the process of preparing a document so even if your computer suddenly dies down, your docs will still be safe.

Small SEO Tools

Small SEO Tools is hands down one of the most awesome websites for small businesses. This website boasts some of the best FREE tools that are guaranteed to help you boost your business. It contains fantastic tools such as Article rewriter, Backlink checker, Google PageRank checker, Keyword suggestion tool, Plagiarism Checker, Page speed checker tool and many more.

Ahrefs

If you want to find out how many backlinks (incoming hyperlink from one web page to another website) your website has, then Ahrefs is the most reliable marketing tool for the job. Using this tool can even help you discover your competitors’ backlinks, and once you find out, you can try to approach these websites to link to your website as well.

Google page speed

This tool determines the loading time on your website giving you an insight on how fast your website loads. As you would probably be aware, no one likes a slow loading website so this can be a factor when it comes to getting more traffic. Google itself gives search priority to websites that load fast.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is the best website to use when it comes to tracking your website’s activities and stats. It’ll give you detailed stats on how much traffic your website gets, what keywords your website is ranking for, which countries your visitors are coming from etc.. You’ll get few lines of code that you need to add to your website and then you can start tracking your visitors almost immediately.

MailChimp

MailChimp is an email marketing software that you can utilize to help you build subscribers for your website. If you have 2,000 or fewer subscribers, you can send up to 12,000 emails per month absolutely free. But if you have more then you would need to pay a fee depending on the number of your subscribers.

Business,Person,Think,Before,Make,Decision,To,Lay,Off,Employee

How To Make Over $5000 Per Month Publishing Kindle eBooks On Amazon

 

Did you know that you can make a LOT of money publishing Kindle eBooks on Amazon?

Here’s another question that might shock you, did you know that you can earn a lot of money writing Kindle eBooks without actually writing it??

Some people even earn over $100,000 a month, and I’m about to reveal the secret to making money from Kindle eBooks based on my own experience.

If you’re a pretty good writer who’s got a knack for words, then you may look at considering publishing Kindle eBooks on Amazon’s Kindle program because it can be pretty lucrative as long as you’re consistently churning out dozens of quality books.

Long gone are the days where you need to approach publishing companies to look at your book clinging to the hope that they’ll one day publish it. Nowadays, anyone can be a self-published author as long as you are willing to put forth the effort and a few tricks up your sleeve.

The beauty of publishing a digital/kindle book is that you don’t need a lot of money to publish, you just need a lot of time to write the books and market them the right way.

Publishing a digital/kindle book is similar to blogging – if you’re an author who sells a lot of books and gets a lot of positive reviews per book, then you are well on your way to cash kingdom.

I’ve actually earned a lot of money from publishing books on Amazon, and the thing to remember is that not every book is going to be a hit, some books will sell and some won’t. You just have to be consistent when it comes to publishing books and eventually, you’ll start seeing some results.

My first book was around 30,000 words, and it was a niche that is very popular in Amazon – romance.

I chose romance for my first book because after much research I discovered that romance is one of the most popular Kindle categories, so the market for romance books was huge.

Based on my research the most in-demand romance books involves super rich people like the dude from Fifty Shades of Grey, war romance and military men, love triangles and even vampires.

Writing my first book

I wrote a love story based on one of my previous relationships on a trial basis – I was involved in a love triangle at one point in my life, and the plot was juicy enough to turn into a book.

The book took me a few days to complete, and as soon as I finished it, I headed straight to Fiverr and got a book cover made for just $5. Once done I then uploaded the book to the Amazon Kindle store. I was shocked that I received many compliments about my awesome book cover when it only cost me $5 to get it done.

I sold maybe five copies in the first month and around 15 on the second which wasn’t too bad for a first book since I had no expectations whatsoever. But in the same breath, I wasn’t rushing to quit my fulltime job either. I also didn’t do any form of marketing for the book because I assumed Amazon is excellent when it comes to marketing its products via organic search.

After my first book, I wrote five more books on romance. They weren’t epic novels, so I managed to finish the five books in two weeks. It wasn’t anything like those Danielle Steel books with over 200,000 words. Mine were more like short novels ranging from 20,000 to 30,000 words. Four of them went on to make an average of $300 per month, but one of the books surprisingly made over $5,000 per month which was shocking because I didn’t think that specific book was the best out of the five books I wrote.

What drives sales in Amazon’s Kindle program

I discovered that making money on Kindle books boils down to two things: People tend to buy Kindle books based on how great your cover looks and a compelling book description. Funnily enough, the content comes third. Once you’ve hooked Amazon users with your eye-catching cover and enticing book description, then it’s up to your content to keep your audience mesmerized and keep Amazon users wanting more.

Let me put it to you this way, would you watch a movie if the trailer was crap? Of course not! Movie trailers are deal breakers when it comes to how a film will eventually perform in the box office hence the reason why movie producers shed a lot of money on their trailers.

Similar to Amazon, a weak book description is a sure sign that your book won’t ever have the chance of taking off because you need to establish a “hook.” Why would random strangers buy a book with a bland book description? You need to hook the readers in the first two sentences of your book description to keep them wanting more.

How to write a book without actually writing it

Since I was running a number of businesses at the time, I had no time to sit down and write books anymore, so what did I do?

I went to Fiverr and hired some ghostwriters!

Just in case you didn’t know, a ghostwriter is a person who is hired to write books that are officially credited to another person as the author. You’ll probably be shocked to discover that many big-time authors also hire ghostwriters themselves.

I know… shocking right?

First I sent out a press release in Fiverr, and around 20 ghostwriters responded. I chose five that I liked out of the applicants because the five writers I picked can really fill space, churn out paragraphs loaded with flowery words and make the book sound a lot slicker.

I discovered that a lot of authors make money from short stories with around 10,000 – 20,000 words so I decided to get in on that market. I created five different romance books in point form; they were around 4,000 words each – I submitted them to my ghostwriters, paid them $250 for each book and within a few weeks they’ve come up with five books with around 30,000 words each.

How much should you charge for your book?

I sold the books at around $2.95 each which is a price that most Amazon users would gladly pay because most people would hesitate to pay anything that’s more than $5. Amazon is the best platform for impulse buys so $2.95 is right up that alley.

Since it only took me a few hours each to create the five books, I didn’t feel bad about selling them at a much lower price. I also discovered that selling them in a bundle was also more lucrative so I decided to offer that as an alternative.

Prime Reading programme

Another option I tried was the Prime Reading programme. Prime Reading offers free access to subscribers similar to Netflix, and you’ll get paid based on pages read by Amazon users. You can earn decent money out of it, but I prefer the bundle route because I can earn much more.

I was easily making more than $5000 per month, and that’s with the help of cheap but talented ghostwriters, 5 dollar book covers, and attention-grabbing book descriptions.

I was even writing random books about random subjects like women’s shoes, parenting, baking, home improvement, etc.. As long as I could see a potential niche, If it’s a niche I could see making a book out of it I even hired professional editor on Fiverr around $100 to edit the books since I didn’t have time to edit the books anymore.

How to hit the bestseller list

Some of my books have surprisingly hit the bestseller list, and once that happens, you’ll see a lot more cash coming in.

Keep in mind that you don’t have to be a massive authority in your niche to be a best-selling author. It just means that you’ve reached the number one spot in any category. I’ve hit the bestseller list for some small categories but only for a few hours but those few hours should be enough to get more eyeballs on your book.

A secret trick to getting into the bestseller list is to place your book in specific categories that aren’t that competitive so that it’s a lot easier for your book to make it to the top. Case in point: when I chose romance as a category, I was competing with a million other books in the same category because this specific category is way too popular. When I switched to categories such as “Australian historical fiction” and “Religious Historical Fiction” – that’s when I was able to reach number one.

How to get more reviews for your book

Reviews are also critical when it comes to making money for your books because the more positive reviews your book has, the more chances people will buy it. It’s called social proofing – you’ll convince a lot more people to buy your books if hundreds of people had a positive experience out of it. The magic number is around 30 reviews, any book with 30 reviews and over has a better chance of getting sold.

Here’s how you can get more reviews for your book:

Once you’ve published a book, Amazon will give you the option of giving the book away for free for up to 5 days as a promotional tactic. You can send a link to people you know during this time and ask them to review your book.You can also

look at the reviewers of similar books within your niche – target your competitor’s reviewers.

To do this, you need to head to the review section of one of your competitors. Pick a reviewer who gave the book a positive

review, click the reviewers’ Amazon profile, and you’ll be able to see their contact information including an email address,

Facebook account, Twitter account, YouTube account as well as other SNS accounts.

Once you’ve got an email address, you can shoot them a friendly email telling them about yourself and your awesome book and give them a link to your free book. I used to have the time to do this, but now I just hire Book Razor to do it since this process takes forever to do and I just don’t have the time to do it anymore. The good thing is, once you’ve compiled your reviewer’s list you can just keep that list and keep those reviewers in the loop whenever your latest book has been released.

In conclusion

So in a nutshell, if you’re thinking of making money out of publishing Kindle books in Amazon, think Eye-catchy cover and breathtaking book description. Once you’ve gotten through these first two hurdles, then it’s up to your content to keep the readers coming back for more.

Did you know that you can make a LOT of money publishing Kindle eBooks on Amazon?

Here’s another question that might shock you, did you know that you can earn a lot of money writing Kindle eBooks without actually writing it??

Some people even earn over $100,000 a month, and I’m about to reveal the secret to making money from Kindle eBooks based on my own experience.

If you’re a pretty good writer who’s got a knack for words, then you may look at considering publishing Kindle eBooks on Amazon’s Kindle program because it can be pretty lucrative as long as you’re consistently churning out dozens of quality books.

Long gone are the days where you need to approach publishing companies to look at your book clinging to the hope that they’ll one day publish it. Nowadays, anyone can be a self-published author as long as you are willing to put forth the effort and a few tricks up your sleeve.

The beauty of publishing a digital/kindle book is that you don’t need a lot of money to publish, you just need a lot of time to write the books and market them the right way.

Publishing a digital/kindle book is similar to blogging – if you’re an author who sells a lot of books and gets a lot of positive reviews per book, then you are well on your way to cash kingdom.

I’ve actually earned a lot of money from publishing books on Amazon, and the thing to remember is that not every book is going to be a hit, some books will sell and some won’t. You just have to be consistent when it comes to publishing books and eventually, you’ll start seeing some results.

My first book was around 30,000 words, and it was a niche that is very popular in Amazon – romance.

I chose romance for my first book because after much research I discovered that romance is one of the most popular Kindle categories, so the market for romance books was huge.

Based on my research the most in-demand romance books involves super rich people like the dude from Fifty Shades of Grey, war romance and military men, love triangles and even vampires.

Writing my first book

I wrote a love story based on one of my previous relationships on a trial basis – I was involved in a love triangle at one point in my life, and the plot was juicy enough to turn into a book.

The book took me a few days to complete, and as soon as I finished it, I headed straight to Fiverr and got a book cover made for just $5. Once done I then uploaded the book to the Amazon Kindle store. I was shocked that I received many compliments about my awesome book cover when it only cost me $5 to get it done.

I sold maybe five copies in the first month and around 15 on the second which wasn’t too bad for a first book since I had no expectations whatsoever. But in the same breath, I wasn’t rushing to quit my fulltime job either. I also didn’t do any form of marketing for the book because I assumed Amazon is excellent when it comes to marketing its products via organic search.

After my first book, I wrote five more books on romance. They weren’t epic novels, so I managed to finish the five books in two weeks. It wasn’t anything like those Danielle Steel books with over 200,000 words. Mine were more like short novels ranging from 20,000 to 30,000 words. Four of them went on to make an average of $300 per month, but one of the books surprisingly made over $5,000 per month which was shocking because I didn’t think that specific book was the best out of the five books I wrote.

What drives sales in Amazon’s Kindle program

I discovered that making money on Kindle books boils down to two things: People tend to buy Kindle books based on how great your cover looks and a compelling book description. Funnily enough, the content comes third. Once you’ve hooked Amazon users with your eye-catching cover and enticing book description, then it’s up to your content to keep your audience mesmerized and keep Amazon users wanting more.

Let me put it to you this way, would you watch a movie if the trailer was crap? Of course not! Movie trailers are deal breakers when it comes to how a film will eventually perform in the box office hence the reason why movie producers shed a lot of money on their trailers.

Similar to Amazon, a weak book description is a sure sign that your book won’t ever have the chance of taking off because you need to establish a “hook.” Why would random strangers buy a book with a bland book description? You need to hook the readers in the first two sentences of your book description to keep them wanting more.

How to write a book without actually writing it

Since I was running a number of businesses at the time, I had no time to sit down and write books anymore, so what did I do?

I went to Fiverr and hired some ghostwriters!

Just in case you didn’t know, a ghostwriter is a person who is hired to write books that are officially credited to another person as the author. You’ll probably be shocked to discover that many big-time authors also hire ghostwriters themselves.

I know… shocking right?

First I sent out a press release in Fiverr, and around 20 ghostwriters responded. I chose five that I liked out of the applicants because the five writers I picked can really fill space, churn out paragraphs loaded with flowery words and make the book sound a lot slicker.

I discovered that a lot of authors make money from short stories with around 10,000 – 20,000 words so I decided to get in on that market. I created five different romance books in point form; they were around 4,000 words each – I submitted them to my ghostwriters, paid them $250 for each book and within a few weeks they’ve come up with five books with around 30,000 words each.

How much should you charge for your book?

I sold the books at around $2.95 each which is a price that most Amazon users would gladly pay because most people would hesitate to pay anything that’s more than $5. Amazon is the best platform for impulse buys so $2.95 is right up that alley.

Since it only took me a few hours each to create the five books, I didn’t feel bad about selling them at a much lower price. I also discovered that selling them in a bundle was also more lucrative so I decided to offer that as an alternative.

Prime Reading programme

Another option I tried was the Prime Reading programme. Prime Reading offers free access to subscribers similar to Netflix, and you’ll get paid based on pages read by Amazon users. You can earn decent money out of it, but I prefer the bundle route because I can earn much more.

I was easily making more than $5000 per month, and that’s with the help of cheap but talented ghostwriters, 5 dollar book covers, and attention-grabbing book descriptions.

I was even writing random books about random subjects like women’s shoes, parenting, baking, home improvement, etc.. As long as I could see a potential niche, If it’s a niche I could see making a book out of it I even hired professional editor on Fiverr around $100 to edit the books since I didn’t have time to edit the books anymore.

How to hit the bestseller list

Some of my books have surprisingly hit the bestseller list, and once that happens, you’ll see a lot more cash coming in.

Keep in mind that you don’t have to be a massive authority in your niche to be a best-selling author. It just means that you’ve reached the number one spot in any category. I’ve hit the bestseller list for some small categories but only for a few hours but those few hours should be enough to get more eyeballs on your book.

A secret trick to getting into the bestseller list is to place your book in specific categories that aren’t that competitive so that it’s a lot easier for your book to make it to the top. Case in point: when I chose romance as a category, I was competing with a million other books in the same category because this specific category is way too popular. When I switched to categories such as “Australian historical fiction” and “Religious Historical Fiction” – that’s when I was able to reach number one.

How to get more reviews for your book

Reviews are also critical when it comes to making money for your books because the more positive reviews your book has, the more chances people will buy it. It’s called social proofing – you’ll convince a lot more people to buy your books if hundreds of people had a positive experience out of it. The magic number is around 30 reviews, any book with 30 reviews and over has a better chance of getting sold.

Here’s how you can get more reviews for your book:

Once you’ve published a book, Amazon will give you the option of giving the book away for free for up to 5 days as a promotional tactic. You can send a link to people you know during this time and ask them to review your book.You can also

look at the reviewers of similar books within your niche – target your competitor’s reviewers.

To do this, you need to head to the review section of one of your competitors. Pick a reviewer who gave the book a positive

review, click the reviewers’ Amazon profile, and you’ll be able to see their contact information including an email address,

Facebook account, Twitter account, YouTube account as well as other SNS accounts.

Once you’ve got an email address, you can shoot them a friendly email telling them about yourself and your awesome book and give them a link to your free book. I used to have the time to do this, but now I just hire Book Razor to do it since this process takes forever to do and I just don’t have the time to do it anymore. The good thing is, once you’ve compiled your reviewer’s list you can just keep that list and keep those reviewers in the loop whenever your latest book has been released.

In conclusion

So in a nutshell, if you’re thinking of making money out of publishing Kindle books in Amazon, think Eye-catchy cover and breathtaking book description. Once you’ve gotten through these first two hurdles, then it’s up to your content to keep the readers coming back for more.

Business,Person,Think,Before,Make,Decision,To,Lay,Off,Employee

10 Crucial Mistakes You Could Be Making Selling Blog Sponsorship

Let’s face it; selling sponsorship to a potential client is not an easy task because a lot of small businesses these days don’t really have a marketing budget.

In a nutshell, getting sponsors boils down to two things: offering something of value and building rapport.

So what are some crucial mistakes a lot of website owners make when it comes to selling sponsorship? Read on and find out.

1. Not contacting the right person

It’s quite obvious that if you want to sell sponsorship to a company you need to find the right person to talk to – the decision-maker.

Think about it, why would you bother pitching your offer to the receptionist when that person wouldn’t know what to do with your proposal??

If you’re pitching your blog/website to a company, you need to reach out to the head of the marketing department or possibly even the brand manager. Approaching the CEO or managing director directly may not be the best idea either because most of the time those guys are extremely busy.

2. Antagonizing Potential Sponsors

A lot of entrepreneurs think that antagonizing is an excellent way to seal the deal with a potential sponsor.

WRONG.

Don’t ever create a sense of urgency if there’s no sense of urgency.

Spitting out a line like “Hi Tony, the website sponsorship deal I’m offering you is for a limited time only, if you don’t take it now I would have to give it to someone else” is an epic FAIL.

First of all, keep in mind that you’re the one that needs their business not the other way around. Secondly, if you’re talking to the CEO or the marketing manager, you have to assume that this person is smart so they’ll probably end up laughing off your bullying tactics.

Just be courteous when you’re presenting your pitch, building rapport and lasting relationship go a long a way.

3. Allowing the Potential Sponsor to dictate the price

Most entrepreneurs and marketing managers are very savvy when it comes to getting value for their money. They want to milk any deal as much as they can for as low as they possibly can.

Don’t let a savvy CEO talk you into lowering down your offer to the point that the offer is just plain ridiculous.

It’s quite fine to negotiate and give a bit of a discount, but you need to put your foot down at some point otherwise if the word gets around, other businesses would want to get the same deal from you which could be very bad for business.

Try and price your packages above your actual price as well so that you have room for negotiations and to give potential sponsors the illusion that you’re offering a huge discount.

4. Pricing your offer too Low

If you’re pricing your offer a lot lower than what it costs to maintain your website, then it’s either you’re on crack, or you’re living in la-la land.

If you’re spending $500 a month to hire writers for your website, it’s pretty silly to start selling sponsorship space on your site for a measly $50.

Do your maths. Sort out your budget first before you start negotiating with other businesses. Having a clear indication of your expenses goes a long way.

5. Failing to give potential sponsors sufficient time

Setting deadlines are always smart, but you need to take into account that the bigger the company is, the harder it is to request sponsorship and funding as the money has to go through a lot of channels.

Corporate sponsors usually take time to get the funding sorted and are traditionally quite delayed with payment because the funding has to go through a lot of hands and approvals.

Make sure you allocate enough time for your sponsors to come up with the money and be courteous when you’re chasing payment. No one likes to deal with someone who sounds straight out of a debt collecting agency.

6. Not offering long-term contracts

Offering just a one-off sponsorship for your blog or website is not the way to go.

Why secure a one-time sponsorship when you can secure residual income for the next 2 to 3 years?

When you start designing your sponsorship packages, try to come up with a one-year and even two or three-year contracts.

This is a guarantee that there’s going to be funding for your website in the next two to three years.

7. Giving up

Did a potential sponsor just shut you down?

Don’t fret; it happens to the best of us. Don’t burn any bridges though; there’s no harm in calling your contact again and touching base – maybe telling them later that you have a great deal they might be interested in? You never know what can happen. Just make sure you give plenty of time in between these requests.

Don’t be that person who still follows up every week even though the business head has already said no. You’ll sound like one of those annoying lead generation telemarketers who keep calling until you give in.

8. Not doing your research

The dumbest thing you can ever do when you’re pitching something to a prospective client is not researching them.

How can you try to pitch something to a potential sponsor when you don’t even know what their business is all about??

I recommend going through their website and social media pages and learning more about their business.

Who’s their target market?

Is their website or social media pages lacking anything?

How can you improve their website and their business?

What value can you provide this business to get them to sign with you?

You need to study a business thoroughly and tailor a package that’ll suit their needs. You can point out what’s lacking in their business and offer an actionable solution.

Maybe their website is not optimized?

Maybe no one is managing their social media pages properly?

You need to explain to the potential sponsor why they need your business and what value you can provide.

9. lame marketing materials

Another stupid thing you can do is approach a potential client with a dumbass looking proposal.

Do you think you can secure a deal with a marketing material that looks like it was designed by a 10-year-old and has grammar and spelling errors everywhere??

Or can you really see your blog getting sponsors even though it looks like it came straight out of the 50’s?

Get outta here!

If you want to secure high-end sponsors, then you need a decent looking blog and topnotch looking marketing materials – it’s as simple as that. The more professional you look, the more they’ll trust you with their money.

10. Failing to discuss expectations

Once you’ve signed a sponsor, it doesn’t mean you can drop the ball and neglect them since they’re already on board.

Once you’ve signed them, you have to do everything in your power to make them feel like a VIP so that they end up sponsoring your blog over and over again.

Make sure you keep the sponsor in the loop and exceed their expectations. You don’t want to lose a significant sponsor just because you failed to meet their expectations.

Business,Person,Think,Before,Make,Decision,To,Lay,Off,Employee

How To Use Free Data From Google To TRIPLE Your Profits

Editorial credit: Alexey Boldin / Shutterstock.com

Let’s face it; most businesses have set up Google Analytics on their websites but then they rarely review it nor use it to laser-focus on their target market or understand their website’s performance.

To put it simply, how else are you going to drive revenue on your website if you don’t have a clear indication of who your customers are??

I’ve always been a massive fan of Google Analytics.

Why?

Because Google Analytics will provide you with extremely detailed and valuable information about your website and your actual customers and the best thing about it is – it’s FREE! Which is perfect for cheapskate entrepreneurs like myself because “free” is my middle name.

Now Google analytics may just be the best damn tool to laser-focus on your customers, but the reality is, there’s just so much information on it that it’s easy for most entrepreneurs who don’t use it often to get overwhelmed.

So to help out my fellow entrepreneurs find out exactly who their target market is and help them triple their profits, here are 8 essential ways to laser-focus on your target market using Google Analytics.

1. Use Real-Time report

The Real-Time reports section in Google Analytics will actually allow you to examine activity on your website as it happens from moment-to-moment. This report is perfect for measuring your audience’s reaction to a new campaign or piece of content published on your website.

Keep in mind that your website would only qualify for the Real-Time reports section if it has activated an event or pageview within the past 5 minutes. To view your website’s Real-Time reports data, head to the Reporting tab and select Real-Time from the left-hand report navigation column as per below. The report is divided into six sections.

Overview

The Overview section is the big picture of the current activity on your website. Such as how many visitors your website has at the moment, which pages are they reading,  what’s your top traffic sources and what country your active users based in.

Locations

The Locations report lets you know which countries your active visitors are from. You can actually filter your data by country by either clicking one of the options in the list or on one of the points on the map.

Traffic Sources

The Traffic Sources report will help you determine what websites your current visitors are coming from. The detailed data is organized by Medium, Source and the number of active visitors from each one.

Content

The Content report demonstrates which actual pages your current visitors are spending time on, which includes the page URL, the page title and the percent of active visitors that are on each page.

Events

The Events report allows businesses to create custom events for the purpose of interactions on their website, which includes button clicks, downloads, video plays and ad clicks.

Conversions

The Conversions report will give you an indication of which goals active users are completing. You’ll be able to find out the total number and percentage of active users who have completed a goal.

2. Create Goals

Here’s the definition of Goals according to Google Analytics:

“Goals measure how well your site or app fulfils your target objectives. A goal represents a completed activity, called a conversion, that contributes to the success of your business. Examples of goals include making a purchase (for an e-commerce site), completing a game level (for a mobile gaming app), or submitting a contact information form (for a marketing or lead generation site).

“Defining goals is a fundamental component of any digital analytics measurement plan. Having properly configured goals allows Analytics to provide you with critical information, such as the number of conversions and the conversion rate for your site or app. Without this information, it’s almost impossible to evaluate the effectiveness of your online business and marketing campaigns.”

Basically, the Google Analytics goals measures how and when people complete specific actions that you want them to complete. Once you’ve created a goal you can then start measuring the Google Analytics data against your goals. If your data is looking good, then obviously you’re successfully achieving your goals.

3. Find out your highest performing keywords

For the newbies out there, keywords are vital for every website as they actually drive targeted traffic to your website for free. In a nutshell, keywords are the words and phrases that Internet users type into the search box of a search engine like Google to find out what websites match what they are looking for.

Discovering your highest performing keywords is very important to the success of your website because it’ll help you figure out what people are searching to find you, you can take advantage of those keywords to reach a wider audience.

To find out what your best performing keywords are, you need to go to Acquisition > Overview and keep scrolling down until you see this:

You need to then click on “Organic Search”

and then keep scrolling down until you see this Keyword box and there you have it – you’ve just identified the top performing keywords that are driving traffic to your website.

4. Know your audience’s demographics

Did you know that Google Analytics can give you a detailed look at the age and gender ranges of your audience?

All you have to do is navigate to Audience > Demographics > Overview in the reporting tab.

You can also find out where your readers are based in the world and what language they speak. All you have to do is navigate to Audience > Geo > Location.

5. Know who your active audience is

The Audience reports provide insight into the characteristics of your customers. You can actually track active users for increments of 1, 7, 14, and 30 days, and by looking at this report you’ll be able to determine the level of user enthusiasm for your website.

6. Find out how people are finding your website

Google Analytics can actually tell you how people are finding your website. It’s got “Referral” which is a page that leads people to your website. If someone clicked on a link on a blog post and they end up on your website, that blog post’s URL would be the referral.

Here’s how you find out how people are ending up on your website. In the left-hand column, click on Acquisition > All Traffic > Referrals. If you scroll down you’ll see the websites that are sending traffic to your website.

This tool will help you determine what other websites are driving traffic to your website. Knowing where your website traffic is coming from can help you laser-focus on what sort of marketing strategy you can implement to make sure these readers keep visiting your website.

7. Figure out why your bounce rate is so high

Bounce rate is the number of visits to your website in which a person leaves your website from the landing page without browsing the rest of your website any further.

Your website’s “bounce rate” is the percentage of visitors who come to your website’s landing page but then leave without engaging with any content or clicking through to another page.

According to Google Analytics Guru Avinash Kausik it’s almost impossible to get a bounce rate under 20%, anything above 35% is a cause for concern and anything above 50% is a massive red flag. Low bounce rate is usually an indication that visitor engagement on your website is good and of course, high bounce ratings is worrying.

If you want to figure out why visitors are bouncing from your website then Navigate to Behavior > Site Content > All Pages.

Click on Secondary Dimension > Acquisition and type in Source/Medium.

Lastly, click on Unique Page views to sort your web pages by popularity so that the most popular pages will appear on the top then check the bounce rates for each page.

If you have high bounce rates on any popular pages then that’s a huge red flag because that usually means that people are visiting that specific page but they’re bouncing off because they are not finding what they’re looking for.

You can improve the bounce rate on your website by targetting keywords with high-value traffic,  great content, avoiding pop-ups and creating an amazing call-to-action.

Google Analytics is an amazing tool that goes into tremendous detail, with almost any metric you can think of. I’m a huge fan of this tool because it’s totally FREE and you can get so much insight into your customers online.

It may take you a while to get used to using Google Analytics, but as long as you keep at it you’ll eventually see the fruits of your labour.

Editorial credit: Alexey Boldin / Shutterstock.com 

 

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The Complete Guide To Choosing The Best Social Media Platform For Your Business

Have you ever wondered Which social media platform is best for your business since there are so many out there?

Let’s face it, with the birth of social media platforms, laser-focusing on your prospective customers is so much easier than ten years ago. Small businesses now have the ability to market directly to their customers and reach out to them on a more personal level and at a fraction of the usual advertising price.

The beauty of social media is that it suits frugal entrepreneurs like myself. You don’t need to splash out a ton of money in advertising anymore to reach out to your prospective customers, you just need to be social media savvy and you’ll be able to reach your target market for FREE which means there’s more money in your pockets.

Cha-ching!

But how do you know which social media platforms are the best fit for your business? Which platform would effectively help you deliver an effective online marketing strategy? Well first, you have to familiarise yourself with how each platform works and then you can make a decision.

That said, below is a list of the seven best social media platforms that are widely used by other businesses.

1. Facebook

What type of business should use it: Every single business you can think of because everyone is on it even your cats and dogs.

With more than 2 billion users, Facebook is the undisputed king of social media platforms.

It’s an incredible social media platform that can connect businesses to its prospective customers from all over the world. Facebook is quite honestly the best equipped social media platform to spark interaction and conversation out Of all the other social media platforms out there.

Facebook also provides you with incredible data that’ll help you laser-focus on your target market. From age to relationship status, to hobbies and interests, you can literally zero in on your audience and serve them with content that’ll appeal to their needs.

One of the best things you can do on Facebook is to create a Facebook page for your business wherein Facebook can provide you with detailed data on how your audience is engaging with your brand. The data is so detailed that Facebook can even tell you what time of day it is best for you to reach your audience.

Keep in mind that you should never make your Facebook page look like a massive billboard advertising your business though. Rather, you should use it to engage with your customers and talk to them on a more personal level so that they’ll actively engage with your brand on a constant basis.

2. Instagram

What type of business should use it: fashion, events, travel, luxury brands, food, Lifestyle – basically any business that has a visually driven marketing strategy.

According to SEO guru Neil Patel, more than 800 million people all over the world use Instagram on a constant basis so it’s another force to be reckoned with next to Facebook.

Did you know that Instagrammers also use Instagram to shop?

According to Statista, Instagram will apparently generate $6.84 billion in mobile ad revenue in 2018 which is a massive increase from the $1.86 billion that they generated back in 2016.

Brands also receive four times more engagement on Instagram than they do on Facebook and as many as 14% of users are likely to buy items directly from Instagram itself.

So whether you just want to increase your revenue and sell your products directly to people or you just want to increase your brand’s exposure, Instagram should definitely be included in your list of social media platforms to include in your online marketing strategy.

3. Twitter

What type of business should use it: Every single business you can think of as well.

We all know that Twitter is Donald Trump’s favorite social media platform and so does a host of celebrities, but besides the obvious, this social media platform is also a huge asset in any entrepreneur’s social media strategy.

Twitter is the fastest way to get your message out there. Your aim as an entrepreneur is to use Twitter to deliver tweets that’ll hopefully encourage more people to share your posts and “retweet” your content resulting in more followers.

A majority of the biggest businesses and media companies use Twitter to announce press releases and post the latest news and updates.Hashtags are a huge deal on Twitter so you need to pay attention to what’s currently trending so that you can include relevant hashtags in your tweets.

4. YouTube

What type of business should use it: Businesses with video content. It’s great for businesses who want to establish their authority in their field by providing video tutorials.

YouTube is owned by Google and the second largest search engine which is the big reason why you need to tap on the power of YouTube if you want your business to thrive.

Furthermore, since Google owns YouTube, this social media platform is perfect if you want your website to be search engine friendly.

Did you notice that videos are more likely to appear in Google search results than any other websites? That’s another big reason why you need to include YoUTube in your social media strategy.

5. Pinterest

What type of business should use it: fashion, events, travel, luxury brands, food, Lifestyle – perfect for businesses who have female customers.

Pinterest is a bookmarking website and is actually one of the most popular social media platforms and most visited websites in the world. It has over 100 million active users and how it works is that people can pretty much “pin” whatever they found online on their Pinterest “boards.” People can either share their bookmarks, save it for later and you can also use the Pinterest search bar to find out what other people are bookmarking.

This social media platform is perfect for fashion retailers as it is visually driven and if you have some amazing high-quality images to share they are likely to go viral on this website. Same as with any other platform, if your image gets pinned by a member with a huge following then it has the potential to be viewed by millions of people.

Pinning and re-pinning on this social media platform frequently are quite necessary if you want your images to appear repeatedly within the results for a given search term.

6. Yelp

What type of business should use it: bloggers, restaurants, stores, travel – basically brick-and-mortar outlets

Yelp is very important for entrepreneurs because it can make or break your business.

You need to have a strategy in place that can help your business receive favorable reviews.You probably need to provide an incentive for your customers to leave positive reviews for you on Yelp just in case you have a bad one – at least the number of positive reviews can drown out the negative one.

Pay close attention to keywords when it comes to updating your information on Yelp because Yelp listings appear quite prominently in Google searches for local businesses. You need to constantly monitor customer feedback about your business and respond to any concerns a reviewer had so that your customers know that you care what they think.

A smart but sneaky tactic for Yelp is to offer your customers a discount on their next order if they decide to review your business. That should drive some positive reviews your way.

7. LinkedIn

What type of business should use it: Recruiters and B2B (business to business) service providers – it’s also perfect for Job-Seekers

This social media platform is perfect if your business is in the B2B field.

LinkedIn enables you to target businesses by industry, job title, and many others and it’s also about building connections and relationships similar to other social media platforms.

An awesome feature of LinkedIn is LinkedIn Groups wherein you can create groups in your niche or industry and then invite others related to your industry to join.

Businesses that are seeking clients or job seekers seeking employment should grow their LinkedIn networks by adding as many authentic connections as possible. You can also use your second and third-degree connections to possibly request personal introductions to enable you to gain some real connections.

8. Google+

What type of business should use it: bloggers, B2B service providers, and businesses who are already on the other major social networks

Google+ is Google’s answer to Facebook. Since this is a Google initiative, the use of keywords and search engine optimization techniques work well on this platform. If you have a Google+ account just make sure you often link to your website to maximize traffic potential.

You can also set up Google Authorship to enable your Google+ profile to follow your content from across the Web in the search results.

A search engine’s goal is to surface the best, most relevant results for your search query. The way they do that (after considering relevancy) is largely through evaluating authority and popularity signals.

Generally speaking, that means older websites that have been around and publishing on the same topic day in and day out for years tend to get the benefit of the doubt (over a brand new upstart).

Here’s a perfect example. Type in any search query into Google right now. Let’s do “grow a website,” because that’s generally what we’re talking about.

That doesn’t mean you should expect SEO to deliver new customers overnight suddenly.

One day it might, but right now, there’s going to be a tiny trickle (if any). There definitely won’t be enough to lift your business off the ground.

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19 Incredible Facebook Statistics Every Entrepreneur MUST Know

Editorial credit: Miss Ty / Shutterstock.com

With over a billion active users logging into Facebook daily, Facebook remains to be the undisputed king of social media platforms.

That’s why if you’re planning to drive sales to your business or traffic to your website then you definitely need to incorporate Facebook in your marketing strategy. If you’re still doubting what I just said because of all the new social media platforms out there that are popping up like mushrooms which seem cooler and hipper, here are seven actionable Facebook statistics from Wordstream that might change your mind.

1. 50 million businesses use Facebook Pages.

2.There are around 400 new users signing up for a Facebook account every minute. 

3. Users access their Facebook accounts at an average of eight times per day.

4. 35 million people update their statuses on Facebook every single day.

5. Facebook Messenger alone has over 1.2 billion monthly active users.

6. As of June 30, 2017, Facebook has a whopping 2.01 billion monthly active users.

7. Facebook is apparently the “most important” social platform for marketers.

Now that I’ve thrown in some mind-boggling stats, here are a few more statistics from Wordstream that will prove to you that Facebook is a marketing force to be reckoned with.

8. 36% of users confirm that they are Facebook friends with their neighbors, 83% of parents with a teen between the ages of 13 and 17 say that they are friends with their child on Facebook and 58% confirm they are connected to their work colleagues in Facebooks. Which means that pretty much EVERYONE is on Facebook so if you target a specific type of consumer you’ll be able to target their family, friends and even work colleagues as well.

9. Thursdays and Fridays between 1 p.m. and 3 p.m. are considered by many to be the best times to post on Facebook so if you’re thinking of posting a new content from your website or Facebook page try to stick within these timeframes for maximum engagement.

10. 57% of consumers confirm that social media influences their shopping which is aptly led by Facebook at 44%. This means that if you have an online store then Facebook is the best bet when it comes to possibly doubling your revenue.

11. Facebook Pages with smaller followings generally have a higher reach and engagement rates which means that even it’s quality over quantity. Even if you have a small following on your Facebook page, as long as your followers engage with your brand on a constant basis then you’ll be well on your way to making a decent money online.

12. User-generated content tends to generate 6.9 times the engagement of brand-generated content which means that if your customers love your product and decided to be vocal about it online, they’ll most likely get their families and friends to like your brand as well.

13. The most effective length for an ad title on Facebook is four words to fifteen words for a link description so just make sure that you keep your ad titles short and sweet for maximum engagement.

14. Images account for 75-90% of Facebook Ad performance so if you’re planning to release a Facebook ad then you need a visually captivating image to draw potential customers to your brand.

15. 26% of Facebook users who clicked on a Facebook ad reportedly made a purchase so this is proof that Facebook ads do work as long as you know how to create an effective Facebook ad.

16. 83% of women and 75% of men use Facebook, 83% of Facebook users worldwide are under the age of 45, 44% of Facebook users 18 and older are women. while 56% are men and 39% of Facebook users are married, while another 39% are single. These are actionable statistics that you can use to laser-focus on your target market and increase your sales.

17. Facebook is the preferred social platform of supermarket shoppers, in fact, 89% use it. Which means that Facebook is a goldmine for supermarket owners.

18. Facebook gets over 8 billion average daily video views, over 75% of the world’s mobile data traffic will be video by 2020 and videos earn the highest engagement rate which means that if you’re serious about marketing your business then you should look at incorporating videos in your marketing strategy.

19. 42% of Facebook fans “like” a page with designs of getting a coupon or discount so if you want more likes on your Facebook page it’s probably a good idea to promote discounts as a marketing strategy.

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The 5 Most Profitable Blog Niches For Making Money Online

Contrary to the general opinion that successful people are successful because they followed their passions and found niches that they were passionate about – it’s about time I finally set the records straight. Since most of the people don’t exactly know what they’re passionate about, they never end up finding that “magical” niche and that holds thousands of bloggers and entrepreneurs back from making any real money online.

Here’s the single biggest tip I can give you when it comes to choosing a profitable niche to blog about:

NEVER focus all of your energy in looking for a specific profitable niche.

Instead, focus on determining a problem and figuring out a solution.

It’s that simple.

There are in fact people out there who are making an insane amount of money from their blogs. Some of these internet superstars have monthly incomes that are wayyy higher than the annual income of big-time executives. And I’m not just talking about a few thousand dollars per month, I’m referring to the big whales who are raking in more than $100,000 per month!

Leaving most of us to wonder – how in the world did they get to that point??

I can give you five simple reasons why:

– They have identified a problem and developed a solution.

– They are constantly finding ways to make life easier for everyone.

– They write search engine friendly articles – which means that their articles rank better in search engines.

– Their blogs provide high-quality content. No website or blog can EVER succeed without providing great content. Do any of you remember the good old days when content length or quality was not a factor in the world of SEO (Search Engine Optimization)? Unfortunately, those good old days of simpler content that rank high is long gone.

– They are consistent when it comes to continuously providing high-value content. Most people who start a blog don’t actually follow through and lose heart when they see that their blogs aren’t making any real progress. Most people, unfortunately, forget the fact that SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a long-term game, as long as you continue to write high-value content and build links, you’ll eventually see progress. You won’t always see results straight away, but as long as you consistently produce great content and wait patiently for 4 to 7 months, you’ll eventually start seeing the fruits of your labor.

Forbes has identified a number of bloggers who are making at least $1 million dollars in annual revenue and here are four great examples out of the lot:

Tuts+

This blog earns around $175,000 per month and it provides amazing tutorials for newbies that are looking to learn how to code.

Smashing Magazine

This blog earns around $215,000 per month and it offers high-value content to newbies that are looking to get into web design and web development.

CopyBlogger

This blog earns around $1,000,000 per month and it provides some of the most practical online marketing advice in the world.

Moz

This blog earns around $4,250,000 per month and it offers high-value content about search engine optimization. It’s considered the authority when it comes to Search Engine Optimization.

Can you see the pattern?

These blogs are consistently making an obscene amount of money simply because they have identified problems and they kept providing high-value solutions day in and day out.

Now let’s get back to why you’re really reading this article – so what are the most profitable blog niches? Here they are in no particular order.

Cars

You’ll be surprised how lucrative blogging about cars can be. The best car blogs out there lets consumers compare vehicle specs and prices, get the most recent news about cars and display photos and videos faster than the much larger media outlets out there. Car Advice, for example, has a monthly income of $125,000. Alborz Fallah started Car Advice as a hobby, so he has an excuse to test drive cars and write reviews about them. But now it is one of Australia’s top motoring sites, and one of Australia’s biggest blogs overall.

Personal Finance

Personal finance includes topics such as income, taxation, insurance, real estate, mutual funds, equities, loans, home finance, mortgage as well as a number of finance and wealth-related aspects for people. You could blog about how to invest well and wisely and make more money in the process. Tell readers how to save money and how to earn more money by doing side-jobs. The point is that making money and saving at the same time is always an attractive concept. Michelle of makingsenseofcents.com is an example of a successful personal finance blogger. She blogs about how to save money and make more money and she earns over 140,000 a month. MoneySavingExpert.com has a monthly income to the tune of $1.3 million. It was created by UK financial journalist Martin Lewis back in 2003 and the website offers tips and advice on all aspects of personal finance, with a bigger focus on saving consumers’ money.

Fashion

The dual benefits of being a fashion blogger are that you’re guaranteed to make money in this niche and you’ll also get a chance to enjoy yourself at a number of high-end beauty and fashion events. YouTube, being a visual platform, is a great way to make headway- and from there, the sky is the limit for building out on your blogs. The world’s most successful fashion bloggers get to travel the world for free, get incredible designer clothes for free, constantly have people shower them with gifts and earn millions of dollars annually so I’m pretty sure their not complaining. Bloggers like Pink Peonies’ Rachel Parcell, Song of Style’s Aimee Song, The Blonde Salad’s Chiara Ferragni, Man Repeller’s Leandra Medine, and Into the Gloss’ Emily Weiss are just some examples of fashion bloggers who belong in the Millionaires’ Club.

Food

Let’s face it; everybody eats and everybody loves good food. There are a number of food blogs out there that are earning big money and that’s through providing recipes and tutorials. Pinch of Yum is a great example of a food blog. It has a monthly income of $95,000 and it’s, of course, a cooking and recipe blog as the name suggests. According to Blogging.com, the blog is run by elementary school teacher Lindsay Ostrom and her husband Bjork, and the website is monetized through a combination of advertising, sponsored content, affiliate links as well as an onsite shop selling food products and kitchen equipment.

Make money online

Let’s face it, EVERYONE wants to be rich. Hence the reason why the internet is teeming with blogs that teach you how to make money. Here’s a great tip if you want to blog about making money online – treat your blogging as an explorative journey and you’ll be surprised at how much you discover. It can start off slow, but it’s guaranteed to pay in the end. Smart Passive Income is a great example of a successful blog that rakes in a lot in this niche. It has a monthly income of $148,000 and it teaches you how to create an online product or awesome content and then monetize it. Pat Flynn, the man behind Smart Passive Income earns money through a mixture of affiliate links, sponsorship, and selling courses and ebooks. Smart blogger is another example of a successful make money online blog and it earns to the tune of $100,000 per month. The blog is dedicated to advising bloggers how to make their website a smashing success.

The above ideas are just some examples of starters to trigger those gray cells of yours – there are seriously hundreds of niches out others that are equally as effective. The sum and essence of this article though are to start broad – that gives you room to move about without being stifled. Over time, you can niche up or niche down- the point is to create enough sub and over- niches.

A famous person once said, “ you’re confined only by the wall that you build yourself.” Therefore, don’t build walls, build open spaces instead that can encompass flavored blogs that have your signature. I bet that you’ll gradually find what you’re good at and will also learn to be good at what you do.

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How An Instagram Model Generated Over A MILLION Dollars From Instagram

Who would have ever imagined that in this day and age you could actually rake in millions just by using Instagram??

With over 800 million active monthly users, Instagram is one heck of a powerful marketing tool. And for frugal internet marketers like myself – the word ‘free’ is music to my ears so that I can maximize a marketing campaign’s profit potential.

I recently came across marketing Guru Neil Patel’s blog the other day and in one of his blog posts, he did a case study on a small business that ended up raking millions by leveraging the power of Instagram.

The case study revolved around Jessica Killings, the girlfriend of Dan Fleyshman who happens to be the co-founder of a company called Uwheels.

Jessica generated over a million dollars in revenue to Uwheels by using one single tactic: using Instagram influencers.

Granted, she did spend a considerable amount of money for this marketing campaign to work, but it was all worth it in the end because the company’s profit more than tripled due to her brilliant marketing campaign.

Here’s how she did it:

1. First, she commissioned a number of Instagram influencers such as Instagram models, athletes, rappers and singers to post about Uwheels when the product was initially released. Basically, she created a massive buzz around the product by getting a lot of influential people talk about it at the same time.

2. She focused on an effective message that would make the product unique compared to its many competitors so that the product would stand out from the rest of the pack. The message she used was, “Got my @Uwheels with the alarm and the Bluetooth speaker system. @Uwheels.” Check out the example below.

3. She continued to keep the buzz going by making sure that the Instagram influencers she commissioned kept posting about Uwheels in the coming months. This ensured that the buzz around the product kept on lingering even after the initial launch.

4. Besides Instagram she also commissioned Facebook pages of models with huge followings – she paid them cents for every click they drove to the Uwheels product. Now, this may have cost money to pay off models but in hindsight, it’s still a heck of a lot cheaper than paying for ads.

Bottom-line: Instagram is a force to be reckoned with. You can either keep up with Instagram or go back to the 80’s and call it a day.

With over 800 million monthly active users, Instagram actually ranks higher than other social media sites such as Tumblr, Twitter, Snapchat, Pinterest or LinkedIn.

People in general love visual-driven content so it would be a smart marketing move to include Instagram in your marketing efforts especially.

What about you? How have you used Instagram to increase revenue in your business?

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Fake Vs. Authentic Followers: How To Actually Spot FAKE Instagram Influencers

Have you ever wondered how to actually spot fake influencers and find legitimate ones out of Instagram’s 700 million users?

According to Media Kix, the Instagram influencer-marketing industry is worth over $1 billion and a big-time Instagram Influencer can, in fact, charge thousands of dollars for a single post.

Case in point: According to HopperHq, Selena Gomez who is at the top of the Instagram rich list with a whopping 122 million followers charges $550,000 per post and the Kardashian’s are right behind her. Kim Kardashian charges $500,000 per post, Kylie Jenner charges $400,000 per post, Kendall Jenner charges $370,000 per post, Khloe Kardashian charges $250,000 per post and Kourtney Kardashian charges $250,000 per post.

Most online marketers and big companies would be aware that a great way of getting new leads and customers for your brand is by collaborating with popular Instagram influencers who can increase your brand’s reach and visibility. Your brand can definitely benefit from Instagram as long as you collaborate with the right influencers in your industry.

But, of course, if you’re on a tight budget, I doubt that you’ll be willing to pay someone half a million dollars for a single Instagram post! So if your marketing budget is next to nothing, then it’s best to look at the average cost of a sponsored post on Instagram which is most probably around the $200 to $300 mark depending on a person’s reach and influence.

Now because Instagram is such a huge media platform and you can make some decent money out of it, it was inevitable for some people to beef up their Instagram accounts by exaggerating their followers and influence.

A number of so-called “Instagram Influencers” purchase followers and likes from various black market websites so they can reach out to businesses and make some extra cash. Others just do it for vanity purposes to make themselves feel better.

These fake followers are most likely internet “Spambots” that actually add no legitimate value to your Instagram account and at the worse, buying followers can potentially lead to your Instagram account getting canceled.

So how can you spot the fake Instagram influencers?

First, you need to find the right Instagram influencers for your business so you can start by using BuzzSumo.

Write down the topic that relates to your industry, cruise over to the “Influencers” tab, and you’ll see a lot of related influencers in your industry.

Buzzsumo can actually give you detailed statistics about the Instagram influencer you are eyeing on including how many followers that person has.

Once you’ve found an influencer you want to work with for your brand then it’s time to determine whether that influencer has real or fake followers – just because a person has over 50,000 followers it doesn’t mean that person is legitimately an influencer because some of those followers can be fake.

I’ve seen a number of Instagram profiles with over 15,000 followers yet whenever they post something they get an average of 10 likes?? Obviously, if you have over 15,000 followers, you’re not getting over 10 likes and no one comments on your posts then it’s either you bought your followers or your followers just don’t give a sh*t about you.

The next step for you is to type your chosen influencer’s username on this website called Social Blade to view their stats.

If that person’s following is genuine then you should be able to see a steady rise in that person’s followers.

If there are a lot of rises and declines and you can see huge drops in that person’s stats, then they’ve most likely paid for a chunk of their followers.

It’s also a good idea to head down to that influencer’s Instagram account and browse through some of that person’s photos. The number of likes, comments, and engagements an influencer gets depends on the frequency and quality of that person’s posts. Honestly speaking, it’s quite difficult to pinpoint exactly how much feedback a person should get on their posts. An average engagement could be anywhere between 1.5% to 3% But in saying that, there are many factors that could affect this statistic such as quality and quantity of the posts and how much effort is that person putting forth to invite his/her followers to engage with them.

All in all, the higher an Instagram influencer’s following is, the more a sponsored post will of course cost. If you’re a frugal entrepreneur like myself then choosing an influencer with a humble but highly engaged following is the best way to go.

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Five Basic Online Marketing Tactics That Are Guaranteed To Supercharge Your Business

Let’s face it; internet marketing is becoming an integral part of most of the businesses today.

If you want to ensure that your company holds a strong position in your market, then using web marketing in the right manner becomes essential. Running a business in the 21st century is not a piece of cake and requires immense effort, hard work, and creativity. To attract consumers, nothing works better than effective marketing and no other marketing medium is better than the internet of course. Below are some examples vital internet marketing techniques that are guaranteed to give more money in your pockets.

1. Less is Actually More

Fortunately or unfortunately, most of the people today are not into reading. They would not even enjoy longer videos or messages; therefore, it has become very important to keep everything concise and straight to the point. By doing this, your message will reach a wider number of audiences and will be more impactful as well. For example, instead of writing a 200-word article about online marketing – why not create a 2-minute video instead?

2. Make People Come to You

SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a methodology of strategies, techniques and tactics used to increase the amount of traffic to your website by obtaining a high-ranking placement in the search results page of search engines such as Google, Bing, Yahoo and many more. In a nutshell, it’s making your website “Google-friendly.” It never goes out of fashion and neither does it fail to be an effective marketing strategy. Making people themselves come to your company, service, or product is one of the strongest moves one can make while being in the industry.

3. Adopt Diversity in Social Media Marketing

Relying only on just the social media giants is not a good option at the end of the day. Although biggies like Facebook and LinkedIn do provide your company with a very strong platform, you should never forget the emerging entities which have managed to gain a significant position in the market. With options like Instagram, Snapchat, and Pinterest in the market, you need to clearly become familiar with the nature of your business and use the right kind of social media platform for marketing it.

4. Mobile Friendly Content is a Necessity

Laptops and personal computers have taken a back seat with the advent of Smartphones. There is nothing that cannot be done with the help of your thumb; therefore, more and more people go for this convenient way. If your website is not compatible with mobile then you are missing out on putting more money in your pockets.

5. Videos are a Instant Hit

Short and meaningful videos will promptly click with the audiences and will give away a lot of information in a limited time which other means are not able to deliver. If your video manages to talk about the most important points in an effective way then it will be able to make you reach wider audiences in a short time.

Internet marketing is available to everyone who makes it essential to be unique and different in its use. Come up with strategies which are innovative and I guarantee that it pave new paths of success for your business.

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90% Of Startups Fail: Here’s 3 Of The Biggest Reasons Why

Let’s face it; starting your new business is never easy because you’re investing time, money and resources on a ‘hunch’. In a nutshell you’re investing on something that may or may not actually work out in the end.

While most people would like to gladly work for themselves so that they can control their own their own time, not everyone has the will nor the patience to follow through with it though. Studies show that in average it actually takes around 5 years for any new business to just break even, basically you’re more likely to see any profits on your new venture after 5 years have passed which of course sounds like a bloody long time for any budding entrepreneur!

Of course, this is not always the case because a lot of entrepreneurs do reap profits almost immediately after they put up a new business – especially those entrepreneurs that provide service rather than a product. But typically, you are supposed to be looking at 3-5 yeas before you can start seeing any real profits so you really need patience if you want your business to stick around.

Now if you’re a budding entrepreneur who is interested in starting a new venture, then here are three crucial mistakes most people make that you should be aware of:

1. People don’t do their homework

The biggest reason most entrepreneurs fail is because they don’t do their homework.

The moment they come up with a good idea they want to get things going immediately without enough research or background work on this idea which of course is a big mistake! A good idea for a new business is a good start, but it is imperative that you do your homework though.

You should be asking yourself questions such as: Who’s your target market? Why would people buy your stuff? What makes your business unique? How will you market your new business? What sort of capital and resources would you need to get things going? How will you make the business grow?

There is no possible way any new business can succeed without proper research and background work. Keep in mind that Rome wasn’t built in a day; it takes time and perseverance for any business to grow. Just make sure you do your homework properly so that when hiccups start to show, you’re more than ready to tackle it head on!

2. People are afraid to take a risk

It’s quite simple really, no risk – no reward. The higher the risk – the higher the reward!

But in saying that though, keep in mind that you need to take “calculated risks”. Make sure you won’t get stuck at a point where you have zero dollars in your bank account because you have invested everything in the new business. Remember, it may take a while before you start seeing any profits from the new venture, what if it takes years and years before you start seeing any profits? What then?? Are you going to live on virtually nothing until the new business “potentially” starts making any real money??

Don’t be afraid to take any risks, but in saying that, just make sure they are calculated.

3. People don’t network

Your business will never succeed if you don’t know how to network and connect with others.

Start mingling with people who are actually successful in their businesses and learn from their experiences. Start going to functions and events and start connecting with potential sponsors and investors within your field. Networking is one of the key components in any new business, the more you network the bigger your database gets and the more people you attract to your business.

It’s simple really; you have to prioritise building relationships rather than making money because if you focus on building relationships first then money will eventually follow.

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3 Stress-Free Tips On How To Run A Financially Stable Business for Emerging Entrepreneurs

Secured funding is one of the major feats for every business, which requires expertise in thorough planning and analysis. However, an emerging entrepreneur can only see the real value if he makes use of the initial support he has and turning it into a long-term growth by means of doing an initiative to transform sustainability.

Financial stability is very important. Without it, brands and businesses lack a solid foundation to cater their business endeavours such as revolutionizing product lines, expanding storefronts geographically, or creating new investments into packaging and shipping for an enhanced customer experience. This is very true to emerging businesses.

Emerging entrepreneurs have a tough job in transitioning pioneer funding resource into companies having verified equity. If you’re just starting up then you need to know that in order for your business to prosper, you have to change from you simple selling idea into thinking about your whole business model and looking into a tangible financial plan.

Here are 3 tips for you on how to run a financially-stable business as a starting entrepreneur:

1. Develop your Clear Vision and Path to Profitability

As an entrepreneur, it’s essential for you to have strict principles when it comes to finance because it will govern your incoming as well as your outgoing spending. If you’re planning to seek capital by means of funding, there’s a need for you to demonstrate your anticipated ROI too investors and add detail as to where your expenditures will be going.

You should give an explanation on how you decide to manage all receivables and cash. You should exhibit a firm and clear vision on how you can become and remain positive in terms of cash flow. “Building your business” is not enough as a financial plan if there’s already the involvement of venture capital funding and private equity.

2. Make use of Investors to Increase your Financial Viability

Thinking about your own finances is an utmost priority for you as an entrepreneur but it’s also equally important that you critically think about your partners’ and investors’ success because they’re the ones backing up your business’ growth. It’s a sign of good partnership if you’re able to make decisions having them in your mind. By helping your investors and partners, you’re also given the chance to ask help as a return of the favour.

3. Make Stable Hiring Decisions

Shortcomings are hard to admit but as a smart entrepreneur, self-awareness is your mark on focusing on your business’ financial future. Other successful entrepreneur’s expertise and experiences are best in avoiding the waste of essential financial opportunities. It will be very impressive if you can better understand leveraging finances. Be smart in bringing in executives; better if they’re already successful players in the industry.

Running your business as an emerging entrepreneur is not all about money but the proper management of your finances is an integral key to the long-term success of your business. It’s good to make investments and smarter in making financial decisions on advertising spend, customer acquisition, costs, and strategies for liquidation.

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Five Must-Know Tips To Start Your Business With Little To No Capital This 2018

‘I want to start a business but I don’t have the means’, says the entrepreneur-wannabe that resides within you. Most of you are taunted by the idea of shifting from the typical corporate slavery to the empowering realm of entrepreneurship. Commonly, you fear the possibility of losing job security and you are not financially stable enough to carry out a big plan like running your own business. Apart from these, you are also crippled by the thought that you don’t have the financial resources to ditch your crappy boss and become your own master. Apparently, all these are just myths designed to encapsulate you in your cowardice by settling into mediocrity. The truth is – there is promise amidst the uncertainties. You just have to be brave enough to embrace it while making use of all your skills, your marketing and sales knowledge, and your good work ethics.

Now you can take heed of all entrepreneurship advices from successful entrepreneurs, but when you’re sitting alone, torn between the amount of money in your bank account and your tedious pile of office work, remember that the following guidelines do not require big investments.

#1. Know your target market and create something

While creating something does require some money to fulfil supplies in order to fill your inventory, the products you create can always be priced more than the actual cost. Better if you are an artisan as online platforms are sweet spots for handcrafted items, for example Etsy and the newly launched Handmade at Amazon. Both have their advantage and disadvantage. While Etsy’s listing price ($0.20 USD per item) remains inexpensive compared to Amazon, the latter has a strong foundation in terms of online selling and attracting traffic. Either way, both have their strengths and weaknesses, it just depends on how you market your brand to your target market.

#2. Master the art of reselling

Holding garage sales in your own backyard is a cost-effective way to earn income. Have the freedom to rummage through various thrift shops and/or flea markets near you for unique items that you can resell either online or in person. Should you decide to take the route of online selling, consider the convenience of drop shipping which is a retail fulfilment method that allows you to sell items without even touching your products. The process begins when you purchase your products from a manufacturer and let them ship it directly to your buyers. This definitely enables you to launch your own ecommerce store with very minimal capital and low overhead expenses.

#3. Bank on intangible capital – Skills

No money? No problem! Earning extra income through your talent and skills is another revolutionary way to break into the entrepreneurship realm. The variety of services that you can sell is almost limitless. Can you write, babysit or even be a personal assistant? If you answer yes to any of these, stop vegging out in front of your TV and slowly carve your way through financial stability. While this is not a cake walk due to a large pool of services out there, ensure that you have a competitive advantage that can make your service distinct from the rest. This is where branding comes in but promoting your services through Upwork, Elance, or Craigslist will definitely be a good start.

#4. Try outsourced services to build up your business

We all know that brand exposure is critical especially when starting up a business. You may need ad campaigns or to build relationships within the industry you’ve chosen in order to establish your brand. To make it happen, your logo, website, and other online representation should reflect the image that you want to portray. When you hire designers, take advantage of outsourced designers that you can find on various talent sites and websites such as Fiverr, Upwork, or Elance. You’ll be surprised at how much you could save without sacrificing your desired quality.

#5. Enjoy free advertising through effective use of social media platforms

When you seize the power of social media advertising, take full advantage of it and use it effectively. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest are currently leading the list of traffic generators in terms of brand promotion. Analyse the analytics and utilise it to reach out to your target consumers. When you discover their social media behaviour, it gives you the edge to speak to them lucratively through your brand. Learn how to engage other users and they will surely keep coming back to your page which will lead to increased traffic that will eventually yield high conversation rate.

Feeling confident enough? You don’t always have to break the bank. Sometimes, all you need is the drive to ignore the negativity and just dive in with a solid plan. While starting up a business is definitely not an effortless task, one day your sweat equity will pay off.

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3 Easy Ways To Make Social Media Work For You And Your Business

The world of business is very competitive. It’s a dog eat dog kind of world and as they say “when the going gets tough, the tough get going”. That’s how one should condition his own mind if he wants to succeed and stay successful. No sulks or losers are allowed to dabble in the business world – might as well pack up and go home! Being on top would rake in more investors and the company’s monetary value will increase. It would also mean your business would expand, more branches/offices opening up and more responsibilities. But before all those can happen, let’s focus first on how we should market the business to gain its popularity.

Social Media, being one of the most popular mediums we have right now, can work very well for you and your business. It’s basically free advertising! Well, not all the time, but even if you do shell out a couple of bucks, it should be worth every cent of it since it’s got a wide coverage. It’s capability to reach out to your targeted audience and beyond that is a big help towards your business. Here are a few pointers on what you should basically keep in mind in your first step to advertising via social media:

1. No such thing as a (totally) free publicity

When we mention the word “spend”, we automatically think the cost might be too much. However, the type of spending you might do for social media marketing would surprise you compared to that when you spend it on print media—it would cost a lot less. Sure you have to spend for graphic artists, content writers and pay the social media sites to give your ads a bit of a boost, but when it comes down to cost cutting, social media marketing should be considered. The cost of having to put up billboards and signage for your business in different areas are ten folds larger than what it should cost you to pay for social media advertising!.

2. Be strategic because people still read

Yes, people read and appreciate, so hire the best graphic designers and content specialists/writers. Hire the right people to make your social media ads eye-catching. To attract audience your social media posts should be visually stimulating! People will not tolerate garbage content. They have to feel some sort of connection to the product they are seeing advertised on social medias and they have to be able to relate to it, so might as well consider being a bit realistic and don’t let your content writers and graphic artists go over the top in the marketing agenda. Provide contents that are informative, inspiring and entertaining at the same time. Be as realistic as possible without compromising the “charm” of your ad. Use taglines that are short yet catchy and can describe your business in less than, say, four words. Hashtags are useful tools for social media marketing, too, so you might want to use them (since everyone else does). Like taglines, they should be kept short and catchy, describing your business in just a few words and should also be unique as much as possible.

3. If you want to be heard, learn to listen too

Listen to your audience. Find out what they are saying and what they want so you can use that for your marketing strategies. Do not underestimate your audience and their expectations of what they might want to read. Social media has raised the bar of social awareness, therefore it would be very easy for the public to criticize and compare so be sensitive to your audience and their constructive criticisms.

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Which Social Media Accounts Are The BEST For Your Brand And Why

If you are planning to launch a small business or you’ve started one just recently and you haven’t utilised the power of social media because you think it’s for teeny boppers only – then you’re dumber than I thought! You have probably encountered a load of information explaining how you can use social media to promote your business which makes sense because social media is a powerful money making machine as long as it’s utilised the right way. It doesn’t really matter if you think social media is for kids, bottom line, EVERYONE is on social media and it’s free communication.

Although there are millions of social media users all throughout the world, it is quite easy to get carried away by the number. Looking for the right social media sites to get your business promoted and maximize its potential is important to the success of a business, and it is the part where you should be concentrating your efforts.

What will your business gain from engaging in social media?

Social media is all about engaging through sharing, which means, in business, it’s targeting your services, your product range, or your articles at engaging a possible client base or customer. With millions of users worldwide, social media is covering every topic range that you would be able to think of.

Along with engaging a prospective client base and customer, social media also plays a big relevance to SEO. Social media has been a unique format because it is helping you promote your content directly to your audience, which in turn, would generate traffic through people who share your content with others, and through search engine optimization.

The most prominent social media sites and their uses:

Below are six of the most prominent and significant social media sites that you need to utilise right now if you want your business to succeed.

1. YouTube  – This site is about showcasing videos to a large range of audience. It is being utilized by businesses at all times to sell products and services. While YouTube is owned by Google, videos have a tendency of featuring prominently on the search engine results. You are even given chance to utilize the YouTube ads for making a secondary stream of income.

2. Google+ – It is in part a combination of Twitter and Facebook and has become essential for SEO, if nothing else.

3. Facebook – This social media site has been predominantly built for sharing. These can be articles, products, or services. It is for sharing your content with as many people as possible.

4. Twitter – It is about sharing news on any subject. You should not let the word “news” make you feel as if it does not apply for products. Twitter is good for new stock ready to be sold, new product launches, and other press releases.

5. Blogging – It is a great way of imparting expertise and news to your customer, client base, followers, and readership, offering a great way of attracting visitors to your website through search engines.

6. Instagram, Pinterest and other bookmarking sites – These social media sites are good to use when it comes to showcasing visual products. If your business is selling something on the web, make sure you post on Instagram, Pinterest and as many bookmarking sites as you can find.

These are just some of the basic advantages of social media, and the uses of each of the sites. Later on, I’ll get into detail how you can use your social media accounts to make decent money online.