What to Do Before You Start Blogging
by Rahimah Sultan
Advertising Disclosure: Marketing Success Review may be compensated in exchange for featured placement of certain sponsored products and services, or your clicking on links posted on this website. There is no expense to you.
If you’re just now thinking about setting up a blog, the first thing you need do is start building your list, on the first day.
Why Build a List First?
You need to start building your list ASAP! It’s absolutely necessary if you want to run successful email marketing campaigns and reach people who are truly interested in your business.
Despite the popularity of social media channels, email marketing remains one of the most used digital marketing techniques.
If you want a successful business, you need people to market to.
What is Email Marketing?
Email marketing as defined in Wikipedia, is the act of sending a commercial message, typically to a group of people, using email… Email marketing strategies commonly seek to achieve one or more of three primary objectives, to build loyalty, trust, or brand awareness.
An email is often the first step in a customer’s journey with you, the initial communication.
What is the Connection Between an Email and Your Blog?
You can think of your blog as your main base of operation, the place where you send people for your products/services or any related information. It’s a marketing tool.
It is also the place you can acquire their information in order to begin a relationship with them so they can get acquainted with you, and begin to like and trust you.
These are the people who will receive your emails. This is a part of your list building. Once your blog is set up, you can strategically place opt-in forms on it asking visitors to fill in their information – full name and email address – so you can contact them. Stick to the basics, name and email. Nobody wants to fill out much more than that.
How Do You Get People to Give up Their information?
1. Pick an email marketing service. I use Host Then Profit (affiliate link).
If you’re just starting out and your budget is tight, you can use a free service. You’ll need to check around and compare the pros and cons so you can choose one that best suits your purpose.
2. Place opt-in forms on your blog.
3. Give visitors a reason to give you their email address. Offer them an ethical bribe (subscriber bribes, lead magnets, opt-in bribes, free offers, free gifts, and content upgrade).
Most people won’t give you their email address out of the goodness of their heart, even if they like you.
Freebies are proven lead magnets.
Give them a free worthwhile gift.
Your subscriber’s bribe should be simple.
Don’t fall into to the trap of trying to get too large and creative with your lead magnet, which could end up in you not creating one at all.
You can educate your visitors by giving away free downloads filled with actionable tips and helpful tools they can use.
Some things you can give away:
Free blog articles
Emails with coupons
Videos
Tutorials and courses
Templates
E-Books
You can start with a one-page simple short PDF checklist offering tips on a particular subject.
To build an email list from nothing you need:
1. To understand your audience
Decide who will be your audience — name, job title, work, demographics like age, gender, education, etc. In other words, create a persona.
You can find out a lot about people through social media channels.
2. A website
Your blog will, eventually, become your website.
In the meantime, you can use a landing page, a single-page website that contains your email opt-in form.
You can use any of the services below to create an opt-in form.
Some of them have free trial periods.
Landerapp.com
iContact.com
Hubspot.com
Leadpages.net
Wix.com
Note: Some advertising channels require that you have a multi-page website that includes pages such as Contact, Terms of Service, and Privacy Policies.
3. An email marketing service. I use Host Then Profit (affiliate link).
4. A great offer, a free worthwhile gift.
Now that you have some pointers on what to do before you start blogging, start building that list.
Use Blog Comments to Benefit Your Online Marketing and SEO
by Rahimah Sultan
Advertising Disclosure: Marketing Success Review may be compensated in exchange for featured placement of certain sponsored products and services, or your clicking on links posted on this website. There is no expense to you.
On the web most of the entries in an average comments section are spam. Akismet is a tool that filters out comment spam for you. Comment spam can have a negative impact on your site’s search engine optimization (SEO) efforts.
Do blog comments still matter or help in any way?
You might think that, with so many social media platforms available to discuss pieces of content, blog comments no longer matter. That depends on your goals.
Many businesses with a large following see no need for blog comments as social media allows them to interact with more people.
However, if you’re a small business just getting started online and only now taking steps to grow a social media following, having a comments section on your blog can prove to be beneficial to your business.
Top brands often benefit by commenting on blog topics. You may not realize this because you don’t see influencers’ names in the comment sections of popular industry blogs.
That’s because they outsource the task. They hire virtual assistants and other freelance writers to write useful comments on recent blog posts.
How do you write good comments that people will notice?
Blog comments are still powerful, if you write high-quality, genuinely-good comments worth noting. They can still get you noticed by popular bloggers and influencers.
Writing a good comment requires:
#1 Letting People See the real You
Don’t use an animal or a generic faceless silhouette. Show you and all your pearly whites with a smile.
If your message is flagged as spammy, a gravatar gives you an increased chance the blog owner will approve your new comment.
#2 Using Your Real Name
Don’t use a fake name or a nickname that your friends and family use or any other name. And don’t use a fake or inactive email address. That will break the communication avenue between the commenter and author.
#3 Not Embedding Links in Your Comments
WordPress, Disqus, and other commenting systems view these links as spam. They come across as sales pitches, a cheap attempt to sell something. The blogger will feel no inclination to view it.
#4 Reading the Post Before Commenting
Although it takes time, reading a post thoroughly before commenting is a must. You don’t want your response to be inappropriate or silly.
#5 Not Having a One-Sided Long Conversation
Long-winded blog comments are not better than short ones. They’re just boring.
#6 Not Being a Parrot
Do not repeat what you’ve just read. Your comments need to offer some insight.
More Pointers:
A) Include a friendly greeting using the author’s name, spelled correctly.
B) Offer a compliment about the post, something about why you chose to be on this blog. Be sincere.
C) Do something that makes you appear valuable to the blogger you’re aiming to entice— anything that establishes you as a person worth knowing and helps develop a personal relationship.
D) Let the blogger know you’re interested in a longer-term relationship. Make a promise at the end, like telling the author you’re going to share the post on your favorite social media platform.
Be sure to do what you promise. When you share the post on your favorite social media platform, be sure to tag the blogger — let them know you followed through.
Show some personality. You can craft your comments like you’re writing an email to a friend.
Good comments alone won’t launch you to world domination, although they’re effective and often overlooked, now that so many bloggers think they’re extinct.
Good comments can get influential bloggers’ attention.
So, you can still use blog comments to benefit your online marketing and SEO and get more traffic to your site when utilized properly. However, not every comment will drive traction and credibility for your site and brand.
You cannot use blog commenting to build backlinks.
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Link Building for Your Online Marketing
by Rahimah Sultan
Advertising Disclosure: Marketing Success Review may be compensated in exchange for featured placement of certain sponsored products and services, or your clicking on links posted on this website. There is no expense to you.
What is Link Building?
According to Wikipedia, “Link building is the process of establishing relevant hyperlinks (usually called links) to a website from external sites. Link building can increase the number of high-quality links pointing to a website, in turn increasing the likelihood of the website ranking highly in search engine results.”
How Important are Links?
Link building for your online marketing is very important.
Before, Google search engines ranked their search results 100% based on the content on a webpage. Things changed with Google’s PageRank Algorithm which looked at how many people linked to a page.
Backlinks still remain the best way of determining the quality of a webpage. That’s why they’re still Google’s go-to ranking indicator.
With more updates Google’s focus is not just on quantity but also linkquality.
Page Authority
The authority of the page linking to you matters most. Links from authoritative pages pass more PageRank to your site. Google doesn’t share PageRank information publicly, although it’s the foundation of their algorithm.
Relevancy
When it comes to links page authority matters as well as relevance.
For example, if you operate a website all about photography and you get a link from an authoritative site about sports, that link won’t really count.
Generally speaking, you want to get links from authority sites that are closely related to your site.
Position
Your link’s position on a page is very important. If it’s embedded in a section of content, you get more notice. Don’t place it in a footer or sidebar where it counts for very little.
You want to place your links in the main body of the page. They should be “editorially placed,” where someone clicks it because they think your site is amazing, not in a profile you created on a random site in which you dropped a link.
These unnatural links can be considered a violation of Google’s guidelines.
Anchor Text
The clickable text section of a link is known as the anchor text. Anchor text needs to be relevant to the topic of the page you’re linking to rather than generic.
Don’t use anchor text excessively as that is considered spammy, just as excessive keyword use (keyword stuffing) is spammy.
A spammy anchor text is a link with an anchor text that has no relationship to the page on which it exists or the page it is linking to.
For natural anchor text links to your website, create beneficial content and the links and anchor text should come naturally.
You don’t want to be penalized.
Guest Posts
Be careful of guest posts. They can be spammy if:
Someone is paid to publish the post
The post contains exact match anchor text
The site exists solely to publish guest posts
The site is unrelated to yours
But, if you publish an awesome guest post on an authoritative, relevant site, that link CAN help your rank.
Nofollow vs. Dofollow
Both types help boost your SEO for search engine rankings because you get lots of clicks from many different sources. For instance, social media.
Nofollow links may not build you as much SEO juice as dofollow links, but they still drive traffic and build your SEO.
After all, your end goal is to drive leads, traffic, conversions, and revenue. SEO just happens to be one of the best ways to accomplish these goals.
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7 SEO Trends to Leverage in Your Online Advertising
by Rahimah Sultan
Advertising Disclosure: Marketing Success Review may be compensated in exchange for featured placement of certain sponsored products and services, or your clicking on links posted on this website. There is no expense to you.
If you use SEO (search engine optimization) in the right way, it is one of the most effective ways to attract potential customers to your website. If you rank on page one of the SERP (Search Engine Results Pages) you will generate organic traffic.
This is where you need SEO.
In this article I will cover seven SEO trends to leverage in your online advertising.
1) CORE WEB VITALS
Google is rolling out a new algorithm update which integrates a new set of metrics known as Core Web Vitals into what Google has traditionally referred to as “page experience.” These metrics measure how long it takes a user to get to your page, how easy/difficult it is for the user to initially interact with your page, and how easy/difficult it is for the user to become disoriented due to inconsistencies/shifts in your page design.
2) GOOGLE’S BERT
Google’s BERT (Bidirectional Encoder Representations from Transformers) algorithm uses machine learning and natural processing to understand what users are actually looking for. With the BERT update Google search engine bots are much more “conversational.” Google’s algorithm can interpret the intent of a searcher. In other words, Google can understand things like the human brain.
To optimize for Google’s BERT be sure your content and the keyword intent match. If people are searching for “seo” as a keyword on Google, they want to know about SEO. On the other hand, they may search “seo services” or “seo expert.”
Always perform a keyword search on Google before writing your content to be sure the keyword you’re trying to rank for matches the searchers’ intent. You can do a search to find free and paid SEO tools.
3) KEYWORD RESEARCH
Keyword research is becoming more important. Use long-tail and targeted keywords, and understand the intent. While SEO tools are important to use you need to analyze the SERP for the keyword before selecting it.
If the intent is right, even a low-volume keyword with only 10-20 searches per month can still generate thousands of dollars.
That’s why you do your keyword research with patience and find keywords that can easily rank and generate income for you.
4) ORIGINAL CONTENT
Google still wants original content. That is, unique content that hasn’t been published elsewhere. It must be authentic, useful, and add value in your own brand voice and language.
5) VOICE SEARCH
A staggering number of the global population are using voice search on their mobile phones. These search queries are long-tail and extremely specific.
6) ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE
Due to the personalization that AI provides, it is changing the SEO and marketing industry. Google uses AI to provide searchers with the results they’re looking for.
7) VIDEO MARKETING
YouTube, the second most popular search engine (Google being number one), has over a billion users. Now is the time to get started with videos if you aren’t already using them.
To optimize video content for search engines, start by optimizing your video channel name and description. Keywords are important, however, don’t overdo it. Just provide a user-friendly description about your channel.
As you start typing the topic of your video, related suggested keywords will pop up in the search field. You can use these for optimizing your video to reach the right audience.
Remember, to rank higher or just to maintain rankings with Google’s ever-evolving algorithm, you need to keep modifying your SEO strategy.
These are seven SEO trends to leverage in your online advertising. Keep these trends in mind and use them to continue driving relevant traffic to your website.
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Effective Email Marketing
by Rahimah Sultan
Advertising Disclosure: Marketing Success Review may be compensated in exchange for featured placement of certain sponsored products and services, or your clicking on links posted on this website. There is no expense to you.
Email continues to be an essential part of daily business and consumer interaction.
Since an email account (i.e. email address) is required to sign up to any form of online activity, it is essential to the overall Internet experience including social networking or any presence on the Internet.
Over the years, email marketing strategies have changed, although effective email marketing is still key to any marketing strategy. The best online marketers use email.
Why do the Best Online Marketers Use an Email Marketing Strategy?
Because it produces results. Email marketing technology has advanced in that the software is becoming more powerful, and advanced features are now more accessible due to the growing number of affordable options on the market.
One email marketing trend that’s really taken off is the use of AI (Artificial Intelligence).
AI tools have come a long way recently. You can use them to help create subject lines, calls-to-action and content which can produce a substantial boost in campaign results.
With AI, after you’ve created your email marketing campaign, you can opt to have it sent at a specific time and on a certain day or you can use the “send at the best time” feature.
You do not have to send all your emails at the same time nor should you always be selling. Just send a few that offer tips or something that may be of interest, then send one offering one of your products or services for sale.
Another aspect of AI is personalization of emails.
Why Personalization?
Personalization can increase open rates. If people see their name in an email they’re more likely to open and read it, thus giving you an opportunity to follow up with them which can lead to more income.
When it comes to personalization you can complement your email with tools like live chat, SMS, push and more. You can do research and find the tools with the options that fit your needs.
While personalizing your emails, you may also want to use segmentation.
Segmentation
If you are expanding or want to grow your business you might consider using CRM (Customer Relations Management) software instead of spreadsheets. CRM works like a task manager. While using a spreadsheet you may track:
Name
Email Address
Phone Number
Type of customer
Date of purchase
With CRM you can start with an email address and add the things already mentioned plus whatever else you want such as:
Lead scoring (A feature that enables you to have a more complete view of how clients are interacting with you.)
Multiple contacts
Notes
Current sales stage of customers and prospects
and more
Make your emails engaging and offer good quality content and solutions to problems. Do not email just to introduce new products or services. No one will want to open them until they’re ready to know what you’re selling or they’re ready to make a purchase.
Make sure there’s a strong reason to open your emails, regardless of whether you’re selling something or not.
How?
Be sure your emails are valuable to your reader in and of themselves.
Include relevant educational content like tips and inspiration to maintain subscribers’ interest, while building trust in your product or service. When collecting signups set expectations from the beginning by pointing out the value you’ll offer. Then, stick to that promise and you’ll grow a list of engaged subscribers to convert when the time is right.
So, in order to have effective email marketing your strategy must be well planned and include the tools you need for efficiency and effectiveness. Be personable, informative and engaging in your emails. Set expectations from the start, keep your promise, and build trust.
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Effective Internet Marketing
by Rahimah Sultan
Advertising Disclosure: Marketing Success Review may be compensated in exchange for featured placement of certain sponsored products and services, or your clicking on links posted on this website. There is no expense to you.
Internet marketing is more effective than traditional advertising. Online marketing is an economical way to get the word out about your products, services and your company. You don’t have to spend a large amount of money so a small budget works just as well as a large one.
Brand awareness is easy when you use the power of the internet. If you setup your marketing properly you’ll have a better online presence, get more traffic and be better able to compete against those who have already built good, strong businesses using effective Internet marketing.
If you don’t market your business you won’t be able to generate leads or make your products and services known. The Internet connects more people than could ever be directly connected in person.
Why is Internet Marketing Cost Effective?
Although it takes money to run any size successful business, it’s natural to be hesitant when it comes to spending without guarantee of success. There are numerous cost-effective Internet marketing strategies available.
Whether you decide to use a website, social media or some other method, Internet marketing can increase visibility of your business and make it marketable and more profitable. You’ll need to think of your marketing strategy in terms of something other than just traffic numbers. You need targeted traffic — those who are looking for what you have to offer.
You can use social media as part of your marketing plan. It cost very little to set up a Facebook page and discuss your product or service with billions of people, some who will be in your local community. There is also Instagram and Twitter, among others.
What are Some Effective Internet Marketing Techniques?
Besides social media there is:
SEO (Search Engine Optimization)
Use SEO for your site in order to rank at the top of search engine results, thereby increasing the amount of traffic to your website or blog.
EMAIL MARKETING
Email marketing is relatively simple, inexpensive, and can generate profit. You want to build a list of clients, prospects, customers and subscribers who want to hear from you. Then you can regularly market to them via email to keep them abreast of your projects and remain a priority and generate more sales.
AI CHATBOT
You can integrate a chatbot into your marketing strategy to qualify leads, interact with site visitors, and personalize the customer experience. Chatbot marketing may seem new to you, but it has quickly gained lots of popularity.
VIDEO MARKETING
Videos are educational and informative. You can use them to demonstrate your products to help customers understand them. They help you stay competitive and boost conversion rates.
Keep things simple when you are just starting out, and use only a couple of these techniques. As you get results add more.
Be sure to have a written plan with your goals and budget and incorporate these effective Internet marketing strategies.
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Successful Internet Marketing Requires Planned Content
by Rahimah Sultan
Advertising Disclosure: Marketing Success Review may be compensated in exchange for featured placement of certain sponsored products and services, or your clicking on links posted on this website. There is no expense to you.
Your moneymaker is content.
Why is this?
You must have a plan because your content is also your sales pitch, billboard, brochure, and portfolio all combined into one.
Successful Internet marketing requires planned content.
Therefore, you must lay out a plan for implementing your moneymaker – content.
Your content must be structured and organized to reach your audience.
Whether you’re a blogger, a professional marketer, or a social media strategist, you need good well-organized content.
When laying out your plan consider the following for content development:
How to reach a larger audience through organic promotion
How to design content for different readers
How to produce new quality content
How to create trust
How to convert visitors into repeat (paying) customers
It needs to be well-written, shareable, and educational, and it should confirm your reputation as an authority.
What is content development?
Content development has two sides.
1. Engineering
The engineering is strategic planning of how and when to distribute content.
2. Architecture
The architecture is side two, content creation – the actual writing.
You have to master both. Put as much effort, or more, into planning as you do producing content.
Content development is very important.
It’s the plan you use to envision the structure of your goals and the strategies to achieve them.
Content development prevents you from missing deadlines and eliminates procrastination and other distractions. There are steps to take when developing content.
What are the steps or stages in content development?
1. Define Content Goals
The first thing you need to do is define your content goals.
Does your content add value such as education and problem solving?
Who is your audience?
Where will you post your content?
What is your schedule for getting out your content?
What is your strategy for having your audience find and interact with content?
What makes your content unique and innovative?
2. Learn About Your Audience
Research your customers’ buying habits and behaviors. Pay attention to their comments and suggestions. Use Google Analytics tools.
3. Create a Content Development Calendar
This calendar shown contain what to post, how often, and dates of postings. The calendar helps avoid duplication and gaps in content. They also help you plan for milestones, so you make the most of important events and holidays.
4. Use a System
Use a system for your writing process for efficiency and performance. Utilize templates for blogs, white papers, infographics, video scripts, charts, and graphs. Set up writing guidelines to ensure consistency in branding and quality.
Test out content variations and different tones for different audiences. Collect performance data and which content generates the best results?
5. Study Your Competition
Analyze your top competitors and stay relevant using their best practices. Find out what they’re lacking and fill that gap.
Don’t give visitors any reason to bounce to your competitors. Ask your audience what they want and start giving it to them.
6. Use Social Media
Use a variety of social media channels and post regularly but not too often, and make it easy to share your content.
7. SEO
You need search engine optimization for effective digital marketing.
Know and use the fundamentals of good SEO writing:
Make sure all your web content is indexed.
Be sure to use proper formatting tags (H1, H2, etc.)
Keep individual page URLs short and use dashes to separate words.
Learn to rank for Google. Produce authoritative content and Google will prioritize your content.
Regularly perform keyword research. That means using tools like SEMrush to find the best and most relevant keywords for your content.
Keep up with changing trends. SEO marketing changes all the time. It pays to stay abreast with industry experts.
8. Free Content
Give away free content to your visitors. Educate them with free downloads filled with actionable tips and helpful tools they can use. Teach them a skill, so they feel empowered and grateful.
If visitors don’t stay on your page, they can revisit your portable download later.
The downloads establish you as an expert, expand your network, and are easy to share, spreading word-of-mouth interest.
Your free content can be:
Blog articles
Newsletters
Infographics and memes
Emails with coupons
Videos
Tutorials and courses
Templates
E-Books
Freebies are proven lead magnets that make visitors happy and draw them closer to buying your products or services.
9. Know What Constitutes Top-Performing Content
Capture the attention of visitors with a platform rich in quality content so they convert into paying customers.
The best content promotes interest, solves a problem, and leaves customers wanting more.
It establishes your reputation as an industry expert.
Generating consistently top-performing (and high-ranking) content is easier than you might imagine:
Stay focused and concise.
Be engaging.
Answer your readers’ questions.
Quote industry experts.
Be adaptable and agile.
Write for your audience.
Link to High Domain Authority (DA) Sources
Learn to Write for “Scanners,” those who only scan and glance.
10. Educate While Entertaining
The best content creators use compelling storytelling to captivate readers and sell their message; to explain problems and solutions through relatable narratives using analogies, humor, and emotion to make their stories memorable. So, tell some stories, and don’t get lost in the narrative. You’re not writing a novel. You still have to get to the point.
Now, develop your winning strategy that includes your calendar with short -and long-term goals for success. Remember that successful Internet marketing requires planned content. Write your content with this information in mind.
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7 Home-Based Business Ideas
by Rahimah Sultan
Advertising Disclosure: Marketing Success Review may be compensated in exchange for featured placement of certain sponsored products and services, or your clicking on links posted on this website. There is no expense to you.
Many people who are trying to start a full-time or side business are looking for home business ideas. With new technology and software, opportunities to create a low-cost home-based business have never been easier.
Here are 7 home-based business ideas:
1. Web Development and Digital Marketing
Although websites have seemingly been around for ages, people still need high-quality sites. As a web developer you have many options for creating websites.
In order for you to create custom websites, you’ll need to learn code. If you are proficient at WordPress, you can set up sites for people or teach others how to use it. WordPress and others like it are semi-custom websites.
A semi-custom website can earn you about $2,500. However, if you build websites using code you can make up to $15,000 or more.
Digital marketing is a term that includes any online strategies used to get more customers to a business. This includes online Ads, social media marketing, search engine optimization (SEO), and Google My Business.
The goal of digital marketing is to help businesses make money. If you can do that, you can create a business as a freelancer or marketing agency.
2. Affiliate Marketing
Although the term affiliate marketing has several meanings, it typically means selling someone else’s products for a fee.
Affiliate marketing can work for you if you recommend a product, service, or software on your website. You earn a commission for every person that clicks on your unique link and buys a product. The difficulty is finding people to sell affiliate products to? You have to build an audience of people who know, like and trust you. You can do this by way of a website, an email list, social media channels, or a video platform. Once you have an audience you can recommend your affiliate products and services to them.
3. Personal Trainer
As a personal trainer you can freelance in your own home, a client’s home or a public place such as a park, beach, or parking lot.
It’s helpful to have documented results from clients. If you’re just starting as a personal trainer, consider taking on a couple of committed clients at a cut-rate and document their outcomes. Then you can show their success on your website, on social media, and in your marketing materials. Rates can range from $11 to $52 an hour.
4. Yoga Instructor
Yoga instruction is similar to personal training in that you can host classes outside. You can also teach virtual classes with a software to assist you like namastream which provides the tools needed for a successful virtual yoga business. Use the software to create multiple membership options, set up autopay, and integrate email marketing.
5. Voice-Over Artist
The demand for voice over artists is high due to the rise of e-learning and e-books. Also, the diversity of voice quality has increased with people looking for unique accents and dialects.
Technological advances have proven advantageous to the voice over industry and have brought it to a new level with the arrival of podcasts, audiobooks, and even smart devices that enable self-command features.
You are not limited to jobs in your local area. With a voice coach you like and believe would properly train you, try remote coaching which makes use of video chat apps such as Skype and FaceTime, and podcasts and webinars.
Even as assistive apps such as Alexa and Siri have grown in popularity, people still prefer the emotional connection of a real human voice.
6. Sell Handmade products
You can sell handmade products through a third-party website like Etsy or AmazonHandmade. If you use a third-party site instead of your own ecommerce site, you gain access to the third-party site’s visitors.
On Etsy and AmazonHandmade you can sell jewelry, pet toys, candles, ornaments, bath bombs, face masks, knitted products, and personalized planners.
It will take time to build credibility. The potential trust customers have in your products and store will increase as you get more satisfied customers.
7. Pet Sitting
Consider becoming a pet sitter if you love pets and have experience taking care of them. While you can do your own local marketing to find customers, you can also use a website such as Rover.com to connect with those looking for dog boarding, walking, and day care.
As far as pricing, a walk in your local neighborhood can be $15 to $20. A trip to a dog park which requires more work and supervision may cost $20 to $30. Day sitting ranges from $25-$50, and overnight boarding costs between $50 and $75 per night.
To increase your fees you can offer additional services such as mobile grooming or dog training certification.
Freelancing using one of these seven home-based business ideas is a great way to start a home-based business. You can practice your service on, or sell the product to people you know in exchange for free or at a discount and get testimonials. When you have quality experiences and good results to share, use that in your overall business marketing.
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9 Email Marketing Mistakes to Avoid
Advertising Disclosure: Marketing Success Review may be compensated in exchange for featured placement of certain sponsored products and services, or your clicking on links posted on this website. There is no expense to you.
Email marketing is an integral part of everyday business. Having a solid game plan when you send out an email to your subscribers is the first step to seeing a higher conversion rate.
Sometimes, even if you follow every email marketing tip there is, you have no guarantee of total success. There is always room for error. Here are nine email marketing mistakes to avoid.
1) Sending Out Poorly-Focused Content
Do not send the same email to all your subscribers. Everyone on your email list is interested in the same content. Segment your audience. Do this by having different opt-in forms that offer different information and freebies.
If you have a blog you can place an opt-in form in different areas for your visitors. For instance, your blog’s main focus may be Internet marketing which includes different sub-topics like home-based business, affiliate marketing, marketing information, etc.
Place a relevant opt-in form offering a freebie in each of these categories. When people opt in, they’ll be added to a particular categorized list. As the site owner, you can then send relevant information to this list of subscribers instead of inundating them with irrelevant emails.
2) One-Way Conversations
You want your readers to get to know, like and trust you. Make sure they have a way to connect and interact with you. Your email should be personable and identify you and your company.
At the end of your emails, initiate a two-way conversation by asking your readers if there is something in particular you can help them with, and include a link to your social profiles.
3) Lots of Offers and no Information
When someone subscribes to an opt-in form, they want useful information and not a bombardment of sales and promotional emails. There’s nothing wrong with promoting your products and services in an email. Just be sure to include useful content.
This can be an informative video, a link to a useful blog post or a great infographic. At the end of the email, you can mention any promotions you have and always add value by actually giving away something for free. Constantly promoting your products and services without giving away anything of value for free will only annoy your subscribers and push them to unsubscribe.
4) Unclear Call to Action
To ensure people see your CTA (call to action) for your awesome freebie or discounted product you need to be sure the CTA is clear. Send out an email to your loyal subscribers to let them know about your offer and include a link.
If that link is hidden in a small piece of anchor text, some of your subscribers will have a hard time finding it. Boldly highlight the link, add bright buttons or ask people to click on a picture to get to your landing page. A few considerations are:
1. Make what you need very clear by including words like ‘Head here’ or ‘Click here.’
2. Very clearly highlight the text that leads to the landing page.
3. Repeatedly mention the CTA throughout their email.
5) Belabored Subject Line
Get to the point! Although you want to make the subject line interesting, if your subscribers can’t figure out what your email is about, they become annoyed. A few tips:
1. Keep it short
Make sure your subject line fits in the subscribers’ view screen. There’s no point in having an awesome subject line if they can’t read half of it.
2. When possible use numbers
Examples:
Join 475 people who signed up for my free online course today!
Happy Valentine’s Day! 50% off all our products.
Here is why 85% of small businesses rely on email as their primary acquisition source.
3. Be personal
Use the name of your subscribers in the subject line.
Hi (first name)! Want access to my free new course?
4. Tell your audience what’s inside (be truthful)
Make your subject line descriptive and honest. It should immediately help your readers figure out what is inside the email.
6) A Welcome Email
Sending a welcome email to your subscribers is fine. Just don’t make it a generic one. Make it informative and useful. Include a great freebie or a link to resources that are only for your subscribers. Make a good first impression by saying something other than just ‘hello.’
7) Attention to Data
If you’re not paying attention to data you could end up with an enormous amount of information each time you email subscribers. This includes the open rate, the time of day when most people opened your email, which links they clicked on, etc.
This data can help you improve upcoming email campaigns you’re working on. You can figure out what’s working, what content your audience likes, and what to get rid of permanently.
Optimizing your email marketing campaigns requires four clear factors:
Personalized emails
Clear headers to optimize email marketing open rates
Clear CTA to optimize email marketing click rates
Updated email list
8) Quantity Over Quality
Focus on the quality of your subscribers rather than how many. Every so often you need to clean your email lists.
Remove those people who are not opening your emails. In the long run, you want only an engaged list of subscribers. Most email marketing services have a ‘Clean Up Inactive’ feature that makes this process very simple.
Doing this will reduce your monthly outgoing cost. You may be paying for a plan that is dependent on the number of subscribers you have.
9) Sending Emails at the Wrong Time
Many studies say the best time to send emails is in the late morning during work hours, at around 10-11a.m. If you send emails when no one checks them, your campaign will probably fail.
Use the tips in these nine email marketing mistakes to avoid to help you build a large list, and create relationships with your subscribers by focusing on a good email marketing strategy.
Hosting and More
How Do You Set Up A Blog?
by Rahimah Sultan
Advertising Disclosure: Marketing Success Review may be compensated in exchange for featured placement of certain sponsored products and services, or your clicking on links posted on this website. There is no expense to you.
In my last article we covered what to do before you start blogging.
Now, you need to actually set up your blog.
How do you go about setting up a blog?
1. The first step to setting up a blog is picking the right topic.
For a personal blog you’re only concerned about enjoying the topic and having fun.
But, if you want to create income you need a winning blog topic.
Don’t try to be unique or clever. Pick a topic that has an existing audience and popular blogs already competing for the audience attention.
Who will link to you if there is no competition? Where will you get your audience? How will anyone find you?
2. The correct blogging platform is vital. To test the water you can start with a free blog at Medium.com and check ideas for viability. (A suggestion only. No compensation for me.)
When you’re ready to build an audience and make money online, use self-hosted WordPress.
That’s WordPress.org NOT WordPress.com
You can check out the difference here.
3. Now, decide on a domain name. Make a list of topics that interest you. These could be topics you think might be profitable, hobbies, or something random you’ve read about.
When your list is complete, check out these questions:
Do blogs on this topic have a Facebook page with more than 10k fans?
Do any blogs on this topic more than 50k followers on Twitter?
Does Amazon have any books with more than 30 reviews on this topic?
Are there any Google ads when you search for words and phrases related to this topic?
Do any words or phrases related to this topic have more than 100k searches in Google’s Keyword Planner tool?
If the answer to these questions is yes, you’re good to go.
Your domain name needs to represent your audience, a specific topic, and a benefit. For example:
Name the Audience. TheBlogStarter.com
Name the Specific Topic. TechRadar.com
Name the Benefit. MakeALivingWriting.com
Once you’ve made a decision on your domain name, you need to check its availability and purchase it through a domain registrar. Any one of the following would be a good choice, and the fee is about $8 to $10 per year for a .com extension.
http://www.godaddy.com
http://www.namecheap.com
http://www.networksolutions.com
http://www.onlydomains.com
4. Purchase a web hosting plan. You need a place for your website on the Internet. You can pay a small fee to keep your website on the Internet, handle all your visitors, back up your website, provide customer support, manage the security of your website, and so on.
There are loads of WordPress hosts, but I recommend HostThenProfit.com (affiliate link).
Do not purchase anything else when you buy a domain name. The registrars will try to get you to do so, but don’t take the bait, as you’ll be setting everything up under your web hosting plan.
You’re now ready to roll.
So, how do you set up a blog?
By following these steps you can create your blog, grow an audience, and start earning a real, tangible income.
Don’t wait days, weeks, or months to get started. Start a blog today — right now.
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