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I have published a couple of new articles for you to read here

Be unique and thrive

Take a look around the mall next time you are out shopping. Did you notice how many stores are selling the same things such as furniture recliners, but only a few seem to have anyone looking at them?

Competition is a funny thing. It scares off the weak and only the strong usually survive.

When I was shopping for a car buffer I was constantly told about the same product. Why? Because they had branded themselves through quality and great customer service.

You need to set your business apart and be different. I know a guy who makes pro skateboards for a living. He has been doing it for years and makes good money because his products are so unique.

So what can you do to set your business apart?

Fast tips to start a business online

Are you looking for a basic and easy to understand plan for online marketing? Here is a three step plan anyone can use:

Find a money making niche

This is a powerful source to find those hidden niches:. http://www.google.com/trends/hottrends

Here you will find an unlimited amount of ideas by seeing the “hot trends” that people are searching on. You will be surprised at what people are searching on. From a baby doll stroller to the season’s hottest camping table, to baby onesies

Buy a domain name and get it hosted

Don’t skimp here. Register your domain name and be sure to use a reputable hosting company.

Setup a blog using WordPress and signup for Adsense

By going to the WordPress.org forum you will have all the help you need to setup your blog and put Adsense ads on it.

Now start writing and adding content. Or hire a ghostwriter to create it for you.

Now keep adding quality content and focus on one or two ways to promote your blog until you have mastered them.

Excuse making leads to failure

Have you heard or used these excuses as to why starting a business online is way too hard?

It takes too much time!

When I got started marketing online, I was earning a college degree and working full time. If you learn to prioritize, you will find that there is always time. For instance, instead of watching your favorite TV show, that time could be used to work on a part time online business.

If you are willing to make sacrifices now, you will reap the rewards well into the future. Would you rather carry a backpack with wheels or a regular suitcase? Which is easier?

On line marketing costs way too much money!

Many of the best online marketers I know of, started out with very limited budgets, and slowly grew their business. Patience and prudent planning always win the race to success.

Marketing online has to have one of the lowest risk factors you will ever encounter for starting any business. So why would you deny yourself of this opportunity?

I really am not an expert on any subject!

You don’t have to be an expert like a multimaster tool to start marketing online. There is so much information out there, that you can easily become an expert on any number of topics within a few short months. As an example, if you so desired, you could become an expert on boy shoes, if you studied enough about the subject. However, if you are still uncomfortable with writing, you can always use a ghostwriter to create content for you.

Of all the excuses I have heard, the ones above have to be the worst. For almost any excuse someone can give me as to why they can’t market online, I can come up with 3-4 reasons why they CAN.

How marketing online has evolved

The Internet has evolved so fast that people can add content within minutes. If you wanted to tell your cooking class about your favourite skinning knife or art class about the best art easel or home décor class about a cool new hanging lamp it used to take hours to create the page and upload the content.

Today it only takes a matter of minutes.

It makes me wonder where we are headed next. What new innovations will make something that is so time consuming today, take only a matter of minutes 10 years from now?

Don’t be scared to create new product ideas

Should you develop your business around your passions or is there another way to make money online? I hear this question all of the time and there is no right answer. It all depends on the person.

Some people like to collect crystal lamp from the turn of the century, others are into sports and music. Yet others are into creatingpillow inserts and couch pillows.

One thing I tell all of my clients is to find everyday problems people have, then create a solution. Why? Because people want solutions to the problems they are faced with. Who doesn’t?

One of the easiest ways to uncover these problems is to simply observe everyday life. I can brainstorm dozens of product ideas by simply watching TV for a few hours. The same can be said for reading magazines or listening to the radio. Once you open your mind to finding and resolving these problems, the ideas will flow!

Are your customer relations up to snuff?

Marketing online requires some really thick skin, as I found out many years ago. No matter how many customers you satisfy, there is always that one insane customer who makes you hate them all. Or that your organic shampoo is a fraud because it didn’t make their hair grow back.

There are crazy people out there and thus, there will be crazy customers. It simply can’t be avoided. You could invent the perfect cat tower and still have a customer complain.

Here is how I solved this problem with my own business. I started to communicate more with my customers and learned they were not just data on a screen. Each customer was a real live person with his or her own individual hopes and dreams. I even managed to get many angry customers to apologize for their behaviour and many of them happily gave me their business again and again. I even had one customer who had returned a broken ceiling fans with lights become one of my best customers.

If you set a policy of total and complete customer satisfaction, realize that not everyone will be happy with your products or service. You can only control so much about what makes a happy customer, the rest is something you have to just accept to move forward and run your business well.

How to properly link your site

Today I want to talk about the importance of a canonical url and how it effects your search engine rankings. As an example, if you have a coin purse site, you would want to use the same url for every page.

Canonicalization is basically the process the search engines use to pick the best url for your Website. As an example you can have the following urls leading back to your site:

www.yoursite.com
yoursite.com
yoursite.com/index.html

The search engines perceive each of these links as a separate url.

So why exactly should you be worried about this? If you are using various forms of your urls, it can have a negative effect on your rankings. You don’t want the search engines trying to go fishing for your urls like your site was a koi pond.

If you are guilty of improper url linking, you aren’t alone. A majority of marketers are making this crucial mistake every day simply because they aren’t aware of it. However, this is easily correctable.

You want to make it as easy as possible for the search engines to determine which url you prefer. Never, ever leave it up to a robot to make a decision about your site that you have total control of. Your rankings could fold up like a cheap futon bed. In this business you need every little edge you can get over the competition.

Can price changes increase profits?

One of the biggest shocks to many new marketers is how you can raise prices on physical products such as a double din car stereo or a bamboo cutting board, and even digital products, but increase sales.

An old marketing genius I once knew, was able to sell hundreds of thousands of copies of an ebook he previously gave away.

The hilarious part is, while he got a only a small amount of comments about his ebook while he was giving it away, he was floored with rave reviews when he sold it. This is because when people had to pay for the content, it became much more valuable to them. It rose in value like an old muscle car.

Believe it or not, this happens all of the time.

This is way I always encourage my clients to constantly test their product prices; especially raising the prices. If a product is selling poorly, something as simple as a price change can boost your sales, as people may perceive it to have more value if the price is raised.

Now if sales are still stagnant, then perhaps your sales letter needs work.

3 Sales Letter Tips That Will Skyrocket Conversions

A very small change like giving your child a new toy guitar, and not a video game console, can launch the career of the next Jimmi Hendrix. In many cases, small changes can make a huge difference. This same theory applies to writing sales letter.

By always testing, you will start to uncover a gold mine of profits you never knew existed, all without spending any extra money on advertising.

Each niche has a different dynamic in the message it seeks to get across to the reader. However, your fashion tip blog dedicated to the straightening iron or discontinued perfume, may not convert in the same way as a blog dedicated to investments. With that said, here are three rules to increase your sales letter conversions.

Use white backgrounds

I have tried colored backgrounds and ones filled with fancy graphics on all of my sales pages, but a plain old white background has always out pulled those backgrounds by a wide margin.

Use a credit card graphic by your order button

This is a psychological trigger that compels people to buy. It also makes your order button easy to find and tends to set your customers apprehensions about buying from you at ease.

Never use “buy”. Use “investment”

This is another psychological trigger. Don’t tell your prospects they are buying a product from you. Instill in them the confidence that they are making an investment in themselves when they own your product.

An example of this would be: “Buy now for only $39.99!” to “Your investment today is $39.99!”

Do you now see the power in this? You are using one word that people associate with a negative emotion (buy), to one that has a positive emotion (investment).

By making these small changes to your sales letters, you will almost be guaranteed to see your sales increase.

How To Use Time Sensitive Offers To Boost Sales

My friend had not had a bath in over three days, there where pizza boxes littered across his apartment, and a funky odor filled the room. As I walked into his apartment, I quickly became disorientated and started to feel myself losing consciousness. I felt my eyes starting to roll back into my head, and staggered to the window to get a breath of fresh air.

“John,” I mumbled to my usually hygienic friend, “what happened to you?”

My friend lost his thousand yard stare just enough to point to the TV. I then realized that he had become another home shopping junkie who was afraid of missing the next “big deal”.

My normal, levelheaded friend had become hypnotized by one of marketing’s most powerful techniques: Time sensitive offers. If he didn’t order “Peppi the singing fish” within the next 15 minutes, the offer would be gone forever.

The Yoda phone that exclaimed, “May the force be with you” when it rang would disappear into a galaxy far far away if he didn’t act now. They only had 100 left in stock. As I sat there watching my zombified friend order useless items he would never use, I decided I would apply this same technique to my own business.

I believe it is vital to be honest with your customers, so I wanted to be sure of two things:

- My offers would only be for useful products and services.

- The offers had to truly be time sensitive.

My results were beyond what I could of ever hoped.

The first time sensitive offer I brought to my customers almost tripled my sales. I was immediately hooked.

Now I never make an offer unless it is time sensitive.

For most of my offers I use special software that will either track the amount of sales of displays a click showing how much time is left in the offer. Whenever the product has been sold out or the time expires, the software then removes the salespage. Unless someone has a problem ordering my product, I rarely extend the offer.

So how can you implement this strategy into your business?

To have a successful offer you should generally follow these two simple rules:

- Make the offer truly special (give a discount, extra bonuses, etc.)

- Make sure the offer is pulled when you say it will be.

The best offers I have tested usually last around 2-3 days.

These kinds of offers usually pull much better than if I limit the offer to 20-30 packages. However, each list is different. So don’t be afraid to test various offers until you find the right formula for maximum sales.

The kiss of death, and quickest way to lose credibility with your customers, is to make an offer that insults their intelligence. Don’t make a 48-hour offer, then run it for a week, just to make extra sales. Your customers will quickly catch on to this, and you will see your response rates fall drastically. Treat your customers with respect, and they will return the favor by making your bank account balloon to new levels.

What Are the Rules of Success?

There are some things we can control about our future and there are some things we cannot control.

There are a lot of things out of our control:

• The weather
• Natural disasters
• Terrorist activities

… are just a few. But there are a lot of things totally within our control…

• Our attitude
• Our habits
• Our motivation

I want you to imagine yourself making more money in 2009 than you have in any other year of your life.

Can you imagine it? If you can imagine it, you can do it.

The only way to succeed is by changing ourselves. If your habits, the things you do everyday are not getting the things you want out of life, it’s time to CHANGE your habits.

Eliminate BAD attitudes, BAD habits, BAD or DISTRACTING desires by KNOWING what they are and HOW TO overcome them.

Let’s talk about how your attitude and habits affect your ability to make money.

There are certain rules for succeeding financially … like ‘golf’ there are ‘rules’ … and there are rules to winning the Internet marketing business too.

If you don’t even know what the rules are how can you formulate a strategy to win?

You can’t formulate a strategy because you don’t understand what the GAME is all about! And that’s why you aren’t successful …yet.

Learn the ‘rules’ and win by playing the best you can play …

Now is the time to look forward.

Look toward changing those habits that have kept you back… what are they? IDENTIFY them! Name them and write them down! Then you can SEE them for what they are… BARRIERS to YOUR success! Kill them, stomp on them, HATE them!

Do you tend to procrastinate? Do you ease up after succeeding? Do you fail to plan ahead?

All of these are BAD habits that must be broken. How?

By DESIRING it… by WANTING success so bad you can taste it.

Stop settling for LESS, EXPECT more from yourself and ‘feel bad’ when you don’t make money. Feel terrible when you failed to DO SOMETHING to bring you closer to your goal.

Use your feelings to propel you forward… feel afraid of being POOR, or …WANT harder, WANT BIGGER dreams to come true, for you.

Then and only then will you have the motivation to succeed.

There’s only one rule you need to know to succeed: If you want success you have to STOP doing what you have been doing and do something else instead until you reach your goals.