What Is The Most Successful Home Based Business?
May 8, 2006
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“What is the most successful home based business,” is a question I am often asked. Wouldn’t it be great if there was a magic formula for the perfect home based business, which would guarantee success?
There is a magic formula - but it might not be what you’re thinking. You could have the most wonderful business idea on the planet, and it could still fail, if you didn’t apply the magic formula.
If you haven’t already guessed - the magic formula is a successful marketing campaign. Without one, your business will fail. Even Coca Cola, as great as it may taste, would have been a complete flop without a successful marketing campaign.
Take two companies, with similar products - one has a brilliant product, the other has an average product. However, if the business with the average product has a better marketing campaign than the one will the brilliant product, it will win every time.
This is good news for most of us. We don’t need to be geniuses, or invent something new or unique. We just need to be marketing savvy, and this is easily learned. Check out the resources on this blog, and also the ones below for some tips and ideas:
The Best Internet Marketing Course
entrepreneur.com - a great resource for marketing ideas
Marketing Sherpa - up to the minute marketing info
For High Performance Affiliate Marketing Info Click Here!
Can Pay Per Click Campaigns Work For You?
May 8, 2006
Pay Per Click Advertising, such as Google Adwords is a great way of driving scores of traffic to your website quickly. But, what are the cons?
Is it expensive? Some keywords can be ridiculously expensive. You really need to search around for cheaper keywords, if you are going to profit from this type of advertising at all. Try www.overture.com to search for keywords and see what others are bidding for them. To find hundreds of great keywords, with little competition, sign up to Wordtracker‘>Wordtracker
Is it Quick and Easy to Set Up? It is not quick or easy at all. It can be quicker to drive traffic to your site via a pay per click campaign . However, the campaign can take a long time to set up, and a lot of monitoring. In fact, just to get a reasonable amount of keywords, Google suggest that you will need to add between 50 and 1000 keywords or phrases. Realistically, for many topics, you will probably need at least 500 keywords.
Do I have to Write the Ads Myself? Writing the ads is where the fun really begins. Take a look at other Adword advertisements, and notice which ones stand out most and why. Write a heap of ads, then monitor your click through rates, to see which ones are most successful, to give yourself an idea on what works best.
How Will I Know What It’s Going To Cost? With Google Adwords, you can set yourself a daily budget, for each campaign, so you will know what it’s going to cost you per month. Some days, your ads may go slightly over the budget, but Google balance this out, so you don’t pay more than your monthly budget allowance.
Wordtracker‘>Find hundreds of great keyphrases, at the click of a button
Struggling to find keywords for your campaign? Click Here!
Serious about success with adwords? Click Here!
Why Customer Complaints are Good For Your Business
May 5, 2006
Many new home business owners believe that customer complaints are something to be avoided, or dreaded even. but you don’t need to feel like that. If you want your home based business to have lots have happy, repeat customers, then customer complaints are something you should welcome.
Have you ever eaten a bad or mediocre meal in a restaurant and not bothered to complain to anyone? Did the waiter come round and ask if everything was ok, yet you still said no?
You won’t be the last person to do that. And I’m betting you didn’t return to that restaurant, or recommend it to your friends.
Now, would you rather this happened in your own home business, or would you prefer it if your customer told you what the problem was so that you could put it right? It would be nice if they did the latter wouldn’t it? Welcoming complaints and dealing with them quickly, is the best way to retain existing customers and gain new ones.
Trouble is, how do you encourage your customers to let you know when something is wrong, so that you are able to put it right? After all, what’s to stop them from just saying “yes”, like many of us do when a waiter asks if everything is ok?
Often it’s best to ask them as soon as you have provided the product or service, or several times, if it is an ongoing project and ask specific questions.
In the case of the restaurant, had the waiter asked more specific questions, you may have been more honest in your reply. For instance, instead of asking if everything was ok, which encourages a yes or no answer, he could have asked more specific questions, to encourage open answers. For example, how was your meal? Which part of your meal did you like most/least?
If we encourage customers to give open ended answers instead of a yes, or no, they’re more likely to see that your concern is genuine.
And if they do have a problem and you do what you can to put it right immediately - even if it means giving a refund or discount, the customer is more likely to give you another chance.
At worst, even if the customer does still tell people that you screwed up, there’s a good chance she’ll also tell them what you did to put things right. At best, you could wind up with a happy customer, and the possibility of referrals too.
Find Your Home Business Niche in Forums
May 3, 2006
Still looking for a niche for your internet business? Have you made a list of your hobbies and interests? No hobbies and interest? Then make a list of things you would love to learn about. Suppose one of the topics on your list is gardening.
A quick search on Overture shows that there are 273,463 searches for gardening a month. So, how do you find your niche in gardening, and how do you find a product that folks interested in gardening might want to buy? You don’t.
First you find out what your prospective customers might need, then you look for a product that will solve their particular problem or need. One of the best ways to do this is through forums.
Forums can offer a goldmine of information. In this case, you would visit gardening forums. Monitor these forums. What type of questions do many of the visitors ask? What type of problems do they face?
Look out for the most frequently asked questions, then go out and find the solution to their problem, in the form of a product or service.
Do contribute to the forum whilst you’re doing your research, with intelligent and helpful answers. This way, you will build up trusting relationships with forum members. Then, once your product or service is launched, you will automatically be able to provide a solution to their problems, and at the same time, you’ll make a healthy profit.
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