Friday, June 24, 2005

Product Marketing for Home Based Online Businesses

by Timothy Spaulding

If you are like most internet based home business entrepreneurs then marketing your product and driving increasing traffic to your web page is essential to increasing sales. The challenge is to market your products and increase your traffic and to do it affordably or even for free.

Fortunately, this is an option for home based businesses, and all it takes is a little creativity combined with dedication. And for those home based businesses with advertising budgets, there are even more advertising options available. Here are some suggestions that should help your product marketing plan significantly.

One of the best ways to get your web page noticed is by writing and publishing articles. There are hundreds, if not thousands, of ezines and newsletters that are constantly looking for new content. First, you need to find some ezines and newsletters that target your niche market. You can search for them on your favorite search engine by searching for "ezine directories" or "newsletter directories". Then, write an article that can be submitted to a variety of these ezines and online newsletters, just make sure you retain the copyright. You nay not think that you have the ability or creativity to write articles, but it can easily be done with a couple hours of effort and some commitment. The key part of marketing your home business is by creating a resource box at the end of your article that contains your URL and some brief information about you and your company. Doing this will get your web page out in the public quickly and will result in many hits and free product marketing.

Another way to market your products is to create a forum on your web page. By doing this, you are getting individuals to talk about products and services offered by your company as well as competitors and other relevant topics. This alone will help your product assuming you are offering top notch quality and customer service. If not, then a forum might not be the best idea for you. In addition, a forum will require a commitment of your time in reviewing the posts to make sure the discussions are kept within the rules. However, for those that are committed to their customers, forums generally create repeat traffic which is important to making sales. This is important because it has been proven that more than 70% of sales are made after the third, fourth or fifth contact. A forum keeps individuals coming back for more and more contact, which means you will sell more products.

Additionally, you should use banners on your own web page as well as others by exchanging links. You should also list your web page with search engines. All of these will help your web page get noticed which means your products and services will get noticed and your home based business will prosper. Remember that the most important factor in product marketing online is URL marketing. You might have the best product for the best price on earth, but if nobody knows how to get to your web site it doesn't matter. Therefore, be diligent about getting your URL out there.

Finally, market your product and URL offline. This will reach a different sector of individuals and will also increase web page traffic. Make sure your URL is printed on any correspondence from your company including checks, faxes, web pages, emails, and letters, envelopes, and any promotional items like key chains, mouse pads and the like. The more people that know your URL means more traffic to your site. This in itself is the best product marketing you can receive.



Timothy Spaulding is the owner of the Work At Home Business Resource Center and Home Made Profits which provides valuable tools, articles, affiliate programs and products for the home based entrepreneur.

Monday, June 20, 2005

Make Your Internet Marketing Easier With Niche Marketing Keywords

By Timothy Spaulding

If your home based business depends on niche marketing, keywords are your best friends. If your answer to the first sentence was no, you are missing out on a lot of potential business. This is because keywords are what people search for on search engines like Google, Yahoo, Excite, and if the keyword being searched on matches keywords provided on your Web site then your web page will be returned as a result.

The results that are returned from the search engines are ranked in order of correlation between the keywords searched for and those on your site. You can easily see that you will want to have as many possible keywords pertaining to your home based business niche market on your web page in order to drive more people to your site. Even though there are thousands of keywords and combinations of keywords, not to mention misspellings, that potential customers might search for, you will want to make sure you have all of the most popular search terms and as many of the others as possible. These keywords equal web page traffic, which equals income and is certainly worth your time to put forth the effort to find out what the most popular keywords are for your niche business.

If you are trying to think of all the possible niche marketing keyword combinations by yourself it may find that it is a daunting task. So it might help significantly to get a software program or sign up for a keyword service that will do most to the work for you as well as let you know the most popular keywords for your niche business. These will also help you come up with additional combinations. You can find these online and can also compare different aspects of different programs to see which one will be best suited for you.

Once you have all of the keywords you want to include on your web page, you might be curious as to how to do it and still maintain a professional looking page. The answer is keyword articles. Keyword articles use particular keywords within a story pertaining to it. As a result, your web page has useful information about a particular service, product, and keyword and the keyword is incorporated on your web page enough so as to return your web page as a result. When your web page is returned as a top result in the search engines, it means your traffic will increase and subsequently your business.

Keyword articles are easy to write if you are interested in doing it yourself, however if not you can freelance the work out. For most home based business entrepreneurs doing it yourself is certainly cheaper if you are trying to market on a tight budget, but having the work done by a freelancer might save you considerable time that needs to be focused elsewhere. And if you find that writing articles is one of your strong points you could turn that talent into a home based business of its own.

Niche marketing keywords sounds as if it could be a little tedious and difficult, however it does not have to be that way. You simply need to establish the keywords for your niche market and then incorporate them in articles on your web page. It is guaranteed that the more information and keywords your web page contains, the more traffic and business you will see.



Timothy Spaulding is the owner of the Work At Home Business Resource Center and Home Made Profits which provides valuable tools, articles, affilate programs and products for the home based entrepreneur.

Thursday, June 16, 2005

Internet Marketing and Your Home Based Business

By Timothy Spaulding

All of you home based business entrepreneurs that are trying to make a living working from home know the problems encountered through Internet marketing and trying to get your web page noticed in order to increase traffic and ultimately revenues. Some people just blindly pay a lot of money for advertising, and those who don’t have an advertising budget often times do not advertise at all. Both of these are detrimental to your business, and it does not have to be as difficult as you are making it.

There are many innovative and creative ways to market your products and services inexpensively if not free, so spending a lot of money on it could be wasteful. But if you have no money to spend you may be dooming your business to fail by not advertising. People in this situation should be diligent about searching out all the options for free advertising.

When it comes to advertising, there are many options online and offline that will help you spread the word about your Web page and your product and you will increase traffic and revenues because of it.

First, check out offline venues like local newspapers, television stations, radio stations and the like for free advertisements. Often times these mediums are looking for new local businesses to highlight in their business sections and/or discussions. This is free advertisement and something you should cash in on immediately. Also, make sure your URL is on all of the printed material you use in regard to your business whether it is stationary or free gifts. Having your URL out there will help people remember your address and be more likely to check out what you have to offer.

In addition, while you are making your URL well known, make sure your web page is professional and accommodating to consumers. Make sure that the checkout process is easy and convenient as well as secure. Using payment systems like Paypal might be a good idea for you as well because it allows a variety of payment methods in many different currencies.

Advertising online also does not have to be expensive. You can submit newsletters to online ezines and the like with a resource box with your information, trade links with other relevant web pages, and other ideas similar to this. Certainly, you can do banners and other advertising, but if you don’t have much of a budget try all of the free options before you start paying
money you do not have. As you grow, your advertising budget can grow as well.

As long as you are creative and proactive in finding inexpensive and/or free advertising your business will grow, your revenues will grow and you will not be spending much at all on advertising. Remember, the more people that are aware of your web page increases traffic, referrals and ultimately purchases. Make sure your URL is visible to as many people as possible in as many places as possible.


Timothy Spaulding is the owner of the Work At Home Business Resource Center and Home Made Profits which provides valuable tools, articles, affilate programs and products for the home based entrepreneur.