Multiply Your Sales Through Affiliate Programs
By Howard Whittington

What could be better than exceeding your personal
sales goals for a given month or year? How about
doubling, tripling or even more of you sales goal for
the month? This is exactly what affiliates can do for
you. The amount of growth potential through
affiliates is unlimited; the more affiliates you have
the more money you can make, after all, if Sam Walton
tried to run every Wal-Mart store, he obviously
wouldn’t be very successful. You must realize that
for maximum growth you cannot do it alone. Think of
the success of companies such as Avon or Home
Interiors. Their success is based on two things; a
great product and excellent affiliate programs.

To attract affiliates to your company you should make
it worth their time. Offering one percent of sales,
is not an attractive offer, the higher the commission
that you are able to offer your affiliates the more
affiliates will be tempted to join your team. You
should also provide your affiliates with the tools
that they will need to successfully market your
product such as banner ads, articles, and anything
else that will help them to better market the product.
You should provide the affiliates with updated
product information through newsletters, new
promotional campaigns and other things to motivate and
inform the affiliates.

You can choose to run your affiliate program in a few
different ways, both of which are beneficial to your
business. A one-tier affiliate program allows you to
generally offer a larger commission and pays on one
level. The affiliate will receive a predetermined
amount for each sale. Using a two-tier affiliate
program, affiliates are paid on two different levels.
This is done by allowing the affiliates to recruit
others to sell under them. In this situation, the top
level affiliate would receive a slightly larger
commission than the recruit or second level affiliate.
For example if the top level seller makes 20% of the
sale, then she/he would make 15% giving the second
level affiliate the 5%.

Setting up the affiliate program can also be done in
two different ways. One way is to do it yourself
through an affiliate tracking software. This software
will provide you with a way to track affiliate sales
as well as allow the affiliates to view their
progress. The downside to this option is that you are
responsible for making payments. You can also choose
to hire an affiliate tracking company to do all the
work for you. These companies will allow the use of
credit cards and completely run the affiliate program
from billing customers, paying affiliates, and also
pay you. This is a great option for the busy business
owner or the beginning business owner and it is
affordable as most affiliate tracking companies charge
a small one time fee. However you choose to run your
affiliate program it is sure to increase profits for
your business.

About the author:
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To find the best home based business ideas and
opportunities so you can work at home visit:
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Implementing and Opt-In List to Optimize Your Internet Marketing Success
By Howard Whittington

In order to make a success of your website or online
business, it is obvious that you will need customers.
Although everyone who visits your page will not become
a customer, they must have some interest in your
product or service that brought them there in the
first place and therefore they are a potential
customer. Potential customers are much more likely to
become actual customers if you make an effort to keep
in touch with them. This essential marketing tool is
called and opt-in list.

An opt-in list will allow you to keep track of your
potential customers by obtaining their email address
in order to keep them informed about the latest
updates for your product or service. You can create
your own opt-in list or you can use an opt-in list
creator that is available online from several sources.
The benefits of creating your own opt-in list is that
you will be able to send personal messages to the
potential customers and they will not need to do
anything, whereas with commercial opt-in lists, the
customer will receive a generated message and will be
required to verify their acceptance of the message.

An important part of creating a successful opt-in list
is to keep in mind that potential customer will visit
your site from many places and may not see your
homepage. Therefore it is imperative to have the
ability to subscribe to the mailing list from all
pages of your site. You should not, however, make the
subscription information a focus point of every page.
It is a good idea to put it at the bottom or top of
the page where it is visible but not distracting. It
is also a good idea to promote your mailing list by
using a give-away. You could offer a service, a
discount, or an ebook. You can also drive potential
subscriber to join your mailing list by writing
articles that will benefit the reader and at the same
time, build your credibly as an expert. You can
include the subscription information in the byline of
the articles. You could also write an ebook with your
subscription information on each page, which will
allow the customer to easily access the information
and join the list with ease.

Once you have created the mailing list and now have
your potential customers within your grasp it is your
responsibility to keep them updated and interested.
Provide them with quality information that is
up-to-date and of interest to them. Offer discounts
or a newsletter, something that the reader can use.
This will keep them interested and will drive them to
your site over and over, eventually they may make a
purchase and if not, they will be informed enough to
use word of mouth advertising for your site.

About the author:
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To find the best home based business ideas and
opportunities so you can work at home visit:
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Golden Rules For the Use of Autoresponders
By Howard Whittington

Autoresponders are a perfect way to increase traffic
to your site. They can save many valuable hours by
automatically answering emails concerning frequently
asked questions about a service or product or by
sending a welcome letter to new members of your
program. There are many ways that autoresponders can
help your business. One of the most important is
their ability to track the effectiveness of your
promotions. Since autoresponders are one of the most
popular marketing tools available today, they are
being used by a lot of different kinds of business and
websites. Some of these take advantage of the system
to use the autoresponders in a negative manner. You
should be aware of some of the “Golden Rules” when
using autoresponders.

Thou Shalt Not Use an Autoresponder Address When
Submitting to Search Engines.

Since you will most likely submit your site to search
engines such as Google or Yahoo!, directories,
classifieds, and free for all sites, you should be
made aware of the fact that these sites commonly use
an autoresponder as well. If you were to use your
autoresponder to contact these companies, their
autoresponder will reply to yours and so on and so on.
Thus creating a cycle of autoresponses that will
flood your email box and theirs as well.

Thou Shalt Not Use an Autoresponder to Subscribe to
Ezines or Discussion Forums.

Since most of the time an Ezine will send you updates
and new information regularly, your auto responder
will send them a message each time. In a discussion
forum, every person in the discussion forum will
receive your auto response. This can be irritating
and most of the time you will be unsubscribed. It is
often hard for the administrators of the forum or
ezine to determine who is using the autoresponse and
therefore it is simply common courtesy to never use an
autoresponer in this manner.

Thou Shalt Not Use an Autoresponder to Take Advantage
Of Unsuspecting Individuals.

Some very unprofessional companies will use
autoresponders to respond to an automated message
when this is done the address in the “from” field will be
automatically subscribed to their mailing list. This
is a extremely un ethical use of autoresponders and
those who do it are in jeopardy of creating a very
negative image of themselves and their company.
Rather than promote their service or business, this
usually leads to people becoming very upset and
spreading a negative word about your company rather
than a good one.

The Internet can be a great place to do business and
autoresponders can be an excellent way to save time,
however when used in an unprofessional way, they can
lead to frustration and aggravation for others. Your
company will suffer the loss of much business if you
choose to participate in these abusive practices. The
appropriate use of auto responders can generate a
large amount of business, while inappropriate use can
drive away that business.

About the author:
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To find the best home based business ideas and
opportunities so you can work at home visit:
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Five Proven Methods for Internet Marketing Success
By Howard Whittington

There are hundreds of ways that you can promote your
online business or website, some more effective than
others. These five proven methods will help you to
generate traffic to your site and also to generate
income into your wallet.

1. One thing that appeals to everyone is “free.” If
it is free people will take it. Think of the samples
of cheese given away at grocery stores. Do you really
want a small piece of cheese? Of course not! But you
take it simply because it is free and someone is nice
enough to offer it to you. The same principle applies
with information or services offered from your
website. You can send out free newsletters or offer a
free trail period. One popular thing that is being
given away now are free credit reports or free PC
scans. These freebies are what we in the marketing
field like to call teasers. After running the free
credit report or PC scan we alert the customer if
there is something found on their credit record or PC
and then offer to show them what it is or repair the
problem for a price. This can be an effective way to
get information to your potential customers, create
sales or to generate traffic to your site.

2. Your website contains information about a service
or product that you are very knowledgeable about. You
can use this knowledge to generate traffic to your
site by writing articles in your area of expertise and
having them published in an ezine or an article
information site. The most effective way to use these
articles is to write them for free and ask in return
that the publisher allow you to include a byline. A
byline is a very short summary of the author, their
credentials and their website. Your byline is a way
that readers will come to know you as an expert on the
topic and will in turn come to trust your site as a
source of credible information.

3. Some search engines will allow a website to
purchase their ranking. This is an excellent Internet
marketing technique in that it is effective and
inexpensive. In the pay-per-click programs, website
are only billed for those who actually visit the page,
unlike banner ads which may be seen by millions but
only used by a few. When using the pay-per-click
program you are asked to choose keywords and when
those are entered your site will appear and if the
surfer chooses to view your site, you are billed for
that click. Many pay-per-click programs will offer
other benefits as well, such as updated lists of
commonly used keywords.

4. You should remember that others are in the same
boat as you. You can choose to network with those who
have similar marketing ideas. When networking you
will be able to share links and refer customers to
each other. You should always be very cautious when
choosing a networking partner as everything that you
recommend is a reflection of yourself or your product
and therefore, you should be certain that your
networking partner is a reputable source of
information.

5. Simply because your website is online, doesn’t
mean that all your advertising should be. Advertise
in newspapers, TV, the radio or you can even send out
a press release to get your information to thousands
of people all over the country.

About the author:
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To find the best home based business ideas and
opportunities so you can work at home visit:
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Autoresponders = Automatic Internet Marketing Success
By Howard Whittington

What if you could send out all the information that
your potential customers have requested without
checking your email or answering a phone? While this
may seem impossible, it is becoming more and more
popular among the most successful Internet marketing
gurus. This is all due to what is called an
autoresponder. An autoresponder is an automatic
method of responding to emails sent by existing or
potential customers and is an must for any Internet
business. Time is money and answering emails
personally take a lot of valuable time for both you
and the customer. Not only do autorespnders allow you
to spend the time elsewhere in your business, but it
gives the customer access to the information almost
immediately.

Since there are so many different uses for
autoresponders, they can be of value to virtually any
type of business. Some choose to use the
autoresponders to answer frequently asked questions
about a product or service. Others use them to
provide information about pricing or product
information. Autoresponders are also a nice way to
welcome new members to a website or group as well as
thank them after a visit.

One might ask what would be the advantage of using
autoresponders as opposed to simply listing the
information on the site. An important feature of
autoresponders is that they send you an email
notification each time a response is sent out. This
allows you to track the success of your promotions as
well as have the email addresses of potential
customers at your fingertips so that you can easily
send out updated and new information to them.

It is of the utmost importance to choose an effective
autoresponder. An autoresponder should be as
personal as possible and send out follow-ups to
potential customers since it has been proven that
persistence pays off. It could take up to seven
contacts before a final sale is conducted. Generally
speaking an advertisement should be short and to the
point. However, in this case, the customer has asked
to see this specific information and therefore an
effective autoresponder should allow you to place as
much text on the page as you desire. The
autoresponder that you choose should provide automatic
updates to customers free of charge.

The autoresponder is one Internet marketing tool that
will not cost you an arm and a leg. You can get free
autoresponders online from several sources. The
automatic responses will be a welcome addition to your
marketing strategy and will help to automatically
increase traffic to your site all while you do
nothing. Be sure that the one you choose includes all
the extras that will send you site to the top and your
profits through the roof.

About the author:
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To find the best home based business ideas and
opportunities so you can work at home visit:
http://www.HMWMegaSite.com
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Effective or Irritating: The Use of Pop Windows in
Internet Marketing
By Howard Whittington

A few years ago, pop-up windows were all the rage in
Internet marketing. It seemed that every time one
opened a web page they would be bombarded with offers
for this or that. It had gotten to the point where
surfing the Internet was almost like playing a video
game; when the ads would pop-up one would try and
close them out before another one came. This is
precisely why we have seen the decline in the use of
pop-up windows on the Internet today; surfers simply
do not even look at the pop-ups anymore. They close
the windows out before even reading the ad. Very
often, a surfer will even leave your site if there are
too many pop-up ads. They simply do not want the
hassle of closing those windows while trying to obtain
the information that your site has to offer. This
information, while valuable, is not as valuable as the
surfers time. Studies have shown however, that even
with these set backs, pop-up windows are still an
effective method of Internet marketing.

Is there some way that pop-up windows can be less
irritating and still be effective? Yes! What if the
pop ad were seen upon exiting your site instead of
entering? This would allow the surfer to obtain the
information that they need from your site, feeling
that they were able to come and go quickly without
being hassled by other ads and offers all the while
making the surfer happy. You have left the surfer
with a positive attitude and therefore are more likely
to respond to the pop advertisement. This is being
accomplished more and more by using what is being
called pop-under windows. When the surfer comes to
your site, the ad is opened discretely behind the your
web page. Then, upon leaving your site, after
obtaining all the information that they need , will
see the ad and therefore be more likely to respond.
Since the surfer has the information, he has achieved
his objective and is now open to do other things;
ideally respond to the pop under advertisement.

Not all pop-windows are created equally. There are
some things that you can do to make your pop-windows,
whether pop-up or pop-under more effective. The
pop-window should be easy to “escape” from. If the
surfer does not want to see the add, but has a hard
time closing it out, they will likely become
frustrated and could leave your site all together.
You should either use a button to that will allow the
surfer to close the window or be sure that the “x” is
easily visible. Another good idea is to use a script
that utilizes cookies. Cookie will prevent
pop-windows from overloading the surfer since you can
decide the frequency of the pop-windows, rather than
each time a page is opened. Also be sure that there
is no more than one pop-window per page.

When creating a pop-window, you will be asked to fill
out a short information form, select the length of
cookies, and choose the layout of the pop-window.
When choosing the design of the pop-window, you can
increase the effectiveness by creating a large
headline that includes benefits that will be most
appealing to the customer. You should also consider
using incentives and lastly do not ask the customer to
read a long and drawn out advertisement. Keep the
message simple yet powerful and your pop-ads will be
sure to generate profits for your site.

About the author:
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To find the best home based business ideas and
opportunities so you can work at home visit:
http://www.HMWMegaSite.com
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Getting Started: Creating a Business Plan
By Howard Whittington

You're excited. You have a great idea for a profitable
online business. Maybe it is an original idea that has
not been marketed online before. Maybe you have come
up with a new spin on the ordinary. Whatever it is
that has influenced you to start your online business,
be sure that you have a plan before you begin. This is
not the time to “pick it up as you go”. These are some
basic things that should be included in your business
plan.

The business summary should give a brief description
of the entire business and is an integral part of the
overall business plan. After you have completed the
business summary you should begin to list the
objectives or the goals that you want to accomplish
through the business. Next and perhaps most
importantly, you should develop your marketing plan.
The marketing plan will address all the specifics of
the business. When developing the marketing strategy
you should consider the following:

The target market. The target market is the customers
that you expect to see visiting your site. For example
will your product be more appealing to college
students or those who are in retirement?

Consider the competition for your product when
determining the marketing strategy. Choose a product
that will be seen as unique and useful. Visit sites
that are offering the same or similar products. Find
out the cost, and how they are marketing their
product. Finds out the pros and cons of their business
and try to improve your product based on their flaws.

Research the various methods for advertising online.
You should become educated about search engines and
how they work since each one is different. Also be
sure that you know how to submit your site to search
engines. You should be prepared to spend a small
amount of money on advertising, but the profits that
you will gain from the advertisements will prove to be
money well spent.

Think about pricing. Again, look at the competition
and see what similar products are selling for. Pricing
can play a big role in the success of your product
since selling a product well below the average price
may lead customer to think that there is a problem
with the product or that it is not of the best
quality. However, pricing items too high could also
detour customers.

Determine the shipping method. Be sure that you know
how products will be shipped so that you can have
shipping details clearly posted on your site. If you
are shipping things of great value, you should
consider providing shipping insurance. Also think
about shipping outside the country that you live in.

Think about the different methods of payment that you
will accept. If your business does not accept credit
cards, you should be ready to give up half if not more
of your sales. If you decide to accept credit cards
will you use a merchant account or will you use a
third party credit card processing center? Both will
help you get started and the third party processing
center will handle all of the business so you don’’t
have to. You should decide which you will use and also
if you will accept checks or money orders. It is
essential to have a secure server when taking credit
cards.

These few things will help your online business to
become a great success and also provide you with peace
of mind knowing that you have thoroughly thought about
and planned for the opening of your online business.

About the author:
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To find the best home based business ideas and
opportunities so you can work at home visit:
http://www.HMWMegaSite.com
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