The success of a blog lives and dies by its traffic. If your blog has traffic, your chances of getting more traffic, more revenues and more exposure are very high. On the other hand, with low traffic, it really won’t matter even if you do everything else right.Here are a few smart ways of increasing your traffic instantly.

Article Marketing

The key to article marketing is to create a schedule and stick to it. Article marketing is a numbers game. Don’t assume you can publish one article and be done with it.

The best article marketers publish at least a dozen articles a month. Some aim to publish as many as one or two per day.

The goal of article marketing is to target many low-competition low-traffic keywords. If you can get your articles ranked for many of those keywords, you can easily start to get hundreds of visitors a day.

It’s a lot of work, but it can work very quickly.

Guest Posting

Another method of using content to generate traffic is through guest posting.

Create a list of twenty other blogs you respect and relate to. Email them and ask if they’d be interested in having some free content, in exchange for a link back to your website.

Here’s the most important part: you need to have a well-designed website with good content. If someone visits your site and doesn’t see good content, they’re automatically going to assume that anything you write for them isn’t going to be good either.

On the other hand, if they’re impressed by what they see, they’ll want to do business with you.

Using YouTube Traffic

YouTube can bring in massive amounts of traffic to blogs.

Start by creating a YouTube channel and posting to it regularly. Create a schedule, such as once a day, three times a week or once a week. People will come to expect new videos from your channel often.

Try to pick specific keywords you want your videos to rank for. Don’t try too hard to SEO optimize your videos, but every once in a while sprinkle some keywords in the titles.

Use the videos on your blog. Embedding the video on your site gives you easy video loads, which increases your view count.

Your blog will funnel your YouTube traffic, which will funnel your blog traffic, and so on.

Blog Commenting

Download an RSS feed reader. Subscribe to ten or twenty blogs in your industry. Set the reader to alert you whenever a new post arrives.

This will help you stay on top of every new post as it comes. Whenever a new post is added, try to be the first one to comment.

Post intelligent comments that add value, then link back to your site using the “name” field.

These are a few different ways you can get immediate traffic to your blog. Each requires consistent action and persistence. If you pick a method, formulate a plan and execute it, the traffic will come. It might trickle in at first, but it can quickly grow to a torrent.

Google Places can bring a lot of traffic to local businesses as well as lend credibility to an establishment. It can help you get people from Google Maps to your establishment, as well as help you rank highly in organic results for local searches.

Here’s how to get a high ranking in Google Places.

PageRank and Backlinks Matter

One factor that still plays a strong role in Google Places rankings are your backlinks. In standard SEO, backlinks are the backbone of any SEO campaign. In Google Places optimization, backlinks play a lesser role, but are still critically important.

According to SEOMoz’s Google Places reverse engineering study, PageRank has a very measurable impact on how well you rank.

In addition to getting links back to your site, you should also focus on getting links from local sites. For example, if you own a pizza shop in Chicago, try to get as many links as possible from other Chicago businesses and websites.

Work on Your Citations

Your citations are other web sources that cite your business.

These include websites like the Yellow Pages, Superpages, Yahoo!, Yelp, Citysearch and more.

These websites will list your address, phone number and possibly your web address as well.

Google uses these citations to verify that you are who you say you are. They want to make sure your business actually exists before putting it live on Google Places.

The number and quality of your citations affects your rankings. If any of your citations are inaccurate, make sure you contact the website to change them. If you’re not listed on any major offline business directory, make sure you submit your business.

Get Reviews

Reviews play another big role in ranking. The more reviews you have and the better the reviews, the higher your rankings.

Try to get as many people to review your business as possible. You can ask personal friends, family members and employees to leave honest reviews. You can also incentivize customers to do reviews.

Do whatever you can to get as many reviews as possible. However, never fake a review and never review your own business.

Listing Tips

There are a few important things to pay attention to in your listing.

First, categories are extremely important. They help Google figure out exactly what kind of business you run, because keywords aren’t always a good gauge when it comes to business names.

Make sure you’re in the right category. Do a search for your business type, see what category your competitors are using and do the same.

Make sure you verify your ownership of the business. Doing so will also give you a measurable bump.

Finally, make sure you fill out the information as accurately and completely as possible don’t be lazy and take short cuts it will cost you business in the long run. Use your real phone number and not a call tracking number. Use your main website and not a website designed specifically for Google Pages.

Getting clients and sales in a small business is completely different than in a large business. In a large business, you’re looking at branding and sales teams. In a small business, you’re looking for the one activity that can get you profitable clients the fastest.What are some sure-fire ways small businesses can market their services effective? What kind of marketing tactics will generate results today, rather than having to wait months to pay off?

Business Networking International

Business Networking International, also known as BNI, is one of the largest organizations of professional lead sharing in the world.

Here’s how it works.

Let’s say in one BNI group there’s a graphic designer, a lawyer, a business consultant, a dentist and a real estate agent.

If the business consultant meets a client who needs a lawyer, he refers them to his friend in BNI. If the graphic designer meets someone who needs a new website for a new business, he might refer them to the business consultant for advice.

So on and so forth. Essentially, BNI is a formal way of getting together and sharing leads. Anyone who is a professional in their field is invited, but each BNI branch can only have one person from each profession.

Get on Google Local

If you run a local business, pay attention to Google Local. Google Local will allow you to jump ahead of all the other organic search listings in Google and have your website display way at the top.

In addition to getting ranked in the organic listings, your business will also show up in Google Maps searches. For example, if someone types in “Dentist in San Francisco” in Google Maps, if you’re ranked in Google Local your result will show up.

In the age of Androids and iPhones, getting ranked in Google Maps is more important than ever. A lot of people are simply typing in search terms on their phones to find businesses near them.

Getting ranked in google Local is all about optimizing your local page. Make sure to add ample photos to your page, write detailed information about your business, its hours and location, and put a link to your website.

Get as many people to review your business as you can. The more reviews your business has, the better your chances of getting ranked.

Start a Blog

There’s no better way to build credibility in an industry than to start a blog.

A blog allows you to express your thoughts to your audience, build a relationship and demonstrate your knowledge all at the same time.

Starting a blog is slow work in the beginning. You might only have a few visitors a month.

But over time, as people get to know you and your work more, people will keep coming back. Also, as you get more and more content on your blog, search engines will send more traffic to you.

Not only will starting a blog bring you traffic from people who’ve never heard of you before, but you’ll also increase your reputation among people who know you.

Finally, blogging is a great way to build connections. It positions you as an expert, which will get you more speaking opportunities, partnership opportunities and business opportunities in general.

Getting new customers doesn’t have to be an expensive endeavor. The old axiom of “it takes money to make money” just doesn’t have to be the case when it comes to small business marketing.

If you want to give your business an infusion of customers without having to spend big bucks, read these ideas carefully. Here are several different ways you can promote your small business – all with little to no cash investment.Use Third Party Review Websites

If you own a guesthouse or hostel, get on Hostelworld or HostelBookers. Get as many people to review you as possible.

If you own a spa, get as many people as possible to review you on Yelp.

No matter what kind of service you’re running, chances are there’s some kind of review system out there. People want to talk about and share experiences they’ve had with service providers in your industry.

Find out what these “hubs” are and actively cultivate positive reviews. Getting ranked #1 in your category on one of these sites is all it takes to get your business completely booked up.

Offer to Write for Publications

If you’re an expert on internet marketing, why not start writing a column for your local newspaper’s business section?

Or perhaps you might want to see if you can get a writing gig in a small internet business related magazine.

Being invited to write a column isn’t as hard as you might imagine. If you have the qualifications, editors are always on the lookout for more content. Because the better the content, the better their publication.

Finally, try also approaching bloggers to do guest blog posts. Make sure you state your qualifications upfront so they know you know your stuff, and make sure to suggest a few potential post topics in your introductory email.

Speak in Public

Public speaking is one of the most powerful and least competitive marketing methods around. Why? Because almost everyone is terrified of speaking in public.

Speaking in public requires honing your presentation skills. It involves mastering your fear of looking bad. It involves quite a bit of personal and professional development.

It’s a lot of hard work to become a great speaker. However, once you do become a great speaker, marketing will likely become a non-issue for your business.

Speaking in front of groups generates so much curiosity and credibility that if you do it on a regular basis, your business is more or less set.

Promoting a small business doesn’t have to cost a lot of money. If money is your main reason for not promoting your business, let it stop you no more. Instead of using your money to promote your business, use your smarts, charm and determination to do the job.

Squidoo is a social networking site. However, it’s also more than that. Users are able to create their own lenses, which are essentially web pages. You can write your lens on any topic and use it to make money.

Squidoo lenses are said to receive a great page ranking with the search engines. However, there are also things you can do to boost your Squidoo lens rankings.Content

Like any basic web page, the best way to boost a Squidoo lens ranking is to publish great content. Content is evaluated by a number of criteria including:

* Quality – Create top quality content. That means it is well written but also provides value and interest to a specific audience. For example, if your topic is Hot Chocolate then you want to make sure you’re providing interesting and valuable information to people who enjoy hot chocolate.

* Updates and frequency – Squidoo isn’t a “set it and forget it” type of site. You want to be vigilant about updating your page with new and interesting information. The more you update it, the better. It adds value and maintains interest in your page.

Squidoo Account Activity

Your ranking increases as the activity on your lens increases. It also increases as your own activity on the site increases. Remember, this is a social networking site.

Links

Squidoo uses the snowball effect to boost rankings too. As your lens grows in popularity, more high-ranking lenses will link to you and vice versa. You begin to generate more and more awareness and attention. You generate more activity on your lens. This results in a better ranking. It snowballs or increases in volume.

Include Images

In addition to publishing great content you can increase the interest level and value of your content by including images and even video. You can also update or add interest to your lens by creating an interesting-looking page. You can use CSS or HTML to add graphics and borders to your page.

Make Sales

Squidoo allows you to use both eBay and Amazon modules to earn commissions. Each commission you make helps boost your ranking. More sales means more money to you but it also means that your lens becomes more visible.

Votes

Readers and other Squidoo publishers can “favorite” your lens or give your lens a thumbs up. These votes of confidence help increase your ranking. How do you get votes? It all comes back to publishing great content!

Ask Questions

Finally, don’t forget to ask questions and get your readers involved. Publish a poll or survey. People enjoy being interactive and sharing their opinion. This will drive traffic to your lens, increase linking and boost your ranking.

The market selection process is one that shouldn’t be skimped on. It’ll affect everything else you do and can determine your success or failure before your website even exists.

Finding the perfect niche involves weighing a lot of different factors to find the perfect one. Here’s how to find the perfect niche.The Niche Brainstorm Process

Start by brainstorming as many niches as you can think of. Get out a notepad and jot down ideas.

Once you run out of ideas to jot down from the top of your head, go to Amazon.com and browse some of the different magazine titles. If there’s a magazine for it, chances are the market’s big enough to support a website.

Jot down more ideas, then head over to eBay Pulse. Again, browse the categories and products that are selling and see if those spark any ideas.

Keep brainstorming for a few days to get all the ideas down on paper.

Evaluating Profitability

There’s generally a trade-off between ease of ranking and profitability. In other words, if there’s a lot of money to be made in a certain market, chances are it’s going to be fairly difficult to get ranked.

For most beginning to intermediate marketers, the goal is to find a niche market that has profit potential but isn’t too difficult to rank for.

Start by using the Google Keyword Tool to evaluate how many searches your keyword(s) get. Then head over to Google, type in the keywords and take a look at the top results.

Who’s ranking right now? Are they super-high authority sites or are they relatively easy to beat personal websites?

Check their PageRank and backlinks using Yahoo Site Explorer. The lower the PageRank and the fewer the backlinks, the better your chances of ranking.

Once you’ve checked out the search engine competition, evaluate how much money there is to be earned in the niche.

Do this by estimating the average customer value. How much is the average sale worth? For continuity products, how long does each customer pay a month and how long do they usually stay on for? Can additional products be sold to the same customer, and if so how many products and at what price?

After this process, you should have a few potential markets with relatively low competition that have high profit potential that you can target.

Evaluating Personal Passion

Once you have a few potential markets to get into, it’s time to look at your own personal passions.

Which market(s) hold the most interest for you, personally? Remember that you’re going to be working with this site for at least a few months to come.

Once you’ve found a site that has both profit potential and personal appeal, all that’s left is to pull the trigger!

Many smart business people today are taking advantage of Facebook to build social proof, connect with existing visitors and bring in more new traffic to their websites.

Instead of just setting up a page and waiting for people to come and “Like” or join, it pays to be proactive. Here are a few smart ways of making Facebook work proactively for your business.Keyword Optimize Your Page

Did you know that keyword optimization is actually incredibly important?

For example, if your group was named “Photography,” you’d probably get a lot more members than if you named your group “Still Film Students.”

Why? Because your group would show up near the top whenever someone typed in “Photography.”

Choose your keywords wisely – Facebook’s groups & pages search can generate a lot of traffic.

Use a One-Time Pop-Up to Generate Likes

If you’ve been in the internet marketing space for some time, you’re probably familiar with the one-time pop-over for collecting email opt-ins.

Here’s how the pop-up (also known as a hover over) works: The first time someone visits your site, the pop-up shows up on their screen. Whether or not they take action, the pop-up will never show up again.

Most people use it to collect emails. However, if you’re getting a page launched, you can use this kind of hover-over pop-up to show your Facebook widget instead.

This gives you the chance to get your Facebook page in front of every person who visits your website. You can very quickly get a lot of Facebook “Likes” and followers this way.

Leverage Your Facebook Network

Don’t forget that there’s a lot of power in your own Facebook network as well.

If you have a particularly good piece of content, don’t just post it to your Facebook page’s wall. Post it on your own as well.

If you have friends who are similar to you and are in your target market, chances are they’ll find it interesting. They might like it or share it, resulting in more of their network seeing the content, which leads to more views on your page.

Post Content Often

Most people have their page settings set so that they “sometimes” see your status updates on their feeds.

That means that the more often you update, the more likely it is that something you posted will show up on your followers’ feeds.

Don’t post more than once a day; but try to post at least once every two or three days. If you can post good content once a day, so much the better – but don’t post shoddy content just to fill space.

These are a few smart ways of making Facebook work with your business. Traffic from Facebook doesn’t just start overnight, but with consistent effort you’ll quickly begin to see results.

Successful blogging requires a combination of consistency as well as proper tactics and methodology. Becoming a successful blogger doesn’t happen overnight, but if you follow the right method you’ll start to see results that tell you you’re on the right track relatively quickly.Here’s how to start and maintain a successful blog.

Post on a Regular Schedule

The most important part of running any blog is that you post regularly. A blog that stops and starts simply can’t generate a following that comes back regularly.

Also, posting on a regular schedule will help you develop the self-discipline necessary to write consistently. Instead of waiting for inspiration, you’ll learn to write when content needs to be created.

Answer Questions in the Comments

Users will often ask questions in the comments and interact with you. Bloggers who don’t respond to these comments will alienate their readers and lose followers.

The people who post comments on your blog are likely the people who care most about the content and are most likely to become your fans.

Respond to each and every comment on your blog and start a dialogue with your readers.

Participate in the Outside Community

Be a part of the larger community that surrounds your blog.

For example, if you run a blog around short-term stock investing, you should also be commenting on other such blogs and participating in stock trading forums.

Share your tips and tactics in other places. This will bring audience members to your blog, and assuming your content is good they’ll keep coming back.

Optimize Each Post for a Specific Keyword

Each post should be optimized for a specific keyword or question. You want your blog post to be the one that pops up whenever someone types that question into Google.

Each individual keyword doesn’t have to get too many searches a month. After all, after your first hundred blog posts or so you’ll run out of even medium volume keywords to target.

Instead, each post should go after a longtail keyword. Over time, this will result in thousands upon thousands of searches that end up on your site every month.

Consider Multiple Authors

Bringing on more than one author allows you to take the writing load off your shoulder, as well as give your readers more than one perspective.

There are a few different ways you can bring on authors.

For one you can pay these authors. Find outsourcers who fit the profile for your blog and pay them a set rate per word or per post. You can find outsourcers on eLance or oDesk.

Alternatively, you can make a habit out of opening up your blog for guest blogging. Guest bloggers usually only make one or two posts, but the content can definitely add up over time.

Starting a successful blog is both challenging and rewarding. Use this article as an overview to help you build your first winning blog.

Many people have the dream of getting their name and their work in print. It can be hard to get on the list at a publishing house, but you can self-publish. It’s easy with Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing.Now, publishing your eBooks has never been easier. With the invention of the Amazon Kindle, gaining access to published material is at your fingertips. Before, you could create an eBook and publish it on Amazon but you still had to create and ship the book.

With the format of the Amazon Kindle, self-publishing doesn’t require as much legwork as before. Just when you thought you couldn’t, now you can.

You can begin today. Your eBook will be made available for viewing on iPads, iPhones and Android devices with Kindle apps, your PC and your Blackberry phones. It can also be viewed in English, French, German, Portuguese, Italian and Spanish.

How to Begin

First, you need to write the book. This is the same first step that you would perform if you were actually selling an eBook on your site. Use your same attention to detail for uploading the book to Kindle. Create compelling cover art, pay attention to formatting and include images to enhance your book.

Create an Amazon account if you don’t already have one. It’s free to do and only takes minutes. Visit the Digital Text Platform site. Then, download the Amazon Digital Text Platform guide. This will provide all the information you need to be sure that your book fulfills all of the requirements for publication.

This site will take you through each step of the process that will ultimately result in your book being published on Kindle. Step one is entering your product details. This includes the title and a thorough and compelling description of your book. Include keywords in the description. If you want to include any images, this would be the place to do it. Don’t forget about your cover art. It will attract many readers.

The second step is to confirm who has the rights to the book. If you are the creator of the content then you are okay. If not, you will not get past this step.

Step three involves uploading your book. HTML format works best but you can also use Word documents. Once you have uploaded your file, meticulously check the formatting to be sure that the book will appear as you envisioned it would. Make any changes that you need to before you give the final okay.

Last but not least is to set a price. This can be the tricky part. If you are neither a previous published author with a following nor have an internet business with a lot of interesting readers and customers, you might want to set the price low to begin. You can up the price offering on subsequent eBooks if you want to.

See how simple that was? Now you give it a try. Showcase your eBook on Amazon Kindle and get noticed.

If you’re after lump sums of cash rather than cashflow, blog flipping is a great way to do it. Flipping blogs is very much like flipping real estate properties.

In real estate, when you “flip” a property, what you do is buy a run-down home or complex, fix it up, market it properly and sell it for higher than you paid for it. Online, flipping refers to the same practice of buying undervalued websites, improving them and reselling them.

Because websites are often sold for multiples of 18 to 36 months of its earnings, a $100 increase in monthly cashflow is worth $1,800 to $3,600 when it’s sold.

Essentially, you take advantage of the multiplier effect to earn quick cash.

Here’s how to make money flipping blogs.

Buying Blogs with Development Potential

Digital Point and Flippa are the two main places to look for blogs to purchase online.

Digital Point is an internet forum with a marketplace section where people can buy and sell websites.

Flippa is a website auction marketplace, where you bid to purchase other websites. It works much like eBay, where you’re bidding against a number of other people who also want to buy the blog.

Get familiar with both sites so you have a large base of potential blogs to choose from.

Improving the Blog

There are two main ways you need to improve a blog from a flipping perspective: monetization and traffic.

The more traffic you have and the better you’re monetized, the better your chances of fetching a good price.

You’ll need to look over the SEO factors of the blog and improve it anywhere that it’s weak. Work on the site’s backlinks, as well as its content.

Experiment with different ways to monetize the blog. Test out affiliate products, AdSense, direct ad sales and any other monetization methods you can think of. If you’re willing to go the extra mile, consider even creating a product for the site.

Selling the Blog for a Profit

There are a few ways you can sell the blog for a profit.

The easiest way is to go back to Flippa or Digital Point and sell the blog on one of those websites. Selling on these established platforms is both safe and easy. It’s also relatively secure, especially if you use escrow.

However, if you really want to fetch top dollar for the blog, you might want to consider going direct instead.

Contact people in the blog’s industry who might be interested in acquiring the blog. Contact both other bloggers and people who are advertising on the blog. You’ll often be able to get a higher multiple in a direct sale than in an auction sale.

If your blog makes over $2,500 a month, you might also consider hiring a web business broker to help you find direct buyers.

Flipping blogs is one of the best ways to generate cash online, because monthly improvements in income can be instantly multiplied by 18 to 36 times. This is a summary of the process for flipping blogs online.

Introduction

What makes customers buy from one eCommerce store rather than the other? Why does one eCommerce store get more traffic than another eCommerce store, even though they sell the same product? And how can you, as the eCommerce store owner, get more traffic and more sales?In this report, you’ll learn all that and more. You’ll learn how to use a wide variety of tools to increase visitor loyalty, as well as to bring in more first-time buyers.

What Makes Your Store Unique?

If you’re the only store in your industry, then you can get by with having good pricing and good service. However, if you have a large number of competitors, you’re going to need to have something that gives you the leg up.

So what makes your store unique?

Can you offer a set delivery time that nobody else can beat? Perhaps your prices are truly lower than anyone else? (Note: that can’t just be a marketing line; it must be true.) Is there an additional service you could offer that nobody else can?

Your positioning in the market depends on what you can do better than anyone else. If you don’t have a specific angle you’re targeting the market with yet, that’s the first place to start.

Never go into a market with the same offer as everybody else. If you do, there’s no reason for customers to come to your store over anyone else’s.

Adding Personality to Your Store

One powerful free way to get more people to your store or to get people to come back more often is to create a personality for your store.

One of the best examples of this is woot.com. Woot is a techie group buying website that was acquired by Amazon.com for $110 million. Essentially they purchase huge quantities of cheap products and sell them for a group deal price online. Every day gets a different product.

What makes this website different than other similar websites is their personality. All their product descriptions are written in a witty, sarcastic way that really appeals to the techie audience.

It’s clear that the people writing the copy really understand the market they’re writing for. More importantly, people will often come back to the site just to read the funny copy for the latest product – and often end up buying.

Your personality or voice doesn’t necessarily have to be funny. But having a personality can be a powerful tool for winning over your core audience.

Using Social Media to Increase Sales

If you’re not making regular use of Facebook and Twitter, you’re leaving sales on the table.

Facebook and Twitter are powerful ways for bringing new people to your eCommerce store, as well as of staying in contact with existing customers.

There are a few ways these two sites can bring you new customers. First of all, if you create something that’s very unique or interesting for a certain community, chances are you’ll get talked about.

These social networking sites make it very likely that anything which gets talked about will be seen by new people. If you own a golf site, chances are people who follow you on Facebook also have friends who golf. If someone suddenly sees three of their friends talking about something on your site, they’re very likely to check it out.

Apart from the social aspect, you’ve also got paid advertising.

On Facebook, you can target people by demographics and keywords. Again, if you own a fishing website and know your target market is men in the 40+ age demographic, you can easily target that. You can even set it so that your ad only shows up for men who’ve shown an interest in fishing.

With paid advertising, you can show your ad to literally millions of highly targeted web visitors.

Finally, Facebook and Twitter can be used to bring people who’ve already been to your store back again.

Once you get someone to follow you on Facebook or Twitter, you can continually send them promotions and information about what’s going on in your business.

Of course, you need to make sure they’re getting something of value by following you. Make sure they’re either getting discounts or valuable content by being part of your fan base.

Building a Community around Your Store

Building community around your store can create both loyalty and buzz around your brand. A community is a group of people who are interested in talking about a topic, as well as helping one another out.

Etsy is a great example. Etsy is essentially a website like eBay, except it’s only for handcrafted arts.

Traditionally auction sites have had a very hard time competing with the industry giant, eBay. Hundreds of auction sites have tried, but few have been able to get a foothold.

Etsy has succeeded because it has a narrow focus and a strong community. It has garnered the loyalty of both artists and art lovers and connected the two.

If you visit the Etsy community, you’ll find a lot of discussion on both sides. People are talking about their latest buys or their top selling strategies. Customers are telling sellers what kind of things they want. Discussions on all topics are happening every hour of the day.

As a result, people keep coming back to Etsy. People keep buying and people keep telling their friends about the site.

So how can you build a thriving community around your web store?

The most important thing is that you put a lot of energy into seeding the community in the beginning.

Create an easy and intuitive structure for users to connect with one another. Forums and message boards are great ways to do that.

For the first month or two, having a staff member occasionally come on and answer questions can make a big difference. Try to have the company actually involved in the community.

Make the community a prominent part of your business. Don’t just have a forum link buried somewhere in your website. Put it on your home page and reference it in articles. Actively promote the community.

Using How to Content to Build a Reputation

If you’re selling a product in a crowded marketplace, one way you can differentiate yourself is to provide top-notch content.

All other things being equal, people are going to buy from a website that they already trust rather than another store.

StarCityGames is a good niche example of this. StarCityGames sells Magic: The Gathering (MTG) playing cards.

There are at least ten other MTG retailers online, in addition to low-margin competitors on eBay. Customers can have their pick of the litter from low-cost dealers.

But StarCityGames is successful because they regularly have professional MTG players writing content articles for their site.

Because their name is well known in the MTG as a resource, just about every serious player knows the site. As a result, they’re one of the most successful card dealers in the space.

It’s not because they’re cheaper. It’s not because they deliver faster. The product isn’t any better. They get their business because they’ve built trust and credibility by providing how-to content.

This strategy can be applied to just about any market, from golf to supplements to consulting.

Stand for Something and Publicize It

Take a stand for something and publicize it. Your stand can be anything as long as there’s genuine passion behind it.

One eCommerce store that does this superbly is Zappos, an online shoe retailer.

Zappos’ most important value is customer service. Unlike other companies that try to minimize customer call lengths, Zappos encourages their support reps to stay on the phone as long as necessary to help the customer. Reps are even trained to send customers to competitors if a shoe they want isn’t in stock.

Zappos’ CEO Tony Hsieh has publically admitted that he doesn’t care much for shoes. That’s not where his (or the company’s) passion lies. What they’re really selling is customer service and a positive shopping experience.

They’ve taken that stance and subsequently broadcasted it as loudly as they could. On their website, on their blog, through their personnel and even through a book written by the CEO.

As a result, Zappos is the leader among hundreds of other online shoe retailers.

Another prominent retail example is Ethos water. Ethos donates 10% of their profits to charity every year. As a result, people are willing to pay for the water, even if it’s often twice the price of other types of water.

Can you make your store stand for something? If so, make sure those values permeate your company’s culture. Make sure everyone who deals with your company knows about it, from suppliers to customers.

Using Scarcity and Sales for Instant Profits

Want to inject your business with a sudden burst of sales? You can do that with one-time limited discounts and sale events.

The secret to sales is two things: first of all that it’s limited time which creates a sense of scarcity, and second that the discount strikes them as an irresistible value.

You can do a sale as often as once every two or three months. Of course, you don’t want to do a sale so often that people start to question your regular pricing.

As long as you don’t overdo the sales, however, you can use this technique repeatedly. A well-orchestrated one-week sale can pull in as much as a whole month or two’s worth of revenue.

One company that does this very well is Audible, an audiobook sales company. They take advantage of just about every possible occasion to have a sale.

The standard price for a book is about $20. For members, it’s usually about $15.

However, every few months they’ll have a sale where you can buy books for as little as $5.

The sales are always limited in time and only apply to specific books. But visitors are offered such a deal that they’ll often snap up multiple books at once.

A customer who might ordinarily only buy one book a month might buy five books in a day just to take advantage of the deal. After all, there are probably many books you’d read at $5 apiece that you wouldn’t at $20.

Anytime you run a sale, make sure you give it as much exposure as possible. Send at least two emails about it, though not too close together. Make sure to also prominently feature the sale on your website.

Using sales can bring in enormous volume if done properly. Make sure the deal seems irresistible and don’t overdo the frequency.

Use Loss Leaders Intelligently

A loss leader is a product that’s being sold for break even or a loss just to get the customer in the door.

Once you have someone on your customer list, you’ll be able to sell to them repeatedly. Yes, you will lose money on the people who don’t buy again – but the people who do should more than make up for it.

The big benefit of doing a loss leader is its marketing power. If everyone else is selling something for $10 and you do a marketing promotion for $1.99, that’s going to create both buzz and sales.

One example of this in action is Double Your Dating’s affiliate program. Double Your Dating is a dating guide for men.

Most digital product affiliate programs pay between 50% and 75%. Double Your Dating decided to pay 200%.

At 200%, they were paying $20 for every $10 sale that was made – an instant $10 loss. This outrageous offer attracted many talented affiliates to promote their website.

They were able to profit from this arrangement because ultimately the customers who ended up buying outweighed the customers who didn’t.

This technique can be used to bring in a flood of customers. Just make sure you can handle a high volume of initially high cost customers before you go all out on such a promotion.

Leverage the Power of Affiliates

No matter how good your marketing team is, there’s no way you can perfectly tackle every possible marketing avenue out there.

Instead, you can “hire” a virtual team of marketers to do all the hard work for you. You can do this through affiliate marketing.

Affiliate marketing means setting up your system so that other people can sell your products for you in exchange for a commission. For physical goods the commission is usually 5% to 10%; for digital goods it’s often 50% or more.

The best way to attract affiliates is to get your eCommerce store on one of the major affiliate networks.

These networks include Commission Junction, LinkShare and ShareASale. Getting onto these networks involves a process of jumping through a few hoops to make sure you’re legitimate. Once you’re in, however, finding affiliates will basically take care of itself.

The real challenge to running an affiliate program is getting your conversion rates as high as possible. The goal is to get your earnings per click (EPC) to the point where it’s higher than any of your competitors’.

In other words, if affiliates could earn $100 for every 1,000 clicks they send your competitors, they should ideally be able to earn even more if they sent that traffic to you.

Top affiliates routinely test traffic to a myriad of different merchants. If you can optimize your website to the point where affiliates will earn more by promoting your site than any other site, you’ll soon be inundated with sales.

Website and Conversion Optimization

Website optimization is the process of testing small or large changes to your website to see whether it increases sales or decreases sales.

For example, what happens if you put the logo on the right side of your header image instead of the left? Or what happens if you use “Add to Cart” instead of “Buy Now” on your purchase buttons?

Each of these changes may only result in a 0.1% increase in conversion. But if you can increase your conversion by “just” 0.1% every week, that’s 0.4% per month. In a year, that’s more than a 4% increase. For many eCommerce stores, a 4% conversion increase means they’ve more than doubled their profits.

Optimizing gives you all kinds of benefits on top of just selling more customers. For one, you’ll be able to attract more affiliates, as detailed above. You’ll also be able to spend more money to attract visitors, because each visitor is worth more to you.

Setting up an eCommerce optimization system can be simple at times and extremely complex at other times. Simple things like testing different banner images can be easy enough. On the other hand, testing different upsells can be extremely complex.

Talk to your system administrator about setting up a split testing program. If you don’t have an in-house tech, explore some of the optimization solutions available online that cater for eCommerce websites.

Getting More Sales for Your ECommerce Store

You’ve now learned a myriad of different techniques and tactics for increasing your sales.

Some of these tactics, such as the limited time sale, can be used immediately to bring cash to the bank. Other tactics, such as building a community around your store, take more time to work its magic.

Increasing your sales isn’t just a matter of applying one or two tactics. Often it’s a matter of trying a wide range of different tactics to see what works and what doesn’t.

Above all else, listen to your customers’ feedback. Try things and see what people like and what they don’t. Also watch your stats like a hawk. See if your conversion rates, return rates and other important stats are going up or down with every change.

Finally, keep in mind that many of these tactics may be outside your sphere of expertise. For example, setting up the technical aspects of a website optimization campaign may be beyond your technical capabilities.

Don’t let that limit you. Look at the tactics discussed here and make a strategic decision about whether or not it’d be good for your business. If you believe it will be, then find the right people to implement the strategy.

When Twitter was first taking off, it was believed to be a tool mostly for consumers. Today, however, business executives are becoming more and more aware of Twitter as a tool to build B2B sales.Twitter isn’t just important for interacting with consumers. It’s also crucial for interacting with brands, potential clients and competitors.

Here are a few big ways Twitter can impact your B2B sales.

Actively Projecting Your Brand

Your brand doesn’t have to be a passive thing. Twitter is perhaps the only avenue where blasting out your brand regularly is not only accepted, but encouraged.

You can’t email your potential clients every day without repercussions. But you can absolutely tweet every day, keeping your brand in front of potential clients, while actually building rather than burning goodwill.

Networking Your Way to New Contacts

If there’s someone in your space that you want to meet, Twitter can be a great way to get around the red tape.

It can be very hard to meet someone in a crowded seminar or to get through their secretary. But if you have their Twitter handle, you can start to build a connection on the social network that can then develop into an offline connection.

Start by following them. Retweet their tweets and @reply to any requests from them with helpful resources. Get on their radar. Eventually, when an opportunity presents itself to introduce yourself, do so and they’ll likely know who you are.

Find Their Pain Points

Twitter can be a powerful way of keeping track of exactly what’s going on in an industry. You can use it to figure out what your clients are up to, what your competitors are up to and what your clients’ competitors are up to.

Let’s say a competitor of a big potential client launches a new product. It stands a good chance of taking a big chunk out of your client’s business.

That could be a stellar opportunity to come in and offer to help. It may or may not result in immediate business for you, but that offer for help will definitely turn into goodwill that can later turn into business.

Use Twitter to keep your finger on the pulse of the industry and identify the pain points of potential clients.

Tapping into B2B Events

B2B events will often have their own Twitter feeds. That can be a very powerful way to participate with your ideal target market.

For example, let’s say Convention Y is having all their participants tweet to #conventionychat.

By participating actively on #conventionychat, you can build up a brand for yourself among potential leads at an event. Start doing this a few weeks before the event. By the time the actual event rolls around, a lot of people there will already know who you are.

These are a few ways that Twitter can affect your B2B sales. Twitter isn’t just a tool for consumers, but can be a powerful tool for building goodwill and gathering intelligence for making B2B sales.

Who says that affiliate marketing is an old business model? Thousands of people all around the world are making a very good living as an affiliate marketer. You can too. Here are five smart ways to make money with affiliate marketingReview It

Create a review site or category for your blog or website and write reviews. You can review both products and services, as long as they’re related to your niche topic. Reviews are tremendously valuable to people considering a purchase. And when they’re reading reviews it means that they’re already in a buying state of mind.

Most likely they’ve decided they want to make a purchase, they just haven’t settled on a company or specific product. You can help them take that last step by providing an informative review. A note about writing good reviews – make sure they appear unbiased. If your review reads like a sales page then your reader isn’t going to trust it.

Product Demonstrations

If you are an affiliate for one or more products, consider creating videos that offer product demonstrations. These demonstrations work a lot like reviews. They help your prospects and website visitors take that final step from researching to buying. And of course you have the link to help them out! (Don’t forget to put your affiliate link in your video.)

Comparison Charts

Have one or more similar products that you represent? Consider creating a comparison chart to help your prospects weigh the features and compare. And of course be sure to include links to all of the products you represent.

Information Marketing

Give away free information like reports, checklists, workbooks, eBooks and even home study courses. Provide a wealth of information on your niche topic and casually promote relevant products within the body of the content. For example, if you have a pet care niche you can create a new puppy safety checklist. Relevant items on that checklist can be hyperlinked to retailers that sell those products. You provide value and earn a commission.

Build an Email List

One of the best ways to earn more as an affiliate marketer is to build a reputation as someone that your prospects like and trust. You can accomplish this by creating an email list and regularly connecting with your subscribers. Share links and information with them. You’ll generate sales and earn the kind of commission you’ve been striving for.

Making money as an affiliate marketer is often about knowing your prospect and providing them with the information and experience they are looking for. It’s about content. The more quality content you can offer your readers, the more commission you’re likely to earn.

Affiliate marketing is alive and well. Many people all around the world from all walks of life are making a great living as affiliate marketers. You can, too.

Affiliate marketing is the business of promoting other people’s products and services. You promote them, not sell them. Each time you successfully promote a product you earn a commission.For example, let’s say that you’re an affiliate for an insurance company. You might write articles about how to find good insurance. In the articles you would include a link to the insurance company you’re affiliated with. When your readers click the link and buy insurance from that company, you earn a commission.

Step One: Make a List of Interests and Passions

Products and services from just about every industry and niche have affiliate programs. This makes it easy for you to find ones that match your interests. And that’s the first step. Decide what industry or topic you want to focus on. Start with a list of your interests and passions. You don’t have to be ultra-knowledgeable about the topic but you do want to be interested in it. You’re going to be creating a lot of content about the topic so it helps to be interested in it.

Step Two: Make a List of Affiliate Programs

The next step is to take a look at your list of interests. If they’re not prioritized, go ahead and rank the top five. Then begin to look for quality affiliate programs to participate with. Don’t sign up just yet. Make a note of the programs.

Review how they pay and how much they pay. Also, if you have access to their resources, take a look at what they provide. Some affiliate programs provide you with an affiliate ID and that’s about it. Others provide you with advertisements, articles, and other marketing materials.

Go through the top items on your list and compare which topics have the best affiliate programs. It’s important that you affiliate with products and services you respect and trust. If your readers have a bad experience with someone you recommend, you’ll lose their trust and in the age of social networking that can affect other readers as well.

Step Three: Make a Choice and Create a Plan

You may also want to take a look at how much competition you have. Some niches have a lot of competition. The more competition there is, the more work you’ll have to do to gain traffic and attention. That’s not always a bad thing but it’s something to consider before you choose your niche. You can use keyword research tools to compare demand and supply.

Once you have your list of priority topics and a list of relevant affiliate products or services, it’s time to decide. What topic are you going to focus on?

The foundation of any affiliate business is content. So once you have made a decision about your topic, the next step is to create a content plan. What content will you write? When will you publish it?

Finally, you’re ready to create your website and start publishing content. It’s also the time to start applying to those affiliate programs you’re interested in representing. It’s a good idea to have content on your site before you apply so affiliate managers can confidently approve you as a representative of their company.

There’s still a lot of money to be made online. One great business model is to create a niche store. A niche is a specialized topic or product. For example, smart phones might be a niche. Blackberry smart phones would be an even more specialized niche. Repurposed Blackberry Smart Phones is even more specific.Niches work well because you don’t have the same amount of competition. And you know that people who come to your website are interested in your specific product. There’s a higher rate of conversion. This translates into more sales for you.

If you have an idea for a niche store, here are a few tips to make it a reality.

Plan it!

You want to have a solid plan before you launch a store. Go into business without a plan and you may end up with a mess. Your plan doesn’t have to be formal. Instead, write it for yourself and anyone who will be working with you. Include:

* Vision and mission
* Your goals
* Your available time/schedule
* Your business model. For example, will you be a reseller? Are you going to join a direct sales company?
* Are you going to outsource work or hire employees?
* Who is your market and how will you reach them?
* Who is your competition and how will you beat them?
* How are you going to test and track your products, systems and strategies?
* How will you receive payment and fulfill orders?

Your Niche Storefront

This decision is important because it can be difficult to change your mind later on. How are you going to sell your products? Will you create an eBay store? Sell on Amazon? Or will you create your own storefront and host the site yourself?

Review your options and make a decision that supports your current and long-term business goals.

Choose a Good Niche Store Name

Your store name, and URL or website address are important. You want people to be able to find your products and storefront quickly. For example, if you’re going to sell repurposed blackberry phones you might want to make sure those keywords are in your storefront and URL – Www.repurposedBlackberries.com for example.

Building a niche storefront can be a fun and fulfilling way to make money. Research your idea and find a niche that has good demand and little competition. Decide how you want to set up your business and storefront and start making money online!

The recent economic recession is one of the most serious financial blows our world economy has taken in the last several decades. Its influence ranges from finance to real estate to online businesses to small businesses.While just about everyone’s affected, there are still many businesses that are thriving. How can you make sure you still do well in these tough economic times?

Here are a few tips.

Offer a Cost-Saving Option

When faced with choosing between either a cheaper option or a higher value option, many consumers today would choose to go with the cheaper option.

Instead of just selling your normal product line, consider creating a “lite” version for customers who still want to use your product but don’t want to spend all the money.

Starbucks is selling their coffee in packets instead of just ground beans for a fraction of the price. Cable companies are offering fewer channels. So on and so forth.

How can you offer cost-saving offers for your customers?

Go International

Have you considered shipping internationally or servicing international customers?

Hardest hit in the recent recession are the United States and the European Union. However, many Western countries like Australia, Canada and New Zealand still have very strong economies. In fact, all three countries have higher than USD valuations on their currencies at the time of this writing.

If your business is online, it can be as simple as changing your targeting, PPC and SEO techniques to target these countries. If you ship physical products, you’ll need to explore the various laws and regulations surrounding shipping products internationally.

Consider Part-Time Workers and Outsourcers

Try to cut back on full-time employees. Try to cut full-time employees to part time; if possible switch to outsourcers.

Downsizing isn’t easy for anyone. There’s the financial blow, the blow to pride and most importantly the pain we know we’re causing to the people being laid off.

Unfortunately, if the numbers just can’t justify having someone on full time, the only right move is to cut spending.

Growing Your Business Despite Tough Times

Though tough economic times do mean customers are spending less money, it also means your competition is likely facing the same issues.

You’ll have less competitors and weaker competition. More likely than not you won’t have new competitors opening new businesses.

In other words, you actually have a very unique opportunity. Your competition is weak; and if you can find some way to differentiate yourself you may be able to corner the market.

Try to find some sort of differentiating factor about your product or service that you can put on the market.

The recession isn’t an excuse to give up. Instead, it should be a rallying call. Treat it like a window of opportunity; as it very often can be just that.

Outsourcing is one of the most powerful tools in any entrepreneur’s toolbox for increasing their productivity, output and eventual profits.Most entrepreneurs start out doing everything themselves. This allows them to keep a pulse on everything in the business during the critical start-up process. Unfortunately, this attitude can also become detrimental in the long run.

The “I Can Do It Better” Dilemma

Most entrepreneurs generally feel like they can do a better job if they did it themselves than if they outsourced it. Even if this is true however, the critical question isn’t whether or not you can do a better job – but whether you should do the job at all.

Your job as the head of the organization is to grow your company. You bring home the bacon. As Michael Gerber, author of “E-Myth” put it, your job is to work “on” your business, not “in” it.

In the beginning, you’ll have to do both, but in the long run you’ll want to phase out of actual operations and outsource most of the manual work.

In other words, even if you could write better customer service emails, that doesn’t mean you should. Learn to think in processes and what needs to get done by a system as a whole, rather than what you personally need to get done.

What and When to Outsource

The first few things to outsource are:

1. Low-level tasks that take up time
2. Things that take up excessive amounts of your energy
3. Things that stress you out or you greatly dislike

By lightening the burden on both your time and energy, you’ll free up more time and emotional muscle to take on the real challenges in your business.

When Should You Start Outsourcing?

The real answer is “as soon as possible.” However, in a start-up situation, you’ll often be a bit strapped for cash in the beginning.

Start outsourcing as soon as you have positive cash flow coming into your business that isn’t immediately eaten up by essential business expenses.

Remember – outsourcing should actually make you money, not cost you money. If your output is ultimately worth $50 an hour but you’re spending your time on $10-an-hour tasks, then all the time you’d save by outsourcing for $10 will eventually translate into increased earnings.

Outsource Outside the Box

Don’t just outsource things inside your business. Consider outsourcing other things as well.

If your time is worth $50 an hour, why not pay someone $10 an hour to do your laundry, clean your house, buy your food, etc.?

It might seem like an extraneous expense, but again, every extra hour you can put into your business is more money earned at the end of the day.

Outsourcing is essentially the art of trading money for freeing up your time and the time of your essential people. Identify all the areas you can offload and take it off your plate as soon as you possibly can.

Content marketing is getting more and more important every day. People today are finding more and more content through social networks and less and less through search engines. That means that creating content people want to share is becoming ever more important.Here’s how to use content marketing to your advantage.

Build Your Personal Brand

At the end of the day, the only thing that travels with you after every job, deal or business venture is your personal brand.

A lot of people fail to consciously build their personal brands. Yet this is truly one of the most valuable assets you have.

By creating high quality, unique content for a certain market, you establish yourself as an expert. Finding jobs, getting business partners and even attracting investors for businesses gets much easier if you’re a known content publisher.

Build Trust with Your Customers

A customer would much rather trust their money with an industry leader who provides a lot of quality content than a site that’s just out there to sell a product.

There’s something about consistency that really builds trust. Anyone can put up a website to start selling a product, but if you’re producing high quality content for six months, people will instinctively trust you a lot more. They’ll think you’ll still be around to help them six months down the line.

Increase Your Viral Launching Pad

If you ever want to launch a viral campaign, you’ll have a base of users to start you off with.

Let’s say you want to launch a video contest, where users send in funny videos around a specific theme and the winner gets a prize.

If you hadn’t been publishing content, how would you find 100+ people to submit videos? It’d be very hard.

But if you’ve already been publishing content for months, you’ll already have a reader base you can launch your viral campaign from.

The “Secret” to Good Content Marketing

Great content marketing is really as simple as focusing on providing good content, consistently.

Good content should be completely original. If it’s based on your own personal experience, so much the better. People should feel like they can relate to your struggles and learn from your lessons when they read your material.

Don’t be disappointed if for the first few months your reader base takes a bit of time to build up. That’s how it works: reputations take time to become established. Fortunately, once your reputation is established, it also builds momentum and can grow very quickly.

The web is veering more and more towards creating good content. It’s not an overnight technique; so the sooner you get started, the sooner you’ll start reaping the benefits.

HubPages is a user generated content site. That means that you, and others, create the content on the site. Each piece of content you create becomes a hub or an individual web page.You can receive comments on the page, drive traffic to it, add content, and make money with your HubPage. In fact, if you’re interested in making money online but don’t want to build or manage your own website, a hub page may be the answer you’ve been looking for.

Here are just a few ways you can make money with HubPages.

AdSense

AdSense is Google’s publishing program. Sign up for AdSense; it’s free, and you can publish Google ads on your HubPages. Each time someone clicks on an ad, you earn money. Now Google has rules, like you can only have three ads on a page and you cannot ask people to click or call attention to the ads. So it’s important to know what the rules are before you sign up.

And like many monetization tools, the more content you create, the more money you’ll make. The same is true with AdSense. The more hubs you have, the more AdSense profit potential.

Affiliate Marketing

Another way to monetize your HubPages is to promote affiliate products. You can create product demonstrations and upload videos to your HubPage. You can create articles and include a call to action that links to an affiliate product or service. You can also write reviews or create comparison charts and let readers see which affiliate product is right for them.

Make sure your content is valuable rather than a blatant advertisement for your affiliate program. Present an unbiased review and/or an informative article to help your readers. You’ll make more money and earn more dedicated followers.

Sell Your Own Products or Services

You can also use HubPages to sell your own products or services. For example, if you write a book or create a home study course you can write and publish content that attracts and helps your audience. Then, include a call to action that drives traffic to your sales page.

For example, you might create a hub page on organizing your home with many different tips and articles on the subject. You can then tell readers that they can visit your website to purchase a book or course that can help them organize their home from top to bottom in 30 days.

Any niche topic can make money on HubPages. It is a growing site with more and more users every day. According to statistics, HubPages received around 42 million visits in December 2010 and over 90 million page views. There’s a lot of potential to make money without spending time, money or energy creating your own blog or website.

Want to increase your AdSense profits without necessarily increasing your traffic? While traffic is important, it takes time to build. Instead, use these smart ways of increasing profits to squeeze every last drop of revenue possible from every page view.Add a Recommended Next Page

The vast majority of content sites on the internet just provide one page of content, then end at the end of the page. If the user wants to see more content, they need to scroll up to the top of the page and click on a navigation bar.

A lot of your traffic will land on specific pages on your website from search engines. If that’s the case, they’re more likely to click away at the end of the article than to browse the rest of your site.

Instead of letting users just click away, one way you can really increase your pageviews is to add a recommended next page or next article to read at the bottom of every single article.

You’ll get a high percentage of people to click to the next page and see more ads, which results in more AdSense revenues.

Be Keyword Conscious

Yes, it’s important to write for real human beings first and foremost. However, when you’re writing your content, it’s also important to keep the AdSense spider in mind.

The AdSense spider uses the words you write in your content to try to figure out exactly what your site is about.

If your site is about “cash advances” but you never use the word “cash advances” or any related keywords in your article and instead you’re talking about “credit,” chances are you’ll confuse the Google bot.

Be keyword conscious. Sprinkle your keyword through your article so you get better ads picked up.

Be Meticulous with Channels

How many different banner placements have you tried? How many different colors, fonts and ad sizes?

Perhaps the most effective way to increase your AdSense revenue is to test more ad variations. You really never know what will work and what won’t work until you test, test, test.

Google AdSense allows you to create up to 200 channels and tag them to any ad unit. That means you can track just about any possible variation to your ad units you can think of and figure out what’s making money and what’s not.

Disallow Unrelated Advertisers

This is one of the most profitable yet underused techniques in AdSense. Every once in a while, browse your own site and see what kind of ads are showing up. Any time you see an ad that’s not relevant, disallow that advertiser from showing ads on your site.

Over time, this will really increase your CTR as more relevant ads are shown to your users.

These are a few smart, proven ways of boosting AdSense income without having to get more traffic.