Small Business Information

Who wouldn’t like to increase their sales by 500%? Well there have been some reports of some very creative use of video that have achieved increases just like that but … and there’s always a but …

It’s not simply a case of shooting some video and uploading it to your site … there’s more to it than that and here is an interesting place to start if you’re thinking of including some video on your website. Be sure top watch the video but don’t try it at home … your wife might kill you.

So you’re thinking of selling your products to Baby Boomers and you’re going to give it a try using social networking?

Well … you could be missing most of your target audience. A study conducted in the United States last month found that only 22% of the baby boomers who were surveyed used social networking sites.

A further 26% of respondents said that they didn’t use social networking sites but they might at some time in the future. A whopping 53% of those surveyed said that they don’t use social networking sites at all.

Many respondents said that they just don’t see the point of social networking sites. Of course these figures are likely to change in the future.

Some of us have come into this industry and built our online businesses from the ground up. Others prefer to take the shortest possible route to what they see as success and so they buy an existing website that’s already making money.

But are those websites really making as much money as you think? Here’s an interesting story about a website that looked as though it was making a heap of money but a large cashflow was quite deceiving.

If you haven’t heard of Twitter before … and you’re involved in marketing … then you’re missing something very important. Twitter isn’t just a place to stay in touch with people … it’s a place to market your products and a place to learn too.

There are some very cluey marketers over there doing business every day and it has a reach like you wouldn’t believe … and it’s getting bigger every day. Even Nasa spacecraft have a presence on Twitter.

But getting out there into the Twitter world isn’t just a case of joining up and then having contact with everyone. You actually have to choose which individuals you will follow and some of those will then elect to follow you … that’s when you can have a real dialogue with those people and begin to learn as well.

So how do you get started? The first thing is to head over to Twitter and sign up. Then come back here so that you can follow this link to my Twitter page. Once you’re on my Twitter page you will be able to see who I’m following and you’ll be able to join those that interest you.

But take a tip … before you begin to start trying to market on Twitter spend a lot of time getting to know how it really works and learning from the guys who are already doing well over there - otherwise you’ll end up wasting your time.

There was a time not all that long ago when sales of digital cameras were beginning to slide. Many thought that mobile phones that had the ability to take photos and videos were taking the place of digital cameras but that belief may have been a little premature.

It seems that shipments of digital cameras to the United States actually rose by 22% in the third quarter of this year with Canon, Sony and Kodak leading the charge.

You can read more about it here

In the current economic climate it’s only natural that affiliate marketers might be wondering what this holiday season has in store for them. According to some pundits sales this season are going to be even better than last year.

Once again they suggest that high petrol prices, crowded malls, the convenience of shopping from home etc. etc. will all push more people to buying online. Let’s all hope that they’re right.

I guess we won’t really know until Black Friday rolls around.

Psst … wanna know the secret to making more sales? It’s hidden in these three sentences:

“Writers using short words and short sentences tend to sell more.

It is easy to think that if you just do more and add more value that you will make more money, but sometimes doing more just means simplifying and clarifying your words, or publishing in a more friendly format. If you want people to take action, to believe they can afford it, making them feel confident and comfortable works”

You’ll find the rest of the post that this quote comes from right here

It’s been a rather hectic couple of weeks as we deal with an increasing workload and a move to new premises but finally there’s a few minutes to do a brain doodle here.

During these last few weeks we were approached by one of our clients who had us previously employed us top build their website for them. If you’re interested you can see it at Aquavue - the best cafe in Hervey Bay.

They wanted to know what we thought of an offer they had received from a company that wanted to enlist them as affiliates.

For a start our client sells his products on his site so he’s hardly going to use it as a vehicle to market someone else’s product but we decided to take a closer look at the company making the offer anyway.

Here is what we found:

1. They didn’t show you the terms of service until you had already signed up and gained access to the affiliates area
2. They paid 10% commission - but buried further down in the terms was a note that they only paid 8% if their product was purchased using a credit card (how else could anyone pay online for what they were selling you may well ask)
3. Every time they sent you a cheque they deducted a further $2.00 for the cost of issuing the cheque and posting it to you.
4. The title of your page had to include their name - a nice little branding exercise that was sure to work for them and make them look as though they owned our client’s website.

Would you trust a merchant like that?

You can probably guess what our recommendation was.

Lots of affiliate marketers start out small, they work from the dining room table or use an old box as a desk with something even worse as a chair simply because they can’t afford anything better. Unfortunately they don’t realise that starting in that way can actually be counter-productive but when money is tight what can they do?

Well if that’s the situation you find yourself in you can always go to freecycle.org because you may just find someone in your area who is trying to give away what you need. You’ll also find that it’s not just limited to the United States - there are local freecycle.org groups across the world.

So have a look, there may be somebody in your area giving away exactly what you want.

A hat tip to Build a Solo Practice, LLC for the link.

Why do people search online? You’ll find some interesting figures here

My thanks to Search Engine Land for the lead to the research paper