The Fever Lever Center

There are many simple, infallible ways to earn income, and one of the surest ways is through marketing your business on the internet. When you learn basic internet marketing techniques, you’ll wonder why you haven’t already jumped on the bandwagon. When you think about it, the only things you’ll need to make money is a vision of what you want out of life and the wisdom and energy to put your ideas into motion.

Basic internet marketing techniques can teach us how to acquire wealth, and an important factor is to provide something the public needs (or think they need) whether it is a product, a service, information or something else entirely - there are many choices.

Every business has a goal of making money, and every business has something to sell. You will need knowledge and a product before you begin your internet marketing. You may need at least a small amount of capital to start your business, although the outlay could be relatively small if you are selling information or services as opposed to a tangible product.

You will need to develop a web site for advertising and informational purposes; if you have the ability to do it yourself, so much the better. If you don’t then consider one of my business partners Plug-In Profit Sites, they are an excellent way to start out in online business.

Like any other business, internet marketers need sales leads. Retail merchants who set up offices or shops are able to buy lists of potential customers, or they may ask their employees and acquaintances to provide them with lists of names to get their business started and begin making sales. The world of internet marketing utilises marketing leads, which you can purchase from reputable companies.

Internet marketing is a very competitive market, and a large portion of your time should be spent generating new marketing leads to drive your sales. You can generate these through your own advertising or by growing and developing an opt-in e-mail list of potential prospects to which you can send your offers.

New services and products are introduced over the internet every day as fast as a speeding bullet. Some of the reasons for these new developments can be attributed to market conditions, new technology, improved search engines, or totally new concepts or products. There are services that will help you develop your internet marketing leads and attract new clients, but use them with caution and always make sure your leads are double opt-in to avoid any potential spam complaints.

One of the most common ways to attract new customers is to develop an email list. Although email marketing may not be as effective as it once was due to software that filters out “spam,” it does still work. One of the best features of email advertising is that it is a free method of getting the word out that you’re in business. The response to emails is still good when it does reach the intended party. Incentives such as freebies of reports, programs or products entice potential buyers to read the email.

You can see how I do this on my website http://www.asuccesfullhomebusiness4u.com. I capture signups to my newsletter through a signup form and this produces me a list of targeted prospects to which I send my newsletter and any hot offers I decide to endorse.

An important part of email marketing is that it can be repeated again and again. You can start out with a small list of marketing and sales leads for your online business, and then build from a few email recipients until you have established a loyal clientele. In addition to generating email marketing leads, you may want to consider a couple of other methods of “getting the word out.”

Another internet marketing technique involves utilizing pay-per-click (referred to as PPC) advertising, whereby participants bid on keywords and pay a varying sum of money every time someone clicks on you advert. The two biggest PPC services are Google Adwords and Overture, but it’s definitely worth your while investigating smaller services as the competition is less and prices cheaper. A click is click, as long you hyper target your market it doesn’t matter where it comes from.

An excellent way to inform others about your business is to join one of the many forums related to marketing. You can post information, ask questions and receive answers from other internet marketers, it is also a good way to gain name recognition and credibility within you niche market, which in turn will gain you extra traffic to your website and should increase your sales.

When you begin your internet marketing endeavours, be sure to establish enough marketing leads to sustain your business and make it profitable, develop a good internet marketing strategy early on in your planning stages. An excellent course on how to market your business online is Cory Rudl’s #1 Training Course and provides everything you need to know about marketing your business online.

Copyright © Ian Canaway, A Successful Home Business 4 U

(Feel free to use this article online and in your email newsletters as long as you leave it intact and do not alter it in anyway. The byline and biography must remain in the article.)

Ian Canaway is a home business entrepreneur and the owner of http://www.asuccesfullhomebusiness4u.com and also a home business based blog at http://www.ahomebusinessblog4u.blogspot.com; providing high quality information and resources. Check us out Now!

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Before we move on to the definition of network marketing we must understand what are the ways one can make money. There are only three traditional ways you can make money. The fourth one is a relatively new concept of Network marketing.

1. The Work model

This is an age old concept. You work for another business owner and get paid. In this model you do much of the work but you get paid only a small amount which you were contracted for. You have no linkage to the profits you created for the business owner. You also get laid off the job if the business owner believes you are no more useful to his enterprise.

2. Traditional Business Model

Here you are the business owner. You require putting in a lifetime of work, investments and commitment to see good money. Your constant involvement in the business is a pre requisite. All profits are distributed to stakeholders like the financiers, stockholders, employees and whatever is left after taxes is yours to take home.

However the moment you retire, your business may no longer exist or it may not be that well managed bringing to naught your lifetimes of work.

3. Franchise Business Model

The franchisee buys a ready made business brand name and makes a copy of the original business model. Pays a large upfront fee and makes all the investment on infrastructure and stocks etc. He also makes a commitment to pay a certain percent of profits to the franchise owners every year. Though safer than creating a new business, franchise model offers very limited profits on a huge investment.

4. Network Marketing Model

Start anywhere. Even from your home. Even if you are homeless! The business grows organically. Income is distributed by the principal company to all distributors according to a multi level compensation formula that pays you for your sales as well as sales of others in your team down many levels and as wide as you can dream. You earn from your own efforts and efforts of others. As your team grows, your business grows and your income grows. You are not limited to any geographic area and can operate wherever company has a presence.

There is a long list of successful entrepreneurs including president of countries who have subscribed to this new model of business.

However a word of warning. If your knowledge about this form of business is not adequate, you are likely to fall victim to the unscrupulous elements in the business and likely to get ripped off big and land in debt. As in all business there are enough fly by night operators operating through your best friend or relative who are themselves an unknowing victim and may suck you in to the whirlpool of losses and failures.

R.G. Srinivasan is a Certified Trainer, Writer and Author with more than two decades of managerial experience. He also writes a regular blog on home-business resources which you may check out at http://www.home-businessresources.blogspot.com for online marketing tips, resources, business opportunities and online promotional strategies

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Marketing to women entrepreneurs is not difficult. You just have to follow six easy, but essential, principles.

As of 2004, there are an estimated 10.6 million privately-held firms in the U.S. that are 50% or more women-owned, accounting for nearly half (48%) of all privately-held firms. These firms generate 2.46 trillion in sales and employ 19.1 million people nationwide according to the April 2004 biennial update on women-owned businesses by the Center for Women’s Business Research. The report was based on U.S. Census Bureau data.

I’m sure it comes as no surprise to you to learn that selling goods and products to women (especially women business owners) is different than selling to men. If you’d like to do business with this huge segment of the business world, what do you need to know?

In my business as a marketing consultant for women entrepreneurs, I’ve discovered six easy, but essential, principles for doing business with women business owners. They are:

- Start small.

- Look at the big picture.

- Sweat the small stuff.

- Less is more, as long as it’s quality.

- Build relationships through education.

- Stay visible and involved.

Now let’s look at these principles a little more closely.

Start small.

Women business owners (WBOs) tend to be very cautious. They make very careful decisions that are well-thought-out. Because of this, WBOs will generally purchase something small or hire a consultant to complete one project before committing to an ongoing relationship and a huge investment. Although this isn’t always cost-effective, it gives them the opportunity to try the product or service before they invest significant dollars.

Sally Falkow, branding strategist with Falkow, Inc. in Pasadena, Calif., agrees. “Women business owners have a tendency to ’stick their toes in the water.’ Many of the women business owners I deal with are eager to learn about how the Internet can expand their business. But they do it on a gradient. This way they can cope with the new technologies and get one aspect under their belt at a time.”

Look at the big picture.

Studies show that women-owned businesses have a better success rate than those owned by men. Their businesses generally grow slowly and steadily, and they don’t spend money carelessly.

For instance, when Jo DeMars, president of DeMars & Associates, Ltd., a dispute resolution firm in Waukesha, Wis., began her business, she borrowed office space, purchased used furniture, and only spent money if she absolutely had to do so. She always paid her bills on time and was very careful about who she hired.

“When I got client work, I wouldn’t hire for the position until I had the contract signed,” says DeMars. She now has 27 employees and contracts with Ford Motor Company and Daimler Chrysler in Calif., among others. Looking at the big picture helped her stay on track.

Sweat the small stuff.

If you get the little stuff right, women will be less concerned about the big stuff. That’s because women are into details. They want to know everything about a product or service before they buy it-not only how it works and what it costs, but also what kind of support can be expected and how long it will last.

Gathering information is an ongoing process for women. How are you dressed? Did you shine your shoes? Were you genuine and honest? Have you done what you said you would do? Do you send professional follow-up notes? Does your office run smooth as silk? All this makes a difference for women.

“As a woman business owner, I not only look for this in my vendors, but at Rowena’s we only hire people who are detail minded. In a retail and wholesale foods business like ours, focusing on details is absolutely essential,” says Rowena Fullinwider, president of Rowena’s, a gourmet cake and foods company in Norfolk, Va.

Less is more, as long as it’s quality.
Women business owners often have an overflowing plate. They usually work many long hours building their businesses, while also taking care of children, a husband, parents and pets; volunteering for charities; and managing the family’s social calendar. So they don’t have time to spend lots of time researching and analyzing everything they buy.

As a business owner who sells mostly to women, Sandra Weaver of Fragrant Expressions at Dayton Farmer’s Market in Dayton, Va., agrees wholeheartedly with this idea. “This is true not just for women business owners but for all women. I have spent a lot of time researching what women need so I can help them feel they can give themselves permission to nurture and express themselves in healthy and appropriate ways,” she says. “Women don’t have a lot of time to shop. They want good buys, convenient shopping, and also honesty. So in my shop, if you’re not happy with it for any reason, you bring it back.”

Because women are so busy, offering a smaller selection of quality products and services will appeal to WBOs. They want to make the right choice without having to wade through all of the wrong ones. The way to a woman’s heart and purse strings is through trust.

Build relationships through education.
A consultative sales style works well for women. It’s important for them to have an equal relationship with vendors and service providers who help the WBO learn what she needs to know. If you can educate, advise and service her business without patronizing her, you’ll be a star.

“I’ve learned through life and business that preparation avoids unnecessary risks,” says Krystyna Bublick, owner of Loveabye.com and Krystyna Virginia Beach Jewelry Creations in Virginia Beach, Va. “Making careful decisions raises my comfort level of success. I’m not afraid of risk, thoughtful risk. Knowledge and expert advice is critical. I know I can not be an expert in all fields, so I build in security by consulting people who are. This minimizes my financial outlay in the long run.”

Stay visible and involved.

Women are loyal creatures. Once you are successful at selling to a woman business owner, you are very likely to keep selling to her for years to come. Of course, this means it often takes a long time to make your first sale.

She will need to know that you are always there, but not always there to sell. So get involved with business organizations to which she belongs, like the Chamber of Commerce, National Association of Women Business Owners, BNI, and the Working Women’s Forum or your local women’s group. Be an active member and prove that you do what you say you will do. She’ll begin to trust you and look to you for her buying needs. And once you win her over, you can keep putting those checks in the bank.

Lois Carter Fay, APR, is a 30-year veteran in the P.R. and marketing field. She now produces three marketing ezines, Brainy Tidbits, Brainy Flash, and Success Secrets of Women Entrepreneurs. All are free. She’s also the co-author with Jim Wilson of “Sales Success! Strategies for Women,” a quick-to-read ebook containing 52 easy-to-implement sales tips. The ezines and ebook are available through her websites.

Visit http://www.MarketingIdeaShop.com or http://www.WomenMarketing.com to learn more sales and marketing ideas and subscribe. Claim your free special report when you subscribe.

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Affluence is an interesting word. To some it means having the discretionary income to take a year-long global vacation. To others the implication of affluence or luxury may be less ambitious. But to marketers, affluence has been the Holy Grail, representing consumers with money to burn.

Today, “luxury” constitutes a $400 billion market and is estimated to become a one trillion dollar market by 2010. According to the Luxury Marketing Council, the wealthiest 10 percent of U.S. households have an average income of $270,000, an average net worth totaling nearly $3 million, and more than $1 million in average financial assets. More than 1.2 million households have a net worth of more than $5 million. By all standards, the luxury market is the most robust and while regular retail sales have increased between four and six percent annually, the luxury market has grown between 20 and 30 percent in the last decade. What’s more household income for the top 20 percent of the wealthiest households is up 70 percent in the last 20 years.

But, thus far, this potentially lucrative market has been elusive to most marketers. It used to be that affluent consumers bought premium items, middle-class consumers bought value-priced items, and lower-income consumers bought strictly based on price. Simple, right? Not any more. Today, many people are living beyond their means, and millionaires shop at Wal-Mart.

What’s more, traditional prospecting is less effective than ever before. Everyday, consumers are faced with thousands of images, from billboards to banners. Marketers are faced with decreasing budgets and a mandate to do more with less, and looking for new ways to reach elusive markets.

But today, there is a way to effectively identify and target potential affluent buyers. It starts with an understanding of the capacity to spend - a reliable and important indicator of the likelihood to buy because it’s focused on discretionary income. Discretionary income refers to money that is left after consumers take care of essentials such as food, clothing, and shelter.

Two households that both have $250,000 in income and that are in the same life stage may in fact have substantially different spending power and patterns depending on their tastes, attitudes, where they live, and their financial asset base. These are the factors that determine what each consumer can or can’t afford to buy and what they choose to spend on. The fact is that “birds of a feather” do not always “flock together.”

To be successful, marketers must focus on a combination of assets and discretionary income. It all starts with an understanding of a prospect’s ability to purchase. Without this, no amount of persuasive copy, award-winning graphics, or hard-to-beat offers will yield results. Typical gross household income measures tend to be unreliable and do not effectively target consumers. In addition, most income selects stop at $100,000 - that is, all households with income of more than $100,000 are categorized together. It is simply an unrealistic measure in terms of what people are likely to spend on.

With that in mind, targeting methods must identify access to money - that is, discretionary funds, regardless of income, in order to qualify current and future prospects. Useful tools segment, prioritize and target both current and prospective customers based on their true ability to buy, viewing wealth based in part on liquid asset factors, not just income.

Armed with more specific information, marketers can better target customers, locate more individuals with similar profiles, all with an understanding of each consumer’s true ability and propensity to spend. With the advance knowledge of a consumer’s capacity to buy discretionary products and by customizing offers and marketing messages to be highly relevant for each audience segment, marketers can more effectively utilize their marketing budget to reach truly worthwhile prospects and increase their marketing ROI.

Echelon Targeting provides a superior measure of consumer spending power to consumer goods manufacturers, retailers, and service providers of all types. Consumer marketers can use Echelon’s systems to gain intelligence on customer and prospect discretionary spending capacity and purchase propensity in order to improve their segmentation, targeting, and marketing strategies.

To learn how to capture the unrealized value of your customers and prospects, or to arrange a test of an in-house file, please contact us at 866-788-9677, e-mail us at jkoppenhaver@echelontargeting.com. or visit our web site at echelontargeting.com.

Jim Koppenhaver is Group Vice President for Echelon Targeting. Echelon Targeting provides segmentation and targeting solutions focused on finding consumers with discretionary spending power for both for profit and nonprofit organizations. As a division of IXI Corporation, Echelon Targeting offers products and services based on the proprietary wealth-measurement techniques of IXI. Jim Koppenhaver can be reached at 847-808-7652 or via e-mail at jkoppenhaver@echelontargeting.com

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Let me get right to the point. The single most powerful small business marketing tool on the planet is a marketing system.

But … when I talk about a marketing system I am not referring to those academic exercises found in college marketing books.

A marketing system by my way of thinking is a simple (in many cases one page) document that specifically answers who you are, what you do, who needs it, how you plan to grab them by the throat, when you plan to do it and how you plan to pay for it…in a way that everyone in your organization, network, and client base can clearly understand.

So, let’s break it down into some simple steps.

1) Narrow Your Focus - create a description of your ideal client. Describe them as though they are sitting across the desk from your at this moment. Define only the market that you know needs what you offer and values what you have to offer. It is just as important to understand who you don’t want as a client.

2) Find and Communicate Your Core Difference - Even if your make it up, you’ve got to find something that makes your business stand out from the pack. Once you do, you’ve got to build your entire marketing program around this difference. Is it red trucks, is it an unheard of guarantee, is it a very specific market niche. You can’t stand out trying to be all things to all people.

3) Package Your Business - Look for ways to build your unique difference into the experience your client or prospect has with your firm. Everything about your firm should communicate and deliver your unique promise. Package your services as products, communicate your unique process, name your service offerings.

4) Educate - Throw away the sales brochures and create marketing materials and web site content that clearly speaks to your ideal client and gives proof that your indeed uniquely qualified to solve their problems. Create case studies, testimonial sheets, client lists, process description, service descriptions, the story of why you started your business.

5) Install the Lead Generation Trio - Advertising that generates permission, public relations that provide proof and referral systems that guarantee trust. Each of these three lead generating tactics works hand in hand to create a non stop flow of highly qualified leads.

6) Automate and Dominate - Once you start to create a flow of leads let technology do the heavy qualifying and selling for you. Ezines, email, blogs, web sites, white paper delivery, subscription lists - all must be automated in order to most effectively communicate as consistently as is necessary in today’s advertising message onslaught.

7) Live by a Calendar - Create the system and then work the system. Do whatever you must to make sure that you do at least one marketing activity every single day. Create a monthly calendar and give each month a marketing system theme. Get everyone in your organization involved - put the calendar in a very public place.

Copyright 2005 John Jantsch

John Jantsch is a marketing coach and creator of Duct Tape Marketing. You can find out more about the Ultimate Marketing System at: http://www.ducttapemarketing.com/Ultimate-Marketing-System.htm

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Reciprocal link exchange field is very big. And everything big has its advantages and pitfalls; to avoid pitfalls when exchanging reciprocal links with your online business partners it is vital to know several big NO’s of this procedure.

Do not think of automatic reciprocal link exchange as of simple link swap, because low-value link swap will not help you with ranking and real targeted traffic from search engine.

Your web site is your online business. Every link on your site is an official business contact exposure. You are ready to share traffic with this partner and you are sure that your site visitors are strongly motivated to learn more from getting to this site. Set the higher standards for your business, and this will push you up.

Having changed your philosophy of manual or automatic reciprocal link exchange, pay attention to traditional traps and mistakes during link exchange.

1. Accept all links during link exchange.

Very big mistake. Even not talking about the reputation of your site in the eyes of professional online entrepreneurs. With time search engines will succeed to reaching better keyword relevancy in their searches. This means that soon it might be possible to wisely sort out the relevant and irrelevant sites-partners on keyword base.

Relevancy proves that you care about your site visitors.

2. Look only at PR of page during link exchange.

Google PR is good for link exchange, but not more. If you see brand fresh web site asking to exchange link with you, don’t reject from PR reasons only.

If you see that this web site can have big future, that its offer will be interesting for the community, and this is your niche - do the exchange.

And if the web site is good, very soon you will see your partner ranking much better with Google.

3. Be afraid to exchange links because the leader has many links.

You are in the tough niche and see that your #1 has over 1,000 links pointing to the site. Don’t get into bottle because with good link exchange plan you will succeed. Don’t expect very fast jump in rankings with 1,000 links competitors, but 2-3 months can be enough.

Quite often kings of the hill do not do everything possible to stay their. You can find extra good niche for establishing business contacts and exchange links. That would be extra traffic from more real sites-partners, and extra links.

Don’t be afraid to grow.

4. Exchange hundreds of links daily.

Making your site grow with over 100+ is risky. That is why do not jump on the trains leading to thousands of links in days. Search engines can de-index the web site for such bad behavior.

It is unnatural for online businesses to get thousands of value business partners daily. That is why search engines feeling the smell of suspicious links’ growth can lose the friendly approach to your site for violating the reasonable limits.

Invest into quality and value, not in the lump number of links.

5. Not using proper anchor text in the link.

Very sad my even today most of the people do not pay attention to the anchor of their URL during link exchange. Anchor text (or link text or link title sometimes) is a signal for search engines to know the niche of this link.

If you choose proper keyword that fairly represent the major of your niche, and put this keyword or keyphrase in the anchor, this will help search engines to make more targeted people seeing this link.

Give new value to your links and your link will return that value many times to your site. Use professional strategies and reciprocal link exchange tools to bring your link exchange to new level.

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