5 Best Local Business Marketing Strategies

As a local business you have to learn how to use the internet to your advantage. If you aren't using the internet to bring in more customers you are missing out big time. These days people pull out their mobile device when it comes to finding a local business in their area that has what they are looking for. 

The days of using the Yellow Pages are quickly dwindling, 54% of people use the Internet over the phone book to search for a local plumber, florist, restaurant, mechanic, etc., sometimes just to get a phone number and other times to do research on the required services offered in their area. 

According to SMDigital Partners: 

  • 74% of all web users perform local searches
  • 100 + million people use Google Maps from mobile phones to find local business every month
  • 66% of people use online local search.
  • 61% of all local searches result in purchases
  • 82% of local searches result in offline actions, including, an in-store visit, phone call or purchase

A recent study from comScore revealed that 78% of local mobile searches resulted in offline purchases. If you aren't popping up in local search they will head over to your competition, this is guaranteed. 

Here are 5 simple things you can incorporate in your local business marketing strategy to help get more people in the door. 

1.  Create A Local Business Profile In The Top Three Search Engines

This is by far one of the easiest things you can do as far as local search marketing goes. All three top search engines, Bing, Google & Yahoo, allow businesses to create a local search business profile. This is absolutely free and it will take you all of 10 minutes. Make sure to include a phone number so that it can show up in search results under your business name. Go do it now!

2.  Get Mobile

These days everyone has a mobile phone. They use it to do all of their searching and other online activities. If your business can't handle mobile users you are in a world of trouble. Your business has to be able to come up in mobile search. Otherwise you will miss out on a ton of potential new customers. 

3.  Optimize Your Website Using Key Local Terms

When the search engines crawl your site they are looking for keywords that help them better understand what your website is all about. Always use the location of your business in the title tags. Include the full address include city and state. 

4.  Get Involved With Social Media Marketing

Well over a billion people are using Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter at any given moment. Think some of your customers are hanging out on these sites? You better believe they are. And as a small business you need to have a strong presence on both of these sites. When it comes to local marketing this is one of the best ways to do it. Build up your following and you will always have customers coming through your doors.  Monitor your reputation on Yelp, the leading consumer review site where thousands of people review various businesses. 

5.  Use Paid Local Search

Paid local search allows you to only receive visitors that are in your region. You can actually tell the search engines the area you want to receive visitors from. This gives you complete control over where your visitors come from. So instead of paying to have visitors come to your site who are less likely to purchase from you, you can only get visitors who are in your local area and are looking for what you have to offer.   Using paid local search will save you a great deal of money. It will also help you increase your conversions as you are only presenting your offers to those who you know are most likely interested. 

And there you have it, 5 of the best local business marketing strategies for small businesses. Use all of them and watch your rankings and profits start to soar.


Stop Wasting Time. Start Earning Money.

 Watch this Free Webclass Now If ....

You own your own business

You would like to own your own business

You find yourself wasting a lot of time on social media

You are serious about building a successful online business

You would like to make money on social media instead of spending time on it


Even if you are a complete beginner, short on time or worried you do not have enough money or experience, if you are willing to give it a go, there will be a way to reach your dreams 

Spots for this webinar is filling up fast - Limited Seats Available!

This FREE web class will show you

* How to use the same time you have available in the day to build your online business instead of using social media for entertainment or worse just scrolling through it mindlessly

* How to use other people's products for free and then use that to promote and earn commissions 

* Copy the exact secrets of successful online entrepreneurs so you too can be successful without the need for a big budget or any experience with social media.

I don't want you to waste your time, so ONLY IF the above information resonates with you you'll find the training useful.

So if you are ready and eager to know more, go ahead and watch the training now !  

3 Steps To Make An Infographic And Top 5 Free Infographic Creation Sites

 Over the last couple of years infographics have become more and more popular. That's because they provide marketers with a great way to get their message in front of the masses. And while many people have jumped on the infographics bandwagon, very few have been successful with it. Most online marketers believe they can just post an infographic and the audience will just magically appear. 

This isn't the case. Your infographic has to be appealing and provide valuable information for it to be effective. So with this article I am going to share with you 3 simple steps to how you can create an infographic that will help you promote your products and services.

I will also show you 5 sites where you can make your own infographic or have one created for a great price. 

Step 1

The first thing you need to do is think of an idea. You can't have a good infographic without a good idea. So sit down and think. Make a list of possible ideas. You can also look online at other infographics for inspiration.  Below is an example of what an infographic looks like.



Infographic Example

Step 2

Gather the data that will be used for the infographic. This can be statistics, or snippets of information that pertain to your subject. You need to make sure the information on your infographic is accurate. Provide the facts and bring it all to a conclusion. Make everything simple and easy to read. 

Step 3

Step three is to create a skeleton of how you want everything to flow. This will be your initial draft and will really get the ball rolling. Figure out what you want at the top, in the middle and at the bottom of the image. 

Step 4

Step four is to actually create the infographic. Be careful with the colours as you don't want to overdo it. Stick with the pastels and bright hues. These colours tend to be eye friendly. It might seem like a challenge at first, but, it will get easier once you learn the program that you will choose to make the infographic.

Top 5 Infographic Creation Sites

Now that you know the 3 simple steps to creating an effective inforgraphic let’s talk about the top 5 sites you can use to create your very own. 

1.  Easel.ly 

This is a pretty cool little program that allows you to create your own infographic. You can either do it with a blank canvas of you can use one of their templates. 

2.  Infogr.am

This one is very easy to use and it comes with five free templates you can use to create infographics. 

3.  Piktochart.com 

With Piktochart you can sign up for a free account or a paid one. I think you will be pleasantly surprised with what you are able to do with the free account. However, if you want to use more than six images you will need to upgrade to a paid account. 

4. Visual.ly

This is great for those who have no design background. You can create amazing infographics in a matter of seconds. 

5.  PowerPoint

This is not an infographic creating site, but, Microsoft PowerPoint is a powerful program where you can create magnificent infographics and images that you can use to place on to it. PowerPoint also has graphics built in, charts and various Smart Art that can be very useful in creating a gorgeous graphic to display your data.



Three Things You Should Do In 2022 To Earn More, Succeed More, And Enjoy More

Impacting thousands of people in the days gone by used to be the special reserve of what used to be called multi-national corporations but today, thanks to the internet, a kid in her mother's kitchen table can reach thousands if not millions by simply pressing send or publish on her iPhone or laptop. Technology has evened the playing field so you have no excuse if you have not yet joined the information superhighway.

After over 25 years as a banking "professional" I started dabbling online in 2020, thanks to COVID-19 pandemic and what I've learned has changed my perspective on how to positive impact more lives, earn more, succeed more and enjoy more. Success, unlike beauty, is not in the eye of the beholder. Success as Jim Rohn says, leaves clues. In this regard I'm only concerned with financial success. When you're financially successful, it reflects in where you live, the type of car you drive and the causes you support.

To be financially successful, you have to earn by the minute or hour or days not every thirty days (or weekly as in America) as an employee even if you're the chief executive officer of your organization. The biggest names out there earn by the minute. And when you earn by the minute you can enjoy more, like spending more time with your loved ones, going on vacation together, reading good books and supporting the less privileged.


Image by congerdesign from Pixabay


Here are the three things I would do to earn more, succeed more and enjoy more in 2022 and beyond if you asked for my opinion and willing to pay me to coach you but you can get them here all for free. I believe you already know that you should be operating online, and if you don't know, put on your running shoes and run helter-skelter in search of who can help you learn that. Having clarified that position, here are the three things you should do:

1. Build Your Audience

In the online world, audience is your customers. If you want to succeed beyond your wildest dreams in 2022 build and grow your audience. Again, if you want to succeed online beyond your wildest dreams in 2022 focus single-mindedly on building your audience. I'm not just talking about audience, I'm talking about customers who are willing to put their hands in their pocket and pay you for impacting their lives.

Building your audience or growing your customer base is something that every man, woman and child aspiring to make it big online should instinctively know but many don't get it. While it's obvious to the cognoscenti, it's not always obvious to the jaded beginner. Rather than jumping mindlessly trying to do a thousand things, do just one thing in 2022 - build your audience.

The more things change, the more they remain the same. From the time of the industrial revolution to the present day, the only way to grow your business remains capturing ever more satisfied customers you can convert to raving fans. No other thing matters. Having customers salivating for what you have to offer is so obvious that gurus like Edward Deming, John Juran, Philip Crosby, Tom Peters and a host of other gurus have pontificated on it and written tens of books for over half a century.

Organizations have responded by setting up Customer Service Departments, installing huge and expensive Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems and spending millions on training yet nothing much has changed. The more they spend the more their service deteriorates because it's not about systems but attitude of people towards customers.

So as an online entrepreneur, if you want to succeed sustainably over the long haul move away from saying and get on with doing - focus on building audience and turning them into raving fans by doing everything you can to make their lives better. You can do this by enlightening them on more productive ways to achieve their goals, by sharing your experience how you overcame adversity, by educating them how to set up their money making machine, by sharing expertise how to be more result oriented and by showing them how to do things with more ease through automation.

Some gurus may advice you to begin with a product and not audience. For your online success, know that audience and products are the two sides of the same coin. However, you need just one product to succeed but you need thousands of customers to reach a tipping point. Your product doesn't have to be great, it doesn't have to be perfect, it doesn't have to be excellent from day one. It just has to serve a purpose. It should be able to take your customer from Point A to Point B. You can always come back and tweak it later on as you build momentum. But without audience your product will remain an orphan. So focus on building and growing an audience.

If you do it right, having a product does not even matter because your audience will at some point ask you if you have a product that can solve their problem A, B, or C to offer them. You can then tweak your existing product or build an entirely new one to add more value to their lives. The most successful online gurus like Brendon Burchard, Marie Forleo, Natalie Ellis, Gloria Atanmo to mention a few all know this and it's not a secret. Indeed, they preach it and if you want to succeed in 2022 and beyond, you'd better listen.

So again, focus on building an audience. Build relationships day and night using all available channels. Be generous because generosity is the number one currency of the internet. Have your perspective. Know that there is nothing people want online that they can't get through Google, YouTube and other search engines. But they might not have the confidence to try them out and they might not understand the context because there are so many viewpoints. That is where you come in - to provide clarity. Help your Audience build self-confidence and clarity because people are on different points on their life's journey so what works for Mr. A might not work for Mrs. B. By providing clarity, you position yourself to attract more prospects you can then turn into customer thereby positioning you to earn more, succeed more and enjoy more over the long haul.

2. Earn daily rather than monthly?

While the majority of people earn monthly because they are in paid employment, do you know you can earn daily or by the hour or even by the minute if you knew what to do online? The majority of people who know nothing about online business believe it's impossible to earn daily, talk less of earning by the hour. They can't just fathom how that can be done yet there are thousands earning by the minute because they have set up their systems on auto-pilot.

Let's say you hate earning daily, why not position yourself to earn at least once every five days? By so doing your earning power will go up by a factor of six. And the good news is that you don't have to know state governor, you need not be "connected"; all you need is a laptop. And more importantly you don't have to work six times or thirty times harder. It gets even better if you can earn while you sleep. And because you're not into anything illegal, you can sleep with both of your eyes closed.

If you're an employee and living in a country like Nigeria, where I reside, you're earning once every thirty days, and to say the least, you're cheating yourself. If you're sceptical about what I'm saying I quite understand. I would have felt the same way when I was working as a lowly paid bank worker. Then I thought I was on top of the world. How wrong I was!

The scales finally fell off my eyes when I left paid employment to try my hands on management consulting, which had always been my dream. The first thing I did was to engage a coach and he showed me various ways I could make a living online. What he showed me exploded my perspective but I was still sceptical because it sounded too good to be true. Despite investing quite a huge sum in training, coaching and website development, I gave up after 12 weeks and went back to knocking doors as a struggling management consultant I was accustomed to because everything looked so complicated.

The decision to go back to my familiar territory set me back over seven years until the COVID-19 pandemic hit in 2020. As millions of people from all over the world, I was locked indoors and I had no choice but revisit what the guru taught me. I applied one simple strategy and it exploded my earnings. Suddenly I became a "guru" in my own necks of the wood. All I had to do was to learn the Basics how to grow my audience, how to use social media the right way, how to build relationships, how to create products and so on. Once I learnt the Basics I realised online business was not as complicated as I thought it was. I wish I knew how to earn daily twenty years ago.

If you're an employee earning income once every thirty days you can make 2022 your best year ever by learning by the side how you could earn at least once every five days for a start. This calls for an open mindset, curiosity and linking up with a coach to show you how things work online. You must also have the self-confidence to understand that if things don't work the world will not come to an end.

3. Take Action


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The third and final thing you should do to earn more, succeed more and enjoy more is to take action. While this is so self-evident, as humans, we like to remain in our comfort zones, we like to procrastinate, and we don't like to make a fool of ourselves. Some of us are perfectionists and until we are hundred percent sure we are right; we don't like to venture on any new endeavours. There are a thousand things that could go wrong if you start a new venture 99.99% of them may never happen. All that is keeping you down is your ego.

So without belabouring the point, take action. A lot of people attend seminars, webinars, read books and even engage coaches but the never lift their finger to do whatever it takes to move the needle in their favour. There are many thing you can do to succeed in any endeavour you engage in but in the center of it all is "You." You have to learn the tools, techniques, systems, processes, strategies and tactics. While technology is important, it's an enable and until you focus your mindset to get things moving nothing will happen.

If you want to make 2022 your best year ever and position you to earn more, succeed more, and enjoy more, focus on these three things, build and grow your audience as if your life depended on it because it does, rework your strategies to start earning daily, and better still, hourly, and finally, take action. If you do these three things, you'll succeed beyond your wildest dreams in 2022 and become the go-to person in your necks of the wood.

Paul is the creator of iBMC (Internet Business Mastery Course), aka, iBMCer, and BWC (Book Writing Clinic) where he teaches how to build businesses online, thought leadership, entrepreneurship and how to write best selling books. He is the author of the book Bridges to the Customer's Heart, dubbed The Customer Service Bible, which has sold thousands of copies in Nigeria. The late Richmond Dayo Johnson described him as "One of Nigeria's most authentic experiential writers." He is the Chief Executive Officer, Vision & Talent, Nigeria's foremost company dedicated to teaching Service Excellence holistically. You can access his Intellectual Property by visiting the website http://www.pauluduk.com/page. You can reach him by mail to paul@pauluduk.com and phone: +234 803 307 5133. you can access Paul's learning platforms at https://ibmcer.com and https://visionknowledgebase.com.  Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Paul_Uduk/1194732.  Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/10554437

How Anyone Can Make Real Money Online With Fiverr

Fiverr is one of the most innovative online creations that offers an infinite amount of opportunities to earn money on the Internet. From wacky tasks to conventional online gigs like content writing, there are a lot of different ways one can earn some hard-earned cash from this online marketplace. 

For online sellers and freelancers, Fiverr is a very profitable site, with tons of website traffic coming on a daily basis. In addition, this marketplace has over 2 million tasks listed and 4,000 brand-new services, across a hundred categories. 

What Is Fiverr?

To earn money with Fiverr, first you need to understand what this website is all about as it will help you decide if it’s right for you and to learn about the earning potential of this online money-making source. 


Fiverr, in a nutshell, is an online global marketplace that offers services and tasks (referred as gigs), at a small cost of $5 per performed job. For the most part, it is used by freelancers to offer an array of services, and by clients to buy such services.

This site lists over 3 million different services that range between $5 and $500 hundred dollars, though anything priced over $5 is called a gig extra, and all base gigs are $5, that’s the rules.

For example, if selling article writing service your gig would be: “I Will Write A 500 Word Article for $5”. Then a gig extra might be, “Write 1000 word article” +$10 and another gig extra might be: “Write 1500 Word Article +$20 etc. 

Many sellers also offer gig extras that expedite speed of delivery for express service as opposed to their normal delivery time.

Price Per Task

As a freelancer, this online marketplace offers you a simple and extremely viable way to earn money online because they have a lot of traffic and thousands upon thousands of members.  

This, in turn, will give you a good source of income, or supplement your other one. While $5 is a relatively small amount of money for many freelancers, there have been a lot of freelancers that have earned a fortune from this online marketplace that sell many gigs per month along with the upsells on the gig extras.

For each gig, Fiverr gets a 20% cut, which means you will only have a net pay-out of $4. 

On the bright side, you can earn much more than $4 dollars per gig, as you develop a good reputation and get more clients to buy your services.

 As your sales increase and you get positive feedback from buyers, your rating as a seller increases, which, consequently increases your rankings within Fiverr for even more exposure that leads to more sales.

After you have completed at least ten Fiverr transactions, you will be able to unlock several advanced tools that offer add-on services as well as increase the value of your gigs. 

What Gigs Can Be Offered?

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist in order to earn money from this online marketplace. As a matter of fact, some Fiverr sellers have earned a lot of money from doing completely crazy and totally unique gigs like impersonating celebrities, daredevil stunts and crazy dancing. 

But, it is the legitimate and conventional gigs that are selling like hot cakes. The most popular and best-selling gigs in this site are SEO services, article writing, business consultation services, video editing and logo designing. 

Tips For The Ultimate Fiverr Success

  • Use catchy key phrases and words for the gigs offered in your profile description page. 

  • Showcase your awesome work by uploading the pictures of the gigs you have delivered. 

  • Deliver fast responses to customer inquiries. 

  • Always deliver the project or gig in a timely manner. Keep in mind that buyers are always eager to get their hands on the end product.  

  • Deliver what you promised on the sales page.

  • Make sure the sales page clearly defines what is offered, and anticipate all the questions buyers might have and make sure to include appropriate answers as well.

  • There are international sellers on Fiverr, but, it is an English site, and sale success can be damaged when sales pages are written in horrible English that no one can understand. If you are not fluent in the English language then outsource your sales copy to an appropriate seller on Fiverr.

  • Quality work is essential to maintain the required number of positive reviews to keep your business growing. Even one negative rating can quickly cause sales to dry up, and so attention to detail and quality is essential for success on Fiverr.



What Is Pay Per Click Marketing And Its Benefits

Whether you are new to online marketing, or an online entrepreneur who wants to learn more about PPC, then you are in for a treat.  In this online guide, you will get a plethora of information about PPC campaigns and how they work. Moreover, you get to learn how this Internet marketing medium can be very beneficial for your business. 

What Is PPC? 

Par Per Click, or also referred as PPC and Search Engine Marketing, is a form of online marketing that has been used by a great number of online entrepreneurs and marketers from all over the world. 

Pay Per Click allows you to gain search engine traffic that can boost the conversion rates of your calls to action and increase sales. All paid search ads appear before organic listings on Google, Bing and Yahoo.

Pay Per Click is basically a sponsored Internet advertising scheme in which you (as an advertiser or marketer) have to pay a fee every time an internet user clicks one of your ads. 

Generally, it is a technique of buying visits or leads to your website. As its name suggests, you do not have to pay for anything with PPC, unless a web searcher clicks your ad that is displayed in the search engine results for the keywords you are bidding on

How Does It Work?

Basically PPC works like this, ads are created within the admin area of the network, for example, in Google Adwords. 

Those ads then appear in search engine results based on a keyword bidding system that is in place in Adwords, each time a user clicks on an add, the advertiser is charged a certain fee by Adwords. The fees depend on the value of the keywords being bid on, the more competitive terms cost a lot more than those that are not.

There Are 3 Entities Involved In PPC:

  1. Searcher Engine Users – They are the people who use search engines to look for information. They are the ones that these ads are targeting based on specific keyword searches. 

  2. Search Engines – Search Engines like Yahoo and Google have to cater to both advertisers and searchers simultaneously. With the help of search engines, searchers get to find solutions to their problems and queries, while advertisers are able to promote their products or services. In other words, they provide relevant and helpful result pages to the users, while driving highly targeted traffic to advertisers. 

  3. Advertisers – Advertisers who use PPC get to set up their accounts with the particular keywords they want to target for their campaigns and bid limits of what they will pay each time their ad is clicked in the SERPS (search engine page results). Each ad is designed to target relevant keyword searches and to show up when people are searching for them.

Pay Per Click advertising mainly revolves around using the right keywords. To be successful in your PPC campaign, you need to put extra emphasis in keyword organization, grouping and research. 

It is also of utmost importance to understand how the system works since paying per click can get very expensive, very fast. 

Constant monitoring, measuring and testing is necessary to retain a positive ROI (return on investment).

The Best PPC Services

There are a lot companies that offer Pay Per Click management services, but, only these two can be considered the best:

  • Google Adwords

  • Bing Ads

The Benefits of PPC marketing

As a website owner or advertiser, you get to enjoy these perks:

  • Greater Reach - With PPC marketing, you get an additional source of traffic to your website, which can enhance your online presence as well as help you establish your business as one of the leaders in your niche or industry. 

  • Increases In Revenue - For high converting sales pages and websites, PPC can yield a positive ROI, and instant sales, as opposed, to other methods, such as, SEO or social media marketing that takes time and a lot of effort.

  • Quick Results - Unlike your traditional organic online marketing techniques, PPC advertising can be easily and quickly launched. This, in turn, will bring qualified leads and targeted traffic to your site in a very fast and efficient fashion. 

  • Quality Traffic - With PPC campaigns, you get to assign an array of ads for particular demographics and keywords. As a result, the quality of traffic coming to your website can be significant. 

  • Testing And Measuring Benefits - Your PPC campaign can be used to test the effectiveness of your Internet marketing in a lot of different ways. For instance, you can use it to perform an A/B test on your promo ads, banners and landing pages. Additionally, you may use these campaigns to test for the right keywords and key phrases to use in your campaigns with other marketing methods. 


What Content Ranks Best In Today's Fussy Google SERPS

 I am often amazed when people ask what type of content ranks best in today's search engine. The answer is and will always be the same, Google wants one thing and that is quality content. Google strives to provide its users with the best possible results.

There are several reasons why some sites rank at the top and others rank at the very bottom. 

Two of the main reasons why websites rank high in Google are:

  1. Delivering high quality original content that is both legitimate and credible.
  2. Updating the site with fresh content on a regular basis. 

So my first piece of advice is to stop trying to game the search engines with black hat techniques. Yes they may work for a short while, but eventually the search engines will catch up and put your site in the sandbox.

Once in the sandbox Google won't send you anymore traffic. Instead of spending hours trying to find a way to trick the search engines why not spend an hour or two writing a valuable piece of content the search engines will love? 

There are two main things Google looks at to determine if content is of good quality. 

1. Engaging Users

The first one is engagement. How engaging is your content? Are people actually reading the entire article or are they hitting the back button as soon as they see it? This is how Google measures engagement. They want to know how long people are sticking around to read your content. If they stick around for several minutes they know you are providing value. This metric is measured by what is called Bounce Rate, and lower bounce rates can help rankings.

If users typically click back, and your site has consistently high bounce rates, this can affect rankings in Google. 

2. Backlinks

The second thing they look at is linking patterns. Google and other search engines learned very early on that people link to content they consider valuable. Content that is considered useful almost always gets shared by users. Content that is considered useless doesn't. 

And while linking algorithms have advanced quite a bit over the last several years, the basic principles of this concept still hold true. So if you want your content to rank make sure its valuable. Make sure it helps the end user. That's the key to getting your content ranked. There are no magic methods or solutions.

Make Content For Users Not Search Engines

I am sure you have heard this said before and it’s true.  When one creates a web page for search engines their focus is keywords, making sure the Google bot understands what keywords the page should rank for, and overstuffing the content with such to the point that it may become unreadable to the human eye. 

But, these types of black hat tactics rarely work, and if they do, it’s only for a short while and then the site gets hit with a big fat penalty and ends up in the black hole of SERPS.

Make every effort to provide useful content. It’s sort of a merry go around:

Useful content leads to happy users and a low bounce rate, happy users link back and/or spread the word about the content through social media which leads to more traffic which leads to better rankings in Google.

So, it’s all about useful content. That's what Google wants and that's what your potential customers want. 

Anytime someone uses Google to make a search they have an intent. They either want to find out about something, learn about something, solve a problem, buy something or treat something. 

Google is going to provide users with information that fulfils that intent.

So do your research and find out what type of content your target audience is searching for. 

Make it a point to craft your content around their wants and needs. This will not only increase your rankings, but, it will also increase your conversions and sales. 

The one thing to keep in mind is people read content, not the search engines. Do away with the keyword stuffing and anything else that is designed to manipulate the search engines. Write good content that people will love to read and I your content will get ranked.


Frequently Asked Questions About Affiliate Marketing

Whether you are running an online business or a regular internet user who wants to make extra cash, affiliate marketing can be a great and lucrative way for you to earn online. But before you embark on this money-making opportunity, it is essential for you to know the fundamentals and important facts about affiliate marketing. 

Luckily, this guide can help you achieve that. Here are some of the most frequently asked questions about affiliate marketing: 

Q: What is affiliate marketing?

A: Affiliate marketing is a marketing scheme that has been practiced by businesses and entrepreneurs for many years. Basically, it is a form of marketing based on performance, where a pre-set commission is paid to the affiliate who refers traffic to a merchant’s site that performs the requisite action, such as making a purchase. It is now used by thousands of online merchants, brands and companies to generate traffic and sales. 

In many ways, it is similar to referral marketing since both marketing forms rely on third parties to drive traffic and revenues to the business or retailer. 

Q: How does affiliate marketing work?

A: There are three major players involved in this marketing practice, namely:

  • Merchant or retailer – This is a person or business selling a service or product. 
  • Affiliate – The person responsible for promoting the service or product
  • Customer – The individual buying the service or product

As a reward for the publisher’s marketing efforts, the merchant pays a commission to the publisher for every successful sale or when a commissionable event happens, such as, filling out a form or subscribing to a newsletter. The commission given to the affiliate varies program to program, often it is a percentage of the sale. 

Q: What are the benefits offered by affiliate marketing to merchants?

A: As a merchant and website owner, affiliate marketing can greatly benefit you in many different ways. 

For one, it helps you promote your product and brand to a wider global audience without having to spend a fortune. In fact, having affiliates can increase earnings by hundreds and even thousands of sales each month. Keep in mind that you will only have to spend money once a sale is made or an internet user responds to the CTA (Call to action).  Thus, with affiliate marketing, your cash flow will become a lot easier to account for and predict. 

Besides merchants and online businesses, affiliates can enjoy a few benefits from this form of marketing as well. With affiliate marketing, affiliates enjoy unlimited earning potential from methods, such as, email marketingblogging, or building an affiliate niche site without the need to develop or support a product. 

In affiliate marketing, all an affiliate has to do is to promote and pitch the product to their own web traffic and then send them via an affiliate link to the merchant’s site. 

Q: Are there any qualifications in order to become an affiliate marketer?

A: There are no general qualifications for this kind of work. But, merchants have the full authority to turn down or approve an application from an affiliate. Some affiliate programs look for a particular set of qualities from their publishers and high quality websites that get the optimal amount of traffic. 

But, there are plenty of programs that approve all affiliates, such as, Amazon Associates. 

Most conventional programs reject affiliates with sites that have violent or sexually explicit content, as well as, those that promote political or religious views, advocate discrimination and violate a few international laws. 

Q: How can a merchant monitor his or her affiliate’s performance?

A: Merchants track commissions, sales and referral through web cookies and tracking links that embedded in affiliate links that use a personal identification that is assigned to each affiliate. 

In a nutshell, a tracking URL is a unique link provided by the merchant to his or her affiliate. With this link, a merchant can keep track of all the sales and traffic that are made through affiliate’s link. 

Q: Is a degree required to become an affiliate marketer?

A: No, only the knowledge of specific skills, and their implementation is required to start an affiliate marketing business. 

Q: How much can I earn as an affiliate?

A: This is not a question that can be answered in numbers, there are affiliates who are millionaires, they are known as super affiliates. Then there are those who make very little and everything in between. Earnings depend on the type of methods that are used, the level of commitment and work that is put in, and learning proper techniques which are implemented in the correct manner. One thing is guaranteed, the earning potential is unlimited.

Q: What are the most popular affiliate programs?

A: These are the most popular affiliate programs and networks:

  • AWIN
  • Wealthy Affiliate
  • ShareASale
  • Commission Junction
  • LinkShare
  • Amazon
  • eBay
  • Clickbank
  • JVZoo
  • PayDotCom



Tips to Manage Your Home Business

Tips to Manage Your Home Business Video

How To Use Webinars For Successful Online Promotion

Chances are you have heard about webinars. You have probably even attended a few. That's because webinars are extremely popular right now. All of the big name gurus are using them to take their businesses to new levels. 

But, what exactly is a webinar and how can someone like you or I use it to promote our products and services online? 

What Is A Webinar?

Let's start by defining what a webinar is. A webinar is simply a web based seminar where you can share valuable information with a target audience. Notice the word target, this is one of the most important benefits of webinars. 

Since the audience has to register to attend a webinar they are already pre-sold on the topics that will be discussed and so they are highly targeted and convert better than other types of traffic.

Incidentally, this webinar in the image is an example of a Recorded Webinar (as opposed to Live Webinar).  The training is done by my mentor Paul and will give you FREE training on how to make money online if you watch it.  (The same training I accessed to get started in making money online.

WATCH NOW for FREE Training

Now as you can imagine, there are a lot of different ways you can use webinars to serve  business needs, here are three of the most important ones. 

#1 – Build Brand Awareness 

One of the best ways to build brand awareness online is by offering a webinar to your prospective clients and customers. The webinar can be either free or paid, this really depends on the goals that you wish to achieve. 

The main goal of the webinar should be to provide value. You want people to leave the webinar thinking you are an expert and the one they should seek out when they need help. 

The more webinars you have the more brand awareness you will be able to build and the more you will become the “go to” brand in your niche.

#2 – To Promote A New Product 

The reason that webinars are so useful for product launches is because the Webinar platform offers various media that can be used to present ideas, media that is much more powerful than a simple text sales page. 

There are videos, images, desktop sharing, PowerPoint slides and a lot more. For this reason, product launches and webinars seem to go hand and hand these days. This is because webinars are a sure way to increase sales and reduce refund rates. 

If you have a new product coming out people will want to know what it’s about before they invest in it. A webinar allows you to educate your audience and actually show them how your product can help them and solve their problems. Along with the great media options there is also the power of your voice that can be used to sway and convert those in the audience who maybe on the fence.

During the webinar be sure to allow for a live question and answer session. This gives potential customers the opportunity to have their questions immediately answered. 

You can also offer the product at a special discounted price for all who stayed until the end of the webinar. This is a great way to get sales coming in quickly. 

As you are just starting out as a beginner, you may wish to promote an expert's webinar to get started, that way they take care of all the arrangements to record the webinar and deal with the customer queries and you just focus on getting people to listen to the webinar and collect the commissions when they sign up or upgrade.

#3 – To Sell Affiliate Products

Not only can you sell your own products with a webinar, but, you can also make money by promoting affiliate products as well. 

A good way to do this is to interview the creator of the affiliate product you are promoting. Ask them a serious of questions. Try to keep the interview to around 60 minutes. That's the perfect time for a webinar. 

Another way to promote affiliate products through webinars is show them in action, such as the case with a software or service that can be demonstrated within the webinar.

Be sure to add your affiliate link to the buy now button so you will get paid for every sale.

Archives

Place archives for all the webinars you have done on your website so they may continue to serve your goals for an unlimited amount of time by engaging new traffic and leads.


5 Common Affiliate Marketing Pitfalls

Affiliate marketing is one of the most rewarding and lucrative ways to make money online. 

As an affiliate marketer you will market and promote someone else's product for a commission. Earning on this commission based model of making money online has unlimited potential and has made some into dotcom millionaires.

And while affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to make money online it’s not simple by any means. It takes a lot of skill, knowledge and commitment to be successful. If you are looking for overnight riches this is not the way to go. However, if you are looking to build a solid business that can make you money on complete autopilot for many years to come, affiliate marketing is most definitely a great option.  

If you choose to go this route there are a few pitfalls I want you to be aware of. These are the most common pitfalls that newbie affiliate marketers run into. 

Pitfall #1 – Not Building A List

One of the things I see a lot of affiliate marketers doing, especially the new ones, is sending traffic directly to the sales page. This is not the best method.

Your first line of business should be to build an email marketing list. 

  • If you send traffic directly to the sales page you will get a one off commission and that's all. 

  • If you build an email marketing list first you will be able to make multiple commissions off of one customer. 

  • You will be able to build long lasting and on-going relationships with a targeted audience. 

  • When you have a list you can market to them over and over for as long as they stay subscribed. 

So please, start building a list from day one.  Find out here how to start building your list.

Pitfall #2 – Promoting Products Based On Commission Only

You should care about the products you promote. Never promote a product based solely on the amount of money you will get per sale. You have to remember, your goal is to be able to make money for a very long time into the future. 

If you promote crappy products just to make a quick commission you will be out of business before you know it. You want to promote legit products you know your list and site visitors will appreciate. If you promote products that are irrelevant and don't produce results you will end up with a lot of refund requests and subscribers who do not find your messages credible. 

Pitfall #3 – Signing Up For Too Many Affiliate Programs

Just because there are a thousand great products with affiliate programs doesn't mean you need to sign up for all of them. 

Sign up for 3-5 if you are just starting out. Get those products set up in your funnel first and then add more as you become well versed in the business and start seeing success. If you sign up for a ton of affiliate programs you will overwhelm yourself and end up doing nothing.

 Pitfall #4 – Promoting Low Converting Products

Just because a product has an affiliate program doesn't mean you should promote it. Conversion rates are extremely important when it comes to the products you promote. If you promote low converting products you won't make very much money. 

Pitfall #5 – Having Unrealistic Expectations

Yes, there are a lot of people who make millions a year from affiliate marketing alone. However, what most people fail to realize is the amount of time, effort, learning and expertise it took for them to get to that level. 

A lot of newbie affiliate marketers expect overnight riches when they get involved with affiliate marketing. It doesn't work that way. You have to put in the time and effort if you want to be successful.


6 Blog Design Tips To Please Visitors And Lower Bounce Rates

Creating an effective and well converting blog design can be a challenging task, whether you do it yourself or outsource it. In reality, there is no one better qualified to determine what you want to achieve on your site than you, and so it is important to brainstorm, and test to come up with the proper design solutions that will increase conversion rates on your blog.

It is a fact that in 2022 the main ingredient in the online success recipe is originality, and this also applies to blog design and layout. 

But, no matter your approach, there are several elements to be aware of when designing your site that are universal must haves, read on to learn more about the most important elements to consider in blog design. 

Elements to Consider When Designing Your Blog

1. Pleasing Colours - The very first impression that a visitor has of your blog is visual, and a dynamic presence online should start with a nice, comforting blend of colours. You should maintain a balance, so do not go for the extremes, too light or too dark. Select a colour palette that well represents your niche. 

If you are using a banner image for your header, then use complimentary colours for the rest of the site. When used properly the right colour combinations can really bring your blog to life. 

One of the worst colour ideas is to use black background with white or yellow font. While this may be ideal for a gaming site, it is very hard to read. It's usually best to make text background white or a light colour, and use dark font colours, like black or very dark blue.

2.  Simple Site Navigation - Web visitors do not like to, nor will they stick around long to search too long for what they are looking for on your site. Navigation should be simple and easy to find, this includes the use of sidebar menus and top navigation menus. Simple to use site category widgets are always a good idea. 

Also, besides listing a Recent Posts widget on your blog, consider adding an archives or visitor sitemap page, such as that provided by the Dagon Design Sitemap Generator plugin. This will allow visitors to reach all the pages of your site and if they are intrigued keep them on your site longer, consequently, reducing bounce rates.

Another thing to keep in mind is your calls to action and exactly what you want your visitors to do on your site, those calls to action should be easily accessible from all angles of the site.

3. Provide Related Posts After Content - Make sure to provide related posts within each piece of content on the blog, this keeps visitors around longer and lowers bounce rates. 

4. Threaded Comments - When comments are threaded and each comment has a separate reply button, visitors are often more inclined to join the discussions or share a viewpoint than when they have to browse comments and provide names in their replies to provide their viewpoints. 

5. Mobile Ready - Less and less individuals surf the web with their computers and even notebooks. Many think it is much easier to access the internet from their smartphones or tablet computers. When your blog loads fast and it’s optimized for mobile, visitors will find it easy to browse, read and comment and they will definitely return. 

6. Make Links Look Like Links - This is really important because if you want visitors to click on your links, for example, affiliate links, then they should stand out within the text font colour.

You should be flexible and open to innovation, to handle a broader array of internet users and to design your blog to be user friendly, welcoming and accessible by all types of computing devices. 

When your site visitors like what they see and the content they read they will undoubtedly return and tell their friends. Don't be afraid to experiment and test to find what makes your blog pages convert the best.

As previously mentioned, it’s important to various elements to see how users react and how they affect conversions on your calls to action, it is only by collecting and analysing data can you really zero in on problems and create fixes.


Best Methods For Monetizing Viral Traffic

Making money from viral traffic differs than that earned from other types of traffic. The fact is that viral traffic lands on your page without looking for something specific, as is the case with everyday traffic like that from the search engines or from a specific link on the web.

Because they come to see the content that went viral, the bounce rate of viral
traffic tends to be higher and conversions much lower. 



Viral Versus Regular Traffic Scenario

Consider that a user from a search engine comes to your site after searching for “buy coffee makers” or “best coffee makers,” these are “buy” keywords and they are obviously looking to buy a coffee maker so offers for those will be considered much more seriously and therefore are much more likely to convert.

On the other hand, another user comes to your site because you created a video that went viral because it demonstrates how to make iced vanilla ice cream latte, that user is not likely to be interested in buying a coffee maker. Likely, they already have one and that is why they want the recipe, or they are just curious. 

But, there are different ways to make money from viral traffic, read on to learn more.

Grow Email Lists

Make sure to have an opt-in in place and a great subscriber gift so you can get them on your list for email marketing purposes. This is a much more effective tactic than trying to convert them directly, and then you can market to them on an on-going basis via email. 

In the coffee example, you can offer an eBook of coffee drink recipes that will engage that traffic to sing up.

Engage Them To Subscribe To Blog Updates

Since viral traffic came to see a particular type of content, it’s best to offer them the same with a blog subscription form prominently placed near the target content they came to see. It is likely they will be interested in getting more of the same type of content in the future.

Prominently display the RSS feed button or the email blog update form, and then cater to them and keep them engaged with more great content. As they keep getting more interesting content, the likelihood of them buying something increases significantly.



CPC Ads)

Google Adsense and other CPC ads see high conversion rates because they are so highly targeted to the specific user that comes to a site. Typically ads are based on recent searches that user has done online and so when a site has a great deal of traffic those click rates and the revenue they bring can be substantial.



Advertising

One of the best ways to monetize high traffic sites that enjoy viral traffic is to offer advertising space. 

Advertising revenue increases significantly on sites that have a lot of traffic and it can be one of the best earning potentials for viral traffic surges. 

You can use various advertising platforms to connect with advertisers looking to buy ad space, such as, Buy Sell Ads, or engage in direct deals. Make sure to advertise your ad space on site and have an “Advertise With Us” page to provide all the necessary information to engage those looking to buy space.

Get Paid for Leads

When viral traffic won’t convert into sales, a good method of monetization is with CPA (Cost Per Action) affiliate programs. These programs pay anywhere from $2 to $40 or more per lead in specific industries. Netflix pays publishers $25 for every successful free trial sign up on their site. That type of payout can really be lucrative. 

The key to converting CPA offers is to make sure and choose highly relevant offers to the content on your site. For example, if your content is about cars and you create a video showing classic car restoration and it goes viral, relevant CPA ads can be placed that refers traffic to insurance companies. The fact that they don’t have to pay anything, just supply their contact information can lead to much higher conversions than other offers. 

Testing

The above methods, like any other online marketing tactics require testing to see what works best on your site and within your niche.

Test different methods, different ads and placements, and always make sure to have either a blog update sign up or email marketing list opt-in form with a great offers, as these two methods facilitate the ability to capture their contact information and cater to them on a long term basis. 


How To Lower Website Bounce Rate

You have built a great site, added stellar content, performed the requisite on site and off site SEO and now you are getting organic search traffic coming at a steady pace.

You can now sit back and toast your efforts because you’re work is done right? 

Wrong! 

There is still much more work to be done, and one of the most important jobs is to analyse site’s traffic behaviour and bounce rate.

What is Bounce Rate?
Image by OpenClipart-Vectors from Pixabay

Bounce rate is a metric that is used to gage how long visitors stay on your site once they land there.

This metric can tell you a lot about what is wrong and right with the site. Also, it is a fact that Google uses bounce rate as a ranking signal in their algorithm.

Usually if visitors leave the site soon after they arrive it is a sign that something is wrong with the site, or they are not getting their needs met. This is how Google sees it. 

Exceptions To This Rule

Consider this for a moment:

If a user that comes to a website finds exactly what they were searching for, why should they stay even a second longer, or browse the site further?

If the landing page has some type of exit link that takes them away from the site quickly, such as, as an email marketing opt in, or affiliate links that are converting in optimal numbers, or their question was answered quickly and accurately, then likely that site’s goals are being reached. Though, the search engines, such as, Google, won’t see this as a good thing, the site owner won’t care much.

But, if that is not the case, and you expect visitors to stick around, or offers are not converting then you will need to find out what is wrong with those landing pages that have such low bounce rates.

There is no one-size-fits-all answer regarding what is an acceptable standard of bounce rate. It is important to consider the intent of the site to determine what % is acceptable.

Tips To Improve Bounce Rates

Content Quality Versus Quantity

While some site owners focus on having a lot of site pages and constantly updating, they fail in providing high quality content. This can result in a high bounce rate, especially when the site is focused on informational content that web traffic is not responding well to.

This does not mean that you should post once every three weeks, this means that there should be regularly scheduled content added, but, such that is high in quality and will engage visitors to maintain a low bounce rate. If you can’t swing the balance of quality and quantity you can always outsource.

Also, it’s important that the content be properly formatted for the web. What works best is short paragraphs, bullets, appropriate paragraph headers and an overall easy to read layout, as opposed to, long blocks or text and long paragraphs. 

Of course, content that is interesting, and portrays the personal voice of the writer who presents it, is usually more engaging than some generic write up that is dull and has no personality.

Site Design

The theme used on blogs and sites can also lower bounce rate. If the colors are not pleasing and easy to look at, people will leave.

Clean themes are usually best, they are classy and look good, and they allow you to show off your most important content, without it being drowned out by a loud design.

Here Are Some Considerations

  • Is it easy to find pages on your site?

  • Is the content buried and hard to locate?

  • Is it clear where users should click?

  • Will a quick scan of the page show users a clear picture of what they can expect to find?

Navigation

Navigation is another element of utmost importance in determining bounce rate. If, for example, the person that landed on a page likes what they read and wants to browse your site more, there needs to be easily accessible navigation of the entire site. 

Top menu bars and sidebar menus are ideal to display your most important pages to web traffic.

Placing related content after a piece of content will entice users to stay on and read more.

Too Many Ads

Are there ads, like Google Adsense, in between every 3 lines of your site’s content pages? This is annoying and can be a major culprit in high bounce rates. 

Ads should complement the content, not be an eye sore that annoys and distracts from what the visitor came to see. 

Pop ups can be especially annoying, particularly those that keep popping up continuously as someone is trying to focus on reading, watching a video or navigating through a site.

Users cannot be expected to navigate through a sea of ads to zero in on the content they were promised when they came to the page.

Sidebar

There is a thin line between an over populated and an under used sidebar. A sidebar has numerous possibilities, and when used correctly it can have major benefits for keeping visitors on the site and also for displaying your most important calls to action. 

Just as with the main content section of the site, too many ads in the sidebar is not always effective. Consider displaying your most popular content, such as, that that has the most comments. 

An email marketing opt-in can have a great home at the sidebar, and your social media follow links as well. 

Internal Links

If you have a reasonable quantity of content on the site then interlinking with relevant relevant keyword terms can also lower bounce rate.

Each page on your site should have at least one or two links to another page with a relevant relevant keyword anchor. 

This will engage readers to browse other pages on your site, and can help to lower the bounce rate. Coincidentally, interlinking also helps with on-site SEO as well.

Final Thoughts

Typically, a lower bounce rate shows that you are doing something right. But, unless your site is making good money or visitors are performing the requisite calls to actions on a regular basis, a bounce rate that is higher than 60% means that there are issues on the site that need to be addressed.



How To Optimize Landing Pages For Better Conversions

As an Internet marketer, having loads of website traffic is not enough to make your online business a successful and profitable one. The truth is, generating massive website traffic is just the first step of the whole conversion or selling process. 

In Internet marketing, the amount of traffic your site gets won’t be as vital as the amount of consumers who are taking action on your landing page, whether it is by enrolling to your newsletter subscriptions or buying a product.  Keep in mind that in internet marketing, conversion is everything. Hence, to be successful in internet marketing, you need to spend more time in landing page optimization. 

Landing page optimization plays a crucial role in determining whether your online business will fail or succeed. By optimizing your landing page, you get to increase your conversion rates, attain more qualified leads, promote multiple products, receive more backlinks and increase the effectiveness of your online ads.

On top of that, landing page optimization will help you identify which layouts, keywords, colour schemes and other aspects of your page have the best conversion rates. 

If you want to know how to optimize your landing page effectively, check out these tips and pointers: 

Analyse The Data

One of the most crucial aspects of landing page optimization is data analysis. As the name implies, data analysis is a process that allows you to analyse all the data on your site and landing page. 

There are a lot of ways to analyse the data on your landing page. 

In this case, you can use split testing (A/B Testing), traffic analysis, and data metric tools, like Optimizely, Conversion Voodoo, Concept Feedback, Google Analytics, Visual Website Optimizer and many more. 

Evaluate The Problem And Apply Appropriate Fixes

With the data you have gathered about your landing page, you will be able to determine what aspects on your page are working and which are not. In addition, the data accumulated will help you know what elements on your landing page and site are in dire need of upgrades and improvements. 

After evaluating the gathered data, you have to find the right solutions to the problem, and implement them as soon as possible. 

Changes in your landing page do not have to be drastic or monumental. In fact, a few changes in the words used in your call to action may have a massive positive impact to your site’s conversions. 

Keep Tweaking

Keep repeating the whole process for as long your online business exists. The key to having a successful online business is to adapt to changes in trends and behavioural patterns of the consumers. 

Additional Tips For Landing Page Optimization 

One of the most common mistakes that internet marketers would make is having a multitude of CTAs (call to actions) on a single landing page. If you ask a visitor to choose between 50 CTAs, chances are he or she will bounce instantly. But if you opt to focus on less of them, you will most likely get the visitor to take the action you want. 

Make your landing page look more credible by adding trust signs like guarantees, trust budges and testimonials. In this case, only use them when they are relevant to your service and offer. For instance, if you are accepting payments through PayPal, try to include a PayPal logo or a PayPal Verified seal on your site or landing page.  

Make sure to increase the speed on your landing page. Internet traffic loses interest quickly when they land on slow loading websites. 

Give your visitor a good reason to buy your product or sign up to your newsletters. You can lure your visitors into subscribing by giving away free eBooks or discount coupons. 

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