Marketing Your Business Online

How can a business that is already successful in reaching their local market extend their marketing reach online? The good news is that the traditional offline marketing that has always worked so well will still work at least as effectively to promote your online presence. The other side of the coin is that to promote your business online, the old traditions need some updating to keep up with online marketing best practices.

Any business should already have a marketing plan and objectives from their offline initiatives, so let’s jump straight into the technology aspects of online marketing. I generally look at the following things first, because they can be done at very low or no initial cost, and also because subsequent specialist marketing won’t be as successful without these things in place. Of course there is a huge amount more to online marketing, the extent of which could easily be justified as a full-time university course. This is the pre-school notes, to help get your site to a starting point on a low budget if you can’t quite afford to be calling in the big guns to market your site for you professionally just yet.

1. Site optimization
This is always the place to start, because the effectiveness of everything which follows is often dependent on this being done up front. When I say this, I include great content and intuitive navigation as the basis for everything. Only once your site has been optimized for intelligent visitors should you tweak it for search engines, but never at the expense of the former.

Search engines look at things like keyword density and how specifically a page matches a specific search term. Of course this is extremely over simplistic, but nevertheless a worthwhile starting point. By identifying 10-20 key terms you would like search engines to pick up on, and creating specialised pages with relevant information which utilises those terms in the right way, you will start getting much better results once your site has been indexed.

You will find that it is best to use specialised keyword phrases, for example “precision-engineered bolts” is likely to get better placement than a generic term like “engineering parts”. You should also work to create a single page for every key phrase you want picked up on, and include the key phrase in the title, meta tags and use all the words in the body of the page at a high density relative to other words. You should also preferably include the key phrase in the page title, as well as the URL of the page, for example, “http://www.mysite.com/precision_engineered_bolts/”. Each page should use a different title, specifically based on the key phrase utilised in that page’s content.

Your site should really be developed using XHTML and CSS these days, table-based design has numerous technical problems associated with it, and it results in a lower keyword density than the current standards.

Ideally you should use a content management system which incorporates and facilitates all of the above quickly and effortlessly. This will allow you to manage your own content optimization, with a bit of trial-and-error.

2. Linking and indexing
The next step is to get search engines to start to notice and index your site. Google, for example, won’t even look at your site until it has been linked to by at least one other indexed site. Paid inclusion (paying the search engines to index your site on a priority schedule) can be appropriate at this phase if you need to urgently accelerate this process, however it is not always necessary.

Especially useful at this stage can be participating in forums serving your primary target market. This has the dual benefit of creating awareness of your business within communities you would like to reach, and at the same time can help create incoming links to your site, something that search engines pay particular attention to. Ensure that your site details are included as a link in the footer of your posts.
Never use a forum to spam members or submit unsolicited advertising posts — that just has the opposite effect of destroying your business’ credibility. Some forums have a separate advertising section in which it may be appropriate to professionally post information about your services and products. Always make sure that your presence represents a valuable contribution to the community. Stay on topic and be professional, helpful and constructive.

Search engines take many factors into consideration when ranking a site. New sites, for example, don’t initially fare well, however you will find they will allocate some credibility weighting to you the longer your site is up and running. The biggest factor though, external to the site itself, is the number of inbound (preferably non-reciprocal) links from other sites, and the context and wording of the referring link, as well as the ranking of the referring page, and referring site. The popularity of those sites plays a big role, as well as how high up in the site’s own hierarchy the link is. By way of example, a link from http://www.news.com.au counts for much more than a link from a very deeply embedded page like http://www.somesitesomewhere.com/subdirectory/theattic/someoldforgottenpage .

3. Implement online marketing partnerships with high-profile online businesses
This is where you can really benefit if implemented successfully. When I was previously running the e-commerce business unit for a large company, rather than pay high-traffic websites to advertise on their sites, which can be very much untargeted, we offered them a percentage of sales. In other words, we provided them with the banners to promote the service, and implemented simple tracking of where our visitors were coming from, and then paid a percentage of the total revenue to the referrer. This resulted in very low marketing costs to us, and the referring sites started placing more and more emphasis on their side to ensure that we got top placement whenever they were low on paid inventory.

Another effective medium-term strategy is to provide content of value to sites which serve your target market. They benefit from your topical content, you benefit from the exposure and links.

4. Dabble in paid keyword advertising
Only at this point should you actually be starting to pay for online advertising. These forms of advertising, however, allow you to specifically target certain people, which means you get a much better return on investment than simply advertising to everyone. This can take some trial and error to find what works best, but the amount you pay should be less than the amount of business you generate, and should normally include full measurement and reports on a reasonably regular basis, preferably online.

For this purpose, I often suggest starting with Google. They are by far the most popular search engine globally, they have a very good reputation, provide reporting online, and are probably the most likely to produce results initially. Yahoo and MSN also have excellent paid link systems, and they keep getting better all the time. The latest offerings from all three are now also starting to allow targeting to specific demographics, a trend that is likely to become the preferred way to target online audiences once the capabilities for this type of targeting matures.

5. Involve an internet marketing specialist
At this point, you should be starting to see some results, and be in a good position to ask some intelligent questions. Preferably deal only with a business that has a good reputation (ask for client contact details so you can find out how effective they are), and has preferably has been around for at least a few years. They should also provide very detailed reports (ask for examples of these up front), and be able to explain in detail how they go about promoting your site, on which sites they do so, the number of views and clickthroughs per site per day, and how effective each promotion was relative to the next. They should also meet with you at least once a month to review successes and failures and involve you in the decision-making process of where next to promote your business. At least monthly, you should be in a position to evaluate your cost per sale for various promotions, and to change your focus accordingly.

Especially be wary of businesses who claim unrealistically quick results, or base their business mainly only on search engine submission, or use deceptive practices to try and “trick” search engines into ranking you higher. These usually at best produce no value, and can in some cases lead to your site being removed or ranked very low by search engines.

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Affordable Business Online Opportunity

The most affordable business online opportunity by far is the IPC Program, equally known as the Independent Profit Center. As far as affordability goes, for the $200 Admin fee, which includes your IPC Website and access to the Training Area, and the $49 Software Package fee, which by itself is worth over a $3000 value in downloadable e-books of informational products on how to succeed online, nothing on the market even comes close to the value and return of this affordable business online opportunity.

Equal Chance To Reach The Top

Here’s the best part about this affordable business online opportunity, you get to keep the full $200 on each sale you make! That’s right, with the IPC Program, there’s no passing up sales, no monthly fees, and no MLM pyramid scheme, where you get only a small percentage of each sale. And let me tell you, those $200 payments sure do add up. So there is no more throwing away your hard earned money to make others rich. You will see that this is a real affordable business online opportunity that you, as the business owner, have complete control over. You can easily see yourself soaring to the top in profits now that there is an even playing field in this online business.

What About The Cheaper Online Money Making Programs?

I know you’re thinking that there are other money making programs, that cost only $39 -$49 to get started, which make for a more affordable business online opportunity than the IPC Program. I don’t think that any of these are even worth mentioning as a “business opportunity”. And “cheaper” is right, you would have to make a gazillion sales in one of these programs to make any money at all. Trust me, I’ve tried a handful of those good for nothing money making dead-end scams. Offering no immediate direction, all they do is leave you feeling lost and confused upon entering the Members Only Area. You may be all too familiar with the feeling.

Many Programs Cost More To Start

I’m sure you are aware of many online business opportunities available on the market today that can even cost you upwards of $997 to join, along with the $29 – $49 monthly maintenance fees. I don’t know too many ‘want to get rich quick money seekers’ out there with that much extra dough lying around in their pockets. Do you? So we can agree that this type of program definitely would not meet the criteria for an affordable business online opportunity.
Then there was that one program I even spent $5000 on, which included 16 weeks of “one-on-one training” with a Personal Coach. Great… I learned how to design a website and write content rich articles, but not one cent did I make, and not one ounce of training was offered to direct me toward a sale. Heck nobody even knew that beautiful website was out there.

The IPC Program – In A Class By Itself!

Did I mention, that with the IPC Program, I recovered my initial investment of $249 within my first 24 hours of having my website up and running? No lie! And needless to say, the other dozen or so money making programs I tried, where I didn’t get any direction and didn’t make so much as a penny on, were all online investment ‘losses’ for me.

This clearly defines why the IPC Program is a most affordable business online opportunity. The truth of the matter is that in this affordable business online opportunity, there is a gold mine to be had, if you simply apply the methods that are presented to you in the Training Area upon joining. And as a result, you will be able to reap great rewards for essentially little investment with the IPC Program. This also means more money into your pocket and not into the pocket of others.

I can assure you, that the IPC Program stands head and shoulders above the rest when it comes to being an affordable business online opportunity! I invite you to see for yourself… http://www.ProfitAwaits.com

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Reasons To Trust And Hire A Top SEO Company

Gone are the days when the world of advertising was tilted heavily in the favour of big businesses. The internet has changed the landscape of business completely. It has ensured a level playing field and small business can no longer cry foul for the lack of fund or budget to grow. Paid advertising is still there giving multi-million dollar entities an edge but there is other cost-effective ways as well to promote businesses across channels on the internet. SEO or search engine optimization is a technique to gain organic traffic and boost the visibility of your website over the internet.

You can now optimize different aspects of the website and give a boost to its ranking in the digital world. Unlike paid marketing, here you needn’t spend beyond a bare minimum level but the benefits are disproportionate to the investment. Optimization is a way to aim at organic traffic which is a natural way of boosting the interest of users towards your website. Thus, a small business gets to access the same market and target audience as a big business would and this is where any edge in the wake of financial clout is nullified. It all boils down to the effort, not money.

Quite clearly, SEO has changed the way websites or businesses are promoted and it has filled a lot of hope among those lacking fund yet are high on spirit to scale new high in the world of internet. This is the major reason why brands look to hire experts in SEO to boost their ranking and visibility over the internet. With the right optimization efforts, your website starts getting more traffic and this is how its conversion rates go up. You can now select your audience, keywords, market to target and ensure a superior ROI. All this without spending big.

Further, you can take your business to the market of choice at a fraction of the cost what paid advertising often entails. Similarly, you stand to gain natural traffic which tends to be of long-term nature. The traffic that reaches to the site will continue to come irrespective of the money you spend or not. The same however is not true with paid advertising where the traffic ceases to flow the moment money is stopped. That’s why, SEO is considered a helpful tool for small businesses as it’s an economical way to realize your marketing goals and fulfil objectives.

In overall, you should first consult an SEO company and analyse its track record and working methodology. You should check whether it has a list of satisfied client spanning across industries. You also need to be sure about its track record of delivering results and traffic to clients. Only then should you trust it and hire it for your optimization efforts. Since you are investing your hard-earned money, there have to be benefits matching the worth of the money. And this is only possible when you trust an expert for the job and leverage optimization to the core.

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Cara Dapatkan Kemenangan Main Slot Online

situs nagamenslot

Cara Dapatkan Kemenangan Main Slot Online, Permainan yang ada di situs online untuk di mainkan semata jenis permainan video online. Panduan Judi Online Ini merupakan ide yang indah sebelum kamu memulai melakukan bettingan di situs bandar judi online situs apa pun yang perlu dilakukan melalui testimonial mereka. Slot Judi adalah salah satu game judi online terbaik yang banyak sekali di gemari oleh para pecinta judi online. Beberapa ringakasan, Kamu juga bisa mencari bantuan dari Bandar Togel online untuk mendapatkan informasi tentang permainan slot terbaik.

Bandar slot toto togel  dapat membantu kamu dalam permainan yang menarik untuk mau mainkan cara yang dapat membantu Kamu untuk bermain slot tsecara sangat baik. Manfaat utama perbankan di situs online ini adalah kamu dapat membuat kemungkinan untuk mengoptimalkannya. Dan dengan berjalannya waktu, perjudian online akan terus menyimpang setiap hari dan kamu bisa mendapatkan yang sangat besar di saat bermian slot online. Agar kamu sangat mudah mendapatkan kemenangan kamu dapat memahami yang akan di jelaskan.

Permainan Slot yang selalu menarik percinta judi online yang terampil dan pula baru bukan hanya karena kegembiraan ketika bermain. Namun sajian juga menawarkan harga dan setelah itu sekali lagi Dikau tidak perlu galau tentang strategi bermainnya. dengan cara mempelajari trik cara permainan bandar yang telah kamu mainkan dalam waktu yang sudah berlalu, dari situ kamu dapat pengalama yang berharga dan bisa kamu manfaatkan agar tidak kalah lagi.

Permainan Slot Judi terdiri dari dua jenis permainan yang sangat spesial. Slot Joker dan Slot Pragmatic Pada bawah ini merupakan kabar penting yang dapat Anda pulang untuk mengetahui spesifikasi dari dua slot ini serta produk video lain yang menguntungkan dan juga menyenangkan.

Apa yang butuh kamu Ketahui Saat Bermain Slot ?

Joker Slot

Bermain Slot joker yang harus kamu ketahui ialah hanya beberapa saja, di antaranya kamu harus mengenali pertama untuk agen yang ingin kamu join, setelah kamu join, kamu juga harus melihat profil agen tersebut apakah terpercaya atau abal-abal, dan selanjutnya kamu harus memaikan semua jenis permainan slot nya, itu kan ada banyak jadi kamu harus coba satu-satu mana yang hoki untuk kamu mainkan, jika sudah ketemu jenis slot yang hoki untuk kamu mainkan, dan selanjutnya kamu silahkan mainkan slot yang hoki kamu main kan tersebutm agar kamu mendapatkan jackpot setiap bermain.

Beberapa penjelasan tentang kedua permainan slot yang akan saya jelaskan dapatkan pahami agar lebih memudahkan kamu untuk bermain dengan baik dan benar serta dapat menghasilkan uang dengan banyak.

Pragmatic Slot Game

Slot pramgmatic adalah permainan slot yang sedang banyak di gemari kalangan anak muda untuk bermain judi online yang sedang gacor, di mana permain slot pragmatic sangat mudah untuk mendapatkan uang masuk sehari-hari karena permainan ini sangat sering memberikan free spin dalam istilahnya memberikan uang secara cuma-cuma.

Setiap permain judi online pasti akan ada kalah menang nya, jika tidak member yang kalah pasti bandar yang akan kalah. Pilihan na hanya ada dua, maka dari itu kamu harus jadi yang lebih lincah dan lebih jago dari sistem permainan yang di lakukan oleh setiap bandar judi online agar kamu bisa mendapatkan kemenangan yang luar biasa. jika kamu hanya asalan bermain judi slot online tanpa ada trik dan cara sendiiri yang bisa kamu lakukan, setiap permainan yang kamu main kan hanya lah sia-sia dan hanya cuman buang-buang uang kamu saja.

Sekian penjelasan tentang permain judi slot online yang dapat kamu terapkan untuk mendapatkan penghasilan yang tak terduga dalam kehidupan kamu sehari-hari, Hanya bermodalkan deposit yang kecil kamu bisa mendapatkan uang dengan sangat banyak. Semoga keberuntungan selalu kamu dapatkan setiap bermain judi slot online di Situs Nagamenslot.

 

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List Building Is a Huge Dilemma for New Comers to Network Marketing

List building is a critical activity in internet marketing and network marketing done through the internet. Knowing how to build a list can mean the difference between success and failure on an online opportunity. This is especially true in Network Marketing where you need to recruit fast to offset your cost for advertising. Although having a list does not necessary guarantee recruits, it increases your chances of getting off on the right foot in any opportunity.

In my own experience, when I started, I did not know how to build a list and if I see any e-book or course on list building, I avoided it. My brain simply did not want to understand the technical complexity of the process. As a matter of fact, I understood the importance of building a list but I had no time to understand the technical aspect of doing it. As a result I go for methods that did not involve list building. How wrong was I, because the money lost could have been used on training on list building. There is no way around it and I had to know it or be a statistic in the business.

Well any newbie to internet marketing will know that it is not easy to understand list building. You need something of value to give away, an autoresponder with a squeeze page and website with this autoresponder embedded. OK you may need a domain name and if you have an affiliate link, you would want to redirect the domain name to this affiliate site. Oh what is a squeeze page anyway? I got lost in all these. It was just technically intimidating. To be honest, I even read several books on it and still got lost.

Despite that I studied the process and got to know it. But list building involves paying for the autoresponders on a monthly basis. And if you are not using free traffic generation methods than it will cost you money to drive traffic to the squeeze page. If you are just giving something away to build a list then you still need to monetize the leads which appropriate offers which is another aspect of internet marketing you have to learn. Building a list in itself does not make money until you monetize the leads. In network marketing this is crucial as you may be on autoship monthly which you will have to break even to make money.

List building is a difficult thing and one of the most important thing you can do to reduce your learning curve is to buy into a system that has an inbuilt autoresponder and one that you do not need to design a squeeze page. This will buy you time to learn the whole process of list building while the system generates leads for you. You can avoid the technically intimidating stuff and concentrate on driving traffic. Make sure that there are affiliate programs in the system that can you can generate retail income to offset membership costs. Simply put, you cannot avoid the process of list building. It will make or break your online business.

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List Building – IM Basics

List building is probably the most popular and ultimately profitable form of internet marketing. There is a very old saying ‘the money is in the list’ which many full-time IM businesses have been based upon.

No matter which area or niche you are in, you should be building a list wherever possible.

Why is List Building so Important?

We need to go back a step to a time before the internet was in everyone’s homes to understand the power of lists.

Old fashioned direct mail (or junk mail as it was known) used to come through everyone’s letter boxes at an alarming rate. There was a massive reason for this. It worked!

Plenty of businesses understood the power of mailing lists and spent a lot of money on campaigns like this.

It is purely a numbers game. If you get your message in front of enough people, then someone will be interested and ultimately buy whatever you are promoting.

Fast forward to today and there are similar principles at work, just using email rather than the postal service.

The beauty of using the internet and email to build a list is that anyone, and I mean anyone, can build a profitable list as cheaply or as quickly as they want.

So List Building is Spam?

Categorically no! There are very strict rules about what constitutes spam and list building does not break the rules. It is perfectly legal and, more importantly, when done properly it has a far more profitable effect than spam ever could.

There are two ways you can get a subscriber onto your list. One is called ‘single opt-in’ and the other is ‘double opt-in.’

A single opt-in subscriber puts their email address into a box on a website and is automatically added to the email list.

A double opt-in subscriber puts their email address into a box and gets sent a confirmation email. In this email is a link which the subscriber must click in order to be added to your email list.

Is Single Opt-in or Double Opt-in Better?

This is a debate which has been going on as long as the two options existed. You will end up building your list quicker if you use single opt-in. However, you are more susceptible to having your list suspended because of spam complaints.

With double opt-in, your list builds slower but you end up with less spam complaints as you can prove that the subscriber confirmed they wanted to be on your list.

In an ideal world, you want double opt-in subscribers on your list but that is a slower and more expensive way to build your email marketing list.

What is ‘The Proper Way?’

The most important aspect of building a list is to have people on your list who want to hear from you.

Having a list of 100 people who are engaged by your message, interested in your content is far more valuable than 10,000 random people who couldn’t care less about your emails.

There are some old school marketers who have been building lists for years who will have such huge mailing lists that they don’t really have to worry about engaging their subscribers. However for a beginner just starting out, engagement of your subscribers is crucial to start making money from your list.

How Do I Build a List?

Firstly, you will need to subscribe to a service called an ‘autoresponder.’

An autoresponder is where your subscribers are stored and allows you to email them all at once with your content and offers.

As your list is so important to you, using a free autoresponder is a false economy. If there is one thing you must pay for to start your internet marketing business, it is an autoresponder. Just Google ‘autoresponder’ to find a service which suits your budget.

There are a few options that work when you want to start building your list. You can create a product to sell and collect the emails of the buyers of your products. You can put an opt-in box on a blog so that visitors can be updated when you add new content. You can offer a ‘freebie’ in exchange for a visitors email address.

Ultimately you want to use a combination of every method mentioned above but to start with, the ‘freebie’ method is the most popular place to start. For these examples, I will assume you are using double opt-in as it is what I use:

The Freebie Method

This involves setting up a page called a ‘squeeze page.’ This entices the visitor to enter their email address in return for a free report, video or something else of value.

When the visitor enters their email address, they are redirected to a ‘thank you page’ which tells them to confirm their subscription in the email they have just been sent. When they click on the confirmation link in the email, they are taken to a download page for the report.

They are now a subscriber on your list.

The Product Method

This system is a lot more complicated as it involves you selling a product to visitors who then are added to your ‘buyers list.’

You need to create the product, the sales page, set up payment buttons and deliver the product paid for. That’s a lot of work.

However, a subscriber on the ‘buyers list’ is proven to be more likely to buy something else from you in the future. If they bought your product, they are more likely to listen to your recommendation for another product.

This is the most valuable type of subscriber you can have on your list.

The Blog Method

If you have a blog, you can put an opt-in box in the sidebar or header so that visitors can be updated when anything changes etc.

Think about sites like Amazon and Play. If a DVD is listed in pre-release you can enter your email to be informed when a launch date is added to the film.

Similarly you can ask visitors to opt-in for updates on the blog, or possibly a freebie as detailed above or maybe a free training course.

It doesn’t matter what you offer, they will be targeted to your niche as they joined the list from your blog.

What Do I Do Once I have Subscribers on my List?

This depends largely on what type of internet marketing you are doing.

You could just send promotional emails with your affiliate links embedded in them. This tends to get you a lot of unsubscribers and spam complaints so it’s not recommended for beginners.

Sending emails with valuable training or information that doesn’t require your subscriber to buy anything is a good place to start. You can then send the occasional promotional email, say 1 in every 6. This way the subscriber gets value from being on your list and is therefore more likely to buy something when you recommend it.

When recommending a paid product, it is useful if you have bought it yourself. That way you can give a unique spin on the product and personalise it for your list.

How you engage with your subscribers is too big a subject to get too detailed about here. It is a science in its own right.

Advanced List Building Techniques

Whichever method you use to build your list,you need traffic. Here’s where it gets interesting…

What if you could also make money from that traffic whilst also building your list? That would be perfect wouldn’t it?

Well it is a fairly easy process to make a little extra money even when offering a free product on a squeeze page.

When using the double opt-in system, after entering their email address your visitor goes to a thank you page.

A great way to make some money is to make that thank you page a paid product which is relevant to the freebie you are offering.

It is important to make the connection between the freebie and the paid product. There is no point having an offer here if it is not relevant to the freebie the visitor is subscribing for.

It can be your own product or an affiliate offer.

You can also advertise some products (using your own affiliate link) on your download page. Again, it is important to keep them relevant.

If you are giving away a free report, why not include affiliate links in the report too. If you are directing the reader to a particular site, use an affiliate link.

Summary

When building a list remember that the subscribers are an asset. A very valuable asset.

Never treat them with disrespect. Never lie to them. Always try to give them valuable information. Treat your subscribers as you would like to be treated yourself.

Every marketer should be trying to build their list all the time. Whether that be passively with their blog or actively with advertising campaigns.

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Under the Hood of Website Translation

If you are a smart marketer or an ambitious entrepreneur, chances are that words like website translation are not alien to you. You must have already grabbed the opportunity to make your product and brand stand visible and comfortable on a global stage. You must have started having conversations or strategies to shape your significant content formats like website or apps into a translation context.

It is very helpful at this point to understand some details that go into the making of this magic called effective translation, the wonder called ‘translation with a global impact’.

Have you covered aspects like content template or source code sharing with the service provider among other elements? It would help if your code or format, whether it is a word document or an in-CMS transition, aligns well with the overall translation process and expertise.

It would also assist in a major way if you make a clear and informed choice about some not-so-easy decisions well in advance and carry these postures throughout the association – like, use of translation proxy or avoiding it; picking development server, having or not having multiple instances, the repository of documents and the technical language (HTML or PHP) deployed in the process. Sometimes, choice of local domain and hosting provider can make a lot of difference in optimization, reach and accessibility for the website. Certain decisions can be tough to make but if they are made with discretion and prudence then they pay off well in comparison to unexpected, unpleasant surprises.

Do not leave the task only to developers and translators. Website translation includes and but is not all about grammar and vocabulary only. Even punctuation or sentence construction or use of colloquial impact can be the game-changer. This is a realm that should incorporate linguistic experts and cultural natives to weed out any gross oversight or errors that might skip the eye of the technical professional.

Website translation and localization can seem like a one-off job but, in reality, it could be a real-time, iterative and a continuous process that could span other parts of the marketing chain and lifecycle easily. Be ready for the onerous demand that could arise from this nature and also make sure you pick a team that can deliver them. The process entails but is not limited to content. The layout of the new content, effective localization and visual characteristics matter equally when it comes to successfully translating a website. They should be envisioned in time and not addressed as a quick-fix or knee-jerk treatment.

Testing is a crucial ingredient to facilitate a smooth and actionable translation process. This should be both functional and user-oriented. Just ensuring that the content appears in a specific language is not enough unless the user can relate to the website in a way that is easy, engaging and familiar.

Accessibility is usually an afterthought for many translators. But in this Internet-dominated age, SEO context and Meta tags or Metadata are very important in driving the right traffic and optimizing visibility. Onboard a language service provider that thinks of these parts as an overall strategy and not as an add-on.

Images, cultural nuances, choice of appropriate words, confirming the connotation of a slogan etc. are some more areas that need more than a technical approach to the translation process. One should have a team or an expert who can point out misalignment or misinterpretation possibilities for a new audience before they blow out of proportion.

Have a consistent strategy, both for website translation and localization and also for aligning it well with the overall branding framework.

All in all, you as a brand and as a brand custodian have to be as devoted and clear as you would expect the translation provider to be. The job entails an investment of thought and the use of right strategy and this also connects to the kind of service provider you ultimately choose and continue.

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How To Start and Run a Successful Lifestyle Business Online

A Personal Insight

Congratulations! You have chosen a really rewarding option into how your business and life will coexist happily ever after.” That was a little note to myself when I chose the lifestyle business option, quite a far cry from a traditional start-up that I was running in the entertainment and events industry after quitting my 9-5 job. The latter required me to be in a specific physical location of course so as to reach and serve my clients.

Today, I run a digital business model and all I need is a laptop handy and an Internet connection. I then choose when I want to do some work and where I want to get that work done. And that my friend is what I call a perfect match! My life meets my business everywhere I go, anywhere I am. The general business rules remain pretty similar and herein I will share my own golden rules that new entrepreneurs will particularly find informative… But first… if you are about to quit your job, you are probably wondering

Can Starting A Lifestyle Business Change Your Life?

No more dreadful Monday morning train commutes to work and staring into a stranger’s face seated across from me wearing sunnies on a cold morning, perhaps a subtle attempt to numb the pain of the lifeless surrounding. They are having the same thoughts as me. “Friday cannot come quick enough”. Then I start thinking about my email box and that Monday morning meeting that I have not prepared for. I have to fill in my boss on the current project status before he can go into another meeting with more important people than me to tell them what I just told him!

I remember having those thoughts and it just makes me queasy as I write this. I know you get the drift. I remember suffering temporary amnesia as I walked out of the house, holding car keys and looking for them all over the kitchen and lounge. I had spent a whole hour pre-occupied in thought on how I will handle the stress that was about to unfold for the next 5 days of my life.

The Road Ahead

As exciting as this new journey is about to be you want to get a few things in order straight away in your new ‘house’ to make this transition process as smooth as you possibly can. That business idea is looking great, you have done lots of research, consulted a few souls preferably smarter than you. You have also been making some new friends. I really hope none of them is still working where you just quit! I soon found out that these friendships only flourished over the years because of shared interests such as office politics that tended to specially thrive on Friday night at the bar when we didn’t have to whisper about overwhelming love for senior management.

The reality now is, you are in an elevated consciousness phase of your life, one that these friendships cannot exist. Your mindset needs to be fed with new insights and nurtured with refreshing thoughts about living a fulfilled life. You have some money saved up in the bank and probably have an actionable step-by-step business plan. There is something of value that you have to share and a strategy to get customers lined up ready to give your ‘something’ a warm welcome into this new world order.

But that is the easy part. I shall be completely honest here; apart from some money that I had saved up at the point of quitting, I really didn’t have much more than a rough idea of what I was going to do. I was risking it all. When I left my day job some years ago, I was at a point where it was either that or I lose my mind.

7 Golden Rules

A New MIND-set:

As with all things new, your mind is the first guy you want to put in check. Let him know there is a new sheriff in town. If you are like me, you have been spending the better part of the last 6 – 12 months buried deep in business books and ripping them apart in your spare time. At some point, you found personal development material captivating. Eventually, you started finding out why that constant nagging feeling of life and lack of fulfilment was. As an example, I had read books like Richdad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki and listened to the audio version of the same in case something was lost in translation! I had also read Think & Grow Rich by Napoleon Hill and Dale Carnegie’s How To Win Friends and Influence People among others.

This is an activity that you will not want to let slip into the overflowing ‘good habits to continue when I get time bucket’. I had one like that and needed no motivation adding more stock completely in autopilot. Mind food is paramount in this journey. You want to stay inspired a good chunk of the time because this is where the sowing is happening. The thing is as abstract as some of the ideas in this material may seem at this point; I found that with time, it all starts to fall into place as the journey progresses. So do not sweat any concepts that are not clear yet. Keeping the reading habit going is all you need. These books are not really designed for reading cover to cover. Think of them like the SAT NAV system your car or as you own version of a personal SIRI.

It is a known fact that our minds don’t like disruption. Whether that disruption is good for us or not, it is not very welcome without some whip cracking. The mind has got everything figured out. It is a very well trained machine with thoughts and habits that shape your life and works even when you are sleeping, doing the ‘regular chores around the house’.

The 9-5 routine mindset is still at this point deeply wired into your system. It’s advisable to start setting up ground rules so that YOU and the MIND are both on the same page. This takes a while and certainly took me the better part of 2 years. Don’t stress just know there are changes you will need to work on consistently in this area. Oh, remember when I mentioned who your new friends cannot be a little earlier?

Breaking The Bad:

I made the mistake of trying to keep a regular 9-5-like routine when I first started my entrepreneurial journey. Big mistake. What tends to happen as a result is, the mind in these early days of business life, is still largely unaware of the ‘new life in construction progress’. It actively runs the old familiar version of ‘code’ from its 9-5 days in the background in stealth mode. You might know what happens when you try to run a new version of Microsoft Windows on old PC hardware? Yes, exactly right!

All sorts of weird compatibility issues are not unheard of.

I did not understand this myself. The mindset driving my routine was still stuck in the old version. The correct term for this is the subconscious mind. So your poor conscious mind, which is pretty much what we operate on until new ways are ‘learned’ runs into a constant battle. It really wants to change the world for you, it’s ready to work hard, promising to cut the Friday night binge that serves no purpose other than a regular headache which eats away the Saturday morning and pinky swears to cut down on addictive TV shows.

Someone, please explain why my favourite big screen stars are also hanging out in these TV shows… like really?

The Deal With Time Management:

As a new entrepreneur what quickly comes into awareness I would say is the time management beast and what seems to be like an endless stream of unmanageable distractions. In a lifestyle business that is run from home, the park, at the beach, the airport lounge or while on safari at The Mara, this can be a constant battle. Don’t get too hang up on being perfect day one with this one. The more I tried to fight it the more I stressed about it. Stress did not improve my time management skills and only added to unfinished tasks that needed more worrying about… I thought! The time drama continued until I put measures to progressively learn how to improve time management.

Keep educating yourself on what works for your schedule and what sorts of distractions are overpowering you. I can tell you now it’s going to be technology related!

It didn’t matter that I was an early riser who wouldn’t go to bed until my eyeballs were literally unlocking themselves from my sockets in protest. Occasionally I got the odd finger in this scuffle! And sometimes I still wouldn’t give up. Now, this does not necessarily equate to being productive. The actual real result was a constant feeling of exhaustion, elevated stress levels, and anxiety.

Why You Need To Design A Routine That Works Around Your Lifestyle Business

I hadn’t changed my routine so my mind would expect the usual treatment, 9 am we are active at work and then at 5 pm it expects that we are on the ‘winding up for the day phase’. I, on the other hand, had with all good intent, added extra hours in front of the 9 and after the 5. Now you can see where the problem was once I kept this up for a while. Insane!!! Create a new routine and optimise around what works for you.

Decide When You Want To Work… Create A Routine… Then Follow It With Military Discipline

Perfecting this phase when you start a lifestyle business, which means your physical surroundings change constantly, it can feel daunting. However, with a well mapped out daily, and weekly routine that you have the discipline to stick with, you will start to see results. In no time, this will end up running on autopilot.

There’s going to be a lot of 10 to 12 hour days, maybe longer but they don’t and shouldn’t be in your constant daily routine. After all, it’s business around your lifestyle. I have 3-hour blocks and generally leave my ‘heavy lifting work’ for when I get into a state of flow, usually after midnight.

Understanding Your Personal Power and Peak Performance State:

This state starts becoming more regular with practice and awareness. Understand your highs (i.e. peak energy state), lows (this is no time to do the books and usually a good time to choose pizza toppings and make big decisions like thin or thick crust?) and my personal favourite flow state (this is creation mode and a good time to change the World). Pick a block of hours that works for you. Once new habits in your routine become solid you will have an easier time telling these states apart.

It’s not unusual for me to get into flow while at the shops looking at apples and kiwi fruit fresh deals of the day. This state for me comes through an insightful thought or sometimes as a series of thoughts back to back, so please keep a hardcover notebook at all times for these moments. You might just stumble on your best business idea yet!

Time management and productivity is a continuous optimisation process. All you have to do is decide how many hours you want to work. Pay attention to your body clock and maximise for times when you are at peak energy states. Then learn to induce these states through rewarding practices like meditation.

Schedule Fun Times on Tuesdays:

Although it’s not how I started off, I am lucky thus far to be working on businesses that allow me lots of flexibility as to when and where I actually work. If this tickles your fancy you are on the right track here. In my case, all I need is my mac book pro and decent wifi. Tip: When I am in a location where the menu has an under $10 dollar price tag frenzy going on, I move on swiftly.

About Tuesdays

Move all the things you used to do for fun on Saturday to this day. The Keyword here is FUN guys so if mowing the lawn is fun! Okay, you get my point. It doesn’t matter what the activity is but I recommend you do it in the early days of your journey. The feeling is absolutely incredible. For me, it was reading the paper and a coffee down the road.

Do you guys wonder why we still print newspapers today?

So, usually, one or two local Moms will swing by the coffee shop and that is all the action there is. The rest of the ‘real’ world folks are at work. This is my opinion but what I found with being Mr Tuesday is that it gives me a boost of confidence and that sense of freedom where I feel, “yeah that’s right, I can do what I want when I want”.

I will point out here that this has nothing to do with money. I have done this even when the reality at that time was ‘cash-flow challenges!’. I am not advocating that you should smile and be happy when you are broke, no no no. When you think about it, this is when you need your mind at a 100% and if all it takes is a series of 3-dollar coffees down the road, so be it. While on this topic, my ideal Tuesday day is on a yacht surrounded by endless views of blue seas at exactly 11 am and a safety vest in close proximity! Unwanted swimming lessons are not part of this plan.

What does your ideal Tuesday day look like?

Your Inner Circle… Your Players CLUB:

This is an interesting one because if you think about your ideal Tuesday above, how many people do you know today can do that? Initially, you will probably be alone or maybe with someone close to you like a partner, wife, girlfriend or somebody else who probably does what you do, or benefits directly from what you do. I found out that the friends I used to hang out with on Saturdays and Sundays in my previous life no longer fitted in the new life I was creating. It’s a delicate balance but I had to make some changes. For the same reason, of course, the folks at your old job will probably not take Tuesday off to hang out at your newly found happy place to share happy coffee with you.

I could go on and on about this inner circle area of the new life but what I realised and accepted was, I needed to decide as part of the journey, to be alone for a little while as more new quality friendships developed. This is still an ongoing process. As an example, a couple of months ago I was in HongKong for a week just by myself. I had a blast but would it have been nicer to share that escapade with someone familiar?

I met new people on that trip and did things I had never done before. I love travelling and it is one of the reasons why starting a lifestyle business was a brilliant model. The thing is, if I can make friends who also have time to be lazy on Tuesdays for happy coffee and random sun baking escapades, that is probably a good ‘new friend barometer’ check right there! Oh and hopefully of course what they do for money is generally not frowned upon by law!

On the real, though, I personally don’t have many of these friends but I found that this is a good time for me to reflect inwards and to focus on my personal growth. If you are new into this game, this could be a good time to spend with a business mentor, perhaps meet other like-minded people in your local community, go deep into nature or maybe just hang out on social media platforms and engage and find out the latest buzz like who got a cat! Seriously the point here is, have a lot of choices in your back pocket that you can go crazy with and if you have bucket list ideas all figured out, check them off weekly without fail.

Family:

Family is very dear to me and I would imagine it’s the same for you too. Perhaps, much so that you are making this decision to escape the 9-5 and really start learning new ways to make money outside the voluntary solitary confinement space (also known as office cubicle). One of my reasons for choosing this journey was my family. To be more available to them and to enhance my own life experiences. To fill those experiences with what I really want anytime I wanted it. The one thing I encountered and you probably might as well, those we love and care for dearly may not understand the new you. These moments may not be as dramatic such as waving placards in protest but you will see it vividly.

Remember how our minds don’t like change?

It’s not their fault and they are probably coming from a place of love for you. Embrace the response you get with love and remember your bigger mission. I had lots of strange conversations with people I love and would have like to be speaking a foreign language at the time. That way being misunderstood would have been spot on. Then one day I realised, they weren’t really saying they disliked my new outlook on life and crazy ideas like giving up a six-figure income.

They were just saying, “We don’t understand how to process this new information”. Please show us how. You might also take consolation in the fact that how well you manage this close relationship is a reflection of how you will do ‘out there’ where the World is short of people like you and me, people who are lost in self-indulgence and totally unconscious of their daily actions will not understand you either!

Remember, training takes time. That’s what it took for me until they somewhat understood. If you are lucky enough to get the all in response from them, great, if not, give them time and if need be, add the space element to it as well. Be kind to yourself.

At the time, I was on a roller coaster going through a myriad of changes both personal and business that required me to be very present. My first business was in an industry I did not know at all, the physical surroundings were not very familiar (I will discuss this in a later post) and a pending divorce as a result of a strained long-distance relationship. Now, this was a lot of action in one headspace!

In Summary

Your circumstances may be a little different from mine for wanting to come this way and choosing this journey. As you go along, it’s reasonable to expect moments where you will be tried and tested by fate. Things will happen that will be out of your comfort zone or out of your control and sometimes both.

In the end, I find that clarity on my why I do what I do sails me through choppy waters. I embrace whatever comes my way with love. Answers to what I don’t know come in the right time. I keep the bigger mission clear in my mind. Creating a life where I can live on my own terms is not free, there’s a price to be paid.

Another really important thing to have a solid business system. I found my answer with the six-figure mentors. They have a step-by-step business system that shows you how to leverage the Internet and start your very own online business. What’s, even more, is that if your goal is to start your own business say around your passion, the business skills you will learn are second to none. From experience with my first 2 ventures as a newbie without a mentor, I would recommend every new entrepreneur make getting a mentor, their number one priority. Looking at how I started my entrepreneurial journey, this was my single most expensive mistake up until today as I write this.

Final Thought

Along the way somewhere, I realised that I needed to give up the idea of perfection and get cosy with uncertainty about what will be tomorrow and experience some discomfort today because of the things that I don’t know yet. I experience more growth as I continue to operate in that mental space. All I have to do TODAY is take to take the next best action. This post is unusually long so if you are still reading, I sincerely thank you. I hope you found some value in there. Feel free to share this post with someone else who will enjoy reading through the ideas and insights I have shared.

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Traffic Building – Oh the Insustainability of it All

Traffic building is a primary goal of virtually every business website on the World Wide Web. The problem many businesses encounter is the practices they insist on using do not connect well with long-term traffic building objectives.

For example, some businesses will insist on purchasing email lists and using these lists to conduct one shot email marketing campaigns. Sure, there will be a certain percentage of recipients who will visit their website and there will be a lesser percentage who actually make a purchase, but the end result is a boost in traffic.

Various advertising techniques such as Pay Per Click (PPC) are used to bolster traffic-building objectives, but the end result may be a smaller Return on Investment (ROI) than the site owner may be willing to accept as fair and equitable.

There is a term used in energy and natural resources that makes sense in the world of traffic building. That term is sustainability. When a site owner is seeking long-term strategies for traffic building they need to look at what strategies are sustainable.

What strategies can perpetually bring traffic to a site without requiring constant care and financial resources?

Organic Ezines – The use of information and personally culled email addressed make for a combination that allows you to connect with the largest number of motivated consumers. These consumers often look forward to your latest issue and are happy to gain insight and information on subjects they are interested in.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – SEO strategies are particularly well suited to bringing sustainable traffic to your website. If you optimize your site well you should expect the potential for perpetual traffic.

Directories – Taking the time to submit your site information to a variety of directories makes it possible to see further sustainability in cyber traffic.

The primary rule for many of these strategies is they cost more in time than they do money. Conversely strategies that require less time always seem to cost more money.

The shoot-from-the-hip approach to traffic building is an approach that requires constant attention and creative thinking. In fact, you shouldn’t be surprised if these approaches yield fewer results than you hope for. When that happens many site owners are tempted to push the envelope and develop strategies that many consider spamming.

When you take time at the start of your online business to develop traffic building strategies the end results are not only likely to be dramatically better they are also more likely to be sustainable.

With the growth of your traffic you will also find a parallel with increased sales.

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Profitable Traffic Building – 7 Ways to Advance in Traffic Building

Profitable traffic building is the key to success in Internet business. If you want to increase your profits, you have to increase your traffic. Through this article you are presented with 7 ways to advance in traffic building.

1. One of the most fundamental ways to advance towards profitable traffic building is to learn the ins and outs of creating content for a website that has been search engine optimized.

2. Additionally, when it comes to profitable traffic building, you must also learn techniques pertaining to meta-tags and meta-tag creation and placement.

3. Moreover, an important aspect of profitable traffic building in this day and age is learning how to create appropriate domain names that will draw traffic to a site.

4. Profitable traffic building also depends upon an ability to create and implement a quality link building program. Again, the key here is quality – any link building efforts need to be quality in nature.

5. Profitable traffic building efforts need to be part of a comprehensive website promotion plan or program. You cannot work on building traffic to a site in a vacuum.

6. You need to be open minded and willing to consider new options when it comes to working towards profitable traffic building and drawing people to your website venue.

7. Finally, if you have questions about what you are considering doing, understand that there are people available who can give you useful and professional advice, guidance and assistance.

Seven simple ways which you will now need to put into action.

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