Your Guide to Finding & Working with a Virtual Assistant
If you’ve been looking for a way to reduce your workload, stress and want to be able to focus on the business-building aspects of your online business, this report will show you exactly how to do that.
Your Guide to Finding & Working with a Virtual Assistant (VA) on Any Budget is your guide to leveraging the skills of others to boost your productivity and profitability.
It includes guidance on:
- The benefits of hiring a VA (Think more time, more money, more stress-free days and nights)
- How to decide if your business could use a Virtual Assistant (Hint: If you’re struggling to complete day-to-day tasks or haven’t been able to grow your business as much as you’d like, the answer is likely YES!)
- 122 things your VA can do for your business – and this is just a starter list.
- How to decide which tasks to pass onto your VA.
- Tips for hiring help on a budget.
- Finding the right VA for your unique business needs and budget.
- Training your VA and creating a mutually-beneficial working relationship.
At only 14 easy-to-digest pages (or listen to the audio if you prefer), it’s easy to whip through and start getting the help you need for your online business. No sense in reading all day, when you can be reducing your workload, minimizing your stress and boosting your profits instead!
3 Key Characteristics of a Great Affiliate Program
Choosing the right affiliate program makes the difference between making peanuts and earning a good income from your affiliate marketing business. If you are a newcomer to the world of affiliate marketing and need a little guidance, this article will help you begin your affiliate marketing journey. Of course, a newcomer will also face a little more difficulty figuring out what exactly to look for in an affiliate program.
These are three tips which can make sure that your affiliate recommendations are consistently good ones.
- The right product
It's always a good idea to check out the product for yourself before you sign up as an affiliate to promote it. With inexpensive products like ebooks, this is easy enough to do. However, if you are considering joining the affiliate program for a product which you cannot afford yourself, you should ask the affiliate manager for a review copy so you can evaluate it for yourself. They may not always say yes, but it can't hurt to ask and it's a good way to make sure that your recommendations are trustworthy otherwise you need to do some in-depth research on the people behind the affiliate program and the product itself.
- A solid reputation
Make a habit of researching any product (and the company selling it) before recommending it. You can do a quick search to look into the track record and reputation of a company. You definitely don't want your potential customers to think that the trust they have in you is misplaced and ruin a good track record by recommending a substandard product or one by a company with a record of poor customer service just so you can make a few extra bucks. If you are new to affiliate marketing and this is a new company or new product which you have no way of judging, you are better off taking a pass on this product unless you know the founders of the company or have some other assurance of their integrity.
- Does the merchant give you more than a simple sales page to help you market their product?
If you are experienced as an affiliate marketer, a simple sales page may be plenty to get you started, but if you are new to this, you're going to need more resources to make this a successful campaign. Try to find programs which give you more than this like sample emails, articles, graphics; you get the idea. You want programs which offer marketing materials and support to get you started.
To learn more about the basics of affiliate marketing, grab your free registration to Moms Affiliate Expo here.
© 2008 Regina Baker
WANT TO USE THIS ARTICLE IN YOUR E-ZINE OR WEB SITE? You can, as long as you include this complete blurb with it: Regina Baker is the Ecommerce Advisor at Wahmcart.com, ecommerce solutions for small businesses. Ready to jumpstart your ecommerce business? Grab her free ecourse at http://Wahmcart.com
Stumbling With Your Product Launch?
Yes, been there and done that drama! On top of the fact, my budget doesn’t allow for products that cost a fortune just to learn how to launch a product or service. Quite frankly, most small businesses don’t have the funds to invest in these products because if they did, they would.
You might be able to relate to this: You write your first report, ebook, perhaps launch your coaching service or get ready to sell your first teleseminar, sit down and wait… and wait for the sales to roll in. And, they don’t. At least not like you hoped they would.
Unfortunately I won’t promise you that you’ll suddenly have every person knocking down your door, but I can guarantee you that this new report by Jimmy D. Brown will get you thinking outside your ‘own’ box.
- No big list?
- No guru friends?
- No super affiliates?
No problem.
I’m a huge fan of Jimmy D. Brown. Why? Because I’ve been studying Jimmy’s products now for a couple of years and to tell the truth, he gives some pretty compelling information that even the higher products don’t! Jimmy gives it to you straight, and if you follow his method of following proven principles, you’ll see the results too!
Jimmy just released a new report titled, “Piggyback Product Launches – 3 Sure Fire Ways To Get a Steady Steam of Free Traffic For Any New Product”. While I’ve been a member of his ListsandTraffic.com membership for sometime now, I’m pretty familiar with everything he talks about in this new report.
So what’s a Piggyback Product Launch? Jimmy says,
“A “piggyback” product launch is to use the existing leverage
of someone or something else to launch your product.”
In other words, if you don’t have a list, an affiliate program, a network of partners, etc., you can “piggyback” off someone who does in order to successfully launch your product. Jimmy tells you exactly how to do this!
I truly encourage you to grab this low cost report, apply what he tells you and watch for results. You’ll be glad you did.
Are You Reaching The Female Market?
Are You Reaching The Female Market?
“Most industries and marketers have finally figured out something: Women have wallets, and women do make independent, big-ticket purchasing decisions.” says Joanna L. Krotz, author of, the Microsoft® Small Business Kit
An article in the Los Angeles Times reads: “Women pack a wallop when it comes to their purchasing power.” Here’s how they stack up financially:
- By 2010, women will control more than half of private U.S. wealth, or about $14 trillion.
- By 2020, that number is expected to rise to $22 trillion
read more here
You have products that are perfect for the female audience but you don’t know how to reach a large sector of this market.
Now There’s a Solution!
Affiliate program owners and managers can feature their program at the Moms Affiliate Expo.
This is the first of it's kind! Be a part of something exciting and new while reaching a market that you possibly couldn't tap into alone.
Become an Exhibitor or Sponsor: September 11, 12 & 13 – 2008
If you run an affiliate program that would appeal to site owners who reach moms, sign up as an exhibitor to secure a media rich listing on the Mom’s Affiliate Expo website.
Learn how to monetize your blogs, podcasts and websites with Women owned products and services!
For additional information on this awesome event, visit The Moms Affiliate Expo.
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Ready to learn more about Affiliate Marketing? Click here
Online vs Offline Advertising
If you’re having challenges understanding how to advertise online, the information I’m about to share with you will change all of that!
So many people think that when they get online and just put up a website, that’s all that needs to happen. Kind of like the phrase ‘build it and they will come.’ NOT!
Unfortunately, online business doesn’t work that way. It’s so different than a brick and mortar presence because having a physical store brings more attention to your business simply because, people are always driving around noticing the signs hanging out front and drop in just to see what’s on the inside.
However, online marketing is so much more different than that. In order for someone to find your site that way, they need to ‘google’ keywords in order to find what they’re looking for AND, if your website is not on the first couple of pages of that search, your chances of being seen are slim to none.
So how should you advertise on line?
Very carefully! I know you’ve probably heard a lot about ‘targeting your market’ and ‘usp’ (unique selling proposition) phrases and, it’s true. Targeting people who are looking specifically for what you have to offer is one of the main keys to getting your business seen. When you advertise to your target market, the results can be phenomenal! The downfall is when you advertise all over the place in newsletters, ezines and directories that are not complimentary to your niche. However, advertising in directories are a plus (even if they aren’t specific to your business), I’ll tell you about that a little bit later.
Having the luxury of ‘tracking’ your sales is powerful! Why? Because it lets you know if your advertising dollars are being spent in the right place. My friend, Alice Seba says, “One of the best tools available to you as an internet marketer are your tracking and testing tools. These help you know if you’re making the right decisions concerning your business.”
You’ve also probably heard the phrase they use in real estate that it’s all about, ‘location, location, location’ right? When you’re an online marketer, it’s all about, ‘testing and tracking and ‘tweaking and improving.’
Alice created a small report called “Online Advertising – More Bang For Your Advertising Buck.” It’s a short 18 page report but packed with solution oriented
information that will teach you exactly how to advertise online. She even gives you writing tips on how to write your ad as well as where to advertise and how to test and track your advertising dollars.
If you really want to see a difference in your advertising budget or want to know exactly how to advertise online, you need this report! I can provide this report to you for $12.97, however, I’m not going to do that. I recommend that you consider joining Alice’s “Sweetie Saturday Report Club” where you can get this same report for only $9. Sure you’ll pay $9 every month (for different topic reports) but believe me, you will not be disappointed! And, if you don’t want to go that route, just let me know and I’ll give it to you for $12.97
Online Directories are AWESOME for Backlinks!
Backlinks are incoming links to a website or web page. In the search engine optimization (SEO) world, the number of backlinks is one indication of the popularity or importance of that website or page. Outside of SEO, the backlinks of a webpage may be of a significant interest: they indicate who is paying attention to that page.
In basic link terminology, a backlink is any link received by a web page, directory, website, or top level domain. Backlinks are also known as incoming links, inbound links, inlinks, and inward links.
A while back and somewhat still commonly done, is the method of asking people to swap links with you. Way too time consuming for me! Online directories are great for this… but, I’m not telling you just to place your url in any directory and all over the place.
NOTE: “We must be careful with our reciprocal links. There is a Google patent in the works that will deal with not only the popularity of the sites being linked to, but also how trustworthy a site is that you link to from your own website. This will mean that you could get into trouble with the search engine just for linking to a bad apple.” Read more here
Make sure you do your due diligence (research) or outsource it to your VA.
Next week, we’ll learn more about back links and I’ll give you a few top notch directories to consider.