Online Business Questions Revealed

Archive for February, 2009

Received this good question, and it is something that all marketers should think about no matter what niche/market you are currently in. It’s vital that you make sure you can stand out amongst the others within your market/nice.

=================================================================================

What is the best way to differentiate yourself from the competition, besides having a good product? I am asking this question from the perspective of marketing competing products to in some cases over-populated markets. Any thoughts on how to separate yourself from others?
—————————————————————————————————-
Dr Smiley’s answer
—————–

Let’s break this down your first question – What is the best way to differentiate yourself from the competition? -

The best way is to get yourself out there and known. One good way to differentiate yourself is to check out your competition and see what they are doing you could be doing better or differently

The second part – Perspective of marketing competing products to in some cases over-populated markets. It’s never easy to get into a competitive market that is already saturated with stuff. Consider narrowing our market down see if there is a smaller market within your market that you could go after.
—————————————————————————————————
Hope you got something good out of that and start to implement it. Make yourself stand out from your competition will get you noticed and more clients.

Like these, then do sign up for our RSS feed and/or leave a comment. If you have a question then please ask it, use the form on the right hand side and the Dr. will get right back to you.

Have a great day
Dr Smiley

Do you have a question you need answered?
Just fill out the form at the right to get your question answered today!. Thanks for visiting!

Below is a question Dr Smiley received and answered. Hope it helps you!
================================================================================

Is blogging and article marketing the only way to get traffic to my website? What do you think about those companies that charge you (x$ for xclicks) to send people to your site?

There are lots of different ways to get traffic to your website, and blogging and article marketing are just some. Make sure you are optimizing your website for the search engines as well so you can get indexed with the search engines. Make sure you are leaving valuable and helpful comments on forums, and other blogs that are related to your market.

Paying anyone to send visitors to your website is not good! You don’t know for sure the quality of visitors they are sending or whether they are targeted to your market. It is always best to stay away from companies like this, get your traffic yourself.

Some other ways to get traffic is by social media, using places like Twitter, Squidoo, and Facebook these are just a few places to get started.

There is one good place to learn more about how to get traffic to any website – The Faster Traffic Master

When new folks come to the Internet to start a new online business, this seems to be the first question they have.

So just how does someone start an online business?

There are a lot of different ways to get started online, but the one thing I have seen and learned, is you Must find out what you are passionate about. This is the best place to start. So let’s start there – your passion.

What is your passion, it can be anything you enjoy doing in your spare time, special knowledge you have that others would love to know, and/or what you do currently in your job or what you did previously in your job. Your love for your pets, knitting, boating, cars, motorcycles, jewelry, health care products, weight loss products. Keep this in mind while you are finding your passionate, you DO NOT NEED or Have to start with Internet Marketing and/or make money online markets. In fact, it’s best if you do not get started there. This is a very saturated market and not easy to get in to.

Decide what it is you want your business model to be, this can be a simple website that sells products, either your own or affiliate products; you can set up a membership site where you can share your expertise with others, and/or put a blog up that you can post your articles up, put anything up related to your market.

Some simple steps to take when you are considering to start an online business:

1. Decide what your passion is, this will help you decide on what type of business you want to start.

2. Find out if this market is profitable. Do some Google searches and see what others are doing within this market and ask yourself, How can I improve on that, is there something missing I can fulfill, what type of questions and/or problems is this market having I might be able to solve.

3. Decide what type of business model you want to run. This can be a blog, a website, and/or a membership business. Depending on what your market is will depend on this model. If you are brand new to this online marketing stuff, suggest you start out with a simple blog, put up a few posts/articles and see how it goes; from there you can always expand.

4. Build a list of prospects that are interested in this market. This is probably the one thing most overlook, do not do that, build that list now. It doesn’t matter if the market you have chosen is profitable or not, get a list started! You can do this a few different ways, put a form on your blog, if this is the model you follow, or put a web page up that asks for their information in exchange for a free report or e-book or a sneak peak at you product. Just get that list started.

5. Find something you can sell. This does not have to be your own product or service when you get started, in fact it is better to Not start that way. Find an affiliate product or service you can get started with, this way you can begin earning while you are learning the market. Test the waters with an affiliate product/service to see what the market is willing to spend money on. You can always develop your own product after you know the market is profitable and willing to spend money to get the information.

6. Once you have the above decided on, it’s time to let others know about your website/blog. This can be done many different ways, the best way to start getting traffic is to submit some articles, now these don’t have to be difficult to do, if you are passionate about your market then you should know something you can write about. These articles don’t have to be long, about 350 words is good enough. Use your resource box to send traffic back to your website/blog. You can find other blogs and forums within your market and post valuable information, answer questions for others, use your signature area to promote your new blog/website. Don’t get overwhelmed here, just pick one or two things you can do, then focus on those only until you are good at it and you are getting traffic using them, then and only then, should you look for other
ways to drive traffic to your website.

Okay there you have some steps you need to take to get started with your own online business. The number one key to success or failure is focus and action. Without these two key elements you will fail. You must take action, be willing to do some work, if you don’t know how to do something, seek the people that do know how and partner with them, exchange your time or money with them to get you started.

Take Action today!

Many are realizing that article marketing is a great way to not only get visitors to their websites, but it also will provide you with a backlink. This is important if you are into SEO (Search Engine Optimization) stuff.

So how does it all work?

It’s pretty easy once you get the hang of it. Write up a small article about your niche/market. This doesn’t have to be real long, usually most directories will take an article that is around 400 words, and if you are passionate about your niche then it shouldn’t be difficult to do.

The problem most seem to experience is what to write about, this can be a stumbling block. Suggest that you do some research on your niche, discover some problems within that niche you can fix through writing an article. If your niche is a bit broad or big, drill down, find a niche within your niche to write about.

You don’t have to stick with your main niche, you might be surprised how many sub niches there are to a niche.

The power of article marketing doesn’t always come in just writing the article, of course you need to be unique, it needs to be your writing, but the real power is within your resource box. You are allowed, in most cases, to add your website link within your resource box. This will give people a chance to visit your website after they read your article.

If you link a specific keyword to your website then you get added benefit within the search engines. When you link your keywords, and then someone types that keyword into their browser, the chances of your article coming up is high, and once they click on your article, they then can click through to your website, a win-win situation for any marketer.

You don’t have to write thousands of articles, just set yourself a goal when starting out to around 2 articles a week.

Once you are comfortable with this, you can increase how many articles you write.

The other good thing with article marketing, is others are usually allowed to copy your work and use it on their website/blog, but they have to leave the article as is with your resource box intact. Another link for your website!

There is no limit on how many people can copy your article, so just think of the power behind this!

The best way to get started is to just do it. Take a keyword that is around your niche and start writing, you might be surprised just how much you actually do know.