Archive for the ‘Blogging’ Category

Many home business owners spend a good deal of their time working on the content of their website/blog/internet marketing efforts. Whatever your niche having a strong internet presence is essential and in the world of Web 2.0 that often means a blog, a Facebook page, a Twitter account, Ezines articles, and the list goes on.

Whatever online trends come and go original, engaging content that informs, entertains and educates your potential  customers is essential. But how do you do that when you’re already slammed trying to  run a home business? There are ways to create a lot of good internet content with far less effort than you might imagine. Here are some ways you take a single article or blog post and make it work extra hard to promote your home business:

Youtube it – There are two ways you can turn a single article into a promotional video to upload to YouTube and other video sites. First if you are comfortable being the star of the show invest in one of the new FLIP video cameras and record yourself reading your article. These little wonders are practically idiot proof and uploading your final product takes just a few minutes.

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Most home businesses rely on a website for generating income which makes it a number one priority. The site’s attractiveness and ease of use is quite important to potential customers and clients. Unfortunately, there are some techniques being used today on the internet that are actually more likely to drive customers away from your site rather than draw them in. Here are a few:

Pop Ups – Many home business owners seem to think that pop ups are great and that filling their site with them is a good idea. For many people though pop ups are nothing but a nuisance and a turn off (after all why are there so many pop up blockers available?) Some appear before the user has even had a chance to view the first page of a site, others before the average person can get half way through reading the first few paragraphs. It’s a little like that old fashioned door to door salesman who wouldn’t take his foot out of the door, annoying and counterproductive.

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As blogs and article marketing have become essential for home business marketing many people who haven’t really put pen to paper since high school find themselves faced with writing fresh and engaging content on a daily basis. If you are one such person there are a few easy steps you can follow in order to become a better writer, whether you are writing a daily blog post or just trying to come up with 140 engaging characters on Twitter:

Step 1 Just Write! – Many people get stuck because as they are trying to write a creative and intelligent set of sentences they get bogged down, by editing each line as they go along. When you first sit down to write, do just that. Don’t worry for the time being about spelling or comma placement, get your ideas down first.

Step 2 Edit – After you have all your thoughts down and your draft is completed is the time to begin editing in earnest. Read your piece through once and immediately make note of any required changes that are glaringly obvious. Consider your initial choice of words too, could the prose be better, does what you have written actually make sense?

If you rely on a spellchecker to catch your errors be careful. The average program will catch most of them but if you wrote “your” when you really meant “you’re” it won’t correct you, the word is spelt right and this a computer, not a literature professor.

Step 3 Read it Out Loud – Read your piece out loud, either to yourself or to a friend. This will help you catch what you may have not by just visually reading the piece through, especially when it comes to proper punctuation. If you are not under a huge deadline put your work aside for an hour or so and then go back and read it through again. Does it still sound as good as you thought it did?

Follow these simple guidelines and you should find that writing for marketing purposes becomes easier every day, until one day you wake up and its almost second nature.

Affiliate marketing can be a big source of income for writers, especially bloggers. But what do those who are successful in the industry know that others do not? Here are a few of the secrets of successful affiliate marketers:

Know Your Audience – Your affiliate links need to be helpful to your readers. Consider why they come to site in the first place and choose your affiliate programs based around that interest. If you blog about baseball don’t include big ads for printer ink just because they have a high potential payoff. Your readers are there to read up on stats, scores and team gossip; printers are not likely to be on their mind at the moment. Purchasing a new replica jersey? Your content may just pique their interest enough that they go right off and do that.

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Many home business owners maintain a blog as part of their overall business efforts, and for many affiliate marketers it is the lifeblood of their business. A number of successful bloggers are also now being sent dozens of products to review on their sights or are paid for their opinions.
New rules (not laws yet) that the Fair Trade Commission intend to implement on December 1st 2009 may change the face of the blogging business for good. According to the new rules a blogger must state clearly in their posts if they are being paid for their opinions or if they have received goods or services for free for review purposes. The penalty for non compliance with these rules could be a fine of up $11,000 per infraction.

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