Category: Online Business

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Online Business

Top 5 Automation Tools for Your Online Solo Service Business

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Part of running an efficient and organized business is making full use of the technology and resources available to you. It’s great to set up systems and processes and have them work for you, but in order to fully automate your business you also need to know which technologies are going to work best to support you in that.

Over the years I have worked with many different automation tools (either in my own business or for my clients) that have helped to support an online solo business owner, and today I’d like to share my top five favorite ones with you. All of these tools I use in my own business today – and they’re a huge timesaver as well as creating a more streamlined and automated business for me.

1. 1ShoppingCart – this is my shopping cart, autoresponder, broadcast, and database management systems all rolled into ONE system. I especially like this service because everything is done in one place which really does make for a more streamlined business. It is possible to use one service for your shopping cart activities (i.e. product sales) and another service for your autoresponder/broadcast (i.e. sending out your newsletter) but the danger with this is that you are running two different databases and at some point it will become cumbersome and may even start to become unmanageable.

2. TimeDriver – this is probably my favorite find and is such a huge timesaver for me; I’m so grateful to one of my clients for putting me onto this service. It’s a system whereby you can get your clients to self-schedule their appointments with you, avoiding the back and forth of emails that happens when you’re trying to arrangement appointments and, of course, the time spent doing this. You simply give your clients/colleagues the special link that’s generated by TimeDriver and they are able to see your availability (which you have pre-determined) and therefore schedule accordingly with you. It works with both Outlook and Google calendars.

3. Submit Your Article – this service is an article submission service (notice I said ‘service’ not ‘software’) that submits your articles to hundreds of different article directories and ezine publishers on your behalf. You simply upload your article to your account and they do the rest. It’s a really great way of getting your articles out to a lot of places in the shortest amount of time possible, and again is another huge timesaver.

4. BYOAudio – as well as using this service to record and host all my teleclass audios, I make full use of their Podcast feature. You can record your podcast episode directly into your podcast, and they will share and syndicate it with the top podcast directories – even iTunes – immediately it’s published! Those directories, in turn, come and get your podcast, index it, and make it available to their visitors. All this takes is about 10/15 minutes of my time to record my podcast episode and publish it to my podcast. Another great strategy for building my list that really takes no time at all to implement!

5. OnlyWire – this is the service I use to create social bookmarks for my blog entries – they even post to Twitter and Facebook. Social bookmarking is a method for Internet users to store, organize, search, and manage bookmarks of web pages. It works in two ways: i) When someone stores a bookmark to one of your blog posts they have an easy way to access your information again; and ii) because these bookmarks are stored on the website’s of the social bookmarking sites, i.e. Technorati, Digg, etc. etc. they provide backlinks to your blog/website. If you wanted your bookmarks to appear on each of these social bookmarking sites you could do it all manually, i.e. create an account, log in to your account, post your bookmark, and repeat this process for every social bookmarking site you have an account at. Where OnlyWire comes in is that you provide your account login details at the various social bookmarking sites, submit your blog post URL for bookmarking, and OnlyWire will do the publishing for you! One or two clicks and you’re done!

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Online Business

Sending Emails To Your List: How Often Is Too Often?

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Knowing how often to send emails to your mailing list is a big dilemma that many solopreneurs face. You don’t want to bombard your subscribers with emails, but neither do you want them to forget you. One of my own subscribers recently emailed me to ask me about how often you should send emails to your subscriber.

Here’s an excerpt of what she said:

“Your article piqued my interest today, and offered solid advice. It is interesting to note that I just attended a teleseminar where it was said that emailing your list daily was imperative and that every email needed to be full of outstanding content. Since I am shortly beginning my first online business, I felt overwhelmed by that directive to insure my online success.

The first thing that came to my mind was that weekly should be often enough. How would I ever come up with outstanding content on a daily basis to send my list and still have enough time in the day to do everything else?”

From my experience and working one-on-one with many clients I know that this is a big dilemma for many solo business owners – after all, you want to build a relationship with your subscribers, but you don’t want them to forget you, and neither do you want them to unsubscribe because you’re bombarding them with so much information. It’s all about striking a balance!

I honestly think that those ‘experts’ who tell you you should be emailing your list daily have nothing else to do! And how you can you put out valuable, quality content on a daily basis – it would be draining both emotionally and time-wise! Plus the flip side to that is that your subscribers are going to feel completely overwhelmed by the sheer volume of emails you’re sending them and are more likely to unsubscribe.

If you’re going to publish a regular ezine (newsletter) then it’s important that the frequency fits best for you and your business. My contact with my subscribers has been gradual in it’s frequency. When I first started I emailed once a quarter, then moved across to monthly (first of every month). Then a while back I decided that I’d do twice a month (1st & 15th) and it stayed that way for about 18 months. At the start of this year I decided to publish my ezine every two weeks on a Friday, and then a couple of months ago I decided that I’d publish weekly, but rather than produce a full-blown ezine every week I would create in-between issues that simply directed my subscribers to one of my blog posts – I have such a lot of content on my blog that wasn’t being fully utilized.

Therefore this strategy was two-fold, first I was staying in touch with my subscribers on a weekly basis, and secondly I was repurposing the ton of content that was readily available on my blog!

Conclusion: Create a schedule that is the best fit for you and your business, and one that works in frequency for your subscribers too!

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Entrepreneurs Entrepreneurship Home-Based Business Online Business Operations Recommendations Starting Up Work Life

5 Things Every Stay-at-Home Entrepreneur Needs

What do computer giant Dell, gourmet food basket maker Tastefully Simple, and organic brewer Honest Tea have in common? Though all three are now multi-million dollar companies, all were originally started within the founder’s home. You’ve probably heard how Michael Dell worked out of his garage to build his empire, but equally inspiring are the stories of Jill Blashack Strahan- who assembled gift baskets on the pool table of her backyard shed- and Seth Goldman- who brewed tea at his kitchen sink and presented homemade samples to clients in thermoses.
The home-based startup story has a certain magic to it that often glosses over the particulars: where to set up office equipment (computer, printer, copier,etc.), whether or not you should dedicate a business phone line or switch your VoIP service to include “follow” features so you’re always available, and how many hours you should put in when your office is in your kitchen. What does a stay-at-home entrepreneur really need? Here are a few necessities:
1. A Separate, Dedicated Workspace. Whether it’s your garage, a toolshed in the backyard, or just an area off the den, you will need a space that’s just for work.

2. A Separate Phone Line. Small business VoIP service plans are cheap and easy to sign up for. You can also add an extension or line to your existing residential VoIP service arrangement.

3. A Fast Internet Connection. For businesses based online, this is non-negotiable. Your internet connection should be fast enough to support online activity and VoIP calls, if you use an internet-based phone system as your method of business communication.

4. A Door…or Earplugs. If you can’t physically separate your workspace from the rest of the house, you can mentally separate it by using earplugs to tune out audio distractions, or a folding screen to tune out visual ones.

5. A “Do Not Disturb” sign. If you’re working while others are at home, make sure they know when you’re “unavailable.”

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Entrepreneurs Online Business

Social Networking — How Your Social Networking Habits Determines Your Business Success or Failure

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The first time I heard the saying “How you do one thing is how you do everything” I didn’t get it. (Actually I think my exact response was: “Yeah, yeah, yeah.”)

However, as I continued to work on myself and my business over the years, this statement has finally sunk in. And now I see how it relates to pretty much everything in my life. (After all, the state of your business is just a representative of what’s going on in your head at any given moment.)

So, what does any of this have to do with social networking? Well, it occurred to me as I look around at what people are and aren’t doing with their social networking that this is a microcosm of your entire business.

Let me explain. How do you approach your social networking?

* Are you someone who set up a bunch of social networking accounts months ago and haven’t touched it since? Where else has this shown up in your business? Are you someone who has a bunch of half-finished information products or books sitting on your desk?

Or maybe you finished them but you haven’t put up the sales letter or did any other marketing so you’re not actually making any money off of them.

Needless to say, with this habit, you’ve simply wasted a bunch of time without anything to show for it. You’re not making any money with your social networking nor are you making any money selling products.

* Are you someone who does your social networking in bursts? You ignore it for weeks, then for a couple of days you’re on it in a frenzy, only to go back to ignoring it. (Or you only jump on and do anything on it when you’re feeling stressed about cash flow and lack of clients.)

So where else does this show up in your business? Are you someone who sends out an email newsletter once in a blue moon? Or you only pick up the phone to follow up when you’re desperate for new clients?

With this habit, while it’s good you’re doing something, you’re only going to see consistent results when you’re consistently doing your marketing tasks. Communicating with people once in a while and/or only when you’re looking for something (i.e. for them to give you money) is an excellent way to have a feast-or-famine business model.

* Are you someone who is pretty good on one social networking platform but doesn’t do anything on any other one? For instance, you love Facebook but your Twitter account sits there unloved and you pretty much never update your blog, never mind anything else.

So where else does this show up in your business? Are you someone who’s really good at going to live networking events and collecting business cards but doesn’t follow up? Or maybe you send out an email newsletter fairly regularly but you don’t do anything else with the articles you write for your newsletter (although you keep meaning to). And you don’t use any other methods to touch your prospects (i.e. direct mail or teleclasses.) You’re getting part of it right but if you followed an entire system you would see far more results. (And, in many cases, it’s not about YOU doing more but simply having a system and a team in place to support you so you get the biggest bang for your marketing time.)

Now, this isn’t about making you feel bad about what you are or aren’t doing. This is about looking at one piece of your business and using what you see there to make your whole business more successful.

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Online Business

Achieving Top Search Rankings in Microsoft New Decision Engine Bing DEO/SEO

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Can Microsoft compete with the search engine giant, Google? It may have looked doubtful before when looking at Microsoft’s Live Search, but things are looking good with the new release of Bing, Microsoft’s new search engine, aka “decision engine”. It was released on June 3, 2009 and has an extensive marketing campaign in place, estimated to be at nearly $100 million. Major television ads are running promoting Bing.
Bing’s simple interface with a colorful background mimics that of Google, but with a more ambiance t it. The background is always changing with hot spots that are clickable. Luckily, you can always go back to a past image and find the hot spots, in case you saw something important there. It does not make much sense to have these hot spots and they can be quite confusing, especially since they are constantly changing. There is no warning of when and where these hot spots are until you scroll over them. Then a question related to the image appears with a link to click on, usually answering the question proposed.
When comparing Bing to Google there are more similarities than dissimilarities. For starters they both have a simple interface with a large search bar in the middle of the page. They both display Images, Videos, Shopping, News, and Maps on the homepage. The difference is Google also has Gmail and Bing has travel. The big difference is that Bing has changing images, where as Google has a changing logo against a blank interface.
Bing has decided to market itself as a decision engine, rather than a search engine. What this means is that Bing incorporates ecommerce websites search bar into a fully functional search engine. Microsoft believes that searchers are ready to move beyond the search stage and Bing will help them make better decisions. The search engine results are categorized to make it easier to find results.
The decision engine has been creating tons of search engines ranking for many of my clients with a lower bounce rate than the other major search engines. Does this mean that Microsoft has succeeded with an advanced algorithm that is superior to the major three’s? Or is it a fluke that the bounce rate is visibly lower than the other search engines.
The big question is how do we optimize our websites for Bing? We all want to be ranked at the top of a new search engine, which has the potential to take on the other major search engines. It is simple, do what you do for the other major search engines. From my observations domain age plays a big role. Bing wants to see websites that are established and have been around for a long period of time.
The decision engine, Bing, seems to like websites with tons of original content on the landing pages. Make sure your page titles are keyword rich and appropriate for the subject matter. Bing loves titles with keywords searchers are using. Make sure to have a good, unique title for all your websites pages. Unlike other search engines, linking out seems to be favored. This means linking to other sites from your own site is good for ranking. This may show to Bing that your site shares useful information with its users. This is not to say reciprocal linking is good, but linking to sites that your users may deem valuable is a good idea.
Sign up for an account with Bing and manage your analytics and start a pay per click campaign with them. Their PPC rates are significantly lower than other PPC campaigns because there is not as much competition and keyword dilution occurring. In a few months to a year PPC costs will begin to mimic those of the other search engines, but for now the prices are superb.
SUMMARY: The new decision engine from Microsoft, Bing, is sure to be a major competitor with Google and the other search engines. Since it is brand new many of you are wondering how their algorithm works and how to get to the top organic search results. It seems like Bing looks at back links more than it does at a pages actual content. Read other observations and advice here.
About the Author
Brandon Leibowitz is a professional search engine optimization and search engine marketing consultant with over five years of industry knowledge. Read news, tips, tricks, and anything else related to search engines in his SEO and SEM Blog.