Category: Online Business

Article Contributed By Alex Schnee

How and where your workplace is has changed drastically over the past few years. As remote work becomes a popular option for large corporations and small start-ups alike, you might be wondering how it’s possible to manage so many different aspects of a business while in various locations. Fortunately, there are a number of tools that can help you make the switch a more remote-friendly working space.

Here are some ways you can successfully create a business that works from around the world.

Hire the right people

Some people love to head to the office on a daily basis. They love the idea of meeting with coworkers and sharing space with others. That fuels them to work with others and to come up with positive solutions to many problems. Others feel more productive in their own spaces and welcome a chance to work from home or a separate office. When you hire new workers, you want to know that they are doing their jobs—even if they aren’t being constantly monitored. It takes a special kind of person to be self-motivated enough to accomplish their tasks without being prompted.

Have the right tools

Your employees will need to have access to a number of files that might have been available in an office environment. This might mean that you have to move documents online, have programs that allow employees to access files, and that help you to keep in touch with one another. This might mean that you have to purchase some of these tools or learn to work with free ones. Even free programs like Google Docs can work if they are used correctly for your business.

Be flexible

Having remote workers around the world means that you might need to be a bit more flexible with due dates and the time that your workers are available. Different time zones and schedules means that you might have to require a certain amount of hours logged each month, but you can’t expect employees to be online during the hours that work for you. Flexibility is incredibly necessary when you are looking to create a business that is based in multiple locations. You also have to be willing to meet employees where they are at.

Encourage creativity

Like being a flexible business owner, you also have to be willing to think outside the box a little bit and to encourage employees to think of creative solutions to problems. The issues you run into as a remote business are probably much different than the ones you would face if you had a home office where you could see your employees in person every day. You want to be in a place where you can encourage your workers to have a stake in the company and to think of new and innovative ways to approach any issues your business is facing.

Be open to offering benefits

Loyal employees can be earned in a number of ways. Just because your employees work remotely doesn’t mean that you can’t offer them reasons to enjoy working for your company. This might mean providing health benefits (or at least a stipend), offering to pay for continuing education, or giving them time off when they ask. Remote work isn’t an excuse for making things cheaper for you—it also means that you still need to think about your employees and how you can help them do the best job they can.

Switching to a remote environment can be beneficial in a number of different ways. However, before you make the change, think about how you can do it seamlessly and successfully.

Search engine optimization may seem complicated and confusing for most new entrepreneurs. With various experts discussing different strategies, it is easy to get lost and end up nowhere. The truth is that SEO is the best bet that can undoubtedly increase your probability of being found online in relevant customer searches on Google, Bing, and other major search engines.

While thinking of implementing SEO on your online operations, you may come across various terminologies and jargons like social media, responsive website, hybrid apps and cloud storage. So, it is essential to know the basics to find ideal solutions based on your actual requirements.

SEO is crucial for start-up businesses as it is the most cost-effective mode of reaching to masses and get new business. However, it is not an overnight affair to succeed in SEO, but it needs patience and time to do it right.

Types of SEO

There are two primary categories of search engine optimization:

• On-page: It includes optimization of everything on a webpage. This includes everything from the words in the content, to the code, HTML, meta tags and so on.

• Off page: As the name suggests, everything off a web page. This typically includes link building, blogging and so on to influence the users.

If you are new to the world of SEO, and you want to incorporate it into your marketing efforts, you need to know the answers to the most primary questions that most entrepreneurs have about this particular branch of digital marketing. 

1. What does SEO mean for a company?

Only knowing the abbreviation is not enough to understand how SEO works for businesses. In terms of promotions, SEO has two interwoven elements as a ‘content’ element and a ‘website development’ element. Content refers to the copywriting of a website consisting of relevant keywords. This means you should create your content to grab the attention of the search engine so that your site gets displayed in the SERPs.

Web elements consist of categories, metadata, captions, and tags. This is how you label your website and pages for easy categorization by the search engines. A ground-level study is required pre-implementation to plan the content and other site elements for optimization.

1. What is SEO Content?

SEO writing is the next big challenge entrepreneurs confront while planning for search engine optimization. For this, it becomes essential to hire a professional content developer who understands the nature and priorities of your business and has an excellent understanding of the latest algorithms and keywords. An ideal SEO writer clearly understands the business goals and the perfect language for promotions to fuse these in a natural way to ensure optimum search performance.

1. How much delay is there in the process?

Entrepreneurs often avoid SEO thinking that it will cause their site to experience significant downtime. In truth, the only time your site may be offline is when the experts are making changes to the code of the website to make it more user-friendly. Changing or updating site content barely takes much time to cause any disruption.

1. How soon can you expect results?

For the entrepreneur concerned about SEO pricing, business is primarily all about the bottom line. An ideal SEO strategy must be able to help a web page to enhance its ranking instantly. However, nowadays you need to keep in mind that paid ranking is a barrier in organic SEO.

Organic SEO may be able to take you to the first page but to grab the top five positions, you may have to make a significant investment. For organic SEO, you need to put in a focused and consistent effort over time to see any major results. Usually, the SEO experts say it will take anywhere from six months to one year for you to see the initial signs.

1. How to know if SEO is working?

One of the primary things about new-age SEO is that the site administrators can now easily figure out the number of visitors and rate of conversions by tracking the search to site. There are many tools available for SEO analytics for the entrepreneurs to monitor the traffic and the actual source of their traffic. Improved rankings and increased number of site visits imply your SEO success.

1. How frequent should you track performance?

Based on the industry and changing market trends, there is a need to revise or revisit SEO strategies now and then. You can track your progress every six to twelve months based on the shift in business goals and the market movements. However, the off page SEO efforts need to be revisited from time to time to ensure that the experts are implementing the most relevant industry practices on time.

1. Is 100% success predictable in SEO?

As an entrepreneur, you may come across many SEO providers offering 100% ensured results over three months’ time. However, these are pure marketing gimmicks, and when it comes to SEO, never invest in deals that you find as too good to be true. There is no such 100% guarantee in SEO. The service providers can implement the best strategies to ensure success, but there is still no surety that it will take you on to the top.

Now you got the answers for the major questions every new entrepreneur has in his or her mind while approaching SEO. However, the concept and practices in this field are changing day by day. So it is essential for SEO experts and entrepreneurs, relying on such techniques, to keep updated about the latest development.

Choosing an SEO provider for your website is also a task that requires utmost care and research. There are plenty of SEO services now, ranging from individual freelancers to top-notch digital marketing firms. As a business owner with the need to hire an SEO service, you have to be very clear about your baseline requirement and the budget to hire the right SEO services. You can refer to http://www.rankingbyseo.com to get a better insight into effective business SEO planning.

 Making money blogging is kind of the dream. You have something to say, you want others to read it, and you can make money when they do. Most incomes generated from the digital world are based on what you put into it. Which means you’re your own boss. Blogging can be especially lucrative if you are an expert in something and want to share your knowledge with others.

But, how do you break into blogging, let alone start making money from a blog? After all, there are countless blogs on the Internet and not all of them make money.

However, although that may be true, there are steps you can take to get ahead of the pack and turn your blog into a revenue stream. These aren’t the only ways to do it, but these guidance points should help.

1. Build engagement offline

Like most businesses, you do have to do some in-person networking to really help your brand get off the ground. If you work to build your audience offline by engaging with people and telling them about your blog and why they should follow it, you have a better chance of getting eyes on it and making some money.

2. Market your blog on a content marketplace

One of the biggest decisions when it comes to creating a blog and trying to make money from it is deciding how to market it. Of course, you can market your blog on social media platforms, like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram, and we encourage that you do.

But, there are other marketing avenues that you should know about and definitely worthwhile. Consider, for example, the site ConnectPal.   ConnectPal allows content creators to create their own ConnectPal page and charge a certain amount for others to access the page. Over the years, ConnectPal’s visitor base has grown considerably. And the site provides an ideal opportunity to do two things: one, market your blog on your own ConnectPal page; two, earn a second revenue stream from readers who want to access your ConnectPal page.

3. The power of ads

Another way to build revenue with your blog is by utilizing advertising. You can make money advertising products, services, other sites, and more on your blog with different types of ads, including “pay-per-click” options or by publishing paid reviews among your other content. If you’re a beginner at this, you can use a revenue tool for bloggers, like Adwords, to get started. Importantly, Adwords can help you budget for and analyze the performance of the advertising you include on your blog.

4. Quality is key

Anyone can have a blog. But how do you make yours stand out? If you work in a range of genres, you have a lot of areas to pull from in your writing, and can create quality work from those experiences that will also draw in an audience from several sources. If you have one particular subject that you’re especially knowledgeable in, you can focus on become a blogging expert in that area.

Either way, the quality of your content is extremely important. If you create quality work and build your network both on and offline, word will spread that your blog is one to follow, and that, in turn, will translate to more readers and followers — and ultimately more potential revenue.

Article Contributed by Dan Razak

There’s no need to say that business world today is all about eCommerce. More and more entrepreneurs decide to start websites that involve selling stuff online. But, with so many eCommerce websites, retaining your customers has never been more difficult. Luckily, there are some things you can do to ensure your customers stick around and buy from you. We have come up with 4 tips that are always going to do the trick. Make sure you check them all out.

Invest in SEO

Just like all the other websites, eCommerce websites simply have to invest in optimization for search engines. This helps them both attract new and retain old customers. Besides using some traditional SEO features such as keywords and back linking, you also have to go for some specific techniques for eCommerce businesses. First of all, this means creating categories and subcategories that make your website easier to use. Moreover, you’ll need to come up with interesting product pages. Just bear in mind that search engines don’t tolerate duplicated content which meant that you’ll always have to make sure that you have content that’s absolutely original. Last but not least, including as many internal links as you can is always a good idea.

Deal with abandoned carts

With so many people buying stuff online, it happens quite often that an online shopping cart gets abandoned. In fact, in 2015, more than 69% of online shoppers decided to abandon their carts. It’s up to you as a business owner to do whatever you can to ensure that each of your customers return and buy the items they’ve left in their shopping carts. Sending a pleasant email to remind them about the stuff they had their eyes on should do the trick. Just remember that emails like these should never be too aggressive. A simple email that includes the price and some additional info about the stuff they wanted to buy is more than enough.

Give cross sales a go

When running an eCommerce store, you have to bear in mind that there are plenty of customers who will wait until the product they’re after goes on sale. But instead of putting all your products on sale, you can choose to hold cross-sales. For example, if your customer is buying pants, you should also offer them items that go with them, such as a belt, shirt or a jacket. Not only this, but in case they buy one of these you can give them a discount code they can use for their next purchase. If they choose to give their discount to a friend, you can give them a bonus that they will get as soon as their friend uses the discount code. This is guaranteed to keep a large number of your customers coming back to your eCommerce website and have them recommend your online store to others.

Go for a personalized approach

Also, your approach is very important if you want to retain your customers. You should always try to learn as much as possible about your loyal customers and try to come up with customized offers that will fit all of their needs. This will make your customers happy and more likely to turn to your online store once again. You can also send emails to your loyal customers as soon as a sale starts or there are new items available for sale. Also, when sending emails, it’s always a good idea to treat your customers as individuals. There are experts in lifecycle marketing who can help you out with this and make your marketing emails as effective as possible.

Give these 4 tips a go and you’ll see more customers return to your eCommerce business the next time they’re in need for the products or services you’re offering. This will, of course, only boost your sales and help your online store grow.

About the Author

Dan Radak is a marketing professional with eleven years of experience. He is a coauthor on several websites and regular contributor to BizzMark Blog. Currently, he is working with a number of companies in the field of digital marketing, closely collaborating with a couple of e-commerce companies.

These days, your business can’t succeed without having a website to share all of your information and sell your products. However, it can’t look like anything. No, it has to be a true creation—something that catches the eye, entertains and convinces people to stay on it. It needs to have flair that makes it stand out from companies that offer similar products and services. Viewers need to be able to easily navigate the site instead of hunting for information on the pages. A quality website can help to boost business for the company while improving credibility. It’s a way to communicate with customers and those who are interested in what you offer. An added benefit of a website is that it operates 24 hours a day even when your company is closed, allowing for customers to make purchases and schedule services as long as the site is set up to accept payments and appointments.

Here are just a few things that you need to think about when it comes to your site:

Easy Layout

Plan the layout before you begin working on the site. If you don’t, then you’re going to be stuck with pages that make no sense and pictures that don’t seem to go anywhere. Write the paragraphs ahead of time so that all you have to do is transfer the information to the site. Decide on the overall design that you want to use as there are numerous designs for the tabs and the ways that the information is displayed, such as paragraph form or using bullets. Choose the colors before you begin with the site as well as the type of font that you want.

What Can You Offer

You want viewers to know exactly what you can offer for them. Include details of the types of services that are provided along with pictures of products that you sell. Explain how you perform services and any certifications that you or your employees have. One of the things that is a turnoff for customers is that they don’t know what the business can do for them, making it hard to know whether it’s a good idea to pursue contacting the company or learning more about what is offered. Include a call to action, such as signing up for a newsletter or a monthly email, to get updated information about the company.

Make Room for Growth

Many businesses don’t allow for the website to grow. They try to include everything at one time when the site is first created. Leave some space for growing in the future. Keep an open mind about new services and products that are offered as well as reviews that you might want to include on other pages. You can also set aside a few pages for pictures of happy customers and new items that you get in stock. Beware of building with sites that only offer basic pages as you won’t be able to add more information in the future unless you pay higher prices.

Keeping It Simple

While bright colors, bold headings and elegant fonts catch the eye of the viewers, they shouldn’t be used throughout the entire site. Colors should contrast each other. Brighter colors should only be used to highlight information that you want to stand out. Avoid using fonts that are hard to read as you want the viewer to be able to easily scan the pages to find what they want to read.

Professional Help

If you aren’t technologically savvy, then leave the designing to a professional company to do your enterprise web design. In the end, you’ll have a site that has all of the information that you want to include without stressing yourself out about placement and details. Make sure you can review the site before it’s published to make any changes that are needed.

A quality website is one that can be created in a short time. It’s a reflection of what your business stands for and offers to customers. The site that is created should add value to the company while building a reputation.