Friday, February 13, 2009

Multiple Streams of Income using Affiliate Marketing

By Glenn Fraley

Multiple Streams of Income, that should be a phrase that you have heard atleast a few times by now. The million dollar questions though, is do you understand what it really means? may business men believe that multiple streams of income will keep them healthy in an income stand point when markets dry up or run thin for periods of time. This is why so many of the successful business men have created multiple streams of income offline as well as online to secure their future earnings at an adequet level to sustain such times. That is why once you have begun the affiliate marketing business for yourself, you should start looking at multiple streams of income should one niche possibly dry up suddenly. This is vital so that you are not depending only upon a single stream of income and it go out quick and you lose your advertising buget or even your entire profit stream. Should this happen with you depending on a single stream of income, you can find yourself bankrupt in a hurry. Just ask any of the most successful entrepreneurs, and you will see uncover that all most everyone of them have established multiple streams of online income.

Start by assessing yourself first. Take time to answer the following questions and noting them on a note pad: Can you do well at sales? Are you good in communicating with people? Are you born with an artistic skill or unique ability that other people dont have? What are the talents, abilities, strength and gears that you possess? Are you gifted with excellent and creative writing skills? By doing this, you can reflect on the kind of business wher you can possibly excel. See, there is a businessman that said and attested that the very first step you must take in creating multiple streams of income is to assess or evaluate your resources.

So, with that being said, lets move on. You need to search around you and write down your physical resources and assets like a color pritner, scanner, computer,CD or DVD Burnter, cell phone, and possibley a digital camera. haveing all of these thigs noted will enable you to use this a a resource. You should also take into consideration your family and friends with what talents they contain that might help you an get you access to. Keep in mind that no signle man is an island. Diversify your abilities, knowledge, talents, and resources of everyone you know as well as yourself.

So, that is the basic initial step for you to layout and create multiple streams of income. So, keep in mind that if you are a site owner or a webmaster already, you certianly have an edge over the competition. This is just more incentive to join an affiliate marketing business or company to help you grab up some extra income out of the website you already have.

In affiliate marketing, you can make money by promoting and reselling your affiliate products and by recruiting new affiliates. Whats good about this is that you can find widest array of training materials that can enhance your marketing abilities. In affiliate marketing, you can be sure that there are genuine products to promote and sell and there is real income to make. Being involved in affiliate marketing is one of the most desirable ways to make multiple sources of income. It is because affiliate marketing programs come in various shapes and forms. There are a large number of affiliate marketing programs that you can sign on with and start gaining bucks right away.

All you have to do is to promote and resell the products and services in your site and pass on potential customers the merchants site. Either part time or full time, being an affiliate marketer is an excellent way to create multiple income streams by means of promoting products and services from web merchants. Here, you can get affiliate commission without investing big bucks in making your own product and without worrying about book keeping, customer support and ecommerce.

In affiliate marketing, it is advisable to promote more merchants in your site so that your visitors will have variety of destinations to choose from. Using multiple merchants in the same site or niche means only one thing " you have multiple streams of affiliate income. There is absolutely nothing wrong with this business strategy because this is one of the best ways to protect your business and expanding your horizons. Through this, you can be assured that you wont experience crisis if ever one of your web merchants closed his/her program.

Select wisely and dont be engaged in selling products you know nothing about. Go with the stuff that jives with your enthusiasm; your passion can capture your client by the nose and guide him/her to your affiliate link. Dont ever be tempted into signing up for numerous affiliate programs in the hope that one of them will bring income. Consequently, you should choose only those affiliate programs that interest you so that you can effectively advertise and promote them.

A thirst for knowledge, as well as patience and persistence will baid your success in any kind of business. So, developing and embracing some key tactics and strategies that allow you to also develop within yourself traits is needed to be done by you. This will help your hard work in stablizing your multiple streams of income.

Ending on a good note, remeber that old saying, "Don't pull all your eggs in one basket." This is just incase one of them are lost, you will continue to have some eggs left to make omelets. So, effect do these eggs have to do with having multiple streams of income you say. Well, frankly, it goes with out saying, that having more streams of income in your possession, the bigger and deeper you lake of money will become.

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Wednesday, February 11, 2009

Asking For Money As Wedding Gift

By Raymond Lam

Couples getting married in the UK have traditionally been given household items as wedding gifts. This was to help the couple as they started a new life together and popular gifts included items such as kettles, toasters, dinner services and glassware. It's not a new concept for newlyweds to be given money as a wedding gift even in some countries and cultures, couples are automatically given money by their guests.

Times have changed and in the UK many couples who getting married already have plenty of household items and often ask for money. Perhaps the money will be used for the furniture, honeymoon, a deposit on a house or a new kitchen. Sometimes wedding couples will only ask for money as wedding gifts and others will mix gifts of money with other wedding gifts.

Sometimes people aren't keen on wedding gift lists however their family and friends will normally want to give a gift that they know the couple will appreciate and get use from. Nowadays there are some wedding gift list services that have a mix of gifts of money as well as other gifts. Guests will usually purchase gifts of money rather than more traditional wedding gifts and even some guests like to purchase a combination of gifts and money.

Couples who are asking for money as a wedding gift should also consider adding some gifts to their gift list so that everyone's preferences are accommodated. So if couples are looking for money towards the honeymoon, other suitable gifts which complement the honeymoon list could be luggage, a camera or camcorder, photo frames or photo albums.

Moreover couples should try to be specific about how the money will be spent so that guests feel that they've contributed towards a specific item. Most gifts of money are for the honeymoon where guests usually put money towards specific elements of the honeymoon such as accommodation, flight upgrades and car hire. When couples set up a honeymoon gift list, there are usually standard honeymoon gifts to add to their list such as drinks by the pool or a romantic meal for two which guests can then buy for them.

Another tip is to personalise your gifts of money if your gift list provider offers this service. Besides couples can customise their entire honeymoon list with their own gift names, descriptions, prices and pictures. So if couples want money to swim with dolphins then go on to have a romantic dinner for two at a specific restaurant and stay overnight in the local boutique hotel, these gifts can all be automatically added to their list. It's also a great way to personalise thank you cards to guests by adding a picture of what the guest contributed to such as a picture of the couple swimming with dolphins.

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Monday, January 26, 2009

Low Budget Advertising

After the advent of online selling sites, shopping has been prefabricated so cushy that it can be done within the comfort of the home. Online selling gave rise to online advertising also known as iAdvertising, which is proving to be the best way to reach a larger audience within a short time using less money.

There are many options acquirable on the Internet to get started. Creating a website and then placing its link on different websites is one of the ways. Pages can be submitted to the search engines after applying search engine optimization techniques. Websites offer various payment methods. Some take money for simply placing an ad or link on their website, some take money only if a visitors clicks on the link or website and some take money only if the visitors visits a link and have bought something or availed some service. There are options acquirable for the type of ad being placed. There are pop-up ads, flag ads, cover ads, polite ads, video ads, etc. Businesses with really low budget can send mails to targeted customers.

Radio stations offer a good price to advertise during the non-peak time. Get in touch with the local station and try to ask for a discount. The same applies to television; even they have a minimal amount for advertising slots during the non-prime hours, especially after midnight. Contact different television station to compare pricing.

The age-old tradition of advertising in yellow pages directories is always a success. All businesses from small to big register themselves in the yellow pages and have sworn to be benefited from it. People can look up for contact numbers, addresses and services offered directly from the pages.

Newspaper is the next best thing. First analyze the audience to be targeted by age group, sex, and location. Choose the local newspaper and section where the ad should be placed depending on the audiences to be targeted. The classifieds department of the local newspapers have special offers, find out in detail about the pricing structure for the size of the advertisements, number of words, font size, etc.

Design the business cards with accuracy. Try to include all the vital information about the business like the study of the company, where it is located, services provided, working hours, and contact information like landline number, cell number and mortal to be contacted. Personalized business cards are good way of reaching the genuine customers.

Other way to advertise is to give presentations on your products. Brochures can be inserted in the business presentation package. Other than things like history of the company and annual turn-up, once again business cards can be included in the package. Distribute newsletters with information about the latest offers and discounts. Informational letters of a page length and e-mails can be sent too on a regular basis. All this can become lot easier by getting in touch with companies who can wage the mailing list of a particular locality and it comes for a very small price. Again the yellow pages can be referred to get information about such companies. After getting the information get in touch with company to get a copy of the latest mailing list. Different companies charge different prices

The word of mouth is also a good method of advertising. Try growing the links in your network and join organizations which deals with advertising like trade associations and chamber of commerce. Active participation in events of these organizations eventually helps reaching more number of people.

Monday, January 19, 2009

Advertising on Television

Advertisements of products, organizations, and services are generally aired on television. This is be done by buying slots on the airtime from a particular television channel. Price depends on the popularity of the channel, time the commercial is being aired, number of viewers and length of the commercial. Placing a commercial on local channels is more inexpensive than on national channel where the cost is almost double.

When thinking of placing a commercial on television it is advised that you first understand what audience needs to be reached. Different audiences have different taste, which can be determined by their choice of television show like celebrity talk, cartoons, sports, reality, news, movies, soaps, prime time etc. Prime time is usually from 6 to 7 pm and is the most expensive slot. Following it is the news time at noon or 10-11 pm slots, which are proven to be the most effective time slots for the success of a commercial. More inexpensive is the 12-4 pm soap time. Always check out with the income representative for the prices. When advertising on national level, check out an ad agency that usually works on commission basis. It’s highly recommended to negotiate during a re-run of the advertisement and stay away from paying the complete amount.

Compare the prices of different networks and different programs before you place an ad. Another money saving trick is to buy a thirty seconds slot and air commercials of ten to fifteen seconds of length one after the other. This increases the possibility of target viewers seeing the commercial without the cost of re-runs. But this is risky as the pressure of conveying critical information in a short period of time increases. So the commercials should not be so short that the actual message couldn’t be delivered correctly to the audience. Usually a reminder commercial can be of a shorter duration.

Look out for the people who would like to buy a slot that has already been purchased. This can be very tricky as it will be more like a bid for which they will be ready to pay a larger amount sometimes even double because they badly need a slot. This usually happens during the holiday season, which comes in the last quarter of the year around New Years Eve, Thanksgiving holidays and Christmas holidays. Best time of the year to buy slots for commercial is the first and second quarter of the year. Price is usually negotiable during the first quarter as the income representatives give discounts to advertisers who have spend a lot of money advertising during the holiday season and are trying to recover from it.

If planning to pay for advertising commercials for the whole year check out the discounts that are being offered for advertising round the year. Usually a five percent discount is offered when signing for a six-month time period and ten percent when signing for a twelve-month time period. But do keep in mind to check out exactly when the commercials are being aired because these discounts are usually offered to distract people from this point and the commercials are aired during odd hours and also not during the holiday season.

The very first commercial to go on air was of Bulova Watch Company on WNBC, United States of USA on July 1, 1941. And ever since then there have been no stopping and now commercials sell anything that one can ever imagine.

Thursday, January 15, 2009

Advertising on Internet

Ever since the advent of Internet, advertising on the World Wide Web has been very popular. Many corporations, companies and business have taken advantage of this and you can see ads on any web pages you visit. Consumer can go to any search engine and type the keyword relating to what they are looking for and hit search and they will be provided with a huge list from which they can select. This is a very cost effective and time saving method of advertising.

It has become really cushy for any business to have a personalized website by which they can advertise, directly interact with the customer; wage details about their product and services. Regular newsletters, offers, discounts can be pasted on site to increase the interest of the website visitors.

Since it’s cushy to reach any kind of audience concerning any kind of business, the possibility of misuse is always there. Based on this Internet advertising is classified into two kinds of advertisement, legal online advertising and illegal online advertising. Legal online advertising includes online advertising directories, search engine advertising, e-mail advertising, and desktop advertising. Illegal advertising is more commonly know as spamming. This is usually done by altering some system settings with the help of external applications after which pop-ups are sent to a particular network or computer. The external applications are known as adware or spyware. Some of these are really harmful, the most famous being Trojans, which are very hard to uninstall and remove from the system.

With the increase in technology, special effects are being used to make advertisement more interesting. Vivid colors, good page layout and lots of imagination is involved. Typically Adobe Flash is used to design advertisements these days. Depending on the technology being used to design advertisements can be classified into various categories.

Banner ads are animations displayed on the website usually created in HTML or Eudora. There is a range of type and sizes of the ads. Trick flag ads are flag ads that have an extra functionality of dialog boxes and buttons and are displayed as an signal or error message.

A pop-up is an advertisement displayed in a new window that covers up the active web page. A pop-under advertisement opens in another window that is under the active web page and can be seen after the present window is either closed or minimized.

Interstitial ads are those that are displayed before directing over to the desired page. Wallpaper ads form the background of the web page. The ads that float on the screen are known as a floating ad.

Polite ads download on a low pace without interrupting the normal functioning of the website. An ad that enlarges and changes the contents of the page being displayed is known as expanding ad. Advertisements which are displayed in a video form on a website is known as a video ad.

Online advertisements cannot only be used to promote a product or service but in fact they can be used for purposes like promoting charity and spreading education.

Advertising in Yellow Pages

Some people believe that yellow pages do not receive response like other advertising methods do and this is true to some extent but not in totality. When talking about traditional yellow pages, there sure is a decline in number of people opting for advertising in it. According to a recent report, even the most captivating advertisement in a particular section is not getting the response from callers like they used to get before. On the contrary, the prices of placing ads in directories are on a rise, which speaks a different, story altogether.

In reality different categories are witnessing different rates of decline. Like the lawyers category is seeing the maximum decline, where as emergency service provider’s section has the same call rate. And sections like mobile phones, real estate and furniture are seeing a rise due to the increasing customer demand. Altering the size of the advertisement or changing the look cannot do wonders any more.

Experts suggest that relying on yellow pages to get customers isn’t enough. Other options should be considered as well along with it. With the Internet reaching every home, nearly half of the Internet users use the net everyday. They prefer to buy stuff online, from the comfort of their homes. Research should be done on the Internet to get reviews about the product. People, who don’t usually shop online, also are also opting to shop online as information is provided at the click of a mouse. It is easier for people to trust as customers who used the product give their feedback about the product after using it.

A relatively newer concept is the yellow pages going online. The good thing about them is that they are updated frequently unlike the printed directories and can be viewed from any part of the world. According to researches conducted, the response increased by twenty five percent every year. So those who are interested to invest in yellow pages advertising can think of going online. Directories are submitted to search engines, which on typing a keyword or phrase bring the results. Small and local businesses, too, can land on the pages brought by the result. The cost of creating a website can be saved if all the relevant information about the company is included in the online yellow pages. Look out for the date to renew the directory listing, and if there is a need to change the advertisement, it is not a big problem on online yellow pages. Some starter websites offer to place advertisement in their yellow pages for free. Search out for such websites on the Internet.

Larger businesses can start their own websites and place links in the online yellow pages. Articles can be framed about the business and can be submitted to Ezines and websites related to the area of business. Some websites also allow posting articles for free. The purpose of the yellow pages is basically to get potential customers but that doesn’t mean that existing customers should be neglected. Steps should be taken to strengthen the relationship with them and to retain their trust by maintaining the standard of the products supplied to them. Once they are completely satisfied, the price-rise won’t bother them and they will talk about the company to people they know, which will fetch new customers.

The neutral is to work smartly and select the right method of advertising. If a business isn’t using any other method for advertising apart from using yellow pages, it can cause problems and the products may not sell. Analyze how much money is spent on placing ads in directories and estimate whether the amount of customers the business gets is desirable. Whenever a call is received from a potential customer, ask them how they got to know about the enterprise. This will help to analyze which advertising method is saint for the business. It is never late to correct the mistake and go for the right method.

Advertising for Free

Advertising for free seems like an impossible thing when heard. But there are several ways by which the cost of advertisement can be conserved, with the help of some imagination and creativity.

A business wanting to advertise, can write articles related to their field of expertise that can be submitted to media and publications having interest in that particular field. The advertising article can have information about the company and dealership opportunity. Due to the rise in Internet users and websites, new websites have sprung up which offer free services. Articles can be written for these websites and they can be broadcasted for free, which will be viewed by hundreds of people everyday.

Once the business has gained some recognition, within no time it will acquire popularity also among the crowds. This popularity can lead to them being invited on broadcasting and television talk shows and even to interviews. Such kind of opportunities shouldn’t be missed as they wage a chance for free promotion. If it is taking a long time to get a break, the producer can be addressed with a letter that can be followed up by a telephone call or in-person visit. During the visit, the nature of expertise can be discussed about the business, which will be of interest to the viewers of the particular channel. Once a businessperson gains the position of being public-friendly, more offers start pouring in.

Free bulletin board located in the neighborhood, like in grocery stores, libraries, and salons, are another good idea. Advertising circulars can be posted on such boards for free. Circulars for mass distribution can be handed out at the mall, shopping center, bus stops, particularly on weekends when there is a big rush. Students can be hired on part time basis for this purpose.

Promotional advertisement can be printed on the envelopes used by the business firms. Both the sender and the receiver can view this advertisement. Promotional offers can be sent to customers by postcards, which should be utilized to its full, leaving only place left for writing the address.

Some of the new mail order publications offer free first time and seasonal deductions for advertisers. Other publications offer pay per inquiry space. Inquiries can be prefabricated about stand-by space, which means that the publication holds the submission of advertisement until the space is not sold and in that case, thirty three percent saving can be achieved. Usually local newspapers wage these kinds of offers.

If the business is involved in ad sheet or catalog publishing, other publishers can be contacted for the purpose of bartering an advertising exchange. They can place advertisement in their publication, in return for placing their advertisement in the business’s publication.

Free offers can be provided to the customer. This can be done by emailing or printing newsletter about information regarding the area of interest of the targeted customers and can be prefabricated favourite by using attach lines. Attach a free coupon with it, which the customers can use it for shopping, if a criterion is met like minimum purchase of $ 50. By this the response will be huge and most of them will purchase something or the other to avail the free offer. The basic ingredient for advertising for free is imagination and research. Opportunities should be searched and a strong working force should be applied to increase the sales.