How to Acquire Free Web Site Promotion

You have finished making your own website. You have introduced your company and presented your products and services. You have added propositions and promos to catch your target audienceís attention. You have achieved the dos and doníts of building a company web site. But why isnít your website a major success?
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Maybe you're not planning the key to the best promotion of your web site. Here are some guidelines on how to acquire free web site promotions for your companyís success.

If you have started to promote your web site, keep it constant. If you promote your site with persistence, it will catch your audienceís attention.

Be patient. Try each method in promotion until you acquire the best, free promotion there is. You have to accept trial and error for your web site to reach the top.

There are many ways for your web site to be seen. Here are some free web site promotions you could try until you find the most effective.

*Free promotions such as search engines and directories would give your web site the deserved traffic you always wanted.  Make sure to check your web siteís ranking to know whether or not this type of free promotion is right for you.

*Make a deal with other web sites on trading links which could help both web sites.  Make sure to use words that could easily interest the audience. 

*Find free classified ads that could boost the promotion of your web site. These ads could be seen by other people who you are not targeting for, but may as well be interested in your services.

*Free and low-cost internet banners are spread all through out the World Wide Web.  Banners that pop-up at the top of a page or in a separate window would automatically catch your target audienceís attention.

If your web site and its free promotion did not work even after accomplishing these methods, analyze your web site. Track down all visitors, advertisements, and transactions. Then locate errors in your web site. Upload new files to your web site continuously for audience to return for new products and services. Monitor your own web site if itís up in the market or down.

Then be ready to try the methods again and surely it will work. 

It has always been said that the best things in life are free. Yes they are. And as soon as your free web site promotion proves to the audience its worth, then youíll believe itís true. 

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5 Ways to Get Out of Startup Mode And Grow Your Business

Entrepreneurs stay in startup mode way too long. Keeping a small business in startup mode requires you to stand on the brake. If you keep telling people you're "just a startup," you will never take actions for real growth.

It's time to move from startup to grown up mode and from planning to doing. In two years, you want to look back at your startup phase as an important part of your thriving business' history. You want to say,"I remember when I was sitting on my floor packing boxes myself. Now I employ over 100 people." This is the mindset to move towards and here are five ways to do it:

1. Delegate. When you're in startup phase, you are handling everything. To become a going concern you have to start investing in people to do tasks you can no longer do. Three quarters of all small businesses have zero employees, which underscores the resistance people have to delegating. You have to grow your business. It is a misnomer to think people cost money. A lack of production and failure to grow your business costs far more.

2. Pick your battles. Don't get wrapped up for a week deciding on a logo when it ultimately doesn't matter. Your brand will evolve as your business evolves, so your logo is likely to change. There are more important things to obsess over -- gaining customers and making money. When you are hunting big game, don't swat mosquitoes.

3. Get attention. The single biggest problem every startup has is becoming known. Your most important task is to get attention for you and your company. It's the gateway to every dollar you raise. Muhammed Ali told the world he was the greatest long before anyone knew him. He got attention and infuriated people. But he proved himself, which turned criticism into world admiration. Get attention. Get critics. Then get admiration.

4. Change your pitch. Instead of saying "I own a small web design company," say "I own a web design company like none other that guarantees your company increased sales." Notice the difference? The first makes you seem small and insignificant. It makes no claim. The second makes you seem unique, confident and capable of being a money maker. Know how to pitch yourself and your business. Be ready to quickly explain what your company does that is better, faster and of value to the marketplace. Then, make big claims to the world.

5. Create urgency. If you start a business venture without setting specific timelines for action and achievements, you will be stuck forever with excuses. One of the biggest mistakes I have made in business was not operating with enough urgency. Being an entrepreneur is a marathon activity with lots of sprints. Win a lot of little races and you will provide your people and company with momentum. We recently shot a television show at my office and I told the editing staff that I wanted rough cuts in half the time they thought necessary. Then I called everyday for a progress update. This pressure to perform doesn't lead to inferior products; it get products to be finished. Urgency is key to getting things done.

Remember: Your vision is not improved by staying in startup mode. It's time to accelerate and become a going concern that is grabbing market share from the other bigger more established players. It used to be the big who ate the small. Today, it is the fast who eat the slow. 

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Related Articles:Promoting Ebay ProductsE Books- The Silent Sales MachinesLearn to Sell on AmazonBuild a Niche Store

5 Things Super Successful People Do Before 8 AM

Thinking about starting a home business? 

Not sure where to begin?

 WE are here to HELP YOU! 

Rise and shine! Morning time just became your new best friend. Love it or hate it, utilizing the morning hours before work may be the key to a successful and healthy lifestyle. That’s right, early rising is a common trait found in many CEOs, government officials, and other influential people. Margaret Thatcher was up every day at 5 a.m.; Frank Lloyd Wright at 4 am and Robert Iger, the CEO of Disney wakes at 4:30am just to name a few. I know what you’re thinking – you do your best work at night. Not so fast. According to Inc. Magazine, morning people have been found to be more proactive and more productive. In addition, the health benefits for those with a life before work go on and on. Let’s explore 5 of the things successful people do before 8 am.

1. Exercise. I’ve said it once, I’ll say it again. Most people that work out daily, work out in the morning. Whether it’s a morning yoga session or a trip to the gym, exercising before work gives you a boost of energy for the day and that deserved sense of accomplishment. Anyone can tackle a pile of paperwork after 200 ab reps! Morning workouts also eliminate the possibility of flaking out on your cardio after a long day at work. Even if you aren’t bright eyed and bushy tailed at the thought of a 5 am jog, try waking up 15 minutes early for a quick bedside set of pushups or stretching. It’ll help wake up your body, and prep you for your day.

2. Map Out Your Day. Maximize your potential by mapping out your schedule for the day, as well as your goals and to dos. The morning is a good time for this as it is often one of the only quiet times a person gets throughout the day. The early hours foster easier reflection that helps when prioritizing your activities. They also allow for uninterrupted problem solving when trying to fit everything into your timetable. While scheduling, don’t forget about your mental health. Plan a 10 minute break after that stressful meeting for a quick walk around the block or a moment of meditation at your desk. Trying to eat healthy? Schedule a small window in the evening to pack a few nutritious snacks to bring to work the next day.

3. Eat a Healthy Breakfast. We all know that rush out the door with a cup of coffee and an empty stomach feeling. You sit down at your desk, and you’re already wondering how early that taco truck sets up camp outside your office. No good. Take that extra time in the morning to fuel your body for the tasks ahead of it. It will help keep you mind on what’s at hand and not your growling stomach. Not only is breakfast good for your physical health, it is also a good time to connect socially. Even five minutes of talking with your kids or spouse while eating a quick bowl of oatmeal can boost your spirits before heading out the door.

4. Visualization. These days we talk about our physical health ad nauseam, but sometimes our mental health gets overlooked. The morning is the perfect time to spend some quiet time inside your mind meditating or visualizing. Take a moment to visualize your day ahead of you, focusing on the successes you will have. Even just a minute of visualization and positive thinking can help improve your mood and outlook on your work load for the day.

5. Make Your Day Top Heavy. We all have that one item on our to do list that we dread. It looms over you all day (or week) until you finally suck it up and do it after much procrastination. Here’s an easy tip to save yourself the stress – do that least desirable task on your list first. Instead of anticipating the unpleasantness of it from first coffee through your lunch break, get it out of the way. The morning is the time when you are (generally) more well rested and your energy level is up. Therefore, you are more well equipped to handle more difficult projects. And look at it this way, your day will get progressively easier, not the other way around. By the time your work day is ending, you’re winding down with easier to dos and heading into your free time more relaxed. Success!

The Elements of Commerce

When you get down to the actual elements of commerce and commercial transactions, things get slightly more complicated because you have to deal with the details. However, these details boil down to a finite number of steps. The following list highlights all of the elements of a typical commerce activity. In this case, the activity is the sale of some product by a retailer to a customer:

• If you would like to sell something to a customer, at the very core of the matter is the something itself. You must have a product or service to offer. The product can be anything from ball bearings to back rubs. You may get your products directly from a producer, or you might go through a distributor to get them, or you may produce the products yourself.
• You must also have a place from which to sell your products. Place can sometimes be very ephemeral -- for example a phone number might be the place. If you are a customer in need of a massage, if you call "Judy's Massages, Inc." on the telephone to order a massage, and if Judy shows up at your office to give you a massage, then the phone number is the place where you purchased this service. For most physical products we tend to think of the place as a store or shop of some sort. But if you think about it a bit more you realize that the place for any traditional mail order company is the combination of an ad or a catalog and a phone number or a mail box.
• You need to figure out a way to get people to come to your place. This process is known as marketing. If no one knows that your place exists, you will never sell anything. Locating your place in a busy shopping center is one way to get traffic. Sending out a mail order catalog is another. There is also advertising, word of mouth and even the guy in a chicken suit who stands by the road waving at passing cars.
• You need a way to accept orders. At Wal-Mart this is handled by the check out line. In a mail order company the orders come in by mail or phone and are processed by employees of the company.
• You also need a way to accept money. If you are at Wal-Mart you know that you can use cash, check or credit cards to pay for products. Business-to-business transactions often use purchase orders. Many businesses do not require you to pay for the product or service at the time of delivery, and some products and services are delivered continuously (water, power, phone and pagers are like this). That gets into the whole area of billing and collections.
• You need a way to deliver the product or service, often known as fulfillment. At a store like Wal-mart fulfillment is automatic. The customer picks up the item of desire, pays for it and walks out the door. In mail-order businesses the item is packaged and mailed. Large items must be loaded onto trucks or trains and shipped.
• Sometimes customers do not like what they buy, so you need a way to accept returns. You may or may not charge certain fees for returns, and you may or may not require the customer to get authorization before returning anything.
• Sometimes a product breaks, so you need a way to honor warranty claims. For retailers this part of the transaction is often handled by the producer.
• Many products today are so complicated that they require customer service and technical supportdepartments to help customers use them. Computers are a good example of this sort of product. On-going products like cell phone service may also require on-going customer service because customers want to change the service they receive over time. Traditional items (for example, a head of lettuce), generally require less support that modern electronic items.

You find all of these elements in any traditional mail order company. Whether the company is selling books, consumer products, information in the form of reports and papers, or services, all of these elements come into play.

In an e-commerce sales channel you find all of these elements as well, but they change slightly. You must have the following elements to conduct e-commerce:

• A product
• A place to sell the product - in e-commerce, a Web site displays the products in some way and acts as the place
• A way to get people to come to your Web site
• A way to accept orders - normally an on-line form of some sort
• A way to accept money - normally a merchant account handling credit card payments. This piece requires a secure ordering page and a connection to a bank. Or you may use more traditional billing techniques either online or through the mail.
• A fulfillment facility to ship products to customers (often outsource-able). In the case of software and information, however, fulfillment can occur over the Web through a file download mechanism.
• A way to accept returns
• A way to handle warranty claims if necessary
• A way to provide customer service (often through email, on-line forms, on-line knowledge bases and FAQs, et cetera)

In addition, there is often a strong desire to integrate other business functions or practices into the e-commerce offering. An extremely simple example -- you might want to be able to show the customer the exact status of an order.

How E-commerce Works

Unless you have been living under a rock for the last few years, you have probably heard about e-commerce. And you have heard about it from several different angles. You may have:

• heard about all of the companies that offer e-commerce because you have been bombarded by their TV and radio ads
• read all of the news stories about the shift to e-commerce and the hype that has developed around e-commerce companies
• seen the huge valuations that Web companies get in the stock market, even when they don't make a profit
• purchased something on the Web, so you have direct personal experience with e-commerce

Still, you may feel like you don't understand e-commerce at all. What is all the hype about? Why the huge valuations? And most importantly, is there a way for you to participate? If you have an e-commerce idea, how might you get started implementing it? If you have had questions like these, then this article will help out by exposing you to the entire e-commerce space.

Commerce

Before we get into a complete discussion of e-commerce, it is helpful to have a good mental image of plain old commerce first. If you understand commerce, then e-commerce is an easy extension.

Merriam-Webster's Collegiate Dictionary gives a few definitions of commerce:

com.merce n [MF, fr. L commercium, fr. com- + merc-, merx merchandise] (1537) 1: social intercourse: interchange of ideas, opinions, or sentiments 2: the exchange or buying and selling of commodities on a large scale involving transportation from place to place 3: sexual intercourse

We tend to be interested in the second definition, but that third one is interesting and unexpected -- maybe that's what all of the hype is about?

So commerce is, quite simply, the exchange of goods and services, usually for money. We see commerce all around us in in millions of different forms. When you buy something at a grocery store you are participating in commerce. In the same way, if you cart half of your possessions onto your front lawn for a yard sale, you are participating in commerce from a different angle. If you go to work each day for a company that produces a product, that is yet another link in the chain of commerce. When you think about commerce in these different ways, you instinctively recognize several different roles:

• Buyers - these are people with money who want to purchase a good or service.
• Sellers - these are the people who offer goods and services to buyers. Sellers are generally recognized in two different forms: retailers who sell directly to consumers and wholesalers or distributors who sell to retailers and other businesses.
• Producers - these are the people who create the products and services that sellers offer to buyers. A producer is always, by necessity, a seller as well. The producer sells the products produced to wholesalers, retailers or directly to the consumer.

You can see that at this high level, commerce is a fairly simple concept. Whether it is something as simple as a person making and selling popcorn on a street corner or as complex as a contractor delivering a space shuttle to NASA, all of commerce at its simplest level relies on buyers, sellers and producers.

What do I need to know to start up my Online Business?

Starting up a business online is similar to starting up any traditional business.

You'll need to know some basic things in order to get started – what you’ll be selling, as well as your market. If you intend to do business online, it’s also a good idea for you to get familiar with some IT and web skills. Read on to find out more about starting a business.

Know your product or service

What type of business will you start? What will you produce or sell?

This knowledge is essential to any business, online or otherwise. Without a good idea of what product or service you will offer, it can be very hard to move forward with planning and marketing your business.

Your product or service will influence your business structure, too. Depending on what you market or sell, will you only do business online, or will you also have an office space or store to run as well? This can have an impact on your business in terms of staffing, storage space, and rent outlays.

Know your customers

Knowing some information about who you will be selling to can help you define your business. Do some research into your potential (or existing) customers or clients, and their habits - this means checking out who will be buying or using your goods and services, and how they normally do this.

Understanding your customer base, and how to direct them to your online business, is important. Investigate what kind of customers usually buy online, what they are buying, and how they find their goods and services.

Know your plan

Why write a business or marketing plan?

It may be tempting to get on the internet right away and start experimenting with setting up your business. However, a little planning can go a long way in ensuring your online business is a success. Creating business and marketing plans for your online business can help you identify goals and develop strategies for achieving them.

If you’re an established business moving online, you might already have a business or marketing plan – but it could be a good idea to review them to make sure they’re comprehensive.

How do I create a business or marketing plan?

Your basic business plan should be drafted before you go into business, but, once started, you should always be thinking about what you can add to it. It should contain some core information, such as why you want to go into business, and what your goals for the business are. It doesn’t need to be long or complicated – it should be clear and to-the-point.

Your marketing plan’s aim is to help you reach your target market and boost your customer base and bottom line. Drafting your plans can involve thinking about:

• what your business name will be
• how you are going to manage your business
• looking after finances
• developing products and services that meet the needs of your market.

7 Steps to Starting a Profitable Online Business

Q: I am looking to start an online business. This stuff is all new to me and I am not even sure where to start, but my first question is this: Where do I find products to sell? I don't know any distributors. Who do I call? I don't want to look like a dummy. Thanks for any help you can give me. — Dory

A: Consider these startling statistics:

According to Forrester Research retail sales rose 2.5% in 2009. While that is surprising enough, consider this: Online sales rose 11%.

If you are looking to start a business, even a part-time business, you would be hard-pressed, in this economy, to find a sector growing at an 11% clip. Forrester forecasts that e-sales in the U.S. will go from about $173 billion this year to about $250 billion in 2014. That's booming China kinda growth my friends.

So the answer is yes, starting an online business is a smart move.

Here are the pros and cons:

Pros: The cost of entry is low; you have access to global markets; it is an automated, 24/7 profit center; you can look every bit as big as the big boys; the overhead is low (more on that in a minute); and the profit potential is large.

Cons: It takes work to get people to learn of the site; there is no personal contact as with a retail store; creating credibility (and thus customers) can be a challenge; it takes time to get things really cooking; and customers cannot physically see or feel your products.

The pros definitely outweigh the cons.

Here are 7 Steps to Starting an E-Commerce Business:

1. Create a great site: This is No. 1 for a reason. You have to have a great-looking, intuitive, easy-to-navigate site if you are going to be taken seriously by potential e-customers. Your site must look professional. Pictures and content must load quickly. There can be no dead links. Have a robust "About" page.

The good news is that it is easy and affordable to create a great site – look for online hosts that have pre-made templates you can customize.

Web surfers who come to your site will judge it in about three seconds. That's all you've got. You better impress them the moment they hit it.

2. Pick your products: I have a buddy who owns an antiques store. His business success motto is: "It's all in the buying." He knows if he can find the right product at the right price, he will make a profit.

The same is true for you.

Where do you find great, inexpensive products? It depends on what you plan to sell. It may be a matter of spending weekends at yard sales and on Craigslist picking up some good, cheap stuff. If you want a more formal arrangement, there are wholesalers and distributors for almost any product you need.

3. Have an online catalog or store: When you shop online, there is usually a catalog of products to choose from: Tiny pictures with product descriptions. That is what you have to do. Happily, you do not have to create this from scratch. Your e-commerce site host (see below) will offer a store creation tool, with point-and-click ways to add products, pictures, and descriptions.

4. Have the ability to process payments: This issue is two-fold: The financial ability to process credit card payments comes when you have a merchant account. Search for that term online. The physical ability to process such payments is, again, something your host will offer. Search for "online merchant services" or "E-commerce hosting."

5. Market and promote your site: All these steps are important, but this one may be a little more important. People have to find your site. No matter how nice it looks or how cool your products, if no one knows about the site, it is a waste of time, money, and effort.

Master search engine optimization (SEO) techniques. Engage in viral marketing. Tweet. Have a Facebookfan page. Try pay-per-click. Advertise.

6. Fulfillment: You have to deliver what you sell, on budget and on time. Don't forget to add the cost of shipping to your prices.

7. After-sales support: How will you handle returns? What should you upsell? Support is the difference between a one-time sale and creating a customer for life.

How to Get More Out of the Time You Already Spend Networking

Many people rely on referrals from others as a primary source of business. However, not everyone who relies on referrals is successful. Why is this? I've studied these folks -- and those who are not successful seem to have "surface level" referral relationships.

They know just enough about their referral sources' businesses to get by. They don't actually know a lot about the people themselves. They tend to say vague things like: "He is really nice," "You'll like her; she's a good person," or "Well, if you just meet with him, I am sure you'll like him." If pressed further, they probably couldn't tell you much more about those people -- and they almost certainly have not built enough social capital with them to count on them when they really need something from the relationship (and vice versa).

Building the deep referral relationship -- the kind of relationship that leads to referrals -- is almost completely dependent upon the social capital you have built with someone. Social capital is like financial capital. To amass financial capital, you have to invest and grow your assets. You have to have money in the bank before you can make a withdrawal.

Relationships are very much the same, referral relationships in particular.

Here's a great example of someone who amassed quite a bit of social capital. . . from me!

Alex was what I would call a casual business associate, but from early on after our introduction, every time I spoke to him, he invested in the relationship. He gave me ideas, gave me his time, he even did some work on a website for me. He invested. . . and invested. . . and invested.

I kept asking him how I could help him -- to return the favor and reciprocate for all the kindnesses and great help he'd been to me. His answer every time was, "I don't need anything. I'm happy to do this."

This went on for almost a year. Every two to three months, Alex would show up on my radar and do something for me.

Then, one time, he phoned me and said, "I have a favor to ask. . ." and I stopped him right there before he could say anything else.

"Yes!" I said.

"But you didn't even hear what the favor is!" he said, laughing.

I replied that I didn't have to hear what the favor was. I told him I knew him well enough to know he was not going to ask me something impossible, and that he had invested so much into the relationship that I would do anything in my power to help.

When he told me what he needed, it was easy, a small promotion by me for one of his services. It was such a big thing for Alex, and something easy for me. I was happy to do it!

In my career, a huge number of folks come to me and ask me to promote something for them. The thing is, the majority of those who contact me have never actually met me or had a previous conversation with me. They've never invested in the relationship, yet they want a withdrawal from it!

Before you ask for a withdrawal, make sure to make an investment, and build a deep referral relationship. If you can answer yes to most or all of the following points about a person and her business, you would have a pretty deep referral relationship:

• You trust them to do a great job and take great care of your referred prospects.
• You have known each other for at least one year.
• You understand at least three major products or services within their business and feel comfortable explaining them to others.
• You know the names of their family members and have met them personally.
• You have both asked each other how you can help grow your respective businesses.
• You know at least five of their goals for the year, including personal and business goals.
• You could call them at 9 o'clock at night if you really needed something.
• You would not feel awkward asking them for help with either a personal or business challenge.
• You enjoy the time you spend together.
• You have regular appointments scheduled, both business and personal.
• You enjoy seeing them achieve further success.
• They are "top of mind" regularly.
• You have open, honest talks about how you can help each other further.

You may be shocked at the level of personal knowledge required for a deep referral relationship, and you may want to argue that referrals should be all about business. I completely disagree. Referrals are personal. When you give a referral, you give a little of your reputation away. You need to know the person that is going to affect your reputation. It takes a lot to develop this type of relationship, but those who do will certainly succeed at building a business from referrals.

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3 Rules You Must Follow If You Want Your Company to Be Exceptional

If you want your company to be the best, there are three rules:

1. Be better.

2. Don't be cheap.

And 3. There are no other rules.

That's according to a recently released book co-authored by Deloitte director Michael Raynor and strategist Mumtaz Ahmed, The Three Rules: How Exceptional Companies Think (Portfolio/Penguin, 2013). Raynor, who earned his doctorate from the Harvard Business School, and Ahmed, along with a team of researchers, analyzed a database of 25,000 companies across hundreds of industries spanning 45 years to identify those companies that were statistically "exceptional."

Defining "exceptional" was a project in and of itself, but it began with one question: "How much of a difference is enough to make a difference?" What Raynor's team ended up doing was generating something of an actuarial table for business success. "If somebody says I am 82 years old. Is that person old or not? Well, if they live in the Northern Islands of Japan, that is early middle age because those people live forever. If they are from Tanzania, they are probably the oldest person in the country. What counts as old is a consequence of your context."

Raynor and his team also developed a mathematical algorithm that corrected for age of business, date, amount of debt, size and industry, among other variables. The goal of the analysis was to strip out the effects of luck and variation to come to an answer to the question: "What do managers do to make companies great?" says Raynor, who is based in Mississauga in Ontario, Canada.

After identifying 344 top performers, Raynor and his team, who officially started working on the project in 2007, looked for common traits to define how those exceptional businesses acted.

The team largely came up empty.

However, when Raynor and his team started to look at how those exceptional companies think, the principles started to become clear.

They are as follows:

1. Better before cheaper. Differentiate yourself from your competition based on quality, not price. While you may achieve some level of success undercutting your competition with cheaper prices, you will almost never become exceptional on a price-based model.

2. Revenue before cost. It will be more valuable to your company to drive your revenues higher than it will be to drive your costs lower. Cutting costs may result in some degree of success, but, most likely, your company won't sustain an exceptional level of greatness.

3. There are no other rules. Technology, talent, markets, people -- it can all change. But don't mess with Rule 1 or Rule 2. 

Exceptional companies include long-haul trucking company Heartland Express and teen clothing retailer Abercrombie & Fitch. The companies are all publicly traded companies, larger than the sorts of companies that many young entrepreneurs may have on their hands. But Raynor says the three rules still apply to younger, smaller companies, if with a modicum of compassion in the application.

Consider the rules "a compass, rather than a map," says Raynor. "You are lost in the forest and somebody says civilization is North. If I hand you a compass, I have done you a favor. You still have to be creative. You can't just walk straight north, you will bump into a tree, walk off a cliff, do whatever it is you do. And so sometimes you have got to go East, West, double back South even and really pay attention to cost for a while, but you want to make sure that over time, you are pushing your company in one direction versus another."

Very often, new startups are especially cash strapped. And Raynor recognizes that. But the rules of putting quality and revenue first still apply on a comparative level.

"If you want to have higher profits than your competitors, the way to do that systematically is not to have lower costs than your competitors," he says.

Raynor cautions that this doesn't mean businesses should put "gold-plated Aeron chairs and Godiva chocolates in all the conference rooms," but that businesses should figure out where they are better than their competition and exploit that gap with higher prices or higher volume, not lower costs.

"It is all about your relative position. If you want to be relatively more profitable, you want to have relatively higher volume and/or relatively higher price" than your "relevant" competition, he says.

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