With any new business you have to build awareness that you are in business, what your business is all about and what products you sell. Your customers on the other hand will have problems they need to solve but will be very wary of anyone or any new products preferring to rely upon the old tried and test ones instead.

So how do you get the message across that, for example, the current products they use may still work but your products will work much better for them in less time. One way of doing this is to create consumer awareness of your new products.

If your business is an online one then one effective way of creating awareness of your products is to write articles about them. However a more effective way would be to first create an effective article marketing plan so that you can use your article writing more effectively to build this customer awareness.

If you decide to use a plan you will need to design a structure for it so that you cover all aspects of your business and products in an orderly fashion which emphasizes the benefits and outcomes of using your products. Remember in your plan the most important thing you need to do is work out how you are going to use your articles to get lots of traffic to your website.

Today there are thousands of article marketers online so you need to be able to write articles that are interesting, of high quality, educational and provide information that people want. So you need to do your research and find out what information people want to read about. You also have to find the keywords and keyword phrases that people type into search engine search boxes. Use these keywords as an essential ingredient in your article marketing plan.

How often are you going to write articles? Also include this in your plan so that you can work it into your daily work schedule. Do you have the time to write article yourself or do you need to outsource it to a ghost writer instead? Maybe your plan could have you writing them initially but as funds become available you will outsource your article writing.

Who is going to submit your articles to article directories? How many directories are you going to use and which ones? Are you going to submit the same article to all your chosen directories or rewrite them to make them unique for each directory? How are you going to keep track of where you are at with your article writing and submission? Are you going to post your articles on your blog and other free sites? All these questions need to be addressed in your article marketing plan.

As you can see article marketing can be made a lot more effective if you create an effective article marketing plan. For more information on article marketing http://www.kerriesheehan.com

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We all know that email marketing is easy, cheap and fast. It can be used to send information about your products and/or services to your customers and also set up to send them timely messages such as birthday greetings.

Email marketing today is losing some of the power it once had in marketing because of the sheer volume of emails one get daily in their email in-box. Today more than ever you need a good headline that stands out among the rest so that people will open your emails.

People still spend a lot time reading their emails but one wonders how much of it is productive and not just house keeping, sorting and deleting them instead. Some emails are important and read straight away while others are sorted and left for when one gets time to read them. With our busy lives it is doubtful if they will ever get read.

You need your emails to be important enough so that they get read straight away not filed away to be read later. How do you manage this?

You need to send your opt-in subscribers good information from the first day they sign up to your list. To do this you need to target your marketing to get people very interested in what you have to offer them and then over deliver. As you build up their confidence or trust in you then they will be more inclined to occasionally purchase something you offer them.

The biggest problem today is that email marketing has been over used and can be counter productive so much so that your audience can be turned off by excessive emails. The bulk of emails today are deleted without ever being read because they have poor headlines or are from people the email receiver no longer trusts. Send the same headline as everyone else and you have a better change of winning the lottery than having the email read.

Emails that have headlines that look like advertisements have a very high chance of being ignored and deleted upon receipt. You need an email campaign that builds a relationship from day 1 with your subscribers.

People want information so that they can choose the products that are best suited to them and not told that your product is the best on the market. So tell them what your product can do for them and give them information on how to use your product rather than a straight out advertisement of your product.

Pay attention to the professionalism of your emails. Things like their formatting, spelling and grammar, as done badly these can put people off. Keep your emails plain and simple and graphics to a minimum.

If people subscribe to your newsletter some will un-subscribe if you send them boring sales information especially about things they have no interest in receiving. It is a good idea to ask them to either tick a box to receive special offers or to make it known that by signing up to your newsletter they agree to receive special offers and announcements from you.

Nearly every day a new course is released about either list building or email marketing. Some are good and some are not. Try searching online for free advice first and if that fails then look for reviews of the paid products so that you can make an informed decision on which one is for you. For more information http://www.kerriesheehan.com

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Let’s look at the two terms make money and create money. On the surface they may seem like the same thing but if we look deeper this is not the case.

Making money refers to the hard work of exchanging your time each week for a weekly pay packet. Most of us are taught from an early age to study hard, get a good education and get a good job. In other words we are being groomed from the day we start school as the factory workers of the future. Think of it another way. How many kids get taught how to write a business plan instead of a resume at school?

Creating money on the other hand is more related to effort and expertise than the actual number of hours one works. If you could go online and had the know how to make lots of sales then that would be creating money from the commissions you receive. The amount of money you make from these commissions is not directly related to the time it takes for you to make those sales. The gurus know this so regularly try to sell you the latest secret to create cash out of thin air any time you wish to do so.

The gurus are right in one way. Most people are one pay packet away from bankruptcy in that if they lose their job they have no way of paying their bills once the last pay packet is gone. In today’s economy this is not a good business model at all.

That said then how can you create money online? One of the best ways to create money online today with the little or no money is by using affiliate marketing. All you have to do is find products that solves people’s problems and sell them to receive commissions.

All you need to do is drive traffic to a merchant’s sales page using a special link coded with your affiliate information. If people buy this product then you get paid a commission up to 75% of the selling price.

However there is a lot to learn about effectively driving traffic to a sales page. This is where you should invest your money,that is, on an education on how to drive traffic and lots of traffic. Once you learn this everything else can be done for free. Affiliate marketing is also called bum marketing because any bum with access to a computer and the internet plus a little know how can do it.

Some people call it making money while you sleep because once you learn how to effectively make money with affiliate marketing you can wake up to several emails telling you that you have made a sale.

However I have to be honest with you in that it is not going to happen overnight as affiliate marketing will take some effort in the beginning to learn how to do it effectively. However once learned it is a matter of repeating virtually the same system over and over again for different products and services. For more information http://makemoneyonline.keries.com/

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Blogs today can be used for all sorts of reasons. However most blogs are used to for either social or business purposes. Social blogs are information blogs with let others know what is happening in your life and are used as a way of corresponding with friends, social contacts and families. Business blogs are information blogs about things happening in your business or particular business environment, new products, new ideas on how to benefit from existing products and announcements of sales and specials on certain products.

If you have a personal or social blog what better way to let your family and friends know about it than to add a link to your blog in your email signature. If you have written all the relevant information on your blog you no longer have to worry about leaving something out in your personal emails if you include a link to your blog in your signature. It can also cut down on the time it takes to copy and paste and write information in each individual email you send to your friends and family.

The real benefit of a social blog over an email is that you can include lots of pictures or photos, videos and podcasts that would make emails very big in size and take forever for everyone to download. Not only that your blog virtually archives all this information so that you only have to open one website link and not multiple emails to get the same information.

If you have a business blog it can be like an extension of all the emails you send out to you customers. You no longer have to send then long boring emails that can be caught by spam filters. You can just send a simple email with a link to your blog or individual entries in your blog. If you send links to individual blogs posts and add your home page link in your email signature it gives the reader the opportunity to click on it to find out more about your business and products.

Affiliate marketers send emails out to their lists about affiliate products that they recommend so what better way to further promote these affiliate products than to use a blog link in your signature that gives more information and reviews about these products.

Most email programs allow you to create signature files that can be automatically inserted in all the emails you send. If you only send personal emails or business emails it is a great idea. However if you send both types of emails you must have your default signature set for either personal or business. If you set the default for business you must take care to change it if you send personal emails.

For business emails you should have something catchy in your signature to attract attention and get your readers click through to your blog. It should be crafted so that interested people click through but not to scare off those who are not interested.

So before you create an email signature file think about what your blog is about and if a business blog the products you are advertising. Create a signature that is going to get interested people to click through to your blog without offending those who are not interested. For more information about blogging http://www.kerriesheehan.com.

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Every day you hear of people talking about getting into online marketing but do nothing because they think it is too difficult or too expensive. No wonder this is the case when you look at the way some of the gurus market their expensive courses. Lots of technical stuff, umpteen videos, audios and ebooks in each of their courses. The sheer volume of what they include is enough to put doubt in the mind of the the average person.

However what most people do not realize is that marketing products online can be low cost and almost anyone can do it.

The only tool you really need is an internet connection which you already have or you would not be reading this article. You can either start online marketing as a second income source or a complete change of career. Most people start marketing online to supplement their income and when they start to make enough money to replace their income they change careers.

The easiest place to start is affiliate marketing which is selling other people’s products. There is not a shortage of people wanting affiliates to market their products for them and some pay up to 70% commission to encourage more affiliates to market their products.

Affiliate marketing is a simple concept and this is how it works. Lots of people and companies have products for sale but it is not economical for them to try and sell them all themselves. So they hire a sales force in the form of affiliates who only get paid when a sale is made. It is a win-win situation as the affiliate gets paid and the merchant makes money on the sale of the product.

There are a great number of products, programs, ebooks and videos on the market today and most are easy to sell because the merchants do research into their market before they create products as it is not viable for them to produce products no one wants. Therefore a lot of these products are in high demand and all you have to do is find buyers and act as the middleman between them and the seller. Easiest products to market are the ones that appeal to you as it is easier to market products you are knowledgeable about.

No it is not going to cost you a fortune even though you may have heard the horror stories about how expensive pay per click advertising can be for beginners. In fact if you follow the bum marketing model it does not have to cost you anything. However you do need a plan and guidance to start you on the right track. Do not worry I am not talking about some stuff that is full of programming code that very few people can understand but very simple stuff instead.

The gurus have some very expensive programs on affiliate marketing that take forever to watch and quite frankly most people forget half of it before they get half way through it. Forget them as you do not have to spend thousands learning how to do this stuff. For more information http://makemoneyonline.keries.com/

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To be successful marketing online you need to find people who are interested in the services and products you are selling. Finding someone once and getting one sale is good but what if this person is interested in buying more of your products and/or services in the future? You need some way of letting them know you have other products they may be interested in now or in the future. Besides it is much easier to sell to an existing customer than a new one.

What you need is a mailing list.

Yes the real secret of making money online is selling to a list of people who are already your customers or who are interested in what you have to offer them. By establishing rapport and credibility with these people over time you will be able to repeatedly offer them your products and/or services and eventually sell them a lot more then if you had only contacted them once.

How do you build a list?

Building a list is very simple if you follow the basics.

The first step is to determine your target market. What people have the sort of problems you can help them with a solution, offer them value for money or otherwise decrease their pain or increase their pleasure? Once you find your target market you have to think of ways your products and/services can provide them with a solution to their problem.

People hate being sold to, so one of the best ways is to simply offer them some information to help them solve their problem. For example, some people crave a good nights sleep so would be interested in information about how to sleep better. Fisherman love to catch fish so would welcome any information on how to catch bigger fish. Marketers want to build more responsive marketing lists so would like to learn more about building their list to make more money online.

Write a short report.

Now that you have determined who your target audience are and what information they want to know, it is time to write a simple report containing that information. I am not talking about an ebook with hundreds of pages, perfectly written with glossy graphics but a simple report of a few pages with just valuable information that is easy to read.

Give away the simple report.

Your simple report is written so next you need to give it away to your target audience in exchange for their email details so that you have permission to contact them with further emails about your products and/or services.

Create a simple website or squeeze page.

In order to give you report away you need to create a simple website or squeeze page to capture email details when people request a copy of your report. This website is to be used solely for building your list so resist the urge to add anything else or worse still sell something. All you need is a good headline that states the main problem experienced by your target audience and offers them a big benefit if they sign up to your list and get your free report. Maybe add a few bullet points of the other problems they might be experiencing and tease them by saying that your free report is a must to find the solutions.

Ask people for their email details.

Do not just add a sign up box to your simple website. You need to make it easy for people to sign up so tell them where to sign up and what information is required to sign up. Something like “Please enter your first name and email address below and click on the subscribe button to get my free report on……..”.

Yes there are more complicated ways that you can build a list and some are very effective but I suggest sticking to the basics when you first start to build your list. By sticking to the basics you will learn how effective your marketing and simple website works. Remember these simple techniques form the basic formula that every successful marketer has used at one time or another. For more information http://www.kerriesheehan.com

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