How To Use Free Promotions For Your Internet Business?
In my opinion, the most challenging task about running a successful Internet business is how to effectively market your website with low cost strategies or using free promotions. Here are some guidelines on how to acquire free Internet business promotions for your website to drive more traffic and increase your revenue:
- If you have started to promote your Internet business, keep it constant. If you promote your site with persistence, it will catch your audience’s 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 Internet business to reach the top.
Free And Effective Promotions To Try
There are many ways for your Internet business to be seen. Here are some free Internet business 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 a point to check your Internet business ranking to know whether or not this type of free promotion is right for you.
- Make a deal with other Internet business blogs on trading links which could help both web sites.
- Think about what you’ve read so far. Does it reinforce what you already know about Internet business Promotion? Or was there something completely new? What about the remaining paragraphs? Make sure to use words that could easily interest the audience.
- Find free classified ads that could boost the promotion of your Internet business. 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 audience’s attention.
If your Internet business and its free promotion did not work even after accomplishing these methods, analyse your website. Track down all visitors, advertisements, and transactions. Then locate errors in your Internet business blog. Upload new files to your Internet business blog continuously for audience to return for new products and services. Monitor your own Internet business to see if it’s 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 Internet business promotion proves to the audience its worth, then you’ll believe it’s true.
Tyrone Shum
Free Promoter
Top 5 Powerful E-commerce Plugins For Wordpress
Today I’m exploring the top 5 e-commerce or shopping cart plugins for Wordpress. Yesterday I wrote a topic about Using A Blog Vs. Using A E-commerce Website, and this article continues from there listing the commercially viable e-commerce plugins to use if you are considering selling products or services to your readers.
eShop
The eShop plugin allows you to open your own store right from your blog. You can sell anything from eBooks, software to even PLR product with this plugin. At the moment it only utilises the Paypal payment system to receive money and is also compatible with Wordpress 2.7+. Visit the plugins homepage to get a more detailed description of the shop’s features.
ShoppThe Shopp plugin is a featured filled online shopping cart for your blog. It’s been designed to make it easy for just about anyone to setup online store in minutes while giving users the ability to easily customise every aspect of the shopping experience. This particular plugin does cost money and for a single license it is $55US or for a developer’s license it will cost $299US. The difference between them is how many times will you be using this plugin on different blogs? If you’re a business setting up ecommerce sites for clients then the developer license will be worth the cost. Also Shopp offers different payment options, such as Authorize.Net, eWay Payment, HSBC ePayments and PayPal Pro which will each cost an additional $25.00.
WP e-CommerceThe WP e-Commerce plugin is a state-of-the-art e-Commerce platform with a focus on aesthetics, web standards and usability. This seems to be the free e-commerce plugin that is most commonly downloaded by users from around the word. It does offer many features and lots of options for users.
WP Live-ShoppingThe WP Live Shopping plugin is a widget that enables you to display all relevant live shopping offers within your Wordpress blog. You can add the widget to your sidebar and customise its appearance within the Live Shopping option panel. You will also need to have a Live account setup in order use this plugin.
Visit WP-Live Shopping Homepage
YAK Shopping CartYAK is a simple shopping cart plugin for WordPress. How it works is it associates products with blog posts, where the post ID also becomes the product code. There is an options screen in the admin section that allows you to configure settings for the shopping cart and had 3 additional pages for showing and fulfilling orders, for product management, and basic sales reports.
YAK Features
Tyrone Shum
e-Blog Reviewer
Using A Blog Vs. Using A E-commerce Website?
This is a subject I’ve been exploring over the last week to decide whether or not to use a blog with an add-on shopping cart, or to use an e-commerce system such as Zencart or Oscommerce. I have a few clients who will be using my services to design their e-commerce website and I’m deciding between using a blog with shopping cart add-on functionality or running an e-commerce system with blog integration. It’s been quite interesting reading comments from forums and on other blogs about this topic and here are my thoughts.
My Previous Blog / E-commerce Experience
I’ve been using Wordpress for a couple of years now and have tried integrating it for a ZenCart ecommerce site. It worked okay but it wasn’t exactly what I wanted. The issue was that I have to create a WordPress site and an ecommerce site with matching themes, so that the end user would have the experience of a single site. This solution was not ideal because the site administrator would have to login to different backends to update information.
On the other hand, installing Wordpress as the main system and installing an e-commerce add-on sounds like the ideal situation (for now, I’ll call this an eBlog). Everything will be in one system and on one database and no need to log into two different systems as I previously had to. I have tried this method and so far it works okay as well, but there are a few issues such as payment methods, having large product catalogues and limited reporting. The Wordpress plugin can’t handle these things as yet compared to e-commerce systems which have been designed for this.
Advantages Of Using eBlog Vs E-Commerce System
Simplicity and easily customisable
The reason why I am choosing eBlog is it’s simplicity of use. Especially when you are training a client how to use the system for the first time, it is quite self explanatory from just looking in the back end of Wordpress. Additionally the vast amount of themes available make it easy for any developer to customise and install new website faster without consuming too much time on a project.
Search engine friendly
Another advantage is, search engines love blogs and the content that comes from them allows them to be easily ranked in search engines much faster than e-commerce websites. Most e-commerce website only have products listed and require additional programming to be allow them to be search engine friendly. In comparison, Wordpress has additional plug-ins that automatically make any article or product become search engine friendly saving time and money for a client.
Automatic upgrades
Since the release of Wordpress 2.7 every update can be automatically deployed with a click of a button and makes upgrades and changes very easy. Unlike Zencart or Oscommerce, whenever a new upgrade is released it takes me almost a week to upgrade due to the vast amount of customised plug-ins installed and main files that can be overwritten.
Disadvantages Of A Using eBlog Vs E-Commerce System
Payment methods
At the moment, there are limited amount of payments being accepted via the eBlog and a lot of development and programming would be required in eBlogs to accept the vast range of payments other e-commerce systems offer. The most common available is Paypal, but what if I wanted a payment gateway for eWay or other commercial banking gateways? It’s not possible as yet.
Handling 100+ products on a single database
Most e-commerce systems have been build to handle lots of products and be available to display on their website. The architecture for this is not available for eBlogs and limits any Internet business to less than 100 products. It’s possible to have 100+ products on an eBlog but to find them on this system will take forever.
Limited Reporting
It’s important to track what customers are purchasing and knowing what the numbers are in your business. Unfortunately eBlog doesn’t offer accounting and proper reporting.
Overall if you have an Internet business that has a few products to sell, this would be a simple way to get started and have your Internet business up and running quickly. Though for Internet businesses with a range of products and requiring greater functionality, a proper e-commerce system such as Zencart or Oscommerce is still the way to go.
Tyrone Shum
e-Blogger
NEIS – Part 2: What Do They Teach You In The Course?
I’ve just completed the NEIS course including going to the panel and getting my documentation approved. It was very exciting leading up to the day and also a very long anticipation since finishing the course material two weeks ago. Over the last two weeks it was time to finalise the business plan and to compile any other documentations required. By the time you go to the panel, you will have submitted:
- 2 bound copies of the business plan with attachments
- 2 copies of the executive summary
What Do They Teach In The Course?
Each BEC (Business Enterprise Centre) is different and they will have different trainers with different teaching styles. Essentially they have to follow the course outline provided from the government agencies. By the end of the course you will have compiled a business plan. Don’t fret though, because they provide you with a template and you just focus on getting the information into the business plan. The topics they cover over the few weeks to assist you with the business plan are:
- Management and Finance
- Marketing and Promotion
- Operations
- Insurances
- Presentation skills for the Panel
Management and Finance
This was a crucial component of the course and I found it quite easy to grasp as I seemed to find crunching numbers fun and naturally part of me (I loved Maths at school by the way). In saying this the most important part of finance I learnt was being able to work out how much it will cost to stay afloat in my new business and when would breakeven point occur? Knowing this gave a good indication for how realistic my expectations were and it is a goal for me to achieve.
Apart from learning how to calculate the breakeven point, there were other calculations required such as:
- Personal & business assets and liabilities
- Startup funds required
- Personal & business cost analysis
- Personal & business cashflow forecast
- Personal & business balance sheet forecast
- Business profit and loss forecast
All of these calculations required us to find exact numbers from our personal finances to come to an accurate forecast and helping us see what is viable for our new business. By the end of this section I found a lot of people struggled in the class and had to come to ask me because the trainer kept using me as an example. (I felt privileged to help and it did reinforce what I needed to know for myself)
The management section dealt with the entry and exit conditions of the business. We looked at how to ask minimise business risk through purchasing insurance and also making sure we have protection for our intellectual property. A lot of times businesses overlook these small little things, and when issues arise it may be too late. These could have been easily avoided if the appropriate business protections were in place from the start.
Marketing and Promotion
I enjoyed learning about this topic because it was the creative side of the business. It was the complete opposite of finance and was a fresh change. The trainer provided a lot of information and was very interactive with the class. She really impressed everyone when she remembered everyone’s name on the first day and could use our businesses as examples in all of the marketing topics she covered. The following topics covered in marketing were:
- Market research & market information
- The marketing mix (4 P’s)
- Product
- Price
- Promotion
- Place
It was very important to understand our market first and to do thorough research on what consumers wanted before approaching the market with your product or service. This allowed us to determine what our competitors were doing and if there was enough demand for our business to enter the market. I definitely found it applicable and learnt how to design a marketing strategy that would cater for my business.
Operations
There are some things in business that you just have to do, and it’s not dollar productive but important in keeping your business operations running. It’s the behind the scenes work, such as book keeping, tax, insurances, payroll, managing and analysing your finances and so forth. All of these components are essential in keeping the business running and this was the final topic in the course that we had to complete for the business plan. I found it to be quite bland but important and I’ve already decided to outsource the paperwork to a book keeper to allow me to spend more time on marketing and promoting the business.
Insurances
This was a very brief one hour talk from an Insurance Broker who offered advice on what necessary insurances were needed to run each and every one of our business. Each business had different needs and we were recommended to speak to seek Insurance Brokers to save time in finding the appropriate insurance for our business. For my business I only needed Public Liability Insurance which is compulsory before starting my business with NEIS. When I start to hire staff, I will add Worker’s Compensation Insurance and keep abreast of what protection I may need for this business later on.
Presentation skills for the Panel
In the third week of the course they brought in a professional speaker named Melanie Wass from Natural Consulting. She explained to us previously from other panel interviews most candidates did not perform well and they lacked strong presentation skills. Therefore they wanted us to succeed and hired Melanie to give us some basic pointers on how to sell our business to the panel and get approved to be on the NEIS program. Some of the questions we had to ask ourselves were:
- Who are you?
- What’s your business?
- What do you really do for people? (think benefit, think big)
- Who do you do it for? (who’s your main target market?)
- What’s your Tagline?
- Your 30 second pitch?
After answering those questions and writing them down, we were asked to memorise them and make sure we were prepared to present them to panel, as that’s what they will ask us. Additionally when Melanie told us that some people have turned up to the panel in T-shirt and shorts, I found it quite amusing. She emphasised to us the importance of presenting ourselves in business attire and projecting our voice clearly. I felt quite comfortable with everything she said and just waited until the day of the panel presentation.
Feedback And Comments
So after going through this comprehensive course I feel a lot more confident in starting my new business and will be keen to share more of my experiences with other. If you have any further questions about the course, please add your comments below.
Also, BEC have the following alliance partners supporting the NEIS programme that can assist you with the business and may have special packages for anyone part of the NEIS program:
Tyrone Shum
NEIS Participant
How To Access Your New Website?
These instructions have been written to help guide you on accessing your new website. If you have other questions, please email us at support@internetbusinesspath.com.
We will send you a separate email with your username and password for your website account and also your email account. Please replace anything that says yourdomainname with your new website address.
ACCESSING YOUR WEBSITE
To access your administration section, copy and paste the following address below into your web browser’s window.
http://yourdomainname/wp-admin/
You will see a screen like this below:
Simply type in your username and password and you will be able to access the administration section of the website.
If you need more assistance on how to use the administration section, please send an email to: support@internetbusinesspath.com.
Also, an additional tutorial to help you write posts in on your website can be found at: How To Write A Post.
ACCESSING YOUR EMAIL
To access your email, simply copy and paste the following address below into your web browser’s window. Remember to replace yourdomainname with your new website address:
http://mail.yourdomainname/
You will see a screen like this below:
