Secrets Of Outsourcing Your Internet Business

Recently, my friend Adam suggested I take a look at replacemyself.com, which is a website that shows you how to train and outsource your business to people in the Philippines working for you full time starting from $250 US per month. Although the information provided is not free, it was extremely valuable and for the price of $97.00 US, it is definitely worth it! It sparked my interest because I am already outsourcing tasks to assistants in the Philippines and I wanted to see how this system could improve my business further. Before we get into the details of this system, I am going explore what outsourcing is and how you can use it within your own Internet business.

What Is Outsourcing?

For me, it is taking routine tasks or areas of my business and hiring good quality people to do them for me at a fraction of the cost. One of the main reasons why I outsource a majority of my business is to eliminate the tasks that I am not good at and focus on tasks that utilises my strengths. For example, I currently have all of my emails and telephone support outsourced to a team of assistants. Therefore I am able to focus my time and energy to do more podcast interviews with leading experts and deliver them through this blog.

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Building A Successful Ecommerce Business: How To Write Quality Content – Part 3

If you haven’t read parts 1 and 2, you should visit those parts first to understand the whole process before reading this post:

• Part 1: Find A Niche
• Part 2: Create Content

If you have been reading the previous two posts you will firstly understand the importance of finding a niche for your ecommerce business and how to do research for it. Secondly, I discussed about creating unique content that will be crucial to how well you rank in search engines, which will bring consumers back to your website to purchase more products and services.

In this post I will be sharing with you the method to write unique quality content for your ecommerce business. It is important to have a point of difference in the market so your ecommerce business stands out from the crowd. Otherwise you will be lost within the pool of millions of websites already on the Internet.

What Type Of Content Will You Need?

An ecommerce website is made up of informative content written within the homepage to product descriptions. These pages put together will form the foundations of your ecommerce business and helps consumers find your products and services. Listed below are some of the content pages an ecommerce website must have as a minimum:

• Homepage content
• FAQ
• About Us
• Contact Us
• Testimonials
• Shipping And Returns
• Conditions Of Use / Disclaimer
• Privacy Notice
• Terms Of Use
• Product Descriptions

Additional Sections To Boost Your Ecommerce Website Contents:

A post I wrote previously called How To Build Great Pillar Content For Your Internet Business? is a post I recommend reading first to gain a better understanding of pillar content. The post shows you the different examples of articles to write for your Internet business:

1. How To Article – shows people how to do a certain task or instructions on building something
2. Definition Article – defines a term in your industry
3. Present A Theory Or Argument – writing to present some unique thought
4. Release A Significant Resource – a report, podcast, video
5. A “List” Article – it’s very easy to scan and share. Can be a top 10 list or action points
6. Technical Or Visual Guide – a screen capture presentation or how to fix something using a video presentation. It is also a very detailed step by step blueprint on exactly how to complete a task.

You can apply these additional pillar articles to your ecommerce business to further assist in marketing your products and services. Most consumers enjoy reading how to articles which encourages them to take action, so remember to link your products to them within your ecommerce business.

How To Write Quality Content For Your Ecommerce Business?

There a few simple steps you can take to help improve the written quality of your content:

1. Page Structure
Search engines love page structure. The more your page reads like an outline the more search engines are going to like it. Put the most important part of your page (usually a product or category name for an e-commerce website) in a Heading 1 (h1) tag, put the next most important item in an h2 tag. This allows the search engine crawler (the computer that goes through your website to index it) to easily create a hierarchy of the content on the page. By doing this the search engine can determine what the topic of the website is and what any sub-topics may be.

2. Keywords
To find the right keywords to use requires you to find out what people are searching for. There are a number of free and paid services out there that will help you analyse what keywords will help your products be easily found. I discussed about the different methods to research keywords in the first part of this series in Determine The Amount Of Competition. Also you can run a Google search for ‘Keyword Analysis’ and you should find plenty of services. Once you know what keywords you need to include try to add as many as you can into your product names and descriptions. Though, and this is very important, never sacrifice the quality of your content just to cram in some extra keywords. If it looks like you just crammed a bunch of keywords on a page, consumers are going to be skeptical about buying your products. You want people to view your products because you wrote a quality description that included a few keywords.

3. Be Descriptive, Not Deceptive
Never compromise the quality of your writing or product descriptions to jam a few more keywords into the page. Make sure you maintain a balance of good keywords to solid and descriptive writing. Nothing will turn off a potential customer more than feeling like they were tricked into visiting your site because it is so loaded with keywords where the content doesn’t make sense. Don’t get so caught up in getting potential customers to your site that you forget what to do with them when they get there!

In the next post I will be showing you how to market your ecommerce business and to utilise everything we have discussed.

Tyrone Shum
Writing Quality Content

Spreading The Word: Turbocharge Your Traffic

For many people who are just starting out or have been running an Internet business for some time, driving traffic to their website is a key factor in marketing products and services. The more traffic gained, the more expose to your products and services. Furthermore, traffic isn’t the end result, it’s converting this traffic into sales. I will talk about how to convert this traffic into sales tomorrow, but for now I’ll show you some great ways to turbocharge your traffic using the latest technologies: (by the way, these are not in any order and try the ones that would fit your Internet business model)

Twitter
Twitter, a highly talked about social networking tool has done wonders for many Internet marketers and you either use it or turn a blind eye to it. I started using it only a couple of weeks ago and it’s helped increase my traffic by up to 500% in a few days, follow me at Twitter to see. It is easy to join and sends out a short 140 character message to all your followers letting them quickly see what you are currently doing. It works well if you approach this strategically by attracting people to follow you from your target market. If you have a blog, then tweet your posts automatically using a Wordpress plugin called Bird Feeder. It works wonders and Twitter is also a great way to monitor what people are saying about your products and services.

Linkedin
To join Linkedin, simply create a profile and you will be promoted a professional online network. Linkedin mainly targets business people allowing them to stay in touch with industry professionals. It’s great for people changing jobs and looking for business opportunities. Furthermore make sure you promote your website if your an Internet business. Many people look for products and services via Linkedin as well, and usually refer others to your website if it’s not relevant to them.

Wordpress Blog
If you’re reading this post, you may not know but you are actually reading it from a Wordpress Blog. This is an excellent way to promote your ideas and get your messages out on the Internet. Also search engines love blogs because they provide new content on a regular basis and that’s what people want, new fresh ideas to read about. It helps drive organic traffic to your website and builds your ranking on search engines.

Digital Press Releases
Have you ever wondered how people get their stories in newspapers, radio and other media channels? Lots of journalists nowadays look at digital press releases listed on sites such as PRWeb, Pressbox or PRLog to write their articles. Create a news story for your Internet business and submit it to generate free publicity and traffic to your website.

Web 2.0 Social Sharing
Have you noticed after reading an article there are icons and a button that say “Share This“? It’s commonly used in blogs and if a reader likes your article then they click on it and it will automatically distribute it via many of the Web 2.0 social networks. So why not add a simple social “Share This” tool to your website? If you want to also learn how to make money from Web 2.0, read my free report: “Make Money From The New Web 2.0“.

Social Networking Presence
Leverage social networks such as Facebook and Myspace by creating a fan page for people to see. Promote yourself and Internet business by developing a personality and brand which people will associate you to. So whenever they visit your fan page then your website they will see a consistent branding across the board and will rave on about you to friends and family.

Create A Mash Up
Feature news and videos from your industry by streaming free content onto your website. Yahoo Pipes allows you to pull in RSS feeds for news and YouTube helps you create and feature videos on your website. It helps drive more traffic from different sources in your market and increase your presence on search engines.

Crowdstorming
By asking your clients what they want you get free ideas on what products or services to create for them. You can leverage their needs and turn them into articles which you can post onto your blog. If there are enough people who demand for these needs, then you have yourself a product and more business will come along your way by simply asking a question.

Continue reading Converting Traffic Into Sales Part 1: Generating Leads.

Tyrone Shum
Turbocharging Traffic

Mixing Breakfast With Business

This morning at 7am I went to Chatswood for a business networking breakfast event (and yes it was early for me). I was pleasantly surprised to have breakfast and network with such fantastic and motivated business owners from across the northern part of Sydney. We had a delicious breakfast served at a restaurant called D’Foreigner that provided excellent food and service. Lucy Martin from Juice Plus and a NEIS panel interviewer invited me a couple of weeks ago after my panel interview. I attended as a guest and was very excited to meet other people who were in business as well. 17 people attended the breakfast and everyone had an opportunity to exchange contact information and talk about their business.

What Is the Leads Club?
This breakfast event was not just any ordinary breakfast where business people come along. It was a very organised and systematised approach to helping both members and guests come together to share their businesses and to help each other generate leads. Hence the name the Leads Club.

Over the years I’ve been involved with network marketing and running other people’s businesses and never once have I been invited to an event like this. I’ve attended Toastmasters, local chamber of commerce events and many other networking seminars and this one has been the most effective for me. The first thing that struck me was how smartly organised and upfront they were about this meeting. Graeme Inglis from Smartline, who chaired the meeting today stated at the beginning that “we are here today to talk about our businesses and to provide leads or referrals on to each other“. By saying this at the beginning I felt more comfortable to approach the meeting from a business perspective and be open to share my business without any hesitation, knowing that I will be able to help others and vice versa.

How Can A Leads Club Benefit You?
For me I could see lots of benefits by attending the weekly meetings and becoming part of the club as the service I provide is quite applicable to most businesses. Though, there are some factors to consider and how a club like this may benefit your business:

1. Am I offering a niche product or service that is suitable for local businesses? e.g. I ran a Dragonboat business that sold paddles to Dragonboat club members. Unless you know or are involved in the sport it would be quite challenging to get leads from other local businesses.
2. Can I generate leads faster from other sources? If so, should I still attend?
3. Does this lead generation technique fit into my business plan?

If you are interested in getting more information about the leads club in your local area, visit Leads Club Australia or contact Catherine Lonergan on 0407 899 988 or via email catherine@leadsclubaustralia.com.

Tyrone Shum
Breakfast Marketer

7 Top Blog Design Tips

Most blog platforms come with some basic blog designs. They may call them templates or themes or something similar, and usually they are not bad although some customisation is pretty common. I often see some common mistakes, and hopefully you will be able to avoid them.

1. Include an about page
   Make it prominent and make it truly about you, not some resume-like page.If people find your blog and like what you have to say, they are going to want to know something about you.
2. Have contact information visible
   An email or maybe even a phone number should be included. Your email can be displayed as a graphic to prevent spammers from harvesting it easily. I would suggest using an address that has your domain at the end to be more professional. e.g tyrone @ internetbusinesspath.com, rather than tyrone @ gmail.com.

   Visible contact information will make you seem more real and although people may occasionally contact you, it will be far less often than you might think.

3. Include a picture of yourself
   Blogs are personal, even business blogs, and people who visit yours will want to know what you look like. It’s also easier to built trust if your picture is visible. Though, you don’t absolutely need a picture, but it’s strongly recommended. Sometimes people might think you are hiding something if you don’t have one.
4. Show a top posts or articles page
   Some of your blog posts are going to be much more popular than others (you may be surprised which ones they are). I call these your pillar articlesDon’t bury your pillar articles, your most popular blog posts. Highlight them somehow. You might for example have a top posts section in the titlebar or sidebar.

   I have a most top articles section and I list my most popular posts based on the ones that are read the most. Other people do it slightly differently. For example, Brian Clark at copyblogger.com has a “Popular Articles” in his sidebar and under that he lists his most popular blog posts. Yaro Starak, on his blog Entrepreneurs-Journey, calls his most popular blog posts “Popular Articles” and lists them at the very top.Somehow or another highlight them. You might do something as simple as create a category called “most popular” and include popular blog posts in that category.

5. Don’t have a blog banner that is too big!
   The banner is the top portion of your blog that goes across the top. It might have a picture of you there, the name of the blog, perhaps some graphic — they vary quite a bit.You don’t want your banner to be big. No one should need to scroll down to see your content. People decide really quickly when they first reach a Web Site, and that includes blogs, whether to read or to leave.
6. Create a visually appealing blog
   Avoid bright colors. Stick to reasonable fonts like Times New Roman and Arial. Have someone with a good eye look at your blog, preferably a graphic designer. Everytime I start a blog and I’ve started dozens for myself, for friends, and for clients, I always get a graphic designer to at least look at it after I am done.

   The problem is that it might look OK to you or me, probably neither having a particularly good eye nor appropriate training, but it still might look really ugly to others. Having a graphic designer take a quick look at it is good insurance.

7. Keep it simple silly!
   Some blogs are just so busy: they have one, two, sometimes three sidebars just crammed full of all kinds of stuff. With some of it you wonder why is it there. What purpose does this serve? Now in my opinion calendars are a prime offender. What good is a calendar there? Some people like them, but to me they serve no purpose.

   Empty space in a blog is not only allowable, but it’s a good thing. It helps focus eyes on what is important, which is your content and hopefully the few things you choose to put in your sidebar.

Most blogs start with a basic template which is then customised over time. These tips will hopefully help you that with customisation and help you avoid common mistakes with blog design.

Tyrone Shum
Blog Tipster

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