Interview With Daniel Scocco From Daily Blog Tips
May 27, 2009 by Tyrone
Recently I asked Daniel Scocco from Daily Blog Tips to do an interview with me. Daniel runs a very successful blog that attracts over 20,000 daily readers and is very popular in the blogging community. Not only that, Daniel has an online membership program called Online Profits that teaches people how to make money from Internet marketing. I wanted to share with you why Daniel is someone who I learn from and also how to model his success.
Why You Should Learn From Daniel?
- He shares his experiences, which are relevant and practical to your Internet business
- His blog is ranked in Technorati Top 100, proving that his information is important
- He is a truly humble and a remarkable coach
Tips For Choosing A Profitable E-commerce Domain Name
May 18, 2009 by Tyrone
If you are starting a new e-commerce internet business, one question immediately pops into mind, what name should I choose? Have you heard of the saying in property, “location, location, location”? Most associate buying property with choosing the right location and it may mean that you make or lose money. Your e-commerce domain name is no different. Think of your domain name as your Internet property, which represents your business presence online. Choose a domain name that is customer friendly and easy to remember:
How To Choose A Profitable E-commerce Domain Name?
Keep It Simple And Easy To Remember
Most customers who look for a website want to remember something that is associate with the product or service you are offering. Unless you have a lot of money to spend on advertising like eBay or Amazon your best bet is to choose a domain name that represents your products and services. Use simple and easy to remember words that are spoken often by your customers. For example, your e-commerce business might be selling racing bikes so consider the domain name: racingbikes.com or roadracingbikes.com. Try to avoid names like joesracingbikes.com or smithsracingbikes.com even if your company is called that. We want to make sure your domain name is easy to remember and captures the widest scope of customers.
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12 Sales Effective Marketing Tips
March 3, 2009 by Tyrone
MARKETING YOUR INTERNET BUSINESS may already be your strength, or you are struggling and just getting by. No matter how your business is performing everyone can benefit by exploring some low cost marketing opportunities that will help grow your business. You don’t have to spend loads of money on advertising, it just requires some creativity and planning. Furthermore, not only does it add more dollars to your bottom line in money not spent on advertising it can also boost your confidence. Here are 12 tips for you to implement into your Internet business.
12 sales effective / low cost marketing tips:
- Press Release – send a story about yourself relating to your business via email to a newspaper or magazine relevant to your industry. A story will increase your businesses public awareness and credibility and it is free marketing for you as well. Don’t forget to include a professionally taken photo of yourself.
- Send Email – contact your existing clients and offer them something via email to entice to visit your website.
- Public Speaking – offer a presentation at your local service club like Rotary or Leagues and ask if they would be interested in allowing you to present a subject of interest. Don’t do a sale pitch, offer something to people that will be of value and record the session to use for later public broadcasts. You can also use this in your credentials to show people you have spoken in public and is good for press releases as well.
- Keyword Marketing - not enough businesses use this method and it’s low cost as long as you set your target and budget correctly. You can buy keywords relating to your business from as little as 5c per word. Be really specific and make sure your target audience sees your advertisement.
- Post Advertisement On Noticeboard - your local shopping centre, schools, universities will have noticeboards for you to post up notices and advertisements. Use them and take advantage of them because many people still read noticeboard and give them an incentive to call (maybe include a tear off at the bottom of your notice).
- Networking – join a business club or a forum in your area sharing the same interest. Attend these events regularly and swap business cards.
- Setup A Stall – sometimes just setting up a store at your local fair or market creates brand awareness for your business and is a great opportunity to talk to people in the community and hand out brochures to offer your products or services.
- Cross-Promote – contact other businesses that offer complimentary services or products to yours and work out a co-operative marketing strategy to promote together. It’s a win-win to help each other out.
- Promote On Your Car – A very cost effective way if you drive around a lot. You can purchase magnetic signs to stick on your car with your business details. You will definitely get people looking because not enough people do it.
- Give Away Vouchers – When a consumer purchases your product or service give them a discount voucher for their next purchase to entice them to come back to spend again.
- Talk To People – Don’t worry, they’re not going to bite you! Talk to your friends and acquaintances, they will be more than happy to refer your details if you approach them nicely.
- Write A Guest Post – This is becoming more popular across the Bloggersphere where you offer to write an informative article for other bloggers. They may have readers that you want to attract and they are interested in what you have to say, then it’s a great way to market your Internet business.
Try to implement a couple of these ideas over the month and test your results. The best way to find out if they work is to ask your customers when they contact you, “How did you hear about us?”. This is the best way to measure and learn from your customers as it can help you determine what is working and what is not. It’s all about trial and error to find the best marketing method for your Internet business.
Tyrone Shum
Marketing Tipster
New Enterprise Incentive Scheme (NEIS)
Over the last few weeks I’ve been preparing myself to start the New Enterprise Incentive Scheme (NEIS), where I attended my first class today at 9.30am in Sydney CBD. I was really excited and anxious at the same time because I was wondering if my idea would become a viable business by the end of the course.
How I Found Out About NEIS?
Back in December 2008 I was looking for other opportunities to increase my weekly cash flow and to do a course to learn more about marketing and growing a business. My initial approach was to do a search on Google and to read blogs to gain ideas. Funnily enough I stumbled across a business blog where it mentioned the NEIS program and described about his personal experience attending this course many years ago. It got me interested and I started to make a few phone calls to find out how to apply for the programme.
What Is NEIS?
You might be wondering why I was interested in this particular programme? NEIS is an Australian government funded programme (only available to residents of Australia), and is aimed at assisting people to explore the opportunities of starting their own business instead of going to the workforce. The additional benefits of the programme are:
- a short 4-5 week course on small business management and planning equipping you will the necessary business skills to start your new business
- 12 month support financially
- mentoring assistance to you to guide you through your new business
The government has provided an excellent opportunity to people like myself wanting to start a new business, but don’t have enough capital to start. Also, I knew there was a cost to attending business courses at Tafe and having a personal mentor, which made it even more appealing for me to apply for this programme.
For more detailed information about NEIS and to apply go to: http://www.neis.com.au/
Requirements
Before applying for NEIS you must also be on a Centrelink benefit. In my circumstance, I was unemployed and able to apply for the New Start Allowance through Centrelink.
How It Works?
The people I met in NEIS within my class, came from all types of backgrounds ranging from senior positions in corporate companies to mechanics. Therefore most people can apply for this programme. Here the stages you have to complete before going onto NEIS:
- As mentioned the requirement is that you must be on a Centrelink benefit.
- Once you begin to receive your benefit / allowance from Centrelink you will need to attend a Jobseeker network which Centrelink will refer you to. They will provide you a Jobseeker number and you have to fill out the relevant forms.
- Submit a fortnightly form to Centrelink to let them know of your job seeking or course attending activities. (In this case you will be attending NEIS for a period of around 12 weeks)
- Apply for NEIS through the closest Business Enterprise Centre (BEC) near you and fill in the required forms.
- Inform Centrelink once you have been accepted in the NEIS Programme
- Attend NEIS short course for 4-5 weeks and then present your business plan to the panel 2-3 weeks later.
- Normally it will take an additional 2 weeks to process your business details to Department of Education, Employment & Workplace Relations (DEEWR).
- Attend a final group meeting to be inducted and assigned a business coach taking an additional week.
As you complete each step you will gain a better understanding of how to run your business and be provided with training and mentoring to help you succeed. After the final group meeting you’ll be out to start your new business.
How Can It Help You?
If you think you are eligible then I would recommend applying for NEIS. Even if you attended the business course it’s worthwhile to gain the knowledge and learn more about running a successful business.
Continue onto NEIS Part 2: What Do They Teach You?
Tyrone Shum
NEIS Supporter
7 Ways To Get Your New Website Listed In Search Engines
January 2, 2009 by Tyrone
Since your new website is your marketing tool for your business it’s going to be crucial to be listed on search engines. In the past when I have setup new websites I have used 8 methods to get them listed on search engines fast and as high as possible. Though, we first need to understand how Search Engines work and how we can maximise our efforts to rank up high.
How Do Search Engines Work?
Search Engines have two elements that make them work.
1. The Index
Simply, the index of a search engine is a giant catalogue containing a copy of every web page and file that the spider finds. If a web page changes, this catalogue is updated with the new information. To give you an idea of the size of these indexes, Google has over 8 billion pages.
It sometimes takes a while for new pages or changes that the spider finds to be added to its index. Thus, a web page may have been “spidered” but not yet “indexed.” Until a page is indexed – added to the index – spidered pages will not be available to those searching with the search engine.
2. The Search Engine Spider
This is also called a web crawler or robot. A search engine spider is an automated program that reads web pages and follows any links to other pages within the site. This is often referred to as a site being “spidered” or “crawled”. There are three very active spiders on the Net. Their names are Googlebot (Google), Slurp (Yahoo!) and MSNBot (MSN Search).
Spiders start their journeys with a list of page URLs that have previously been added to their index (database). As it visits these pages, crawling the code and copy, it adds new pages (links) that it finds on the page to its index.
The spider returns to the sites in its index on a regular basis, scanning for any changes. How often the spider returns is up to the search engines to decide. Webmasters do have some control in how often a spider visits their site by making use of a robot.txt file. Search engines first look for this file before crawling a page further.
The Search Engine
Most people have heard of Google, Yahoo and MSN. As these are the dominate search engine providers on the Internet today most websites look at being listed on their indexes. Therefore it is crucial for a new website to let “The search engine spiders” know they exist. Here are the 8 ways to get your new website listed:
1. Search Engine Optimization
I highly recommend setting this as your first priority to do. The reason is, once you get listed onto a search engine – particularly Google, you will find increasing amounts of traffic to your new website.
Since search engine optimization is a very large area for discussion I have created another post about search engine optimization.
2. Google Sitemaps
Simply by creating a sitemap that tells Google to crawl your website will enhance the chances of listing higher in Google searches. Google has written a very comprehensive manual to show savvy webmasters how to communicate with Google through their Webmaster sitemap submission system
Something interesting I discovered with my own website: if you know how to create Cron Jobs and have it automatically run it on a daily basis to tell a search engine to crawl your site, you will have a greater chance at getting to the top of a search.
3. Manual Submission
Once you have optimized your site using keywords related to your website, the next stage is to submit your site to the various search engines. I don’t believe it’s necessary to submit your website to all the search engines on the Internet, but I do recommend submitting to the top three: Google Add URL, Yahoo and MSN. Each of these search engines provide a submission page to let you submit their websites.
One last tip about manual submission, I wouldn’t recommend anyone pay a company to submit your website. Personally I think they are a waste of money because there are no proven results that they work and get your website ranked higher.
4. Submit Your Site To Directories
Another good place to start is with web directories. The two biggest by far are Yahoo Directory and the Open Directory.
There are plenty of other directories you should consider as well. To find them run a search for ‘web directory’ on your favourite search engine. The directories that come up highest in the search rankings will probably generate the most traffic. You can also check these directories of directories:
5. Comment In Blogs, Forums, Bulletin Boards And Newsgroups
A great way to get your website listed on the search engine is to provide comments on other sites with your website at the end of your comment. NOTE: The idea is to provide something of value to another site, not just putting your website there as that is considered SPAM.
6. Linking To Other Sites And Ask For A Link In Return.
There are three ways you can find websites that might want to link to you.
- Go to your favourite search engine and type in some words related to what your website is about.
- Sift through the websites in directories such as Yahoo Directory or the Open Directory
- Find out who’s currently linking to both you and your competitors, check who’s linking to them, and who’s linking to them, and so on (To see a list of the inbound links to a website go to Google and type in link:http://www.URL.com) – replace URL with your own website name.
Now that you’ve found these websites, ask them to link to you. A quick phone call or e-mail will help. And remember, always mention that linking to your website will benefit their site users and therefore their website. You could also offer a link exchange, where by you both link to each other. If you’re going to do this, it’s wise to link to their website first, before getting in contact.
7. Press Release Distribution
This is one of the most cost effective way to distribute your website in the marketplace. PRWeb.com is a great place to promote your website.
Tyrone Shum
SEO Tipster
