People in online business can go back and forth about whether or not freebie marketing is a good tactic. It has some advantages; people like free things, but also some disadvantages. That would be that freebie seekers are often not buyers, and therefore nearly worthless in terms of earning an income.

But freebie marketing isn’t just for online marketers. It can be done in the real world. Just think about the free samples you can get wandering a grocery store or Costco on the right days.

And yes, they give away a lot of free products to people who don’t buy that particular product that day.

And then there’s my daughter’s recent karate class. We went to a local street fair (free) and the studio was offering a free month of karate classes plus a free uniform. It was something we’d been considering for our daughter anyhow, the other studios were offering only a single day free, and so my husband and I signed her up.

Really I think they did a brilliant job. My daughter now really wants to continue in karate. She wants to earn a Black Belt someday. Potentially this could get them years of payments from us.

They did a really good sales job by offering those free classes. I very much regret that we can’t take them up on continuing them at the moment. No budget for it. But when things improve, they’re on the list. It’s the first activity my daughter has taken that has made her consider a long term goal with it.

That’s the kind of thing you need with your freebies. You need something that will give your visitors a taste of what they could get by paying. A good freebie makes the customer want your product even more.

This isn’t something that is always easy to achieve. Many paid things don’t translate well to free. If you cut features too much you can lose the power of what you’re offering and decrease interest. But too good a freebie makes people look for ways to keep it free if you go for a full trial version.

How you resolve this depends on what you’re offering. If you’re offering a trial version of something, find a way to balance what you offer for free with what it will take to make people want to pay for more.

If you’re trying to sell something else, offer a freebie that will help them to see why they need it.

Freebies should have a goal of making you money. Just giving something away isn’t going to do you a lot of good. Plan out the path you want your customers to take, from accepting the freebie to buying whatever product or products you’re selling.

You may recall that I recently had some trouble with a once reliable hosting company. I’ve moved away from them now (they were hosting other sites of mine, not this one), but they did get me thinking.

How much downtime should you put up with?

What if the host has been reliable for years?

Do you really want to go through the inconvenience?

Trust me, it is a major inconvenience to change hosting companies. DNS updates much faster than it used to; a matter of hours rather than a couple days as it once was, so you have less time to lose activity on your site if you have a forum or something, but there’s a lot to get done before you risk it.

In my case it took a long time to decide to leave my prior host. They had been reliable for a couple years. I liked the service. But when the server I was on started having major downtime due to server hardware issues that kept happening over and over, I had to give up.

I do believe in taking past performance into account. If I didn’t I would have left them with the first big downtime, which was several painful hours.

The decision must be based upon your own tolerances. All servers will go down at some point, but a good hosting company will know how to handle it. Most downtimes are a matter of minutes, and you won’t even notice.

A good hosting company will also have a way for you to check on what’s happening during a server outage without contacting support. Don’t expect them to contact you; I’ve found that to be quite rare indeed. But there should be a status page, blog page or forum where they will share what they know. Make sure you know how to get that information so you can get a quicker answer than you would by contacting support.

Even if you’ve just had a bad downtime, take the time to really research your options. I did, and that was what helped me to settle on Host Gator. Settle is perhaps the wrong word, since I’m really pleased with their service. They helped move my main site over, so I didn’t have to figure it all out myself. The little changes between servers can make things quite challenging, and they handled that for me.

I’ll admit that in some ways I’m sentimental for my old hosting company. There were good and I still think of them as a mostly good company. They just couldn’t handle the extreme issues that my server threw them (hardware, not software) quickly enough and when they had constant problems I had to make the tough decision. I’m still unhappy that they couldn’t handle the problems well, and I won’t go back, but there’s that sentimental bit from when I raved about their otherwise excellent service.

I’m getting to be quite a fan of datafeeds for marketing. Sure they’re a lot of work, but they can also bring in the sales. And there are some great tools to help you along.

Now one of the first things you need to understand about datafeed affiliate marketing is that you cannot just throw up the entire feed and expect a ton of traffic. You might get bits and pieces but you really need to do something to make your pages unique. Without that you aren’t going to get the natural search engine traffic.

With some of my sites, the very first thing I looked for was programs with a datafeed I could use. That’s one of the things I love about ShareASale - free datafeed access for affiliates. Commission Junction only gives it to you free if you make enough sales. And of course there’s a lot you can do with Amazon or eBay feeds, although these are run differently from the ones at ShareASale.

If you aren’t a programmer, however, you’re going to want some software to put the feeds up on your sites. And you’re probably going to need to clean up the feeds (merchants can be sloppy with them) and figure out how on earth you’re going to make your little datafeed site stand out. We can’t all replicate the entire Amazon site, after all.

Here are some of the tools I enjoy using:

Build a Niche Store (BANS)

An absolute delight if you want to sell products that are being auctioned on eBay. I’ve reviewed this product in the past, and things have really picked up for me again since eBay’s transition to their own Partner Network.

You might be amazed at some of the niches that do well through eBay. You can get pretty creative with your sites. And the cookie is good for more than just the auctions you refer people directly to, so you never know what’s going to come up.

The Affiliate Datafeed Profit System (ADPS2)

My favorite tool right now for ShareASale datafeeds. It works within a WordPress blog. All you have to do is find the merchants you want to represent who have datafeeds, sign up with them, request FTP access to their feeds, activate the plugin and put in your information. These are all really easy steps, and many merchants auto-approve affiliates.

Once it’s set up, ADPS2 can download the datafeeds for you, and you click a button to have it create posts to the specifications you select. You choose the number of products per post, the number of posts created and the category posted to. ADPS2 will randomly date these, with a few being posted in the next couple hours and the rest over a number of days. How many depends on how many posts are being created.

You can have up to 5 merchants going on this, and the posts will mix them up. Keeps things more unique.

This is a great addition to a blog that you have some content already, and need products. As with many things It’s not going to do you a lot of good to use it without some content you’ve created and promotion of the website.

PopShops

The two systems above cost money. So now here’s one that can be free, if you choose. Or you can pay for additional features.

PopShops is nice if you want to use a datafeed from Commission Junction, LinkShare and so forth, but don’t want to pay for the privilege of accessing them. It also handles updating and removing products for you, which is very convenient when you’re using datafeeds. And you can mix the merchants up to suit your site.

The free version runs on JavaScript. In other words, it’s not going to attract search engine spiders for you. But if you have some content going and want to test the waters, it’s a place to start.

You pick the categories and your layout. Then the products. It’s a simple drag and drop interface. They brag about it being so easy a 3 year old could do it, and even have a video to prove it.

You can pay a monthly fee to get a PHP or ASP version for your site. This is, of course, much friendlier to the search engines. The Pro version is just $5 per month or you can go for even more features for $30 a month. But even in the free version all your commissions are your own. Just make sure you sign up for every program you put in your shop. You can even create widgets for your blogs.

The disadvantage, of course, is that you have to trust to their cleaning of the datafeed. But since you can mix up the products as you like you can still make some pretty unique pages.

Associate-O-Matic for Amazon

Now this is one I haven’t tried, but looks promising. The most recent update to the script was May 10, 2008 as of this writing, and it has been around for a few years.

It has a free option that costs you 10% of clicks rather than an upfront cost, or the full version is $99 for the first year, $20/year thereafter.

Amazon, like eBay, sells just an amazing range of stuff. The disadvantage is that they have a very short cookie life, one day as I recall. Compare that to 30 or more days for many other programs. But people trust Amazon, it’s familiar and they buy lots of stuff there sometimes. There are affiliates making very good money through that program.

Why Use Datafeeds?

With all this information about it, the reason why you should use a datafeed may not be quite so apparent.

A datafeed allows you to get traffic for the individual products, potentially. No guarantees, of course. But if someone is looking for a product they aren’t going to find your site if all you do is link to the merchant’s home page.

A datafeed site also has a lot of pages generated automatically for you. It can come down to more pages being more ways for visitors to find you.

No, datafeed affiliate marketing has not made me rich. It sure would be nice. But it has opened up some areas that I am developing sites that should bring in some income I’d have trouble earning otherwise. My datafeed sites have had some very promising beginnings.

Overwork is one of the great problems of the home business owner… any business owner really. This is particularly true of the early stages when you’re still building things up.

Do you take time off for you?

Working the entire weekend is a very easy thing to do. I do it often enough myself. But time off to refresh yourself, to have fun with family or friends is very important.

It may not have to be the entire weekend. It may not even be on the weekend itself. There’s no law that says you must call Saturday and Sunday your weekend. You can take off whichever days suit your needs and the needs of your family.

Taking at least a day off every week can be tremendously refreshing. You may find that you work better when you are more refreshed from a break. You may have fresh ideas.

Go on, take a day for you. Do nothing more business-wise than check emails for emergencies. Once you’re clear, leave the computer alone!

Relax.

A great niche is one of the requirements for a successful online business. You aren’t going to do well if you don’t stand out in some way or if you try to market to everyone.

Researching a niche is generally frustrating, though. Pretty much any niche you can think of will have a lot of competition in it. How are you supposed to stand out? More important, how are you supposed to earn anything?

One important thing to consider right now is that very, very few niches lack for competition anymore. At least not if they’re profitable. A great number of people have been trying to or succeeding at making a living online, and many of them have come up with some great ideas.

This isn’t as bad as it may sound. If someone’s making a living at the niche you wanted, you have know there’s a market there. If no one is, either you’ve stumbled across a very rare gem or you’ve found one of the many niches where there are no buyers.

The Big Secret - They Aren’t All Serious Competitors

Just because you see a website in your niche doesn’t mean that they’re serious competition. Many people do well in a niche because there aren’t any really good competitors in it. Just think about how many times you see ebooks telling people that all they have to do is throw up a quick affiliate site and they’ll start earning the big bucks.

If that’s your main competition, you may be able to do very well by putting in more serious effort. Go over what the competition is doing, and figure out how to do it better.

Sometimes standing out is just that simple. You find a way to do it better. You might provide better information, you might keep your site more up to date, you might be more helpful on a personal level.

Heck, you might just have a generally cooler site.

Mistakes are natural when you run a home business. For most of us it’s how we learn to work better. But sometimes the mistakes you make are ones you may have already known enough to avoid, had you just thought about it a little bit more.

Mistake #1: Expecting instant results

This is a common mistake in the work at home crowd. It’s easy to make because people want to believe it, and a very, very few people do succeed just about instantly. But they are a very small exception, nothing even close to the rule.

If it were that easy, there would be a lot more rich people working online.

Mistake #2: Charging too little

This one applies primarily to people who are selling something of their own. If you can set the price it helps if you test to figure out what you are really worth. It doesn’t matter if you’re selling a service, a physical or electronic product. If you haven’t considered what your time is really worth, what your products are really worth, do so.

This can apply to affiliate marketers too. If you’re doing well selling a product, have you ever considered asking for a raise? If you have a good track record, many merchants will consider it.

Mistake #3: Treating your business no better than a hobby

Many people fail because they don’t take their business seriously enough. They let anything and everything distract them from their business. They may even let hobbies take precedence over their home business.

Running your business like a business means setting work hours. It means separating your personal and business finances. It means keeping track of your spending.

Mistake #4: Doing it all yourself

You can do a lot yourself, but odds are you aren’t an expert on everything.

Hiring any sort of help can be painful. It’s hard for many to give any part of their efforts over to someone else. It also adds up financially. But it is often the best possible decision you could make for your home business.

A good virtual assistant, for example, can handle things like routine emails and some of your marketing tasks. You may also need a lawyer and a bookkeeper. You may want to consider business insurance, and a good insurance agent can help you to figure out what you need.

Mistake #5: Taking on too much

Many people get extremely ambitious with their home businesses. You’ll see people take on multiple network marketing opportunities, or 100+ websites, or more clients than they’re ready to handle.

This problem is particularly acute if you fall for it before you’ve established yourself in one venture. Many network marketers find many opportunities interesting, and take on multiple in hopes of marketing them together. And that can work for some products.

But if you haven’t figured out the basics, haven’t figured out your niche, haven’t learned how to deal with what your customers need it’s a huge mistake. It goes similarly for running multiple websites.

If you’re offering a service a lot of clients can sound good at first. But if you take on too much you’re quickly going to have to learn to subcontract, work serious extra hours, or ruin your reputation. It pays to know how much work you can handle and what you’ll do if too many people want your time.

Mistake #6: Paying too little attention to your family

The right home business is addictive. You’ll want to spend time on it, lots of time. But you lose track of the things that should matter, such as having time for your family and friends.

This goes along with having regular work hours. While sometimes it may be necessary to work more hours, regular work hours allow you to take time off to relax. You need it and your family needs you.

Not taking this kind of time can actually limit your productivity. Your mind needs some quiet time, relaxation. Wasting your work time feeling guilty that you haven’t done anything with your family for a long time can slow you down. Failing to take your regular time off can also encourage you to take time out of your schedule, out of sheer guilt. It’s not good for you.

There are many more mistakes you can make with a home business. What other mistakes can you think of?

I don’t know how this happened, but somehow summer is almost here already. Children are getting out of school in some areas. Most others will be out within a month.

And of course, the weather is looking quite inviting in many areas. The temptation to goof off away from your home business grows.

Should You?

The answer to that question is yes, within reason. We do all need a break sometimes. Just don’t overdo it to the detriment of your home business.

If you need a vacation, go hire a virtual assistant. Going on vacation does not have to mean abandoning your business entirely.

If you blog, write some posts in advance or get some guest authors. If your blog has even a small audience you can probably find someone willing to blog on your site a little for the exposure.

Be Serious About Your Business the Rest of the Time

It’s easy to take a lot of time off your home business when summer strikes. The weather’s lovely. If you have kids, they’re home all the time, a situation not all work at home parents are used to. But you need to keep working.

If you quit working your business, summer is a great time for it to decline. All the time you’ve spent building up your business, and it can wilt away in summer’s heat if you don’t take care of it. Pay attention to it. Try to make it grow.

Planning for these distractions are a part of what it takes to be successful in a home business. Distractions happen year round; it’s just that many more tempting ones happen in the summer.

If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you know about the Build a Niche Store software I use occasionally, and the transition of the eBay affiliate program from Commission Junction to their own eBay Partner Network.

And if you read around other sites, you may have heard many rumblings of discontent as many sites lost significant income in the process.  If you haven’t, I’m talking about people who went from mid to high 4 figures, to low to mid 3 figures or worse. It was pretty ugly, despite eBay’s insistence that all tracking was working just fine.

I’ve mostly been sitting back, gritting my teeth to see what would happen. I lost quite a bit of income in this process too. But I’m happy to say that I’m starting to see signs of life at long last.

Not quite the income from before yet. But it’s early days yet, as it’s been about a week of income coming in, more than the few dollars I got last month. Hard to say if it’s actual new sales or if they’re quietly correcting tracking problems. But I’m seeing a difference that I hope keeps up.