I was having a little fun Stumbling around when I came across a post called How I Made $100,000 by Spending 25 Minutes and $0 on Marketing on the Self Made Chick blog. It’s worth a read. She’s not joking, and it’s a great reminder that when you come up with an idea that should get you easy business, even if it’s not quite in your comfort zone, you should probably run with it.

If she keeps up posts like this, her blog is likely to be popular pretty quickly.

Getting out of your comfort zone is tough. I’ve made myself do that a few times, and it has always felt good, even if it hasn’t had quite the results Christine’s had. I even tried promoting myself as an expert for a local television show once, and I’m the girl who could barely talk in front of her class in high school. It didn’t work out, and a few months later the show was cancelled anyhow, but I tried.

Think about what you’ve been putting off. What should you be doing to grow your business that you haven’t yet?

Technorati Tags: procrastinate, procrastination, grow business, home business

This one’s for the bakers out there. A new site, Cake America is focused on allowing bakers to advertise their cakes, pastries and so forth.

The idea is pretty simple you sign up (free if you just set up one store, multiple stores available with a fee), upload pictures of the cakes you have to offer along with descriptions, and post your store information.

The site is searchable by cake style or by city. Obviously you are going to get most of your customers on a local basis, but the more ways you can gain exposure to your business, the better, especially if you’re just at the free level.

The advantage to this kind of site as opposed to a regular online directory listing is that you can showcase your work. It can supplement your website if you have one, or give you a chance to get at some of that online traffic you’ve been missing without one.

There are a variety of cakes already listed on the site. I would expect one of the key factors to succeeding in advertising on a site like this would be to describe your cake in as much detail as possible. You want to catch every detail that people might be searching for in looking for that particular case. You also want the description to be appealing, of course.

Advertising on forums is often suggested as a way to get traffic to your website. You’re told to use it to build your reputation, get your name and your business out there in front of other people.

So does it work?

That depends on you. Can you make the right decisions to help it work?

Advertise Right

Too many people think advertising on forums means blasting their ad all over the forum. They are some of the most detested users on forums, and are banned frequently, their posts deleted.

That kind of forum advertising doesn’t work well at all, even if the ads aren’t quickly deleted by alert moderators. People don’t come to forums to read ads. They come for information.

Even if the forum has a section for advertising, as is common for many home business forums, the ads are likely to be of only minimal effectiveness. The one positive thing to be said for them is that your ads probably won’t be deleted, and those who read them are looking for something to buy or join.

The best way to advertise on a forum is to be a solid member of that forum. If the forum allows signature links, take advantage of that. Build up a reputation as someone who gives solid answers. If you are a person that people go to for help on the forum, they are more likely to think of you positively when they want to buy the kind of product or service you offer.

Read the rest of this entry »

A big step for any blog or website is when you start promoting it. Promotion is vital for success, yet starting too soon can hamper your success. You need to have something for people to see.

The press release is a wonderful form of promotion for a new site. But you don’t want to do it when you have just one page going… unless of course you’ve built a one page sales site, and even then you probably need a couple other pages, terms of service, privacy, about and so forth.

And then there’s the mistake of only sending your press release to the major press release websites. Send it there, yes, but also take the time to contact your local media. Local businesses are often covered by newspapers. If you’re lucky, the local story can get picked up elsewhere. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve used Yahoo Answers off and on for a while to promote my websites. It can be a bit tricky finding good questions to answer, but it does drive traffic and help me to appear as an authority.

However, you do need to pay attention to quality. Of the answers I’ve given, about 25% have been selected as the best answer. A few were the only answer, but often they competed with other answers of varying qualities.

The trick to this is to genuinely have a good answer. Do not just throw up an affiliate link and think your job is done. Give some good information, and point to still more good information on your website.

Do not just make a sales pitch. People asking for information on Yahoo Answers are not looking to immediately purchase something in most cases. They want information. Give them a good taste and help them to trust you. They may not be ready to buy right away, but you can give them the chance to become interested in what you are offering.

Technorati Tags: yahoo answers, website promotion, site promotion

Text messaging is really popular right now. You may or may not text people yourself, but it’s quite a popular trend and may be quite useful for advertising.

I’m sure you’ve seen text message voting on shows such as “American Idol”. Text message advertising works somewhat similarly. You choose your keyword and use it in your advertising. The Mobile Marketing company, Mobitivity, recieves the text message and automatically sends your ad back as a text message.

They’re fast about this. You can set up a campaign with them in minutes.

There are plenty of possibilities for this. You could hold voting, certainly one of the better known options. You could have people text to enter a contest or drawing. You could make special offers. You’re limited only by what you can say in a short text message and your own creativity.

It can really pay to take advantage of the newer marketing options. There’s often much less competition and people can be more curious about wht you’re offering.

1. Memes! Yep, trying things like Thursday 13 and other memes on my blogs to see what impact they have.

2. Blog carnivals. I’m checking them out twice a week to figure out which ones I have posts to submit. Read the rest of this entry »

I’ve recently learned of an interesting trick that can allow you to insert your customer’s names into a page if they click through from an email or a page where they have entered their name.

This is a trick many do with software, but it’s not too hard to do on your own. Mostly it’s just knowing how to put in the PHP to add in the names. And you know what? It’s not all that difficult.

You will want to create a page in PHP. Name it as you want, but you will want it to end in.php.

If you name the variable “name” (without quotes), you can insert the name into the page with:

< ?php echo "$name"; ? > (take the space between ? and > or < out).

You can use this over and over again in the page.

Of course, there is the question: How does the page know the name? Read the rest of this entry »