This is what I hear from people day after day in my role as an online Home Business Consultant. "I am posting, and promoting but not getting any leads or sales! Help me!" If this is you, keep reading, I am going to tell you what you need to know about marketing.

It is true that you can be promoting every day but if you are making one or all of the 5 common mistakes I've outlined here, you won't get the results you want. Take note, this is important stuff if you are really serious about making money online.

1. The first mistake made by new online marketers is this:

Not knowing WHAT to market.

I talk to people daily, nice people who want to sell something online and earn some extra money. They sign up or this and for that, they get Affiliate Memberships all over the web hoping to get better results by being involved in everything they can get their hands on. There intentions are good, they are motivated but they stumble right off the bat by not knowing what to market.

Here's a quick guide for you on WHAT to Market: -Pick products to market that are DIGITAL. Digital products are those that can be bought and sold instantly online. You get your commission sooner, the buyer gets their product instantly! It's no-fuss no-muss and the best way to start your web marketing experience and see some results. -In most cases there is no cost to be a product Reseller or Affiliate - hurray! -Pick Reseller products from a reputable long-standing company that specializes in helping vendors connect with affiliates to sell products online -Pick products or affiliate programs that provide advertising copy, banners, and sales aids along with referral links so you can easily promote the products -Pick products that catch YOUR EYE! Newest releases, products with catchy names, trendy topics, those with positive buyer feedback, and return guarantees are best! -Look for Joint Venture releases so you can be one of the first to promote the products when first released for sale Finally, FOCUS! Keep your eye on the prize - profits - don't spread yourself too thin. Narrow your efforts to a few products and put 100% effort into your campaign.

2. The second most common mistake made by new online marketers is this:

Not knowing HOW to market.

I am always surprised at the answer people give me when I ask how they are marketing online. They look at me perhaps thinking what a ridiculous question that is! They tell me they are sending out their website address. When I look at their website I see a site that is oh so boring! It reads like a brochure with company history, and a few pages of fluffy copy. Yes, of course it is important to promote your website address BUT if you wish to capture leads you must do this - get the prospects contact information!

Getting the contact information from a prospect is often very difficult to do with a standard corporate site. The answer to this problem is to create what are called LANDING pages, or Squeeze pages. These are single page sites that have one purpose and one purpose only - get you a LEAD - and better yet lead to a sale! Some companies provide Landing Pages for you when you become a Reseller for their products. Landing pages help you build your marketing list. Every person may not be a buyer today, but on your mailing list they may enjoy future products you offer. Offering an option to join your mailing directly on your Landing Page gives people 100% control over opting in to your mailing list or not. You build your list while ensuring that people have voluntarily joined your mailing list.

Here's a quick guide to creating responsive landing pages:

-They should be FAST Loading! Skip any animation, video or annoying distraction that just makes people click OFF! -Use images that are colorful, directive, and related to the theme of your product -Your copy MUST be short, punchy, laden with benefits - speak directly to the reader -Your copy should tell readers what they get if they ACT now! Limit the offer, even better! -Capture the contact information of the reader so you can deliver what they asked for -The more goodies, freebies, offers, and cool stuff you can give people the BETTER the response! -Always include an option for people to join your mailing list and give them GREAT reasons to want to do so!

Unlike a website, a landing page should be EXCITING, BENEFIT-LADEN and accomplish this:

Look reader! You get this! Do this to get it! Do it NOW and also get this BONUS!

3. Here is the third most common mistake I see new marketers making:

Not KNOWING WHERE to Market

Marketing is NOT simple but if you know what you are doing it can be. The key is to find the sites, the niches where you can target your market. Market to the right people instead of the masses with solid products and you will get instantly better results.

Here's a quick guide to knowing WHERE to market:

-Do a Google search to find sites related to what you are promoting, then target those sites for your marketing campaigns -Use every available niche market you can find and post there, this includes Forums, Classified Ad Sites, Banner Exchanges, Twitter and Social Networking and Bookmarking sites. -Do not discount FREE and low cost advertising options like Safelists, and Traffic Exchanges. These are excellent ways to target a specific market -You do NOT have to spend ridiculous amounts of money on advertising. Find the sites where your target market exists, then place low cost ads including safelist posts, banners, and classified ads. Don't even think about buying pay-per-click ads at sites like Google unless you have deep pockets and know what you are doing. -Learn what backlinks are and why they are SO VERY important to generating traffic and achieving better search engine indexing for your site, products or business. -If any of the terms above are foreign to you, you have some homework to do, I have included some resources below.

4. Are you ready for the fourth and perhaps most fatal mistake made by new online marketers?

Not knowing how to TRACK your promotional campaigns

If you are going to spend time and money to promote a product or service you MUST, you absolutely MUST know where you are getting your results. Ad Tracking is a 100% requirement! If you are not tracking your ads, and the clicks you get and from where, you are promoting blindly. What happens when you don't watch what you are doing? You can fall in a hole! Online this can be a hole where you fall in and throw your money into wasted ad campaigns. I've seen more people allow paid advertising to eat up their entire budget than I want to think about. Smart marketers that get results know exactly the ad campaigns that get results, and the sources they came from.

Get an Ad Tracker Tool. Some advertising sites provide you with data on number of clicks to your ads, or impressions. This is important, just be sure you understand what those terms mean. A click is usually far more powerful for you then a "view". You want ACTIVE respondents, real people actually clicking on your ad to see it. This is much different than an "exposure" or a "view" with the latter being considered passive and very weak marketing, often provided free. For best results you will ALWAYS get better results from paid advertising than from free advertising but don't discount free promotion, it is a good way to earn advertising credits if you have a small advertising budget. If you buy advertising be SURE you get some kind of way to validate the promotion, the click rate, and actual IP addresses of unique respondents to ensure the hits are legitimate and not computer generated. Make sure your respondents will be geographically specific too, from countries that you wish to target. For example, Canada or the USA. If you have your own domain you are fortunate, as you can benefit from an Ad Tracking tool that tracks all your promotional activities and traced to your website domain address.

5. The fifth common mistake I see online marketers making is very straight-forward.

Not being realistic or giving it enough consistent time and effort to see results.

I know we live in an instant gratification world but if you are new to online marketing you will need to be more realistic. Promotion takes a lot of CONSISTENT effort using a number of strategies at a number or web sites. By tracking your ads you can see instantly where your efforts are being productive. Be prepared to try various copy, be cognizant that some products will sell better than others, some advertising resources will deliver better than others. Vary your offers, change up your products as needed, update landing pages, post to a number of sites and track the results. Take some time to learn about some of the terms used in this article. Be honest with yourself about what you are doing. Are you serious about earning money online or are you doing this as a hobby? Your level of hunger and ambition to succeed will be your motivator. The good news is that once you have built your mailing list, and found niche sites and advertising resources that work, your job to promote gets easier but NEVER goes away.

 

WebcastSource.com - Home Business Opportunities And Earn Income Working From Home, 2013. Written by Richard Moyer

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Author's program note. Sooner or later EVERY writer will face the ordeal of the blank page and come up with -- nothing! At such a moment, you may well fall victim to malaise, running the spectrum from anxious to suicidal. The longer the seizure lasts, the worst these reactions will be, until one completely miserable day you reckon you can never write another word again... and this can bring on not only sadness but a kind of death from which, like the real thing, there is no escape.

To help you through this situation when it inevitably occurs, I am going to pack this article with one practical suggestion after another. You may not need them now; may not need them for a decade. But keep this article readily at hand for when you do.

First suggestion. Use a special song to raise your mood and get you moving.

Have a song easily available that makes you want to surge. I have a list of favorites, all selected for their proven ability to lift my spirits and put me in the mood to give something to humanity, something like the project I'm currently writing. "Maniac" from the 2001 film "Flashdance" featuring Michael Sembello always works. I indulge myself, acting kid crazy as everything conduces to get you.... your brain.... and your prose flowing again. You'll find this song in any search engine... turn it on, let yourself go, until you feel the unstoppable energy that this kind of insistent music delivers.

Second suggestion. The minute you get nervous, frustrated, flustered, hot under the collar, STOP and STOP at once.

The worst thing you can do is force yourself to write. Not only will the quality of what you're writing be tainted, but you'll hurt yourself and begin to think the writing game is not worth the candle, the worst possible conclusion.

This particular advice can be very difficult to follow. After all, you've been productive before and aim to be productive again just as soon as possible. Surely, if you force yourself to write you can push the blockage to one side and flow, right? Instead, sit down at your writing desk, write as much as you can that flows naturally. Stop when the flow ceases...

... even if you've only managed to write a single word. Pushing yourself during a block never works positively and can easily affect your self-esteem and self-confidence when the push doesn't work.

Third Suggestion. Keep your regular writing hours, even if you cannot write your name on the page just now.

Good habits are the key to good, constant, always flowing writing. Thus, it is important during draught days to do the precise things you did during the fat days. What you produce may not be substantial -- yet. But even if you find yourself in the position of Oscar Wilde ("in the morning I put in a comma; in the afternoon I took it out again.") that won't matter. Why? Because the most productive writers are like Pavlov's dogs... trained to write whilst in your sanctified writer's place.

Fourth Suggestion. Still stalled? Do this!

First of all, notice I use the word "stalled" to describe your current unproductive situation. It is a word that implies you were moving and the problem being solved you will regain your accustomed outcome... and peace of mind.

Thus, when stalled do this... Take a walk around the park (if you're lucky enough like me to have one right out the front door, so much the better). Find yourself a shaded bench where the view is congenial. Take out the pad and paper every writer must always carry; select an object and -- describe it, fully, completely, without leaving anything out of your description... writing not only factually but with as much lyric beauty as you can draw from the "dry" well at the moment.

The simple task of describing the flower bed at your feet starts the productive juices flowing... even if you're able, just now, to write only a single word (tree) with just one adjective (green). The thousand mile journey starts with the single step; yours starts with a single word... and any word will do.

Fifth Suggestion. Copy a page of another's prose... to get you moving.

Nothing happening so far to get your stalled skills working productively again? No worries! Take a passage from a favorite book or article, open a file and enter this text. As you do, engaging brain and nimble fingers, you're performing a function all prose writers regularly do, in my case almost daily, that is entering reference material.

When you've finished so entering a block of text, go on and comment on what you've entered. What was good about the passage entered, what was bad, what inspired, what underwhelmed? In just a minute or two, you're writing... perhaps not yet up to your usual level. But what of that? Your creative faculties are working; your imagination is working, your fingers are working... and soon the flow of new ideas, new insights, new observations and new perceptions will be working, perhaps even better than before.

Sixth Suggestion. Read from your own prose.

Far too many writers fail to read their prose aloud. This is bad for several reasons, including to make sure all sentences are balanced, harmonious, with every word the right word. Merely reading your prose cannot deliver the optimum result; reading aloud can.

Thus, pick up the first page of anything you've written, not necessarily lately either. When you've finished reciting this page, sit down at your computer and write a second page to accompany what you've already written and read. Again, by positively positioning yourself and doing your usual tasks, you ease back into your stride and the production and presentation of the right words in the right order.

And if none of this works?

Seventh Suggestion. Close, relax, start again tomorrow.

With the best will in the world and the diligent adherence to these recommendations, your block may not end in a day, a week or even a month. Thus must you continue to implement these suggestions even when they may not be immediately helpful.

Therefore, begin each writing day as you always have, at your usual time, and with your usual matutinal rites. Do not skip a single one. Similarly eat at the usual times; run your usual errands in the usual way. And above all, close your shop at the usual time with the usual activities, such as preparing reference materials for next day usage. Never stay up late forcing yourself every step of the way; that may well have been a contributing factor to the blockage in the first place.

Guaranteed results.

Follow these steps, and I guarantee your days of obstacles, impediments, blocks and absolutely no progress will be history soon enough. Moreover, because you have experienced what is often a terrifying situation, you are better prepared to see it coming and take immediate action to overcome it. Once you do, dance the "Maniac" gyrations for yourself. They'll put you in just the right frame of mind to produce that Niagara of high energy language, the kind your readers are thrilled you never stop writing and always produce so predictably and so well.

WebcastSource.com - Home Business Opportunities And Earn Income Working From Home, 2013. Written by Richard Moyer

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