Viral Marketing

Creativity.

This is one virtue a site must possess to lead the race in the ruthless competition in the Internet based business. With so many competition and rivalry going on, every method of marketing must be employed and utilized.

It doesn’t matter if you have a killer product or a fantastically designed website, if people don’t know that you exist, it doesn’t matter, and you are not going to make it big. Worse of all, you business could just get killed.

While there are so many methods and schemes used by so many e-commerce sites today, there are still some of those that can help you with an extra boost in the popularity ratings. One of these is the so called Viral Marketing.

While the term Viral easily depicts a virus, a word very much dreaded by all computer owners, it is not what it seems. You do not actually use a computer virus to spread your business; on the contrary it just might kill you. Everyone has had enough of all those pop up ads and spywares.

Viral Marketing Overview

Viral Marketing also known otherwise as Viral Advertising is a marketing technique used to build the public awareness of one’s product or company. They use many forms of media to reach out to the public without actually promoting the product by riding on in other forms of addictive means that could get a person hooked and be obliged or amused to actually pass it on, with the product or company advertisement along with it.

In a nutshell, companies ride on the idea that if people like the content of a media they will pass it on to their friends and family. They sponsor the certain media, such as a cool flash game, funny video, amusing story and such, which one may pass on to another with the company brand or logo or the products description or any other content to help promote the company or its product.

Viral marketing has become a popular means of advertising and marketing because they are relatively low cost. To avoid being tagged as spam mail, viral marketing counts on the eagerness of one person to pas on the product. If a person sees the name of the person they know as the sender, they won’t block it and open it as well.

Many companies offer incentives such as discounts and rebates when they help in spreading their viral marketing. They rely on the number of recipients a viral marketing gets from one person in determining the amount or number of incentive they can be attributed with.

Using Viral Marketing to your advantage

The main and foremost advantage of viral marketing is that you get a lot of publicity and public awareness about your site and your company. You get to generate a flow of traffic that are potential customers. With a little ingenuity and imagination, plus some incentives or prizes, you can reach out to a great number of people and announce your existence.

Most every site and companies are catching on to the effectivity of Viral Marketing and Advertising. Not using it could kill your business. Along with other schemes and methods in promoting your site, like Search Engine Optimization and such, viral marketing could easily push you ahead in the rating games.

Viral Marketing could be a sneaky way to get people to know about you and your company. You get them to pass your advertisement along. They are also very low cost that not investing in it could be downright a business suicide. All it takes is a great idea, a good addicting game, a funny story many ideas are still out there. Create a gossip or a buzz, many movies are promoted by using scandals and gossips to make them moir

Network Marketing For Believers And Non Believers Alike

There are thousands of experts out there who will tell you how to succeed with network marketing. Some of them really do know what they’re talking about, even if their message is often delivered in that rather ‘consultant speak’ manner that makes so many of us cringe and shy away.

After many years of watching the rise and fall of ‘the next big thing’ here are a few observations for any would be online marketer to think about - more a case of how not to go about things, which, hopefully, might save some of us a lot of pain.

1) You get very little in this life for free - if only everyone would accept this simple truth, the network marketing arena would be a happier place. By free, I’m not just talking in monetary terms either. There is no doubt that the internet is still a place where you can find success with minimal initial outlay, but for the most part, the people who have had the greatest success are those who have put a lot of thought and/or effort into their business, along with some investment. You also have to add the downright dishonest folks, who are prepared to make a buck at anyone’s expense and have little or no conscience about what they do - trust me, there are plenty of them out there circling too!

2) A business means a product or a service - you cannot sell thin air to people, other than the downright stupid ones. When the next flash website catches your eye and promises you all the wealth your little heart desires, remember that they know what buttons to push to ignite your interest and talk has always been cheap. If nobody is expected to sell anything, there won’t be any money will there? So, on to the next step….

3) It’s staggering what some people can be convinced will make them money. We mentioned products and services, and if we accept that they form the basis of any business, there is much more we have to accept. Before rushing into an online venture just because it says on the screen that millions of people want to buy what they are asking you to sell, think about it carefully. Would you want to buy what they are selling at the price they are selling it at? I mean, come on, you must have known people who have got involved in a network marketing company and tried to sell you on it too; vacuum cleaners, cleaning products, beauty products, miracle potions, timeshares, beef jerky, online shopping malls - the list is endless. I’m not saying that these products are not valid (well, maybe the miracles are pushing it a bit) but the likelihood of them making you rich, are, let’s be honest here - slimmer than a very slim thing! So let’s move on to what you’ll be given for free shall we?

4) A web page of your own to promote your business! Sounds great in theory for people who don’t know much about websites or marketing and they just can’t seem to get enough of them. I know we all have to learn and start somewhere but I say this because if it weren’t true, we wouldn’t be seeing these awful pages with a low resolution grainy photo of the ‘marketer’ either sitting in their dingy little living space peering in a hopefully vacant way at their monitors or, even worse, a cell phone snapshot of the site ‘owner’ with their little rat like dog. Remember the old saying, ‘would you buy a used car from THIS man?’ It applies here in spades. Like it or not, in this world, image is everything, so think about yours and that of the business you are trying to promote. Showing me a video of some smug fool in a rented sports car does not make me want to be like him, nor does it inspire any belief in what he might be doing. Remember that in advertising yourself and your business, your audience have a huge variation of aspirations and are looking for someone to provide what they need - bragging shamelessly about your own success makes many people want to hit you upside the head rather than aspire to your not so lofty ideals. If you want people to trust you and your business, get yourself a domain name, learn how to build a website of your own and you are already many steps ahead of thousands of affiliates and would be marketers. Oh, and when you write your ad copy, please, please, please….proof read everything. Badly written and misspelled copy makes me click elsewhere faster than anything and if people try to tell you differently, don’t believe them - your professional image takes a huge battering if your writing is below par.

5) Which leads on to a quick thought about offline promotion. Maybe you’ve seen it too - ’Want A Part Time Income Of $6000 Per Week?’ plastered across the trunk of a twelve year old automobile. Erm…need I say more. If the driver of a top of the range Bentley did it, maybe you’d believe them, but then you’ll never see such a display. In the same vein, all those flyers taped to light poles or slapped on your windshield while you’re at work. What am I getting at? One word - desperation. It will not inspire people to flock to an ‘opportunity’ because it smacks so loudly of desperation and the fact that by believing your sales pitch they too may well be reduced to wandering parking lots at night, furtively slapping flyers on windshields. Hardly a business success model is it? You are demonstrating only one thing with these tactics - your own lack of funds or willingness to even invest in effective advertising. Keep your offline efforts professional too. If that means restricting yourself to business cards and small ads so be it, your credibility will at least be intact.

6) OK, time for a little positive relief. There are some good opportunities to be found online. I don’t know about them all and space prohibits a long list of the good, the bad and the ugly here. When you do find something that you think can work for you, don’t be afraid to try it. As the saying goes - if you think you can do it, or if you think you can’t, then you’re absolutely right. Take time to learn from people already involved and try to find out just how much help you can expect. A good network marketer understands the need to help others in his organization and thus enhance his own business and income - there should be no ‘secrets’ and people have to be team focused. The vast majority of people give up on network marketing because they never get any support from the ‘team’ who recruited them in the fist place

7) Once you’ve taken the plunge and start to work on your program, don’t be disheartened after the first week with no visible results. No matter what anybody tells you, it will take time. If you’re looking to give up your day job, sit on the beach and watch the cash flow into your account while you sip Pina Coladas then perhaps network marketing is not for you.

The hardest aspects of network marketing are advertising, marketing and recruiting. These will take up more time than anything else, especially if you are on a tight budget. There are countless solutions on offer; some that work and some that don’t and you will also spend a lot of time sorting through them. This is where having a helpful up line will pay dividends, so get involved with the team and find out how they do it. Overcoming the skepticism of potential customers/members will also be a regularly occurring theme in your days. It’s a fact you just have to accept and it’s thanks to all the cons that have been perpetrated in the past. Never resort to that old enemy, desperation. Many programs now make things a little easier with matrix builders that help you to grow your business without recruiting hundreds of people yourself, but this still relies on the need for an active and effective team working to gain new customers.

9) Give all your strategies time to pay off, but if they’re not working, try new methods. Doing the same old thing day in and day out will produce the same results. When you get new sign ups, help them as much as you can and don’t jealously guard your knowledge, no matter how hard won it may have been.

10) If you want to change your life, network marketing is a viable model for doing so despite the high failure rate. It will take work and it may be frustrating, but people do succeed and there is no reason why you shouldn’t be among them.

Finding Your Niche In The Business World

Who am I and what do I love to do? Well, isn’t this the twenty million dollar question! A more appropriate question might be “Who was I and what did I love to do?”

As you search to find yourself, and what it is you love to do, you may find the task harder than you thought it would be. Try to think about your childhood. Can you remember what thrilled you as a child? Like many people you’ve probably forgotten what brought try joy and excitement to your essence.

Children instinctively just “know” what they love. We quickly forget what makes us happy as we grow into adults. External influences eventually diminish the thought of actually “doing what we love to do.”

When I was a child I vaguely remember wanting to be a stewardess, a mother of 8 (don’t know why it had to be 8, sounds rather ambitious in today’s world), and a musician. Well, didn’t every little girl who grew up in my world want to be a stewardess? It seemed so. Or, could it have been a clue to what really was the essence of me? Maybe I longed to travel and this was what society offered at the time.

I did have a musical inclination. I seemed to learn to play clarinet fast, and was quite good for a beginner. Never got past the beginning, victim of circumstances, but that’s another long story. I could pick a tune on the piano by ear and dreamed of being able to sit down and flawlessly play the most beautiful of compositions. But, that didn’t happen.

The mom thing? Don’t know where that came from. Maybe the caring side of me. Maybe just that period most little girls go through where they emulate their mother and “play house.” Who knows?

But, I did grow up to be the mother of four. I quickly learned that 8 was really ambitious. Some days, I don’t know how I survive the four. I’m far from super mom status, but I guess I don’t do too bad.

I’ve found recently, through self searching and pondering, that the question of “who am I?” becomes increasingly difficult with age and life’s interference. Yes, life interference can be very damaging to our happiness. Our experiences tend to mold us into the person we are today. By the way, that isn’t necessarily who we were meant to be.

Have you ever longed to be able to do something you are passionate about and truly loved as a child. Maybe it’s some form of art; painting, drawing, crafting, dancing, or singing. Maybe you enjoyed building things or, taking things apart and putting them back together. Or, were you the mathematical genius in the class? Did you love to play school and teach real or imaginary children?

Childhood is innocence. As children we accept our true essence without question and pursue it daily in our real and imaginary play. It is life and life’s external influences that re-route us away from what we love to do. We are too quickly discourage from the pursuit of happiness.

It is apparent in many happy, successful, adults that there is a often a common denominator. Most extremely successful people really love doing what they do. They live their work. They strive to be better and better at it. They never dread going to work and are always thinking about new ways to improve. They simply love the work. They “live to work” not “work to live.”

America’s most famous billionaire, Malcolm Forbes, reflected this same belief, that you should do what you love to do to be successful, in several of his statements:

“Success follows doing what you want to do. There is no other way to be successful.”

“When what we are is what we want to be, that’s happiness.”

“The biggest mistake people make in life is not trying to make a living at doing what they most enjoy.”

These quotes from Malcolm Forbes pretty much sum up the importance of doing what you love to do.

Everyone should pursue what they love to do. Then work at doing what they love. You may say “It’s too late.” It’s never too late to rediscover your childhood passions. It’s certainly never too late to start getting some satisfaction and enjoyment out of life. If only for own pleasure, you should pursue what you love to do.

Whatever it is you feel you would love to do, go for it. Take an art, singing, dancing, literature, accounting, computer, home decorating ,or mechanic class. Invest in yourself and your happiness. You may find that through pursuing what you love, you will find your best work. Share your knowledge, passion, or talent with others. You will see yourself become confident and successful at what you love to do.

I found that my favorite thing to do is to simply be a housewife and mother. Maybe it’s not “just being a mom.” Rather, it’s doing the things required to be a housewife and mom. It’s not a glamorous career. But, it does require quite a few skills. Moms are usually very talented in more than a few areas; art, organization, accounting, negotiating, and decorating are just a few that come to mind.

My favorite task is saving money. A family of six makes saving money pretty much a requirement of my job but, I’ve found that I Love IT! I get great satisfaction in getting the most for my money, getting things for free, and managing a household on a very limited income. So, in order to expand on my happiness, I decided to share my knowledge with others. I actually have fun sharing my ideas and money saving tips. And, I enjoy researching and finding more money saving tips for myself and others.

Sometimes, it seems like I can’t pull myself away from my work. That’s because I love it so much. I love it, I am passionate about it, and I believe in it! Enthusiasm is contagious. If I can get others excited about saving money, then I am happy.

I don’t like the way things are looking for family finances today. It’s discouraging to see so many families in financial trouble. Maybe, I’ll help change that! Maybe you can change something too!

Get More Traffic Than You Can Use

Generating excess traffic to your website is the key being successful online. This however is very delicate and hot subject for internet marketers, especially when it comes to generating free traffic, which seems to be the ultimate goal of all online entrepreneurs. But I can assure you that most sources of free traffic do not come free at all. Did you ever calculate how much time you take browsing these sites, and as you might have already found out by now, in our line of business time can be more precious than spending a few bucks on advertising your business.

The best solution is to try and find a balance between these two forms of generating traffic. When you combine the best free traffic sources with some of the best paid advertising, you are on the right path to get a result. Me personally, I will suggest three methods that will boost your online traffic, and if you put your mind to it and concentrate to these three methods of advertising, the traffic you need will come. Let me give you a brief description of my favorite three methods which are: (1) Posting and Contributing to forums; (2) Writing and Distributing your own articles; (3) Buying and Writing Ezine ads.

1. Posting and Contributing to Forums

Please try to understand that these places are not for posting ads. The primary scope is to contribute with your questions and answers. Forum spam is becoming more common, and above all it does not go down very well. If you ask me too many once good forums have been bombarded with Ads posted by online marketers. Therefore, your no.1 goal is to visit these forums, read as many posts as possible, and when you think that you have a good question or answer, then post it to the forum. This type of attitude towards forums will allow you to build certain credibility in that forum, and only by giving an honest and well thought opinion on the topic discussed will generate interest in your business from other members. As you build your credibility, you will generate free traffic, and most forums allow you to post a link at the end of your post where you can promote not advertise your business.

2. Writing and Distributing your own Articles

Articles can give you that much needed advantage over your competitor, and a good reason to write you own is that these have the potential of becoming viral once posted. In truth and honesty, I can say that this is my no1 method of diverting free traffic to my site. It is important to concentrate on creating a 500 word article which is relevant to the nature of your online business, and then at the end of your article it is important to include a resource box that displays a link back to your own site. When done, post your article to article distribution sites, and also email groups. To see traffic from this method, it is important that you repeat the process continuously.

3. Buying and Writing Ezine Ads.

This is the method which is not free. However, this paid method of advertising works efficiently, because it is the most specifically targeted method of all three. Start by writing a good ad for your business, and link to your auto responder or directly to your site. The next step is to contact Ezines to place your ad. If you do a search for “ezine directories,” you will find enough lists to keep you busy for a long time. Once contacted, look for rates for both classified ads and solo ads. Solo ads are usually more effective because they out in a separate email, but for this reason they are more expensive. So make sure that you choose the right ezines which relate to your business and do not advertise in an unrelated ezine. Once this is done, you will need to track your results to see which ezines bring you the most and best traffic in order to repeat the process with different ads.

These three methods of generating traffic will keep you busy for a while, and if you do things the right way and most important of all stay focused, you will definitely see the traffic you need.

To Your Success,

Brian Camilleri

5 Top Product Promotion Strategies

One of the biggest myths of the Internet is the good old line, “If you build it they will come …” So many people throw up a website and sit back rubbing their hands with glee convinced they are going to become supremely wealthy.

Months later they are wringing their hands with regret wondering why they’ve had five visitors, four of which were their friends!

A website does not just automatically appear high in the search engine rankings and get traffic, you have to do some work in order to get this traffic and start making sales. There are thousands, or even more of sites competing for the same traffic you want &ndash depending on your niche and keywords, there could be millions of sites!

You need to promote your website and get it noticed &ndash not only in the search engines, but in other places where you will get targeted traffic who are interested in your website.

Strategy 1 - Directories

There are a whole host of directories on the Internet. Just search for your keyword and “Directory” or “Link Exchange” or anything similar and you will find hundreds of places to put your links. Yeah, it is hard work to do this, but you will get links and traffic to your site. If it’s too much like hard work for you &ndash hire someone to do it!

Strategy 2 - Articles

Articles are an excellent way to gain traffic and promote your site. Submitting your article to directories will get you backlinks and if they are quality articles, will get you known across the Internet as an expert. Newsletter and website owners will pick up your articles and use them as content. This will help to promote your site to a much wider audience.

Strategy 3 &ndash Affiliate Program

Running an affiliate program for your product is an excellent way to promote your site. Instead of you working on promoting your site, you have all these affiliates doing the work for you. And the best thing is &ndash you don’t pay them a penny unless they make a sale. Depending on how much you offer as a commission, you could have hundreds of hungry affiliates aggressively marketing your product all over the Internet.

Strategy 4 &ndash Viral Marketing

Viral marketing is a concept that has been around for some time. It’s a very powerful method of getting traffic to your site. You have all seen those cute or funny emails and videos that people send to all their friends? That is viral marketing. If you can tap into this through a book, a video, games or anything people will want to pass on to their friends, suddenly you have a whole lot of people promoting your site &ndash for free!

Strategy 5 &ndash Forums

Forums are an excellent way to market your website. As you participate in a forum so you can establish yourself as an authority and trusted expert on your chosen subject, which will make people come to visit your website to find out more information. Be aware though, that if you blatantly promote your business without adding value or spam the forums you will do more harm than good to your reputation and your business.

Promoting your website will get you targeted traffic. It will also allow you to organically move up the search engine rankings through backlinks and the use of keywords. If you are someone who is serious about making money online, then you need to start taking your website promotion seriously. Remember though &ndash spam and other unethical practises will harm your business in the long term. Promote your site ethically and responsibly, and you can be reaping the rewards for years to come.

How To Test Your Sales Copy

You’ve got a website and it’s selling some copies of your product. You want to sell more, but how do you properly test the changes you make in order for you to know how you are improving your sales?

Internet Marketers talk a lot about testing your sales copy and your website, but very few talk in detail about the methodology of this testing. It is very easy to get confused and undo the changes that were increasing sales!

I remember when I was at school in my chemistry class performing experiments to blow things up, make acids to eat through the table and stain my lab coat and being taught how to properly test an experiment. What is interesting, is this is probably the most valuable lesson I got from the chemistry class (apart from the effect certain metals have when exposed to water). It is certainly the lesson that applies the most to my life now.

My chemistry teacher was an interesting man, he didn’t tolerate people who didn’t listen or didn’t want to learn but he was a passionate man when it came to chemistry. His fingers were stained from handling chemicals and he took an almost perverse pleasure in gassing the class or waking them up with a sudden explosion.

Then one day when he had given us a series of experiments to perform, he taught us about testing. When performing an experiment there are often many things you want to change in order to perform the experiment properly. The trouble is, as an impatient teenager waiting for lunchtime you are tempted to make all the changes at once.

“No lad,” the teacher told us, “You can’t make all the changes at once. If you do that, how are you going to know which change to the experiment caused it to work?”

Of course, this concept hadn’t occurred to any of us, we were all just interested in lunch.

He leaned back in his chair into his reminiscent pose, “In order to properly perform this experiment you need to make a single change at a time and then measure the results. Then, and only then, will you know which change performs the best and gives you the desired results. Sure you can make all the changes all at once, but what if you undo the change that works?”

These very words came back to me when I started my Internet Marketing career some years ago. If I am making changes to my websites or sales copy to monitor the conversion rate then I need to make a single change at a time, drive a sufficient amount of traffic to it, and then analyse the results.

If the conversion rate has increased, then I keep the change. If it has decreased, then I discard the change.

By performing my website testing this way you will know exactly which changes best affect your conversion rates (and profits) and be able to stack them on top of each other to gain the highest possible conversion rate for your site.

3 Reasons Why Every Business Needs A Newsletter

There are many benefits you and your business can reap from publishing your own newsletter.

1. Keeping In Touch — Your customers and clients are the lifeblood of your business. What better way to stay in touch with your existing customers than through a newsletter? A newsletter allows you to add personal touches to your relationship and celebrate milestones, both your own and your client’s. In addition to furthering your relationship with your clients, a newsletter can also allow you to introduce new products, offer special sales or discounts to your existing client base, and encourage referrals.

2. Hook In New Customers — Unless they have an immediate need or came to you through a powerful referral, most potential customers won’t buy right away. Often they will shop around and compare which means you will likely never see them again. However if you have a free newsletter that offers interested clients the opportunity to learn more about you, your business, and your products for free and they can also learn more about your interaction with your existing customers. A newsletter can be a very simple strategy to turn a one-time visitor into a lifetime customer.

3. Establish Your Expertise — No one knows more about your business than you do which makes you an expert. Likely the construction of your own business has further left you with a great deal of expertise in your field. Share your nuggets of knowledge through your newsletter to deepen your relationship with your existing customers and convince potential customers that you are the answer to their problems.

Now that I have convinced you that you need to publish your own newsletter, I want to go over a few questions that budding editors and publishers always ask.

What exactly is an electronic newsletter?

Just like their paper counterparts, electronic newsletters deliver written messages usually relating to a common theme or topic. The main difference is that an electronic newsletter transcends paper and ink and most likely only ever exists on a computer screen.

Some electronic newsletter are delivered only via email while others are delivered only on the web. Most are delivered in some combination of the two. Most of my ezines and newsletters are delivered via email but also available immediately via web page (or rather blog page) and RSS feed.

You can choose the method is most suited to you and your audience.

How do you publish an electronic newsletter?

It is much easier to start publication of your own electronic newsletter than it is to start up a print publication. You simply need to decide on a topic, name your publication and start writing. It is easy to find an audience (beyond your own customer base if you choose) through the various ezine and newsletter directories around the internet as well as going directly to the source, for example discussion boards for people interested in your topic.

You will need to determine a delivery method, which means most likely setting up your own web site or page on your existing web site; creating an archive for your issues once they are created, which could mean setting up a blog; and tracking your readers, which likely means setting up a mailing or autoresponder service. However you can use free tools to do any of these things.

Writing Press Releases

Now that you have a brand new and fresh web site that you will be putting in circulation in the very near future, the next step you will need to take is advertising for this site to make a huge impression on the market. How does one go about writing a strong press release for an impending site introduction? You are not alone if you are unsure on how to go about this, but there are a few suggestions to get you started, here are some that have been successful in the past.

Remember the one fact to keep in mind is that you are going to need the public’s attention, on this media release it is extremely important to remember the fact that the news sells. What you need is very convincing line in communication to get your message across. If an editor finds material that is counterfactual and deliberately untrue or promises that are just not reasonably accepted, they will rubbish the media release. Some of the most frequent are, one of a kind, changing the face of the world, or everyone wins. The entire premise is to act and think like a reporter to get the word out in that media format. If the release is not in a journalistic format, it will not be taken in earnest.

A good measure would be to make the title around ten words, keep it short to grasp attention. A brief summary of the information should be in the headline, and should be powerful and hard-hitting. You are trying to reach the mass public; it should be as wide as a roadside sign or billboard. The best way to get a good review is to have the editor notice your release above all others, this can be done in just a few words. Just like all good journalists know the most effective and important part of the release is always the opening paragraph. This can be referred to as the summary lead. It is always the most essential element of any release that you incorporate the familiar 5 W’s of journalism, and not to eliminate the single and most influential H. who, what, when, where, and the single how are the mainstay in quality information that everyone truly looks for when reading a release. It is imperative on this note to embrace them.

This is the body of the information with the introduction and the closing statements surrounding this bulk. It is the introduction that leads the readers down the path of yearning for more on the subject so it must be dynamic. This opening paragraph is what is known as the hook. This hook not only has to seize the audience’s attention but the press and the editor as well.It is not always an effortless task when Writing press releases. The hook in every sense of the word is strictly fact and not a system of persuasion to the multitude.

How Can I Compete With Stone Evans?

Whatever niche you decide to enter online, you are going to encounter competitors. There may well be unexploited niches on the Internet, but they are probably not profitable and so not worth your while getting involved in.

One question that often preys on the mind of Internet Marketers, particularly new ones, is “How can I compete with the king of Marketers, Stone Evans. ”

You don’t actually have to compete with him, you just need to stand out from the crowd and compete with everyone else competing with him! You don’t necessarily need to be the dominant force in your chosen niche. Quite often being in the top ten is enough to have a good income without working too hard.

I always teach the people I coach that they need to go out and find twenty of their major competitors. They need to subscribe to their newsletters, read their websites and pay attention to what appears in their inbox.

Why? Because you need to understand what they are doing.

If you can find out what they are doing well, then you can emulate it and adapt it for your own personal slant on the niche. You can also, of course, discover what they are not doing very well.

If you know what they are doing badly, then that is an opportunity for you to get into the market place. You can even use it as a selling point in your sales copy that you “do this better”. Of course, you never mention anyone by name, but you can make a point of mentioning that particular area and how you perform so well in it.

It gives you a chance to get a bit of an edge, particularly if your competitor has put their business on auto-pilot and not updated their product or website. The Internet is changing almost daily, and so products very quickly go out of date and the information in them becomes not as fresh or useful.

You can therefore capitalise on this and make it a selling point &ndash something that differentiates you from your competitors and gives your market a powerful reason to buy from you. People always want the most up to date and newest information and are often willing to pay a premium price for it.

Understanding your competition gives you a fine handle on the market, from pricing through to promotion. Scout out your competition, see what they are doing and decide how you can do it better &ndash and then enjoy the benefits of your research!

Network Marketing, The Business Model

Network marketing is a multi-billion dollar business. As a business model, it is taught in major universities around the world. The Wall Street Journal stated, “…between 50% and 65% of all goods and services sold in this millennium will be through network marketing.” It is a business model that is perfectly suited to the “information age.”

What is this “Business Model?”

Network marketing is a way of doing business that is different from the “traditional” model used by most consumer packaged goods, food and drug companies. It is one of the most promising income opportunities in American today. It is the idea of many people each doing a little work, as opposed to a few people doing a lot of work. To quote J. Paul Getty, the world’s first billionaire, “I’d rather have 1% of the efforts of 100 people than 100% of my own.”

Rather than using the customary distribution process of moving products from manufacturer to wholesaler to retailer to consumer, network marketing companies use a network of independent marketers to move products directly from the manufacturer to the consumer. Further, the cost structure of a network marketing organization is different than a traditional packaged goods marketer.

With a traditional company, millions of dollars are spent on advertising to entice consumers to buy that company’s products instead of the virtually identical product from another company. With a network company, the advertising expense is channeled into sales commissions for distributors who promote the product through “word-of-mouth” advertising, i.e. by telling other people about the product. In the traditional business model, money is spent BEFORE the sale in the form of advertising; in the network marketing model, the money is paid AFTER the sale in the form of commissions. Which model seems to make the most sense from a business standpoint?

With network marketing, you have two sources of income: (1) direct commissions from sales you make yourself, and (2) commissions from sales made by people you introduce to the business, called residual income. You can invest your time and money once and get paid multiple times for the effort. It means getting paid for the work of others. In traditional sales, you may be a great salesperson and have a few dozen good customers and earn your income from all their purchases. However, you probably have to nurture these customers and spend most of your working time making sure they are buying from you and not someone else.

In network marketing, you can build a downline of 100, 1,000, or even 10,000 people, most of whom you will not know nor ever have contact with. This is because the majority of the people in your downline will be people who know somebody, who know somebody, who know somebody, who know you. By having a downline that is working with you, and for you, you can multiply your efforts many times. The earning potential of a downline of 1,000 people, each putting in only one hour a day five days a week, represents 20,000 hours of work in a month. It would take one person 10 years to produce the same amount of work. That’s the power of a network.

Perhaps Robert T. Kiyosaki, author of the Rich Dad, Poor Dad series, said it best. “The richest people in the world look for networks. Everyone else looks for work.”

It is estimated that more than 50,000 people start a home-based business every week in the United States. The average person owning a home-based business earns more than $50,000 a year (often working part-time), while the national average annual household income is less than $45,000 (and most of those people are working at least 40 hours per week). Additionally, a home-based business owner can qualify for many legitimate tax breaks, and tax experts suggest that the average person can save between $2,000 and $10,000 on taxes every year just by starting a home-based business.

How is this possible? Well, consider these two tax structures: a wage earner first earns income, then pays tax on that income, and then pays for expenses with after-tax income. A business owner first earns income, then pays for expenses, and then pays tax on net income after expenses. In other words, a business owner can legitimately reduce the amount of tax he or she has to pay because business expenses are paid with pre-tax income, not after-tax, income.

Network marketing is a $36 Billion industry in the United States. More than 20 per cent of the estimated one million millionaires in America today have earned their fortunes over the previous six years through network marketing. Worldwide, there are over 3.5 million millionaires, and more than 700,000 have made their millions via network marketing. Conservative estimates are that network marketing in America is creating 40 new millionaires every month from average people. This means that a person’s greatest chance of financial success is through “networking.” Again, Robert Kiyosaki observed, “If I had it to do all over again, I would choose network marketing.”

For people who are interested in starting a home-based business, supplementing their income, and providing greater security for retirement and for their children and grandchildren, network marketing is an obvious choice.

Bruce Bailey, Ph.D.