Contrary to popular opinion, marketing by email newsletter is not yet dead, despite the pervasiveness of blogs and social networking. What I like best about ezines is that I have a list of people who like, know and trust me, so anytime I do something, such as offer a teleclass or a product for sale, they are a ready, willing, and responsive target market.

Several years ago when I debated about eliminating my ezine from my marketing mix and substitute a blog instead, I heard a very strong and resounding “No!” from my readers. Some people prefer to get an ezine in their email inbox on a regular basis, while others prefer to get blog feeds. I do have a blog and post my email newsletter articles there, as well, so I think I have created the best of both worlds with this marketing strategy.

Once I convince clients of the need for an email newsletter, the first question I hear is, “What do I put in the ezine?” The contents of my email newsletter have changed over the years, but over time I have discovered 3 essential components that every email newsletter publisher should include in her newsletter:

1. “Get to Know You” section. People have to know, like, trust and respect you before they’ll decide to buy anything from you. I devote the first section of my email newsletter to write a short paragraph about what’s going on in my life and my business, be that good or bad. I subscribe to several other ezines in which the publisher has a similar column, and quite frankly, it’s always the first section I read in those email newsletters. Almost always, it is this section that brings me the most comments and feedback from my subscribers. This strategy is a great way to begin to let your “voice” permeate your ezine marketing.

2. Quality, Information-Packed Article. In my early publication years, I did a slip-shod job in demonstrating my expertise by choosing only to share resources in these early editions. While resources are helpful, the key to demonstrating your expertise is by sharing your expertise. I believe the best way to do that is to teach what you know through writing an informative article that solves a major problem experienced by your target market. I’m quite fond of “how to” articles, so most of mine are written in that format. I believe that most people search online for quality information, so the “how to” format helps my readers figure out how to implement a new strategy in their businesses.

3. Marketing Promotion. Because part of my income is derived from product sales, I feature one of my information products each week. Occasionally I may decide to feature a product that I love for which I’m an affiliate. The key here is that any affiliate products you feature should directly relate to and be used by your subscriber base. If you don’t currently have an information product, feature the service that you provide. Remember, the ultimate goal of publishing an email newsletter to make more sales, whether those are sales of your products or your services.

4. Optional: Resource Section. I’m an information junkie and collect info about useful online resources and services like a kid collects video games. Because I know that many of my readers have the same problems that I have in my business, I share a resource gem each week with them to help them better manage their businesses or their lives.

I also include a promotion about new posts in my blog to my ezine readers (these are posts appearing exclusively in the blog, not what they have previously read in the email newsletter). as well as an overview of what’s new on my anti wrinkle treatment website. When I’m speaking at an event or hosting a teleclass, I create an Upcoming Events section to inform my readers of these noteworthy events.

Your ezine can be as short or long as you wish, but generally it should take no more than 5 minutes to read. If you incorporate these 3 essential components into your ezine marketing, you will see your product and service sales steadily increase.

————————

Online Business Resource Queen (TM) and Online Business Coach Donna Gunter helps independent service professionals learn how to automate their businesses, leverage their expertise on the Internet, and get more clients online. To claim your FREE gift, TurboCharge Your Online Marketing Toolkit, visit her site at http://www.OnlineBizU.com . Ask Donna an Internet Marketing question at http://www.AskDonnaGunter.com .

Did you ever imagine that studies show that over 95% of busineses fail today? What happens if you wondered of starting your very own franchise or even your own home-based business with that figure in mind? You are probably thinking, “no thanks”. However, surprisingly the number of home-based businesses has increased drastically over the past few years that are successful. Why would it not? It’s over a billion dollar industry in today’s internet market. Everybody’s dream is working of their own home, working any hours they desire, being your own boss, no dealing with selling of any kind and inventory that is relatively nothing. All you need is a good quality PC computer with an internet access.

The three main ingredients you need to succeed are: the utmost desire, an excessive amount of determination and not having a “give-up” attitude. Believe me, I understand. To be perfectly honest, there were many, many times when I found myself doing those exact things. I spoke the the quality manager of the company I represent, Gordon VonKahl, who sincerely made me realize I can honestly perform what really interested me. That is data-entry. My quality tile flooring manager gave me an example of how and what needed to be done. Guess what, I am doing it and having a great time at it in the meantime. I never thought in my wildest dreams I would in the beginning. Having to start the process of starting my own home based business was a big step for me. I am glad that I did. I find having my own home based business very rewarding as it keeps me busy.

Please keep in mind, there are an excessive large quantity of scams on the internet today also. I believe all kinds of people are reluctant to look for home based businesses because of excessive, numerous scams. That is why it is very important to always do your extensive research before investing. What I am really trying to say, there are legitimate home-based programs to get you started out there today in which I will share one with you today. If you can easily follow a simple step-by-step program, there is no telling what the future could hold for you monetarily. If you do not look into the home based business if you are interested, you could be making a very big mistake. Perhaps you might even regret it as well. Do yourself a favor, check and find out if the home-based business is really the answer for you.

————————

I am the author and only entrepreneur for LCA Typist. I like to show people on how to build a good foundation business success. You will get no obligation free tips, training and good support at http://www.24hourwebcash.com/aquino0383 . If you prefer, you may call this toll-free number at 1-800-719-8268 Ext. 17858 to see if you qualify.

Are you working too hard in your business? If you’re an entrepreneur, you probably are, especially if you’re in the early stages of your business building. And you’re not alone.

Here’s an example from my own client files:

I was recently working with a client who was a real go-getter, very serious about being in business for herself, and marketing only to a more affluent clientele. She wanted to increase her reach into that market online. And she was considering adding article marketing to her mix.

At this stage in her business, she was already doing quite well. She was close to making 6 figures and charging 5 times as much as her counterparts – and getting it easily. But she wasn’t satisfied. She really wanted to break the $100k mark before the third anniversary of her business, which was coming up in just a few months.

When she asked me, “What is the quickest, most cost-effective way to regularly market articles?” and then told me she planned to do this work herself, I stopped her.

“You know, just because you can do this task, doesn’t mean you should…” She was quiet for a moment before asking me to elaborate.

“I know your writing is high quality and of high value to your market, and I definitely think you should be getting that content out there, to the appropriate places that will bring you the highest return-on-investment for your efforts. But I don’t think you should be doing this yourself. It’s not a good use of your time or your energy. What do you think?”

After a bit more discussion, she agreed to hire someone to do this for her.

As you read this, did you think of perhaps one task that you routinely do (or that falls by the wayside because you can never just get to it) that you know is ‘below your pay grade’ and yet you continue to waste time and energy on it (even if that time and energy is just thinking about how you’re NOT getting it done?)?

This concept was (still is, from time to time) difficult for me to grasp when my own coach shone a light on it for me. But since I’ve tried to be aware of how much effort I really need to put into a task to get the result I want, it’s opened up space for things to flow more effortlessly and more quickly than ever.

Here are four ways you can do less and still grow in your business:

1. Email

Do you spend more time than necessary responding to emails? Do you write two paragraphs when a two-sentence response would suffice? Do you respond to emails that actually don’t require a response? Do you check email every 5 minutes (come on, fess up!)? What if you didn’t do any of these things and still had a handle on your inbox? You can – just follow Tina’s system to Escape from Email Hell (see Alicia Recommends).

2. Blog

Are you writing blog posts that are long? Maybe it even feels cumbersome to try to write a post the length of an article. Don’t – keep them short and pithy. Make sure your keywords are in the content and it doesn’t matter how long your posts are to the search engines – and your readers will probably appreciate shorter posts as well. Better yet, turn your weekly ezine articles into blog posts to save even more time and energy.

3. Website

Are you constantly updating your website? Does it really need to be revamped so often? More to the point, is this something you have to do yourself? No. Most virtual assistants can make website updates for you at a much lower cost to your time and energy than you doing it yourself.

4. Customer/Client Relations

Who responds to questions and comments from your clients and customers? Are you processing refunds, working out payment glitches, resending download links, answering the same questions about your programs over and over, or any other task that could easily be passed off to a capable assistant? You can quickly and easily train someone to respond to these inquiries in your voice by having them shadow you via blind-copying them on each email you send out. Then reverse the process and voila – another time and energy drain has been removed from your shoulders. take off those work gloves and you will be surprised at how much you achieve.

If you’ve been a client of mine, it’s very likely you’ve heard one of my mantras, “Done is better than perfect.” I usually follow that with, “And it’s never going to be all done.” So choose to cause yourself less stress and DO LESS. Experiment with this and see how much more productive you’ll actually be. Think of just one thing that you could do the easy way instead of the hard way, or delegate to an assistant, or better yet, take off your ‘must-do’ list altogether.

————————

Alicia M Forest, MBA, Multiple Streams Queen & CoachT, founder of ClientAbundance.com and creator of 21 Easy & Essential Steps to Online Success SystemT, teaches professionals how to attract more clients, create profit-making products and services, make more sales, and ultimately live the life they desire and deserve. For FREE tips on how to create abundance in your business, visit http://www.ClientAbundance.com .

Don’t have enough readers for your free blog website?

Do you want to create your own blog the fast and easy way?

If you answered yes to any of these questions then free blogging sites are for you. Firstly, you might be wondering what blog is all about. A blog or a web blog is like an online log where you can use to build traffic for your website. It can contain any topics you want and it can even contain your diary.

So just how do you start blogging for free?

Creating your own blogging website is very simple. You can visit websites that offer free blogs which has step by step process on creating your blogging website. It will usually just take a few minutes of your time to create a blogging websites in sites that offer free blogging web pages.

However, before starting to go to websites that offer free blogs, you should first determine several factors for your blogging web page.

Firstly, you have to think of a name for your blog. To do this, you must first determine what kind of topic you will dedicate your blogging webpage to. Ask yourself what you want to discuss, what are your interests or hobbies or if you have a website that is dedicated to a particular topic, you can discuss that to. It can be anything, it can be dogs, cars, casinos, food, travel, and you can even create a blog about a lamb motor if that interests you.

After knowing what name your blogging site should have, the next step would be what to put in it. Basing from your title, you will have an idea on what to put on your blog. You can put in any comments you want with different topics regarding your title and headline. You can even post in surveys as your topic; this is very useful if you sell a particular product where you can get consumers opinion on how to sell your product more effectively.

Another way to generate interest in your blog and attract a lot of readers is to make your blog a bit controversial. People like controversies and making your blog one, can create a lot of curious people to read your blog. You should post comments that can be controversial and this can result in many people wanting to post in their comments too.

Now that you have finished creating your blog, with title or headline, a comment, how should you attract people into reading your blogs? One of the best ways is to write an article about a particular topic in your blog and post them into article submission websites. This can generate a lot of targeted traffic and in no time at all.

To make this work, you should write the article with your blog site URL included at the ending of the article or in the footnote. With a good article and a little bit of luck, your blog will be discovered by people and chances are, your blog will create a lot of traffic by word of mouth.

Free blogging websites are one of the most useful tools to generate targeted traffic to your website. It can even generate a lot of loyal readers or fans of your work to post in comments and suggestions regularly to your blogging website and will often recommend it to other people. The best thing about this is that it’s easy, convenient, fun, and as the name suggests, it’s all for free.

John Platania

————————

John Platania is a internet marketer with over 20 years of experiance running 4 different successful companies. You can visit his website at:

http://www.ResortRescue.net

Squidoo is a website created to allow anyone to set up a page on any topic he or she wants for free. It’s an easy, fun way to turn whatever you are passionate about in life into a successful internet business!

You can combine your internet business interests with this solid and free advertising opportunity. You can also carve out your own unique business niche if you have a more obscure business product. You also get to be a bit of a philanthropist with your internet business, as Squidoo donates 5% of its revenue to charity.

Squidoo’s stated goals are “to bring the power of recommendation to search”, “to pay as much money as we can to our lensmasters and to charity”, and “to have fun along the way, and meet new ideas and the people behind them”. This attitude filters down into its internet business owners and allows them to practice philanthropy while making a fair profit.

Squidoo’s user-generated pages are called lenses – single pages that highlight one person’s opinions, interests, or knowledge. Lenses can be about anything – products, ideas, people, places, sports, hobbies, pets, philosophy, politics – you name it. Lenses don’t generally focus on content – emphasis is placed on recommending and then linking to content on the web. However you choose to personalize your lens tells your visitors what it is all about.

Combining your internet marketing vision with the proper lens content will increase your overall business appeal. When you create a lens, you become its lensmaster. As lensmaster, you use the tools available online to provide links, feeds, and lists to users who are trying to learn more about your topic. Your lens can link to eBay auctions, YouTube videos, blogs, Google maps, Flickr photos, and any other links related to your lens. You are encouraged to use your lens to promote your own personal knowledge, product, or cause as it relates to your internet business.

You can reach younger audiences and audiences less inclined to actively search for products in search engines. Many people who browse Squidoo may come across your page from another link, and you suddenly have a new customer! Squidoo divides its revenue with its pool of lensmasters. Above all else, 5% of the revenue goes to charity. Then 50% goes to the lensmasters, and the remaining 45% goes to Squidoo. So even if your lens isn’t an instant success, it will still generate revenue for you as a result of its inclusion in the pool of lensmasters. And remember, you are also generating money for charity!

Overall, Squidoo is an easy way for you to make an internet business out of whatever interests you, no matter how obscure – there is a nich group wanting to know about plasma mounts so you can write about them. In fact, you could make the argument that the more obscure your topic is, the better off you’ll be. You can bank on the fact that no matter how obscure your topic is, there are thousands of other people out there interested in it as well. You can easily carve out your own little niche market.

————————

For more information on Web 2.0 and creating a successful Internet Business, visit http://TheInternetBusinessAuthority.com