1. Redesign A Product

The easiest way to increast your target market is to redesign a product or service that you already sell in order to promote it to a completely different market.

For example, let’s say you currently sell an ebook called “Lead Generation For Real Estate Agents.”  It would be really easy to tweak that ebook for other markets like day spas, beauticians, or oil changing businesses.  Once you create an ebook called “Lead Generation for Day Spas,” then you’ve increased your target market to include day spas.

You can easily repeat this strategy over and over again to increase your target market to be as large as you want.

2.  Create A Companion Product

Another pretty simple way to increase your target market is to simply create a companion product to one that you already sell.  For example, if you sell a really great software program for online marketers, you could create an ebook that outlines ingenious ways to use the program and get more out of it.

You’ll find that some of your target market will be interested in you for your software first, then buy the ebook, while others will be more interested in the ebook and then purchase the software so that they can use the creative strategies you’ve outlined.

In addition, you can also use this strategy to create companion products to other people’s products.  That would really increase your target market!

3.  Joint Venture With Others

This is a no-brainer idea to increase your target market.  All you have to do is find people to team up with in similar, but non-competing markets, and cross promote your products.

For Example, let’s say that you sell WordPress themes/templates.  You could easily create a joint venture with a WordPress plugin developer.  Your joint venture could simply be cross-promotion to each other’s list, or you could actually package both products together for sale to claim a much larger target audience that’s interested in both WordPress themes and plugins.

It’s really easy to to increase your target market exponentially and increase sales and profits with a little creativity and thinking outside of the box.

If you’d like to learn more about how to increase your target market and become a maverick in your own niche either click on the links or subscribe to 10 Days To Smokin’ Traffic Now!

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Trying to do everything yourself actually prevents you from making money in your online business.

Although it may be a little scary at first, outsourcing less important tasks is really important to your online success.  That’s why I’ve put together a list of the top 3 reasons why online businesses should outsource.

1.  More Value for Your Time

When you own an online business, you need to be constantly aware of what your time is worth.  The most successful entrepreneurs spend as much time as possible doing profit producing task rather than dull and repetitive ones because they are keenly aware of what their time is worth.  When you outsource, you pay someone else to take care of the menial work so that you can concentrate on money making projects.

2.  Outsourcing May Be More Cost Effective

If you think about all the resources and time that goes into some of the tasks that your online business requires, you may find that it really costs you more to do it yourself.  Doing it yourself may require you to purchase special software, take time to learn how to use it, office space to set up certain tasks, special equipment, books and manuals to learn how to do specific tasks, etc.  These kinds of costs can really add up!

When you outsource an activity, you get more bang for your buck than just the task itself.  You get someone who specializes in areas of your business that you may not know quite as well or have no desire to learn.  Those people usually have the tools required to do the job and already know how to do it.  That means you can spend your time and money on projects that will earn you a better return on your investment.

3.  Outsourcing to Experts Means It’s Done Right

When you outsource to experts, you’re getting people to work for you that already know their business.  Whether you’re outsourcing for help on troubleshooting, manufacturing, taking orders, website design and maintenance, or something else, you’ll be able to take advantage of an expert’s knowledge in a specific area without having to learn it yourself.

When you first begin learning about and implementing outsourcing techniques within your business, you’ll find out those boring or repetitive tasks can easily be handed off to someone who enjoys doing them.  This will allow you, as an online business owner, to free up more time to concentrate on more important aspects of your business such as product creation, advertising, networking and other marketing practices.

These are the things that will help your business to grow even more profitable.  Online growth and prosperity are both great reasons why online businesses should outsource.

Want to know more about why online businesses should outsource and a whole lot more? Get your Free Copy of 10 Days to Smokin’ Traffic Now!

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Well, that’s simply not true.

While there are certain circumstances where a merchant account may be necessary, for the majority of online businesses, it’s just an unnecessary expense… especially when’ you’re first starting out.  I’m going to tell you why you don’t have to have a merchant account.

1. Setup Fees:

Merchant accounts cost quite a bit of money to set up. This will often run you $150 or more. Some services will waive this fee, but they will usually hit you with a higher monthly fee or transaction fee. If you want to accept checks online, you’ll usually have a setup fee for that too.

2. Monthly Fees:

There are several monthly fees associated with having a merchant account. Gateway fees, statement fees, customer service fees, etc. If you want to take checks, you’ll also have to pay additional fees for that service.

3. Transaction Fees:

If you process payments through your own merchant account, you must also pay a percent of the transaction as an additional fee. This is called a transaction fee and usually runs you around $0.30 per transaction. Again, eCheck counts as a second service and each check you accept online also incurs a transaction fee.

4. Discount Fees:

You’ll also have to pay a discount fee which is usually about 2.5% of the transaction amount. Ditto for eCheck.

5. More Accounting:

When you have a merchant account, you have a lot more accounting responsibilities. With most systems, each transaction must be specifically added to your ledger. You can often download and import the numbers into your accounting program, but it’s still a pain to keep track of it.

6. Payment Gateways and Shopping Carts:

You have to purchase or rent additional software to process online payments, specifically a payment gateway and shopping cart.

According to one merchant account company I found online, these are the industry standards for just some of the fees:

Setup Fee: $100- $500
Payment Gateway License Fee: $199
Application Fee: $50- $295
Discount Rate: 2.0%-3.95%
Transaction Fee: $0.25-$0.50
Statement Fee: $10-$25
Internet Gateway Fee: $10-$20

So clearly a merchant account is pricey and maybe a little bit inconvenient, but is there an alternative?

Absolutely!

There are tons of third party payment processors available online.  They will process credit card, and sometimes check, payments for you and then deposit the money in your bank account or send you a check.  Of course, there is a small fee for this service, but it is usually very competitive with the cost of going through your own merchant account, there are often no setup fees, and it’s a lot more convenient.  Plus you don’t have to worry about payment gateways and shopping carts!

In the end, new online businesses and websites rarely need their own merchant accounts when they are first starting out.  Getting a merchant account proves to be too much hassle and too costly to the new online business owner.

Once you’ve been doing business online for awhile and are earning substantial revenue selling your own products and services, then it may be time to look into getting your own merchant account.

Want to know more about operating a successful online business?  Get your Free Copy of 10 Days to Smokin’ Traffic Now!

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Free article marketing

Unfortunately, sitting down and writing an article for your promotional campaign is really difficult for some people.

Here are four free article marketing tips to help you jump start your next campaign and put out some killer articles on the niche or concept of your website.

1. Write a Killer Title

The title of your article plays a large role in the effectiveness of your free article marketing campaign. You must be sure to create an exciting and keyword rich title to have a successful campaign. The best content in the world will never be widely read if your title is boring and doesn’t accurately convey the subject of the article. If you want people to click on your title so that they can read your article, you must give them something valuable and enticing.

In addition, your title must contain your keyword. Without a keyword, your article won’t be indexed as highly by search engines. Keywords are what helps people find your article in the first place, so don’t forget to include them in your killer title.

2. Make It Easy To Read

Make sure that your article is structured in an easy to read manner. More so than newspapers and magazines, people tend to scan online information rather than reading it all the way through. Therefore, successful free article marketing requires that you make sure that the information readers are looking for can be easily read and found.

Use sub headings, break the content apart into smaller paragraphs, and use bullet points whenever possible in order to build an article structure that is easy to read and scan.

3. Provide Valuable Information

One of the biggest keys to a successful free article marketing campaign is to make sure that your article is valuable and informative. This is really the entire point behind article marketing because people are looking for good information. If you can provide what people are looking for, then you will gain a lot of additional traffic to your website.

In addition, well-writting and informative articles boost your reputation, credibility, and authority on the subject. You’ll benefit greatly by positioning yourself as an expert.

4. Hook Readers in the Summary

Many times, potential readers will only read your summary or the first paragraph, so you have to make sure that it’s both catchy and memorable so that you can hook them into reading the entire article. The title may be the most important aspect of your article, but you need to be able to back that up with an excellent and eye-catching summary. The summary is going to tell people exactly what they can find in your article, so that they know right away whether or not they are going to want to read it.

Article marketing is an excellent means of generating traffic for your website, email list, or product. Following these four tips will help you jump start your way to success in your next free article marketing campaign.

Want to know more about free article marketing? Get your Free Copy of 10 Days to Smokin’ Traffic Now!

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Here are eight public domain use ideas to get you thinking:

1. Use public domain to increase your organic search engine traffic.

As I said in the idea above, you can cut up public domain content into separate articles and distribute them, but you can also slice it up to create articles for your own website. Make these articles keyword rich and submit them to search engines to gain a high search engine ranking for your keywords. The number one reason people go online is for information research. By setting up keyword and content rich webpages, the search engines will rank you higher and more of those targeted visitors will find you.

2. Use public domain products to upsell your own products.

Upselling is a really powerful strategy for increasing your revenues, if you have additional products to offer. Public domain can give you the opportunity to offer an ‘upgrade’ to your customers. Simply use a public domain product as it is or modify it slightly and you have a product to use in your upsell.

3. Create a digital information product.

This is probably the easiest and most often used method for taking advantage of public domain. You can easily compile the material as is (or with a few slight edits) and turn it into an ebook. Then you can sell the ebook, give it away to subscribers, offer it as a backend, etc.

4. Use public domain as a bonus to your own products.

Just like we talked about using it to upsell your products, you can also use it to create really great bonuses for your products. People love bonuses. Sometimes people will buy a product just for the bonus if it’s something that they view as unique.

5. Use public domain on your website as content and partner with Google AdSense to generate revenue.

Use the material you gather from public domain to create an information rich website. Then place Google AdSense ads within the site. Every time someone clicks on the AdSense ads, you earn a percentage of that advertising revenue. If done right this can add up very quickly.

6. Create a physical information product.

Just as you can create a digital information product out of public domain material, you can also create a physically delivered product and ship it to customers. The real advantage to creating a physical product is that it may work better for your niche audience (especially if they aren’t very sophisticated) and physically delivered products can generally command a higher price.

Some options for a physical product could be to read public domain material into a a microphone and then record that onto a CD, divide the material into sections and turn that into a home study course, or simply repackage the information into a booklet.

7. Create articles or mini courses out of the public domain content.

People and online businesses are starving for great content. You can literally slice up the material you get into smaller articles and distribute them online to gain traffic to your website. This is called article marketing, and it’s a great way to gain targeted visitors to your site, especially when the content actually comes from public domain works.

8. Create s product based on a public domain work.

Some people call these types of products derivative works. All it really means that you use the public domain material as the basis to create something completely different like a video, software, Cd, etc.

There are tons and tons of other ways that you can utilize this freely available material and make money with it. Hopefully this will give you some idea of the possibilities and give you a good jumping off spot for using public domain in your own online business.

Want to know more about public domain?  Get your Free Copy of 10 Days to Smokin’ Traffic Now!

Click the link to learn more about
Public Domain Riches

Or learn more about the
Public Domain Treasure Hunter’s Kit

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