Post about "Finance"

Promoting Your Website Or Blog With Online Competitions

If you’ve got a website it doesn’t matter what sort it could be a personal blog detailing your daily adventures, affiliate site marketing your favourite e-books or a site promoting your company. Even if you don’t want to make money from the site it is going to be a pretty pointless venture to undertake if no one ever sees it.

You need visitors, not just one off visitors who come maybe click an ad and never come back. You need return visitors, people who interact with you, subscribe to hear what your trying to say and buy your affiliate products.

It’s easy to get visitors to your site popular methods include search engine optimization (SEO), pay per click advertising (PPC) and social networking on sites like twitter, Facebook etc. Unless these visitors return your sites never going to reach its full potential, your going to spend a lot of time and money just getting more visitors who come and go.

How can you get visitors to return to your site?

There are a few ways you can get visitors to return to your site or sites you could try building a mailing list, with a mailing list you can send mail shots or a regular newsletter to all your subscribers at once. Mailing lists are a great way to promote and make money from affiliate marketing.

If you have a blog running on a popular platform like WordPress, Blogger, Drupal or Joomla to name a few you will almost certainly be able to offer your visitors an RSS feed that they can subscribe to and they will be updated every time you make a new post.

If you sell products on your site you could produce a catalog that visitors can subscribe to receive or post it out with orders.

One great way to build subscribers and repeat site visitors is with website competitions.

Offer your visitors something in return for them subscribing to your feed, newsletter or catalogs. Everyone likes the idea of getting stuff for little or no effort and that’s where a free to enter competition can help you.

What can you offer in your competition

What you can offer competition winners depends largely on your resources and budget, the more costly the prize should but won’t necessarily guarantee better results sometimes a creative prize can work just as well as an expensive one.

If your website is already established you might even be able to get an advertiser or supplier to sponsor your competition that way it won’t cost you a penny.

How to Effectively Run Your Home Based Business – Part 2

In the last post, I touched on some of the ways you can get the word out about your home based business. Continuing to do those things on a regular basis will definitely be effective and you will have a successful home base business. In this post, I want to cover some of the day to day operations you should (and should not) be doing so you will be able to enjoy some of those great benefits of having a home business.There are many different types of people out there: workaholics, procrastinators, lazy, motivated, etc. What I am going to suggest here will be for all types of personalities. As a home business owner, we don’t want you working 24-7 and burning out within months of starting a home based business and we also don’t want you being lazy and only working a few hours per week. If you are planning on doing paid online surveys or maybe data entry jobs as extra income, then a few hours per week will do. These suggestions will help you to be effective as well.1. Set a Schedule (when to work) This is probably the most important step to being effective. You need to set a time to work and a time to play! It is very easy to get distracted when you are working at home: kids, TV, phone calls from friends…set up a time when all you will be doing is work, even if it is only for an hour. For me personally with 2 kids in sports and summer vacation just around the corner, I set my schedule more on a weekly even down to daily basis at times. It does vary but I still have one and use it. So give yourself ample time to work but also give yourself time to play, it is very important that you do this!  Now, stick with that schedule!2. Set a Schedule (what to work on) As a home based business owner, you have all the responsibilities of the business. For those of you doing data entry jobs online or paid online surveys then the only thing you need to do is set the time when you will be working. For all others, there is advertising, budgeting, social networking, article writing, bookmarking, blogging and doing your actual work! This can become overwhelming if you have no plan or schedule. Allow yourself time to work on each part of your business. Example: today I am working from 9 to 1, I will post in my blog from 9 to 10, bookmark it from 10-11, then do social networking from 11-1. Once you have everything set, you won’t waste time wondering what to do, you will be doing it and doing it effectively.3. A Place to Work Definitely the least important thing you should consider, but still important. To be effective, you need to be organized. Having an office with a desk and a file cabinet to keep all business related material will keep you organized. Again, you don’t want to waste time looking for papers when you could be making money working. And if you have kids…keep them out of YOUR space! I wrote that this shouldn’t be on the top of you list because while I do have an office with a desk, good chair, file cabinet, etc., I like to move around occasionally. I have a good wireless network and laptop that allows me to move anywhere around the house, even out to my pool so in the summer when my kids are swimming, I can be there to watch them and still be able to work. But just to break up monotony, I will work in the dining room, living room and kitchen from time to time. Do whatever works best for you.I hope these tips will help you become very effective with your home business. All successful home based businesses are run effectively. So set when you will work and what you will be working on and where you will work on it. Have a game plan and set your day to day schedule and most importantly – stick with it! If you follow these guidelines, you will be able to enjoy all the perks that come with having your own home based business.