Steve Guttridge: aka Stay At Home Bum Marketer

by: Mande White

It seems everyone now is watching their money and looking for ways to stretch their marketing dollar. Here are 7 Budget Friendly Internet Marketing Tips. Every tip listed can be implemented for under $200 (for the entire year) plus a little elbow grease! How’s that for stretching your dollars!

1. Get a website-$80 a year or less

If you’ve got one-great-make sure its updated. If you don’t have one you need two things to get one up by the end of day. You need a domain name and then domain hosting. You can do both at GoDaddy.com or HostMonster.com. You can walk away with a basic plan for less than $100 a year. Next, Install WordPress and the Atahualpa* theme (google ‘Atahualpa wordpress theme’ to find) and build a quick website. Do not get roped into using the website builder software that comes with web hosting. WordPress is FREE and comes a lot of support from others who use it at wordpress.org. Bare minimum your website needs is information on how to contact you (phone/email/physical location), list of your products services. Add some pictures and you’re good to go.

2. Start Blogging-FREE

Why? How? Oh my! Here’s how to make it really simple. Again, you’ll need WordPress and the Atahualpa theme installed at www.yourdomain.com/blog (ask your hosting provider how to do this if you don’t know how). Then 3 times a week- type a brief message/article/how-to tip/customer interview/monthly special as a blog post. You can google things like ‘blog post ideas for small businesses’ and get a lot of tips on things to blog about.

3. Create a Facebook Page for Your Business-FREE

Get your business a Fan Page set up on Facebook. Go to: http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php and walk through the step for setting up a Fan Page. After you set up a Fan Page-send an email to all your current clients and customers asking them to join. Whenever you make a blog post-send an update to your fans. Also keep fans updated on specials or discounts that your business might have. Think about offering a “Facebook Fans Only” special.

4. Create a Facebook Group-FREE

A business Facebook Group will let you communicate and get to know your current customers. A group allows you to privately message members much like someone being on an email list. You can also have discussions in the group about products or services that you offer.

5. Create a Twitter Account-FREE

Local News stations, police departments and local newspaper have started using Twitter to keep followers up-to date. After you set up a Twitter account, invite all your current clients and Facebook Page friends to follow you on Twitter. Then begin watching the conversation. Start by re-tweeting what others have said. That means copying something that some else has said in your tweet update box and putting a “RT” in front of the message then sending it out to your followers. This allows the message to be seen by others in your group that the original message might not have been seen by. It builds trust and loyalty. People like when you acknowledge what they say or do. Then tweet about things that are going on with other local businesses that are tweeting.

6. Start or continue your email newsletter-$120 or less

If you are blogging this can seamlessly be tied together so that every blog you create automatically gets emailed out to your newsletter subscribers. I recommend iContact for this as their service allows for autoresponders, email newsletters, surveys and RSS feeds. If you are blogging 3 times a week-there are 3 emails that go out to your subscribers every week! Plus if they like the article it’ll drive traffic back to your website.

7. Set Up Google Alerts-FREE

Go to alerts.google.com (you need to have a gmail account-create one if you don’t already have) and type in the name of your business in the ‘search terms’. Select Type: “Comprehensive”. Select ‘How Often”: As-it-Happens and have it delivered to your gmail address. This service will send you an email anytime your company name is mentioned.

Also set up google alerts for general industry terms or products that are related to your business. This will provide you with ideas for writing blog posts as well as quickly keep you updated on what’s being said about your business and your competition.

There you go! If you’ve already got all these in place-Super Job! Watch out for a future article on “Advanced Budget Friendly Internet Marketing Tips!”

About The Author:
Mande White, MBA, Social Media Coach, teaches those that are overwhelmed, confused or lost trying to figure out how to use social media to promote their products and services. For FREE tips on how to use social media to Make More Money Than You Ever Thought Possible, visit http://www.FreeSocialMediaHelp.com.

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by: James Lehnen

Its all about the Marketing

There is a saying in real estate business that we have all heard, “location, location, location”. Well, in the Internet Business world its, “marketing, marketing, marketing”. Marketing is everything. I can’t say it enough. Let me give you an example–if you had a bucket of nice shiny diamonds, and you dumped them in your driveway and waited for people to come by and get the diamonds, how many people would come by. NONE, thats how many. Why? Because you did not market the diamonds. You did not advertise the beautiful expensive diamonds just sitting in a nice pile in your driveway.

My point being, it does not matter what your selling, or how great a product it is. If you do not market it the correct way, those diamonds(your product) are not worth a dime! So, I guess the question is, “how do I market my product?”

In the Internet world there are literally thousands of ways, and places, to market your product. You could try articles, classified ad, traffic exchanges, social networks, paid for advertising on websites, google PPC, and many more. The problem most Internet marketers have is that they are marketing the product. This is wrong! “What the *#&@$” you say. Just here my out. You have to market YOURSELF, not the product. YOU are the brand that people are buying.

Let me give you an example. Ray Kroch started Mcdonalds 60 years ago, he knew way back then that you had to market the brand, not the product. Were his burgers better than everybody elses. No, of course not! Did his shakes taste better than the soda shop down the street. No way! He new he was promoting the brand “Mcdonalds–a great place for families and kids that can provide you with a cheap meal at a great price everytime.”

In the Internet Business, YOU are the Brand. You are marketing yourself. Market how you can HELP someone accomplish what they want. If you are promoting a MLM business, then market how you can HELP the customer build his business. Thats the secret that so many people trying to make it in the Internet Marketing business do not know about.

A guy was trying to sell drills to make holes. He showed people his drills, but nobody bought them. He realized after months of trying to just show his drills, that he had to find people who wanted to make holes and show them how his drill would HELP them make their holes. Stupid analogy, but you get my point. Successful Internet Marketers know how to promote themselves as the BRAND. Just look at some of the “gurus” of the Internet marketing world and you will find out that what I am telling you is the truth.

So, the moral of this article is to always believe in yourself. Market yourself and you will become successful.

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by: Matt Bacak

Having the right hosting company for your online business is crucial if you are looking to expand and grow your business over the years. It is especially important as well if you intend to have a “brand” of websites or simply several websites with plans for expansion. Recently I was asked why I don’t recommend GoDaddy for hosting. Well, the reason is that GoDaddy has a lot of limitations for the online business owner and these limitations can hurt an online business.

You need to find a hosting company that has the following:

Find a hosting company that is going to give you your own unique IP address. It’s going to help you from a search engine marketing perspective and an email marketing perspective. If you have a unique IP address already and are thinking about giving it up, I wouldn’t recommend it because right now IPs are like gold on the internet. You’re going to have to get a special account where you are getting that unique IP address. If you’re just starting out online having a unique IP address isn’t a real concern. But if you plan to grow your business it is crucial that you get one.

You also want to find a hosting company that has cPanel . Having cPanel let’s you know that a particular hosting company runs on a Unix/Linux server. The reason for this is being on a Windows server has issues similar to the same issues as if you’re using a Windows computer. You don’t want to be on a Windows server. A lot GoDaddy is a very Microsoft based. They do a lot of business with Microsoft so a lot of their things are Microsoft-driven. I’m totally against Microsoft-driven servers because there are simply too many problems and limitations for the average business owner.

Another reason I don’t recommend GoDaddy is their limitations for sending autoresponder emails. I recommend you use Autoresponse Plus and I also recommend that you install it on your hosting account. GoDaddy servers are problematic in regards to this. Their servers are not set up to work well with Autoresponse Plus. They limit the number of emails you can send out per day. I’m not sure of the exact number but you’re only allowed to send about 200 emails per day with the GoDaddy servers. After that they start charging you. Once you go past 200 a day, for every ten emails you send out beyond that number, they charge you around ten bucks or something like that. Now to me that’s insane because as a business owner especially if you’ve been around for a long time, your lists will be far greater than 200. This is a huge limitation for any online business. Now you can see how important it is to choose your hosting company wisely.

Since we know that GoDaddy’s hosting company is not the best fit, what are the best hosting companies in my opinion? Well, there are several companies that offer the necessary capabilities outlined above. I highly recommend FatJack as it has everything I’ve mentioned above.

There is also ThirdSphere. However, there are some issues when dealing with ThirdSphere, especially if you build your list beyond 20,000 people. I recall this being the limit. Once you get past 20,000, you start getting charged for sending out emails above that number. If you don’t plan on building a list that big then you could look into their services.

But remember, getting a Unix/Linux server for your hosting account is extremely important. I can’t recommend this enough. Planning ahead and understanding the software and their capabilities is essential to running a profitable online business. Failing to do the research could kill your company. Hopefully I’ve assisted you in making an informative decision. I’d like you to grow your company even further than you can imagine. Good luck!

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by: Ray Ricardo

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