Steve Guttridge: aka Stay At Home Bum Marketer

By Ghyslain Lefevbvre

Being able to brand yourself is extremely important for today’s entrepreneur. It is also very difficult to do. In order to be a successful online business owner, the branding part of your business could mean the difference between people choosing to do business with you or someone else. Think about it, if a prospect is thinking about starting a business and he/she has an option to see you and get to know you vs. the other option of not seeing or knowing anything about the other entrepreneur, which one will they choose!

There are many examples we could use to explain some of the branding out there but let’s use these. In the MLM world, you have a main name like Herbalife. Herbalife, for a MLM does a good job of branding and advertise themselves to the world. If you ask a soccer fan if they heard of Herbalife, they will answer immediately yes,” they are the sponsor for the L.A. Galaxy”. Looking at another MLM, we have Melaleuca, company with very good products but ask anyone you know and chances are they won’t know who they are because they are not out there doing anything to promote the brand.

In the restaurant industry, if you think of McDonald, you think hamburger, Denny’s you think breakfast, Starbucks, you think coffee, Wal-mart, you think save money. What all these companies have in common, they know who they are, they make sure they are very good at it and that is what they advertise and focus on. It took a trial an error period for each company but they figured out and now they are the leaders in their field.

Before you start branding yourself, you must remember this. Whatever you choose to do to brand about yourself, it will follow you for life. You may or may not remember Rich Jerk. His methods, at the time were very unorthodox but they worked. He was almost insulting people on his website if they weren’t going to buy his products. His methods were very successful but only for a short period of time. Now, for Rich jerk to rebrand himself, it would be very difficult and timely.

So how do you brand yourself in your online business? First let’s define Branding. “The marketing practice of creating a name, symbol or design that identifies and differentiates a product from other products”
So let’s start with this. Try this little exercise. Take a look at your promotional materials or services. Do they say things like?

* Best service
* in business since 1291 B.C.
* newest technology
* best trained
* fastest delivery
* friendly smiles
* we do it right the first time
* professional service

As you brand yourself to your online business customers, keep in mind all of this. These are just starter steps but extremely important to build a trust between you and your possible business partners.

So how do you decide on your Brand? Ask yourself these questions. Do you cater to a specific group of people? Are you expert in addressing a specific issue? Do you guarantee your work? Finally, there is one thing in your business that no one else can duplicate – YOU! So don’t be afraid to give your business or practice a little personality. If you are in a very competitive industry, it may difficult so you may need to plan your branding very cautiously and find something unique about you…

To conclude, branding is very important for the success of your business but it can also be very difficult. Take your time, because the difference between you and your competitors is YOU.

If you would like more info on how you could start and build your online business, please visit our website. To find a business opportunity, also visit our website.

Ghyslain Lefebvre is an expert online business entrepreneur who helps people start and achieve what they are worth. If you would like more info on how you could start and build your own business working from home, please visit or http://7figureincomethisyear.com/ or get what you are worth

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By Jonathan D Scott

Article traffic is one of the best ways to get quality highly targeted traffic. No only will you benefit from being listed in the most viewed category you can also make it to the most published article category too. But more on that later. Lets get right to it. I will list out 7 secrets that done correctly will help you dominate the article directories and get lots of traffic.

1. Top Copy – Of course you need to have something relevant and intriguing to say. Write from the heart but do not ramble. Get to the point fast and offer value. Sometimes you want to offer information you would normally charge for.

2. Organize Your Article – The way you layout your article is actually very important. You want to make your article readable by the skimmers. Most people have short attention spans even when they want to learn something. Make your article stick out. Use bullet points and start new lines for important sections, words, or sentences.

3. Wondering Eyes – Now everyone has wondering eyes. So take advantage of this trait. Use Bold, italic, and if allowed small pictures or emotion icons. Highlight words through out your article that tell their own story. Your skimmers will see these words and get the picture. Your main goal is to get the reader all the way through the article to your resource box and clicking your links to find out more.

4. Keywords Are Key – Do a little keyword research. Write your article using the keywords you find and sprinkle them through out your article. Place the keyword in the title, body, and resource box. Definitely use the keyword as an anchor text in your resource box.

5. Internal Back linking – The large article directories have hundreds of thousands and some millions of article in their database. This creates a whole lot of back link opportunity for you. Your goal is to get into the categories that will deliver the most article traffic to your article then your website. Most of the large article directories have categories such as most viewed article and most published. These tends to be difficult to get into but the pay off is sweet. More on that later.

6. Generate Article Traffic – In order to get into those special categories you need people to come view your article. This is where your back linking skills come into play. But I would first start by telling all of your friends that you have a great article that they should go and view. You can republish your article where ever you would like to get some back links generated for your article. You want to pick places where you can generate views of your article. One great place is social networking sites. Especially ones that allow you to have a blog.

7. Faster Approval – Online you will here a lot of people say take action. But taking action sometimes takes time. Well we all know time is money. So to help get that money you will want to take advantage of the faster approval methods these article directories give you. Most of these options cost money. If you can afford it, do it. its worth it. The faster you are approved the faster you can get working on your traffic and the faster you get paid.

Article traffic is your ticket to lots of visitors to your website. Want more dirty details? Check out the Article Traffic website and video that will give you more insight into these 7 secrets to article traffic domination.

Visit the site and click here: Article Traffic.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Jonathan_D_Scott

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An active sentence works better than a passive one. The cat sat on the mat (active) is simpler and clearer than the mat was sat on by the cat (passive).

The reader’s brain works faster than their eye. If you start a sentence the attack… they may already be thinking about tanks, or vitriolic newspaper articles or a mugger in a dark alley.

If the sentence goes on the attack on the castle… the reader may have to discard previous pictures and now they may be thinking about a knight in shining armour. If the compete sentence reads the attack on the castle was carried out by Zorro, they discard all previous images and come up with a completely new one.

Conjuring up all these images is hard work and it can leave the reader confused. It is much clearer to work out the action in a sentence the attack and who took that action Zorro and put the actor first, then the action, and then the scenery the castle.

Actor – action – scenery
Zorro attacked the castle

Strict grammarians call the actor the subject of a sentence, the action the verb and the scenery the object.

Subject – verb – object is the definition of an active sentence and those are the best sentences to use.

Sometimes you will think you need a passive sentence but, really, you don’t:

My house was broken into last night (passive).

You don’t know who broke into your house (there is no subject) so you cannot make the sentence active. But you do know who broke into your house, you just think you don’t:

Thieves broke into my house last night (active).

Write Actively

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Here are tips gleaned from roughly 5 years spent building up an ezine list. I’ve also incorporated comments and tips from Jenna Glatzer, who successfully built her list up to 75,000 at her excellent site, www.absolutewrite.com

1. Free Stuff. Pick genuinely useful free stuff that you know your audience wants and needs. For instance, my brand new ezine, Expert Status, attracted 600 readers in just a few weeks by offering a report, “25 Top Self Help Literary Agents”. The practical freebie works. Jenna Glatzer offers two free ebooks/reports to subscribers on agents who are receptive to new writers, and on writer’s markets. She notes: “Before I did that, my subscriber numbers were in the hundreds, not thousands.

2. Put a subscribe box on every page of the site. This has worked for both Jenna and me. Mine is parked in the left hand column of the site. Experts advise putting a simple sign up box (with freebie mentioned) in the top left hand corner, as that’s where the eye naturally travels first. A simple sign up box that requests only email address works best.

3. Ad swaps. Exchange plugs for your ezine with another website, to run in eachother’s ezines. Be sure to mention those freebies! Doing this on a regular basis with a rotating selection of web partners will keep your subscription page busy.

4. Cross-registration. I’ve found subscribers by having a plug for my ezine on the thank you page of a comparable (but not directly competitive) website. This offer is made to folks who just signed up for an ezine, and are therefore deemed ‘in the mood for more.’ Offer a swap with your site, and try not to list more than about two other ezines. Also, make a point of including only really good, reliable publications that reach your target market.

5. Give away a bonus for other sites to use, based on your ezine. A popular web marketing technique is the special one or two-day promo that offers big bonus lists when you buy a certain product on those particular days. (I cover this promo technique in more detail in my ebook/binder, Get Known Now; How to Build Your Platform as a Self Help Expert.) So collect some of your best ezine essays, pack ‘em up in a downloadable PDF-based e-book, and offer it as a bonus these sites can use in their special promos. Don’t forget juicy descriptive copy about your ezine, and a subscribe link at the end of your ebook. I’ve gotten hundreds of new readers this way, and much traffic to my site.

6. Announce ezine ‘events’ on PRweb.com and other PR sites. There’s an entire world of web-based press release distribution services out there, some of which are low cost or even free. So use them. But be sure to only plant press releases that are truly newsworthy, and thus likely to get press attention. Even if the media don’t use your words this time, they’ll hopefully file you as an expert for future use.

7. Use discussion boards or groups. These are sites frequented by gangs of people interested in the same thing. Avoid the unmoderated sites, because they’re likely to be spam targets that generate little bonafide traffic. Boards found on member sites are the best. Don’t spam the board with your subscribe message. Instead, offer some genuinely helpful info. Then sign off with a signature line that includes ezine and subscribe info. You can find some of these groups at groups.yahoo.com, topica.com, mail-list.com, and listfool.com for starters.

8. Sponsor other people’s contests. Jenna Glatzer gives away products like her paid newsletter, Absolute Markets Premium Newsletter, to writers’ groups, contests, and conferences that request it, regardless of size. I’ve tried this too, to good effect. Simply run an announcement in your ezine that you’d be happy to sponsor comparable events. Ask them to provide a URL for an event description so you know it’s legit. Then offer up your gifts, and ask for a plug for your ezine and for them to talk up your dazzling freebie, as well. Jenna notes that groups she sponsors “often send out ads for us to their lists ? just as a thank you.”

9. Run quality content. There’s no substitute for heartfelt writing plus solid information about a subject that matters. Jenna writes: ‘The main reason our list stays so big is our ‘letter from the editor’ ? Each week, I chronicle my writing life and my triumphs and failures ? when an article is killed, when I’m having trouble finishing a book ? And I share personal things, too, like when my grandfather died?. People write: ‘ I feel like I know you so well.’ And I think that’s why they stay on the list, even when their mailbox fills up with dozens of other writer’s newsletters.

10. Allow reprints. Allow any newsletter that wants to reprint your articles do so. I like to have an email requesting permission, so I can enter their info into a big database I use to track where I can send more articles in the future. I end each article with the line: You may reprint this article in your own ezine or website. Simply send an email requesting permission to EMAIL ADDRESS. Please be sure to include our full bio box at the end.

11. Create a survey or contest. This would be one of those newsworthy ‘ezine events’ I mentioned above in point # 6. Make it a fun, relevant question that you could really develop a good, newsy story from. I did a survey asking people what they fought with their spouse/partner/boy or girlfriend about. The results made for the kind of reading offline media enjoy running short, 100-word pieces about (fillers.) I made sure to attribute the survey to my ezine, The Joy Letter, with a mention of the site’s basic URL. You can get the technology to run your own survey and collect responses at surveymonkey.com (for a fee) or bravenet.com (for free.)

I think I could actually go on and on here. The possibilities seem to be endless. If you try even half of these techniques on a regular basis, you’ll find your subscriber rates double and even triple. Here’s to building your list ? the foundation that much of your traffic and success rely on.

Suzanne Falter-Barns’ website, The Self Help Salon (www.selfhelpsalon.com) offers tips and tools that help you build your platform and get known as an expert in your field. Sign up for her free ezine, Expert Status, and receive her free report, “25 Top Self Help Literary Agents

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