Which is a better shopping cart? e-junkie or 1ShoppingCart?

Shopping carts have their pros and cons and it’s always up to the user which one is better for his or her needs. As for e-junkie and 1ShoppingCart, it all boils down to how their affiliate program works. You can try both and see which one is easier for you. But on this post I will share with you an internet marketer’s personal experience with both.

For Ellen Finkelstein, it’s all about having a personal connection with each of the other internet marketers she comes across with after being an affiliate for them, helping them promote their courses and products. What usually happens is that the marketer would give her an affiliate link plus some marketing materials. It’s indeed a lot easier when things are handed to you on a silver platter so to speak. And she wants to do the same thing for her affiliates as well.

Find out all the details here on what made her decide  to use 1ShoppingCart and let go of her  e-junkie account. You’ll find it useful and you could save a lot of time and effort deciding which shopping cart to use: Comparing shopping carts: e-junkie vs 1ShoppingCart

 

 

Dos and Don’ts of Content Marketing

Do you know that more than $100 billion is the expected budget that will be spent on content marketing for this year? This just means that content marketing is making its mark in the industry and countless businesses are counting on it to bring in more money for their businesses. So if you yourself has a business and you’d like to stand out from your competitors, try content marketing. But first, you need to learn the dos and don’ts.  Here they are:

Content Marketing Dos

1. Study Your Competitors

2. Set a Goal for Your Campaign

3. Stay Organized

4. Optimize Your Content

5. Have a Proper Marketing Plan

Content Marketing Don’ts

1. Assume Your Readers Will Love Your Content

2. Cut Corners

3. Underpay for Work

4. Disguise Your Sales Pitch as Content

5. Lose Track of Your Campaign

To learn more about content marketing’s dos and don’ts, please head to: 5 Content Marketing Dos and Don’ts

 

How to Blog as a Book Author

Are you a book author? If so, blogging is one of the best ways to get attention from your target market. It can bring traffic to your book or amazon site; it can bring you fans and likers and a lot more.

So how do you blog and what do you blog about aside from what you have written in your books? Below are some tips you can follow to make sure that you get a steady amount of traffic to your site and eventually, book buyers as well.

1. Review other novels or books in your field, especially from other lesser-known novelists or book authors.
2. Write a blog post using the voice of one of your main characters. For nonfiction authors, write a blog post using the voice of Abraham Lincoln, Gandhi, Plato, Teddy Roosevelt, Dr. Oz. Henry David Thoreau or some other famous person in your field.
3. Tell stories. Have that main character tell some side stories not included in the novel. For nonfiction authors, you can tell stories you did not feature in your book, especially new testimonial stories you receive.
4. Write about the setting – time and/or place. Use some of the research you did to ensure that your novel was accurate.
5. Invite your readers to review your book. Feature their testimonials on your blog.

To find out more tips about blogging as a book author, please head to this post:  Blogging Tips: 101 Aimed at Authors and More

 

Use Affiliate Marketing to Boost Your Business

Marketers use affiliate programs to increase the sales of their online products and services.  There are numerous ways to go about this. For this post, I will share with you 8 steps that will get you going:
1. Setting up an affiliate program
2. Putting a product into a program
3. An affiliate signs up
4. The affiliate gets an affiliate code
5. The affiliate gives out the code
6. A buyer uses the affiliate code to buy a product
7. The affiliate gets credit for the sale
8. The merchant pays the affiliate

To find out more about this 8-step process of using affiliates for your business, please head to:  8 steps of an affiliate program

Tips to Getting More Instagram Followers and Likes

Instagram now has over 100 million active users and is one of the most used social networks. Using this as one of your tools to build your brand can help your bottomline but first you must know how to gain more followers and attract more likes. So how do you do this? Here are some excellent tips:

 

• Connect your Instagram account to Facebook
• Use Popular Instagram #Hashtags
• Use Popular Instagram Filters
• Follow other Instagram Users
• Like Plenty of Other Photos
• Combine Images and Use Picture Frames

These are just some of the tips you can use. To find out more, please head to:  How to Get More Instagram Followers and Likes

How to Maximize Business Potential Through Social Media

Everyone’s on the web nowadays and it’s not just on blogs, forums and static websites but on social networks as well. This means that potential customers and clients for your business are just waiting for you right around the corner of Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn and the likes. So as a business owner, you might as well use these venues to boost your online business. How do we do this? Below are some tips:

1. Make sure people know where to find you on social media.
2. Go mobile.
3. Tailor your message to suit your target market best.
4. Share content that people like to talk about. 
5. Keep interactions alive.
6. Make your posts during strategic times of the day.

These are just a few important tips you can use to make sure you’re using social media to its fullest. Read the rest here: Increasing Your Marketing Reach with Social Media

 

How to Make Your Target Market Follow You

Have you been in a situation online, particularly in Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn where you join groups that follow other people’s twitter and Facebook pages as well?  Sure, seeing the numbers of your fans and followers increase seem exciting but what value does it really give you in terms of getting people who are in your target market?

In this post “Stick to targeted followers only!” you’ll learn the reason why it’s important to stick to your targeted market only.

For building your list, you can also go into partnerships. Here are a few of the reasons why partnerships are valuable for your business:

1. Find a person who serves the same target market as you but who provides a different service or product; this person isn’t a competitor.
2. Subscribe to their newsletter and read their free download
3. If you think their download would be valuable to your subscribers (and vice versa), connect with the person.

For more information and tips about getting followed by your target market, please check out this link: Stick to targeted followers only!

Four Hottest Social Media Trends

Social Media marketing expenditure is predicted to continuously increase making it dominate the world of digital marketing with its exciting and novel platforms for consumer engagement. Hence, small businesses in particular must be able to integrate social media with their existing traditional marketing to deliver maximum impact.

Consider these four social media trends this year for small businesses to understand why you, as an owner of small business, must focus more of your digital marketing efforts to social media:

1. Engagement meets ROI. This is about the conversation rate (how many replies to a post), amplification rate (how many retweets or shares per post) and conversion rate (how much of the ttraffic you get actually interacts with your business).

2. Specialization improves engagement. This is about choosing the right social media channels that best drive lets you engage with your target market.

3. Social video makes it debut. 13 million users are now being reached by Twitter’s video sharing app Vine in just 5 months which is why it is social media’s latest darling. The time limit in the app makes small businesses more creative in their pursuit to interest and engage their target market.

4. SoMoLo integrates social with mobile search and location-based marketing which helps change the landscape of eCommerce today.

With these trends, we can see that it’s still all about customer engagement. If you know how to apply these trends to your marketing efforts then you will be able to get the numbers you need for your business. Read more about it here: Top 4 Social Media Trends in 2013

Segment Email List to Improve Your Email Marketing

Do you sometimes wonder why your subscribers unsubscribe to your list or mark your emails as spam? This is because they most probably receive emails from you that they don’t find relevant. This is what usually happens when you don’t segment your email list.

Segmenting involves dividing your email marketing list into groups based on certain criteria. You may group them together based on their interests, demographics, past behavior and preferences. This way, you are sure that you are sending them materials that they will find useful and relevant.

So how do you do this? How do you segment your email list? Hop on to this post to find out more: Improve Email Marketing by Segmenting Your Email List

Online Storage Sites for Your Files

It’s true that there are numerous sites you can use to store your most precious files online. Below are the four most popular ones that you might also find very useful:

• Amazon S3: If it’s security you’re looking for, Amazon S3’s reputation is built on that. And in terms of controlling your files’ privacy, you can do that here too. It only costs at least $2 a month. Give it a try.
• Dropbox: This one can be integrated with your computer.  
• SkyDrive: This one integrates with Microsoft Office as it is from the same company.
• Google Drive: This one is from Google. You might be familiar with its interface. It’s formerly called Google Docs.

So if you have files like videos, products, and what-not that aren’t ready to go live and public yet but you need places where you can keep them, try these online storage sites. They are mostly free services that have become very popular with online users. For more information, please head to: Safe places to store files online