My 2¢ Worth

eb Sm@rts will not be published next Thursday, August 10. I will be gone all next week. Another mini vacation. I'm going to be traveling out to Wisconsin.

 really don't have much to say this time. I'm thinking too much about getting away. I'll be leaving Monday morning and returning late Thursday night or possibly Friday morning.

ou can bet I'll have my bag packed before the end of the day tomorrow.

o what's in Wisconsin? Darned if I know. I'll be traveling out to Milwaukee. I'm sure there will be something interesting to see and do. There's something interesting in every State in the Union.

his is the way I like to vacation; no particular plans in mind. Just pick a spot on the map and go.

Feature Article

Slow Agonizing Website Death

by: Kevin Bidwell Free Business Start-Up Kit

I’m about to scare you. I’m about to tell you something you, at first, won’t want to hear.

But it will be OK. Trust me.

By the end of this little article you’ll see it was necessary. In fact, by the end of this article you will not only be thankful I scared you, you’ll be in a better position to make money than you have ever been before.

Ready? Hope you are sitting down.

You need to buy some advertising for your site. In fact, you need to buy A LOT of advertising for your site. And it won’t be cheap. It might run into the tens or even hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

Pretty scary, huh?

Here’s the good part: I’m going to show you how to painlessly get all the money you need to advertise your site.

First, the stark reality: If you’re not spending tons of money on advertising your website is dying a slow, agonizing death.

You’ve got good sales copy. You’ve got a killer product. You’ve done JV’s and made a boatload of money in just a month or two.

But now things are slowing down. The JV’s have come and gone. Search traffic is a trickle. You were making 10 sales a day and now you’re lucky to get 10 sales a week.

Or maybe it’s even worse and you are seeing just a couple sales a week.

Think of visitors to your website like food to your body. If you skip a meal you’re OK, though you might be a little bit hungry. Skip all the meals for a day and you’re REALLY hungry, but you’ll survive. You can even go a week without food and not cause any major damage.

But go a month without food and you’ll be risking permanent injury to your body. In less than two months you’ll be dead.

If your website doesn’t have a steady, consistent stream of traffic it will die too. And it won’t be pretty.

Advertising is the key to finding those new visitors you can turn into customers. But most web business owners seem to be "advertising averse" they think of it as a costly way to spend money they don’t have and maybe get a return.

They like things like joint ventures and search traffic because those visits are "free" or at least they seem that way. You make no investment and pay nothing until you make a sale.

And you’re right, that’s pretty cool. It’s also pretty limited.

Joint ventures run their course and then produce very limited traffic and sales. You already know that. Search engines are tough to keep on top of. You know that as well. What you need is a more controllable way to generate traffic day-in and day-out.

Advertising is the only controllable way to consistently increase your traffic and sales over time. You have power over over the whole process. Over time you will be able to accurately predict how one ad will perform and how many sales it is likely to generate.

Advertising is the cure for slow, agonizing website death.

But that’s the problem: If adverting is the cure and advertisements cost money, where are you going to find the money to pay for it?

Don’t worry, it won’t hurt too much.

The place to find your advertising dollars is in your current sales. The next sale you make, take 50% of your profit and put it back into an advertising fund. If you can afford it, take 100% of your profit.

Let me show you how that breaks down:

Let’s say you are selling a $50 eBook. You make, on average, two sales a week right now. Since it is an eBook it has almost zero cost to you.

So, this week you take your two sales—$100—and spend half on 5 text ads on blogs related to your topic. $50 in ads.

[In a future article I will show you where to put your ad money, right now I am just going to show you how to FUND your ads.]

Over the next week those $50 in ads pull in another 2 sales. Your previous channels produce another 2 for a total of 4 sales. You make $200 and have $100 to put into your next set of ads.

$100 produces 4 sales and your 2 make 6. You make $300 and put $150 into ads. That’s week 3.

Week 4 you make 8 sales. Week 5 you make 10. Week 6 is 12 sales. Week 7 brings in 14. Week 8 takes you to 16 sales.

By week 13 following this little plan you are making $1,300.00 per week. By the 6 month mark, you are making $2,600.

At the end of a year following this little plan you have gross sales of $137,800.00 and a profit of $68,900.00.

Not bad.

In future articles I will show you where to put your advertising dollars to get the most return on your money. In the mean time consider how much money you can put into advertising—it is the best investment you can make.

**************

Kevin Bidwell owns www.All-In-One-Business.com and has helped 4,953 people start a business from home. Visit now to pick up your own free How to Start a Business from Home guide now.

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Second Article

Marketing - The Life Blood Of Any Business

by: Andrea Lea Churchill FWS Marketing

Marketing is a broad business subject that encompasses a range of activities including advertising, public relations, sales, and promotions. Generally, you will find that people often confuse sales with marketing, when in fact the two are quite different. Marketing is all about getting a product or service into the market, promoting it, influencing behavior, and encouraging sales turnover. Sales, quite distinctly, is the actual transaction of getting a product or service into the hands of your customers.

With so many messages being propelled towards all of us these days, it is more critical than ever for a company to get their product noticed. This means marketers have evolved to being creative. Marketing is not an exact science and managers who know little about it are afraid that the marketing staff within their firm is often wasting valuable money. The truth is that marketing is an investment that always pays off; it just may come back in ways that are not necessarily measurable. So even though one campaign may bring moderate results, another will bring astonishing profits.

Companies not committed to a marketing program are at a disadvantage in today's business world. Those who are still focused on their products, rather than their customers, are doomed to experience lots of failure. Knowing what your clients' expectations are and working to exceed them is the key to ultimate business success.

There are millions of marketing ideas just waiting to be created. If you need to generate ideas, start by brainstorming on paper or on the computer. One small idea generally leads to many other ones. Alternatively you can do an internet search for specific marketing ideas you are wanting to use in your marketing program. If you lack the time or talent to be creative and generate your own marketing ideas, there are marketing companies that can assist you to build a complete marketing strategy.

When you are planning your marketing program, keep in mind the hurdles you may face, and think of ways to eliminate them. Some things that may hold you back from implementing your marketing ideas include budget shortfalls, lack of skill, or being understaffed. Think of ways around this as you plan your strategy for the future.

Finally, think about the specific steps that you can use in a marketing campaign. Your marketing actions might include advertising, sponsorship, branding, and public relations. Or, you may want to stick with direct mail, product packaging and creating promotional materials such as caps or pens. Whatever method you choose, make sure you are pointing excited energy in that direction. It will be reflected in the results!

**************

Andrea Lea Churchill has created a resource site FWS Marketing . Feel free to submit an article if you would like to contribute.

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