If the objective of generating storefront traffic is to achieve a high conversion rate, it makes sense to examine any obstacles that may interfere with the outcome. Limiting a business to just one payment method can mean fewer conversions, and ultimately, less profit.

A study of North American online businesses found that offering more than one payment method increased conversions by twenty percent! Shoppers would add items to their cart, proceed to check-out, then fail to complete the transaction if their preferred method of payment was not available.

Clearly, offering multiple payment options is a convenience that consumers seek and a simple way for business owners to increase sales.

Credit cards remain the most frequently used method of payment. However, some people choose not to use them for online purchases, creating the need for alternative methods. PayPal, with an estimated 50 million users worldwide, has filled that need. Other methods include electronic checks and, of course, good old-fashioned cash in the form of a check or money order by mail.

Each method obviously has advantages and disadvantages for the business owner. Credit card transactions carry fees that the merchant must cover, but as the most preferred payment method, accepting this form of payment ensures a healthy number of completed transactions.

PayPal is widely used among internet shoppers, and allows the merchant to accept payment by electronic check as well as credit cards. Fees are also assessed to the merchant for this type of transaction.

Accepting payment by mail opens the door to the small percentage of shoppers who do not trust even the most secure shopping cart when it comes to releasing personal information. The downside is the time delay in waiting for the check to arrive and then to clear before shipping the order.

One thing analysts agree on is that conversion is about the customer. When considering what options to offer shoppers, such as alternative payment methods, the business owner must think about the people behind the numbers. Without conducting a full-scale demographic study, it is possible to develop a composite of the type of people who are likely to buy. What are their habits, their likes and dislikes, their preferences and concerns? The answers can help business owners decide what factors might prevent completion of a transaction, and more importantly, which options facilitate a sale.

A business can be successful even if it accepts only one form of payment. But providing shoppers with options simply removes one of the most common reasons for abandoning a shopping cart without completing the transaction. Offering multiple payment methods to potential customers will ultimately lead to higher conversion rates, increased sales, repeat business, and word-of-mouth referrals from satisfied customers.

Ewen

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For those who have recently started an affiliate program and feel overwhelmed or those thinking about starting one, but don’t have a clue where to begin, hiring an affiliate manager might be beneficial. An affiliate manager is someone who can handle the tasks associated with running an affiliate program. Some of the more popular tasks an affiliate manager can handle include marketing an affiliate program, answering affiliate questions, recruiting new affiliates, motivating current affiliates, creating new tools and resources to help with promotion and other various duties.

Of course, it’s not a neccesity to hand over all of these tasks. By outsourcing some of the tasks associated with running an affiliate program to an affiliate manager, the owner is then able to focus on the parts they really enjoy. For example, if coming up with contest ideas to motivate affiliates is something you love to do, keep doing it. Once you’ve came up with the ideas, then hand them over to the affiliate manager for implementation.

While being able to focus on the aspects of your affiliate program is a benefit of hiring an affiliate manager to some, other people enjoy the benefit of not having to do any of the work at all.

Many people start affiliate programs to increase their passive income by promoting informational products such as ebooks, special reports, and so forth. When hiring an affiliate manager to handle your affiliate program, you are able to sit back and let the business run smoothly while you do other things.

Another benefit to hiring an affiliate manager is that even though an affiliate program is new, the affiliate manger may have been working with affiliate programs for years. They may have the knowledge and experience needed. They can help walk you through parts of an affiliate program you may be unfamiliar with. An affiliate manager can also help make important decisions that can lead to the success of the program.

A well-rounded, highly skilled affiliate manager will know how to recruit new affiliate into your program. The more people promoting the products, the more successful your business will become.

An experienced affiliate manager will also be able to motivate current affiliates by creating fun contests, offering special incentives, and inspiring some friendly competition. When this type of energy happens, sales can sky-rocket.

Some people that sign up with the affiliate program will be brand new to the world of affiliate marketing. This doesn’t mean that they cannot be successful; they just need a little extra help in getting started. A good affiliate manager will know how to reach out to them by creating tools to train them and possibly doing some live training sessions over a conference call.

These are just a few of the many benefits that can be received by hiring an experienced and qualified affiliate manager. Take into consideration these things and talk with others who have hired an affiliate manager for more benefits to find out if it’s the right direction for your program.

Ewen

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In the beginning we want to attract clients, any clients. I don’t mean good or bad clients, but someone who will buy from us or use our services. If we have two or three clients, we think we have hit the big time. Everyone has to start somewhere. As time goes on, we will want to attract more clients.

So, how do we go about this task? It starts with contacts. When you are finding clients in the beginning, a list of contacts created from networking, research, and word of mouth aids us in choosing who to approach.

Get together all those pieces of paper and contact sheets to form a comprehensive list. Some of these people may already be your clients. Put their names on a separate business list. For the others, fill out a profile with as much information as you can on them.

If you have contacted them before, study their reasons for not going with you the first time around. Maybe you didn’t offer the exact service they needed. Maybe your website didn’t look very professional or your brick and mortar business doesn’t have a website at all.

Do yourself a favor: Take their comments seriously. Before contacting them again, be sure to make the changes that meets their need. To do otherwise would damage any future relationship with them. They might feel you didn’t listen to a word they said. Your name would be ingrained in their heads, but not in a good way. And, they will tell all of their business contacts about you.

Another way to bring them in is to offer promotional merchandise. We’ve all gotten these at one time or another. Remember those keychains, sticky notepads, and coffee mugs you picked up from booths at business conventions? These are promotional items used to hook clients.

Now, you may want to start with a letter to the client to gauge their interest before sending anything else. If their interest in you is rekindled, send them some promotional items. Along with these items, send along a sampling of your product line.

Promotional items are a part of your marketing plan. Consider their cost as an investment. For a service-based business, offering a discount or a free component to their first order would also be appropriate. The idea is to get them interested in coming over to your side.

Don’t overlook the obvious ways to get more clients to sample your services. If you have a website, sign visitors up for a mailing list for free coupons and an informational newsletter. Every visitor is a potential new customer. Locally, send out mass mailings with coupon offers or take out ads in trade magazines.

There is more than one way to find new clients. Use your experience as a consumer to tailor your strategy for attracting new business.

Ewen

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There are a lot of factors involved in creating a successful membership site. Sometimes you can have so many things going on at the same time that important details can get overlooked. Here is a handy checklist to help organize and streamline the process:

* Find your topic. Research things you are interested in. If you are passionate about it, others are likely to be too. Besides, it is more enjoyable to spend time working on something you are passionate about.

* Identify your niche. You want your site to stand out from the crowd. This will take some research within your topic, but it is probably the single most important decision you will be making.

* Buy your domain. This is where you figure out your website name and make sure it is available. A good rule of thumb is to keep the name under twenty letters.

* Create a list of content you want to offer your members. The key to a successful site is a compilation of all the resources possible on your topic, as well as unique content like cheat sheets, reviews or checklists.

* Check out the competition and see what they are offering and at what price they are offering it. This doesn’t mean undercutting them, but you don’t want to price yourself out of the market either.

* Design your site. It doesn’t need to be complicated, but it does need to clearly and compellingly communicate what you are offering. Organize your site content in a clean, uncluttered, easily accessible way.

* Secure your automated tools. This can include (but is not limited to) an email auto responder, a shopping cart, and ad tracking. Figure out what you need. You can purchase these separately or bundled together.

* Generate some buzz. You can do this any time after you have identified your niche. You can create buzz by submitting articles to various sites, sending out press releases, or with an early bird membership rate. I would also recommend putting up a tickler page offering something free related to your site (like a report or newsletter) to generate an email list.

* Create your affiliate center. This is for your affiliates’ use, and normally contains their stats, articles for them to use on their sites or ezines, graphic ads they can use, etc.

* If you put up a tickler page, now is the time to replace it with your full site. Test everything to make sure it’s all working perfectly. Keep offering something free that visitors can sign up for, in order to grow your mailing list.

* Hire assistants as needed. At some point in this process or maybe a little further down the road you will likely find you need some help handling all the facets of your site efficiently. You may want to “promote” one or more of your best affiliates or hire a virtual assistant that specializes in affiliate marketing.

No one can guarantee you success. But using this checklist will help you monitor your progress and help you make sure nothing important gets overlooked. If you follow each of these steps and do your research carefully and completely, there is no reason in the world why your site won’t make you money.

Ewen

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There was a time when businesses that were geographically distant from one another found it difficult to form successful partnerships. Large corporations often had branches in many states or countries, but tending to them required lots of travel. The online conference call has made it much easier for businesses and branches to communicate with one another.

Online conference calls may involve online audio, text chat, video, or any combination of these things. They make it easy for people in many locations to come together and share ideas, collaborate, or just keep each other updated on how things are going. Following are some advantages of online conferences for international businesses and joint ventures.

Online Conferences Are Inexpensive

Travel to a foreign country is not a cheap proposition. It is a budget concern for large businesses, and it may be impossible for small ones. Using a conference call as an alternative may allow meetings that normally would have been impossible to take place.

But even regular conference calls can be very expensive when they are international. Holding your conference online reduces costs for everyone involved. Voice chat can be used as a substitute for a phone call, or you can use text or webcam chat.

Online Conferences Reduce Scheduling Conflicts

Travel is not only expensive, it is also time-consuming. Flying to another country can take many hours, and it often requires extensive rearranging of one’s schedule. It can also result in jet lag, causing conference attendees to have trouble concentrating.

Online conferences require only enough scheduling for participants to be in front of their computers at a certain time. Time zone differences may make times inconvenient for some participants, but at least they do not have to make arrangements to be away from home for several days at a time.

Online Conferences Allow Lots of Interaction

On a traditional conference call that takes place strictly over the phone, it may be difficult to get points across. Seeing people’s facial expressions and body language makes oral communication more meaningful. Having an online conference with video makes it easier to interact with other participants.

It’s also possible to use visual aids during an online conference. Even if you’re not using video, you can set up web pages to illustrate your points. You can also share files with others, and even work on documents and other projects together.

Online conferencing makes it possible for businesspeople separated by many miles, and perhaps even an ocean, to collaborate with ease. It makes meetings that once would have been feats of scheduling and budgeting almost worry-free. Whether you’re thinking about making connections with distant businesses or want to find an easier way to work with current partners who are far away, online conferencing can make it happen.

Ewen

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One thing that you can count on in business is that there will always be ups and downs. A business thrives on making the most of its options during both of these times. When your business is not increasing in profits, here are a few things that you can do to liven things up a bit.

First, make sure that you have a sound business plan. Your business plan details a game plan for the growth of the business. It is a guideline that you can use to direct future ventures for your business. The plan is not set in stone. It is open-ended so that you can add and change portions as your business grows.

One thing that is worth your time when business is not moving forward is to re-evaluate your business plan. If it has been some time since you dusted it off and took a look at it, now would be a perfect time. Did the initial business plan include provisions for times of stalled profits like this one?

If not, don’t worry. We can take care of that right now. The last thing that you should do is cut advertising out of your budget. Erroneously, businesses often think that if cash flow is the problem, advertising or not advertising won’t make a difference. In fact, it makes a big difference.

When people are not in a mood to spend money, there are a number of reasons. For starters, they may be resetting their financial priorities. With the changes in the economy, people are holding on tightly to their funds. Purchases and services used need to be worth what is being spent.

Revamp the marketing strategy for your business. The business could be going nowhere fast because the old campaigns don’t work anymore. Test each marketing tool to see what is no longer working and look at your business with fresh eyes. See things the way you did when the business was first getting underway.

Have you made any changes to your website lately? Add some new content. What about Google Ads? They’ll help bring new business and income for you. Since money is a concern, write the content yourself.

Speaking of content, while you are writing some for your own website, consider submitting a few articles to content sites. They have forums where you can make contact with other businesspeople and gain new ideas to revitalize your business. As a bonus, this content will bring added revenue to you while adjusting other areas of the business.

The key to any business surviving the ups and downs of the economy is change. Businesses that branch out in many directions are often diversified enough to find success even after a standstill. If you have the right tools and a bit of creativity, your business will continue to thrive.

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Your membership site is only as good as its content. It is fresh and unique content that draws people to your site. Adding unique content to your site each and every month is a simple and effective way to keep people coming back…and to attract new visitors. You want people to come back to your site over and over. You want them to refer others to your site through your affiliate network. Updating your site each month with new pertinent content is one of the best ways to do this.

Of course if your content is of low quality no one will want to pay you for it. You can’t just post a few things you threw together. Make sure that the content you post is useful to your members. This can include things as simple as tips or hints as well as articles and reviews you have written. They don’t have to be complicated things either. The kinds of tips or hints will depend on your niche, but not everyone is a professional and we were all “newbies” at one time or another. You have to learn the basics somewhere.

Exactly what types of things you can write about will vary widely depending on the subject of your site. Of course there are some things that can apply to just about any site, like marketing ideas and time management. You can write about mistakes you have made along the way, or about something you tried that really paid off.

Another good way to add unique content is to quote from other blogs or news articles relevant to your topic. Don’t simply post a link to another blog and say, “Here is some great info.” Post the link but give it a sub-header and comment about it in your own words. Write a short synopsis of the article or blog and include your thoughts and how you felt about it. Give a short example of how to make use of the information in the article.

If you do not like to write, you can always hire a ghostwriter to brainstorm with you and develop your content. Yes, you will have to spend some of your profits on this service, but it will be worth it. Outsourcing the content to a professional will free up your time and allow you to work on other aspects of the business.

Making sure to provide good, quality content that is relevant to your target audience will keep your subscribers happy. You may find that you have better retention rates, as your customers will stay customers. If you offer an affiliate program, your happy customers will also be more likely to participate in it and refer others to you, thus increasing your profits even more.

Ewen

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Google Adsense is a program which offers website owners the chance to earn passive income through their website or blog. By participating in the program, the website owner allows Google to place ads on their website that are related to the content found on the site.

These ads are then seen by the website’s visitors and when one of them clicks on these ads, the website owner receives a commission. The amount received may also be based on how many times that ad was seen on a per-thousand-impressions basis.

While setting up an Adsense account is simple and easy to do, Adsense offers some tools for the website owners that are very advanced and can help the website owners generate higher profits.

In order to help the users know which ads are working the best for them and are generating the most income, Adsense allows the user to set up channels. This feature enables the Adsense user to assign a unique identifier either to a domain name, a specific URL, or even a particular type of ad unit.

When a website owner takes the time to decide what information means the most to them and then identify ways to track it, Google’s channel system can become an immediate and timely form of market research.

The user will be able to view reports that can suggest which type of ad boxes, colors, and more work best on pages featuring different content or even from different websites.

This information can be very helpful, especially if a website owner owns several websites, each catering to a different niche. Each niche may have different tastes. By identifying what type of Adsense ads attracts each type of target market, the website owner will be able to increase their Adsense revenue.

All of this testing and tracking can take some time to complete. It is possible to outsource this activity to a virtual assistant. Some VAs specialize in internet marketing; they may have a lot of experience in this field and can be a source of great information for you.

Of course, Google offers tutorials on how to make the most of channels and how website owners can maximize their profits by using them. Other tutorials can also be found on the web.

The final results won’t come in overnight, but over some time, a pattern can develop which will make it clear what type of ads attract the most users on each site.

Ewen

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Buying leads may sound like an easy way to market your business, but they may not always be a wise investment. While there are some legitimate lead companies out there, most of them are not known for their high level of ethics. Some of these companies will knowingly sell the names of deceased people, as well as people that are entirely fictional.

Many lead companies generate their leads through gimmick advertising such as contests for free televisions, cars, or other costly items. In order to enter the contest, a person has to fill out a form, including personal information such as their name, email address and phone number. There may have been some fine print on the form that says that by filling out the form, the person agrees to receive information about a home-based business or other offer, but the person filling out the form is probably not reading the fine print.

The lead generation company takes that information and then sells it to their unsuspecting customers. When the lead purchaser calls the lead, the person has no idea that they requested any information about the offer the lead purchaser is calling about. Worse yet, the lead company is most likely selling that leads’ information to five, ten, or even more different customers.

The person who filled out the form in the first place is now being bombarded with email and phone solicitations and the lead purchaser is now out of the money that they spent on the leads. Since there was a bit of fine print on the form that mentioned acceptance of information about an offer, the lead company is not guilty of false advertising.

This, of course, does not mean that all lead companies are bad or unethical. It may take some time to find a legitimate lead company, but it can be done. It is always wise to ask others you trust for referrals of the lead companies they use.

The amount of time the lead company has been in business is also something that should be considered. Lead generation companies that are untruthful tend to be unstable and don’t last very long, for all the right reasons.

When buying leads from a company you have not done business with before, it is wise to purchase a smaller package and test that out before committing to anything costly. The final proof of the value of the leads will be in the sales you make.

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If you have been a part of direct sales marketing or business for very long, you know how difficult it can be to get your whole team together for training meetings. With today’s technology, however, this problem may soon be a thing of the past. There’s a new way to hold team meetings – hold them online.

Before you can host your first virtual team meeting, you will need to make sure a number of items are in place. Each attendee will need a computer, high-speed internet access, and a microphone if they plan to speak. The other needed component is web conferencing software that everyone can access. (Good web conferencing software includes GoToMeeting, WebEX, Webinar, and Microsoft Office Live Meeting.)

Plan to have a test run well before your meeting to ensure that everyone can successfully access the web conference area and there are no other bugs in the system. If everything works well, set a date for the actual meeting that most people on your team will be able to attend.

When you are sure there are no major problems with the web conferencing area or software, begin to create your agenda. Make sure you cover everything that you would at an in-person conference or meeting. Also plan for enough time for each person to share their concerns or give feedback.

A day or so before the planned meeting, send an email to each team member to let them know the agenda. Ask them to have comments or questions prepared to help the time run smoothly. You might also ask that someone act as a secretary for the meeting so no action items are overlooked.

As the online meeting begins, make sure everyone knows that you will be moderating the meeting. You expect each person to keep on task and only discuss things related to your shared business. Even though you’re all in different locations and don’t have to travel for the meeting, everyone is most likely busy. Respect your team members’ time but leave enough time for questions and for you to give an adequate answer.

Close the meeting by thanking each person for attending. Perhaps have a surprise giveaway, and then make plans for your next meeting. Before signing off, let everyone know that you will send notes with action items marked clearly. Then, make sure to follow up on each action item that is mentioned.

Give each person a chance to digest what was discussed and follow up with an email asking them if they felt the meeting was productive or not. Also ask them if there are suggestions for making future meetings more helpful.

Meetings are important for any business with many team members. Online meetings can be a great asset to your downline, but don’t forget to invite members of your upline should the need present itself. When it’s not possible to meet together in person, an online meeting can be a great alternative. Give it a try – you may find that you don’t want to hold meetings in any other way in future.

Ewen

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