If you are selling on the Web and relies on pay per click search engine marketing to get traffic, you’d know that the costs are creeping up. The BlueNile.com CEO Mark Vadon said in February “To give you perspective, in our top five keywords, our cost per click was up over 80 percent compared to a year ago.” Target Marketing magazine in an article on “Conversion Tactics” stated that traffic alone will not be enough. The article recommends: Shift more resources to conversion tactics and less toward traffic generation. Focus on holes in the buying process (where visitors might be

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I’ve met a lot of women (even men) who have made comfortable, if not fantastic, income from direct selling. From Avon to Mary Kay to Tupperware, direct selling is a low-cost business that anyone can start from the comfort of their homes. So I find the article over at MSNBC “Tupperware parties with a twist” very interesting, not so much as to the products being sold but the enthusiastic response these types of parties are attracting. The author is even surprised at the multi-generational participation of women in these parties. Apparently, there is demand in America for these types of

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Marketing is the lifeblood of business, as they say. A business, whether big or small, will go nowhere without customers. Small and home-based businesses are faced with a tougher challenge in getting the word out about the business given our limited resources. Hence, we need to work smarter, be more creative and find inexpensive ways of marketing our businesses. Here are some articles that discuss low-cost marketing strategies that home-based businesses can do: Marketing Your Small Business through Product Demonstrations Using Phone on Hold Marketing for Your Business Trade Show Giveaways Attract Visitors How to Beat Your Biggest Competitor with

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Shop.org, the online division of the National Retail Federation, and BizRate Research have released a new study that looked at the various marketing campaigns and promotions used by the retailers for the holiday season. The study called “2006 Online Retail Holiday Best Practices” analyzed the holiday promotions that worked best including the best sales drivers for etailers. It ranked the various promotional strategies according to effectiveness and provided a measure of the usage of said strategies. Some of its findings include: 1. Holiday Promotions that Worked Best Free shipping with no conditions — ranked 4.4 in terms of effectiveness and

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If you are planning to advertise your business, there are several mediums you can choose and factors you need to consider. You can advertise in radio, Yellow Pages, online directories, billboards, cable — or even several mediums at the same time. In making your decision, you need to ask questions like: What is the most effective way in reaching my customers? How effective is the advertising medium I chose? What budget can I afford? Of course, you want to use the medium that will give you the biggest bang for your buck. The best return on investment! You may want

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Nolo has a little book called “Your Little Legal Companion: Helpful Advice for Life’s Big Events” that provides tips on how to handle situations from having a child in kindergarten to managing retirement. The book has a section called “Having a Brilliant Idea” and here are the 10 tips that they offer: 1. Who’s going to buy it? Before anything else, think of the marketability of your idea. Marketability is “the single most important factor in commercializing an idea.” Before thinking of patents, research on who will potentially purchase the product resulting from your idea and how you are going

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In my discussions with online sellers, the best sources of traffic for an online store are as follows: 1. Offer the best products and build a solid reputation. Everything starts with creating the best products you can possibly offer. Granted that some of the best products do not necessarily translate to huge success, small online retailers cannot afford to sell mediocre products. Customers are most likely to buy a product from a reputable online company with the LOWEST LANDED (Delivered) COST. 2. Rank well in the search engines (organic search results, not the pay per click). SEs can be a

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If you haven’t yet played around with Google Webmaster Tools http://www.google.com/webmasters , I strongly urge you to sign up your websites. It has a variety of tools to help you improve and understand your Google rankings. One of the tools is a Site Diagnostic Tool that tells you how many pages of your site are in Google and when was the last time the Googlebot visited your site. To get detailed statistics, you need to either add a code in your metatag or upload a file in your server. Once that’s done, you can get information on HTTP errors Not

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Someone over at Yahoo Answers asked: If i were to open an online scrapbooking store with really great low prices, a whole variety of products both old and new and barely any knowledge on the materials, how sucessful will my business be? Low prices and wide selection of great products are key ingredients of a successful retail tore — any business that provides these two elements can expect reasonable chances of success. What caught my eye, though, is the phrase “barely any knowledge on the materials.” An online store is unlike a traditional store where you can put the materials

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According to a Center for Disease Control study , an estimated 16 percent of children and adolescents ages 6-19 years are overweight. And the number seem to be growing! In fact, this estimate represent a 45% increase from their previous study. Childhood obesity is caused by a myriad problems. But a huge part is attributed to young people not regularly engaging in vigorous-intensity physical activity. Participation in physical education classes has been dropping. Children are sitting more on the sofa watching TV or playing computer games instead of running around. Whatever the reason for childhood obesity, this is one market

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Here are some resources on how to start a party planning business How to Start a Planning Business Personal Event Planning Business Plan (Free) Party Planning Business Party planner’s growing business I recommend reading the following books for in-depth information The Party Planner by Charles Maring, Jennifer Maring, and David Tutera It’s Party Time: How to Start & Operate Your Own Home-Based Party-Planning Business by M. L. Hine

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