Archive for July, 2007

There are days when working from home can be very challenging. You may be under a tight deadline and it seems that a new obstacle creeps up at every opportunity. Perhaps your business isn’t moving as fast as you had hoped and you’re ready to throw in the towel. Whatever has you ready to give up, don’t let it win. Instead, grab your motivational toolbox and get pumped up.

Your motivational toolbox is your secret weapon against stress and anxiety. These are the trainings, the audios, books, emails, or pictures you keep stashed in case of emergency. Your toolbox can be a digital arsenal stored on your computer or it can be an actual toolbox filled with tangible items.

Audio trainings are great to listen to for motivation. They are quite easy to find on the Internet as more and more people are embracing audio technology on their websites. Another benefit is that you can simply download the audio to your MP3 player and go for a walk, which will get your heart pumping and help lower your stress. There are many Internet Talk Radio programs to choose from.

Login to your Aweber account and choose the list you wish to broadcast to by either choosing it from the drop down list at the top of the page or clicking on the list name in the table in the middle of the page.  You’ll know you are in the right list when the list you see beside Managing List: is the one you see.

Click the “Messages” tab at the top of your screen and choose “Broadcast” from the options listed.  Next, click the green “Create Broadcast Message” button in the middle of your screen.  Complete the following steps to send your broadcast message to your subscriber list.

Send On:  Choose the date and time you’d like your message to be sent.

Use View:  If you want to send to all the subscribers on your list (this list only not all lists) choose All Leads, otherwise choose from the options in the drop down list to specify which leads you want to contact.

Include/Exclude Lists: This will tell you which list you have chosen.  If you would like to send to multiple lists you can click the link in the description to choose the lists you would like to broadcast to.

As a business owner I have a virtual assistant, her name is Angela Wills. I remember when Angela first started accepting clients inside Mom Masterminds where I met her.

I didn’t need a VA (Virtual Assistant) at the time so I passed by her at the time. Boy was that a BIG mistake. Later on down the road, ah maybe about 2 months later I asked her if she could do some work for my websites. And she had to turn me down!

At the time I didn’t realize what a good VA she really was, so I told her to let me know when things opened up for her.

I think it took a full year for her to get back to me! Why? Because she was so darn busy with her clients, she had no time to take on anyone new.

Angela also quit her J-O-B this year of 2007! And it’s been great seeing her business grow by leaps and bounds. And I’m also lucky that I’m also a client of hers now too.

Put it this way… Angela is GOOOOOD!

Christmas is THE season for the entire scrapbook industry although we’re still in July, you should plan now to do a media blast. Really start thinking Big on how you can gain major exposure for your business by using this one holiday season.

Before you start writing a press release, you really need to think about creating the best, biggest, Christmas event you can muster up.

You could join up with other store owners and create a huge event at a local hotel or convention centre. Just because you have competition, doesn’t mean you can’t join up and work together for this incredible day.

What do you want… your regular customers who are loyal to your store, OR a real bang up job and have hundreds of women discovering your business?

So let’s talk about your press release.

First off, you need to create a press release and distribute them locally, and online. This will drive traffic to your site and traffic to those stores that are joining the day with you.

Maybe you’ve never thought to create a press release before, so let’s dig into what exactly a press release is…..

I decided this week that I need to do a ”Scrapbook Intervention.” So many of us start scrapbooking, then get busy with life and don’t get together with our friends as much to scrapbook.

Jackie is my first ”Scrapbook Intervention.” I love her to bits, and she is my very best friend from childhood.  We love the time we spend scrapbooking together and both realize we need to make this time for eachother more often.

I was very lucky to grow up with some pretty nice women who I spent alot of time with when we were kids. Yes, I am lucky to have 3 other women that grew up with us, and I’m close to them and can call them my best friend also.

This weeks show is all about our friendship, getting together and scrapbooking, and remembering our past way back to our childhood.

Jackie and I made a promise to eachother at the end of our call, and that’s to set a date every 2 months to get together and scrapbook. We are planning to commit this to eachother. We live farther apart now and this works for us.

Writer’s block is a common ailment among writers, whether it is a news reporter under a deadline or a student trying to finish a report.  If you are a blogger, you may find yourself suffering from “blogger’s block”, the condition of not knowing what to put in your blog.

Your blog should feature your voice. It is easy to find reprint articles when you feel stuck, but try to avoid putting them in your blog. You can publish a reprint article on your website and create a blog post that links to it, but keep the blog content your own. This will enable your readers to get a feel for your personality, as well as develop a relationship with you.

The media is a great place to find things to blog about. Watch the local news, read the paper, or check media websites. Take a look at what is going on in the world and spin the stories into a tale for your readers. If you have a website about home schooling and come across a news clip that features something they would find interesting, by all means, blog about it. After you give your opinion on the story, link to the original news source as a convenience for your readers. They may find your post so interesting; they’ll want to read the original story, too.

If you are looking for a way to drive traffic to your website, look to your blog. Blogs are an excellent way to communicate with your target market and invite them to visit your site. Here are some tips you can use to blog for traffic.

Post on your blog regularly; at least 3 times a week. By updating your blog on a regular basis, you are giving your readers a reason to keep referring back to your blog. If you are providing timely and informative posts, your readers will see you as an expert in your field.

They will turn to your blog as a way to seek answers to their questions. Posting regularly also develops a relationship between you and your customer. They will get to know you and trust your opinion.

By installing a feed burner onto your blog, you will make it easier to keep in contact with your customers. Your readers will be able to subscribe to your blog and choose to have new posts delivered right to their email or computer’s homepage. There are several services to choose from, and you can get a basic service for free. Setting up the service is easy; you simply install a small piece of HTML code onto your blog.

When it comes to website traffic, the old saying “the more the merrier” doesn’t exactly apply. Simply having lots of traffic will not increase the number of sales you have. Your goal in creating traffic is to attract targeted traffic, which will in turn, bring you more paying customers. You can have a lot of traffic coming to your website, but if they are not interested in your product or service, what good will it do to have them visit your site?

If you do a search on the Internet for ways to increase traffic to your site, you will find websites that sell software or monthly membership packages that promise to bring traffic to your site. Don’t be fooled by these costly gimmicks. There are many ways you can increase traffic to your site for free.

What these companies don’t tell you is that one of the methods they use to drive traffic to your site is paying people to “surf” the Internet. People log into a website, enter a password and their computer will automatically “surf the net”, displaying different websites. However, the person that logged in isn’t necessarily paying attention to the screen – or even looking at it. The company that you paid may be driving “traffic” to your site in terms of visitors, but that doesn’t guarantee more customers.

Article Marketing is a great tool to use when it comes to adding traffic to your site. If you are not familiar with what it is, Article Marketing is simply writing articles and submitting them to article reprint directories on the web.

As you know, having fresh content on your website and blog is key when it comes to getting search engine traffic. Many website owners and bloggers visit article reprint directories on a daily basis, in search of articles to use on their sites.

When you submit an article to a directory, you are allowing other website owners and bloggers permission to add your article to their site – for free. However, they need to include an “about the author” box at the end of the article. You get to write what you want included in that box, so include a bit of information about the product or service you offer and include links to your site.

When the website owner or blogger puts your article up on the web, all of their readers will see your biography information and the links to your website. Your article could end up on hundreds or thousands of websites, and quite possibly, millions of people could end up reading it! Who knows how many people could click on your link?

Everyone has times when they lack motivation. On the other hand, you may be so motivated and full of ideas that you lose your focus because you are trying to juggle too many tasks at once. However, multi-tasking may do more harm than good. When your mind is divided by too many tasks, your productivity decreases. Here are some tips to help you stay focused and motivated on your business.

Choose a Niche
Once you know what your niche market is, you will be able to focus on tasks that will help you with that particular market. Try to narrow your market as much as possible. For instance, if you have a coaching business and want to help people work from home, perhaps you can target a certain field, such as web designers or virtual assistants. You will gain a reputation for being an expert in that field and will be able to help people create specific plans while coaching them to success.

Set Goals, and Write Them Down
When you set goals for your business, you are defining the direction in which you want to take your business. When you write them down, you are greatly increasing the odds that you will accomplish the goals you have set.

To create an autoresponder series for a list in Wahmcart, simply create a mailing list as you normally would, making sure you add a welcome message as your first message in the series.  This message will have a 0 day delay so that your subscribers will receive it immediately after they sign up.

The steps to follow will walk you through setting up more messages in your autoresponder series.  We’ll use the example of Becky’s Blankets who sends a plain text email to their subscribers once per week.

Login to your account.  Choose Followup => View Lists => Choose the list you want to add to and click Messages => Click Add Message

Choose whether you would like your message to be delivered in plain text or HTML.  By default Wahmcart does plain text.

Next enter the delay of the message.  This is in days and is the number of days after a subscriber signs up for the list.  Since this is the first followup email (not counting the welcome message), set the delay to 7.  Subscribers will then receive their first email 7 days after they sign up.

Press Releases can help your business gain publicity through the media. Having media attention gives your business credibility. Here are some tips to boost your press release’s appeal.