Archive for Market Commerce
06.19.08
Posted in Market Commerce at 2:44 pm by admin
Athletes who are having banner years instruct their agents to renegotiate their contracts right away, to wangle lucrative extensions, extra years of gravy, because when you’re hot, you’re hot.
Technically, their teams have no duty to come back to the table, as long as there is a prior contract in effect. Teams can coldly say, a deal is a deal. Talk to us later.
But they don’t, because they fear offending their star player, especially when his or her career is arcing upward. Plus, they want to lock-in future performance at present prices, if they can.
If management is satisfied with a player, they’ll talk with him and his representatives and be willing to elongate or to sweeten the deal.
The same thing applies to nearly anyone in business. If you want to know where you stand with a customer, how satisfied he is, try selling him again, on the spot.
There are incredible advantages to this strategy:
(1) You may get lucky, and grow your business, right away.
(2) If you succeed, you’ll tether your customer to your firm for a longer period, making him resistant to the persuasion of competitors.
(3) When an existing client chooses to buy more, generally, he rationalizes that he’s doing it because he likes you, what you’ve been providing, and how you go about what you do. In other words, he persuades himself that you’re doing a good job and that he’s happy with you. Buying more is conclusive proof to you, and to him, that he’s satisfied.
But what if they don’t like how you’re performing? What, then?
They’ll tell you by hemming and hawing, hesitating, using non-committal language.
They’ll say, “Let’s see how this first program goes, and we’ll take it from there.”
Their lack of comfort, confidence, and satisfaction will be revealed, and you can address it right away, in the open, by asking, “Are you happy with our performance so far?”
If there are problems, you’ll hear a, “Yes, but…” reply.
If they say they’re pleased, you can add, “If you still feel this way at the end of the program, should there be anything standing in the way with regard to expanding it?”
Again, the reply will tell you where you stand. If it’s squarely on quicksand, you’ll know before you completely submerge. In a hopeless situation, you can focus your marketing energies elsewhere.
Trying to sell more to determine where you stand with a customer is a worthy use of your time and effort. It’s like the advice boxer Jake LaMotta’s manager gave him in the movie, “Raging Bull”:
“Take the fight. If you win you win; and if you lose, you win!”
Dr. Gary S. Goodman, President of Customersatisfaction.com, is a popular keynote speaker, management consultant, and seminar leader and the best-selling author of 12 books, including Reach Out & Sell Someone® and Monitoring, Measuring & Managing Customer Service. Gary’s programs are offered by UCLA Extension and by numerous universities, trade associations, and other organizations in the United States and abroad. A popular guest on radio and television, worldwide, Gary is headquartered in Glendale, California. He can be reached at (818) 243-7338 or at: gary@customersatisfaction.com.
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05.25.08
Posted in Market Commerce at 4:23 am by admin
If you have a little initiative and a desire to earn a little extra income from a readily available source, then you may wish to consider a role as an online marketing affiliate. There is no easier or more effective way to earn a revenue from the online boom, without having to invest vast sums of money in the process. It is a simple marketing formula that works as well for the huge online industries as it does for the average Internet user.
The affiliate program works by rewarding website owners with revenues and big businesses with valuable customers. The premise is simple; the affiliate program site offers the potential affiliate all the marketing tools, including banners and text links for free, in exchange for a small portion of their site space. In return the affiliate has the potential to earn a commission based revenue from some of the largest online industries.
The affiliate-marketing program is a unique advertising opportunity, which has allowed many industries and individual businesses to flourish. Few have gained like that of the online poker industry. The potential of online poker may have seemed a little limited before its inception, however now it is one of the leading contenders in an online gaming revolution. Now generating millions of dollars in revenue, the industry has largely grown out of a successful network of affiliate marketers. By introducing as many affiliates as is possible, the poker sites are able to access a huge range of people from the global market that is the Internet.
On their part the affiliates are rewarded by the success of the sites that they represent by earning a portion of the money generated by the players that they introduce. This commission-based revenue offers the affiliates a chance to earn up to 35% of all the money generated by a player, throughout the duration of the life on the site. Therefore the parallel industries work by encouraging further growth in each other. The affiliates must first attract and then forward on customers to earn their revenue. When they achieve this goal they are rewarded with a generous proportion of the money generated by the players. In turn the poker site gets the added bonus of extra players and the subsequent word of mouth advertising and income that they produce. So without ever having to risk a single penny, poker sites can reach a vast audience and expand their market share, and an affiliate can earn an unrestricted amount of money just by hosting a few advertising features.
Discover how to become a super Party Poker affiliate and generate a massive income with poker affiliate programs at http://www.epokeraffiliate.com/
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05.10.08
Posted in Market Commerce at 2:35 am by admin
Copyright 2006 Peter Tarrida del Marmol
Most of you have seen those little buttons on websites labeled
RSS or XML. If you are wondering what they are, RSS means Really
Simple Syndication. Really simple because when you subscribe to
a site that has this feature, you keep up-to-date with new
information without having to check the site every day. This is
really good news because you can use it to get newsfeeds from
major news networks, news on new movies, even your favorite
musician’s tour dates or CD releases.
This new twist to the Internet is very valuable to you as a
Internet marketer too. Imagine replacing email marketing with
RSS marketing. People actually subscribe meaning they want your
information updates, similar to opt-in newsletters. With
newsletters you have to write them and your site content. With
RSS, when you update your content, all subscribers are notified
by their newsreaders.
Newsreaders are special software that read RSS feeds. To get
started, download a free RSS reader.
If you use a Windows PC, go to http://www.rssreader.com
For Mac users, see http://ranchero.com/netnewswire
Once you are set up, here’s all you or your customers have to
do…
Right-click (control-click for Mac users) on any RSS button on a
site, blog or news source that interests you. Select Copy
Shortcut (”Copy Link to Clipboard” for Mac, “Copy Link Location”
for Firefox browsers), and paste that URL into your RSS Reader.
And that is it, you are subscribed. Once you get started, your
favorite parts of the Web come to you. No need to go out and
check for updates all the time. If you do not want to download
software, subscribe to your favorite feeds through My Yahoo or
My MSN.
So how does any of this make you money?
More traffic means more money. By placing RSS on your website or
your blog, anyone can subscribe automatically and know when a
new product or service is available. This new breed of Internet
shopper is not to be ignored. To take advantage of the traffic
you have to make your RSS feed available to website visitors and
submit your feed information to RSS, blog and XML type
directories.
Here’s how you get RSS for your site!
Go to http://blogs.law.harvard.edu/tech/rss for the best source
of RSS and Blog information. There are several file types for
RSS and here you learn which is best and why. The easiest and
fastest way to learn more about this technology and see it in
use is to go to http://rss.sitesell.com where you find all you
need to know about RSS, including solid marketing ideas.
There is no need to become a techie, no need to know all the ins
and outs of RSS and XML. There is huge need for you to know
enough about this newest technology to use it. Once you do, it
comes easy to see how you make money online with RSS. In the
same way newsletters and opt-in email are used for successful
marketing, RSS is much easier, faster, and a much less intrusive
way to communicate with potential or existing clients and
customers.
It’s very critical to provide exactly what people want to make
money online. How can there be a better way to do that than to
allow people to subscribe to their wants and wishes? Start using
RSS and XML technologies to make money online now before it too
becomes the jungle email marketing is. To add fuel to your
marketing fire, use optimized content for frequent updates to
your blogs and web pages and deliver it with RSS
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04.04.08
Posted in Market Commerce at 9:17 am by admin
Client satisfaction starts with meeting or beating the contractual obligations of the relationship. There are also some intangibles that can help you to over deliver to a client.
Meetings
In most organizations it’s easy to deliver additional value around meetings, because statistically, most companies run meetings poorly. Capture important notes during your meetings and then deliver your neatly typed notes consistently with your client’s format. Not only will it allow you to capture the main ideas and benefit of important discussions, but it will almost always be appreciated by your client’s team members. Send this as soon after the meeting as possible.
Proactively help to define the agendas and outcomes for each meeting. Help keep things on track and try to meaningfully contribute towards these goals. Become highly proficient at running successful meetings.
If there are action items for other team members that are critical to your projects success, tactfully contact the team member and offer your help if it makes sense. Keeping the project on track internally helps you accomplish your goals as a consultant and you’ll be viewed favorably as a team player.
Reports
Delivering quality reports during your client engagement will enhance your image as a consultant because they’re so visible to the internal team members. In your earliest meeting possible get together with the client and define parameters for the report format and content. Every client has different needs so don’t assume that your template doesn’t need to change. Information important to one client is not interesting to another. Define up front what works and then deliver it.
As with the rest of your communications, a picture is worth a thousand words. You or your staff should become proficient at producing flow charts, Gantt charts, performance charts and architectural diagrams. Drawings in your report that communicate an abundance of information make it easy to use.
Perfect the art of the executive summary. For busy executives in the client organization, sometimes they’ll only want a one page summary. Make sure it communicates the key issues of the report. If they want more information, they’ll drill down.
Accessibility
Make it easy to contact you around the clock using email, phone, or mobile. The more you’re as accessible as internal team members the more you will be regarded as one. Have backup plans when you know you’re not going to be available. Proactively contact your clients letting them know if there will be a period of time they won’t be able to get a hold of you and give them some alternative options.
Profit Engineering
Our company focuses on profit engineered technology, that is, how we maximize the ROI on the technology we deploy. We pay attention to the business process, the costs of the process and try to achieve the best solution possible that will impact the bottom line for our client. And we’re also pretty good at communicating this to the client so they can appreciate our responsible efforts.
About The Author
Bryan Brandenburg has published 5 books as well as a number of articles both in print and on the internet. He has published almost 30 software programs both for consumers and business. More information can be found at www.vmmg.net.
b.brandenburg@vmmg.net
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03.28.08
Posted in Market Commerce at 8:33 am by admin
Do you know what your website is worth? The short answer: Multiply the number of unique monthly visitors to your website by $38. That is, if you average 1000 unique monthly visitors, your website is worth $38,000; if you average 100,000 unique monthly visitors, your website is worth $3.8 million.
Consider some of the following purchases in the last year:
Dow Jones purchases MarketWatch for $519 million
America Online purchases Weblogs Inc for $25 million
News Corp. purchases MySpace for $580 million
InterActiveCorp purchases Ask Jeeves for $1.9 billion
In an article entitled “What Works,” the December issue of Business 2.0 magazine looks at recent sales of websites and analyzes the websites’ traffic to reach a value for each monthly visitor. The figure they came up with is $38 per unique monthly visitor.
So what does this mean? For high traffic websites, bubble-era buyouts are back. If you own a high traffic website you can, potentially, sell it and strike it rich. Now, the above example of a website that generates 1000 monthly visitors is just that, an example; nobody’s interested in 1000 visitors. But, if you have 100,000 monthly visitors and up you may be on to something. High traffic is worth money in advertising revenue. Internet advertising spending will reach $12 billion by the end of this year.
The article states that venture capitalists look at three metrics when valuing an internet company:
1. The cost of enrolling new users to the website
2. The stickiness of the website (the frequency of repeat visits)
3. Add-on services (like premium accounts)
I would go further to say that websites that target a niche audience that isn’t already saturated by other websites will be worth more. Take MySpace.com, for example; it targets the 18-35 age bracket. Off the top of my head, I can think of dozens of websites that directly compete for the same advertising dollars… TheFaceBook.com, Friendster.com, ClassMates.com, HotOrNot.com, to name just a few. Yet, MySpace.com sold for $580 million. What if your website has high traffic but also attracts a different demographic, a demographic that advertisers would like to get to but don’t yet have the opportunity to do so? How much is that worth?
Also, I would say that websites that find a way to get users to pay for unique services will also cash in. We’ve all seen websites that offer free accounts but require a fee to upgrade to premium accounts. PhotoBucket.com, a photo sharing site, requires a monthly fee for increased bandwidth. Ryze.com, a business networking site, requires a monthly fee just to be able to email other members on the site. But what if your website charges users a fee for unique information? And, what if your users are more than willing to pay for it? How much is that worth?
So, how much is your website worth? Only time will tell.
Tino Buntic is the creator of TradePals, providing qualified sales leads to business professionals and entrepreneurs across The United States and Canada.
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03.26.08
Posted in Market Commerce at 4:59 pm by admin
If you want to make money online without having you own products, selling other people’s products could be the ticket. Selling others products has many advantages. You do not have to spend time on creating the products, you do not have to set up a system to sell and deliver the products, and you do not have to get a merchant account and pay recurring merchant account fees. The person who owns the product does all of these things for you. All you have to do is market the product and make money with it.
So how can you make money with other people’s products? People who have created products usually run affiliate programs. An affiliate program is a way for you to earn commissions every time you sell someone else’s product. When you sign up for an affiliate program, you will get your own unique id you use to link to products you are promoting. Once you make sales using your affiliate links, you will generate commissions.
Here are five steps to take to make money with affiliate products:
- Find A Product To Sell. Before going any further, you need to find a product that will sell. A product should have a professional appearance, be presented on a professional web site and be a quality product that you would want to recommend to others.
Once you find the product, join the affiliate program for it and get your affiliate links.
- Create A Web Site To Sell The Affiliate Product. Having your own web site to promote the affiliate products is best. I always recommend that you get your own domain name and web hosting to host your web site.
The cost of domain names and web site hosting has come down considerably since just a few years ago. You can now get a domain name for about $8 per year and web site hosting for under $10 per month. At these prices you don’t have to be a millionaire or commit to a large capital outlay to start your own web site.
- Create Content For The Web Site. To get more visitors and more sales, you need content for your web site. It is not enough to just link to the product with your affiliate link. In order to make money with your affiliate link you need to bring potential buyers to your web site. A great way to bring them in is with content that is of interest to them, and is related to the product you are promoting.
One good way to generate the content for your web site is by creating your own content and articles that are related to the topic of the product you are promoting. Another good way is by using the articles that were written by the author of the product. Many authors allow their affiliates use the authors’ articles on their web sites, and use the affiliate link in the resource box.
- Optimize Your Web Site for Search Engines. Search engine optimization is the process of modifying web page content and meta-information to improve the search engine ranking of the page. Successful search engine optimization will greatly increase the number of visitors that come to your web site. The more visitors to the web site you have, the more affiliate products you will be able to sell, and the more money you will make.
Make sure you optimize every page of your web site for search engines; that way you will get more web site visitors.
- Use Your Articles To Promote The Affiliate Product. Article publishing is a great way to drive traffic to your web site. Start by writing a few articles that are of interest to the people who would want to purchase the product you are promoting. Use the About The Author Resource Box to promote the product. Then take your articles and submit them to article directories. Doing this will bring more traffic to your web site and help you make more money.
Remember, you do not need to create your own products to make money online. Follow the five steps we outlined above to make lots of money selling other people’s products.
Start making money today! Biana Babinsky pays you 50% commissions for selling her Complete Online Marketing Course. Learn how at http://www.completemarketingcourse.com/affiliates/
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