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A Home-Based Business Online March 18 Sent to 9,075 Subscribers Editor: Elena Fawkner Publisher: AHBBO Publishing Online Home Business Contact By Email 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 7. 9. 1. Hello again and a warm welcome to all the new subscribers who have joined us since the last issue! This week's article is about the importance of multiple income streams, a crucial issue for those of you who rely heavily on only one source of income in your online business. With the slide the stockmarket is taking on the back of recent dotcom busts, it's important for all of us to make sure we don't have all our eggs in one basket. To this end, this week sees an excerpt from the "Write A Book" online course, from Steve Manning. If you're looking for another income stream for your business or have ever wanted to write a book (we all have one in us, as they say) I'm sure you'll find Steve's writing as motivating and inspirational as I do. You can sign up to receive daily instalments of the course, which is free. Details at segment 4. Finally, I want to take this opportunity to clarify a possible misconception I may have inadvertently created with the article from a couple of weeks back entitled "Un-Due Process". In that article, I referred to the spam-intercepting software, SpamKiller. The owner of the software has suggested that my article incorrectly gave the impression that the software automatically added addresses to the recipient list of spam complaints. This was not my intention. To set the record straight, although SpamKiller includes a feature whereby the user can have the software scan the body of an email for all email addresses and URLs contained therein, it is the user who must manually decide and select which of those addresses actually receive a complaint. The software does *not* send a complaint to all those addresses automatically. You can check out SpamKiller for yourself. As always, thanks for reading and I hope you enjoy this week's issue. Remember, this ezine is for YOU! If you have comments or suggestions for topics you would like to see addressed, or would just like to share your experiences with other subscribers, I want to hear from you! Please send comments, questions and stories to Contact By Email . 2. Grow, process (if necessary) and sell fresh, preserved and dried herbs (seeds, parts, plants). Examples are dill, basil, cumin, celery seed and cilantro (coriander). It is surprising that with so many gardeners and the high prices of herbs on the shelves of the supermarkets, that many more haven't gotten into the lucrative field of herb growing and processing. When you're in the store for herbs and spices, they are usually expensive -- $2.00 per ounce and up. Still many still grow wild! Bay leaves for example are available free by the bushel on bay trees that grow all over the south. To be successful in the herb and spice business, grow things that do well in your area -- that you have adequate facilities and room for. Of course, you can expand the list of possibilities with a greenhouse and various climate control devices, plus soil manipulation. At the least you will probably need a small greenhouse (or hot frame) to start your plants and perhaps a screened area for growing and/or drying that is secure from insects and other pests. For the rest of this report, visit http://www.ahbbo.com/herbspice.html . ----- There are many more ideas like this at the AHBBO Home Business Ideas page at free home based business ideas with more being added all the time. 3. © 2013 Elena Fawkner Over the past few days the news headlines have been focused on Wall Street and the downward spiral of all of the major stock indexes. As usual when one of these shake-outs occurs, the popular media tries to reduce the issues to easy to understand, bite-size morsels. A favorite strategy is to profile a "typical" small investor who had all his eggs in one basket when the market crashed and now his entire life savings are nothing more than red ink on his personal balance sheet. Had our typical small investor diversified his portfolio, investing some of his capital in blue chip stocks, some in tech stocks, some in property, some in bonds, chances are he would still be in the black. The same can be said for anyone running an online business. The online environment is so dynamic and volatile, and so many so-called "hot" opportunities come and go (and don't do much in between), that devoting your entire enterprise to just one product or service offering is nothing short of dangerous, if not outright foolish. The answer, then, is to place a few eggs in several baskets, so if the bottom falls out of one, you can still make an omelet with what's left. In other words, diversify your product and service offerings to generate multiple streams of income. SOURCES OF INCOME Here's five ideas to get you started: 1. Affiliate programs. 2. Own products and services. 3. Website advertising. 4. Ezine advertising. 5. Content access via subscription. We'll look at each of these individually in a moment, but first, one important caveat. The concept of multiple streams of income does NOT mean you should rush out and add new products and services to your repertoire willy-nilly. Whatever you choose to offer must be closely related to the subject matter of your site. If your site is about pet care, don't try and sell saucepans. To do so is not only a waste of valuable time and other resources but you compromise the integrity of your site's purpose, not to mention your credibility as an expert in your field. But even more importantly than that, all traffic is not created equal. Sure, if you create a separate page on your pet care website just for your new saucepan line you may attract one or two site visitors you may not have attracted otherwise. But those visitors were interested in saucepans, not pet care. Once they reach your site they'll assume you've lost the plot and click away faster than you can say “where'd he go?". Far, far better to have fewer site visitors who are all highly interested and motivated by the subject matter of your site (highly targeted traffic) than relatively more visitors who are only somewhat interested and motivated (untargeted traffic). The return on your investment will always be MUCH higher from targeted traffic in the form of repeat visits, referrals, recommendations and, of course, all-important sales. OK, let's turn now to the five sources of income. AFFILIATE PROGRAMS The first and most obvious source of income is affiliate programs. I'm sure most of you are already well-familiar with the concept but, if not, you can get a quick primer by reading the article at http://www.ahbbo.com/affiliate.html . To be effective as an income-generator, the affiliate programs you choose should be closely related to the subject matter of your site in the sense that a visitor interested in your website content will also be interested in the subject matter of the affiliate program you are promoting. To start your search for appropriate affiliate programs, visit http://www.associatesearch.com OWN PRODUCTS While affiliate programs are a good place to start, you are working on commission. For significant, long-term, sustainable income you need to develop your own line of products and services. This does not necessarily mean you must personally create the product or service; it just means you get to keep the profits on any sale. You could, for example, sell products you purchase from a wholesaler. Under this type of arrangement, you buy the product for a certain price and sell it for a higher price. The difference is your profit. The profit under this type of arrangement will, 99% of the time, be significantly higher than the commission income you generate with affiliate programs. If you don't want to bother with the hassle of storing inventory and shipping orders, make arrangements for the wholesaler to drop-ship orders to your customers instead. Of course, you can always create your own products as well. A good option for an online business is a digital product such as an e-book since production and distribution costs are extremely low. Your customer simply downloads the product from your server to her hard disk. But you don't have to restrict yourself to digital products. You might choose to write a book and have it professionally bound and printed. Or you may choose to make your book available in both digital and traditional format with different price points to reflect the different production and shipping costs. WEBSITE ADVERTISING Once you have generated consistently high, targeted traffic to your website, you can begin to think about charging for third party advertising on some of your website real estate. The price you can charge for banner advertising depends on your traffic whether your advertiser pays you to simply host his banner or whether she pays you per click-through. Particularly if your revenue depends on click-through it is very important (both for you and your advertiser in terms of repeat business) that your advertiser's product or service is relevant to the overall subject matter of your website. Your pricing would generally be set at a CPM rate, for example $20 per thousand page views. So, if your site receives 5,000 page views a week, that's $100 a week in advertising revenue. The more targeted your traffic, the more you can charge as your CPM. EZINE ADVERTISING You have, I'm sure, heard it said many times that a great way to generate traffic to your website is to publish an ezine (electronic magazine or newsletter). that's certainly true. Ezines are a terrific traffic generator. But they can also be a source of revenue in their own right. Once you hit 1,000 subscribers (as a general rule) you can start charging for advertising in your ezine. Again, CPM is a good pricing model to start with. I price my advertising at $5 CPM. This means if I have 8,000 subscribers, a classified ad costs $40; if I have 9,000 subscribers, a classified ad costs $45, and so on. Again, the more targeted your subscriber database, the higher your CPM. Some very highly targeted, specialized ezines can charge as much as $40 CPM or more. Others that are very general and untargeted may only be able to generate $2 CPM. Again, the time and effort you expend in targeting your market audience, the higher your potential revenue. CONTENT ACCESS The number one commodity people are looking for online is information. Consider making your website content available on a members-only basis, charging a membership fee for access. Your content has to be of genuine value to your website visitors, however. don't try this if all you're offering is a collection of other people's articles. The type of content that lends itself well to this type of arrangement includes things like apartments for rent listings (eg http://www.westsiderentals.com ), home-based job openings, that sort of thing. Members-only sites that consist of a collection of freely available products and tools can also work well if, by joining, the member saves him or herself many hours of independent searching and collating the relevant materials. Apart from information, entertainment-type content also lends itself well to a pay-for-access type of arrangement. The obvious example is the highly lucrative internet pornography industry. Say what you will about it, it is a business model that most online entrepreneurs would love to be able to replicate in their own industry, if only they could generate the same level of interest. It's that targeted traffic principle yet again! As I said, these are just a few ideas to get you started. Once you start implementing these, others will suggest themselves to you. It really doesn't matter what you do so long as it works for you. By all means, if something works well, don't stop what you're doing. But don't rest on your laurels either. Make sure you always have other wells to drill if today's runs dry. ------ ** Reprinting of this article is welcome! ** This article may be freely reproduced provided that: (1) you use the autoresponder copy which contains a resource box; (2) you leave the resource box intact; and (3) you only mail to a 100% opt-in list. Resell More Than 30 Best Selling ebooks for 100% Royalty FREE Profit on Your Website. FULL Resale Rights , Unlimited Updates and a 365 day Guarantee that is insane. All for one very low price that simply cannot be beaten. 4. by Steve Manning Welcome to your first lesson on how to get your book written faster than you ever thought possible. My name is Steve Manning. I'm the creator of the run-away best- selling, writing success program, "How To Write A Book On Anything in 14 Days or Less... Guaranteed!" I envy you. You're about to write a book. And although I've already written several myself, I know the thrill that comes with starting a new one. I see it every time I give my lecture to professionals all over the world. These are folks who are just like you. Folks who have an overwhelming desire to write that very special book (fiction or non-fiction). And if you've already made the decision to write your book, I don't need to tell you all the benefits that can come your way. Many of my clients are professionals. Folks like doctors, lawyers, consultants, speakers, engineers, professors and so on. Hundreds of them. From all over the world! They know exactly what a published book means to them. It means greater notoriety, more success, credibility, status, revenue, lead generation, and much more. In fact, there are as many different reasons for writing a non-fiction book as there are people who want to write them. And I've helped my students do it all. If you're thinking about fiction maybe you see yourself as the next Grisham, or the next Creighton; the next Danielle Steele or the next Anne Rice. You've got a story to tell and you want to tell it... as wonderfully as possible. Let me tell you that I'm here to help make it happen for you. My passion (call it a magnificent obsession) is to help as many people write as many books as they want to write--and get them published! That's why I personally answer more than 100 emails a day, field dozens of calls and personally edit my student's work. People are always amazed when they call to order my success program and they get me personally. They're amazed when they call me at 10:00 at night to ask a question (I invite my students to do that) and they get me! Now, there's no way I can cram all the information, details and strategies of my success program into a series of emails. My hope is that you'll take the information I give you here and realize the value of the total program, then go back to my website () and order it. If you do, you'll have all the information you could possibly need to write as many books as you could want to. And, you'll have me at your beck and call, too, just as hundreds of my students do! If you don't order the program, well, at least I've done everything I possibly can to make it happen for you, in the brief time we've got together. Let's get started. The first piece of information I want to give you is so profound that most people simply don't get it. It is the very basis of speedwriting. Someone once asked Isaac Asimov why he was so prolific. His answer was unbelievably simple, complex and informative. "I guess I'm prolific because I have a simple and straight-forward style!" So powerful are these words that they should be engraved in stone and placed on the desk of every writer who has ever thought about producing a book. "I guess I'm prolific because I have a simple and straightforward style." Ironically, Asimov could just as easily have said, "I guess I have a simple and straightforward style because I'm prolific." The two statements are co-dependent. If you want to be prolific, you must have a simple and straightforward style. But the only way you can have a simple and straightforward style… is to be prolific. I'll explain… Do you know ANYONE who does something well? If they do it well, chances are very good they also do it very quickly. Now, this does not mean in order to do something well, you should do it quickly. It means only that those who do something very well almost always do it quickly. They have mastered the details, they have mastered the techniques, and they have mastered the process and the challenges. With this mastery comes proficiency. And proficiency will always be accompanied by speed. Now my next point of explanation… In order to write well, you should write the way you talk. If you write the way you talk, your writing will always be very understandable to the reader. There will be no convoluted sentences. No $25 words, where a 50-cent offering will suffice. There will be no misunderstanding. No misinterpretation. When you talk to friends, you don't 'put on airs' in your speech. You speak to be understood, and (with the exception of politicians) you usually are. And just about every writing instructor, agent, editor, publisher and reader will tell you that if you write the way you talk, your manuscript will be infinitely more readable, publishable and sellable. You've already mastered the art of talking. You've been doing it ever since you were a few months old, and you've been honing, practicing and developing your talking skills just about every day of your life! You have mastered the details, you have mastered the techniques, and you have mastered the process and the challenges. With this mastery comes proficiency. And proficiency will always be accompanied by speed. Does that last paragraph sound familiar? I used it to describe a person who has mastered a skill previously. You talk relatively quickly because you know how to talk. You know what you want to say and how you want to say it. Those who know how to do something well, usually do it quickly. You know how to talk, so you talk quickly (by that I mean you don't labor over every word). If you want to write well, write the way you talk… The logic is inescapable. If you want to write well, write quickly. If you write quickly, you will always write the way you talk (you won't have time to develop the awkward sentence). If you want to write well… write fast! If you want to be prolific, write quickly. If you want to write well, write quickly. The faster you write, the better you write! ------ You can receive future instalments of Steve's free Write-A-Book tutorial by signing up at his website. Instalments arrive at daily intervals. Click here to go to Steve's site: ------ Steve Manning is author of "How to Write A Book On Anything In 14 Days Or Less ... Guaranteed! -- An Expert's Step-by-Step Guide". "DOWNSIZED?" Thousands have... Take control of you future! Master your own Destiny while making $2-300 per day. Now you can EARN...while you learn! Click below for Free information. 5. TIP #1: How to quickly add a name to your address book. Outlook Express: When you're in the Inbox, double-click on the message. This will display it in its own window. Then, on the 'From' line (in the message header), RIGHT-click on the name of the person or company that sent the message, and select the "Add to Address Book" option. The name will be added. Netscape Messenger: While reading a message, pull down the Message menu, and select "Add to Address Book." Eudora: While reading a message, pull down the Special menu, and select "Make Address Book Entry". Or, as a shortcut, you just hit Ctrl-K on the keyboard. TIP #2: Have you received an email that was forwarded to you, and it contains information that should have been kept private? Can you stop this kind of "forward-itis"? Not really. Some people will forward all email. They're incorrigible forwarders, and love to send messages all over the place. The only way you can stop them is to NOT send them confidential mail in the first place. If someone sends you a message alerting you to something that is bad or outrageous, don't forward the letter unless you're sure it's true. Especially those messages about "mail viruses". Forget them. You cannot get a virus just from reading your e-mail. Those kinds of viruses simply do not exist, and the only damage--scaring the people who don't know this--is done by foolish people who forward such messages. ------ Tips by Tom Glander and Joe Robson of The Newbie Club. The best Newbie Site ever to hit the Web. 7. Subscription Management To SUBSCRIBE to this Newsletter:
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9. Contact Information Elena Fawkner, Editor A Home-Based Business Online Contact By Email Online Home Based Business |
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