Merry Christmas in The Digital Age

Ever wondered how Mary and Joseph would communicate today?

Loved this so much last time, I decided to post it again.

Wading Into Wholesale

New Sales Highs in 2014 - In 2014 I attained $50K+ in Amazon sales. Between my husband and myself, we also had a very good year on Ebay. That was mostly him because I was busy with Amazon. Over the course of the year, I started considering more and more about finding ways of being able to purchase my inventory in a manner where I could have higher sales volumes with less work. That means automating things. I'll have to come back to that one as the year progresses.

Read more...

What do you need help with right now?

Sorry to be gone for so long.

My health took a nose dive a year ago and I am just now coming back to this blog. The only thing I’ve done with this site over the past year is background stuff such as keeping the internal updates going.

With such a long absence, rather than just jumping in and posting articles, I’d like to hear from you as to what topics you are interested in. What do you need help with?

Ebay

Given my increased limitations, rather than seeking more clients I have chosen for now to return to building my Ebay business. This is something I can do according to the schedule my body dictates.

I have learned a few tricks along the way. In fact, I’m thinking of writing an ebook on the topic. There are a lot of technicalities to running an Ebay business, but I’m focusing on the marketing side of it. If you would be interested in hearing more on this topic, please let me know by commenting below. Read more…

A Simple & Free Template & Tutorial for Creating Infographics in PowerPoint From HubSpot

I am hooked on Infographics.

I love how easy it is to assimilate information from them.

How about you?

Would you like to have a free tool to create your own infographics for your business?

Do you have PowerPoint?

If you have the desire and the application, just add HubSpot’s new template and create away. Read more…

Need Help With Copywriting? Here’s A Five-Minute Crash Course

Copywriting is the art of writing in a way that sells.

In the internet marketing world, the primary concern of a copywriter isn’t about branding. Instead, it’s about conversion rate, i.e., the percentage of people who buy after seeing your sales page.

Even if you’ve never written a sales page before, learning the basics will allow you to greatly increase your selling power.

AIDA

This five minute crash course will show you how to use one of the oldest and most proven copywriting formulas in advertising history: Attention, Interest, Desire, Action (AIDA).

Attention

The first and most important step in the copywriting formula is attention. Attention is the first impression. The goal is to catch the readers’ attention in five seconds or less.

The best way to catch attention is through a strong headline. Your headline should speak directly to your readers’ needs and make a bold promise that keeps them reading more.

Most copywriters spend an inordinately high amount of their copywriting time on the headline. Why? Because if you don’t catch their attention, nothing else you write matters. Your headline should get someone to stop whatever they’re doing and pay ATTENTION. Read more…

A New Look At Balloons As Marketing Tools

With more than 20 years in marketing, I really hadn’t thought much about balloons as a marketing tool until I attended Main Street Marketing Machines launch and Make Market Launch. Spending a total of five days at these huge events, surrounded by Sandi’s beautiful balloon work opened my eyes to the seriousness of balloons as marketing tools.

As Sandi puts it, this book is “a collection of How-to’s, Advice, Tips and Tricks to getting the most out of your balloons and your marketing.” She encourages the reader to pick and choose what chapter you need at any specific time.

Although I would never try to a DIY approach to using balloons with a tradeshow booth, I love all of Sandi’s step-by-step guides. I suggest that those who enjoy decorating for something as simple as a birthday party or baby shower pick up a copy of Sandi’s book just for these guides. Read more…

My Top 3 Writing Tips – Write Like You Talk In Online Marketing

I love Infographics!

Do you?

If you have been following me for any time at all, you know I love infographics. A visualization holds far more value for me than words. (If you’d like a printable copy of this infographic, click here or on the chart on the right.)

The infographic on the right is the Marketing Sherpa Chart of The Week. You can easily see from it that the most effective marketing at the least level of difficulty is email marketing. SEO (Search Engine Optimization) remains the leader in effectiveness, but it ranks as being more difficult. You will want to learn about it, but get comfortable with writing first so that you can use it in your articles – the BEST use of SEO.

Now look at how high Content ranks. What is Content? Read more…

The 3 Biggest Mistakes You Can Make When Starting Your Online Business

Starting any business has many pitfalls…

… but with the speed of setting up an online business these days, the planning takes on renewed importance. But by far the very biggest problems will happen early on in your online business start-up.

The top three biggest mistakes you can make when starting your online business – the ones which you must avoid at all costs – are not doing your research, spending money blindly on advertising, and not building and caring for your list. If you don’t get these right, the chances of success are next to zero. Read more…

Online Backup – Carbonite? Mozy? Crashplan?

One of the things that’s been on my “To Do” list for a long time was to set up with a online backup and recovery service.

Last year I signed up with Mozy, but when I found out that they do not support unlimited backup, I cancelled that. Falling prey to modern advertising, I figured the alternative was Carbonite, so I put that on my infamous “To Do” list  and promptly neglected to do it due to the other things that took its place at the top of the list.

Finally I decided, “Today is the day!” I’d had friends who lost their data and I certainly don’t want to go through that. But with the clarity that comes with putting something back to the top of the list, it occurred to me that certainly there were other services. So, before jumping in and downloading Carbonite, I took some time to research. Read more…

Content Is King and Keywords Are The Princes

Click on the chart to see the full sized version

“Content creation and keyword research considered most effective SEO tactics”

I love getting the Marketing Sherpa Chart of the Week. Always interesting, visually presented information. This week’s article has a chart showing the result of one of their latest surveys. You can read the full article at the following link, but we have the chart right here.

Marketing Research Chart: To improve SEO effectiveness, content is king

Marketing Sherpa surveyed 1,500 search marketers about the effectiveness of their top SEO tactics. They reported that “More than half of CMOs report that content creation is a very effective tactic to improve their SEO rankings. Keyword research was close behind, with 43% finding this strategy very effective.”

Why are these two things more important than any of the other “tricks” to drive traffic? Read more…