Speaking of income, I’m sure you’ve heard the term passive income…essentially passive income refers to income you receive that involves little active participation from you at the time of purchase. If you operate a business that is primarily service based, chances are you’ve already realized that without some sort of resellables or employees in place, you don’t get paid when you don’t work. I don’t know about you, but frankly I’m not good with that. I’d like to look forward to my time off, rather than worry about how I’ll afford it, and you should too!

One great way to bring the benefits of passive income into your business is to develop or select resellable product to offer to your existing clients – this is particularly easy to make a part of your plan if you are already keeping in regular contact with your database, either through blogging, newsletters, mailouts, or web promotions such as pay-per-click campaigns.

Consider what you currently sell that you can offer for sale online. While websites are great for building credibility, they are even greater when you fully realize the potential for selling product online. If you are in a business that is largely service oriented, and find that your time is booked up and that people can’t access you when they would like to, it is worth looking at how you can package your services and deliver them in a resellable format.

Drawing from our own client base, a perfect example of this is the professional trainer – after many years in the business this trainer has developed many programs that she is able to offer to groups and individuals. These programs are accompanied by workbooks and presentations which she and her consultants typically deliver in classroom settings. In 2009, her goal is to turn these proven and already existing programs into home study courses through a combination of pdf manuals and cd & dvd presentation components, thereby making access to her training much more widely available. Of course the added benefit to this is that as she becomes successful at marketing her resellable product she can scale back her hours or go on vacation, without the worry of everything grinding to a halt in her absence. Nice!

In the event that you have no way of turning your service offerings into resellable product, affiliate reseller programs and drop shipping arrangements can be a quick and effective way of adding product to what you have to offer. When looking for products, think about what is complimentary to your existing offerings that would be of interest to your clients.

For more information about how Catch This! helps their clients develop, package, and market resellable product, visit our website at www.catchthis.ca

In my dealings with other web developers I am hearing that one of the most common challenges they are facing when approaching potential new clients is that business owners are gun shy about spending money on their business websites.

I have an entirely different viewpoint on this. Now more than ever it is imperative for business owners to take advantage of online marketing techniques. Why? Because, in actual fact, the cost of having a website built and hosted is far less than the overhead and daily expenses associated with keeping a brick and mortar store open, stocked, and staffed. And that’s to say nothing of the money that needs to be budgeted to effectively market and drive traffic to a store.

More often than not, to gain walk in traffic you need to look at a marketing mix that includes print materials with regular promotions of your product, local TV & radio advertising, AND you need to have a great location to be able to truly stay in view of your target market.

Now this is not to say that some of these methods aren’t also necessary for the promotion of a website however, the marketing of your site is simplified and made more cost effective by virtue of the fact that they are easily accessed by the masses regardless of location. Staffing is also less of an issue – while you may still need the assistance of designers, and virtual assistants to run your campaigns these individuals are often available on an as needed basis, so that you don’t have to consider such bothersome things as payroll and government deductions.

Something to consider when thinking about the part your website will play in your business in 2009:

Offer something people want AND promote it through the use of strong sales copy, testimonials…build credibility for your business – now more than ever people want to be sure they are receiving value for their dollar.

When recently asked by a client of mine if all the copy on her website was necessary I said “Hell YES!”. While I know I need her services and gladly pay her fee because I have personally experienced the benefits of what she sells, she still needs to provide adequate information so future clients are able to make an informed decision about purchasing her products and services.

Even if you don’t sell a product online, your website is an important part of how you can build credibility for your business. We’ve all heard “You HAVE to be online!” So why aren’t you? If you’re not online or have an out of date website, chances are your competitor who’s got a sharp looking website that’s easy to navigate and has lots of useful information is beating you out of work.

Tune in next week to learn about the value of offering resellable product on your website, and the story of how one of our clients is creating her own resellables from work she has already done!

For more information on how we can help you take your business to the next level with effective online marketing, please visit us at www.catchthis.ca or email us at info@catchthis.ca.

So off they went, tweaking the message and building the Powerpoint – and in the end what they had was fun and punchy! They had chosen to use a well-known BTO song to accompany the message, and had worked some really fun photos in alongside the text areas.

Great job…just one problem – COPYRIGHT ISSUES! Without going into a big explanation of how copyright works, the point is that copyright issues can arise if you are using images or music in your marketing that you don’t have the rights to.

What does this mean to you? Don’t use images you find using Google Images! Or at least, don’t use them without first making sure they really are in the public domain and are free of copyright, or obtain written permission to use them.

In our web design & marketing projects (whether for clients or ourselves), we rarely use Google to find images for marketing for this very reason

So where does that leave you when it comes to images and sounds for your marketing pieces? In fact, there are many places where you can conveniently and affordably purchase royalty free stock photography for use in your projects.

WARNING: We’ll be the first to admit that cruising through stock libraries can be highly addictive, time consuming, and entertaining, so if you are prone to getting distracted from the task at hand we advise that you get out an egg timer and set it before you start!

With that said, whether you’re a do-it-yourselfer or are hiring someone to do graphic design work for you and need to supply the images you want them to use, these are just a few of our favorite libraries:

www.dreamstime.com
www.istockphoto.com
www.bigstockphoto.com
www.fotolia.com

In most cases the images cost $1 – $15 each depending on the format/size you need.
TIP: If you are printing the project you need to use 300dpi high resolution images for nice clear results….72dpi is fine for web viewing. Also sizing up an image is rarely a good idea so buy the image that comes closest to the dimensions you plan to use it at.

Each of these libraries have different Terms of Use, so be sure to read them before you purchase to ensure that your usage of the item is acceptable. In most cases, the terms are pretty flexible when it comes to using the images for marketing & packaging purposes, so long as you aren’t actually reselling the image itself.

Looking for royalty free sounds – here are a few sites we suggest:

www.audiobase.com
www.premiumbeat.com
www.soundsnap.com
www.soundloopstudio.com

For more specific information on copyright protection, www.whatiscopyright.org has a very educational write up. Another informative article on Copyright Violation can be found here…

As for our friends, thankfully they didn’t run into copyright issues because they found out about the problem with Googling for images and sounds to use before they rolled out the new marketing.

What does a hit counter do? It tracks the number of times a page is loaded regardless of whether it’s a new visit or just a refresh of the browser window. Some may track unique visitors but by far they do not provide enough information to evaluate what your website and marketing message is doing for you.

It seems to me that hit counters rose to popularity early on in the life of the internet, primarily as bulletin boards, membership sites and other such forums wanted to demonstrate how popular they were. They began to decline when it became obvious that the website owner could seed these counters, either by refreshing the page manually himself hundreds or thousands of times or by just setting a high starting value in the code of the counter in order to make their site look more popular than it really was. Would people really fudge their counter numbers? Of course the would! As a website owner, you wouldn’t want a low hit count because people might assume you don’t offer anything of worth and move on without reading further.

The other problem with a Hit Counter is that the number they display really holds no useable statistical meaning by itself. Most of the counters track page loads which means every time the page is loaded or refreshed in the browser the ticker advances. This is not providing a true representation of the number of actual visitors you had.

Today, there is no need to install an ugly feature that displays a pointless number when most hosting packages now provide web statistics in the hosting control panel that can provide you with most if not all of the information you need. If your hosting package doesn’t have this or does not provide enough information you can always sign up and install something like Google Analytics on any page you wish to track. Contact your developer or web hosting company to find out how to access and use these statistics. Web statistics need to become an essential part of your marketing strategy.

And on that note, have a very Happy New Years – travel safe, and celebrate responsibly. Cheers!

Even though we know websites are the modern way of doing business, building credibility, gaining exposure, and distributing information, the plain truth is that in a lot of cases entrepreneurs are still ending up with websites that are really only functioning as online brochures, and don’t do much more than eat up marketing budget as hosting fees and domain renewals come due.

I firmly believe this is a result of the failure to consider websites as the truly powerful sales and marketing tool they can be.  I can’t stress enough the importance of thinking about how you market and sell your products or service, and how you want your website to function as a working part of your business.  For greater online success, think about what purpose you want your website to serve for you…set functionality and information gathering goals for your site and discuss them in detail with your web designer/developer.

There are more ways you can turn your website into a functional tool that serves a tangible purpose for your business than I can address in a single blog post but here are a few simple methods to consider as a good starting point if you have a site that’s in need of some purpose.

1. Forms – Online forms allow you to be specific in the information you gather from your site visitors and customers.Do you sell a business opportunity, offer specialized workshops?  Forms are a great way to collect the initial information you need to qualify potential buyers, and do more detailed and specific follow up.

   Perhaps you have a price list online – by having visitors fill out a brief form before sending them through to your pricing page you can get a clear picture of who’s looking at that information, and build a contact list of potential clients for your sales department.

2. Blogging – A quick and easy way of keeping in touch with your audience.  By pairing a blog with your website you can reduce maintenance costs that would normally be incurred if frequent updates are needed.  Blogging is also a great way of adding relevant keyword rich content to your website, thereby increasing search engine results over time.Depending on the type of business you are in, video blogging may even be useful.  Construction companies and home builders can make excellent use of video blogging as a way of documenting progress on projects, and pointing out the special quality features of their products.  For bands and other performers, a frequent challenge is that no amount of demo tracks will adequately demonstrate their skills – once again, video blogging can be very useful as a show-and-tell mechanism.  Remember, your website should give viewers a taste of what you have to offer.
3. Surveys – Surveying your visitors is an easy way to collect very valuable information.  By asking a few simple questions you can find out what your audience is looking for, and determine whether they found it.  Armed with this feedback you can make informed decisions when it comes time to evaluate the performance of your site.There are many, many survey tools available. My current favorite is a nifty and free little survey tool by 4Q.

   It is super easy to sign up for, simple to setup, and once you’ve personalized it all that is needed to implement it on your site is a small piece of code.  I could go into greater detail, but why would I when there is an excellent (and entertaining) video about the power of using survey tools on your website here:  http://www.kaushik.net/avinash/2008/03/4q-the-best-online-survey-for-a-website-yours-free.html

   To view the Q4 survey in action, visit my site at www.catchthis.ca – and remember to fill it out so I know you were there and that you found what you wanted.

These are a few ways you can increase the effectiveness of even the simplest website, and turn it into a real marketing tool that will yield results.

Business owners often have great expectations of their websites, the leads they’ll generate, the sales they’ll make, the relationships they’ll build – the fact is tools only work if you put them to work.

The building of a truly useful business website involves planning and input from you as the business owner to make it achieve the goals you have identified.  And once completed, it requires regular tending and use to make it the truly valuable tool it can be!

Now get out there and harness the power of the internet for your business!

When talking with them about their particular challenges, time and again it comes back to their need to generate leads and build effective business relationships…sometimes with the added difficulty of budget limitations.  If you’ve ever undertaken a print campaign of any size, you will surely have noticed that the costs can add up fast and the results are often difficult to track.  These are just a few of the reasons that our focus has become working with entrepreneurs to automate processes and give entrepreneurs a system for communicating with their customers that they can afford, update without overwhelming expense, and track response to.

For businesses, consistent and effective communication is crucial, and internet marketing has made it faster and easier to reach out and touch your target market regularly and affordably.  Not only that, it allows you to be responsive to change in your business without the agony of throwing out unused print items that no longer work for you.

The purpose and intention of this blog is to bring you tips and info that will help you understand how to communicate more clearly.  Using tools that are available through internet marketing channels, you will find you can make better use of your advertising and marketing budget, and harness the true power of having a website  — especially when you pair it with intentional business building strategies and a little tracking.  I hope you learn something of value to your business here.

So with that said, I’ll be back next week to start bringing you a regular mix of ideas and tips that you can use in your business to change the way you communicate with your target audience.

SHARE:  Send me your business communication and marketing challenges at shayne@catchthis.ca and we’ll put our heads together and see if we can come up with a workable solution for you.  Please note, I may share your story here (with a link back to your business of course) so keep that in mind when you submit.