But that actually happened to Patrick Meninga of Make Money With No Work.
It’s a very interesting and instructive story, certainly if you can write great articles. And I certainly appreciate his way of creating backlinks.

Read it carefully, maybe someday it will happen to you too. Here’s Patrick telling exactly how he did accomplish that six figure income.
Enjoy!

How I Built a Six Figure Website in Under 500 Hours

My flagship website was earning me very good money – over $2,000/month at one point.  I eventually sold it when someone offered me $200,000 for it.  

So how did I achieve this level of success with such a small time investment?  After all, 500 hours can be accomplished with just 2 hours per day in less than a year!

Here are the three “secrets” that got me there:

1) Average of three articles published daily.
2) A precise marketing strategy focused on high quality backlinks.
3) Ignore distractions and take a long term perspective.
 

Average of three articles published daily

Volume matters.  The idea is to create a large authority website and rank for lots of long tail queries in the search engines.  If you have over a thousand articles and decent authority then you can probably earn a full time income from the combination.  

How do you get over a thousand articles on your website?  

Write them yourself.  What looks like an “unclimbable” mountain is actually pretty simple to conquer: simply publish 3 articles every day.  Period.  Done deal. 

Photo Credit: skyseeker

Within a year you will be at your target of having over 1,000 articles on your website.  

One major caveat to keep in mind, however: 

Your articles have to be good.  

Darn good.  Fantastic, in fact.  

So you may not be comfortable publishing three each day at first.  

Rest assured, if you keep at it, you will one day be able to crank out three quality articles in a single day.  

If you want a six figure website, this is the main shortcut that will get you there….high volume publishing.  Three per day is the magic number.  Anything less will be agonizingly longer wait to see real money.
 

Precise marketing strategy focused on high quality backlinks

All of that quality content that you are putting up needs some promotion.  

If you want to stay underneath the 500 mark, then you cannot waste time with things that do not lead to future income.  

For the most part, social media marketing strategies should take care of themselves and be handled almost entirely by your readers.  If you are creating phenomenal content and have the appropriate buttons and widgets installed, social media should take care of itself.  

What you need to focus on for promotion is getting a few really good links.  Period.  

My suggestion is to write original and useful guest posts to be published on other sites within your niche.  

Is there still a place in Internet marketing for cheap manufactured links?  Perhaps.  However, they are a poor use of your time, unless you already have some authority based on “real” guest post links.  If you must, outsource the creation of these supporting links after you build a strong foundation with guest posting.  That way you are not wasting precious time that could be spend creating high quality content on-site. 

There are only two activities to concern yourself with:

1) Putting premium content on your website.
2) Creating backlinks to your website.

If your workflow spreads the 500 hours out over one to two years, then I suggest that you spend roughly 75% of your time creating killer on-site content, and only 25% promoting it with strong links.  

After a certain point your time spent marketing drops to zero, and all of your effort can be focused on creating premium on-site content.  

You only have to build link juice and site authority once.  Streamline the process by pushing hard for quality guest posts.
 

Ignore distractions and take a long term perspective

 
You can absolutely create a six figure website by only working on it part time.  The secret is that you must be patient and give the site time to age while you build it. 

This works out very well if you focus on quality on-site content.  

It also works particularly well if you focus on getting just a few high quality backlinks rather than lots of cheap manufactured links.  A flood of cheap links might brink quicker rankings and traffic, but the quality guest posts will build lasting authority over time. 

The manufactured links will lose effectiveness over time unless you create more of them, while the handful of guest post links will stand the test of time.  

Achieve your income goal by eliminating distractions and working efficiently:

* Have a daily publishing quota while maintaining high quality. 
* Spend about a quarter of your time creating high quality guest posts for strong backlinks. 

That’s it.  Have enough patience to allow time for trust to build.  

Do these things consistently and you will meet your income goals. 

Any questions?  Ask me in the comments!

Six figure income in only 500 hours is a post from Affordable Internet Marketing, http://www.affordable-internet-marketing.com by Case Stevens.

Creating article videos is just a matter of converting an article into a video and that process is really pretty simple. It only takes just a few easy steps! Still, not many marketers take advantage of this excellent option, yet with YouTube marketing you can rank quite high for real competitive terms!

Of course the success of using article videos strongly depends on the keywords you are targeting. A lot of them just are too competing.
For many other phrases it might take a little while to get there. If that happens, you should start building a couple of nice links to it, just like you would any other article. In the end, this is a great way to try and get your keyword onto the first page of Google.

To create article videos, you first want to download OpenOffice. This software is completely free and contains a text editor, spreadsheet and presentation manager.
It’s a huge file, but well worth the time to install it on your computer and play with it.

First, we’re going to use OpenOffice Impress to create a presentation of an article. Here’s an outstanding tutorial that shows you how to do that.

Photo Credit: fletchy182

Next, experiment with Impress a bit, until you have a professional looking template that is not too fancy. Try to keep it simple, but professional.

Create your presentation by using short sentences or paragraphs in each slide. Leave a lot of space and give the reader time to read the slides.
End with your byline containing a URL for more information. Don’t forget this, as generating traffic is the secondary goal for article videos.

Next, were going to make our article video. I use GFX Video Writer, but you can also download a free program called Jing.

Again, a huge program, but well worth the time to experiment with it. Here’s a great tutorial that shows you how to create article videos.

Once you have Jing installed and running, just play your presentation while Jing is recording. You can make it more professional by clicking the URL in your article that sends you over to your website.

Save that file. You now have a professional YouTube video that you can upload today. Make sure you use your keyword in the YouTube title and description. Be as descriptive as possible.

YouTube videos often rank on the first page of Google, so you should consider YouTube as part of your marketing strategy.

What is described above makes this possible. It just takes some time to get used to both software programs. If you’d rather use an easy to use software that converts articles into videos in just a few clicks check out Instant video articles.

So, that’s how I use article videos to get on the first page of Google.
What’s your take on the topic? Do you use article videos?
Post your comments below.

Article videos can get you on the first page of Google. is a post from Affordable Internet Marketing, http://www.affordable-internet-marketing.com by Case Stevens.

You can use article marketing to promote your business’s brand and increase the amount of traffic to your website. It can also be used to improve your site’s ranking by the major search engines.

Article directories and websites receive a large amount of online visitors every day. If you are able to connect your website to articles from these directories and are able to offer the reader something of value, then odds are you will vastly increase your website’s online presence.

Here are some tips that can improve your article marketing campaign:

1. Submit an article to an article directory website that is in-line with your website’s niche.
   So, if you own a website that sells gardening supplies, make sure you write an article based on the topic of gardening. This will accomplish several things.

   First, the people who want to read an article about gardening are much more likely to want to click on your links and see your gardening website.

   Second, you will be filling your article with high quality in-bound links. These are links that are directly related to your niche, which will be more highly valued by search engine algorithms. This will help search engines to rank your website higher on its SERPs.

2. Use high quality keyword links in your articles.

   This will also improve how search engines rank your site. It is a good idea to place these keyword links near the beginning of the text, because it will make it easier for search engine crawlers to locate them.
   Google’s free keyword analyzer tool is an easy way to find out which keywords you want to use.

3. Avoid keyword stuffing at all costs!
   
   Photo Credit: pigsonthewinguk

   Keyword stuffing refers to adding too many keywords and keyword links to your article. This sounds like a great idea because the more links and keywords you have the easier search engines will find your page right?
   This is not the case. The major search engines have algorithms designed to locate sites that are considered to be overly promotional and will penalize such sites. So keep your keyword density around 1%-4%. This will help prevent your site and article as being labeled as a “keyword stuffer”.

4. Make sure that your articles offer something of value to the reader.
   Too many article marketers think that simply getting their articles out onto the web and filling them with go-to links will get the job done. It might- but you stand a much better chance of making your article marketing campaign profitable by submitting articles that offer something of value to the reader.

   So again, if you want your readers to eventually end up at your gardening website, then offer real and valuable information related to the topic of gardening. This will bring your article more readers and more traffic.

5. Get good at writing articles!
   In order to make your article marketing campaign profitable you want to write up a decent number of high quality articles. This means you will want to get very good at writing your articles and you don’t want to spend too much time doing so.

   If you are not great at writing articles you can always hire a copywriter or a ghostwriter. Try Elance if you want to hire a freelance article writer to save you time and effort.

A properly run article marketing campaign can vastly increase your websites SERP ranking and traffic generation. A poorly run article marketing campaign will waste too much of your effort and time.

How do you run an article marketing campaign?
Post your comments below.

Your Article Marketing Campaign – 5 Tips for Improving is a post from Affordable Internet Marketing, http://www.affordable-internet-marketing.com by Case Stevens.

Solo ads are placed in ezines, which are online magazines or newsletters. If you’re willing to pay, lots of these ezines allow you to place advertisements that are send out to their subscribers.
The most effective type of ezine advertising is called “solo ads”. This means that your ad goes out alone (with no other ads) and with your topic in the subject line and a link to your landing page in the copy.
The big benefit of solo ezine advertising is that the newsletter covers one topic.

To be successful with solo ad advertising, you should of course select an ezine that is targeted towards the particular market that you promote to. Then you can be sure that you are targeting people that will be interested in your offer.
But that alone is in no way a guarantee that you will succeed. The way the owner has build his list of subscribers is also very important. If such list only exists of freebie seekers, your solo ad will certainly not deliver the results you want.
The most successful lists to send solo ads to are buyers lists. More on that below.

Photo Credit: dok1

Solo ads are the most expensive type of newsletter advertising but you can get them for as low as $10. But these probably are not buyers lists. These will cost a lot more, but may be a very cost effective method of reaching a lot of people in your market. In general, you will more likely get a better response from a $20 solo ad sent to 500 to 600 subscribers than from one of the same price that is sent to 5,000 or more subscribers. If it seems to good to be true, in most cases, it is.

So, if you want to use solo ad advertising, it’s very wise to check out how the list is built and what kind of subscribers it contains. Subscribe to the ezine to test out its quality and reliability first. You will also see examples of other solo ads this way.

But that still doesn’t guarantee you’ll get the clicks. That’s why a new way of solo ad advertising is becoming quite popular these days. It allows you to buy a fixed number of clicks, rather than the solo ad itself.

In the Internet marketing niche, the market price, on average, is 0.30 to 0.40 per click. Different packages can be available, ranging from only 100 clicks to several thousands. Delivery range from 2 days up to a month for monthly packages. Thus you have established a fixed amount per click and if that’s worth it for you, solo ad advertising can be a goldmine.

But where to find reliable ezine advertising to send your solo ads?

Well, you can use the Directory of Ezines for starters. That has been a great resource for me for many years.

But now I’ve just finished reading a rolodex of solo ad advertising resources. I was done in a few minutes, because it’s a simple spreadsheet. It shows you where to buy great solo ads from lists consisting of… buyers!

But it comes with two videos.
The first one of 50 minutes explains:
- restrictions where you can send your visitors to, so make sure you know that upfront,
- kind of lists and their limitations or benefits,
- how to make a deal,
- conversations to have and questions to ask,
- refunds,
- click tracking,
- how to avoid scam artists,
- responsibilities and follow up.

The second video (over 30 minutes long) explains different techniques used by this expert to be highly successful with solo ads.

This solo ad advertising resource was put together by a veteran Internet marketer. That assures you, that you’re not just getting a resource, but that you get experience!

If you’re interested in solo ad advertising that deliver results, check this out right now and let me know what you think.
Post your comments below.

60 Solo Ad Advertising Resources That Deliver Traffic is a post from Affordable Internet Marketing, http://www.affordable-internet-marketing.com by Case Stevens.

Another reason we sell low priced products to our visitors to get them into our sales funnel using a low threshold. Once they’re there, we try to sell them higher priced products by building trust and confidence, so they follow our recommendations.

So, why would we try to promote big ticket items then?

Well, there are some advantages like:

• Promoting big ticket items isn’t that much different from selling low priced products. It’s the conversion that’s more difficult.
• You make more money. If you follow the tips above, it’s easier to sell 100 items of 999.99 dollars than selling 10,000 products for $9.99.
• The back-end also consists of high-ticket items and remember: your customers are already used to that.
• High ticket items almost always tend to have a high perceived value. If someone is looking on the Net for a high ticket item, they will find many that provide them the world.
• Much less competition. As I stated above, not many marketers are promoting these kind of products, so it’s easier to stand out of the crowd.
• Less customer service. Your customers asked most questions up front, so they already know what to expect. Hence you may expect a lot less refunds.

Photo Credit: FaceMePLS

Big ticket items are products that people won’t buy impulsively. The price range is different for each person, but it’s fair to state, that they are well over a couple of hundred dollars.

Before buying big ticket items, your visitor wants to know every detail of each benefit that the product will deliver. She’s quite busy comparing these benefits, as well as the prices and bonuses. It takes a lot of convincing and persuasion before she will finally part with her cash.

That’s because she’s making a decision, which in itself already is a difficult process. Since there’s a lot of money involved that she can spend only once, this one may be even harder. She wants value for her money.

The more you can help her to create that value, the better you will convert. Any extra information you can provide is helpful and that, in contrast to your sales funnel system, is how you build trust and confidence.

That’s crucial in the promotion process. Your visitors must be confident that they’re dealing with a real person that is trustworthy. Excessive sales talk may be considered as hype and makes you incredible.

The least you should do is list your private email address, so interested people can ask you questions. Better is to list a telephone number.
Even better is to offer extra product information in exchange for their email address. Thus you will build a list through which you can reach them over and over again.

But you’re still a small fish in the pond. That’s where affiliate programs come in. Big ticket items are often offered by big companies. They will help you build trust and confidence, in the first place by just being a big company.
If you are able to send very targeted traffic to their offers, you may make a lot of money online.

So, why don’t you promote high ticket items through affiliate programs?
If you want a head start, then here’s a ridiculous low priced (no pun intended) resource that you can use immediately. Over 50 big ticket items with payouts range from at least $100 all the way up to $10,000 and everything in between.

Let me know how you’re doing.
Post your comments below.

Big Ticket Items – Smart Affiliate Marketing is a post from Affordable Internet Marketing, http://www.affordable-internet-marketing.com by Case Stevens.

There lies a huge opportunity for you, if you can explain to them what social media can do for them and their business.

That’s why I publish a guest post today about the topic, written by Robertoi Delrio. He explains everything below. So read carefully and take advantage of these benefits.

Social Media Powerhouses for Small Business – The Fantastic Four

Are you a small business that needs recognition?
Do you know how to reach your target audience?
Are you aware of the fact that you can have a massive marketing campaign without even wasting a single dime?

If you just said, “No”, to all these questions, you are sure going down the path of, “abandoned business”.

Here’s a reality check for all business owners, small or big: Social media is your gateway to getting fame, attention and money, clients and business sustainability.

Without social media, you will always remain surrounded by people who heard of you through word of mouth, half of who wouldn’t even be your target audience. So, buckle up and get ready to take a power ride of these four social media powerhouses, and give your business the exposure it deserves!

Facebook – The Place to Reach 800 Million People!
Half the planet exists virtually on Facebook and almost every entrepreneur, every major/minor business are actively present on this one social powerhouse.

Apart from the ability to reach out to 800 million (and counting) users, Facebook has a special feature for businesses known as, “targeted demographics”. This means you can control what kind of an audience do you want to reach out to – in simple terms, who should benefit from your business?
Is it the teenage population of New Jersey? Or is it the working class of New York? Is it for sports lovers or is it for book lovers? With these specifications, your business page or ad will be visible to only that specified audience.

You need to be quite interactive on Facebook to get customers. People are smart and they would never opt for a business that remains blatantly dull on a social media platform.

Remember though that active Facebook marketing requires extensive time investment. If you cannot manage this alone, you might as well hire someone to do it for you – either a professional marketing management team or a part time assistant depending upon your budget.
Despite some strong contenders, Facebook is still the biggest social platform and surely a social media tool, you’d never dare ignore.

Photo Credit: owenwbrown

Twitter – Where Professionals Talk
Twitter is more business oriented and has more professional users than the casual ones.
Banking on simplicity, it is the perfect site for professionals who are short on time and cannot invest as much time as in Facebook.
Short, sweet and simple, Twitter lets a user tweet a message in just 140 characters with the ability to add in a URL to the specific website.

Casual users with no objective to business are hardly active on Twitter and therefore it has grown into a platform where you follow entrepreneurs or individuals who are related with your business. Twitter emphasizes on, give and take. I tweet your post, you tweet mine and there you go! Relationship built!

You can follow people based on similar interests and because this is a great platform for businesses to collaborate and share ideas, Twitter is always the perfect station to get the latest news right from the horse mouth. Where Facebook can be used to interact with customers, Twitter is used to interact with businesses and get on the bandwagon of promotional marketing.

Google Plus – Bursting with The Google Power
It took Facebook years to reach 10 million users; it took Google Plus just a month to get up to 20 million users. And that my friend, is the power of Google!
Disregarding the negative vibes associated with this social network (the competition with Facebook et al), we should focus on how your business can benefit, and if it’s about benefits, then surely with G+ you get it in a perfect package.

First off, with every search result, you’ll see a small +1 button neatly placed at the end of the title. That button enables you to share the site within your circles (aka friends, family, and colleagues).

Google had also claimed that the Plus button will be an element in their ranking factors as well! Now this is definitely a huge thing for businesses that are looking desperately for any factor that can increase their rankings.

Recently, Google Plus has also launched its Google Business Page that is quite similar to that of Facebook. If you want to have something less stressful and simpler than Facebook with access to 20 million subscribers, time you join Google Plus! But, be warned that Google Plus will not be as colorful or fun as Facebook though it’s a great place for serious professional.

YouTube – The Power of Online Videos
YouTube is a platform where you can reach out to millions of people and turn them into your site visitor, even customer through a digital video. A visual promo is a treat for customers as they are able to instantly connect with your company and the services you offer.
Again, the demand here is engaging content and in the case of a video, it has to be dynamic, productive and of a bearable length (max 5 minutes).

Ever since YouTube was launched it has become an instant hit. With hundreds of millions of customers getting registered and using this site every single day of their lives, YouTube is the platform you have to consider! But like other social media powerhouses, this calls in for some creativity and time! You need to connect with users and bring them not just one video, but a continuous stream of videos that will spark their interests in your website or business.

No matter which platform you decide to use, there is one thing you need to understand; it’s going to take a lot of time and patience before you see any results at all. You can’t get results within just a month.
It takes months of effort and dedication, time and energy to be able to get people to recognize your business and trust you enough to spend money on. These platforms are overcrowded with competitors who would go through any lengths to get their share of the sweet pie. The one who wins and gets the pie is the one who is willing to be patient and wait for results.

What’s your take on the social media for small business?
Post your comments below.

Social Media for Small Business and Their Benefits is a post from Affordable Internet Marketing, http://www.affordable-internet-marketing.com by Case Stevens.

But, to my utter surprise, the majority of small business owners are still reluctant to go online. Whenever I get a chance to commute with some of these businessmen, they appear to be in two minds when thinking of having an online presence, which is even more mind boggling, knowing how little it costs to create a website and take your business online.

Internet has just so much to offer for small businesses, I can keep going on and on as to how small businesses can benefit from the Internet in more than one ways. But let’s take a look at some major benefits Internet has to offer for small businesses.

1. One of the cheapest marketing mediums:
   Small businesses do not have the budgets to go for conventional marketing mediums, they have to rely on word of mouth or referral system, and almost all of these low-cost marketing mediums have their own limitations.

   Not Internet … this low cost marketing medium offers so many ways and platforms to market just about any product or any business, especially after the advent and success of Social Media websites.

   Small businesses, who are finding it hard to outlast the competition, can turn towards the Internet and give a much needed impetus to their business. Not to mention, if you can pick out some low competition keywords in line with your business, and get your website to rank for these keywords (e.g. 123inkjets coupons or 4inkjets discounts), you will be getting a constant stream of new customers coming to your business.

2. 
   Photo Credit: fiskfisk

   Global reach:
   Location plays a very important role in the success of small businesses, and the problem is, you can’t just keep changing locations of your business.
   If you are not getting enough customers or sales from the local customers, you’ll be left with no other options but to spend hefty budgets on marketing and reach out to customers from other areas and try your luck.
   Internet can help you deal with geographical boundaries. Using the Internet, you can easily get in touch with potential customers in nearby cities, or even countries, and find new leads.

3. Business Networking:
   For businesses targeting B2B industry, Internet is the ideal platform to carry out all types of business activities. You can perform everything from finding new potential clients, sending business proposals, communicating, negotiating rates, and making new business partners.

   Social Networks like LinkedIn will let you connect with hundreds of businesses coming from the same or interrelated industry. Apart from the business partners, you can also source low cost suppliers in other countries.

4. Learning Made Easy:
   Internet allows you to keep a tab on your respective industry. It will help your business if you are well-informed about all of those up-coming technologies, or new products before your local competitors get a hold of this information. Staying on the ball can turn out to be a game changer.

   You can also keep a tab on how similar businesses are marketing their products or services, and try some of these techniques. In addition to that, spending some time reading the news and articles on Internet will give you many ideas to expand your business.

So far Roberto and his 4 outstanding reasons for small businesses to make an online presence.

Let me add this:
Problem is, that small business owners have to spend way too much time running their business and if they’ve made the jump to the Net, they’re often ripped of by some web design artist.
If you are able not only to create a website (that’s where most so called web designers stop), but also achieve high rankings for (local) keywords as mentioned above, you can make a lot of money getting small businesses online.
Think about that.

Any comments?
Post them below.

4 Reasons why Internet is a Godsend for small businesses is a post from Affordable Internet Marketing, http://www.affordable-internet-marketing.com by Case Stevens.

That’s the good news – you’re busy enough to hire someone now. Or, you’re too lazy or too clueless to do your own administrative work but have enough money to pay someone to do it.
Whatever your excuse, you’re seriously considering hiring a Virtual Assistant and you don’t know where to start. Well, as they say, “There’s not enough time to learn from your own mistakes, so learn from mine.”

Unless you’re a brick and mortar store you’re not hiring eye-candy so don’t get hung up on photos. Looks and age don’t matter, competence and skill set does.
Unless you’re hiring an assistant who will model for your website as well as answer your phone and keep up with your calendar, don’t worry about looks or age. Worry about skills, experience, dependability and phone voice and people skills.
You want the smartest, most dependable, most skilled Virtual Assistant you can find, oh – and afford. Unless lots of face-time with him or her with your customers is part of your business, focus on ability.

The good news is, with the economy in the toilet there are tons of experienced, skilled, dependable, brilliant assistants out there. Many of them are mature men and women with decades of experience working for corporate America. And now they want to work with you:

Photo Credit: Vaneeesa

Before You Hire:
Decide what it is you want your Virtual Assistant to do. Do you need someone to schedule your appointments? Answer your phone? Take customer orders? Make sales calls? Generate leads? Write letters? Answer your email? Take care of all the crap you just don’t want to think about? Maybe you can’t keep your checkbook balanced, let alone manage your business taxes.

Whatever it is, decide exactly what you need done. Then write it down in bulleted form before you go Virtual Assistant hunting.

Determine Your Budget
Virtual Assistants, the good ones anyway, will generally cost from $35 to $100 an hour. Most Virtual Assistant have a minimum hourly rate and minimum number of hours per week or month.
Figure on hiring someone at least two to four hours a week. Some Virtual Assistant won’t work full-time; some require a guaranteed number of hours per week or month.
Decide exactly what you want accomplished in the time you hire someone for.

Hourly versus Project Rates
Everything is negotiable. If you have projects or work that has a beginning and an end – such as inputting data, transcribing tapes, writing blog posts etc. consider finding a Virtual Assistant who will give you a project bid rather than an hourly rate. This way you don’t get nickel and dimed to death and you can manage your budget better.
It also means if the Virtual Assistant goes overtime they eat the difference. If they get it done faster and more efficiently, they make more money. If you’re paying for someone to answer the phone, you might be able to negotiate a lower base rate and a per call rate.
Either way you win if you can negotiate a project price.

References
If you want to see how professional a Virtual Assistant is, visit their website. Is it professional? Well-written? Does it answer your questions about the professional and what they do? Are there testimonials? A website is their store-front. Are you impressed? Disappointed? Appalled?

Call and set up a time for a consultation. Explain you’ve never hired a Virtual Assistant and ask them to explain the process. Are they able to explain what they do clearly? Do you feel comfortable talking with them? What’s your gut feeling? Any chemistry there?

Get a list of references. The more they’re charging, the more references they should have. Call all the references. Double-check the phone numbers against Google to ensure they’re a real business, not just a friend who’s going to rave about them.

Spend at least 15 minutes with each reference. Ask for specific examples of things the Virtual Assistant did that made them so great. Ask about pay. Ask about reliability, invoicing and other satisfaction. Ask why they aren’t using the Virtual Assistant anymore.

Don’t ask yes or no questions. Ask open ended questions like, “What did you like best about _______?” instead of “Did you like _______’s work?”.
Ask for referrals for other Virtual Assistant or about the references experience hiring Virtual Assistant Who knows – you may learn something.

Don’t worry too much about Virtual Assistant certifications. They’re a dime a dozen on the internet. Worry more about how your consultation and the consulting interview goes. Trust your gut. The way you are treated and your experience on the phone when you’re hiring is your best indication of how the rest of your relationship will go.

Know Who You’re Hiring
Virtual Assistants, the good ones anyway, consider themselves independent contractors.
Don’t ask them for a resume – it’s offensive. They’re not applying for a job – they’re partners. You hire them like you’d hire an attorney or financial professional, not a secretary. They’re not there to fetch your coffee or pick up your dry cleaning – unless they advertise themselves as personal assistants.
So make sure you know who you’re hiring. Not every Virtual Assistant can answer a phone, take a message, and respond to emails. Many assistants want to run errands and do girl/guy Friday stuff. So be very clear about what you expect, and what they offer. Treat them all with respect.

Price
Don’t hire the cheapest assistant you can find. If they’re not charging a decent rate they’re not making a decent living as a Virtual Assistant, so chances are they’re
(1) not likely to be around long enough to be a great partner or
(2) they’re doing to take on more clients to make up the difference and end up not giving your project the attention it deserves.

You also want to hire someone who is already making a living as a Virtual Assistant. If they’re “trying it out,” or “making extra holiday money” they’re not going to be there for you or anyone else, for very long. About the time you think they’re trained, they’re onto something new and better paying, are going back to school, anything but helping you grow your business. Bite the bullet, hire a pro. You’ll be glad you did.

Some good advice here!
How about you? Do you hire a virtual assistant for your business?
If so, share your experiences.
Post your comments below.

Hire A Virtual Assistant To Grow Your Business is a post from Affordable Internet Marketing, http://www.affordable-internet-marketing.com by Case Stevens.

Jeremy Tan of Survivor Marketing thinks it’s crucial for your Internet marketing efforts, but recognizes how few marketers really apply this in their daily marketing efforts.
That’s why he wrote today’s highly interesting guest post about this topic.

Here comes Jeremy.
Pay attention and enjoy!

Think Like A Customer: The Most Important Skill In Marketing

Indeed, there are myriads of marketing skills out there that you are exposed to, and those new and old marketing techniques that you desire to master.

Yet, the most important of them all perhaps remains as the most difficult to comprehend for many. This skill is vital for any type of marketing to succeed, and involves studying societal patterns and trends.

This skill shall be known as “thinking like the customer“. It involves getting inside the minds of your customers, attempting to decipher why they do what they do. This is the best way for you to know what you should provide to your customers, since you know how they are most likely to respond in any given situation!

Sure, some of you might be thinking that you can think like the customer, with all your market research, customer feedbacks and surveys.
While I find this true to a certain extent, I would want to challenge this perception as I feel that these market research only serve to offer second-hand insights into customer behavior. Such statistics and data are just substitutes for actual conversations and real exchange in the society.

Keep this in mind: Research serves to inform you of what actions people have done, or are most likely to undertake. It can never predict what changes the future could instill in this rapidly evolving world that we live in!

Putting this thought into the web marketing context, those unable to think like the customer would end up doing stuff that are unimportant — Or worse still, not doing stuff that are important to their online business!

Photo Credit: stefan.erschwendner

Take social media marketing for example. You have to think like the people whom you are trying to reach out to, and you will realize what exactly are the best ways to connect with them. If your customers do not visit blogs, or even do no possess fast connections to view videos, you can then rethink and brainstorm your social media marketing strategies!

You need to know how your potential customers look for information that they need, and then position your business in front of them!

This think like a customer doctrine should be applied to everything you do online. This thought should determine the way your site is structured, the content that you produce, the products that you sell, and even the way you interact with your customers. It should be the core factor which determines your entire web marketing strategy!

Yet, to succeed, you will still require all of the other marketing skills. However, once you’ve mastered how to think like your customer, your marketing efforts would be much simpler and more likely to be fruitful!

Now, that’s a highly useful marketing skill indeed.
What about you? Do you think like a customer?
Post your comments below.

Think Like A Customer to Make More Profits is a post from Affordable Internet Marketing, http://www.affordable-internet-marketing.com by Case Stevens.

I wouldn’t have thought about this possibility, but Farah Mustansar, who clearly is someone thinking outside the box, would. She uses the ‘mystery shopper’-phenomena to fully test if her online store is up to par.

Here’s Farah’s guest post.
Enjoy!

Using mystery shopper to scrutinize and improve your online store

“Mystery shopper” is a technique commonly used by brick and mortar stores to assess the shopping experience from customer’s viewpoint.
Mysterious shopper (Anonymous shopper to be more precise) is a person who visits the store as a customer (but the sales staff or store owners aren’t aware of the identity), so the shopper is treated just like another customer.

The shopper will stroll around the store, take a look at products on shelves, talk to sales persons, try to negotiate on prices, and everything a normal customer would do.

Meanwhile they are taking notes in their mind, especially about the areas that they feel needs some improvement. Later on, their input helps businesses to improve on whatever the mystery shopper thinks were the weak points. Note that mystery shoppers are also employed by third parties for various reasons.

Photo Credit: DavidMartynHunt

Online stores can use mystery shoppers as well, to evaluate the shopping experience and improve. Let’s take a look at how mystery shopper can help.

Categories & Navigation:
The first thing mystery shopper needs to pore over is the navigation and the categories. The online stores usually have many different products and all of these products need to be exhibited in relevant categories.

An online store without proper categories will result in hundreds of products scattered all over the place, and it will make it impossible for the customers to find the desired product. So, it’s important that the products are arranged under different categories.

For example a fashion clothing store can use the categories like Shoes, Apparel, Accessories, Brands, and the likes.

Search:
At times, customers are not in the mood of sifting through various categories. They will land on your website with a particular product in mind, and would like to go straight to the product page.

To do so, they will use the searching feature; and you need to provide them with a good enough searching facility. If the search shows no results unless the customers are putting in exact same keywords, that’s not good enough.

On the other hand, if searching turns up too many results, that’s not going to cut it either. Mystery shopper should try searching with various keywords and see if the search results were helpful or not.

Display:
Once the customer reaches the product page by searching or navigating through the categories, the page must be having a couple of good quality product images along with the description.

Not only the product page, but the entire web store should be designed in a way to lure the customers into buying, hence maximizing the conversion. A Mystery shopper will try to notice if the website is keeping the customers involved by using the features like “new arrivals” or “relevant products”.

Customer Support:
Online stores need to have some sort of customer support which is available 24/7.
At times email support is not enough. If possible you should give them a toll free number, or provide them with “live chat” option, as you cannot ask customers to go through lengthy FAQ or Terms and Conditions to find the answers arising in their minds.
Mystery Shoppers should try these customer support options and see if they were good.

Checkout:
The checkout procedure has got to be smooth. The store must be using the best shopping cart software and payment gateways.

Online customers prefer paying via PayPal. If you are not able to provide PayPal for some reasons (e.g. you are not operating from one of those approved countries), you should at least provide them with an option to pay via credit/debit card.
A Mystery shopper will use the shopping cart and checkout, making changes, trying discount coupon and field to see if everything’s working fine.

Have you ever used a mystery shopper to optimize your online store?
Post your comments below.

A Mystery Shopper to Improve Your Online Shop? is a post from Affordable Internet Marketing, http://www.affordable-internet-marketing.com by Case Stevens.