She used brainstorming sessions to develop new products and matching online marketing techniques. But she wasn’t very satisfied with the outcome of these sessions. She felt it could be a big time waster. Hence the question.

Fortunately I found Kaushal Gandhi prepared to write about winning techniques for brainstorming in today’s guest post.

So, if you want to be more productive using brainstorming sessions, read this carefully.
Enjoy!

10 Winning Techniques for Brainstorming

1. Do Your Homework
   Often brainstorming sessions can be spur-of-the-moment 15-minute discussions, where your group will toss up many ideas in a short amount of time.

   However, if you’re going to be involved in more official state of affairs, then you should make it a point to collect relevant information, beforehand. Thus you can use it effectively at the time of the session. Hence, be prepared!

2. Build a protective and an imaginative surrounding
   The environment should be such that people can feel completely at ease speaking out their mind and expressing their opinions.

3. Create an even playground
   Allow people attending the brainstorming sessions to jeep all their pending work and thoughts aside. Mull over starting out with stretching or breathing exercises. Such activity will leave all the people in the room relaxed and make them momentarily forget about whatever is happening in the outside world.

4. Focus
   Brainstorming is not just a method of conjuring up uncanny ideas.
   The group should be focused on the task at hand and not get distracted by the subject of the discussion.
   Any member of the group should not get discouraged by a topic that is not of his interest and hence, not take active part in the discussion. Be it any topic, problem or issue, all the members should totally concentrate on a solution without showing any signs of lethargy or disinterest.

5. Listen to the other members patiently
   While it is important to get your own point across, you should not forget that the other members are also an integral part of the entire process and deserve to be heard out by the panel.

   
   Photo Credit: Jeff Lowe

6. Try remaining objective
   In case you are heading the brainstorming session, do not get too occupied with what the end result will be. The session might not reach a logical end, if you keep your personal agenda on the line.

7. Manage the Group keenly
   Ensure that the members remain present for sessions throughout its duration and not keep on taking breaks, and at the same time remain committed to sustaining the enthusiasm of the group.

8. Suggest creative exercises
   Include a few exercises for stimulating the mind and generative creative ideas. There should be magazines, books and audio-visuals available to not let monotony set into the sessions.

9. Do not forget that there is a job at hand
   The idea of such a session is to generate ideas and offer suggestions/opinions. Successful sessions are those which result in propositions or suggestions which could take shape into concrete decisions. A brainstorming session rarely gives birth to a final idea.

10. Assess the results of the session at a later point of time
    For successful implementation of ideas, they should have a longer shelf life than a single session of brainstorming. One which sounds imaginative one day might sound outdated the other. Hence, it is imperative to keep improvising on the ideas that were brought about in the brainstorming sessions.

There you have it.
Do you use these techniques for brainstorming or any others?
Post your comments below.

10 Techniques for Brainstorming – The Winning Formula is a post from Affordable Internet Marketing, http://www.affordable-internet-marketing.com by Case Stevens.

That’s why we have a guest post about the topic today.

In general, private label rights -or PLR- grant the distribution rights of documents where you are allowed to treat them as your own.

Mind you, restrictions may apply, but basically that’s what they are.

Nicole Miller knows a lot about private label rights and that’s why her post is published today.
I let her do the talking.
Enjoy.

—–

In this article, we introduce what we call, “Solution Marketing,” and then we describe a world without PLR.

In the latter, we paint a picture of the difficulties encountered without access to the obvious benefits of this new medium. They say you can’t prove a positive with a negative – but we believe that after reviewing the negative aspects of a PLR-void environment, you’ll quickly come to appreciate the positive aspects that private label rights has to offer!

Solution Marketing Defined

In just a few moments, you’re going to see how solution marketing plays an important role for an example auto mechanics shop. But for now, “solution marketing” is a term we use to describe problem solving – from a business perspective.

When we’re faced with problems in business, we want the solutions to those problems addressed in a way that’s effective, marketable, and ultimately profitable. PLR is an example of solution marketing because it solves problems.

It solves the problem of limited time by providing pre-made products. It solves the problem of limited money because it’s a cost-effective alternative to hiring full-time writers, designers, or programmers. It solves the problem of limited energy because other people do the work. And it solves the problem of limited resources because there are literally hundreds of PLR content outlets to work from.

It’s not just a new buzzword. In our view, solution marketing is a solid answer to a problem that can be applied with little planning, little funds, and little knowledge.

Photo Credit: by Nicola since 1972

A World Without PLR

To reiterate why PLR is such a strong, viable option for quickly building a successful venture, imagine for a moment – a world without private label rights. In a single instant, we would be faced with enormous production costs and reduced time to put production into a profitable perspective.

As an example, let’s say that we have a small auto mechanics shop and in an effort to educate our customers on how to reduce repair costs, we want to fill a section of our website with a collection of articles about basic car maintenance. That’s not too difficult a task, however in a world without PLR, we’re faced with a few problems:

• Problem 1:  No one in our mechanics shop is a writer. “Charles” is a transmission specialist, “Alan” is a brakes expert, “Derrick” is our in-house detailer and “Alicia” is our secretary/cashier.

  Our only experience with writing is limited to filling out order forms! In a world without PLR, one of us is going to have to bite the bullet and write the articles for our website. And since none of us have experience doing this sort of thing, chances are the articles aren’t going to be very good.

• Problem 2: None of us have the resources to write. In this case, we’re faced with a tough nut to crack because in a world without PLR, we need

  1. the educational background to write the articles
  2. the time to write the articles, and
  3. the funds to pay for that education and the funds to replace our temporary writer with a temporary mechanic

• Problem 3: We don’t have the time or money to hire a professional writer.
  Hiring a writer can be time consuming and costly. We would have to check references, evaluate the quality of the writers’ works, pay to have our lawyer read over the contracts, and then finally select one out of a possible hundred potential candidates!

These are just a few of the issues we would have to address in a world without PLR and as you can see, they make a strong case for the “solution marketing” we described above.

The good news is that we don’t live in a world without PLR and as a result, our problems above become moot. With PLR, we can simply buy a collection of auto maintenance articles, change the content a little to our liking, and then upload them to our website for our customers to enjoy.

Nicole Miller writes for Currys discount codes where you can find PCworld.co.uk discount codes.

———-

So, what’s your take on private label rights?
Post your comments below.

Private Label Rights as Solution Marketing is a post from Affordable Internet Marketing, http://www.affordable-internet-marketing.com by Case Stevens.

Of course this doesn’t apply to you, but many people have absolutely no idea about what kind of products they should produce.

In my opinion, that is mainly caused by the fear of failure. While creating products is quite easy, this fear even stops them making a decision on what products to make.

Let’s try to help them out, shall we? Let’s tell them following …

Photo Credit: art_es_anna

Creating products only require 2 simple steps!

1. Finding a niche you’re passionate about ant that is popular with others.
If you don’t already have one, you want to select a niche that you are at least interested in (better: passionate about).
Being passionate about a niche makes it so much easier for you to research and write about it. It also makes creating products a lot simpler.
Your passion, know-how and interest will shine through to your customers.

It should also fill a need for the public. People must be prepared to pay for solutions in your niche.
On the other hand, you don’t want there to be too much competition. Otherwise you’re setting yourself up for failure.

It’s quite easy to find your niche. Just check sites like Ebay, Amazon and Yahoo Shopping. Ezinearticles.com is another great source.

What you need to do is find out what is popular, what people buy, what they are interested in.
Each of these sites mentioned above provides you with stuff that is hot right now. Like Ebay Pulse .

Or take Amazon. Select a department in the left menu. Then click Go next to the search bar. Next, at the right of the search bar, select Bestselling or sort on price. Average customer review is another selection criterion. Do the same for books.

Read forums to see what questions people are asking. Read the latest news! Your ears and eyes are your best research tools. Ask shop assistants what is popular. Read trade publications, you can often discover topics before they become mainstream.

2. Creating products!
When you have your niche you can begin creating products. And the first thing you need to consider creating a product that will sell well. For this there are a couple ways to get help.

The first way is to watch the news and create a product based on the latest tidings. For example, you might want to create a book about preparing for a natural disaster if an immense natural disaster just occurred.
Another example is creating a product about how people can get the job they want or about job alternatives or how they can save money if the jobless rate is soaring.
Pay attention to what’s happening worldwide and decide to make products in response to that.

Another way to creating great products is to see what kinds of products are already selling well.
If a certain diet is popular at the moment then you include a similar diet in a new product you create. Or tap into the popularity of a fad by making a product that is related to that fad.

Creating products based on the right selection can make all the difference with whether you are successful with Internet marketing. All you have to do after creating products is follow the six simple steps to build a highly profitable niche business.

If you’re looking for a proven step-by-step system for finding hot markets, creating products people are eager to buy (even if you’re not the expert), and how to get it to market in the shortest time possible, while on a budget, check out my affiliate link to this Infoproduct Creation Guide

Then share your thoughts about creating products.
Post your comments below.

Creating Products That Sell! is a post from Affordable Internet Marketing, http://www.affordable-internet-marketing.com by Case Stevens.

In it, Chris describes a simple 5 Step process, to make big money online – more than any other online activity. Mastering that simple process will allow you to write your own tickets.

This is what the so called “gurus” do, almost exclusively. And then they just repeat those steps over and over again in one hot market after the next.

It’s exactly what I wrote about in the past in posts like Mediocre Copywriting Skills? and How Simple Internet marketing Can Be.

But… while the concept IS easy, execution can be a real problem for many online marketers.

Photo Credit: tiarescott

Inside The 24-Hour HOT Product Formula, Chris says:

“But I’ve already tried selling my own product, and hardly anyone bought it! I can’t get affiliates (real ones), I can’t make decent money with it and I can’t get traffic! What am I doing wrong!!??”

The reason why many attempts to create an own product and get affiliates sell it successfully fail or deliver just some poor results, is because people just don’t understand how to recognize and present HOT offers or how to develop an effective sales process.

As I posted before, a lot of people are simply selling the wrong products.
Or they’re selling the “right” product, but with the wrong offer.

The most important thing to remember when selling products is: people do NOT buy what they need! They buy what they WANT.

Therefore, your prospects will always find money to buy what they really want. So…

… why not offer products that your prospects will make private sacrifices for in order to to buy them?

And that’s exactly the goal of Chris’ latest report!
It shows you how to pick out markets full of “rabid buyers” and hence how to recognize what sorts of products truly sell like crazy.

Plus… how to quickly produce hot-selling products of your own that you can use as leverage (and an initial starting point) to penetrate a market, make some big sales and even a fortune.

Chris also shows you how to create simple copy that sell like crazy and how to roll out your products.

This report only consists of 28 pages, but unlike Chris’s previous VIP reports, he added some great videos, so you can look over his shoulder to see HOW this famous Internet marketer is actually doing it.

Honestly, it’s eye opening for people who don’t know how to create their own products and sell them successfully. And fast!

If that sounds like you or if you’re not making enough money online, I suggest you get your copy right now.

To make the decision easier, I’ll even add a special bonus to the report that fits like a glove.

Because I’m going to give away a copy of my “22 Secret Hot Buttons” report for the first 10 visitors who buy this great report through my affiliate link and send me their PayPal receipt.

To get this free bonus (and to avoid disappointment if you buy this from someone else!), you first MUST clear your cookies and then use this link:
“The 24-Hour HOT Product Formula”.
Then email me your receipt (support -AT- affordable-internet-marketing.com) and I’ll send you the bonus by email.

Get your copy now and let me know what you think.
Post your comments below.

The 24-Hour HOT Product Formula is a post from Affordable Internet Marketing, http://www.affordable-internet-marketing.com by Case Stevens.

So here a 4 top domain name tips, written by Emilia Johansson, director of AffiliateTips.com. Emilia is an expert in finding great programs that pay out high commissions which she publishes in a top 10. She looks at today’s topic from this respect.

Here goes. Enjoy!

The Importance of a Top Domain Name

When you’re starting your affiliate business there are many things to think about and one of the most important things is picking a domain name.

Photo Credit: Rick & Bart

I wouldn’t say that it will make or break your business but it can make the difference between a successful and a mediocre affiliate.

How can that be, you might ask yourself, and the answer is quite easy; with a carefully chosen domain name you’ll be able to attract more visitors and that equals more money in your pocket at the end of the month.

If you stick to a few simple strategies you’ll get a head start to your competitors and to help you with this we’ve created this post. Read it and learn what to think about – in just picking up one or two of our pointers you’ll get an edge to your competitors when it comes to the domain name.

Matching Names

It might seem obvious but if possible you should try to match the domain name with the name of your website. If you do this chances are much greater that your visitors remember the name and in the end return to your site.

If the names don’t match people will be confused and as many are inpatient they won’t bother trying to find your site. This means less visitors and money for you.

Many of the top names are already taken – use free registry tools to find out if the one you want is free or not.

Keyword in the Domain Name

One of the best ways of attracting visitors to your website through a domain name is in picking a name that includes your website’s keyword. From an SEO (Search Engine Optimization) perspective this is ideal but it won’t be easy to do.

First of all, think about what your most important keywords are and then start thinking about what the domain name could be. This could take some time but it will be well-worth the effort.

Keep it Short and Simple

If you are thinking about using a long domain name then you really should reconsider. Most people won’t remember the name of your site if the name is too long – keep it short and simple.
Of course, this shouldn’t be done at any price – don’t sacrifice your memorability and branding just to keep the name. Maybe a deliberation is at its place…

Also try to avoid using to many dashes in your domain name as this will make it harder for you to use it when you are meeting with people face to face. One is fine but if you have problems pronouncing it in less than a few seconds it’s probably best to rethink it.

Creative Names

If you can’t come up with a generic domain name you might want to think about picking a creative domain name. In fact, in many cases can this prove to be more successful – it all comes down to how creative you are.

To test if your chosen domain name is creative enough to be remember, simply mention it casually to a few friends and check back with them after a day or so. If they still remember the domain name – it’s for sure a keeper.
Warm up your creative muscles and start brainstorming!

About the author: Emilia Johansson is the director of AffiliateTips.com – an affiliate marketing site with a large selection of affiliate program reviews that makes it easier to find affiliate programs for your site.

Have any other domain name tips? Let us know.
Post them below or give us your comments.

Also, don’t forget to check out our Domain Name Availability Search.

4 Top Domain Name Tips is a post from Affordable Internet Marketing, http://www.affordable-internet-marketing.com by Case Stevens.

Why Create Your Own Products?

So, you want to create your own product.

Well, you’ve made a good choice. I’ve been telling this to marketers for a long time. Yes, you can make a nice living as an affiliate marketer, but if you want to rake in the really big bucks, you need to create your own products.

Need reasons?
This article is going to give you plenty of reasons. After reading it, I have no doubt that you’ll be convinced that creating your own product is the way to go.

The biggest reason for creating your own product is complete control.

As an affiliate marketer, you are at the mercy of the product creator.
The price of the product, the sales page, the customer support… everything is out of your control. If the product creator decides to reduce the commission percentage from 75% to 50%, well, you have to live with it.

I’ve seen product creators literally destroy their products with some of the changes they make and in turn, they kill their affiliates chances for making sales.

Another big reason for creating your own product is competition.

As an affiliate, you are competing with every other affiliate who’s promoting that same product. Unless you really have some serious affiliate marketing skills, you’re not going to get many sales.

As a product creator, not only don’t you have to worry about competing with other affiliates, you get other affiliates to help you promote your product. One super affiliate doing that can land you hundreds of sales. I have personally had many affiliates over the years promote my products for me.

Still another advantage of creating your own product is making a name for yourself.

As an affiliate marketer, you’re promoting somebody else’s product and in the process, promoting somebody else’s name. It is doubtful that anybody is going to even remember who you are after they’ve purchased the product from you. Think about it. Do you remember all the affiliate marketers you bought products from?

In addition to name recognition, there is also the opportunity for addition income. Each product you sell, if created properly, can lead to additional sales. I have some products that one $20 sale leads to another $200 of income in many cases. With affiliate marketing, these chances are limited.

Yes, creating your own products is a great way to earn a nice income online. However, product creation does take some doing. In my signature is a great guide that I put together with my friend Justin Michie on product creation. I am sure you’ll find that it’s the best guide you’ve read on the subject.

Why create your own products? I think the reasons are obvious.

To YOUR Success,

Steven Wagenheim
Complete Guide To Product Creation
http://www.stevewagenheim.com/productcreation.html

3 Big Reasons To Create Your Own Products is a post from Affordable Internet Marketing, http://www.affordable-internet-marketing.com by Case Stevens.

It also reports more than 85 percent of the world’s online population has used the Internet to make a purchase—increasing the market for online shopping by 40 percent in the past two years.

That’s impressive!

Are you prepared for this? Do you have your own online shop?

If you haven’t, why not?

There are many advantages.

And there’s an opportunity to have your own online shop within minutes, featuring over 28 MILLION products from over 1,300 merchants who offer their products through Commission Junction, LinkShare, LinkConnector and ShareASale (plus a few others).

All these products are put in a huge database from where you can select on keyword or brand, generate some code to put on your site and presto… you have an online shop, updated in real time.

Or …

… you can have little snippets with a few products displayed in the sidebar of your blog or site. Or use them instead or in conjunction with Adsense ads.

Many options available.

More info is at Your Online Store In Minutes!

Check it out and let me know what you’re thinking about this development.
Do you have your own online shop already?
Do you think it will be valuable to have one in the near future?

Post your comments below.

875+ Million Online Shoppers – Time For Your Own Free Online Shop! is a post from Affordable Internet Marketing, http://www.affordable-internet-marketing.com by Case Stevens.

Shortly after publishing yesterday’s article USP: Differentiate Your Site In 30 Seconds, a comment was made asking for any tips to work on your unique selling proposition. So, here goes.

The USP is the one thing that makes your product and your business different from every other product and business in the same market.

How to find your USP?

The USP is a result of a matching process, a comparison between your product and company on one side and the market, more specifically your very specific target group on the other side.

The four steps to find your USP are:

1. Evaluate your strengths and significant competencies
   Take a good look at the features and benefits of your product or service and at your company and then decide what differentiates you and your business from the pack. Is it the value you provide, how big a problem you solve, your experience, know how, customer service, delivery speed and so on?
   Try to quantify the differences as much as possible!
2. Analyze your market to find out which benefits are most crucial to your target prospects. What benefits do they appreciate most and which do they actively look for?
   Review leading trade publishings, analyze newsletters and search the Net for news and trends about your niche. Here’s another great tip: survey your customers to gather data.
3. Compare the answers from steps 1 and 2 and encircle the matches.
   Whenever details of both lists match, you can build a USP. If you have no matches, you have to digg deeper until you find them. It’s not always easy to find a USP, but in order to differentiate yourself and your product, you should have one.
4. Take your TOP match(es) and use it to position yourself and your product in the market.
   Summarize the results from step 3 into one, compact, compelling, motivating phrase that will persuade your clients to trade their cash for the benefits presented by your products.
   Your significant product benefits and the way in which you structure your offering is your ‘Unique Selling Proposition’ or ‘USP.’

Image credit: lovrin

You can find a USP for every product or service that you sell, but you could also look at your companies product range and develop a unique selling proposition for that. If you take this route and go more general, you’re developing a brand.

If you’re having difficulties finding a good USP, start digging deeper in steps 1 and 2.
A great way to get into the smallest details is to have someone interview you to get the answers to questions like
- what exactly is it that your product or comapny does?
- what services and/or products do you provide?
- to whom do you provide these services/products; who are your customers?
- what makes you better than other companies?
- why do you do that better; how and how much?
- what needs do you fill for your customers?
Then, after the interviewer asks everyone of these questions, have her ask this one, “So what?” You should give more. Both you and the interviewer may come up with unexpected answers and solutions.

Finding a USP can be hard. As a marketer you need to discover and fine-tune or even refocus your USP.

Did I leave something out? Post it in the comments.

4 Steps To Discover Your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) is a post from Affordable Internet Marketing, http://www.affordable-internet-marketing.com by Case Stevens.

From all the people that give you advice, there are many telling you that you need to produce a HUGE product, taking you weeks or even months to create, in order to have a product worth $50 – $200+.

The underlying idea is that they wish you to get swamped with the idea that you have to produce a monumental product to acquire all that money you desire for your endeavors, so that you lack the confidence to produce anything personal and basically become their competitor.

To put that differently… “Don’t create something of your own while you are able to just join my associate program.”

Such advice makes me sick to my stomach.

Do I have anything versus acquiring associates? No. Of course not. I’ve associates of my own. Joining and advertising associate programs should only be a step in your business.

Remember that a lot of people just want to avoid you competing with them, ever. You should be aware that nearly all of what they tell you is planned to make certain that you keep spending your money to assist them make additional money by doing nothing else than advertising their products through their associate programs.

Now, picture this… Perhaps producing a product you would like to sell for $50 – $100 or more is a lot of hard work, but producing a series of reports that sell for $5-$10 or $10-$15 each isn’t.

And they don’t take long to create. I’m talking days, not weeks or months. The sooner you can finish a product, the sooner you can get paid and move on to creating another.

You don’t have to create one $50 – $100 product. You can simply create 5-10 $10 products and offer them in a way that makes it natural for people to buy them in bundles.

The easiest way to get people to buy more than one product is to make them all related. Make it so that one product seems a little incomplete without the other. You can cross-sell them by mentioning (one of) your other reports inside.

Keep in mind that I’m not saying that you should leave anything out of your products. Not at all. Just make sure that one product expands on an idea mentioned in a previous one.

You always hear people talking about how it’s not worth the effort to sell a $10 product and you know what?

They’re probably right.

But what many don’t tell you is that when you offer a group of low-cost, attractive products on a related topic… Many people don’t buy just one. People buy bundles of low-cost products on impulse.

Many people want to keep this hidden from you because they know that by getting out there and successfully selling your own products (no matter how small) that you’ll gain the confidence you need to compete with them later on.

If you’ve been putting off creating your own information product because you feel like you don’t have enough time to create one, hopefully by the time you’ve finished reading this report, you’ll realize that you have all the time you need.

Oh, and by the way, here’s a great e-commerce script to sell them.

Have fun and let me know how you’re doing.
Post your comments.

Easy Way To Create $50-$200+ Information Products is a post from Affordable Internet Marketing, http://www.affordable-internet-marketing.com by Case Stevens.

Let me explain.

Last week, I wrote about your best Internet business opportunities.
This post lets you decide about the business topics you can select. If you’re still indecisive, read on, because I have a great resource below.

And a few weeks before, I showed you 4 simple steps to create a successful small business website.

The steps 3 and 4 in this post can be easily implemented using the outstanding Rapid Action Profits script that I recommended in there.

Only leaves you with steps 1 and 2: Get a Product and Create a Sales Site.

Create a sales site is partially done using Rapid Action Profits, as it already contains a general sales page.

But you want a more specific one. And you want your product, right?

What if I told you that you can have …

Would that help?

I mean, with such a resource at your fingertips you will have plenty of choices to decide upon your business topic, as you can check out for yourself below.

Believe me, you can’t do them all.
If you only pick three (3) of them right now and turn them into great selling websites, one each month, you’re in business before this first quarter is over!

All you need to do is read the ready-to-go private label product, add an introduction and your remarks, insert a few affiliate programs maybe and use my system to create info products in a flash.

Including the necessary research on your part, this can easily be done within a month. Even two weeks is very well possible, but let’s just stick to one product a month. And that’s because the first one may take some more time as you have to gain some experience in setting up the system, RAP and find affiliate programs.

Now, let’s just assume, that for each product that you launch, you will only sell two per day. Let’s say the profit per sale is only $20.
That’s 40 bucks a day after only one month.

After three months, you’re generating $120 a day, 30 days in a month! Doesn’t that make a nice monthly income?

I thought so. Now, what’s this great resource with so many PLR product?

It’s Nicheology.

Normally this great membership site is closed and has a long waiting list. But right now there’s a small opening in the door.
That’s why you have to act fast.

Check it out and let me know what you think about it.
Don’t procrastinate, as these free spots always are filled very quick.

How To Become Successful Fast In 2008 is a post from Affordable Internet Marketing, http://www.affordable-internet-marketing.com by Case Stevens.