MIBW
Archives:
November
23, 2001
Please
note that these are archives so many links to ads and
old pages may not work.
Of
course any contests or special sales you may read about
are obsolete so please don't email me about any
promotions, thank you.
Any
reference to my old domain My IBiz Helper.com will
redirect to Ezine Ad Helper.com, this includes any
email sent to myibizhelper.com
So
please do not send any mail to myibizhelper, it will be
treated as spam. If you need to contact me, use the
contact
form here
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MY IBIZ WEEKLY! November 23, 2001 Vol.1 Issue 2
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Starting a Business on the Internet isn't impossible if you have the
right help...
Publisher:Donesia Muhammad
http://MyIBizHelper.com
This Weeks' Issue:
==> Note from the Publisher
==> Top Sponsor
==> What's New!
==> Article: Common Sense Marketing Methods
By Donesia Muhammad
==> Middle Sponsor
==> Weekly Webmaster Tip
==> Guest Article: Are you Wasting your Marketing Dollars?
By Angela Wu
==> Useful Sites and Ezines
==> Free Ads Section
==> Contact Information/Subscription Info
Proud Member of the Ezine Publishers Association
Join Free http://www.ezinepublishers.org
WARNING! Don't even think about applying for a merchant account until
you read this! Discover the truth about online credit card processing
that merchant providers don't want you to know.
http://www.netsitedesign.com/realtime
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NOTE FROM THE PUBLISHER
Welcome, everyone to another issue of My IBiz Weekly! I want to thank
everyone who has subscribed to this ezine. Thank you for all the
positive feedback regarding last weeks' issue. I have moved the list to
Topica for the time being. For those of you who were not able to
download your free ebooks or did not receive the instructions, I will
include those links at the bottom.
I have a new article for those interested in getting started with your advertising and sales methods
and a guest article from Angela Wu asking yourself are you wasting your
marketing dollars? Stay tuned in the following weeks about some exciting
updates to myibizhelper and some new additions to the newsletter.
So sit back and enjoy this issue.
Sincerely,
Donesia Muhammad, Publisher, Webmaster
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COMMON SENSE MARKETING
By Donesia Muhammad
"Think as an Advertiser, Customer, then as an Owner for Success"
As a business owner, whether you are selling goods or services, you
first have to change your way of thinking in order to be successful.
Promotion and Marketing is all about addressing the consumers' needs.
Competition is healthy and plentiful so you need to understand the
basics first.
THINK AS AN ADVERTISER
Are you thinking as an advertiser? Are you coming up with new ideas
every day? Doesn't mean that every idea is a winner but it helps to keep
your mind active. Do you know who is your target audience? Your target
audience should be the people, or type of people who would most benefit
from your goods or services. On the Internet, your target audience
shouldn't be just "anyone with a valid credit card and an internet
connection!" No, that's how Spammers think, which is why they are never
successful. To try and figure this all out simply and easily: go turn
on the television. Watch some of the commercials. Look at how they use their
words and phrases.
For example a commercial for a toy isn't designed just for kids. It's
designed to put an idea in a child's mind that the product is so good
that they couldn't possibly live without this and if their parents don't
buy this toy, then they are bad parents. Of course that's not true but
try telling that to a child. Who is the target audience for toy
commercials?
Children( depending on the age)
Parents (depending on their age, this tactic is usually for new parents)
Day Care Centers, Doctors' offices,( or any facility that caters to kids
and needs children to occupy themselves)
Grandparents (they want to spoil kids)
Anyone who wants to win a child over (sad, but true)
Look at the billboards on the highway. Do you think
that drivers are looking at the messages? In areas of high traffic, yes,
they have nothing else better to do. If they are not watching then the
passengers are to cajole the driver to do what the ad says.
THINK AS A CUSTOMER
Are you looking at the local stores in your area as an owner and a
customer? What do you want to see as a customer, what do you expect when
you visit that store? Is your expectation met or does it need help? If
you worked there, how would you improve this.
WEAR DIFFERENT HATS
Put yourself in the various target audiences that you have written down
for your business. How can each audience be satisfied? Can you cater to
everyone...maybe not but you can try to meet the majority of consumer
concerns if you stop thinking as just an owner but a customer.
NOW YOU ARE READY TO THINK AS AN OWNER
To get your business message across, it is a gradual process. Anyone
with a few thousand dollars can hire someone to come up with a site and
advertise that site to so called target audiences but only you can know
what is best for your business, only you. Get to know the true start of
advertising and wear as many different hats as necessary to succeed.
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Copyright (c) KDM Publishing
Donesia has been doing business online for over 5 years.
Let her marketing, advertising and writing experience help
your business grow. Read more of her articles here
http://DonesiaMuhammad.com
This article may be freely distributed as long as the above byline is
included
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WEEKLY WEBMASTER TIPS
Web Source Web Design Tips
by Shelley Lowery
Adding Color to Your Input Boxes
The INPUT tag is used to create input fields within a
web page form.
You can change the font, input text color, input text size
and the background color of your INPUT box by using the
STYLE attribute.
<INPUT type="text" STYLE="color: #FFFFFF; font-family:
Verdana; font-weight: bold; font-size: 12px; background-
color: #72A4D2;" size="10" maxlength="30">
In addition, instead of using the standard form submit
button, you can use an image.
<INPUT type=image name="submit" src="yourimage.gif" border="0">
When using an image to replace the standard submission
button, make sure you include, "BORDER=0," as the Netscape
browser will show a border.
Tip provided by: Web Source: Your Guide to Professional
Web Design and Development. http://www.web-source.net
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business owners. Get great articles, super tips, free
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get to run a free ad seen by almost 9000
subscribers!
http://rimdigest.com
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ARE YOU WASTING YOUR MARKETING DOLLARS?
(c) Copyright 2001, Angela Wu
I was horrified.
I had just spent $400 on advertising -- advertising that
only yielded $100 in sales.
Desperate to make up my losses, and not knowing which of
my three ad campaigns actually produced the sales, I made
a guess. I figured that most of my profits must have come
from the ad campaign that reached the largest number of
people -- in my case, an ezine with over 50000 subscribers.
So I naively shelled out another $200 for an ad - a wasted
$200, I might add, since I didn't make a single sale.
Thankfully I've learned a lot since those frustrating
days as an online business 'newbie' ... but the above
scenario isn't uncommon for beginners to the Internet
business world. We're constantly bombarded with claims
of fast, easy money - and they're hard to resist.
For example, when I first started online, I was told that
all I had to do was purchase a top sponsor ad in an ezine,
place a 'tested' and 'proven' ad ... and presto! I'd
be several thousands of dollars richer.
It didn't work. I faithfully purchased a number of ads
and followed the instructions to the letter. Hundreds
of wasted dollars later, I was completely discouraged
and almost ready to give it all up.
I'm glad I didn't. I learned that not every marketing
campaign will be successful ... unfortunately, all too
often people try an online business and give up when
they're unable to make money at it. In some cases,
sticking with it a while longer could have turned a
'failure' into a 'success'.
That doesn't mean doggedly doing exactly the same thing
over and over again, hoping to see better results. If
you do the same thing you'll get the same results.
(Article continues after a sponsor message)
Testing your marketing efforts is critical to your success.
And one of the simplest ways to do this is to use an ad
tracker.
Ad trackers provide you with a way to 'code' each of your
marketing campaigns. You use this special coded URL in
your ads -- and whenever a visit clicks on the URL, the
tracker records the 'hit'.
In other words, these tracking codes tell you how many hits
and unique visitors you get from each of your advertising
campaigns. By analyzing this information, you're able to
instantly see which of your campaigns are successful -- and
which are not.
Ad trackers don't cost much at all ... yet this small
investment can yield huge returns! Two of the most popular
are:
= ROIbot, http://www.roibot.com/r_r.cgi?R46886_article
-
this is the tracker I use most. It's easy to set up
and to manage, and it comes with a whole bunch of other
features including an autoresponder.
= Ultimate Ad Tracker, http://www.ultimateadtracker.com/ .
This is a CGI script that you'll need to configure and
install on your server (it comes with instructions).
Once set up, it's very easy to use.
Using an ad tracker really opens your eyes. I had always
thought, 'The more people I reach, the more sales I'll
make' -- you know, the usual traffic hype that we all hear.
Instead I found out real truths about what was working for
me and what wasn't. For example, my ad tracker taught me
that it's not the size of the ezine that counts ... it's
how many people actually *read* it. It also taught me
that just because a website gets a lot of traffic, it
doesn't mean that advertising on that site will give you
*results*.
By testing everything you do, you'll get solid proof of
what doesn't work, what works well, and what can be
improved. You know which ad campaigns to continue ...
and which ones to dump for something more profitable.
So track your marketing efforts -- every single one of
them. You'll gain valuable insight about where your sales
are coming from, and be able to learn and grow from these
insights. Your bottom line will thank you!
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Angela is the editor of Online Business Basics, an
exclusive newsletter for eBusiness beginners. She offers
a 'no hype, no bull' approach to building a profitable
Internet business. Every issue is packed with helpful
tips and useful tools, specially selected to fit a
beginner's shoestring budget. Visit her online today
at http://onlinebusinessbasics.com/article.html
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