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Archive for the ‘Growth Topics’ Category

Before mastering the art of lease or rental agreement, one has to understand the basics behind these terms. A lease or a rental agreement refers to an agreement that a tenant and landlord sign authorizing the tenant to use the said property and to keep it in possession for a certain period. The same kind of agreement made between the tenant and the subtenant is known as a sublease.

An Oral Agreement Can Lead To Many Problems Later
Although it is possible to have oral agreements for a period of less than one year a written agreement is required for a longer period. If you are interested in mastering the art of lease or rental agreement, you must learn to make only written agreements. Any misunderstanding in an oral agreement may create severe problems leading to disputes between the landlord and the tenant. After the end of the agreed period the tenant needs to give back the possession and rights of use to the landlord. A definite amount of money is specifically mentioned in the agreement that a tenant pays to the landlord. This amount is popularly known as rent.

Difference Between A Lease And A Rental Agreement
Though rental agreement and lease are used interchangeably, there are a few differences between the two. The basic difference is in the duration for which the agreement is made. Rental agreements are usually of very short durations such as 30 days. On the other hand, the term of lease is normally from six to twelve months. Another difference is related to the renewal of the agreement. Renewals take place automatically in the case of rental agreements while in lease agreements they do not happen.

Include The Names Of All The Tenants In The Agreement
Mastering the art of a lease or rental agreement is very important because it is a legal document. Also, it has all the practical details of the transactions that are going to take place between the landlord and tenant. The most important point to remember when making a rental agreement or lease agreement is to include the names of every single adult tenant, who is going to live in the property for the said period. In this way, you make every tenant responsible for the payments and all the other terms.

Mastering the art of the lease or rental agreement also requires that you mention the names of all the people who are going to live in the property. This way, you can prevent the tenant from moving in any other relative or friend into the property. It will not be possible for the tenant to sublet it. The amount of rent, time of payment, and mode of payment must be specifically mentioned in the terms of the agreement.

David Gass is President of Business Credit Services, Inc. His company publishes a free weekly e-newsletter on Small Business Consulting at their web site http://www.smallbusinessconsulting.com

Business interruption insurance refers to insurance, which covers the risk of losses a business may suffer because of a temporary closure of the business due to some circumstances like fire or another peril. Business owners who buy this type of insurance get the compensation for lost profits and recurring expenses.

Explore all the options and make a wise decision. Insurance providers offer several options. For example, a certain policy reimburses the extra expenses if you need to perform business operations from a new place because of some disaster at the original place. Choosing this kind of an option is an indication of the buyers’ foresightedness and good judgment.

How to Buy Business Interruption Insurance
The unique character of this type of insurance is that it isn’t sold as a separate policy. If you want to purchase it, ask the providers to add onto an already existent property insurance policy. A typical example is a business owner’s policy onto which this type of insurance can be added. Before finalizing, make sure to ask the agent if there is any new offer by the providers.

Make Sure That You Get Enough Time
One important point to keep in mind when buying it is that you should get enough time to restart your company as usual. A major disaster can damage a company to such an extent that rebuilding business can take more time than you had estimated. The normal waiting period is approximately two days. The waiting period is the time for which the insurance providers do not start making payments.

Factors Affecting Price
Factors that affect the price include the kind of business, the location, and the degree of ease involved with shifting to a temporary location. For example, a real estate agency may get a cheaper deal than a restaurant, because the risk of fire associated with it is less than with a restaurant.

If you have paid for it and a disaster occurs, the provider will reimburse you an actual amount of money that you would have earned had the business activities not been disturbed. This calculation is done on the basis of your financial records. You also get compensation for the expenses like electricity, because it is a continuous expense whether business is running or not.

Don’t Think That You Will Never Need It
Finally, you should not avoid buying it just by giving an excuse that these situations are hypothetical. You never know when a disaster shall strike, especially when you have to rely on others to perform various duties. It is better to be safe than sorry.

David Gass is President of Business Credit Services, Inc. His company publishes a free weekly e-newsletter on Small Business Consulting at their web site http://www.smallbusinessconsulting.com

Once you have had your business up and running for sometime, you will have the expertise to run it in a smooth manner. During the time that the business has been running, you probably have done many things to keep the business in operation. You probably answered phones, hired manpower, and marketed your products or services. In short, you now know your business inside and out. For business operations that are beyond your time and capabilities, you now have employees to handle.

Professional Assistance
There are many business processes and operations that you can manage through hiring trained, knowledgeable and qualified employees. However, there are some operations, which are best left to the experts in the respective field to handle. Some of these exceptions are matters concerning law and government legalities, accounting and auditing, management of labor and marketing. These are specialized fields and people who are experts in them are normally not employees of companies but are consultants. Most consultants are not employees but there are consultancy firms that have consultants as their employees. Either way, it is generally an accepted practice to engage such consultants for professional help.

Getting access to professional help from consultants in fields such as government legalities, specialized accounting and auditing, marketing and human resources will help the growth of your business in a way that will be sustainable. This is one way to make your business grow rapidly and efficiently. Consultants are a big help for businesses that wish to make their business operations function in an optimized way. It is also a good way to increase their customer base and do product or service innovations. The skills available from these professionals are crucial for businesses to be sustainable. That is the principal reason that professional consultancy businesses are doing well and thriving.

Hiring Consultants
Hiring consultants is a different ball game than hiring employees. It is also very different than going in for outsourcing of services. Getting professional help is expensive since consultancy charges are quite high. For most consultancy jobs, the cost can range from a few hundred dollars a day to many thousands of dollars a day. Because of these high costs of consultancy, many people think that consultancy is not worth the cost. However, this is not true. Going for professional consultancy does pay, both in the short term and in the long term.

Besides engaging professional help for carrying out highly specialized tasks for your business, you should also consider using computer software geared toward business processes to help your business processes. Many companies offer customized computer software solutions for existing and upcoming businesses. You will do well to take their help in optimizing your business operations and making your business competitive.

David Gass is President of Business Credit Services, Inc. His company publishes a free weekly e-newsletter on Small Business Consulting at their web site http://www.smallbusinessconsulting.com.

Many marketers are weighed down by natural human instinct when it comes to contacting prospects. The impeding disorder of which I speak is fear. It’s a handicap to any entrepreneur independent of industry or product. Fear must be overcome if great success is to be achieved.

The greatest leaders in the history of the world are those who learned to overcome their fears. In the American Civil War I can imagine the inexperienced soldiers milling about in confusion, paralyzed by their fear of death or capture. One man, Thomas J. “Stonewall” Jackson, refused to back down in the face of opposition on July 21, 1861. He and his regiment led the resistence at Manassas Junction that turned the tide of the battle in favor of the Confederacy.

Doubtlessly, there were soldiers who must have considered Jackson a fool. I can imagine the cries of those who told Jackson that his plan would never work, that his company was beaten and that the smart thing to do would be to give up and go. Jackson’s determination proved that his system was right and became the example to follow.

It is easy to trust someone once that person has established himself as an authority. Oftentimes it seems by chance that successful systems are discovered. The same pattern follows today in the business world. We can’t trust someone until we recognize that someone as an authority.

Do you have your own success story? Do you have anything that demonstrates your capabilities in your field of business? If the answer to both of these questions is no, you fit in with the majority. If the answer to either of those two questions is yes, how can you make the most of that success to win the trust of your prospects?

For those without a success story, a paradigm shift may be in order. People who see themselves as failures tend to follow the path and act the way that a failure does. If you don’t think you have a success story, lean on somebody who does and follow the path that they took. This way you can act as a second testimony for the success system itself, even if you haven’t reaped all the rewards yet. It will lend you more credibility than trying to create something new.

The successful business man is already in flow. He believes himself to be successful so he lives according to his belief. Even when a successful man suffers a setback, he’s still successful because he’ll work his hardest to find a solution that will turn his “bad” luck into “good” luck. Even in setbacks there can be great discoveries.

Building relationships of trust start with trusting yourself. Believing in your service or your product and knowing your training will convert more prospects into customers because they will perceive that you are successful and you will win their trust.

Tyler Ellison is an experienced internet marketer and helps others to make money fast online marketing legally using different techniques to attract prospects.

Do you remember when you moved the furniture in your room? Do you remember how you kinda bumped into everything a couple of times and then figured it out. The funny thing is that it took you two to three turns of bumping into things in the dark, before you worked out things had changed.

And the brain learned. Through repetition.

But remember when you put your finger into a candle flame and got burned? You never ever did that again, did you? The brain learned a lesson very, very quickly. You didn’t need a second turn to figure out the danger.

In effect, the brain learns through:
1) Repetition
2) Extreme danger

Since your business isn’t in extreme danger all day, through out the year, the chances are your brain isn’t learning as much as it possibly could. Which is why it’s important to use the concept of repetition. Take one concept that you learn in business and repeat it time and time again. For example: Referrals. Ask for referrals every single day, in every single way. And mark a tick if you succeed. Mark a cross if you fail. In under ten days, referrals will become part of your system. And you’ll never forget it.

Repeat. It’s the only way to learn.

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Imagine thirty thousand menacing obstacles in your path to success.

You’re dehydrated. Hungry as hell. And wobbling like an Irishman on too much Guinness. Your eyes hurt, your head throbs and your will is all but broken. You’re not even sure you want to go on.

You feel like Frodo.

As in the character Frodo, in the final episode of the ‘Lord of the Rings-The Return of the King.’

Terror and dismay gleam from Frodo’s big, expressive blue eyes. In the distance, he can see his goal. But it seems to him like he’ll never get there. He turns to Sam and says in a defeated tone, “Sam, it’s the Eye,” referring to the eye of Sauron - the enemy he must destroy.

And Sam turns to Frodo in a soft, encouraging voice and says,
“Let’s just get to the bottom of this hill, Mr.Frodo.”

Let’s just get to the bottom of this hill, Mr.Frodo.

I spoke at the World Internet Summit in Sydney, Australia, last week. And I saw about two hundred and fifty Frodos in the audience.

Confused. Weary. Inundated with dozens of tactics and strategies about the Internet, their eyes stared into nothingness. Frozen stiff at the task of having to build an Internet business from scratch, almost all of them seemed to have a cross too heavy to bear.

And they didn’t exactly have Sam to egg them on.

I said to them, like I say to you. “Let’s just get to the bottom of this hill, Mr.Frodo.” Then we’ll do the next hill, and the next and the next, till we get to our destination.

You’re bound to be struggling. I struggle in Yoga class. I’m a first-class doofus. Five minutes after we start the class, I wonder when it’s all going to end. I look at the ‘human pretzels’ twisting and turning to the left and right of me, and I can’t ever see
myself being so flexible. And I despair.

But I’ve got my own personal Sam. I simply say to myself:”Let’s just get to the bottom of this hill, Mr.Frodo”

And hurrah, yippeee yahooey, I’ve actually made it past
Yoga session No.2.

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It may seem strange to compare a website to an office plant, but there are similarities.

If you don’t water your plant, give it fertilizer once a month, avoid extreme temperatures and make sure it has adequate sunshine, the plant will not thrive. Eventually it will start turning brown, dropping leaves and no amount of attention will bring it back to life.

For many business owners, their website is like an ignored office plant that dies from lack of attention. After the website is developed and goes live, everyone celebrates and then ignores the website. Yet, the website is expected to continue bringing in leads, bringing in money and selling product 24/7. But it doesn’t.

A healthy website needs proper care and nurturing. If I were to create proper care and feeding instructions for a website, here’s what I would include:

Water Your Website

Visitors that come to your website are thirsty for information. Ask yourself, “Who is my audience and what do they want to know?” Answer your audience’s biggest question on your homepage and then continue to provide more answers throughout the website.

Spend some time thinking about the needs of your audience and researching what they want to know. What are their biggest problems? What are their most pressing concerns?

Set your website up so that you are providing answers and solutions to their biggest problems. Position your business as a solutions provider.

Fertilize Your Website Once a Month

You want people to bookmark your website and come back often. Keep their attention by having interesting articles on your website. Try to put one new article a month on your site. You don’t even have to be the one writing the articles. On one of my sites, I have an automatic feed from another author who writes a grammar article every month. I put a little bit of code on my web page and her article magically appears every month.

Another technique is to go to an online articles directory like http://www.ezinearticles.com. There are thousands of free articles you can use on your website. The authors only ask that you post the article without altering their byline.

Avoid Extreme Temperatures for Your Website

Make sure graphics and animation are not overshadowing your message. Websites that are graphic heavy tend to take too long to load and people will leave before they even arrive at your site.

Also remember that graphics can not be indexed by the search engines. So, if you have a graphics heavy site, your site will get a low ranking with the search engines.

If you have a “splash” page, consider getting rid of it. A splash page is a page full of animation and sound that entertains before you get to the homepage. In order to get to the homepage, the visitor has to click the “Enter” button. A splash page is a good way to discourage business because it puts one more obstacle between the visitor and you making a sale.

Provide Adequate Sunshine for Your Website

Constantly check the statistics of your site to find out what’s working and what isn’t. What pages are being visited most often? What search engines are bringing you the most traffic? What articles are the most popular? What keywords are people using to search for your site?

Use the statistical information of your website to continually make changes. If you find most people are leaving after visiting the homepage, it could mean that your marketing message is not clear. Maybe your headlines are not strong enough or maybe your navigation is confusing. Change your headlines and see what happens. Keep testing until you get the results your want.

A website can not be ignored; it has to be constantly nurtured for it to be an effective marketing tool.

Michelle Howe, MBA, is an expert
in online copywriting.
Visit her Web site at http://www.InternetWordMagic.com
for a FREE audio download of “Pay-Per-Click Success:
Attract More Customers in 30 Days or Less” and FREE
report, “The Five-Step Plan to Article Success.”

A Web site can be your number one marketing tool if you keep refreshing it with new information and make it valuable to your target market.

How long has it been since you made any changes to your Web site?

For many companies, once they put up a Web site, they are done. Yeah, maybe they will add some current news events now and then, but generally a finished Web site is not something a company thinks about too much. It functions as an electronic brochure for them and that’s the end of the story. But should it be?

Let’s begin to answer that question by looking at the main reason people use the Internet: to find information. Is the information on your Web site the most current available or is it dated?

How many of you have visited Web sites that list the last update as 2004? Or how about a Web site that lists a copyright date of 2005 and shows a visitor count of 1500? Sad, isn’t it. Sad because these companies haven’t figured out that a Web site is a dynamic marketing tool that constantly needs review and tweaking.

I’m not talking about drastic, complete overhaul; I’m talking about making changes based on your target market and how they buy. Even if you feel your company only needs a Web site as an electronic brochure you need to think about how your target market buys.

Who is Your Target Market?

Who do you want to visit your Web site and buy your product or service? If you haven’t done an analysis of your target market recently, you might want to take a look again. Businesses change, markets change and your target audience changes.

Think about what’s been going on in your business in the last six months. How are things different?
*Have you started selling new products or are you offering new services?
*Have you taken your business in a new direction?
*Are you becoming more targeted as to who you do business with?
*Are you now targeting a specific industry or demographics that you weren’t six months ago?
*What are you doing that’s bringing your most money?
*What are you doing that is not bringing in money?
*Have the buying patterns of your customers changed?
*Are there any business trends that are affecting your business?
*Is the local business economy affecting your business?
*Have you done a recent survey to find out who your competition is?
*Have your surveyed your customers recently to find out their needs?
*Have the goals for your business changed?

By answering all these questions you will have a current market analysis of your customers and be better prepared to meet their needs.

How Does Your Target Audience Buy?

That may seem like such a basic question, but the answer can make or break a business on the Internet.

For example, do you accept credit cards on your Web site? Someone who sells a service such as a consultant or a business coach may feel that there is no need to accept credit cards through their Web site because they are not selling any product. However, you could be wrong if credit cards are the way your clients buy. Maybe they would prefer to just go to your Web site to make their payments rather than taking the time to send you a check.

What if your customers are a little nervous about using their credit cards on the Internet, have you considered offering a PayPal payment system? For a small business, PayPal is a very cost effective way to collect money online without going through the cost of setting up a merchant account and paying its monthly fees. You can make it easy for people to give you money when you know how they buy. Now let’s look at your Web site itself.

Make It Easy For Them to Buy

It doesn’t matter whether you are selling a product or a service, people need and want information to help them in their buying decision. The easier you make it for them to make that buying decision, the more likely you will be the one who gets the sale.

Right now I’m working on a Web site for a small online business that has plenty of competition for the products it is selling. However, when I reviewed the online competition it became very clear that none of the sites did a good job of organizing the information so that the consumer could easily make an informed decision. Some of the sites had good information, but it was so scattered throughout the Web site that the visitor had to really look to find the information.

After talking with the owner and identifying the demographics and buying habits of the target audience, I completely reorganized and rewrote the content to meet the needs of the buyers. The content was rewritten to specifically appeal to an audience of women ages 35 plus. We grabbed that niche market to stand apart from the other online competitors who were trying to appeal to everyone.

From a navigation viewpoint, I changed things to make it easier for a visitor to buy the products. Instead of three to four clicks to make a sale, a visitor only has one or two clicks to buy a product.

As soon as this Web site goes live with the changes, this online business is going to be racking up the sales because we took the time to analyze the target audience and how the target audience buys. You can do the same thing with your Web site.

Make sure your site’s information is timely, interesting, and reflects the changes in your business in the last six months. Think like your customer, make it easy for them to buy and you’ll never go wrong!

Michelle Howe, MBA, is an expert
in online copywriting. Visit her Web site at http://www.InternetWordMagic.com
for a FREE audio download of “Pay-Per-Click Success:
Attract More Customers in 30 Days or Less” and FREE
report, “The Five-Step Plan to Article Success.”

Do you have the correct e-mail signature on all of your outgoing e-mail?

For many entrepreneurs the answer is no. In fact, I see a tremendous number of e-mails from small business owners that do not even have a signature line, let alone a correct one.

Are you guilty of just signing your name at the end of an e-mail and then hitting the Send button?

Every e-mail you send out is a representation of your company. Every word you write says something about your company. Therefore, every message you send needs to be professional and complete.

How to Set Up a Signature Box in Outlook

I remember talking to a friend and advising her to have an e-mail signature. She said she wanted to, but couldn’t remember how to set it up with Outlook. So, for those of you who need instructions, here’s how you do it:

Tools Options Mail Format Signature

But before you get started on writing, here are some guidelines to follow when creating a professional e-mail signature:

(1) Include all your contact information in the signature box: name, complete address, phone, fax, e-mail address, website address.

Many people print out their e-mails and then go back to them for reference. You want all of your contact information available to them, including your e-mail address. Although your e-mail address is in the heading of the e-mail, it’s a good idea to repeat it in the signature box so that it is easy to find.

Even if people don’t print out the e-mail, they are probably saving it in a folder. Again, you want to make it easy for them to find your contact information.

I’ve had situations where I’ve talked to potential clients, exchanged a few e-mails and then things stall. When I go back a few weeks later to follow-up I am sometimes stuck because all I have is an e-mail address. If I hadn’t specifically gotten their phone number I can only hope to reach them by e-mail.

(2) Include your company’s tagline.

Consider your e-mail signature as another way to brand your company. Your company’s tagline is part of its branding and needs to be included in the signature box. It not only sounds good, but gives a very professional look to the e-mail.

(3) Include your company’s logo.

This is again using the e-mail signature to brand your company online. Be memorable. Make it easy for people to identify who you are and what you do.

(4) Advertise or promote your services/product.

It’s a simple technique, but it works amazingly well. Use the last few lines of your signature box as an advertising tool for your company. For instance, when I am giving a seminar or teleclass, I usually list it in the signature box. Every e-mail that goes out will advertise my event.

However, the one thing you need to remember is to make sure the information about the event is current. Once the date is over, take it down or replace it with another future event. Otherwise you risk looking sloppy.

Make a decision today to create a professional looking e-mail signature.

Michelle Howe, MBA, is an expert
in online copywriting. Visit her Web site at http://www.InternetWordMagic.com
for a FREE audio download of “Pay-Per-Click Success:
Attract More Customers in 30 Days or Less” and FREE
report, “The Five-Step Plan to Article Success.”

Firstly lets be clear about what is an opt-in list. Every business keeps a list of its customers and potential customers. When the list is only made up of people who have willingly joined it by subscribing or registering, knowing you will be contacting them, then you have an opt-in list. On the Internet it is much easier and cheaper to create and maintain an opt-in list.

Note that people generally only join knowing that you will be contacting them with information relating to a ‘certain topic’* - we’ll talk about this in a moment. Buying lists or copying from other sources goes against the notion of opt-in and sending emails not related to the topics the subscribers originally signed up for will destroy your credibility.

* Think about it, would you join some mailing list that is about a broad range of subjects knowing that you are going to get emails that are totally irrelevant to your interests? Would you have any more respect for the list owner who seems to be the master of nothing in particular and intends to send you mailings about anything he likes (because he doesn’t know/care what ‘your’ interests are)?

Let me tell you, when you focus your material and your subject on a specific subject, you get a greater proportion of your readers wanting to join your list. Just as important is the fact that you can then finely tune your offers to their specific interest and significantly increase the response rate to each of your offers.

Therefore, it should be obvious that after building your highly targeted list, you can easily waste it all by a careless irrelevant offer. I tell you, do not be tempted to offer something unrelated or even just loosely related to your subject area no matter how lucrative the profits for you! If you have a lucrative product or offer, with a healthy market, then build a new list. The second time around is a lot easier.

Ask any expert … the late great Corey Rudl opened ‘my’ eyes to the ‘life time value’ of customers and prospects. In other words it is not that first sale that makes you rich but rather the steady stream of sales over time that makes you wild profits.

Just one final point here, when marketing to your list, ‘your’ emphasis must be on informing and educating not selling and marketing! Nobody joins or stays on your opt-in list begging, “please advertise to me”.

If you just inform and educate, people will respect and trust you. Your recommendations will then find willing customers, easily. You can then of course add subtle references to products and offers that you recommend on the periphery of your highly informative communications.

Once again you must thoroughly research your offerings and ensure they are completely relevant and of the highest quality.

Look out for my other articles on list building techniques. For now let me show you a few ways you can profit from your opt-in list(s).

Once you take care of focus and product quality etc, there are a number of ways to ‘monetize’ your effort to earn top dollar. Here are some ideas:

1- Advertisements.

Advertising your products and services in ezines and newsletters to your opt-in list. This seems an obvious one. But many people haven’t considered advertising other companies’ products. This is a rich and repeatable source of income.

Just get the above principles about focus and quality right and getting advertising revenue will be easy, successful and soon you’ll have a queue of advertisers. Take a look at various ad brokers and ad exchanges etc.

Note that because companies can’t trust bought-in lists, they’d rather place ads around your newsletters etc. You could then also offer higher priced ’solo ads’. That is, you could then email your list once a week or once a month with just one ad that is bigger than a classified ad but smaller than an article.

Tip: join a few ezines and you’ll see exactly what I mean. However, I suggest you reduce the frequency of these solo ads compared with the average. Be above average, ‘less is more’!

2- Look into affiliate programs

There is no shortage of ‘affiliate’ programs for absolutely any market. If there is demand for the product or service in question, there is definitely a good affiliate program out there for it. Join it and profit hugely when someone else does the entire fulfillment, administration etc.

Two points:

(a) If you’re not clear about affiliate schemes, you really do owe it to yourself to do a search for terms like “affiliate marketing”.

(b) It is just possible but still highly unlikely that after searching thoroughly for an affiliate scheme in your subject area, you find nothing suitable. If so, you have just struck gold! Research and then perhaps set up your own scheme.

I guarantee you, if you can’t find a good scheme, there will be many thousands or may be even tens of thousands of others having the same problem. You will be richly rewarded.

3- Direct approach

Don’t be frightened of approaching other web sites with some sort of proposition for joint effort. Most companies welcome the any reasonable offer that lands in their laps without any effort, when it is intended to make them money.

Ask if they are willing to share a percentage of the sales revenue that comes through your list if you market their offer to your list.

4- Product sales

There are a great many product wholesalers and distributors who would love you to sell their products. They already have product catalogs, photos, distribution and logistics facilities and marketing write ups etc.

They already make bulk purchases and warehouse the goods and are well equipped to fulfill orders. They certainly welcome someone else also selling their products and increasing the sales of something they are already engaged in.

In the US, search for these under terms such as ‘drop shippers’. In the UK they are known as wholesalers with fulfillment houses among other terms.

I set up exactly this kind of system for three major clients last year … the clients loaded up the product details from files supplied by the distributor. The client then focused purely on selling and marketing online. They never even touched a product or saw one in their own offices.

After the launch one client told me, who’d be crazy enough to sink a stack of cash into a warehouse, advanced payment for stock or imports etc, then work like hell for weeks and months by the time the stock is sold! This is a dream: we use your hosted end-to-end online product catalog/retail system and make 50% - 70% commissions on products we never touch!

5- Sell information products

This is a vast and rich subject which I can’t discuss in any reasonable detail. I just ask you to consider it. Often delivery is by electronic means (email, download, etc) with no physical warehousing, fulfillment, shipping etc. Therefore you have no distribution costs at all. The supply is almost infinite and you can package your product in a variety of ways from regular lessons to ebooks to audio material.

No matter what the percentage profit margin, since you are effectively supplying electronic files, there is no supply cost at all. This means you repeatedly turn a profit on every sale over a long period of time.

Look into this and you won’t be disappointed.

6- Pass-on!

You are reading this article therefore you certainly know the importance of having a list. No matter how good or bad the profits from your list, that will only improve when you increase the size of your list. But don’t forget that you must keep your list tightly targeted.

Two highly neglected ways of increasing your subscriber base are pass-on and post-on (explained in 7 below).

On every informative article or mailing add a little text asking the reader to pass-on the article to a few friends and colleagues that they think may benefit from the information. You’ll be amazed how many people never think of sending the information on to others until they’re prompted. You’ll also be surprised how many think this is a good idea when reminded.

Don’t forget to add a little more test to the effect that:

“… If someone else passed this information to you, you can benefit from regular informative articles by registering [or emailing] …”. Be sure to put this information in your resource box. A resource box is a short 3 - 6 line paragraph stating who you are, what you do (that makes you an expert) and a link to your website for more information or your contact email address. This goes at the bottom of all your articles and emails. You’ll see why next, in (7).

Tip: Some people advise that you can do any advertising in the resource box. I personally think this could take something away from your informative article. I suggest you put no ‘overt’ advertising in the box. Also you may put off publishers from publishing your information, again see next, in (7).

I suggest you only go as far as offering further or more detailed information from your web site (or by emailing you). If your information is top quality and it should be, then people will naturally want to know more and will click through to your site or email you or take up your offers elsewhere in your ezine.

7- Post-on!

On every article or ezine mailing to your opt-in list, include another line of text permitting other ezine, newsletter or website publishers to reprint your article on condition that your article is published in its entirety [if you want it that way] “AND” that your resource box remains attached to your article without any change.

A great many other publishers require regular fresh content and you will find a huge number of ‘takers’ for your top quality articles. Attaching your resource box to all articles and newsletters and ‘not’ advertising overtly, vastly improves both the response to your articles (i.e. increases your subscription base) and the reprint of your articles by publishers. This translates to more income from your opt-in list.

I have one final tip you: Focus on one of the methods above and keep on tweaking testing, improving. Once you have mastered the method and you see major benefits from your op-in list, then move on to another technique from the above list. You can apply this idea to virtually all actions and enhancements to your online business. It works extremely well.

You will find most of those who fail to make any meaningful profit from their opt-in lists or other efforts, usually have at least one thing in common: a very noticeable lack of focus! Don’t be one of them.

I wish you success and profit from your opt-in list. The world around us is changing all the time, look out for this and never stop learning newer, more suitable techniques and approaches.

Dr Sami Fab is the founder of OnDemand Ltd dedicated to creating time-saving solutions for the home based, small and medium sized businesses.

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www.Autopilot-Business.com