Affiliate Marketing - What's True And What's BS

As with many things on the internet affiliate marketing has a lot of stigmas attached to it. There are many individuals out there who make affiliate marketing seem as if it's the next big get rich quick scheme. That you can add code top your website or emails and BAM, make a ton of money. This is not true my friends; so don't buy into the hype. Remember the people hyping such things as the "next big thing" all have their own best interest in mind. They are simply trying to get your money by selling you something.
In all honesty affiliate marketing is a wonderful way to make money, it just doesn't happen overnight. Not by any stretch of the imagination. The premise behind affiliate marketing is simple. Companies pay you a percentage of each sale for referring visitors to their site. In other words if someone click on a link for a widget on your site, the link takes the person to your affiliates site. If they then purchase the widget, you get a percentage of that sale. The percentage varies by company and product, but is normally between 5% and 25%.
Affiliate marketing is truly a wonderful system. You never have to touch a product, and you get paid. You don't have to have a warehouse full of product, you don't have to ship anything, you don't have to complete the transaction, and you collect a piece of that transaction. Now, before dollar signs start ringing in your head, that's just how it works. Getting people to convert, that is buy something, is the work. You don't have to do all of the things mentioned earlier, but you do have to help people make the decision to buy.
Not only do you have to help them make the decision to buy, you have to refer a lot of people to your affiliates site in order to get sales. So affiliate marketing is really about getting traffic to your site first and then referring that traffic to your affiliates site. And my friends, getting traffic to your site is not an easy thing to do. That's where the work comes in. You may not have to stock or ship the product, but you do have to get visitors to visit your website and then visit your affiliates website, which is by no means a quick and easy thing to do.
That, in a nutshell, is what affiliate marketing is and how it works. The premise is wonderfully simple and affiliate marketing is a wonderful way to make money. Just don't think of it as a way that you're going to get rich quickly. As with anything of value on this spinning rock we call earth, making money doesn't happen quickly. You must provide value to your customer, or in this case your visitor in order to make money. And remember, just slapping a flashy banner ad on your website isn't going to amount to anything more than having a flashy banner on you website.

Trevor Kugler is co-founder of JRWfishing.com and an avid angler. He has more than 20 years experience fishing for all types of fish, and 15 years of business and internet experience. He currently raises his three year old daughter in the heart of trout fishing country.....Montana!
Gang Hooks Tied & Ready To Fish: http://www.jrwfishing.com/gang_hooks.asp
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Small Business Staffing and Scheduling During a Large Local Event

One of the most difficult things for a small business to do is to try to meet the demands of a specialty event that is coming to town. You have to have more workers on duty to handle the increased volume, but you never know how many people will come in. Worse, if you over staff you will not make any money and waste a potentially very high profit day(s). Needless to say, you cannot make a mistake, and you need all the extra bonuses that you can get. Meaning you must capitalize on them.

Small Business Credit Card - Solution of Your Quick Loan

We all know that business credit card brings various benefit to the card holders. Do you know that business credit cards are not only addressed to big corporate? Instead they are also often to be offered to small medium business.
There are organizations as well as companies that are not able to manage monthly cash flow and business cycles without it. Such small business credit card usage is usually optimized by finance division to track business monthly expenditures and simplify bookkeeping process. In the purpose of expanding businesses and organizations, having a small business credit card is essential because it can also support business credibility as well as legitimacy.
Reviewing The Advantages Before You Apply
There are many financial sources offer business credit cards with best rates. As many of them have variety of product advantages, business owner must smartly consider which card is best to be optimized to the business. So here they are the points that need to be review.

• Card purchases and transfers on the balance
• Personalization
• Annual fees
• Cash rewards on purchases made by additional card holders
• Liabilities from fraudulence
• Cooperation with other industry or retail
• Travel supporting programs
• Additional credit cards
  
  

Benefits for Small BusinessesGetting support on financial aspect from small business credit card is definite. It is not the only one benefit you can get using business credit card in the operation. It can also build rewards to the business owners. In case there is an emergency case and meanwhile your business has limited budget to release, or maybe you need to serve your client unexpectedly, and you don't bring any money in hand, this card will help you channel the money in advance.
The timeline to pay for the service is also manageable. The benefit can be brought and delivered to you first, and when the time comes usually on the next month, you have enough time to repay for the money you had used before. It gives you flexibility to manage your cash flow as of course the result of income should be seen clearly on the next month before you pay the expenses.
Moreover, the statement of accounts that are printed in details where you engage your business transaction can help business owner to track the business expenses easily. The flexibility you can get from the services is very effective to enhance business operation in the condition of your business is able to optimize the card smartly.

Aktasio Zikri is International Certified of Neuro Linguistic Programming and Time Line Therapy Practitioner. He plant the applications within the businesses and studies them for entrepreneur mindset development. Visit http://www-smallbusinesscredit.com for more information about quick loan as well as fast loans.

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Competing With the Big Boys

We all know that there will always be competition. In fact many would argue that a large pool of competing companies is actually a positive sign. After all, if there is more than one company doing the same thing that you do, then it's very likely that your target market has plenty of potential customers. When only few companies service a given market, they either have the market cornered, or it simply isn't large enough to for more than a few to survive in this area.
That being said, in many cases the existence of only a few large companies in a market may serve to scare off any one seriously considering a business in this area. This of course applies to those markets tied to geographical locations or online enterprises. Can a small enterprise truly compete against such monstrosities? In many cases the answer is a resounding no. In some areas however, a small company can actually thrive in the shadow of a large corporation. There are several reasons for this.
The foremost reason for this is the fact that many customers feel disenfranchised with large box stores or large online retailers. If the product they are interested in very specific, then the depth of knowledge a large chain may have may actually be less than one might expect. If you interested in learning the Zulu language for example, you may very likely find greater expertise and greater awareness with smaller stores than you might with a large language company that only produces the top thirty or forty languages.
Another issue is that many  large companies, especially online, are often reticent when it comes to provides live operators or even direct phone numbers. Even regular and long term customers can grow quite frustrated to learn they must file an electronic ticket to have their complaint or question answered. Answering phones can certainly a be concern for a small shop, but a live person is often what reassures the person that they their orders will be handled probably and their future inquiries will be addresses by a real person.
Despite their deficiencies, this is not too say that large companies don't have clear advantages.
They have seemingly inexhaustible funds when compared to most endeavors, and their reach in terms of branding can seldom be surpassed. Picking the right niche and understanding your competitors' weakness however can produce a long lasting alternative for many customers and allow you to compete successfully.

Jacob Lumbroso is a world traveler and an enthusiast for foreign languages, history, and foreign cultures. He also is a music fanatic and has a website where he provides information on Used Electric Guitars and Cheap Electric Guitars.

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Let's Complain About the Recession Only If These 4 Are True

If only I had a dollar for each time I get asked "How's the recession affecting your business?" My answer? "It's not. I've got my own bailout plan."
I feel like I'm almost expected to complain at the sound of the "R" word when it comes up in conversation. But see, I refuse to complain. In fact, I say to business owners, let's complain about the recession only if these 4 things are true for you in your business:
1) You obsess about marketing your biz
And I mean obsess in a good way - an unwavering determination to do consistent marketing. Most of the folks I work with are solo entrepreneurs who sell a service. We do our own marketing. Unfortunately, our marketing tends to be inconsistent. And from my experience that was true long before the "R" thing hit. It may be more accurate to say the recession exposed the flaws or weaknesses in many of our businesses - one of which is inconsistent marketing.
And I don't mean spending more money on marketing necessarily. I mean we get creative and we become determined to discover more no-cost/low-cost marketing options. There are countless no-cost ways you can implement immediately.
As I always say "Marketing is the gas in your business engine." So my question is this... How much are you obsessing about having a multi-pronged approach to consistently marketing your business in this new economy. If you're not, you may not want to complain about recession just yet. You've got some untapped, income-generating marketing actions to take.
2) You have a consistent lead-capture strategy

Running out of leads/prospects? It may not be the economy's fault. Take a look at your web site for starters. Make sure the very first page of your web site invites the visitor to take action - to give you their contact information in exchange for a valuable freebie. This grows your list of prospects every single day and gives you people to follow-up with.
And consider your other forms of marketing and how you make connections. Do you have a way to consistently identify your ideal prospects? And when they show up, do you have an irresistible freebie they would definitely want? If not, then you may not want to complain about the recession just yet. There's an opportunity to plug up the holes in your prospect-attracting and prospect-capture process. The more you grow your list of prospects, the greater your opportunity for increased revenue.
3) You have a tenacious follow-up process
Of course, it's not enough to get leads/prospects. We have to follow up. Take a look at your office desk. Is there a stack of collected business cards, notes to call someone back, and other clues that you have a flawed follow-up process? Here's a true story... right now I'm practically begging another business owner to take my money. I'm the one doing the follow-up phone calls. I truly want what they're selling yet they're a little too busy to sell it to me. Hello?
If you're guilty of not following up with prospects and other contacts... or, if you haven't picked up the phone to connect with some strategic partners lately, then you may not want to complain about the recession just yet. There's a golden opportunity to create a consistent, reliable follow-up process that turns into cash for your business.
4) You commit to massive profit-focused action
As entrepreneurs, we typically are not short on ideas for growing our businesses. We tend to be very creative. But we are often short on action. We get bogged down in the minutia of our businesses.
Might there be a stash of incomplete brilliant ideas that you can turn into money for your business? Is there an opportunity to change how you work each day so that you're truly focused on profit-producing tasks vs. minutia? Then it may not be time to complain about the recession just yet. Wake up tomorrow with a bold and unstoppable determination to bring that idea to reality. Or, take a no-excuses approach to completing that major profit-generating project or task. It may just be the thing that brings in the clients and cash you need.

And now I'd like to offer you the FREE one-hour audio seminar for solo entrepreneurs on "How to Create a Steady Stream of Clients For Your Solo Business" at: http://www.moreclientsaudio.com Allison Babb is an author, speaker and Small Business Coach to solo entrepreneurs at: http://www.GreatSmallBusinessAdvice.com

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