Over the past few years, blogs have risen from an almost unknown “computer geek” secret to the “it” thing on the internet. It seems that almost everyone, from celebrities to your local junior high students has a blog.

While it is very common to find blogs as personal diaries, people that own product and service based businesses can absolutely profit from having a blog.

First and foremost, a business blog helps to build your web presence. In today’s society, having a strong web and social media presence is a key factor in your business success.

When a potential client is thinking about hiring you, there is a good chance that they will do a little investigation of you online. The potential client may go to Google and do a search on your name, just to see what comes up.

If they find a lot of links and positive feedback, including blog posts that include helpful information, they will feel more secure in hiring you.

Using your blog to showcase your knowledge in your chosen field will help you establish yourself as an expert. When people see you as an expert, they will automatically think of you when they need your product or service, and they will also refer others to you.

Now you’ll want to be sure your blog isn’t JUST useful information. Sprinkle marketing messages throughout your blog to draw people back to your business and what you have to offer.

You can communicate your knowledge in a variety of different ways. Of course, keeping your blog current and full of information your target market would appreciate is the main goal, but you can find ways to make it fun.

Example:

A life coach, for instance could hold a series on reducing stress, and each Monday they could post a relaxation technique. You can also include audio and video messages. This is a growing trend, as more and more people are getting video iPods.

How to Make Money With a Blog

In addition to using your blog as a way to build relationships and gain publicity, there are various ways to make money blogging online. Here are some options:

1. Promote Your Products or Services – The options are unlimited here when you have a product that can be demonstrated. Create videos demonstrating how to use your product, get video testimonials from real clients, host product giveaways, write useful posts relating to your services and it’s benefits that will be of interest to your customers and potential market.

Keep in mind, however, that your blog is a relationship builder. START the sales process there and don’t push too hard to sell directly. Once you give away the quality information your readers are looking for you can then build their trust for further sales.

2. Affiliate Sales – Another option is to join affiliate programs for products and services your target market would enjoy. When you join as an affiliate, you will be given special links that you can use on your blog; when one of your readers clicks on these links and purchases the product or service being advertised, you will earn a commission.

3. Advertising - When you sign up (at http://www.google.com/adsense), you will be given a small amount of HTML code to add to your blog; Google will read your blog content and display text ads your reader may find interesting. For example, a blog about golf may display ads for golf clubs. When one of your readers clicks on these ads, you will be paid a commission. You can also offer ads on your own throughout your site.

Your business blog can benefit you in many ways. It can help you earn income by raising the public’s awareness of your business and cementing yourself as an expert, and by applying the above suggestions, you can also begin to make money blogging online. This will give you an additional income stream, and more than likely, it will also help you create additional buzz around your business.

In this day and age there are not many (if any!) people who can get away without marketing their business on the internet.

Your customers go to the internet in droves to find the services you offer locally. That’s why at a bare minimum you need a website that gets found when they start looking for what you have to offer.

This transition from marketing entirely offline can be tricky, especially if you are new to the world of internet marketing. The following are a few tools that you can use to market yourself online and make the transition more comfortable.

Start Blogging

Blogging is a great way to introduce yourself to a new online market. By posting on a regular basis, you will be able to update your market on things within your business as they happen. Your readers will get a feel for your personality and will come to feel as though they know you.

As you know, people want to do business with people they like. By using your blog as a relationship-building tool, you will be creating a steady market of loyal customers.

Don’t make the mistake of thinking blogging is just for teens to share their latest mall finds – it’s so much more than that!

Use blogging to showcase products, case study customers, post videos tutorials, engage visitors, take surveys and much more. Build a community around your blog and you’ll learn so much more about your customers than any offline flyer or newpaper ad could EVER tell you.

Create a Newsletter

Creating a newsletter list is an important activity. There are many autoresponder programs that you can choose from to help you with this. From your autoresponder program, you can create a form that you can place on your blog. When one of your readers chooses to subscribe, they will be automatically indexed into the autoresponder.

Not only is this a great way to keep in touch with your readers, you can also use these messages to market new services and products to your subscribers. Since this is done through an autoresponder, you simply load the messages into it once. Each new subscriber will receive each message in the order you set; you don’t have to worry about someone missing an important message.

Create Information Products

Creating information products to market online is a fundamental part of having a successful work at home internet marketing business. One of the main reasons people come to the internet is to receive information.

If you can provide information that people are looking for in a clear and easy to receive manner, people will pay for it. The average person would much rather pay $30 or $100 to receive all the information at once, rather than spend an entire afternoon researching 25 different websites for the same information.

Article Marketing

Once you create your information product, you can post about it on your blog and send a message to your mailing list through your autoresponder. Another thing you can do to promote yourself is called “article marketing.” This is when you write an article and submit it to article reprint directories. Owners of websites and blogs frequently visit article reprint directories in order to find articles to place on their websites.

When you submit an article, you are allowing others to place it on their sites for free. In exchange, they will include your author biography. You can use this area to point people back to your own website, blog, or the sales page of your information product.

One of the best things about an internet marketing business is that you can outsource many of the tasks to other work at home individuals. There are many talented writers, virtual assistants, and other professionals that would be more than happy to take on these tasks for you.

Many of them have excellent internet marketing skills, as they have built their entire businesses online. You can find these people through services such as guru.com or Elance.com.

This was just a small sampling of the tools available to you. As you can see, they all work together to help you build a successful internet marketing business and transition into a work at home career. As you do your research, you’ll find many more tools that will help you along your way.

Do you have a neglected email list? How about an autoresponder sequence in need of repair?

Time to create an email marketing plan that focuses on building your business and your profits.

If you’re like many internet marketers you’ve likely set it and forgot about it. Unfortunately, you can’t forget it forever if you want to increase your profits.

Here are some improvements to consider adding to your email plan:

1. Clean up your list – Go through all your messages one by one and test them out. Yes this may take some time but it will be well worth if, especially if you set up these lists a long time ago. I recently switched my website format over to wordpress and deleted a lot of my old files.

My autoresponder was set up to link to some pages of my old site where I had articles and if I hadn’t gone back in and changed my autoresponder (at the reminder of a subscriber) then every time someone clicked on that link they’d go nowhere and I’d look unprofessional. If your series of messages are too long and it’s just too much to handle by yourself hire a VA to help.

2. Opt-in Location – This one seems basic but do people know you have a list? Don’t assume they’ll find your opt-in box and put themselves in there, you have to make it very obvious.

Also, make sure they know WHAT they’ll get by opting in and be sure to delivery exactly what you promise (so they’ll stay around). A bullet-point list works well to let people know what your list offers without requiring too much of their attention to get them to read.

Another way to make your list stand out is to of course offer a free report or ebook with each subscription. Other ideas are offer up an audio or a video. Whatever you offer make sure it is of high valuable and something that makes signing up for your list irresistible.

3. Add landing pages - You should be using double opt-ins to make sure your list has really requested to sign up. After the initial sign-up you will be able to direct them to a landing page. Make sure that landing page they come to grabs their attention and tells them to confirm, you could use something like this:

IMPORTANT: Please check your email inbox and confirm your subscription so that we can send you the information you requested.

On that same landing page you could also make them another offer, either for another list, or product you offer or many even an affiliate product. Or if you have a service based business and want them to get to know you better then direct them to your articles page.

Once they confirm in their email you will be given another opportunity to create a specific landing page. Use that page to make another offer, or lead them to your website to read more information or articles.

You’ve got people’s attention once they get to your landing page and they HAVE to go somewhere once they’re done – it might as well be somewhere you can suggest to them so that you benefit from it.

4. Promote – Where do you promote your list? Is it just in one little box on your website? There are many other places that you should be using to promote your mailing list.

* Write articles that you submit to directories that have a bio leading to your opt-in page.
* Make a special offer in your signature on forums (if they allow it)
* Add a signature to your emails that tells people why they need to sign up for your list
* Blog about your list and why they should join it

5. Contact as often as possible – You’ve heard this before but it’s time for a reminder. If your prospects don’t hear from you on a regular basis then they will forget about you and why the signed up in the first place.

How often you contact them will depend on what your list is about but it’s often said that you must be making contact at least once a month if you want to be remembered. Many topics will require you to contact your list once a week and this is perfectly acceptable to them because they asked for this information.

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