photo credit: milena mihaylova

Many business owners are coming to the realization that having a blog is a very powerful tool for their business to have in its corner, but many of them don’t really know how to start a blog or how to make it grow into something great for that matter.

Choose your niche wisely. Decide on a topic for your blog and then deliver your news and information in a fashion that will entice and engage readers. Select your theme well, and make sure it’s something you’re passionate about, as you’ll be married to it day in and day out, constantly sourcing information for content. Also, consider the competition in your genre. The more unique your chosen topic is, the more chance of success you will have.

Your readers are your key to a successful blog. Remember that they all value their time and want to see interesting content. They want this content in small doses so that it’s not taking up too much of their time. They want to see something exciting, valuable, and something that makes them want to read more every day.

Check out other blogs within your niche and see how theirs is laid out, what they write about, how many followers they have, any offerings that they include on their site and more. This will not only give you a sense of where about you should be but it will also give you a chance to join their blogs in order to build your community.

Remember that your blog is a powerful tool for your business, and in order to keep that tool successful you have to work at it. As posted on Open Forum.

From Business Opportunities Weblog.

photo credit: Stabilo Boss

With online businesses growing before our eyes, I feel it is important to provide these online business owners with as many tools to help them in their venture as possible. We all know that you can never have too many resources and helpful suggestions to fall back on. Below are some great tools that I recently saw posted on CrowdSpring that will come in handy for your online business.

• Google Website Optimizer is a great free tool that is easy to use for anyone and allows you to test several different conversions on your site such as text and image conversions.
• Gmail Apps. This is a wonderful tool that supplies you with several different applications such as state of the art email, calendars, and intranet solutions for small businesses. The best part about this program is that it comes at a low cost to you.
• Campaign Monitor. This is probably one of the more important applications that you can find on the Internet at such a great price. This tool is great for online and email marketing campaigns, tracking your results and managing your subscribers. With marketing branching out in all sorts of different forms, this tool would be perfect for online small businesses.

Basecamp is a web-based project collaboration tool It allows a team to share files, assign tasks, centralize feedback and manage projects.

From Business Opportunities Weblog.

photo credit: benstein

Everyone is jumping on the Facebook train including businesses, at least if they are smart they are. There are tens of thousands of users on Facebook, that is a lot of contacts that you could be targeting for your company and bringing yourself a ton of traffic. However, when setting up your Facebook page there are a few factors that you should keep in mind, as recently posted in an article on Virtually Ready.

1. All of your events can be posted to where the public can see them. So even the people who are not added to your Facebook list can still view your event when it comes up in their search.
2. There are all kinds of applications you can use to create several different boxes on your page to customize it to your specific taste and needs.
3. You have complete control over how much your fans can contribute as well as the content that is posted for the public to see.

You can incorporate an Facebook Ad Campaign via your Page with the option to target a specific market and send those who click on your ad to either your Fan Page, an Event created via your Page, or to your website.

From Business Opportunities Weblog.

photo credit: fdecomite

In today’s outstanding technology based world, many businesses especially small businesses are crossing over to the virtual world of business. With so many web based applications and free or low cost web based programs it is now possible to work wherever you want via the Internet.

The virtual office presents two opportunities: first, it promises huge cost efficiencies for small businesses in terms of computer systems, virtual server space and even employee resources. Second, it gives rise to exciting new enterprises that provide physical real estate and attendant computing facilities for as little or as long as required – by the week, or even by the hour, recently stated on Open Forum.

Several well known companies such as Amazon.com, Ebay.com, Netflix and more have set themselves up as a virtual business and they’re making great profits because of their online community.

Think about all of the money that could be saved if your business made the switch to it’s own virtual office. With all the costs of rent, supplies, taxes on your space, setting up your office and more, this can add to quite a bit not to mention all of the extra ongoing costs to keep it up and running. Cut out a large proportion of your yearly costs by making the switch to your virtual office.

From Business Opportunities Weblog.

Looks like nothing is safe from becoming an advertisement these days. A newly surfaced Microsoft patent application proposes to create ads out of human interactive proofs, also known as CAPTCHAs, those lines of fuzzy or distorted text or images used by websites to confirm that submissions are coming from real human beings, not automated online bots.

Microsoft’s idea, as depicted in the accompanying diagram, is to present users with a product image, slogan, or some other form of advertisement — then require them to type in the name of the product or related text to complete the human proof.

Microsoft says in its patent filing that the approach creates “an effective way for advertisers to deliver their message to a captive audience. Unlike so much web-based advertising that accompanies popular web portals such as search and news sites that users can easily ignore, here the user must actively engage in reading and understanding the content in the advertisement in the HIP (human interactive proof) challenge in order to identify the solution to the challenge.”

Photo by USPTO.

From Business Opportunities Weblog.

Fast Company:

Ah, summertime. There’s no better time of year to shutter oneself indoors and watch videos on the Web–at least that’s what the latest numbers released by comScore would suggest.

In July, 158 million U.S. Internet users watched a record-setting 21.4 billion online videos, a full 88% more than they watched during the same month last year. We can call the spike a trend at this point, as June saw record-breaking viewership numbers as well.

Hulu scored its best month to date, notching 457 million views of its online content, which includes offerings from NBC, Fox, Disney, and others. On average, Hulu viewers watched 12 videos, totaling an hour and 13 minutes per viewer. Google remained in the top spot, however, as viewers watched 8.9 billion videos, or 42% of all videos watched, via the search giant. Viacom digital came in second with 812.3 million views, with Microsoft’s properties ranking a strong third delivering 630.6 million views.

So who was watching all these hours of video? Apparently, 81% of the American Web audience was. The average viewer watched 500 minutes of total video, or 8.3 hours, in July, with each video averaging 3.7 minutes. That’s an average of 135 videos per viewer.

Photo by HULU.

From Business Opportunities Weblog.

photo credit: Andrew Mason

Marketing can come in several different packages, aspects, and looks. Companies spend thousands of dollars every day on high tech marketing thinking it will bring in more business, but the truth is that there are several ways of successful marketing that doesn’t have to break your bank account. Take Internet businesses for example, most of the marketing comes at a low cost to you. Below are some tips on no brainer and low cost marketing for Internet businesses.

1. Email actions. There are so many different ways you can market your business by just using your email account. You can attach documents (ads, coupons, etc.), you can attach a business signature to the end of your email, send out sale notifications and newsletters via email and more.
2. The Mogul Mom recently suggested that another great no brainer way of marketing is to include some thoughtful comments on your site. You may add simple comments such as thanking them for their response, but what most readers are looking for is actual feedback and consideration from you. Go on and contribute anywhere you can on blogs, comments boards and more. Give them some adivce or tips, strike up a short conversation with them, or simply add more content to your thank you message.

Testimonials: I don’t know about you, but I put a much heavier weight on testimonials from real humans than I do on seeing celebrities wearing or using a product that was more than likely gifted to them. When I’m thinking of buying, trying or using something (from products to services to books to appliances to WordPress plugins), I want to see reviews or testimonials from real people. Don’t you?

From Business Opportunities Weblog.

YouTube, the world’s most popular video sharing site, said it will start sharing advertising cash with users who upload the most popular clips of everything from skateboarding dogs to dancing babies.

The video site, which is owned by Web search giant Google Inc, said it will extend its YouTube partnership program to allow individuals to make money when their videos are deemed eligible based on the number of views and how widely they are shared with other users.

YouTube has been criticized by some Google investors, who complain that the site has failed to capitalize financially on its immense popularity.

Until now, users who regularly produced videos could earn revenue from YouTube if they formally applied to be members of the partnership program, which YouTube said has earned some video producers “thousands of dollars.”

Under the new system, if a video becomes popular YouTube will email the maker an “enable revenue sharing” message.

Executives declined to quantify how popular a video would need to be for its owner receive the email.

YouTube said it will sell ads against the clip only if the user agrees to do so.

Photo by YouTube.

From Business Opportunities Weblog.

photo credit: geishaboy500

Anyone who owns their own business on the Internet knows what a hectic challenge it can be at times. We all know that the more help and tools we have to keep our business running smoothly the better. So I have put together a little list below containing some great tools for your Internet business that is sure to come in handy and help relieve some of your stress.

1. Quick Books.
2. Go Daddy.com.
3. Yahoo Search Marketing.
4. PR Tool Kit.
5. Blue Host.

iContact: After you’re up and running you’ll want to start doing online marketing to draw even more traffic into your Web site or Web store. Use this link to get great deals on online marketing and Internet marketing tools for email marketing. Posted recently on Understanding Marketing.

From Business Opportunities Weblog.

photo credit: Travis Isaacs

It is no secret that social media marketing is becoming more of a prevalent aspect to businesses today. With so many people practically living on a computer of some sort it makes sense to target these markets as much as possible to gain more traffic, clients, and profits. Below are some very helpful tips on getting the most out of your social media marketing that I read on Duct Tape Marketing.

Always amplify the content on your site and the content regarding your business that is located on other sites as well. Make sure that people know about you and where to find continuous content about your company.

Many business owners, especially those who are new to social media marketing, find themselves starring at their computer trying to figure out what to say, what to post, and what not to post. You will learn these things over time, it’s a trial and error concept. If something work’s to your benefit… do it again, if not then find something else to run with. Look at other business profiles to see what they are posting and including on their profile, that will give you a general idea for what to post on yours.

Integrate – Don’t treat your social media activity as something separate from your other marketing initiatives. Feature links to your social media profiles in your email signature, on your business cards, in your ads, and as a standard block of copy in your weekly HTML email newsletter.

From Business Opportunities Weblog.