How To Make Money Online In Nigeria

Taking Advantage Of Google+ Hangouts API To Boost Your Business

Udegbunam Chukwudi — Sat, 19 May 2012 06:59:01 +0000

Once the fastest growing site in all the social media space, Google+ seems to have hit a ceiling of sorts and maybe even lost a little momentum. One reason for this is its closed nature. Whereas Facebook and Twitter are supported by an arsenal of third-party applications, Google has been rather reserved when it comes to giving developers an invitation to Google+. However, the internet giant has been teasing us with the Hangouts API for a while now, and finally appears to be ready to share the love.

Google introduced the Hangouts API last year in September, just a few months after launching the social network itself. Just recently, the company announced that it was moving the API out of the preview phase. What does this mean for businesses? It means they now have the green light to create and deploy their own Hangout apps on the Google+ platform. Savvy marketers can take advantage by using the API to recreate the video chat experience outside of the social network, which just may appeal to some of their fans.

For example, let’s say you have built on a small community around your website. By tapping into the Hangouts API, you can incorporate the feature on your site for community members to use. With a quick click of the Hangout button, users can open the application and run a video chat session right in the same window. Talk about convenience. This type of engagement could benefit business in a variety of ways if the community actually puts the feature to use. The recently released API could also be useful for creating games and various types of productivity apps. For the business with a programming team onboard, the possibilities are virtually endless.

Tough Sailing for Google+

The Hangouts API not only offers promise for businesses, but Google+ as well. Google has struggled to keep its platform relevant in the social space where Facebook holds the bulk of the power, and newcomers like Pinterest are on the rise. From the very beginning, Hangouts was pushed as the one component that would set the site apart from the competition and provide the individuality that is so desperately needed in the social arena. Depending on how developers react to the invitation, the new Hangouts API could be the shot in the arm that gives Google+ life to keep fighting.

The Hangouts API is already being used by a few Google+ developers. Aces Hangout, Clubhouse Challenge, and Slideshare are among the brands to use it to connect to the social platform. But as we alluded to, the support from the developer community will tell all. Although some will surely want to hop onboard, you have to wonder if others have lost interest. Either way, the official launch of the Hangouts API means new opportunities, so businesses that want to capitalize should make the move to get plugged in.

Chiko Noguchi is a best practices activist and advocate for a leading provider of email marketing services.

Continue reading this article @ Taking Advantage Of Google+ Hangouts API To Boost Your Business.

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Online Business Reality For Nigerians: Important Things To Know About Starting An Online Business

Udegbunam Chukwudi — Wed, 16 May 2012 00:22:00 +0000

When many people hear the words online business or internet business many ideas run free in their minds. Unfortunately most of these ideas and perception are wrong. Most of these perception are borne out of the stories and lies peddle by evil marketers and people who are out to sell lies and make money from innocent people who actually want to learn the truth.

In this article I will discuss a lot of these lies .If you are new to online business or have just started yours ,this article will be useful to you.

Here Are The 7 Realities Of Making Money Online (Or Even Offline)

1. Overnight Success Does Not Happen Overnight

Have you ever read an advert that says

“how to make $1000 in 24 hours by just by doing nothing online”?

I bet you have and there are many adverts like this on are national dailies and in other specialized publications.

Well, I know as human beings we are always looking for the short cut, the easy way out , the painless and stress free way but …

You know what ?

These adverts are just lies.

Although I cannot deny the fact that it is possible to make huge amount of money online in a few hours (people have done so) but it is very difficult for a complete new comer with no knowledge or limited knowledge to do such.

The point am making is this; success takes time and hard work so don’t be deceived by people who just promise you money and success online by just doing nothing.

By the way, even scams takes time to succeed.

2. Bank Accounts Don’t Make Money

Many Nigerians bug themselves with how they can open ClickBank accounts and PayPal account. They forget one big fact…

Bank accounts don’t make money .

I have mentioned before that having a PayPal account or any other account in other payment platform is like having a bank account. And as you know ,if you have 20 bank accounts in different banks ,that does not guarantee that you will make money online or offline.

If PayPal accounts was all you need ,then every American with a PayPal account would be a millionaire.

3. Value Creation Is A Must

Zig Ziglar ones made a statement which goes thus-

You can get what you want if you help people get what they want.

That statement is the basis of value creation.

Value is created when you help people get what they want or desire. The same value creation principle is used online and is a necessary ingredient for making money online. You see, anyone making money offline or online is creating value for others. So if you know what people value and you create It for them you will make money online.

Read this article to learn how to create value online.

4. Focus Is The Key

It is very easy to get distracted online because there are so many ways to actually make money online. There are very many online business models that work . There are very many strategies that work. There are very many people teaching different things and proclaiming that their method is the best method. There are many new websites that you want to try out .There are many e-mails in your e-mail box you need to read.

And the list goes on and on.

So It is easy to be distracted.

But staying focus on a single thing for a long time is what always works.

Staying focused on a single online business model is what works.

Following one mentor is what works.

Using one method and learning all you can about it is what works.

I will make a confession here.

I often still get distracted too because new opportunities and ideas come up every day and makes it hard for me to focus on my present activity but even with that ,I still have to caution myself to remember that I need to focus.

You need to focus on one business model too.

5. Knowledge Is Not Power, Action Is

Do you know that very popular statement ;

“Knowledge is power’?

Of course you do.

You know what ?

I don’t completely agree with it.

Why?

Because knowledge without action is worse than ignorance.

You see, a lot of people have read lots of e-books, read blogs articles ,gone to seminars and are rich with knowledge but have done nothing with the knowledge they have.

For example, many people have heard and read about the need to build a list but many do nothing about it.

Know this-knowledge is worthless if you don’t use it .

So just buying e-books ,attending seminars and knowing about how to make money online will not make you money online.

Start taking action .NOW.

6. You Need To Invest

Many people just assume that because e-mail is free, facebook is free, etc that making money online will also be free. They hate the idea of investing in anything.

See.

If you want to make money online then you have to invest .

PERIOD.

There is not compromise here.

You will have to invest you time and money.

You need to invest money in getting knowledge , tools ,advertising , outsourcing etc.

You need to also invest time to learn , practice , fail , succeed , network and do many other things.

Don’t think you will just make millions without any kind of investment.

7. The Best Time To Start Your Online Business Is NOW

Not when you know everything.

Not when you have read all the blogs .

Not when you have all the information.

Not when you have read all the e-books.

Not after attending all the seminars.

No.

Start right now.

Now is the perfect time.

Am not saying you should not get the basic knowledge needed or not to read about the online business model you want to use. Am I saying –don’t wait till you get everything.

Why?

Because you can never get everything.

You will learn more as you act and practice.

Start now.

You see , I might seem like some gurus that knows it all.

But guess what .

I don’t .

Am still learning and doing new things every day.

If you wait till you know all you need to know ,you will never take action and you will never succeed.

Thank you.

Mk Akan is a Nigerian blogger and entrepreneur and has written a free e-book that reveals other lies and realities about making money online in Nigeria. Click here to download the free e-book .

Continue reading this article @ Online Business Reality For Nigerians: Important Things To Know About Starting An Online Business.

6 Important Tips On Creating Videos That Sell Products

Udegbunam Chukwudi — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 01:38:00 +0000

The widespread availability of broadband and the purchase of YouTube by Google have made online video one of the fastest growing trends on the web. From both a viewer’s and producer’s perspective, online videos are fun, entertaining, and easily accessible.

Having said that, anyone can crank out a video but creating content that is worthy of an audience proves to be a challenge, even while an increasing number of businesses put their efforts toward video production. The truth is, as with all marketing tools, there’s no one sure fire method that is guaranteed to work, but there are a few techniques that seem to stand the test of time.

The following are 7 important tips on creating videos that sell products.

1. Apply the 80-20 Rule

Simply put the 80-20 Rule means that you’re probably making much of your revenue with a well-defined group of top selling items. With that in mind, you’ll likely get the most from your video by boosting these items’ product pages with videos first.

Most online retailers have over five hundred items in their catalog. Choosing to follow the 80-20 Rule serves as an excellent guideline for where to begin with video enhancements.

2. Keep videos short and sweet

The truth is your online audience has a very short attention span. This issue is compacted by the less-than-ideal objective qualities of most online video: download times, small player window, poor sound quality, etc.

The good news is that this actually works in your favor because it allows you to save on production time and costs. Ideally, product videos are less than one minute long.

If your product is especially complex or pricey you might want to extend that by up to 50%. However, there’s little point in going above 90 seconds. The simple fact is the vast majority of your viewers will simply ignore anything longer.

3. Conduct A/B tests from the start

Obviously, different types of videos perform better for different types of products and different types of clients. The catch is we can’t know which type of video performs best for our products and client base until we’ve tested a few versions. Failing to test for effect early on can mean leaving substantial conversion potentials untapped.

The simplest way to do this is by creating and uploading a few versions of product videos for a limited group in your catalog and monitoring their performance, in terms of conversion rates and purchasing behaviors, to determine which gave the best results. Once you feel you’ve accumulated the data you need, pick the best formats and utilize them for the rest of your site’s products.

4. Add captions

Captions within your videos will have a surprising effect on click through rates and conversions. Although the only difference between both versions is the red captions in the version on the right, there is drastic difference in their conversion rates.

Merely adding captions to the original video will drastically improve its conversions.

5. Add user reviews to increase trust

User reviews and testimonials are popular in e-commerce because people tend to trust ratings and recommendations from their peers. You can increase the ROI from any existing user’s reviews you have by adding them to your videos.

6. Include video in your on-site search results

Research shows people searching your site are twice to three times more likely to make a purchase than those merely browsing. The reason is because searching visitors usually have a clear intent, while browsers are more likely to be casual traffic.

A good way to use video to capitalize on the quality traffic is by indicating the availability of video within every item’s search results. Indicating an item has video increases the likelihood a user will click to view it, and then buy it.

Once you’ve invested in creating a few videos you can maximize the ROI on them by including them in all your online marketing activities. Link to them from your email marketing campaigns, upload them to your social media profiles, and use them to push your SEO campaigns via proper tagging and deep backlinks.

Adding video to your site can not only help improve your sales, it can also be a fun experience for both you and your customers. Online video can steer traffic away from your competitors, improve your site’s appeal and give you a powerful way to effectively capture more sales.

Author Bio:
Yo Noguchi is an experienced freelancer, guest blogger, and frequent contributor to a blog hosted by Benchmark Email, one of the world’s global free email marketing providers.

Continue reading this article @ 6 Important Tips On Creating Videos That Sell Products.

How To Boost Your Small Business with Pinterest

Udegbunam Chukwudi — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 14:24:32 +0000

Pinterest, a newly launched social networking site has been garnering all kinds of interest lately. The site, which amounts to a forum for sharing photos of products, recipes, travel, and other categories from all across the web, has been steadily increasing its traffic. With this explosion in popularity, many companies have realized the potential to use Pinterest to boost their own business. Here are a few easy tips for building business through Pinterest activity.

Invest time

Although Pinterest is easy to use, it’s important to spend the time to make sure you’re using it right. Find out which “pinners” are the most influential – whose choices are repinned and liked the most. It’s through these users that your efforts will have the greatest impact, so find out who they are! Once they know, like, and start sharing your brand, their followers, who trust their judgment, will follow suit and start sharing your brand as well.

Simplicity is Key

When creating a board of your product, keep it simple, following the clean overall aesthetic of the Pinterest site. The site is popular because it’s easy to use, so don’t overwhelm your viewers!

Don’t Limit Your Activity to the Site

Whether you are a physical store or an e-commerce site, make your presence on Pinterest known! Link to it on your company site, or have a sticker in your store – your current customers are the most likely to start sharing your products on Pinterest, so let them know that they can!

Connect Pinterest with the rest of your Social Media presence

Use your Facebook page, company Twitter account, or any other social media identity to direct followers toward Pinterest. It might be gaining in popularity, but it’s still new, so many users don’t even know about Pinterest in the first place.

Promote a presence, not products

It might seem natural for a company to only share pins of their own products, but this is severely limiting your potential. First of all, customers are less likely to interact with a pinboard that seems to be only sharing your products – they might as well be on your website! Instead, share other pins that appeal to your customer base – they will see a well-curate and diverse pinboard that’s worth looking at!

This is a guest post by Mary Johnson from TradeStable.com.ng with classifieds ranging from used cars to real estate and jobs.

Continue reading this article @ How To Boost Your Small Business with Pinterest.

5 Simple Tips on How to Tweet Your Business

Udegbunam Chukwudi — Fri, 16 Mar 2012 19:29:56 +0000

Once in a while, it is good to take a look at what your social media connections look like. You might have a Twitter account, but rarely use it. Or it might be that you are not getting the reaction to it that you were hoping for. You know that businesses on Twitter get a lot of attention if they do it right, but what is the right way to Tweet?

How can you make your business stand out? Are you doing something wrong, or is it just a matter of investing more time and effort into your Twitter account?

Well, take a look at these five tips and see which ones your Twitter account needs to improve on to make your business tweets a success.

Be human – No one wants to read automatic posts. Show a little about yourself. Don’t be afraid to post things that are not directly related to your business. The more people know about the real you, the more they’ll want to read.
Offer advantages – Coupons, discounts, and loyalty programs all work wonders for keeping and finding customers. People will sign up if they get something for it, so make sure to offer your followers things to keep them hooked.
Keep going – Don’t give up if you are not successful right away. Get some history going. The longer you are on there, the better off you’ll be. And post regularly. People follow businesses who are active and alive. Twice a week should be your minimum.
Be interesting – Don’t put your followers to sleep. And don’t always talk about yourself. If you find a news article, an offer, or something you think others would like to see, post a link on Twitter. It will make your Tweets more alive and offer another advantage to your followers.
Pay attention – Don’t let Tweeting go one way. If people talk to you, respond. You don’t have to respond to everything, but try your best to be responsive and approachable. Retweet other people’s interesting posts and follow others. Your business is not an island, make sure to connect.

Those are just a few of the ways to be a successful Tweeter. There are many, many more, but this will at least get you started. Don’t forget to keep Tweeting even if it doesn’t seem worth it at first. You never know when your Tweets might take off.

Thanks to Coleen Torres from local phone service for this post. You can find more about her at her http://www.phonetvinternet.com/insider/coleen-torres/.

Continue reading this article @ 5 Simple Tips on How to Tweet Your Business.

On Site SEO For Small Business Websites: Dos and Don’ts

Udegbunam Chukwudi — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 09:50:56 +0000

A common mistake made by most webmasters who are looking to run an SEO campaign for their website is not paying attention to the on-site SEO aspect of the campaign.

Search engine optimization can be broken down into two categories, on-site SEO and off-site SEO.

Off-site SEO is the technical aspect most webmasters are familiar with such as building backlinks and having reviews written for your site. On-site SEO is the process of optimizing your website in such a way so it is easier for the search engines to crawl your website and know what it is about.

Failing to focus on the on-site SEO portion of your SEO campaign can hinder the effectiveness of your other work. By remembering to handle the on-site SEO aspects of your website before starting the off-site link building, you will see better results in the search engine rankings for your desired keywords which should in turn boost your small business profits.

While there is a lot of information out on the web about what should be done to properly optimize your on-site SEO, a lot of this information is incorrect. If you do not correctly handle your on-site SEO, you could be banned by the search engines. This will result in your site not appearing for any of your targeted keywords.

Here is a list of what you should and should not do when looking to handle your website’s on-site SEO.

ON-SITE SEO DOS

Create unique Meta tags – This includes creating a Title tag, Meta Description, and Meta Keywords tag. You want your targeted keywords to appear in this section of your website on every page because the search engine spiders will reference this part of the code to determine what your website is about. Do please note that Google no longer takes meta keywords into consideration as most seo guys have abused it on a massive scale but other less popular search engines still use it.
Unique Content – Content is becoming increasingly important in the world of search engine optimization. The more value your content is perceived to have by the search engines, the more important your website will be viewed by their algorithms. Creating unique content that your visitors enjoy reading that contains your targeted keywords will have a dramatic affect on your ranking in the search engine results.
Folder Structure – The way your website’s files are handled can have an impact on your ranking in the search engines. Remembering to name your file folders with your keywords will help the search engines associate your website with specific keywords. For those running wordpress sites, file folders = categories.
Optimize all Images – If you have any images on your website, you will want to make sure they are optimized for your keywords. Naming your image with your targeted keywords can help drive traffic to your website as images routinely appear in the search engine results. Do not over do this though as it could get you penalized. Do not forget to also add ALT and TITLE TAGS to your images for browsers without images activated.
Use CSS and avoid tables – You want to make sure your HTML code is as clean as possible so the search engine spiders can freely crawl your website.

ON-SITE SEO DON’TS

Do not used Copied Content – Sometimes it can be difficult creating new, interesting content for your website. However, this is not an excuse to copy someone else’s content and use it on your site. You can always outsource your content writing if you are having a hard time creating your own content.
Do not use hidden text – Using hidden text with the hopes of tricking the search engines is no longer acceptable and a good way to get your site banned from the search engines.
Do not stuff keywords – When creating your content, you do not want to try and stuff your keywords into the content as much as possible. The search engines will view your content as spam and will punish your website by never allowing it to gain a first page ranking.

Following this list of Do’s and Don’ts will surely have you on your way to effectively optimizing your website so that the rest of your SEO campaign will prove fruitful.

This is a guest article by Ruben Corbo, a writer for the website The Search Labs a global provider of link building, on-site SEO, and competitor link analysis services.

Continue reading this article @ On Site SEO For Small Business Websites: Dos and Don’ts.

11 Simple Facebook Promotion Tips for Small Businesses

Udegbunam Chukwudi — Wed, 29 Feb 2012 10:51:39 +0000

Every once in a while it’s good to take a step back and look at some of the broad ways to approach your marketing strategy. This is not one of those posts. Instead, this post will give you a series of concrete steps that you should start doing right now in order to build your Facebook presence. While not every step is spelled out to the last detail, you should be able to complete all of them without too much thought.

It’s time to stop thinking and start doing. Here we go.

Create a Complete Profile

Go to your Facebook profile, scroll to the bottom, and click "Create a Page." Follow the steps from there, and complete every single step. Leaving something empty will make you look like you aren’t taking this seriously. For any images, we highly recommend paying for a high quality stock image or paying a professional photographer. At the very least, if it’s an image of your face, make sure somebody else took the picture and the lighting is good.

Customize Your Profile

When you’re done, go to Pagemodo.com and create a customized Facebook page. Again, only use high quality images and choose your layout carefully. Tell your audience a few things about your business. Set the Pagemodo page as your about page. Typically, you’ll still want your wall to be the default page because the point of any Facebook page should be to share information and interact with your audience.

Invite Your Friends

Encourage your existing Facebook friends to "like" your page and share it.

Share a Few Interesting Things

Check out Reddit, StumbleUpon, Twitter, and Google Trends for interesting things that are at least somewhat related to your business or your target demographic, and share them on your page. I do this on my BlackBerry phone using Social Scope app.

Run an Advertising Campaign

It’s easier than you might think. If you can spare $50 you can buy an ad campaign. You can set limits on exactly how much money you are willing to spend so that you never go over budget. You can choose to market it only to people in certain areas or only to people who have already expressed an interest in a specific keyword. This is a great way to drive targeted traffic to your page. Always ask for people to "like" your page in the ad.

Run a Poll

Ask your new audience what their opinion is on something emotionally charged or funny by holding a survey on your wall. Encourage some of your real world friends to take part in order to get the ball rolling.

Join other Pages

Search Facebook for pages that are related to your business. Find the conversations there and join in. Look for pages that allow you to share your own content on their wall, and share a few interesting things on those pages.

Install Buffer

Buffer is a simple online service that lets you schedule tweets and Facebook updates to go out at regular intervals. Set it to update your Facebook about 3-4 times a week. Only share the most interesting content you find and only schedule things a maximum of a week in advance. You can find buffer at bufferapp.com.

Respond to Everything

Respond to everything that you can, starting with the comments that have received the most "likes." Respond to likes themselves when possible, but try to say something a little more inventive than "thanks." Your responses should encourage further conversation, so a lot of the time it’s better to go with questions than statements.

Integrate it With Your Website

Install a like button, a like box and comment form on your website. The like buttons allow people to share your articles with their friends, while the like box allows them to join your Facebook page from your website. The comment form helps maintain interaction on and off facebook.

Post only the Best Updates from Your Site

If you churn out content at a massive pace, most of it will get ignored if you overwhelm your fans with blog content. Only post your featured content to the Facebook page.

Jeff has been blogging since 2007 & contributing on many websites since that time. He shares his experience about how to get the most out of your blog. Jeff is also a consultant and content contributor for Queens condominiums community.

Continue reading this article @ 11 Simple Facebook Promotion Tips for Small Businesses.

Five Ways Videos Can Boost Your Online Marketing Campaigns

Udegbunam Chukwudi — Fri, 24 Feb 2012 19:26:39 +0000

If you haven’t yet experienced the power and influence of online videos and still rely on traditional promotion methods like print ads or television marketing for your business campaigns; you are getting obsolete! Video marketing is emerging as a great tool to showcase your merchandise and services online, particularly for small businesses.

In this time and age, where the competition is immense, companies are always looking for ways to cut down their costs (most importantly marketing budgets) and to reach out to customers in a quicker and cost effective manner. Video marketing is the right choice for engendering superior leads in any business.

The choice of medium is also not a problem nowadays. There are plenty of websites such as YouTube, Vimeo, Sorenson Media, Hulu, etc. where you can easily upload and share your videos.

Every 60 seconds, more than 48 hours of video information is uploaded to YouTube and this amount alone should get you into some serious thinking about changing your marketing strategy.

A Viral Video is Instant Success for Business

Viral video is one that makes its audience want to share it with friends. This sharing process creates a chain where a person shares the video with his friends and colleagues who further share it with theirs and the process expands.

Ever wondered why ‘Pantene’ among thousands of shampoos, could make an impact on its key customers, the typical women? They created a viral ad featuring a female with average looking hair and how after the use of Pantene conditioner and shampoo her hair transformed like that of a model.This clever idea virally spread the video ad across the net.

Arousing Customer Curiosity about Your Business

Video marketing is the best way to capture the attention of potential customers and trigger repurchases from existing customers. All depends on how appealing and moving your video is. While many businesses will complain that they don’t get enough views on their videos, the problem actually lies in the content or title of their video. Truth is that when people see something extra ordinary,they usually stop to watch. Hence uploading your video online to market your product can stir the curious minds of online consumers.

For this purpose marketers these days use different tactics such as creating an animated video for e.g. Honda’s “keep doing” animated commercial which featured simple shapes and colors to inspire its customers to service their cars every now and then to help planet. Other tactics include humor, real life situations, fantasy, etc. – anything that supports their strategy and makes your video worth watching.

Grabbing Social Media Attention

A successful blog recently claimed that in response to the question “What 3 digital marketing channels & tactics will you emphasize in 2010?” Over 500 readers cast around 1600 votes for best 3 digital marketing tactics for 2010. These top three tactics were reported to be Blogging, Twitter and Search Engine Optimization. Equally fascinating was the fact that out of the top 10, 6 tactics belonged to the category of Social Media Marketing.

The most important reason why you should choose a social medium to promote your campaign is that majority of your customers, regardless of their gender, age or financial position, are a part of various popular social networks. Without doing much you can easily reach out to them and put forward your products or services.

Reaching Out To Global Customers

You cannot even imagine the potential reach of an interesting video. Once it is uploaded on the websites like YouTube.com, it can be viewed by anyone from all four corners of the world. Digital marketing is the most appropriate marketing technique to build one’s brand’s image globally, because of the global nature of Internet, and social media websites to be precise.

Helps Sell Services/Products in A Compelling Way

Using videos helps build trust in your customers’ minds because it provides a more trustworthy medium to communicate the message to your viewers as compared to a sales page containing nothing but text and images. A video can provide a personal touch, and gives a much stronger impression even if they are not going through the entire video.

Natasha Mesty is an Internet Marketing expert and writes on topics related to guest blogging. Watch this video on guest bloggingto learn more about myblogguest.com and how it can help you in your guest blogging endeavors

Continue reading this article @ Five Ways Videos Can Boost Your Online Marketing Campaigns.

How To Raise Funds For Your Small Business Venture

Udegbunam Chukwudi — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 19:53:16 +0000

After the recent unfortunate recession, almost all individuals are experiencing financial hardships like job loss, wage reduction, and others, due to which they are incessantly falling into debt. On the recent economic surface, one of the best ways of achieving a debt free status is to start up a small online business. People who are smart, talented and hard working will definitely be able to earn good money out of this business. But the matter of concern is, it is not an easy task to raise money for a small business.

So how can you go about it?

Here are some important tips that can help you generate sufficient fund to launch your path to financial freedom

So let us here take a close look at some important tips in order to raise cash for your small business.

Draft A Business Plan With Desired Goals

This is an absolute essential thing to do while starting a business, no matter what kind it is. Even if you operate a virtual business, you have to plan properly. Without a proper business plan or documents, no lender will accept your loan application and lend you money. If you do not know how to get started, attend a few business courses conducted by your local community college, or read a book that has substantial information on small business funding. You may also go through e-books available online in order to enlighten your knowledge on business funding.

Take Out A Bank Loan

People mostly go to banks first in order to obtain fund for their businesses. Go to your personal banks and apply for business loan. If they decline your loan application, go to other banks. Do some research work and make a list of banks that have good record of supporting small businesses. You can also hire the services of an agent who will help you providing with a list of banks and their quotes. Choose the best quote that you think suitable for your business with reasonable interest rates.

Call On Your Family and Friends

If you do not get fund from a financial institution or bank, you may go to your friends and family. You may borrow money from them and repay it later. Remember, although you will get better terms, like low interest rate, lenient repayment schedule and others, but if you fail to repay them on time you will lose much more than money.

Apply For A Government Grant

Government grants could be a great way of funding your business and it’s a tad amusing that quite a number of small business owners are not aware of this. There are many government grants available that support small business men/women to get started. However, before you apply for them, know the eligibility criteria. Check the website Grants to see if you qualify for any grants currently offered by the US Government.

Seek Out Potential Business Partners

Believe it or not, there are many investors in the market looking for innovative people to place their money with. Finding them can be little difficult, but not absolutely impossible. Visit forums related to your work and start getting familiar with people. Doing so, you will be getting a lot of expert advice and suggestion from people who are already operating in your field and you will be getting partners who will most likely work with you.

In conclusion, if you are planning to set up a small business online or in the real world, funding should be the least of your worries as there are plenty of ways to go about it especially if you live in a developed country.

These are just a few tips on how to generate funds for your small business. Feel free to share with us other means of going about it. Cheers.

Stewart Bradley is a contributory writer associated with the Debt Consolidation Care Community and has written several articles for various financial websites. He holds his expertise in the Debt industry and has made significant contribution through his various articles.

Continue reading this article @ How To Raise Funds For Your Small Business Venture.

Cheap Backlinks: Are They Worth The Pain?

Udegbunam Chukwudi — Thu, 16 Feb 2012 08:06:46 +0000

Backlinks are the buzz word today in every SEO war room. Sites are flaunting them, selling them, buying them and doing all sorts of odd freaky things. It seems backlinks are becoming as good as money in web world.

But, do leveraging backlinks make any sense, especially, in post-Panda algorithm days? There is no black and white answer to this question. Want to know why? Read on.

Why Backlinks are getting God-like status?

Everybody knows that the reason lies within the search engine world. Search giants like, Google, Yahoo, Bing and others, use backlinks as reputation-measuring tool for websites. The logic is well-promoted. If any site links back to your site, it means, link-forwarding site respects your site for any reason, whatever that may be.

This equates a simple fallacy, which means more backlinks lead to more respect and more respect means better Page Rank or ranking in search engine result pages for any particular topic.

The end result is websites slogging for backlinks.

All genuine search engines categorically nix trading of backlinks but that hardly stops anybody from exchanging backlinks for monetary benefit. Many sites depend heavily on backlinks for better PR. There are too many shoddy dealers around; who even sell backlinks in bunches, just like any over-the-counter commodity.

But do those cheap commoditized links work?

They don’t of course. Not only that, such cheap bulk backlinks are full of blowback too.

Google already unleashed Panda algorithm to reign over the malpractice of backlinking. Effects are already visible for all competitive and common keywords. Even relevant backlinks are not as effective today as they were earlier, let alone bulk irrelevant software-generated backlinks.
Considering the vast size of the web world, you can, though, succeed in fooling algorithm for some obscure and ultra-specific keywords. But don’t expect your victory to last long.
Cheap bulk link building services depend on software. Software hardly cares relevance of links, content matching or usability of link-followers. With cheap link services, you can get dofollow back links from even engineering related sites when you actually sell baby-care products. In most of the cases, these links are nothing but spam. And no legitimate business owner likes dealing with spam, because they are serious legal offence.
Besides, you can’t rely on cheap backlinks as a long-term strategic tool. Being a spam, they often disappear into air. And the worst is you have no one to fall back on for your loss.

What to do then?

Having said all these, you can still use backlinks in your favor because search engines still use them to measure your sites’ online reputation. But you have to be more cautious and less fraudulent.

Use backlinks in a very slow pace. Remember not to alert search crawlers. Only couple of backlinking is more than enough for a week.
Always take care of link-originating page and linked page. They must match in terms of relevance. Take care of content and keywords too.
Do not overuse any keyword or anchor word. Search engines take any overuse as spamming.
Try to develop organic backlinks from true authority sites and directories. This takes time but never fails to pay.

At last, you must remember, blackhat practices are too tempting but no genuine search engine likes you playing with their well-guarded reputation. So, do not call for their wrath. In the world of internet marketing they can simply bury you down.

Alyssa Clarke is a blogger who also happens to be a tech lover. She is always on a look out for latest tech stuff and is currently hunting for some cool Mac apps. She recently read about the Toggle touch remote control and desperately wants to own it.

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