Everything!

The truth is both you and I would be hard pressed to find a small business owner or entrepreneur with a gut feeling that they really need to step up their online marketing either through website redesign, social media, email marketing, or one of the hundreds of other ways to market a business online. In fact, that person might be you.

So, what’s the hangup? Why don’t you get started?

The Question: What is keeping you from busting into the world of effectively marketing your business online?

The Answer: You don’t know what you want for breakfast?

That’s right, you don’t know what you want for breakfast.

Have you ever woken up in the morning, hungry, walked over to the cupboard, opened it up, stared at a box of cereal, closed the cupboard, and mumbled to yourself, “There’s nothing to eat for breakfast. I’ll wait for lunch,” then went to work hungry convinced what’s there isn’t worth it?

You were just staring at a box of cereal weren’t you? But what was the cereal? Super Duty Bran Flakes

So, why didn’t you eat the Super Duty Bran Flakes? You bought it didn’t you? You put it in your shopping cart and paid for it didn’t you?

In fact, didn’t you stand there staring at the cereals saying to yourself, “Yummy Fruity Pebbles? Super Duty Bran Flakes. Yummy Fruity Pebbles? Super Duty Bran Flakes. Yummy sweet sugary indulgent breakfast bliss? Dry raspy healthy bran breakfast hell?”

The problem was, you didn’t decide and commit to that decision. So you just picked the one on sale and now, a day later, you’re frustrated with yesterday’s attempt to buy cereal. So, that box of Super Duty Bran Flakes sits on the shelf long past its expiration date gathering cob webs in the back of the cupboard.

The same holds true for online marketing.

A business owner knows he or she needs to get a website and start marketing online. Unsure of whether the website should be lively and exciting or clean and simple, the business owner either blindly picks one or “plays it safe” with a boring generic website with the hopes that it will appeal to all audiences.

Well, that generic middle-of-the-road website doesn’t appeal to anyone, and what you’re left with is a website that sits on a virtual cupboard shelf gathering cobwebs while the business owner convinces himself that online marketing doesn’t work and isn’t worth it.

What’s the solution?

DEFINE YOUR TARGET MARKET AND TAKE ACTION!

When you were buying cereal, you didn’t commit and take action what you really wanted, so you just took what was on sale.

When you were starting to market online, you didn’t commit and take action to attract the customers you really wanted, so your generic website and marketing continues to pull in generic non-committed customers.

In the grocery store, had you committed fully to either Fruity Pebbles or Super Duty Bran Flakes, you would have open up the cupboard for breakfast knowing exactly what was in there, and ate a great breakfast.

In your online marketing, had you committed fully to build your website and develop your online marketing plan to attract your most valuable customers, you would open up your email every day knowing exactly what kind of business leads you are going to find in there, and have a great list of pre-qualified leads.

So what’s it going to be? Fruity Pebbles or Super Duty Bran Flakes?

It’s time to commit and give new focus to your online marketing efforts.

Most entrepreneurs and small business owners quickly come to the realization that they need to a website. Here’s how the process goes. And, hey, I’ve been through this cycle myself so if this describes you, I’ve been there myself.

I love stories! Let’s take an entrepreneur named Jane, and follow her through her search for an aggressive online presence. Jane is an accountant with her own small business and has decided she needs a website.

First, Jane goes to all the do-it-yourself website creation companies out there where you pay anywhere from $10-$60 per month to create a website for your company with pre-built templates. She signs up for an account and starts shuffling through the templates, and picks out nice one with a blue background and a picture of an office building at the top of the page. It doesn’t really represent her business and she can’t put her logo on the page but she feels it’s good enough.

Jane spends all of her spare time for the next week and a half trying to learn how the template builder works and trying to get her website to look just how she wants it. On day 10, she’s run out of patience and decides to leave it how it is and hope for the best. She’s a little hesitant to send prospects to the site because it’s kind of home-made looking and doesn’t really represent her business but she does it anyway.

After a couple weeks, Jane’s business has been stagnant, and she’s thinking it’s because she’s sending her prospects to a cookie cutter website that looks like everyone else’s home-made cookie cutter website. So, she starts to look at other do-it-yourself website creation companies to see if there are better templates out there. . . maybe the $19/month company has better templates than the $10/month company. So, she makes the switch. . . and goes through the same cycle of choosing, learning how it works, and trying to customize it with no results.

It’s at this point that Jane starts thinking that maybe she should look into getting a custom site done. So she talks to some web designers and asks the question, “What web design software do you use?”. Well, from her previous two experiences with building websites, Jane thinks that professional web design software will build her a professional website.

So, Jane buys the same web design software that the pros use. It’s kind of expensive but she figures it’ll be worth it. Well, after downloading the software for 4 hours, she installs in on her computer. Then, after opening up the software, her face goes white as she quickly realizes that the software is not going to build the site for her. In fact, it occurs to her that asking a web designer what software he or she uses is like asking a car mechanic what tools he uses, buying them, and hoping the tools will fix the car for her.

Now, she has decision to make. Does she spend the next couple months learning how to use the software and basically learn to be a web designer while her accounting business suffers? Or, does she hire someone to just build a professional site for her?

Jane goes on Craigslist, asks friends, and family members, and starts looking for the cheapest web designer she can find. After all, she just spent all her money trying the home-made site services, and buying the expensive web design software, plus her business has been suffering from the time she’s been taking to sort out the website. So she finds the discount web guy who says he’ll do her site for $199 and make it perfect. Well, unknown to Jane, the $199 web guy is a college student that build his brother-in-law a website for his tree cutting service once and that’s about it. So the cheap web guy builds Jane a site that looks almost as good as the do-it-yourself website she had build herself months ago. She bites the bullet and pays the guy.

Well, now she’s back where she started. She now has a homemade looking website, expensive software she’ll never use, a dragging business that she hasn’t been giving proper attention to, and a big fat headache. Now, Jane has a decision to make. Should she hire a trusted professional to build her site exactly how she envisions it or keep her “new” website that looks like it was built in 1992?

As humorous as it may seem, believe it or not, this is a very real and very common scenario my friends.

Had Jane, simply hired the right person to build her site from the beginning, she probably would have had her site live online in about a week with no problems. She would have saved about $1700 on website creation software, do-it-yourself trials, and bottles of ibuprofen. And who know how much money she lost by minding her website instead of her business. Had she hired the right person, her site would have been clean and professional right from the start and she would have been able to confidently send her prospective clients to her website for information.

Wow! What an adventure!

So the moral of the story is. . . before you launch a new website or get an old one upgraded, talk it over with a professional web designer that you can trust. A good web designer will be able to take care of your needs a let you know know what your best options are within your budget regardless of whether or not he or she gets your business.

I know, I know. . . you still want to know what web design software I use don’t you?

Well here it is:

And, of course, there’s no way I could end this post without a plug for my web design and SEO company: Integrity Online Marketing – a Honolulu web design company

Peace.

From what I can tell at first glance, Peoplestring is a social networking and email service that rewards you in multiple ways for using their services.

Here’s one of the free banners that People String gives you to help spread the word on your blog or website.

Similar to Facebook, there is a social networking aspect of the site where you can update your status, add friends, join groups, etc. . . Additionally, there is a chat feature that brought me back to they days of AOL chat rooms of the early 90′s.

The system gives you an email address such as nateburgoyne@peoplestring.com that is free, though it may take you a minute or two to find it. I found it by clicking on the rotating “Mail” icons on the right side of the  page.

Before I share my thoughts on the program, I actively participate in Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, so that’s where my social networking foundation lies.

I think Peoplestring has  a great idea about putting money back into the pockets of the users, however, in my opinion, I think it’s a  ”features overkill”.  For me, the dashboard is too busy with banners, buttons, links, tools, and news.

I’m guessing that once you get into it and spend some time with it, you’ll be able to easily navigate through the site.

Maybe I’ve been spoiled with the simple Twitter layout that asks nothing more than, “What are are you doing? and the Facebook update box that asks the question, “What’s on your mind?”.

Am I going to take Peoplestring as a serious business venture? Maybe. They have a lot of new features planned coming up for the network and I’m sure they’ll be working out the kinks as they go along. While I was trying to figure out the system, the number of people online was bouncing around 176 at any given time, which in today’s social networking word, is minuscule, however, you have to start somewhere.

Personally, I think People String needs to clean up the interface some so it’s easy to follow and so that it intuitively tells you what to do to use the services and generate income with the system. From what I can tell, you get paid by getting others to use the system,  taking surveys, and promoting some products like this Black Grape antioxidant drink.  It’s a bit overwhelming for me.

They do  have some tutorials and webinars and so forth to show you how to use it all, but to tell you the truth, I’m in an iPod state of mind. I want to be able to look at the dashboard and know what to do without an instruction manual.

Will I personally pursue Peoople String as a business?

Well, I’ve signed up  for my free account and I’ll definitely check in with them from time to time to see how the system is progressing. If they do clean things up to where I understand the system, I’ll definitely be launching my business and helping my downline to do the same.

Should you sign up for Peoplestring?

Yes. Why not? It’s free.

Sign up as part of my group by clicking the banner below and when I decide to take this business into full gear, you’ll be one of the first to get first-hand training on how I do it. Might as well jump in early and get paid a couple bucks doing so.

In the past years, John’s pest control business leads were generated mostly through door knocking, yellow page ads, etc. . . Lead generation was extremely labor intensive and actually expensive. In fact, it was costing him about $100 per lead to knock doors.

Well, things have changed. No too long ago, John updated his website and got it search engine optimized. Now he’s on the front page of Google for search terms like “honolulu pest control” and “oahu pest control”.

Now, he gets leads automatically coming to his email box without knocking one single door and business has never been better.

He was telling me how businesses don’t see the picture of what a quality search engine optimized website can do for  a company. Now, I didn’t build his website, but I did look through the html code for it, and it looks like he’s doing things right.

And the great thing is, once the website is online, most internet marketing is free. No more yellow page ads, no more ads in the newspaper, no more flyers and door knocking, and no more cold calling. It’s an automatic lead generating machine that, if done right, can easily return your investment 10 fold.

I couldn’t let the blog post go without a plug and a nice link back to his website. Right now he’s #4 in Google for “Honolulu Pest Control” and I know he’s going for #1 so here’s a sweet link for you: Honolulu Pest Control.

If you are a business owner or entrepreneur and you’re ready to upgrade your website or take your business online let me know, and I’ll make sure you get a killer discount from my Honolulu web design company Integrity Online Marketing.

First of all, the web design itself is clean an professional. There’s a clean logo at the top with a tag line easy to read, “Make money from foreclosed homes.” Perfect. When you look at the site, you know exactly what it’s about and what they are going to teach you.

The box of information also has the title. “Make Money Purchasing Foreclosed Homes!” Although there is an exclamation point, the calm colors don’t give the impression that the site is yelling at you. Then, in the subtitle in yellow letters it says, “Learn to buy, sell and profit from millions of foreclosures..” Clear an concise. Now, I didn’t design this website but I really like the colors….notice I used the same on my own personal website.

On the right side it clearly tells us how much it costs to check out the program. Just $1, and below that it says they donate that to charity. Brilliant! Everyone has a dollar to give.

Video is great. They have a video on the page about the housing crisis to keep you captivated. Then, they have the call to action…enter your zip code.

After you enter your zip code, if the program is available in your area, it sends you to the congratulations page. Man, you feel like you won or something. Then you enter your contact info to access to the program.

It’s clean, professional, looks like a great program, and you get access to all the info for a buck.

What would I change about it? While the YouTube videos are great, if you click on them like I did, it takes you away from the sales page to YouTube’s website, and we all know that YouTube can be a major distraction. It could cause the visitor to get lost. Now, if the embedded video was branded with Foreclosure Coin links and images on the video, it wouldn’t be so bad because they’d be seeing your web address all along. However, in this case, the videos are not branded.

All in all, I think it’s a great site. I hope this gave you some ideas for your online marketing. I know what you’re wondering…did the foreclosures business work for me? Yes. I still have a lead generating website for it and if you’re in the real estate business, you should have one too.

First of all, I want everyone to know that the internet is a really fun place to be, and it could be as simple as starting a blog about your favorite hobbies and activities then turning it into a money making machine.

Secondly, although you can make money online overnight, it’s important to remember that your internet marketing business is a business. It’s not a get rich quick scheme. It’s a business that you can grow step by step and sometimes very quickly with the right tools and education.

Now, where would I recommend that you start? Like I said, here are some of the resources that I personally use and recommend.

Armand Morin is a great internet marketer with a fantastic program called Internet Marketing Explained. I’ve met Armand personally and almost always some of his audio training on my iPod. He recently udated and relaunched his course. There are tons of audio and video files that you can load on your iPod and listen to while you’re working at your computer, driving the car, or washing dishes. When I’m listening to Armand, I always make sure I have a pen and paper nearby to take notes. If Armand is selling a $2000 course, he loads it with $10,000 worth of training. Here’s a free video about it. It’s definitely worth watching:

For more FREE information about Internet Marketing Explained by Armand Morin, CLICK HERE.

Another resource for information for the more budget minded marketer is Brian Wynn’s Millionaire League. You can see the sales page HERE. I bought this product a few years ago, and it’s one of the best $27 products I’ve bought. He adds new things from time to time and it’s loaded with great information. I’ve implemented many of the strategies in his membership site myself.

One of the biggest mistakes that new internet marketers make, is paralysis of analysis. I say, just jump in and go for it. Take action and it’ll work for you. Does this stuff really work? Yes.

Here are some more places to look for information on starting your home e-business. Most programs are actually very good. Have a look at the sales page. Does the sales page have the tone or feel that sits well with you? If so, buy it and check it out! Almost every program that I’ve ever seen online comes with a no questions asked money-back guarantee, so there’s no risk when you buy the stuff. Buy it, and if you don’t like it or if it feels like a scam to you, simply ask for a refund.

Happy marketing! And by, the way, watch for my personal e-commerce home study course coming soon…

“How do you prefer to communicate: phone, fax, email, text, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter?”

Everyone has their own preferred way of communicating and it’s the job of you and I find out what our clients and customers prefer to use.

Here’s a great example: As many of you know I’m an avid stand up paddler surfer and have become part of the industry by creating Stand Up Paddle Surfing Magazine http://www.supsurfmag.com. There was a client of ours that we were having a heck of a time getting in contact with. Emails and phone calls went unreturned from an extended period of time. However when we found him on Facebook, we connected immediately and we were have a board meeting (surf) together in less than a week. Apparently his preferred line of communication is Facebook.

Happy tweeting, posting, texting, and status updating!

So, what kind of plan do you need. GoDaddy has a free hosting account but if you use it, you’ll have GoDaddy banners at the top of your website. If you don’t mind advertising for GoDaddy, just buy and domain and you’ve got free place to host it. If you need something a little more professional, I recommend upgrading to the most basic shared hosting service they offer. Then, as you go along, if you find you need something more, you can seamlessly upgrade.

GoDaddy lets you choose between Linux and Windows servers where you choose your hosting account. If you’re wondering, “Should I choose Linux or Windows?” I recommend Linux as do many other internet marketers. Why? Well, that’ll be another post. You can get your hosting account and domains Here at www.godaddy.com.

Anyway, they wanted to make a push over the weeked to move product fast. A 2000% increase in sales for a normal weekend and all they had to do was write 2 emails.

No, it wasn’t a million dollar deal or anything, however, it was a 2000% increase in sales. What could that do for your business in a weekend? 

And the magic is, the system can be repeated over and over and over again. It was all done legally, ethically, without spamming, and all the customers were super excited to hand over their money to buy the product.  It was a win, win, win for everyone involved and it can be implemented by any business large or small. We just barely did this over the weekend, so this is breaking stuff! More to come. 

By the way if you haven’t already done so, be sure to join my newsletter. No Spam, no junk, and you can automatically unsubscribe any time.