Home Business Center Newsletter February
2003
"No one is big enough to be independent of others."
- William Worrall Mayo, Founder, Mayo Clinic
> Answers to Subscriber Questions
- Gain Credibility through Online Publicity
- FREE Conference Calling
- New Home Business Just Released
- Finding YOUR Niche Market
- 6 Steps to Easy Time Management
- How to Create a Mini Site Fast
- Making Money with Crafts
> Business of the Month
& Business Tool of the Month
> Advertising with HomeBusinessCenter.com
Online Publicity can help Your Business
Achieve Credibility
"If you're looking to enhance your marketing efforts, getting an article published about your company
essentially provides a third party endorsement to your products and services.
You don't need the luxury of a million-dollar ad budget to raise awareness of your business.
Instead, working with the print media can be a cost-effective way to get editorial publicity for articles
that incorporate information about your company.
In fact, with the rise of Internet use within the business community and the general public, reaching your
target audience is now faster and more convenient than ever."
- Courtesy ARA Content
In addition to having a company distribute your press release for you, you can have an expert write a
professional press release for you or an article about your business – Save yourself the work!
www.homebusinesscenter.com/freepress.html
FREE Conference Calling
For businesses, organizations and individuals
Use Web-scheduled conference call with automated invite-sender or use Reservation-less conference call
option anonymously – immediately!
Learn More
New Home Business Just Released!
Take what you’re already using and make money with it! This is a smart, low-risk, simple business
opportunity that is well-thought out.
One of the best start-ups I’ve seen in a LONG time!
click here
Finding YOUR Niche Market
Yes, targeting a niche market is important. Why?
Because it enables you to market to people who not only CAN buy your product – but are LIKELY to buy it.
Marketing to the right niche market can save you lots of time, money and frustration – and can mean the
difference between a successful business and a failure…
Read more
6 Steps to Easy Time Management
MindTools.com has put together a really good step-by-step outline on how to manage your time
efficiently.
First, you’ll learn how to figure out how much your time costs, how to decide your work priorities and how
to find out where you are losing time.
Then MindTools shows you how to put together action plans, priority lists and personalized goals so that the
important things get done, and time doesn’t get wasted.
Get Started Free Here
Create a Mini Site Fast
Exactly How To Profit From Mini Affiliate Sites.
courtesy of Phil Wiley
Here's a quick step by step guide to creating a mini affiliate site from scratch. You can do it in just a
couple of hours or less. Here's my diary from earlier today.
11.45am: Logged into Commission-Junction to find a replacement cell phone affiliate program for my cell
phone mini site.
I glanced at the new affiliate program listings and one jumped out as being a perfect subject for a quick
new mini site.
"Amazing Cure for Bad Breath".
Tons of people have bad breath. Great topic for a mini site. Or is it? Depends on what products there are to
sell, and how many potential online buyers there are.
11.47am: Followed the CJ link to http://www.orasweet.com/ which sells a new product called a tongue scraper,
and pays 30% commission. Dismayed to find the product only sells for $3.50, which means it only pays a little
over $1 per sale.
But then I followed the sales links to find the site does an upsell on the order form, which makes it much
more attractive for people to buy a $14 package or a $27 family package. This is more like it!
11.55am: But do many people look up bad breath in the search engines? Booted up Good Keywords
http://www.goodkeywords.com and discovered that last month 3659 people looked up halitosis on Overture and 5176
searched for bad breath. Not too bad a number. Should be able to do something with those figures.
12noon: Visited Overture to see what people are willing to pay for high rankings on these search terms. If
people are paying for ranking they must be making money from it. Discovered that 6 cents will get you 10th spot
in Overture for halitosis, and 40 cents a click will take you to number 1.
I wouldn't recommend paying 40c a click for a possible $1commission but 6 cents should be fine. It's hard to
tell until the site has been running a while and you can analyze the stats.
Bad breath will cost you 74 cents for top spot, so that's out, but bad breath cure will only cost 21 cents.
So that's a possibility, though 3rd spot is yours for only 6 cents so that's much more attractive.
12.10pm: Spend the next 30 mins checking out the opposition. Discover a site called tongue scrapers selling
a similar but far more expensive product. It has no affiliate program that I could see. But more importantly
found a number of other items to sell, or upsell from a mini site, including BreathAlert, an electronic
palm-size monitor that "detects and measures the presence of annoying or embarrassing breath odors."
Now I'm sure that lots of people who think they might have bad breath would love to be able to find out for
sure with this product.
About to kiss someone? Check your breath...though preferably not in view of the person you're about to kiss
;-) Walking into an important business meeting? Check that breath.
In 2 minutes I discovered 2 affiliate programs you can sell it through. One at www.themall.com was terrible
offering only 2 cents a click-though and no further commissions on sales. It also only pays you quarterly and
then only if you've generated over $50 at 2 cents a time. The other at iGadget www.igadget.com didn't look
great paying only 7% commission on a $37 sale.
But it has possibilities. Ran out of time to look further. But odds are there are some much better affiliate
programs around for this product.
While looking for an affiliate program for the BreathAlert I also found an Australian mini site selling both
this and the tongue scraper. They're probably missing out on a lot of Internet sales because the products are
priced in Australian dollars http://www.freshkiss.com.au/index.html , includes 10% Australian GST tax, and
there's no order form for people outside Australia.
12.40pm: Look up available domain names, and ideas for domain names by using Name Boy.
http://www.nameboy.com which lets you enter both bad breath and halitosis. Available names, at the time of
writing on 2nd Aug 2001) include:
breath-fresh.com
awful-breath.com
bad-breath-cure.com
bad-breaths.com
a search at www.betterwhois.com revealed these available names:
my-bad-breath.com
problembreath.com
betterkissing.com
Incidentally, the 2nd magazine article I ever got commissioned to write, back when I was 16, was about why
people kiss. Took a lot of hands on (mouths on?) research.
12.55pm: Quick search on Google reveals plenty of info about combating bad breath, and researching then
putting together enough content would be easy enough. There's also lots of info and some good graphics on the
Orasweet tongue scraper site.
1.10pm: Lack of time means I'm not going to build a mini site on this subject. But YOU can, which is why
I've written this article for you.
If you'd like to read a lot more about building mini sites, including much more detailed step-by-step help,
you want the Mini site Profits book. http://www.homebusinesscenter.com/minisiteprofits.html
Making Money with Crafts
Sample Business Plans for Crafts:
(including marketing and web strategy plans)
click here
Where to Sell Your Crafts for the Most Profit:
click here
How to Make More Money at Crafts Fairs:
click here
Craft Show listings by Region:
click here
Free Craft Marketing Newsletter:
click here
How to start your crafts business and how to price your products to sell, how to get grants:
click here
Craft Copyright Issues:
click here
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