Home Business Center Newsletter October
2009
"If you love your job, you haven't worked a day in your
life."
- Tommy Lasorda
- Increase Traffic with Free Twitter Directories
- Salon Business Plan Samples & Templates
- Musicians: How to Sell Your Music Online
- Make Extra Cash with Website Ads
- Social Media Link-Building Advice
- Home Business of the Month: Start Your Own Blog
Start Your Own Online Store 1-2-3
Increase Traffic with Free Twitter Directories
Twitter is quickly becoming an effective way to promote your business and find new customers online.
However, simply signing up and "tweeting" all the time won't do the trick.
One quick and easy tip to growing your Twitter followers is to register with online "Twitter directories". I
just read about this strategy today and tried it myself. It's pretty painless and doesn't take much time. It's
a good way to get the word out there and help people find you who share similar interests with you, or even a
similar location. Here are some popular directories below you can register with for free:
Salon Business Plan Samples & Templates
Any sort of beauty salon - whether it
be for nails, hair, spa treatments, etc - is a great business to start because of the potential for
consistent monthly income from repeat clients.
Of course many future salon owners have questions about getting started. "How do I start a salon?", "How
much will it cost?", "What salon equipment do I need?", and most importantly, "How do I find customers?" Most
successful salon owners will tell you that they started with a plan, especially ones that needed to obtain
financing to pay for their equipment, furniture or lease for a storefront.
If you haven't written a business plan before, it can seem overwhelming. How do you even get started - and
how do you know that you're doing it right? That's what's so nice about business plan templates for beauty salons. You've got a form you can follow...
Musicians: How to
Sell Your Music Online
If you are a musician and want to promote your music products online, how do you do it?
ReverbNation and Audiolife have created what many artists think is the "Ultimate E-commerce Platform" for
professionals in the music business. It's called ReverbStore, and it's already a popular marketing tool for
over 450,000 musicians.
Using ReverbStore, artists can design their own physical and digital products online (like CDs, ring tones
and music downloads, and then sell them through the website. What's even better is that products can be offered
without the requirement of producing tons of inventory - they are produced on-demand, and dropshipped directly
to the customer when purchased.
Read more about this, and other online music business opportunities
Make Extra Cash with Website Ads
If you have a content-focused website or blog and are looking for an easy way to increase your income
without selling anything, here's a great idea.
You can offer advertising space on your website for other companies to advertise their stuff - and they
pay you to use your website space. The great part is that you can work through third parties who set up the
advertising system, so you don't have to find advertisers, set up a complicated payment system or design ads.
The third party does the work for you, you simply place a little code on your website.
Google uses
this strategy with their Adsense program. You've probably heard of it. You can also work with companies
like BidVertiser, who attracts advertisers
wanting to advertise on multiple sites, rather than one search engine. Chitika is another "third party" you can use to place ads
you your site. Their ads tend to have nice graphics and I think integrate well into sites where visitors
are interested in buying products.
Each of these search-targeted advertising companies offer different benefits, and your website visitors may
respond better to one than another, so testing them out may be the best way to find out which program is the
best income-earner for you.
Social Media Link-Building Advice
Home Business of the Month:
Start Your Own Blog
Blogs are a great way to connect and communicate with customers, answer questions, provide solutions and
promote your business. But you don't want to be boring.
The most successful blogs are like people -
they're real, unique, interesting and have emotion. When you write your blog, let your real self show
through. Personalize your entries and make them unique. More readers will be able to relate and continue
to read - and even add comments to "take part in the conversation". And this will make your blog even more
interesting, attracting more readers.
If you are using a blog to help promote your business, include valuable information about your industry, not
just your company. Also discuss competitors, opinions, topics not included in company ads or press
releases.
Add eye-catching graphics such as photos, charts and videos that enhance the reader's experience. If done
right, using graphics can professionalize your blog, back up a point you make, and even establish you as an
authority figure in the industry.
You can also use social bookmarking tools, such as Stumbleupon or Digg to attract visitors to your blog
and and get it ranked in search engines. Add audio and video to blogs with Hipcast
Article: Blogging for Business and tools you can use to start your own blog.
Thanks for being a subscriber!
NOTE: Our subscriber names are not made available to anyone else. We respect your privacy and value you as a
subscriber. We like hearing your ideas and suggestions. | Need Sales? Newsletter Advertising
