Call In A Pro To Help Market Your Site

Writen by Craig Dawber

A number of subscription website owners feel they can handle all aspects of their website business themselves from writing content to developing the site to marketing the website and managing the site as well.

There may be a few of the owners who may be able to handle all the functions themselves, but in actual practice we should let the experts handle their individual tasks like a designer should be hired to design the site and a marketing professional to market your site, to achieve the best results.

Whether it is a small business or a big business house, the keyword for help here is professional- a person who has in depth knowledge of the topic under consideration. An internet marketing professional for example will be able to help you make a marketing plan suited to your budget and requirement. This will include a detailed sales and promotion plan for your website for a given period. The kind of Marketing professionals you hire will depend on your budget and size of operations. There are small teams of marketing professionals who specially cater to small businesses and their requirements. You can run a marketing campaign for a few hundred pounds to thousands of pounds, depending totally on your budget and requirement.

Why hire a professional to handle a specific task of business operations?

There is enough literature available to set up your own marketing operations, especially for your own subscription website. Many business people opt for services of a paid professional, because of the following reasons:

· They may have tried their hand at marketing their site, but realize that their efforts are not producing the desired results
· They may lack the expertise to handle all the aspects of internet marketing
· They may feel that handling the marketing operations for their own business, they may not be totally objective in their decisions.
· They may not be able to devote the required time to the marketing operations.

Services offered by professional marketers

The marketing professionals can take care of the entire marketing operations for your business, or may offer help in certain specialized areas. Various functions of marketing that a professional can take care of are:

· Write and edit the content for your website
· Write the content for your newsletters and other press releases
· Write articles and other information content for your subscription website
· Improve your websites search engine rankings by making the content keyword rich
· Increase exposure for your website by entering into profitable link exchange and affiliate programs with other related sites

How to find a professional marketer?

You can locate the type of marketing professional you are looking for by searching on the net for example a search on google.com for a marketing /PR/advertising consultant will reveal hundreds of results and deciding on one from these hundreds can be time consuming. Look for smaller companies or professionals in these results and short list a few of them. One other good way of finding the marketing person for your site is by asking other site owners about their marketing person. You can decide on the marketing professional for your business based on the following criteria

· what all services do they offer
· List of their clients
· Testimonials
· How much consultation can they give and satisfy you
· analyze the would be consultant's site and its content

The above points will give you a fair idea about what kind of a personality does the consultant have and will you be able to work with him

This article was written by Craig Dawber of smarket-associates.com Need advice and guidance with your online business check out the resources found in this website.

Why Offline Advertising Is So Important For Websites

Writen by Lois S.

It is important that anybody with a significant online presence understands why offline ads are so important and more so why they are usually much more effective than online advertisements. This is very useful knowledge that will no doubt impact dramatically on the success and profitability of any online enterprise. More so when numerous businesses have lost significant amounts trying to advertise online and have ended up with virtually nothing to show for their efforts. Even the much-talked about pay-per-click ads have been hit by increasing click fraud in recent times. This is where software is created to continuously click at ads with the motive of landing the advertiser with a huge ad bill and no business. Other times the software has been used to profit webmasters who post the pay-per-click ads as affiliates and earn a percentage of the cash paid by the client for every single click that happens on their site.

Actually the very nature of the World Wide Web has a lot to do with it not being suitable for traditional advertising. For starters, contrary to what most people think, the net is not an advanced Television. It is very different from the Television in that it is an interactive medium. It is actually an advancement on the Telephone. This means that the person surfing the web chooses where they want to go, just the way you choose which calls you want to make to get information and which calls you want to receive. This is the reason why, while many people may be tolerant of advertisements coming to them on Television, they will usually get extremely upset with unsolicited ads coming to them through the internet. Whether it is pop-up ads that interfere with their surfing experience or unsolicited mail in their email inbox, the reaction is often the same.

As clear proof of this, software that blocks pop-up advertisements and unsolicited mail has been very popular online. Not only that, laws making spamming a criminal offence have been passed. Effective online advertising methods and tools are very different from those practiced offline and much more difficult to master. Especially for a new business. This is why offline ads play such a critical role for sites and other online businesses. Radio for example has proved to be very effective in promoting websites as will be proved form the high number of online jingles and advertisements on radio these days.

Newspapers and magazines are also very effective. Even the traditional small business classified ads have often proved to be very effective in pulling massive traffic to a site. So if you are not doing too well and you have never tried offline ads, you should get to them pronto because they have the potential of making a huge difference in your online business.

About the author: Lois S. is a Technical Executive Writer for Website Source, Inc. http://www.websitesource.com. Her established writing skills coupled with experience in the website hosting industry have provided internet professionals with marketing, product and service ideas for many years.

Success At Selling Crafts Online

Writen by Kate Shoemaker

So you've made this great website, your getting a lot of visitors but no sales and your wondering what gives?

First you need to make sure your website shopping cart is working properly so test it thoroughly!If your not using a shopping cart and are only accepting orders offline you have no business selling online at all!You must have a shopping cart so people can buy from you online. It is also important to have a professional looking website, if you are using a free web host>>leave now! and go get yourself a professional website. http://www.lillyscraftmall.com Offers very affordable hosting , they have a storebuilder system you can use and when your store is done you get free advertising in their craft mall all for less than $10 bucks a month!They have some very talented ladies, I buy from there a lot.

Second you need to look over your product pictures and ask yourself: Are they high quality pictures? Would you buy your own item? Do they show enough detail? This is the only thing the customer has to go on when they are deciding to buy or not so it better be a high quality picture!

If your pictures are not the problem then maybe it is your items?

Perhaps your selling an item that sold very well 5 years ago? It might be time to make some changes to your inventory. I suggest doing some research online , you can start at: www.ebay.com Do a few searches in their handcrafted items category. What sells well at shows is not necessarily what sells well online.

For example if you sell handbags do a search for handbags within that category and see what items have bids on them. Only look for items with bids.You can also do an advance search to see what has sold in the last month in your category.

I am not suggesting you steal someone's design at all but maybe you can craft something similar? The idea is to keep up on current craft trends, if your constantly adding new products to your craft store the visitors will keep coming back to see what you have!

The majority of people looking for handmade items are NOT looking on ebay they are using search engines, however ebay's audience is very diverse and it can give you an idea of what the current crafting trends are.

With handcrafted items people want something Unique not something they can get at Walmart for half the price.Pay very close attention to custom orders they are a wonderful way to generate new ideas for your product line.

Keep your monthly website cost down ( Under $15) and it will enable you to stay in business longer or until you find your nitche! It's not going to happen overnight but if you keep at it and stay on top of your products things will eventually pick up!

I Wish you much success!!

http://www.look-up-anything.com