advertising – Page 3 – TP Javeton WebNet

Present-day American dreams

Present-day American families have the same dreams shared by families a few decades ago; buy a home, provide for the health and welfare of their children, and send those children to college. But the price tag for fulfilling these dreams climbs higher and higher every day, making it much more difficult to achieve the same standard of living that families enjoyed in past decades.

It used to be that a husband went off to work in the morning and the wife stayed home doing household chores and taking care of the kids; but the days of one-income households are long gone and both parents must now go out to work – when they can find it.

However, as the old familiar adage suggests, “necessity is the mother of invention” and accordingly, many enterprising single moms & dads, and even husband & wife teams are finding ways to stay home, and still earn a living via opportunities that are springing up all over the country as a result of the tremendous growth of an industry that makes work at home possible.

The (HBB) industry has made it possible for anyone with some basic skills, a computer and Internet access to start a business at home. For example, an individual with a background in word processing can create his/her own in-home word processing business.

Getting started

Before you begin your however, it is important to do your research. Find out what kind of software program will be most suitable for the type of business you intend on doing. You will also want your computer system to be compatible with your clients and customers.

Next, look at the make-up of your industrial area. An arts community, or a thriving business area? By checking out the demographics of your area, you can make a decision regarding the type of advertising you want to use.

In the beginning, you will want to try all sorts of advertising. Neighborhood newspapers are an inexpensive way to advertise, but they usually only published on a weekly basis and that may not be enough to keep the clients rolling in. You can put your name on the bulletin board at your local supermarket and pass out flyers door-to-door in large office buildings or other business complexes.

Although it may be more expensive than neighborhood newspapers, you may want to run an ad in your local daily newspaper (in the business services section). Church bulletins and university newspapers that sell advertising may also be a relatively inexpensive way to go. You should also get your business cards printed up right away; and don’t let a client walk out the door without one or two business cards. Repeat business and word-of-mouth may well be your best advertising tool.

Whatever methods you choose to employ in your advertising, do yourself a favor and track the responses. Put a check list next to your telephone and whenever a call comes in (whether you get hired or not) ask the prospective client where s/he found out about you. It won’t take long for you to discover where your most cost-effective advertising comes from and when you know that, you can punch it up and drop the ones that aren’t doing anything for you.

Do your homework!

One telephone call will be the only opportunity you have to sell your service. If you hesitate when asked a price for a particular project, you will probably lose the job so do your homework. Call the competition and ask what they are charging. If the competition is out of your immediate geographic area (and you are therefore not a threat to their livelihood), you may want to be straight with them and tell them you are starting a in their field and ask for their input. You may be surprised to find them willing to help out with important information.

Keep in mind that there are myriad of tasks that need to be undertaken in order to establish the fundamental operations of your new home-based business. Whether you expect to get clients from the Internet or not, it is necessary to set up your business in a manner that will accommodate local clients/customers. So business letter heads, envelopes, forms, business cards, invoices and other paraphernalia will be necessary.

It will also become necessary to establish your pricing policies and have them available upon inquiry. Depending on your business, you could set a basic rate which can be a flat rate or a percentage.

For example…

…Using the business of word processing for a pricing example, a prospective client may call asking what you charge for 4 single-spaced pages. Your answer might be $45.00 per page straight text and then when the client comes, you discover that what s/he has is 4 pages of extremely complicated tables – definitely NOT STRAIGHT TEXT.

By not making firm pricing commitments over the phone, you will have the flexibility to charge a more accurate price when a client brings you something other than what you were expecting.

Elaborating further on the word processing example, to some clients a resume may be a single spaced page, but it takes a lot longer to type than a business letter and you will want to charge more for resumes. You will want to establish an hourly rate for tables, transcription and other more time-consuming jobs.

Always keep in mind that your pricing will change as you become more familiar with what your clients demand, and you may find yourself doing a lot of list maintenance and merge letters, or you may be doing work primarily for doctors, or attorneys; so you need to have a good basis for your pricing… but be flexible.

There are several models you can choose from, each one giving you the same flexibility to create your own USP (Unique Selling Proposition), as well as your own operational balance sheet. After all, the income & expense aspect of any business is usually an excellent indicator of that business’ prospects for success or failure; and truth be told, no business – new or old – start out with failure as an aspirational milestone. Therefore, it is success to which they aspire and choosing the type of home-based business to launch could make all the difference.

Choice of business types

The two business types that came to mind – based on my own – experiences are: Promotion and Distribution. You can choose to be a promoter or a distributor in addition to all the other choices that are available; but I have provided a glimpse of each vocation with the help of two other publishers whose knowledge of the topics is unquestioned.

According to a What is Promotion? article published to the Slide Player website, “Promotion is any form of communication a business or organization uses to inform, persuade, or remind people about its products and improve its public image. Product Promotion: 1) Explains the major features and benefits of its products (especially in relation to competitors), 2) tells where the products are sold, 3) advertises sales on those products, 4) answers customer questions, and 5) introduces new products…”

…And Distribution is described in the following manner: After a product is fully developed and offered at a competitive price, it must be delivered to an identified target audience. The place element of the marketing mix is where product production and distribution channels are decided and planned. The decisions made in this step directly affect the types of communication that are used to tell the target audience about a product.” This description is provided in the article, What Is the Difference Between Place & Promotion in the Marketing Mix? Written by Tim Burris for the Chron website. And there are so many more!

Customers generated from traffic

Establishing your own E-commerce site is not like what it used to be. There are thousands of competitive sites doing everything possible to get a bigger share of the profit pie. So every scheme, method and technique you can find to augment your sales must be utilized in order to derive any benefit or achieve what can reasonably be considered success.

We obviously have to admit to ourselves that most of us are in it for the money, otherwise why would we go about wasting our time, effort and money just for the fun of it. Of course we also must understand that while some of us take a measured approach, many others would not wait very long to see their profits. They would never take things lightly or take the measured approach because they are bent on grabbing an ever bigger portion of the profit pie.

So what is this commodity that gives any one business a competitive edge over another? Customers! It is common knowledge that without customers we have no business, because without customers to buy our product or service we can’t get sales which is ultimately the fuel that powers the engine of your business, mine and any other.

In Internet terms, large numbers of customers are generally referred to as traffic which represents all the people that get a chance to see what you have to offer, and it is therefore reasonable to conclude that the more people who see your products/services, the more people might decide to buy them.

Seldom does anybody put up an E-commerce without expecting to make a profit, especially when there is startup capital that needs to be recovered. With a consistent traffic flow, we may at least have a fighting chance to achieve that profitability, and monetizing your traffic would optimize your chances of making the best out of it.

Making money out of your traffic

The best and most proven method of making a profit out of your traffic is using advertising. The Internet generates hundreds of thousands upon hundreds of thousands of traffic streams everyday and most of them are searching for something. While some are just looking for information there is also a good percentage that is shopping for something that they need.

The Internet has proven to be a very reliable source of finding what was once deemed to be a very unsearchable products and in this respect, the internet has made the world a smaller place; you can advertise a product from the depths of Istanbul and still find a buyer from the center of Philadelphia or Beijing.

Generating traffic is not an easy task though. You have to contend with a great number of sites to generate a reasonably satisfactory traffic flow; but if done correctly this could open up a Pandora’s Box of possibilities with one of the benefits derived is the monetization of your traffic flow.

So, to get to the core of it the more traffic you generate the more likely you are considered a desirable, desirable, in a sense that a good traffic flowing site is easily convertible to profit. Basically traffic equals profit. Advertising is the name of the game; with a good advertising scheme you can use your traffic flow to your advantage.

When you have above average traffic you’ll most likely have an above average potential to grab what can be considered a respectable share of customers that are willing to pour money into your coffers. Other than those who will buy from you directly, there are also those that can be redirected to sponsored links that are willing to pay you for a sizable portion of the traffic that you have generated.

This scheme is called “pay-per-click”. With every click a visitor of your site makes on an advertised link you will be paid. The more traffic you generate and the more clicks that occurs would result in more profits.

Traffic from affiliate programs

Another method of monetizing your traffic is the utilization of affiliate programs. You can link up with other tried and tested sites and online companies and monetize your traffic by having a percentage of sales generated by traffic coming from your site. The basic idea is, traffic generated from your site will go to another site which can offer a product or service that you do not carry. Many programs can keep track and make records of transactions that was made possible because of this site linkage.

When purchases are made by customers that sent by your site to their site you get a percentage of that sale. Affiliate programs would give you the benefit of monetizing your traffic without the actual need to carry or promote a certain product.

There are so many ways and methods to monetize your traffic with the only requirement being a bit of hard work and the desire to successfully launch a profit-generating site. The Internet is a veritable source of information, tips and guides which are offered everywhere on how to monetize your traffic and make your site a good profit producer. Ultimately a traffic-generating site is a profit-producing site.