The secret to starting your first business online and being successful at it is to have a clear purpose for what your business will be about. You should also have a definite plan for your business.

You should start by writing down what your business is about, who your customers are, and what you will sell.

Also, you’ll need to set up a separate bank account, as well as buy a business license if your city requires one.

Once you’ve taken those preliminary steps, then it’s time to dive into the task of setting up your business online.

Start with a website. Although many people dread this step, it’s one of the most crucial to your success. Having a website will allow you to build your list of prospects, as well as sell your products and services.

It doesn’t have to be anything complicated either. It can be something as simple as a lead capture page or you can use a content management system to build a content rich site.

Regardless of what type of site you choose, you want to get it set up as soon as possible so you can start promoting it.

Next, you’ll need to consider your marketing plan. Creating an effective marketing plan really isn’t as difficult as it sounds.

You have lots of options to choose from:

*Search engine optimization
*Linking
*Article Writing
*Press releases
*Blogging
*Joint Ventures
*Affiliate Programs
*Free Classifieds
*Social Networking
*Forums

There are many others, and how you market your business is only limited by your imagination.

When choosing how to market your business, you have several things to consider.

First, what do you like to do? If you hate to write, then you’ll have a difficult time coming up with a good article even if you can write. If you’ve never written a press release before, it can seem pretty daunting, but you can still do it. You will simply need to do a little homework first.

Now, once you’ve chosen the type of marketing you want to do, you need to choose the sites where you will market. You’ll need to do a little research.

Go to your favorite search engine and do a search for the type of marketing you want to do. If it’s free classifieds, then you’ll look for free classifieds ad sites. Don’t overlook sites on your topic because these sites will actually be more targeted to your market than general sites, for example, article directories.

Select about five sites and then study those sites. Again, if you’re doing free classifieds, you’ll want to look at as many ads as you can. Study those ads. Which ads made you want to take a look at the actual offer? That’s how you want to write your ads. The same applies to any other promotional material: articles, press releases, etc.

Once you’ve completed this task, write your sales materials and start posting. Then go and find five more sites. Test and track your promotions to see which ones get results.

By following these steps, you’re now well on your way to starting a successful business.

Want more tips on how to start an internet business? Then check out my free course, "How to REALLY Start Your Business in 30 Days". Grab your free ebook on affiliate marketing and make money in 7 days or less.

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Office Hours: Tips for promoting your business through social networks

I’ll be honest with you; no matter how many times I get asked to do it, I’m always flattered when someone asks me for an interview. It’s exciting, and it’s so much fun to talk to others about internet marketing.

So, you can imagine my surprise one day when I have a voice mail message on my phone from Microsoft. Since I hadn’t called and asked for any kind of tech support, I was rather surprised and very curious.

I called back, and Monte Enbysk, a senior editor at Microsoft Office Live, answered the phone. He wanted an interview.

The rest is history. You can read it over at Microsoft, and I hope you find it to be helpful.

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Free giveaways aren’t just a way for you to promote your business. They’re also a great way to add additional streams of income to your business.

Here’s why:

Free giveaways usually offer some type of one time offer or additional products. When someone buys through your link, you get paid. Because these sites also offer an affiliate program, you have an opportunity to add an upsell to your business.

When you join a free giveaway, it gives you additional products to promote, as well as a way to build your list. You don’t have the hassles of a joint venture because free giveaways are a lot easier to promote.

Now, if you really want to make more money using free giveaways in your business, there are several ways you can do this:

1. Join as many free giveaways as you can. The more giveaways you join, the more opportunities you have to expose others to your products and/or services. Although it can be time consuming joining all of these giveaways, it’s worth it because it allows you to grow your business much quicker because of the exposure.

2. Promote your giveaways as much as possible. You don’t have to have a list in order to promote giveaways. In fact, one of the reasons for joining free giveaways is to build your list, and it’s a very fast way to do it.

There are plenty of easy ways for you to promote the free giveaways you join too. This includes Bum Marketing, free classifieds, Squidoo, forums, posting the information on your blog for your readers, social marketing and others. It doesn’t have to cost you anything to promote; you just need to take some time to really get the word out.

There’s an added benefit here with doing lots of promotion on free giveaways because the more you promote, and the more members you get the higher your gift will be in listings. Most people only go through the first two to three pages of a giveaway, so if your gift is listed on the back pages, it’s less likely to be seen.

3. Offer an upsell on your confirmation page. An upsell is a product you offer that costs a little bit more than what you are selling the original product for. With free giveaways, you normally offer a special offer where you might offer one of your products at a lower price. If you don’t own any products, you can always create a package from PLR or buy resales rights to products and create your own unique package.

Whatever you choose to do, just remember that free giveaways are another way to add additional streams of income while adding value for your site visitors.

Want more tips on how to market your business on the internet for free? Then grab my free ebook, "Internet Marketing for Free: The GUIDE." You can also see the latest free giveaways at my site.

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Whether you’re brand new to internet marketing, or you’re simply looking for a way to jumpstart your profits, free giveaways might just be the answer.

A free giveaway is where you offer a gift of some kind for signing up for your list. Your gift can be anything from an ebook or report you’ve written to a free subscription to your membership site.

Regardless of what kind of gift you offer, there are certain things you should keep in mind:

1. If you are offering a premium you didn’t create, make sure that you can use this product in the giveaway. Although there are many products you can get resale rights to, it’s important to make sure you read the terms of service first. Some product owners don’t allow their products to be given away.

2. If you do decide to use some type of resale rights product, make sure that your offering is unique. You can do this by adding additional gifts to the offer, or you can even write some type of report to add to the package. Just make sure you’re not giving away the same thing someone else is. Otherwise you won’t get very many new subscribers.

3. If you do decide to give away some type of product you’ve created, do your homework first. In other words, do your research. You don’t want to offer a giveaway gift that isn’t related to the giveaway, or it’s something no one would want. You can visit forums, Ebay, or the search engines to get ideas.

4. Once you’ve created your gift, get it submitted as soon as possible. Since there may be some type of waiting period before your gift is approved, you want to get it submitted as soon as possible.

5. As soon a you join a new giveaway, you should start promoting it. Although many will offer you prewritten emails for your lists, you should rewrite these, or write your own. If you don’t have a list, you can always use other promotion techniques like free classifieds, Squidoo lenses, article writing, or some other technique you feel comfortable with.

Many giveaway site owners will delete your gift if you don’t promote, so make sure you promote the giveaway and not just your gift.

Giveaways can help you jumpstart your business, and your profits, without the hassles of joint ventures. If you’re looking for additional revenue streams and new customers, free giveaways might just be the answer.

Want more tips on how to market your business on the internet for free? Then grab my free ebook, "Internet Marketing for Free: The GUIDE." You can also see the latest free giveaways at my site.

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Whether you’re new to internet marketing or not, Squidoo really is one of the easiest ways to market your business online, build traffic to your site, and you can even make money.

For those that don’t know what Squidoo is, it’s the brain child of Seth Godin one of the top marketers online. A Squidoo lens is a page on the Squidoo site that is on a specific topic.

A lens can contain articles, reviews, RSS feeds, links, and all kinds of other resources on a specific topic. Lenses also tend to rank really high in the search engines making it an easy way to get your site seen without your site having high search engine rankings.

The best part is that this site is friendly to affiliate programs, so if you’re a bum marketer, or you don’t have a site of your own, this is an easy way to build one. There are, in fact, quite a few lensmasters who make a fulltime living with their Squidoo lenses, and if you choose to, you can too.

Although there are many ways to market your Squidoo lenses, here are five tips that will help you quickly promote your lenses and get high rankings:

1. Carefully choose your keywords.

You want to make sure that the keywords you use are keywords that people are actually searching for. You also want to make sure that the keywords aren’t too broad. Long tail keywords, keyword phrases at  least three to four words long, will help you drive more targeted traffic to your lens.

Test your keywords to see which ones are getting you traffic. Look for more keywords that may be related to your lens and add those.

2. Bookmark your lenses.

This is one of the easiest ways to get new traffic to your lenses and announce them. You can use services like Digg, as well as Only Wire.

Not only will this give your lenses some good, high ranking backlinks, but it will also help your lenses get indexed faster.

3. Link your lenses to other lenses.

You want to make sure that the lenses you create in your account are simliar in topic. You can easily link these lenses together. This is another form of linking for your lenses, but it’s called internal linking. This will also help you raise your rankings in the search engines.

4. Visit other lenses.

You can share your lenses on Squidoo by visiting other lenses. You want to look for lenses that are related to yours and have a guestbook. You can post comments on these guestbooks and leave a link to your site. You also want to vote on other lenses. This will help get other lens masters to your lens.

5. Join groups.

There are thousands of groups on Squidoo you can join and showcase your lenses. You can do a search through the groups to find groups related to your lenses and add your lenses to these groups. This is also an opportunity for you to see what others are doing with their lenses so you can improve yours, get more traffic, and make more sales.

Squidoo also has plenty of resources to help you get more traffic to your lenses, including Squidoo U, a forum, and tips on showing off your lenses.

Want more tips on how to make more money from Squidoo? Then read Squidoo Profits. Get my free Squidoo ecourse and learn how easy it to make money on Squidoo.

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