The best affiliates for your blog.
A lot of people ask me to suggest affiliates. They want to know which ones are the most effective at monetising their blog. I suppose it would be safe to say that I have done a hell of a lot of research on this subject as bad choices can make the difference between a profitable blogging business and bad choices can mean no business at all.
It is a difficult one because it all depends on your target audience.
Of-course there are some great generic ones like Chitika which is an online advertising network which works a little like Adsense. For me Chitika far surpasses Adsense because not only can you earn with click throughs you can also earn a residual income for 15 months on your referrals earnings. Read the rest of this post »
February 14, 2010
Tags: blog, Guest Blogs, internet, marketing, pat sutton, selling, website Posted in: how to guides, marketing, sales 
One Comment
How To Plan The Perfect Website!
According to Wikipedia – The Internet actually started in 1969, (yes, only 1969!), as the ARPANET, a Defense Department system designed to let survivors share files after a nuclear attack. From being available on just a handful of top secret computers, itās grown to millions and millions of users.
And itās still growing. According to a recent survey, the volume of Internet traffic is expected to double annually over the next five years. Consumers are expected to account for 70 percent of all Internet traffic over that period with the rest of the market made up of business users.
What does that mean for you?
It means customersāmillions of them.
No other business tool can put the products you sell in front of so many people so easily. Nothing even comes close. Read the rest of this post »
About the Author: Pat Sutton is a Digital Marketing Specialist. The founder of http://www.TheBusinessWoman.co.uk and http://www.PatSutton.com Don't forget to sign up for her blogging and marketing tips and to receive Pat's FREE E-Book The Blogger's Bible!
February 9, 2010
Tags: account, internet, marketing, networking, pat sutton, selling, website Posted in: business, how to guides, marketing, sales 6 Comments
Don’t get out! Don’t talk to people! Stay in your comfort zone!
If these words are music to your ears then join the club. There’s nothing I would like better than to be able to potter around in the office, produce new products and then wait until the business comes in as if by magic!
So why shouldn’t it work like that?
Hey, I’ve got a great website! My products are great! I am a nice person with integrity!
Not enough guys! You can have the best products in the world but if no-one knows about them then you may as well forget it!
So how do you find this elusive yellow brick road?
Get out! Talk to people! Don’t stay in your comfort zone! Read the rest of this post »
About the Author: Pat Sutton is a Digital Marketing Specialist. The founder of http://www.TheBusinessWoman.co.uk and http://www.PatSutton.com Don't forget to sign up for her blogging and marketing tips and to receive Pat's FREE E-Book The Blogger's Bible!
February 8, 2010
Tags: communication, marketing, networking, patsutton, personal development, relationships, verbal business card Posted in: business, marketing, personal development, tips 75 Comments
Has your business suffered due to the credit crunch?
It’s not often that I blatently promote something but for once our government has made the right decision to help ailing businesses in the West Midlands in The UK. It is a fact that the West Midlands has suffered more than any other area in the UK and at last this is being addressed. So I am un-ashamedly championing this directive, namely, The Business Recovery Service.
If you are a business in the West Midlands, UK, and you are struggling, The Business Recovery Service will provide a FREE responsive, targeted service to West Midlands small to medium enterprises that can demonstrate they are āat riskā due to the current economic climate.
This dedicated service will ensure that businesses have a strategic business recovery action plan that will initially stabilise the business and stem its losses to ensure its survival. The business can then be introduced back into the mainstream business support.
What does this free programme deliver? Read the rest of this post »
About the Author: Pat Sutton is a Digital Marketing Specialist. The founder of http://www.TheBusinessWoman.co.uk and http://www.PatSutton.com Don't forget to sign up for her blogging and marketing tips and to receive Pat's FREE E-Book The Blogger's Bible!
February 4, 2010
Tags: communication, marketing, pat sutton, website Posted in: business, sales 2 Comments
The IPad – I want one.
I change my mobile every 6 or 7 months for no other reason than I fancy a change.
I buy something then use it for a little while then, when the novelty wears off, I sell it on Ebay.
If you were to look at my Ebay profile you would see that I actually admit to being a gadget freak.
I have been hankering for an e-book reader and have been doing some extensive research on them but I am so glad that I haven’t succumbed as I have fallen in love with the idea of having the new Apple IPad.
I have got to say that it’s one of my failings, I fall in love with the idea of having something but once I have it in my sticky hands there is always an anti-climax. I think the fun is in the chase and the more difficult it is to get the more excitement for me.
The one thing I hate doing is waiting, if I want something I want it now! I want the IPad, the one with all the bells and whistles but shock horror, I will have to wait until at least April 2010 for it – oh the pain!
Well according to the Apple website, it is going to beat netbooks and e-readers hands down….oooh can’t wait!
So watch this space for my honest review when I get it in my mits!
January 31, 2010
Tags: Apple, communication, internet, IPad, pat sutton Posted in: New Products, marketing 43 Comments
Don’t wait for Business Opportunities to knock – you’ll wait forever!
If you’re sitting at home on the sofa watching Law and Order and you hear a rat-a-tat-tat on your door! Don’t get excited, it’s not a business opportunity knocking!
If you’re comfy in front of your computer chatting to someone on Facebook then your attention is in the wrong direction to notice a fleeting business opportunity flying by.
I know it’s a clichĆ©, but you need to get out of your comfort zone and rattle some cages!
Here are my five tips for opportunity ambushing.
1. Join referral networking clubs – people buy from people so you need to get out there and talk about yourself and your business. Be prepared to refer members and they will in return refer you, that’s how these clubs work. There’s only one downfall to these type of clubs – they are usually at an ungodly hour of the morning so make sure you make the most of them – not my best time!
2. Join LinkedIn groups – for instance, if you’re a widget training business, it’s pointless joining a group of widget trainers, unless it’s to get a few pointers. You need to look for groups of people who are likely to want your service. Interact with the right people, listen to their story, answer their questions and comment on their articles. Get known and seen! An opportunity will come out of it, I promise.
3. Give something away for free. Something that will show your potential customer just how good you are. They may not buy from you straight away but they will remember you when they are in need of a service such as yours.
4. Send “snail mail” – a postcard to a business up your street is a very inexpensive way of marketing but it can be effective. I use Vistaprint for the cheapest postcards and business cards.
You see, regardless of the long arm of the World Wide Web, many of us still like to work with people from our own local area. Let’s say you are looking for some widget training. You’ve found two companies that can do it for Ā£250 a day. One is located the other side of the country and the other is just around the corner, which would you choose?
Keep a record of your mailing list and what has gone to them because once is never enough, you need to get in front of them as many times as you can so they will think of you when the time comes. If you’re worried that you’re wasting your time and money then give them a call and politely ask them if they would like to continue to receive correspondence from you – you never know, it could spark up a relationship at least!
5. Join small online social networks – I’m not talking about drowning in the Facebook pool. I’m talking about small free networks like my women’s peer network where you can get to know people and join their groups and actually interact. You can make connections and even learn something new.
Just one health warning – An opportunity that may well come knocking is the sheep in wolf’s clothing with a, never to be missed, get rich quick scheme. If it sounds too good to be true, then it usually is!
About the Author: Pat Sutton is a Digital Marketing Specialist. The founder of http://www.TheBusinessWoman.co.uk and http://www.PatSutton.com Don't forget to sign up for her blogging and marketing tips and to receive Pat's FREE E-Book The Blogger's Bible!
January 30, 2010
Tags: account, communication, marketing, pat sutton, website Posted in: business, marketing, sales, tips 5 Comments
Don’t sack the receptionist – give her more work!
It’s so frustrating when you arrive at an office reception only to find that there’s no receptionist! There you stand, waiting for someone to notice you.
The staff manage to beaver away while at the same time giving you glances but, infuriatingly, not making any effort to come to your rescue?
You think, should I wait, should I talk, should I….
The problem is that when a company has a belt tightening period, then the receptionist is usually the one person that bites the dust, leaving a void in the reception area and some poor employee out of work and me, the poor visitor, left to her own devises.
I can understand the reason – maybe she spent a lot of time filing her nails or chatting on her mobile – but who’s fault is that? She should have been kept busy with a crucial occupation that most small companies ignore.
She could have been the companies “Social Media Whizz Kid”!
Now don’t get me wrong, I am not saying that you would encourage her to chat on Facebook all day, I’m talking about structured marketing using Facebook, Twitter, Plaxo, LinkedIn and all the other important social networks.
What many companies don’t know is that if an employee is using a company e-mail then you have every right, as their employer, to monitor their e-mails. This is the first thing you should make clear to your new receptionist stroke online marketing manager.
She would be given targets to meet and results to report on, in fact she would be kept extremely busy.
There’s three things you would need to have in place in order to ensure you really do benefit from her activities, in other words to make sure she is actually marketing your business not chatting and making dates with her new found friends.
1) A weekly feedback report.
This would be to check such things as, how many followers you have gained on Twitter and how many “fans” on Facebook and contacts on LinkedIn, Ecademy and Plaxo etc.
2) Someone to write good copy.
Find your cleverest writer, (you could hold a competition!), and get them to write a couple of blog posts a week. The posts should contain all the right key words for the search engines and, ideally, should come out of your website but if you don’t have a blog on your website then you can start a blog easily using blogger, or blog spot, there are many others! (A little bit of training for your blogger wouldn’t go amiss either!)
3) A good trainer.
It doesn’t matter how much your staff think they know about Facebook etc, they will undoubtedly, not know about the right way to leverage this new media to market your business.
The beauty of teaching a member of staff Internet Marketing is that you will be in complete control; your staff member will be gaining some great skills and you will save a lot of money down the line – money that you would have had to pay to a marketing company to do it for you.
Give a man a fish and he eats for a day teach him to fish…………
Pat Sutton – Professional Blogger and Marketing Director at Niche Media Marketing
One to one training, workshops and seminars on Social Media Marketing.
Pat Sutton – Forbes Listed as the 30 women entrepreneurs to follow on Twitter!
January 22, 2010
Tags: blog, communication, internet, marketing, twitter, website Posted in: business, marketing, tips, writing 2 Comments
A good way to beat writer’s block!
One of my favourite bloggers at the moment is James Chartrand. Here is one of his wonderful tips for when we’re suffering from blogger’s block.
“Great quotations are the richest goldmine of blog post ideas you’ll ever have.”
So I popped over to Wikiquote and found this great quotation by Sarah Bernhardt -Ā “Life engenders life. Energy creates energy. It is by spending oneself that one becomes rich.”
This is what I have been prattling on about for months. Give, give, give and eventually you will receive. Take a look at my blog, “Selling to the taxi driver” and you’ll see what I mean.
Here’s another:
“Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing.” Helen Keller
I love this one, how many of you have the courage to really take a chance – to give up that job you hate or walk away from an employer who infuriates you? How may of you would love to be your own boss but have no idea how to do it?
I did it, I gave up a full time job to become an internet entrepreneur and I have never looked back. My choice of businesses fitted my values and beliefs, I chose to build a Blog site, this one, and to join a company called LifePathUnlimited.
It is important that you choose the right one for you and also the right mentor to help you on your way. If you want help with your life decisions please do contact me.
If you see yourself as an author and are interested in a monetised blog site then don’t forget to check out the fabulous Darren Rowse’s Blogger’s Workbook, it is what set me off on the right track.
“Just remember that even a long life is not long enough and an opportunity missed is not something lost but something never achieved.”
And that’s one of mine!
Pat Sutton – Blog Author at http://www.patsutton.com
January 18, 2010
Tags: blog, communication, internet, marketing, pat sutton, relationships, taxi, website Posted in: Blogging, marketing, personal development, writing 2 Comments
So why should you have an official blog?
Did you know that blogging is the new “BLACK”?
A blog can be uploaded to networking sites to spread the word about your business – that’s free advertising!
A blog gives you the chance to voice your opinions to the world.
A good blog can generate subscribers and we all know how important they are!
A blog with the right keywords will help the search engines to find you.
An informative blog can give you kudos…you could be seen as an expert in your field.
A blog can create an income from affiliate advertising and adsense.
So what are the 8 things you should have on your official blog site.
1. A subscriber’s sign up box. This will enable visitors to subscribe to the RSS feed of your posts.
2. A newsletter subscription box. Once they have agreed to receive your mailings then you can safely market to them by e-mail – it is always better to add a few subtle links to your products or services in a newsletter than to bamboozle them with adverts.
3. A comment box. When people comment on your blogs you are capturing their details.
4. The Opportunity to buy something. Of-course it is great when your visitors spend money on your website but you will need a lot of visitors to make any real profits from it but it is possible. The magic word is traffic!
5. Adsense – I have a lot of visitors and do make a few bob from Adsense but again you need a lot of traffic to make any real money.
6. Adverts – a busy website is more likely to attract advertisers so concentrate on getting your visitors up before you approach any advertisers.
7. Bookmarking buttons to places like Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. Everytime you write a new post hit those networking buttons and send your work around the web. I am a member of 50 groups with LinkedIn alone, my posts go out to all of them on a daily basis. Don’t upload the full article, just a snippet then a link to your website.
8. This brings us to the most important part of your blog or article…THE TITLE!
If you want literary accolades then write something clever like “To blog or not to blog that is…..”
The trouble is that this title will not help the needy searcher…if your target audience is someone who wants to know more about blogging then make your title as search engine friendly as you can.
Think of the words people will use when searching Google then create your title to not only inform people of the content of your post but also include the important keywords.
Pat Sutton
Official Blog – Internet Marketing and Personal Development
http://www.patsutton.com
January 8, 2010
Tags: blog, marketing, relationships, twitter, website Posted in: Blogging, how to guides, marketing 5 Comments
How to market your website so that people buy from you!
It doesnāt matter what kind of business you have and how benevolent you are, you can give things away for free, you can raise money for great causes, you can hold peopleās hands but everyone at sometime needs to make a living.
The baker puts bread on your table, not to feed your family but to feed his own!
I am sure, if you own a bakery or a grocers then online marketing is not so important but if you have a product or service that has a website at itās heart then you need to know how to drive traffic, create a contact list and to make sales.
Ok, so you have a great website that showcases your products or services or you have signed up for an online, work at home business that has provided you with their propriatory website to promote ā what next?
It doesnāt matter what kind of online or offline business you have, if you sell from a website then you need to get it out there to the right target audience.
Not many of us are really clever enough to know, for sure, who will buy from us, I promise you, I have had many surprises! But somehow we need to work out how to get our business in front of buying customers. So a scatter gun approach is not really the way to do it, you need to target the right people.
So how do you recruit people to an online business. How do you get people to come to your website?
Online? Offline? Cold calling? Friends and family?
Letās look at Friends and Family first.
If you want to lose friends then pitch to them, the same with family members. I donāt know about you but I would hate it if my loved ones avoided me because they felt guilty for not buying into my business! So that is a definite āno noā.
Cold calling? Hey! Iām into this online gig because I want to enjoy it, I want a better quality of life and cold calling just does not do it for me! So, for me, thatās out too.
Offline ā now hereās a thing ā yes it can work, even for an online business. You could:
1. Get out there to your local business networking events.
2. Build relationships with local business owners to encourage referrals.
3. Take stands at exhibitions.
4. Advertise in the newspapers.
5. Give out flyerās in shopping malls and markets.
6. Carry business cards for those chance encounters!
Then thereās ONLINE.
Now this is where your marketing can really rock!
Here are my 5 very best online marketing tips.
1. Any good at writing?
You donāt have to be Jeffrey Archer but a good clear blog with all the right keywords can be a fantastic marketing tool.
The article should not be about your business but about something helpful for the reader. Of-course it should be linked to your business, for instance if you are a garden landscaper then an article or blog about growing roses would be good but a blog about baking a chocolate cake may not be.
You need to engage with the reader, they need to see you as a leader and expert.
Once you have constructed your blog or article you then need to add a clear succinct signature at the bottom, this is very important for obvious reasons.
I know what youāre askingā¦.what do I do with my blog once it is finished?
Well if you have a blog section on your website then that is ideal as readers can click to your website to read the blog.
You would open your blog on your website, copy the URL or address and add that link along with a catchy intro like:
An easy way to bake a chocolate cake ā if you love chocolate youāll love this ā http://wwwā¦ā¦
You would add it to places like Facebook, Twitter, Ecademy, LinkedIn etc thatās assuming that you are a member of all these social sites, if not why not???
If you have written your blog on someone elseās website, like Blogger, Ezines or another blogging platform like my site for business women, TheBusinessWoman then you need to make sure that all your website details are in your signature.
2. Twitter!
I know a lot of people think that Twitter is a waste of time well, I promise you that it is not, if you do it right.
A daily tweet containing great advice to followers who are your target audience can really boost your profile. If you have a good profile then people will see you in a good light and are more likely to buy from you. If you read my blog, How to market on Twitter, you will see how you can make Twitter really work for your business.
3. Facebook Fan Pages.
Create a fan page with the same name as your business then set to work making friends and then inviting them to become fans of your page. Once you have a reasonable amount of members you can create a badge to upload onto your website. This creates a sense of community and will give confidence to your website visitors. Of-course you also have your fans to market to as well.
4. Relationships.
Join groups and forums to get to know people, (not to pitch to them), once they get to know you they will eventually ask you what you do and then you can get away with a subtle pitch.
5. LinkedIn groups.
Join the groups on LinkedIn, you are allowed upto 50 group memberships. Of-course you need to find groups of people who would be interested in your sector and will be beneficial to you as well. Then once in a group you can upload your articles or blogs to their discussion pages. These are then sent out by the system to the group members in update e-mails. Some of the groups have memberships of thousands of people each so your one article alone can get you enormous exposure.
Pat Sutton ā Internet Marketing Specialist ā Official Blog Site http://www.PatSutton.com
Business Mentor with LifePath Unlimited ā http://www.ThisBusinessRocks.com
December 7, 2009
Tags: blog, internet, marketing, pat sutton, relationships, selling, tweet, twitter, website Posted in: Blogging, how to guides, marketing, sales, writing 2 Comments
