Here’s a question for you: do you think it is easier to sell your product or services to a complete stranger or to a person with whom you’ve had contact before; whether it’s an email conversation, forum participation, blog interaction or even an existing customer relationship (i.e. an existing customer). Without doubt, it’s significantly harder to sell to a total stranger who has no idea about your credibility. Will your product or service truly benefit the buyer?

This is precisely why you should build a well-targeted customer base — a group of people who trust you and will most likely buy a product that you offer to them. This will ensure that you have a recurring and consistent source of income. When you release a product or make an endorsement, you have a group of people always ready to hear what you have to say.

This doesn’t happen by accident. Initially people “trust” you enough to give you an email address. A little later they subscribe to a free mini course or email series. Later they may respond favorably to a product recommendation. Soon after maybe a small purchase.

There are several sources that you can tap to start building a well targeted customer base. For example, you can participate in an online discussion forum and give advice and help for free. It won’t be long before people start to recognize who you are and value your comments. You become a valuable friend, teacher, and authority figure on a specific topic. Eventually you begin to gain the trust of these people. Would you buy something a close friend recommends?

Another way to build a customer base is to build a mailing list. There are a gazillion methods to collect subscribers, but eventually, it’s about proving your value and offering an incentive to encourage people become part of your mailing list. A typical example would be a website that’s full of freely available, helpful and quality articles on a certain subject matter. Maybe add a “special report” that can be downloaded for free that provides valuable content in exchange for an email address. Rich content provides value; “special well-targeted reports” provide additional value.

When a customer finally commits to give you money, that’s not the end of the relationship. It’s simply an elevation of the relationship. Keep in touch and develop what can be a flourishing relationship. Understand the lifetime value of each and every customer. This is a vital element of what may be a source of long-term income.

Imagine if 100, 1000 or even 10000 customers are waiting to grab your newest products even before they are released! Hence, it’s vital to build a customer base because it simply the best source of future revenue. Understanding this important concept will save you lots of time and effort.

Author – William Lockhart

Identifying your Niche


by Vishal P. Rao

The Internet has become a valuable source of information and purchasing tool for today’s consumer. With the click of a mouse you can find almost anything from products to services on the web, and you can shop for the best prices and values all hours of the day from the convenience of your own home. For some of these same reasons, mail order businesses are also on the rise with consumers finding better values from companies that don’t have the overhead associated with a storefront.

With everything at the consumers’ fingertips, the home business owner can also benefit from today’s market culture. Just as consumers can shop from their living rooms and kitchens, business owners can conduct business in the convenience of their own homes. If you are looking to set your own hours, have less commuting time, and enjoy the general freedoms of working for yourself, starting a home business may be right for you.

One important business plan to attend to when you first start developing a home business is to invest time in finding your niche.
So what does this mean, finding your niche?

Identifying a niche is about finding a distinct segment of consumer interest, then capitalizing on it. It means finding that particular spot in the business world where you can stand out amongst others. For example there may be hundreds of booksellers out there, but how many specialize in books on a particular interest of yours? If your home business focuses on selling books, you may be competing with the hundreds of other sellers. But if your home business focuses on selling books about outdoor sports, you may find yourself in direct competition with fewer businesses.

Now that you know what a niche is, how do you go about identifying yours?

You can start by asking your self a few important questions:
What am I good at?

Take an inventory of your skills. Are you a good mechanic? Are you a wiz with home decorating? Do your friends all come to you when they have computer problems to fix? Do you know almost everything there is to know about a particular topic? Find the things you already have some skill in, and start a list. You may be surprised where your talents lie.

What do I enjoy doing?

What things do you love to do so much that you would probably do them whether there was a profit involved or not? The best place to start with this question is to look at your hobbies. These are often the things you pay a fairly significant amount of money to be involved in. Why not check it out to see if you can make a profit at these very same things? Starting a home business can take a lot of time and effort, and having a passion for the focus of your business can be a great source of the stamina necessary to make it through the difficulties in the beginning.

What is there a need for?

After you jot down what you are good at and what you love to do, it’s time to assess the market for these things. Are you always looking for supplies for your hobby, but can’t ever seem to find what you need? It’s very likely others are having the same difficulty, and a home business that supplies this need would be very well received by this segment of the market. Or maybe you love to decorate your kids’ birthday cakes, and your neighbors would rather pick theirs up at the local grocery store but can’t stand the small selection. This is a market for which you already have the skills and interest to meet the needs.

Side Bar
If you are planning to do your business entirely on the Internet, one great tool you can use to check whether there is market for your idea is the Overture Search Term Suggestion Tool: http://inventory.overture.com/d/searchinventory/suggestion/

End Side Bar
You simply enter the keyword that people might use to search for your product and it’ll return the number of times that term was searched on last month. Amazing isn’t it?

But don’t be afraid of markets where you may have some skill, but have a lot to learn. As long as you have the willingness to put time and effort into becoming an expert in your niche, you will be able to develop the specialization you need to be a leader in the market.

Once you answer these questions and find the distinct area that will set your business apart from others, you have identified your niche and are ready to develop your home business.

About the Author
Vishal P. Rao is the editor of Home Based Business Opportunities – A website dedicated to opportunities, ideas and resources for starting a home based business. Visit him at: http://www.home-based-business-opportunities.com

Earning Extra Income With Affiliate Marketing – Having Your Cake and Eating it Too!

By Bill Schnarr

Affiliate marketing is the single fastest growth industry on the Internet. Yet many people go into it without a solid recipe for success. Indeed, many look to earn extra income with affiliate marketing with no real plan, and that can severely hamper their efforts at becoming successful at it.

Make no mistake, although affiliate marketing can be an easy and fun way to earn additional income, it is work, and just like any other job, requires effort, perseverance, and above all, a clear line of sight from start to finish line.

Things like setting up your home office properly, getting some know-how, setting realistic goals, making connections, and investing in your business will not only ensure that you have a leg-up on your competition, but it will also ensure you are firmly standing head and shoulders above them.

Setting Up Your Home Base

Perhaps the most important first step you can take to becoming a professional affiliate marketer is to set up your home base – that little home office you’ve always dreamed about!

There are many good articles on the internet about ergonomic design, and with good reason. Anyone who is going to be spending a large amount of time on their computers needs a space that promotes good posture, positive environments, and takes care of safety issues revolving around the office workspace.

The best place to start might be to head down to your local Home Depot and touch base with a professional sales representative. They are trained to show you how to set up a first-rate ergonomic office while saving you some serious cash.

Ergonomics is the science behind preventing office workplace injuries, and office designers now make tables, chairs, and desktop accessories that reduce stress on your back, limbs, wrists, and tendons, and reduce stress injuries such as carpal tunnel syndrome which can occur from long hours of doing small repetitive tasks.

You’ll want to start with an ergonomically designed desk that puts everything within easy reach, a good computer with a screen that won’t hurt your eyes, non-glaring lamps placed far enough away that your eyes won’t be soaking in light while you are trying to work on the computer screen, and a chair that is comfortable and promotes circulation to your legs and rest of your body.

Of course, having the greatest home office in the world won’t matter if you don’t take the next step to becoming a successful affiliate marketer: getting some good, professional training.

Learning the Trade

Nobody goes onto a worksite cold. You can’t walk into a restaurant and expect to become the head chef just because you dressed like one that morning. And no construction company in the world is going to put you in charge just because you want the extra money but lack any real training.

The trick, then, is getting some professional training and learning how to become a professional affiliate marketer.

The first step in this road to success is to find a professional affiliate marketer and see what they can do to help you get on your feet and get moving. Thankfully, there are a few affiliate marketing pros out there who supplement their income by fulfilling another dream for many of them: being able to teach their trade to other enthusiastic marketers and passing their collective knowledge on to others.

In fact, simply typing “Affiliate Marketing Training” (in quotation marks) into www.yahoo.com, www.google.com or some other search engine will find dozens and dozens of sites promoting quality affiliate marketing conferences that you can attend.

One of affiliate marketing’s brightest stars and biggest success stories is James Martell, and chances are pretty good that if you’ve looked into affiliate marketing at all you’ve seen his name pop up more than once. His downloadable home-study course and twice monthly audio newsletter for students of his program make him the good place to start looking for a great course and learning the inner workings of affiliate marketing.

Become a student of the business. Start by setting some realistic income goals and working to achieve them.

Setting Reachable Goals

One problem with some affiliate marketers is that many tend to overshoot both their skills and their plans by setting unrealistic income goals and becoming disenchanted when they are unable to attain them.

Certainly a goal of $5,000 a month is attainable, but the first time affiliate marketer is most likely not going to make that kind of money when they step into the ring for the first time.

Make no mistake; $5,000 dollars a month is a goal that can be achieved through affiliate marketing, but beginners should look for something more modest. Start small. Start with, “I’m going to earn an extra $50-$100 a day, by learning how to create my own great looking websites, that get free traffic from the search engines, by taking the time to learn how to do it, from someone who already does the same thing.”

As an income goal, it’s certainly achievable, and you would be doing yourself a favour by setting aside the extra time you will need to learn how to do things right, the first time. Like any skill, it takes time and experience before you really get good at what you are doing.

Set goals and get used to setting them often. Set up daily goals for little things. Set up weekly and monthly goals to work toward even larger goals. Get used to writing your wants and needs on paper, and then actively working toward those goals. You’ll be glad you did, and you’ll be amazed at how much something as simple as a “to do” list can help you focus your energy and become better at your craft.

There’s a great book out about goal setting called “Goals: Setting and Achieving Them on Schedule” by Zig Ziglar. Take a look at it if you feel you could use some extra help in this department. In fact, set a goal to purchase the book and read it if you have to!

Another important goal for you to set: if you are really looking to augment your earnings with affiliate programs, or plan on becoming a full-time marketer, you have to get out there and make connections.

Making Connections to Your Future

By all accounts, the professional affiliate marketing community is a tight-knit group of people who are constantly in contact with one another.

There is a large amount of information sharing, helping one another as a support group, and a general belief that by pitching in and helping out everyone can be successful in their new role as an affiliate marketer and learn from each others mistakes.

It would be extremely shallow to suggest getting out there and making friends simply to help your business along, and people tend to not look kindly upon those who do (and we all know someone like that, don’t we?). Instead, get out there and introduce yourself. Start by seeing where you can help others with their business, and in return people will be more inclined to help you when you need it.

Get out there and enjoy yourself, and get to know these people personally. You won’t only be better off from a business standpoint, but your life will be far richer for making good friends who can relate to the trials and tribulations of your business woes and successes.

Just being able to relate to like-minded people will relieve tons of work stress. You will always be able to discuss your new career and problems you are facing with people who understand what you’re talking bout and don’t simply see your job as “foolin’ around on the ‘puter”.

Of course, they’ll have no choice but to take you a little more seriously when you invest a little money and a lot of effort in your own affiliate marketing business and really make your image shine.

Investing in Your Business is Believing in Yourself!

It’s a well known truism that states, “It takes money to make money.” These words couldn’t be truer in the world of affiliate marketing.

Although affiliate marketing is relatively cheap to set up as a home business, there are still some costs involved in getting up and running smoothly. Things like home office accessories (remember that trip to Home Depot?) Can set you back large sums of money depending on how far you are willing to go at once.

There are also costs involved within the industry itself. For example, finding affordable web space ($8-$15 per month) and registering your own domain names ($10-15 per year) does add up.

You will also need to look at web site template options if you hope to save time by having your websites “pre-planned”. Low-cost website templates, such as those found at www.affiliate-marketing-templates.com can greatly affect the way others view your site. Is it professional? Is it clean? A good web development company selling FrontPage website templates will be able to accomplish all of this and more.

You are also going to want to invest both time and effort into setting yourself up with quality content. Writing for the web is a skill that takes practice and patience, like any other, and must be clean and easy to read while still fulfilling the needs of your affiliate site.

You can always go out and find professional writers to do this for you, but remember that they can be costly and deserve to be well-paid for their services. After all, they are going to make or break your web site!

Investing in your affiliate marketing business is more than just covering costs, though. It is really about you stepping up to the plate and making a commitment to become a success. It is an investment in your own success, as well as an investment in your future.

Hopefully, this article has given you some ideas about the direction you need to take in order to earn extra income as a successful affiliate marketer. Remember that it takes time to become succeed at anything. Rome wasn’t built in a day. You’re affiliate marketing business isn’t going to be built in a day either.

Just keep at it, and before long you’ll have people coming to you for advice on how to get started.

For more information, see www.work-at-home-net-guides.com

About The Author
Bill Schnarr is a single parent and freelance writer who works from his home in Calgary, Alberta. As well as writing about successful home based businesses and having dozens of online and print publishing credits, you can also look for him in the recently released “Chicken Soup for the Single Parents Soul”.