What Are Joint Ventures and How Can They Benefit Your Business?
In the internet marketing world, a joint venture refers to two or more business owners who team up to offer complementary products or services to each other’s customers and share the profits based on a predetermined arrangement. If that sounds complicated, don’t worry. This example should help to clear things up: Suppose you own an online store that sells dog-training products. In order to grow your customer base, you approach …
3 Steps to Building an Effective Facebook Fan Page
With more than 800 million users worldwide, Facebook is here to stay. That means building a presence for your business website on this global social network almost mandatory. However, if you have yet to venture very far into the world of social media, understanding how to build and maintain your brand’s presence on these user-oriented sites can prove challenging. Let’s discuss how you can harness the power of Facebook to …
Johnny Cupcakes’ Recipe for Success
“Quality is more important than quantity.” It’s a simple rule that Johnny Earle takes pride in following — and has used to build his popular Johnny Cupcakes brand. What started as a joke in 2000, when Earle was just 19 years old, has evolved into a multimillion-dollar company that today also employs his parents, his sister, his neighbor, and his close friends. Earle, who ranked at the top of BusinessWeek’s …
Understanding Stock Image Rights
Let’s say you’re building your company’s new website and use Google Images to find the perfect picture for your home page — the one image that somehow manages to simultaneously capture both the spirit and personality of your business in a single, beautiful frame. You save the picture to your hard drive and upload it to your site. After all, you found the picture on the internet. That means it’s …
JustinFit: Another Site We Love [VIDEO]
Meet Justin Seedman, owner and head trainer of JustinFit — our Sites We Love winner of the week! In the video below Justin shares the personal journey of how his business came to be and the lessons he’s learned along the way. JustinFit is active on just about every social media platform there is. From Twitter to Facebook to Pinterest, Seedman has his social bases covered, and you can really …
Managing Your Business Email – Taming the Inbox Monster
Although email communication was originally intended to save time by cutting down the number of face-to-face interactions needed to accomplish tasks, most professionals find that it’s spiraled out of control – eating up far more time and energy than in-person meetings ever did! If you’re facing a serious case of email overload that’s preventing you from growing your business effectively, consider the following steps to help you tame the inbox …
Writing Effective PPC Ads for Your Business Website
As we discussed last week, pay-per-click (PPC) ads can be a great way to send a steady stream of visitors back to your website. However, it can also be an easy way to lose your shirt if you aren’t carefully tracking your budget and the ultimate ROI of your advertisements. So today, let’s focus on how to get the most out of your PPC ads by choosing the best wording …
Esaie Couture Design Schools’ Website Is Designed for Success
This week’s success story comes from Wanda Bruno, co-owner of Esaie Couture Design Schools, which offers sewing classes and instructions in New York City. From simple craft projects to dressmaking, Esaie Couture caters to a wide range of skill sets — and can even help you learn what it takes to become a fashion designer. Initially, Bruno knew she needed a presence on the internet for her bricks-and-mortar business. While …
Is Your Website Effective? [INFOGRAPHIC]
People often ask me, “What can I do to make my website more effective?” Ninety-nine percent of the time, my answer is the same — because, no matter how many small-business sites I review, I find similar issues. This infographic shares my top five online business practices. Click the image for an enlarged view.
How to Set Up a Business Blog
Although the word “blogging” is associated with personal websites in the digital world, building a business blog actually has a number of different advantages. Not only can business blogs be an incredibly useful tool in branding your business as an authority within your industry, they can also help you to engage visitors and turn them into repeat customers. Today, we’ll look at how business blogs work in more depth, as …