SEO Tips and Resources

Wikipedia defines leverage as “A force compounded by means of a lever rotating around a pivot” and “By extension, any influence which is compounded or used to gain an advantage.”  The extension of that definition is the most relevant for online businesses.

Leverage is most often expressed in either fiscal or mechanistic terms, but it applies much wider than that as well, including the affiliate marketing industry.

So how can we interpret the term “any influence” for our internet businesses?

One of the best ways for an internet business to maximize our profits is by re-using available content.  Most of the ebooks currently advertised on the internet reflect content that has been re-used, although some may have been originally written as ebooks, most originated as a single blog post, or a response to a customer email, perhaps even a collection of Frequently Asked Questions.

Within Finance, the advantage gained from leverage is frequently written as a ratio of some sort, for example, a debt-to-equity ratio.  Such ratios are useful for bookkeepers, but accountants are not the primary audience here.

What advantage can we realize by leveraging our existing content?  Consider the following simplistic example (no rocket science here):   Assume that it takes you 10 hours to write a document for use with a single customer and then sell it to that customer for $50.00.  You would have earned $50.00, but it took 10 hours of your time to earn that $50.00; in other words, you have earned about $5 per hour (less than the current minimum wage) for your work and made zero profit. 

If, however, you take that same document (tailored to remove any proprietary info) and offer it as an ebook via the Web for $19.95, and that you ultimately sell 100 copies of your published ebook.  You would have earned $1995, and if you subtract the $50 it cost you to create the previous document with a reduction of another $5 to customize it for any customer/proprietary info, leaving you now with a profit of $1940.00.

That’s the power of leverage, specifically the improvement gained from re-using existing content. 

Once we become familiar with leverage, we discover that there are many different ways to apply it to our home businesses.  This article addressed only re-use of content, but there are many other ways.  Separate articles describe additional ways that online businesses can improve ROI by using leverage.

If you like what you’ve just read, and would like to learn how to leverage your efforts, and become a millionaire - get the FREE Infinite Income Plan report and put your income on autopilot.

Technorati Tags: affiliate internet marketing, Home Business, internet business, leverage, online business, technology

Internet Marketing Resources affiliate internet marketing, Home Business, internet business, leverage, online business, technology

Leverage is the ability to gain a big gain from a small investment - whether that investment is time, effort or money.

We usually think of leverage as the mechanical improvement that results from using a lever.  In fact, Archimedes once stated, “Give me a lever long enough and a fulcrum on which to place it, and I shall move the world.”

But leverage isn’t restricted to the physical world of mechanical advantage - it applies in many other conditions as well.

In business, Change Agents often speak of changing one or more business “levers” in order to bring about organizational change or transformation.  Unfortunately, in today’s world, those business levers often result in job cuts, down-sizing, bankruptcies, or other forms of corporate re-organization.

But leverage has many positive implications as well.

People apply financial leverage when they use borrowed funds to increase their ROIs, or when they use calls or puts to control large quantities of stock much cheaper than if they had purchased the stock outright.

home based businesses employ leverage when they function online.  Simply by doing that, they’ve removed the boundaries of geography (and largely, time as well) and leveraged their advertising dollars, since it costs the about the same amount to create an ad that reaches only a small number of people as it does to create an ad that is global.

If we were operating a small “brick and mortar” store, we might be satisfied with a couple hundred visitors, but as an online business, we want traffic numbering in the hundreds of thousands, or even millions - and not just any traffic, but targeted traffic.

We are utilizing leverage when we use tools such as Google AdWords:  we use the Google technologies to identify targeted traffic for us and send it to our website.

The Web provides us with many forms of leverage, but they basically all boil down to the use of technology.   Technology is one of the greatest levers ever invented.

Most internet marketers are familiar with the use of autoresponders and search engines, etc., but they habitually fail to make full use of the technology lever in their back office processes - including everything from managing sales leads to fulfilling the order and taking care of the follow-on billing and customer service issues.

Those online businesses that take fully leverage technology are the ones who will succeed in this competitive environment.

If you like what you’ve just read, and would like to learn how to leverage your efforts, and become a millionaire - get the Free  Infinite Income Plan report and put your income on autopilot

Technorati Tags: affiliate internet marketing, Home Business, internet business, leverage, online business, technology

Internet Marketing Resources affiliate internet marketing, Home Business, internet business, leverage, online business, technology

Classic salesmanship in print required a killer sales copy roughly encompassing these 4 elements: Attention, Interest, Desire, Action - the AIDA principle. This was accomplished initially in direct response sales letter and later adapted for the web in the form of the Long Form Sales Letter that we have been accustomed to all these glorious days. For those not familiar with the make up of a sales letter, there are variations but a common theme is effective use of the AIDA principle starting with a hard to ignore attention-grabbing headline, fast-paced action-packed writing, emotionally hooking anecdotes and fantastic claims couched in reality, tons of endorsement from happy customers who used the service or bought the product being pitched and culminating in an urgent call to action. Think you can’t do this with video? Think again, see this illustration at Video Info Marketing home page.

With the advent of rich media dominated web 2.0 world what becomes of the beloved Long Form Sales Letter? While there’s a valid reason to be concerned, this is no time for panic. Burying your head in the sand would be counterproductive and absolutely useless. There’s a glimmer of hope for those who understand the fundamentals of the sales process. Dan Kennedy’s 6 steps of sales process outlined in his outrageously amazing book “No B.S Sales Success” is the gold standard. Understanding this process and internalizing it should encourage anyone concerned about the shift towards online video. If you understand online video is just another medium to transmit your pitch, then you should have no problem adopting online video as a vehicle for broadcasting your sales message, getting prospects to take action and having them to stampede in a mad frenzy to your website and buy your stuff.

Another reason to be excited about online video, Infomercials - they provide a template that can be adapted, with some tweaks, to devastating effect.  You see, while a hyper-texted web was finding its footing, infomercials were the medium of choice for savvy marketers who figured the dead airtime on cable and broadcast TV were a gold mine. Their bet was that there is a huge potential in late night TV viewership and the rest, like they say, is commentary. These savvy early adopters cleaned out their competitors’ clocks. Carlton talks about this stuff to his inner circle of clients, eye-popping stuff!

Ok, If you understand the sales process and can tweak infomercial tactics for the web how could you accomplish this? Before you leap in here’s a cautionary reminder, online sales video must adhere to the same principles that led to the success of the sales letter: Grab attention, hook the prospect and get the viewer to take action. The catch is to do this in about 5 minutes or less. Preceed with videos that deliver stellar content to build trust, establish authority and bond with your prospects. The core of this strategy is adding value to your prospects before they buy one single thing from you. Though it’s possible to make your pitch in your first video, you must promise and deliver tremendous value to the prospect if the prospect takes action. Providing social proof, establishing authority and having a ‘reason why’ should be the other key components of your core strategy. This is the secret sauce to video marketing success just as in sales letter - remember the essence of the sales letter hasn’t changed much since Ben Franklin.

Here’s an excellent video that does just that - Spoiler Alert! Self Promo - not that there’s anything wrong with that;). You can start thinking of ways of incorporating its approach to your online video marketing campaigns:  Video Info Marketing

There’s always understandable angst to adopting new techniques, process and ways of doing things. Yet, adapting to rich media based world is a reality you can’t avoid. Rock and roll with this sucker so that you can dominate your niche. You don’t want me to tell you what happens if you ignore online video…You really don’t…Get to work and take action today, break out the screen cam software, Powerpoint or Keynote Presentation and start playing with that webcam.

In upcoming posts we will discuss tools and services that will make the whole process doable and dare I say, fun eh?

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