Yes, you read correctly. According to the article, Google to Connect Friends Across the Web, Google is working on a service that will let any web site become a social networking site. All you will have to do is embed some code into your web site, and your web site visitors will be able to connect and interact with each other.

Imagine having your web site visitors meet each other, interact, chat. What do you think?

Biana Babinsky

About Biana: Biana Babinsky is the online business coach who teaches her clients how to get more web site traffic and clients online. Join her online business mentoring program to discover how to use the Internet to get over 98% of your clients! Join now at https://www.MarketingSalad.com

One of the first things that I teach my clients is how to to start and use a newsletter that will get them clients – every time.

A newsletter is a great way to connect with your potential customers, build relationships with them and get more clients and more sales. My newsletter has been a source of clients and product sales for many years for me. This is why starting and publishing an effective newsletter is one of the first steps I teach to my clients who want to run a profitable and sustainable coaching business.

If you don’t publish a newsletter yet, you should start doing it now! Here is how to get started publishing a newsletter:

– Pick a newsletter publishing service to use to send out your newsletter – there are many to choose from. Aweber, 1 Shopping Cart and many more. Compare the pricing and features that each service offers, and see which ones you will need for your business.

– Make a commitment to sending your newsletter out on a regular basis. The only way to build a relationship with your subscribers and convince them to buy from you is by being in touch on a regular basis. You have to make a commitment to send out your newsletter on a regular basis, otherwise you are just wasting your time.

– Offer a free gift to everyone who subscribes. A gift can be an e-book, audio recording, special report, etc. You want to bring in as many subscribers as possible, and an attractive gift that your potential subscribers want will convince more of them to subscribe to your newsletter. More subscribers = more potential customers to keep in touch with and build relationships with!

– Write an effective newsletter that provides your subscribers with value and at the same time promotes your products and services. When people read your newsletter, they want to read valuable information that is going to help them. Use your newsletter to promote your expertise and share information with your subscribers at the same time.

Your newsletter should provide a nice balance of tips for your subscribers and at the same time let them know about your offerings.

In my Grow Your List Home Study Course I share the exact steps for starting and publishing a newsletter that will help you get more clients and product sales. You can grab it at https://www.avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/znews

Biana Babinsky

Biana Babinsky is the online business coach, expert and author who teaches coaches, consultants and other business owners how to grow their lists and use their lists to get clients. Get her Grow Your List Home Study Course to discover how to grow your list faster and use your list to get product buyers, teleseminar participants and one-on-one clients. Learn more about the Home Study Course at https://www.avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/znews

A few years ago a client of mine asked me when he will be able to stop marketing. “Well”, he said, “I am marketing to get more clients. Once I have enough clients I can stop marketing, right?”

I said: “Imagine that two of your clients decide to stop working with you. You will immediately need two new clients, but you will not be able to get them immediately because you are not marketing.”

After talking about this for a bit, we came to a conclusion that he will never be able to stop marketing.

Has anyone ever stopped marketing? Only if they closed their business.

Think about commercials you see on TV every day. The commercials that we see on TV are commercials for huge companies whose names everyone knows – Pepsi, Ford, etc. Everyone knows what their name is and what they do. But that does not stop them from using commercials to promote their brand and promote their new products.

So when should you stop marketing? The answer is never.

If you do not have enough clients in your business, you need to continue marketing. But even if you have enough clients (and have more clients on your waiting list), you should still continue to market your business. Here is why:

– It takes time to convert a lead into a client. Imagine you need new clients all of a sudden, but you have no one in your pipeline. If you haven’t marketed in a long time, you will not have any leads or prospects to convert into clients, and, therefore, you will have to get started by marketing for leads and prospects.

If you always market your pipeline is always full and you always have plenty of prospects to turn into clients.

– You reach new potential clients every time you market. That’s true! Every time I market, whether I am doing search engine optimization, speak in front of a group or teach a class, I get in front of people who didn’t know about me before, but are now exposed to my expertise.

Every time you market you reach new potential clients who have the potential to turn into real clients – how cool is that?

– You get more product sales. Even if you do not need one-on-one clients, marketing is going to help you get more product sales and use your multiple streams of income to increase your bottom line.

Need help with marketing? Join my online business mentoring program, https://www.MarketingSalad.com to learn directly from me how to create a successful online business. Click here to join for just $1 for your first month.

Biana Babinsky

Biana Babinsky is the online business coach who teaches her clients how to get more web site traffic and clients online. Join her online business mentoring program to discover how to use the Internet to get over 98% of your clients! Join now at https://www.MarketingSalad.com

A few weeks ago I wrote an article on how to stay in business and get clients during an economic downturn. One of the recommendations I made in that article was to create products, such as e-books, classes, audio, seminars and more that you can offer for sale to those who don’t want to spend the money on your services.

Your products cost less than your services, so when your potential customers are not willing to spend money on your services during the downturn, you can offer them your products. This way, both of you win! Your potential customers will still get help that they need and you can still make money with your knowledge.

The products will also help you create multiple streams of income for your business, so that you do not have to rely just on your services to bring in revenue.

After that article came out, I have been getting many e-mails from readers. Quite a few of you asked
me what to do if you are not ready to create products yet, but you do want to create multiple streams of income in your business.

The answer is to use someone else’s products through an affiliate program.

So how do you pick affiliate programs to join? Here are some tips:

– Pick an affiliate program with many different products that will be of interest to your target market.

– It is even better if you already used a few of those products, because that way you will be able to recommend them.

– Join that program, learn a bit about the products, and start promoting them.

Need an affiliate program to join? I would love for you to join my affiliate program and use my popular products to create passive income streams for your business. You can sign up for my affiliate program absolutely FREE and for every sale that you refer you will earn 40% commissions. Register for the affiliate program, FREE, at
https://www.avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/zsaff

And when you register for the affiliate program you will also receive an invitation to a no charge training session I am doing for my affiliates on May 6th. During this session you will discover the step-by-step process to use my products to create many passive income streams for your business. I will teach you about which products to promote and how to promote them, so that you can save time and not have to learn everything on your own.

To get an invitation to the training session, register for the affiliate program, FREE, at
https://www.avocadoconsulting.com/rlinks/zsaff

Biana Babinsky

Many years ago I was working on a web site project for a client. It was almost done, but there was an important part that I needed to completely finish the web site. The client needed a programming script for the web site. I wrote her a script that did everything but one thing that she needed.

It took me a long time to troubleshoot the script, but I still could not get that one thing to work. I really wanted to be done with the web site, so that I could move to the next project, but before I could be done, I needed the script to work. After spending another week on that script, I finally asked another web developer about the issue I was having. In about an hour I had a working script!

I was very excited, as the project was done! I billed the client, we checked and released the web site and I moved on to the next project.

As you can see, taking the next step is great and liberating. If you are stuck trying to figure something out and you can’t move on, here is what I recommend. Take some time and decide what this next step should be. Then, decide if you can take the step on your own, find an expert to ask questions about taking the step, or hire someone to help you with it.

For example, take a look at the next step that you should take in marketing your business. You may want to start a blog, but aren’t sure which software to use. Or, you may want to do article marketing, but aren’t sure how to get started. In this case the best way to take the next step is to find an expert who can answer your questions and recommend the best way to do that.

For the past few days I have been helping members of MarketingSalad.com, my online business mentoring program taking the next step to accomplish their goals. I am dedicating this week and next week to this task, so if you need help in finding the next step to take, come join us at https://www.MarketingSalad.com!

Biana Babinsky

About Biana Babinsky: Biana is the online business coach, expert and author who teaches coaches, consultants and other online business owners how to get more web site traffic and clients online. Join her Online Business Mentoring Program at https://www.MarketingSalad.com to learn how to market your business better online!

Is your business in balance? Or are you working on 25 projects and 15 marketing initiatives at once, all while thinking: “I should really be using this brand new social networking site that I just heard about!” ?

If that sounds like you, it is time to re-think how you do business and see if you can prioritize your actions, while still accomplishing everything.

Here are some of the things I do in order to achieve more balance in my business:

– Automate everything that I can. Lots of things can be automated online – scheduling of blog posts, automatic product fulfillment, ezine software, etc.

Take action: Take advantage of technology to automatically get people subscribing to your list, downloading your products, registering for your classes, etc.

– Outsource tasks that I don’t enjoy doing and can’t automate.

Take action: Take a look at everything you are doing and see which ones can be outsourced.

– Long term scheduling. I always know what’s coming up for my business for the next 6+ months. That way I can plan the tasks I need to do, marketing I need to do, etc.

When you know what’s coming up long term, you can schedule backwards. For example, if one of your goals is to have an ebook written by the end of October, 2008, you know that there are tasks that need to get done every month/week/day in order for this to happen.

Take action: Create your marketing plan!

– Multiple streams of income. Creating products, such as seminars, ebooks and my mentoring program has really improved my work/life balance.

I can have as many or as few one-on-one clients as I want. (I usually have 3-7 clients at any given time), and I don’t put my marketing efforts into getting one-on-one clients.

Instead, my marketing is concentrated on getting leads for my business.

Take action: Create multiple streams of income for your business!

Biana Babinsky

About Biana Babinsky: Biana teaches coaches, consultants, virtual assistants and other business owners how to get more clients, create multiple streams of income and run a successful online business. Join her mentoring program at https://www.MarketingSalad.com to discover how to create a successful online business.

Many coaches have asked if they should use article marketing to promote their business online. Here are just a few reasons to use article marketing to promote yourself:

– Article Marketing Helps You Build Your List. I am sure you know that building your list and conversing with your potential clients is extremely important. I have tried dozens of list building techniques, but I keep using article marketing, because it is effective and it helped me add tons of people to my list.

– Article Marketing Helps You Promote Your Expertise. One thing that many successful experts do is writing. They write articles, books, ebooks and other products. When your potential customers read your articles, they are automatically seeing you as an expert.

– Article Marketing Helps You Tap Into Brand New Markets. When your articles are reprinted on other blogs and web sites, people who have never heard of you before will read them and get exposed to your knowledge and your expertise.

Every time your article is reprinted, you are able to tap into a brand new circle of potential clients that you would have never reached otherwise.

– Article Marketing Helps You Start A Conversation With Your Potential Customers. People buy from people they know, like and trust. How do they find out that they know, like and trust you? By having a conversation with you! Your article is the first step in that conversation. Here is how it might go:

Step 1: Your Potential Customer Reads Your Article
Step 2: Your Potential Customer Follows The Link From The Article To Your Web Site
Step 3: Your Potential Customer Subscribes To Your Newsletter
Step 4: Your Potential Customer Reads Your Newsletter, Gets To Know You Over Time
Step 5: After Learning About You, Your Potential Customer Buys A Product, Registers For Your Class, Or Becomes A Service Client

More and more online business owners are realizing how powerful article marketing can be. Every time I read articles in article directories, I see more articles from coaches, consultants, virtual assistants and other professionals posted there.

Just read an article, MySpace, Facebook: Big not always better about how Internet users like to use smaller, more targeted social networking web sites and groups.

Personally I like both types of groups. I am a member of small networking groups where membership is very targeted. For example, we have a very targeted networking group at MarketingSalad.com, my online business mentoring web site. In addition to learning about online marketing, members of MarketingSalad.com also network with each other and do business with each other on a regular basis. This group is very targeted – members are are coaches, consultants, virtual assistants and other online business owners who are serious about building profitable online businesses.

But I also like much larger networking web sites, such as Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. The key to using those really large sites is to still find smaller groups of people you want to socialize with. For example, if you like skiing, search for skiing groups. If you want to become known to your target market, search for groups/places where your target market is and start the conversation going.

It does not matter how big or small a group is, as long as you can create a strategy to increase your visibility and reach your market effectively.

Biana Babinsky

And, more importantly, is it worth telling? This is what an article on CNN is asking, Everybody has a story — but is it worth telling?.

While the article is specifically about memoirs, I think it applies to other genres as well. As someone who works with authors on self-help and other how-to non-fiction titles, I always recommend to my clients to do research to see if there will be demand for their book/e-book before they actually write it.

That way if you decide to go ahead with your idea, you will see how realistic your projected numbers are, and how much demand there is in the market for your idea.

Biana Babinsky

One of the most important concepts in online marketing is a landing page. A landing page is a page where your visitor lands to do something. It could be a page where your web site visitor lands following a link from your PPC ad. It could be a page where your web site visitor lands to purchase your ebook. In short, it is a page, where your web site visitor comes to take action.

The best rule to remember about a landing page is one action – one page. What is an action? An action is the action you want your web site visitor to take on the landing page. The action can be subscribing to your newsletter, buying an e-book or registesting for a telseminar.

The most successful landing pages don’t try to be all things to all people. Rather, they concentrate on getting a user to take one action and one action only. When someone lands on a landing page like that, they only have two options – take action or leave.

So, what about your landing pages? If your landing pages are not producing results, it is time to take action!

– Review your landing page. Are you only asking your web site visitors to take one action per page? If you are asking them to take more than one action, make a change to ask them take just one action.

When I helped a client change her landing page for a teleseminar to only have one available action to take, she was able to double her sign-ups!

– Review your web copy. The sales copy on your landing page is very important as well. Does it convince your web site visitor to take action? If not, you need to improve your sales copy to make it convince your visitor to take action.

– Review your marketing. How do you promote your landing page? Do your promotions help you qualify your visitors, so that the ones who do come to your landing page are already targeted customers?

Biana Babinsky