I just read a blog post that says that you can use Gmail to read the content of PDF files as HTML. This might be a huge blow to ebook and special report authors who want to prevent copying of their reports and ebooks.

I haven’t tried this yet, but I will investigate it and report my findings on this blog – watch this blog for more information. Anyone else tried it? If you have, please post your results.

The posts and comments also mention how easy it is to copy/paste from the PDF files on MAC computers.

Learn more about this issue

Via The Virtual Handshake Blog and Boingboing

As you know, I always say that experts have one thing in common – they have written something. It could be a book, articles, special report, white paper, ebooks and lots of other things.

So what do you do if you want to publish a book, but can’t land a deal with a traditional publisher? You self publish your book!

You might already know about lulu.com, a place to self publish your book, report, handbook, manual or lots of other things. Once your material is published, you can sell it on your web site and lulu.com, earning royalties on every sale.

For an additional fee, you can have your book listed on Amazon.com as well. I just learned about another web site that helps authors to be published – it is called blurb.com.This Washington Post article: Sites Let Amateurs Be Published Authors Without the Book Deal discusses the two sites and what you get for the money.

Via a post by Stephanie West Allen on a NewCoachConnection mailing list.

Biana Babinsky

Biana Babinsky is the online business consultant, expert and author. She teaches coaches, consultants and other solopreneurs how to promote their businesses, create multiple streams of income and make more money online. Get her Complete Step by Step Online Marketing Course, to learn how to get more customers online for your home based business.

Online networking is a business building technique that myself and my colleagues use. After all, how else would you have clients from the US, Canada, Europe and Australia if it weren’t for online networking?

Many people thinking that online networking means just networking through business networking web sites – LinkedIn, Ryze, email lists, etc. But what about blogs? Can you network through your blog and make meaningful business connections?

Web Pro News has a great article on Blogging Connections. Do you network and make connections with other business owners through your blogs?

Biana Babinsky

Biana Babinsky is the online business consultant, expert and author. She teaches coaches, consultants and other solopreneurs how to promote their businesses, create multiple streams of income and make more money online. Get her Complete Step by Step Online Marketing Course, to learn how to get more customers online for your home based business.

Many coaches, consultants and other solopreneurs that I know miss out on a very important income stream – earning money from affiliate programs. Quite a few people told me (and I agree with this) that they are in business to promote their business and their products, not someone else’s products, even if they get paid for every sale.

You are, of course, in business for yourself, so a lot of your time should be spend on promoting your brand, your business, your products and services. However, there are times when you are talking about, recommending, or even blogging about someone else’s products. And that would be a perfect time to use their affiliate program to earn affiliate revenue.

In the past few weeks I witnessed dozens of business owners blogging, e-mailing and recommending products, all without using their affiliate links. Here are just some of those situations:

– Recommending a Product on a Blog/Mailing List. If someone asks for a product recommendation, and you know of a product that they need, and can personally recommend it, why not recommend it with an affiliate link?

If you have a book to recommend, Amazon.com has an affiliate program that helps you link to any book on their web site – great option, and you earn money recommending books that you love.

– Cross Promotions And Join Ventures. Many of you participate in join ventures and cross promotions with other business owners. If you are recommending someone else’s web site or product, make sure you use their affiliate link to link to them. This way you will earn money for every sale without any extra efforts on your part, since you are already participating in the cross promotion.

– Using Other People’s Articles. Many business owners I know re-print articles from others’ web sites. If you re-print articles, check to see if the author allows you to replace a link in the Resource Box with your affiliate link, thus earning you money.

I encourage my affiliates to re-print my articles with their affiliate links, as this is a great way for my affiliates to earn more money.

Curious about earning more money with affiliate programs? Join Avocado Consulting Affiliate Program and check it out for yourself.

Did you know that if you are not using the correct keywords on your web site, you are losing money?

What are keywords? Keywords are words or phrases users provide to search engines to locate information. Search engines examine page content to determine whether a specific page is relevant for a particular search word or phrase. Thus, effective keyword selection is one of the cornerstones of search engine optimization.

Each keyword is characterized by supply (number of search engine result pages) and demand (number of searches). The easiest way to improve search engine rank is to select keywords that have favorable supply-demand characteristics; that is, ones with a
relatively high demand and a relatively low supply. It is much more difficult to improve the search engine position of a page on a high supply, competitive keyword.

To learn all about picking the right keywords for your web site, get my Step by Step Search Engine Optimization Special Report.

Hi, everyone Every few weeks I hear from people or see messages on forums that say that all the money online has been made. There is too much competition now; people are scared of buying online; everyone has a web site and affiliate links; the web is flooded with offers – these are just a few arguments I heard.

What do you think? Did the time to earn money online already pass?

Biana Babinsky is the online business consultant, expert and author. She teaches coaches, consultants and other solopreneurs how to promote their businesses, create multiple streams of income and make more money online. Get her Complete Step by Step Online Marketing Course, to learn how to get more customers online for your home based business.

Have you tried click exchanges, link exchanges or any other advertising programs that offer you clicks to your web site? How can you determine which programs to use, and which ones not to use? How can you compute your online advertising ROI(return on investment)?

If you are considering advertising on a web site, do some research first. Ask questions. Where is the traffic that they are going to send to your web site coming from? Do the people they send to your web site get a reward for visiting your web site? How do they get people to your web site?

When people get a reward for visiting your web site, they are not your target customers. They are not here to learn about your business or your products – they are here because they get a reward for being here. They will move on to the next web site, as soon as they receive their reward.

The people that you want to visit your web site are people actively searching for products and services that you promote. These are people who are much more likely to buy from you, because they are looking for what you have to offer before even visiting your web site.

Biana Babinsky

Biana Babinsky is the online business consultant, expert and author. She teaches coaches, consultants and other solopreneurs how to promote their businesses, create multiple streams of income and make more money online. Get her Complete Step by Step Online Marketing Course, to learn how to get more customers online for your home based business.

On May 11th, Leni Chauvin, The Client Attraction Coach of Attract Clients Galore will be interviewing me about marketing a business online.

I will be answering questions about jump starting your online marketing strategy, creating a marketing action plan for your business and attracting qualified, targeted leads to your
web site.

The interview is free to attend, so make sure you register for the interview.

If you are not blogging because you can’t decide on the blogging platform, I have a great solution for you. You can now use have a WordPress blog without having to install it on your own server.

While I do recommend having a blog on your own server (you control everything, including your own branding), having a WordPress blog on the WordPress.com web site is the next best thing.

WordPress.com web site itself gives you these reasons to start a blog on their server:

“
– It’s Free!
– Connect with an audience of dozens to millions.
– Stop sending mass emails to everyone.
– Archive your thoughts.
– Why the heck not?
“

I have more reasons for you:

– Get more search engine traffic
– Increase the number of your newsletter subscribers
– Get more clients
– Let more people know about your expertise
– Increase your brand exposure

Start your WordPress blog in minutes at https://wordpress.com/

And learn how to market your blog online – grab my 5 Steps to Success with Business Blogging Special Report

So you started a home based to work from home. How can you get customers to actually come and buy from you? Here are five tips to get you started:

– Get a Web Site for your Business. Getting a web site online is just like opening a store in the brick and mortar world. Even if your company provides a web site for you, get your own web site. It is going to be much easier to promote, get search engine traffic and get customers when you have your own, not a company-given web site.

– Make sure the Web Site is usable and search engine friendly. Many times a web site owner designs a web site that the owner likes. The problem is, the web site is very business owner-oriented, instead of being customer-oriented. Remember – it is not about you, it is about the customers. Ask a few people from your target market to test drive the web site for you, and to tell you what they liked/disliked about it.

This way you will know that your target customers like and are interested in using your web site.

– Start learning about Search Engines. You might not become a search engine specialist, but it is important to know how search engines work, and why they send more traffic to one web site, and less traffic to another. To get started, read the Basics of Search Engine Optimization article. For more in-depth information on getting search engine traffic to your web site, get Step by Step Search Engine Optimization Report.

– Get a Newsletter for your Web Site. When people come to your web site, you don’t want them to leave empty-handed and never return. So ask them to sign up for your newsletter. They might not buy from you on their first visit, but capturing their email address will help you keep in touch with them and market to them at a later date.

– Start a Link Exchange on your web site. Exchanging links with good, quality sites will help you get more traffic and search engine rankings. Avoid web sites that are full of banners and are not professional looking.

Biana Babinsky
Biana Babinsky is the online business coach and expert. She teaches coaches, consultants and other solopreneurs how to promote their businesses, create multiple streams of income and make more money online. Get her Complete Step by Step Online Marketing Course, to learn how to get more customers online for your home based business.