Businesses have to stay modern to compete with other businesses that are popping up all over the world, and all over the Internet. One of the ways businesses stay modern is to rebrand themselves. If you are preparing to rebrand your company, read on for mistakes to avoid while in the rebranding process:

1. Totally redesigning all your packaging. This could be a huge mistake, because if there is no trace of your old brand left, how will consumers know who you are? They might think your business is new and therefore inexperienced. Be sure to just tweak your packaging, like Aunt Jemima has. Aunt Jemima is a good example because the company just updated their “blue collar” woman to reflect today’s culture – a woman with a more professional image. In 1989 they removed her headband and gave her pearl earrings and a lace collar, which reflected the modern times of more women in the workforce.

2. Not following a plan. You need a new plan to follow that is similar to a marketing plan. You will need new custom business cards, brochures, an updated Web site – basically all your marketing materials will need a face lift with your new brand theme. Be sure to adjust your color printing budget, along with timelines and other resources so that you know exactly what you need and who is going to do it.

3. Not consulting with a branding expert. You do not have to go with a big-name expert that will break your budget. But do consider consulting with an advertising or public relations agency to help you with your rebrand. They have experts that have helped other companies with rebranding and they can be invaluable to you.

4. Not rebranding everything. If you decide to redesign everything, make sure you do not miss anything. If you have a great new Web site, new brochures and catalogs, and nearly everything has your new logo or brand design on it except for your invoices or your letterhead, people’s perception of your brand will decline. Make sure that every single thing that customers see has been changed.

5. Not testing your rebrand. Just as you would if you were building a new brand from scratch, you need to test it out on your target market. Hold focus groups and show the participants your new materials and gauge their reaction. Are they more interested? What don’t they like? Do they say anything like “This is not your company”? If customers really liked your old brand, be sure you just tweak it or update it, instead of completely overhauling it. Oftentimes you will get tired of your brand before others do.

6. Only focusing on your own industry. When you conduct brand research and you are looking for ideas for your rebranding strategy, you should not only look at your competitors, but look at companies that are not in your industry. Pay attention to what successful companies are doing with their customer service, their marketing methods and their Web sites. Do not copy their ideas, but tailor their tactics to work with your rebranding strategy.

If you avoid the mistakes highlighted here, your rebranding task should be a success!

Lynne Saarte is a writer that hails from Texas. She has been in the Internet business for some years now, specializing in Internet marketing and other online business strategies.

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When it comes to selecting a name for your business you would assume it is the easiest part of the start up process. But in fact, there is a lot you have to take into consideration. After all, your business name acts as your identity. A poor name could keep people from even coming to your site, let alone becoming a customer.

Creativity is key when selecting a name for your online business. Anybody can come up with a bland name like Jeff’s Home Business. But throwing in creativity can help separate your business from the thousands of other businesses on the internet.

While you want to be creative, you do not want to have the name be too far out there. Creativity is good, but it is vital you stay as professional as possible. After all, it is still a business that you are running. Keep it clean and relative to what your business is about.

The next thing to keep in mind when selecting a name for your business is keeping it short and to the point. You do not want to have a business name that is long and drags on. This only makes it difficult for people to remember. The shorter it is, the easier it will be for people to remember so they can type it into their search browser.

What can be difficult is trying to keep the name short while still including keywords. Targeting specific keywords within your business name can help you climb higher on the search engines. It is a great way to generate traffic without spending a penny. If you can, try to include a couple of different keywords within the name.

The last thing to take into consideration when selecting a name for your online business is including something that represents the company. If you have a sports web site, have sports or some kind of word that represents sports within the name. If you have a home business web site, makes sure to include internet marketing or home based business within the title. You want to let people know what to expect prior to getting to your site.

The tough part about selecting a name is taking all of the tips listed above into account. You obviously want to select a name that suits you and sums up your business. But you want to make it as visually appealing as possible to internet searchers. You have one chance to grab their attention through marketing, and sometimes it is the business name that can do it.

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How can this benefit you as a network marketer? It is not only you who sees other marketers time and again, they also see you time and again. But in order for you to make an impact on them and draw them to you, you need to make a positive impression that will be a memory attached to your name. To be the person that this person decides to join the next business under you need to attract them to you, and they need to like you. This means you need to create personal branding for yourself. You need to create an opportunity for them to actually WANT to be a part of your business, buy your product, or whatever else your final goal is.

No e-mail list is exclusive. The fact is, each and every person is on many other marketers contact lists and so they receive e-mails from all kinds of people. If you have an e-mail list (which you should, or else you should start building one) you need to remember that it is not exclusive to you. These people are receiving messages from other people. When the next business launches or the next product is launched, they could potentially receive an invitation from many other marketers, not just you! Do you offer your prospects a reason to work with you instead of all the other people they could work with? Now you can see the value of personal branding. Once you have built a personal brand so people trust and like you, they will be much more inclined to go with you instead of all those other people… and that is when you start making the real money.

As I said in the introduction, people are not interested only in the product, service, or opportunity. The compensation plan and all those minor details will not make them instantly join you. YOU will make them join you. That means that the impression you give them will help them decide if they want to work with you or not.

So how do you create personal branding? I will cover this briefly because there are really many possibilities, but there are some major tips I can give you:

1) Always strive to offer more support to your downline, more helpful tips and content for your e-mail list, and more quality relationships than anyone else. This in turn will provide you with a loyal membership that will want to always stand by your side, no matter what. I know many people who have huge lists compared to me, yet when I send an offer to my list they are highly responsive because of this.

2) Use websites to brand yourself. Offer people who don’t know you the ability to read and learn more about you online, without even interacting personally with you. It is surprising how connected someone can feel to you just by reading your printed words on your website, listening to your audio, or viewing your video. No matter who you are, you need a website. The network marketing industry is relying more and more on personal connections, and if you aren’t following the wave you could be left behind while the ones who started branding themselves now pick up the pieces you left behind. I have had people read my blog, my bio I posted on my website or articles I have written and later during our first actual conversation they tell me that they feel like they already know me! If people feel like they know you before you even talk to them you are on the right track. On your website create a personal bio and tell your story. Explain how you got into network marketing, why you wanted to get into it, and what your goals are. Paint the picture and allow them to see themself as a part of it.

3) On each promotion you create, include your name, and also a photo picture when applicable, with a personal touch. If you promote splash or lead capture pages online try to create your own so you can add a personal touch and a photo. Think of the individual that you would be talking to, and write like you were actually speaking to them. This way your words will mean something to them and draw them in.

4) Write a regular newsletter to your contact list. I dedicate myself to writing at least one quality article per week. If I would write more maybe they would not be as top quality and I want to offer the best I can to my subscribers. If your contacts are seeing value in being on your list they will not want to unsubscribe because they know they will become more knowledgeable and in turn improve their online business. If you help them improve their business they will be more likely to return the favor and work with you. Always seek out to learn and increase your knowledge and you will always have more to write about. If you have a blog you can easily post your newsletters to it and increase traffic and exposure.

There is much more you can do but that should help you get started. Remember to focus on creating quality relationships with others. As a rule, ask more about them and their experiences than you do talking about your own. Instead of thinking of a way to get people into your business try focusing on how you can help them and build a relationship with them. You will then experience more joy and sense of accomplishment throughout your business. The students I have had and the people I have seen most successful in network marketing are those that you can recognize by their name alone. Next time when someone sees you in another business, especially in social networks, give them a reason to say… “I remember you because…”

Dive in and get noticed!

I have noticed while browsing through the articles over on my blog that most of them don’t appear to be very friendly towards new bloggers.

You often find that the more experienced you become in a subject that it actually gets more difficult to write helpful articles for people that are new to it.

This is my first article to be aimed at people new to blogging and concentrates around the most popular methods in which one can make an income from their blog.

I’m sure you know that the web is crawling with advertisements but if you are relatively new to blogging or Internet marketing in general you may not know that the advertisement industry is a market that literally anyone can tap into and take a share of the profits.

Due to the sheer size of the web and the opportunities available a blogger is able to make money from his or her blog in many, many different ways no matter their skill or experience level. I am now going to introduce you to the most common means by which bloggers are currently making the most money….

Pay Per Click Ads

Pay Per Click ads are literally everywhere you look on the Internet and are probably the most popular and most effective way in which a blogger can cash in from their blog. As a PPC publisher by publishing the ads on your pages you gain the opportunity of earning revenue every time someone clicks one of your ads.

Google currently offers the largest, most successful Pay Per Click ad service. Unless this is the first time you have used the Internet I can say that you have at least came across an AdSense ad if not even clicked on one before. These are the self and same ads that you can publish on your own website or blog in order to make money.

There is one major factor in making money from PPC and that is targeted traffic. The big thing with current Pay Per Click ad programs is that the ads are contextually relevant to your websites content. Contextual ads are ads that are served to you website or page based upon its actual content. Since the ads are relative to the content this increases the chances of someone visiting your site actually clicking the ad since it is more likely to be displaying something interesting to them. For example if you have a blog about football and you are running context based ads on your site then the ads will be related to football While this works most of the time there are some situations in which the ads served on your page may not seem relevant to the content. This can be caused by a few things but two of the main causes are poor use of keywords in your content and the lack of advertisers in your niche if it is a very small one.

Widgets

Widgets are extremely popular and usually reside in a bloggers sidebar. There are constantly new services popping out from the virtual woodwork and throwing new widgets at people. Quite a new entry to the advertising widgets playing field is Widgetbucks. They are called Widgetbucks simply because they serve their ads in a widget. Other than this they are essentially the same thing as most other PPC programs. If you search around for other widgets you can use to monetize your blog you should have no problems finding some interesting ones.

Selling Services

If you can offer any form of service online then this can potentially hold massive profits. Maybe you are a professional writer or designer. Services like these can be incredibly profitable and your blog is a great place to advertise and sell them.

Selling Digital Products

Anything that you can offer through online distribution methods can be sold as a digital product. Fewer people are buying music, video games and software and are now opting to purchase them digitally. If you have the ability to create any form of digital product be it a video game, music track, sound effects, screen savers then you have the opportunity to market them through your blog or website.

When it comes to selling digital products, one place I highly recommend is Clickbank. If you have a digital product you would like to sell you can allow Clickbank to handle it all for you for a small commission. Clickbank not only allows you to sell your own products but you can also sell other peoples products too. They allow you to sell other peoples products via a specially formatted link on your website or blog and you will receive commission on every sale you generate.

Merchandise

With so much competition online for sales of physical products this is probably the hardest revenue stream to break into. However, selling physical products can still make you a lot of money if you do it properly.

By merchandise I don’t mean wide screen TVs, furniture, video games, movies or anything like that. Recently a family member mentioned to me how she likes to write poetry and she showed me some that she had already written. After looking through the 3 inch thick folder and reading a few poems it dawned on my that this could be a valuable skill to her. The cherry on the cake was when she said that she had previously had two of her poems published in a poetry book so I suggested selling them online as framed pictures with the poems as an overlay and seeing as how she can roll poetry off her tongue like….something that rolls a lot i also suggested writing custom verses for people for special occasions. We are now discussing various ways in which her poetry could be integrated into different products and have plans to build a blog where she can market them.

For those who you who do not have the means to create a physical product you can always use a service such as Cafepress. Cafepress allows you to run a store full of products with your own designs such as mugs and shirts and will even print books with your own content which you can then sell for a profit. All you need to do is create a design and you can upload it to the website and preview it on your products. The products that Cafepress offer are sold at a standard price which you can then add to. Whatever the difference in price after adding to it will be your profit.

Paid Reviews

A paid review is where you may get contacted by another blogger or website owner with a request for you to write a review and post it on your blog for a one time payment. This income stream relies quite a lot on the status of the blogger. If you are a new blogger then you shouldn’t expect to get results like this until further down the line when you have established yourself better.

Paid Writing

This wouldn’t be a direct revenue stream from your blog but it would more than likely be your blog that would get you noticed for your writing skills. A skilled writer may find the content on their blog enticing other bloggers to request a paid post for their own blog.

Affiliate Marketing

It is difficult to succeed in affiliate marketing as it requires quite a bit of knowledge in general marketing in order to do well. Affiliate marketing is the closest thing to selling your own products and is very different to other ways of making money online which makes it quite a difficult task. While being one of hardest ways to generate a return if you keep at it and become successful the rewards can be huge. Running affiliate ads on your blog is easy and you could probably expect to make a few dollars here and there but to make the big money will take quite a bit of time, research and experience. As an affiliate you will be promoting another persons product. When you generate a sale you will receive a commission for it. The biggest affiliate program to date is probably the one which Amazon run but there are so many companies now that offer affiliate programs that you can be sure to find a product that you can promote through your blog. Amazon currently offers commission of around 4% on most products but the more expensive products such as electronics tend to have a set commission. If your main purpose of blogging is to generate an income then be sure to look into affiliate marketing. You should however be prepared for some hard work if you want to make a decent reliable profit from it.

Donations

One of my favorites. I haven’t placed a donation link on my primary blog just yet but i will be doing so in the near future as soon as i start to offer free wordpress plugins and templates. Donations tend to bring in more on blogs and sites that offer free services such as website templates, blog themes, WordPress plugins, scripts, free graphics, sounds – anything that you would expect to cost a fair amount of money that is offered for free has a greater chance of generating a donation from a happy customer. The reason why free services tend to work the best is that a lot of the time someone may be looking for a plugin or a script to gain certain functionality from their own website but can’t afford to hire a professional to do it for them. If they find what they are looking for for free on your website they may feel inclined to send you a donation as a thank you!

Don’t keep all your eggs in one basket and NEVER give up if something isn’t working out as you’d hoped it would. A lot of blogs fail simply because of the fact that the blogger has become disheartened by their results.

I urge you to experiment with any form of potential income stream you can lay your hands on. If something doesn’t perform well then you can always take it down and try out something else in its place. Experimenting with different ways to monetize your blog can be quite fun and it is interesting to see the different results from each method.

If you are interested in my articles or services then please take a look over at my personal website – MrMunro.com.

Contact me at mrmunro@mrmunro.com

Out of copyright prints are in high demand especially if mounted ready to frame. Some subjects are more popular than others, notably dogs and cats, sporting subjects especially golf and cricket, topographical (named place) subjects.

I’ve seen really high prices paid for well illustrated items on eBay and also on some outside web sites.

But there’s something I discovered just recently that’s even more amazing than selling your prints on eBay and it’s somewhere you can have hundreds of different products created for you from your original or reprinted illustrations. It’s called Café Press. You start by uploading your illustrations to your own free shop at cafepress.com and have the company create hundreds of different items for you to sell and for other Café Press members to sell on commission.

It’s the closest thing to the perfect dropshipping model you are ever likely to find and it lets you list hundreds or thousands of Café Press items on your own site, on eBay if you like, and have the company deliver on dropship directly to your customers. Go take a look, you’ll see what I mean.

* So Many Things Café Press Can Create From Your Vintage Prints

Here are just a few:

T-Shirts ….. Hats ….. Bags … Prints ….. Stationery ….. Stickers ….. Buttons ….. Books ….. CDs ….. Bathroom Tiles ….. Bags ….. Tote Bags ….. Mugs ….. Glasses ….. Table Mats ….. Decorative Accessories ….. Wall Plates ….. Wall Calendars ….. Mouse Mats ….. Dog Coats ….. Dog Blankets ….. Dog T-shirts ….. Greetings Cards ….. Coasters ….. Bed Throws ….. Magnets ….. Golf Shirts ….. Hoodies ….. Babies’ Body Suits & Pyjamas

* Neat Idea

Consider having products made at Café Press to suit a specific niche market on eBay, such as Freemasonry, Scuba Diving, Topographical Views, etc. Pack your eBay shop with different items and lots of different views.

You can also sell your Café Press products on eBay and have Café Press fulfil orders directly to your customers. It costs so little to keep an item in your eBay shop for the entire month but shop listed items are less easily found by potential buyers than auction listed items. Overcome this by having one or two items listed at auction and use them to attract visitors to your shop to acquire your products ‘Buy It Now’ and also to generate hectic bidding that might even find your products fetching really high prices with lots of Second Chance Offer potential.

* Café Press will even create bound books from your text which can also come from the public domain.

There are smart businesses and stupid businesses. Smart businesses grow profitably, generate cash flow, increase in value over time, and operate without significant input from the founders. Stupid businesses aren’t set up to do any of these things, and are destined to eventually fail.

Following are fifteen signs that you might have a stupid business:

1. Marketing is not a priority. It is a sad but true fact that the most successful businesses do not always provide the best products or services. Often, less deserving businesses do better because they make marketing a top priority. If your business isn’t using at least seven different channels to get visible, then it is at risk.

2. You do not have a detailed cash flow budget and projections. Cash flow and profits are not the same thing, and the number one reason businesses fail – even those with strong potential – is because they run out of cash. It is essential to know how much cash you have, and how much you will need in the near and mid-term. Use a variety of different scenarios to assure enough cash in case of unanticipated problems or delays.

3. You aren’t developing sources of leverage. Businesses that last learn to operate without depending on the founders or owners. Smart businesses have standards, systems, and documented processes in place to provide leverage for owners and grow without depending on one or more key people.

4. You don’t have an “edge” in your marketplace. If you are a me-too business offering the same service, pricing, and products as everyone else, you won’t last long. You need some sort of edge that matters to your prospects and customers and keeps them coming back. Your advantage can include proprietary technology, product leadership, operational excellence, unique distribution channels, protected sources of labor or supplies, and more.

5. You provide lousy customer service. No business owner ever admits to providing lousy customer service, and yet too many businesses do just that. It is crucial to understand your customer’s expectations, know the “magic moments” when you can make or break the customer’s experience, measure results, train employees to delight customers, and put in place standards and processes to assure consistent service.

6. Your business lacks focus. Entrepreneurs love to start new things up, and this can be deadly for cash flow and customer perceptions. Know what you do well, and for whom, and be the best in that niche. Don’t have visions of grandeur. Don’t try to own the whole world. It is expensive to launch new products and enter new markets. For instance, a local boxing gym decided to get into kickboxing and mixed martial arts. They quickly lost their loyal base of boxing clients, without attracting enough new martial arts clients. Fortunately, the owner saw his mistake and regained his focus on boxing.

7. You don’t have the right people to succeed. Businesses need talent – “the right people in the right seats on the bus” as Jim Collins writes. If you don’t have systems in place to recruit, train, reward, and retain top talent, your business won’t last as long as it otherwise could.

8. You spend too much money on things that are unrelated to getting more customers and meeting their needs. Larry Ellison of Oracle used to say, “If you aren’t making it or selling it, what are you doing here?” Prune your business expenses to focus on those activities that add direct value to the customer. For instance, I worked with one business that had huge legal expenses related to contracts, trademarks, and patents. The business ran out of cash because of these costs. It would have been smarter to first test its products, use do-it-yourself legal services, and then spend money protecting its assets after proving market demand.

9. You don’t set a clear direction that every employee understands and embraces. Many business owners keep their strategy and goals in their head, without communicating clearly to employees. It is much more powerful to have a dialogue with employees about where you want to take the company, what it can do best, how it can make more money, and resources required to get it there.

10. Your fixed costs are too high. Constantly find ways to reduce fixed costs. Thanks to technology and the increased acceptance of contract labor, you can have a lean, mean, virtual organization and avoid huge overhead.

11. Your attitude is wrong. One of the biggest reasons businesses don’t last beyond the life of the original owner is because the owner cared more about ego, status, and maintaining control than on having a successful business. Strong business leaders surrender control to top talent, and place greater emphasis on bottom-line results than on their status or ego.

12. You don’t live by metrics. The best businesses pick a few key things to measure and constantly improve on those metrics. Examples include: number of leads, conversion rate, dollars spent per transaction, repeat business, and gross profit margin.

13. Your business fails the five forces test. Michael Porter devised the five forces model of competitive advantage. If you don’t have lots of control over your vendors or customers, face significant government regulation, work in a highly fragmented industry with lots of competition, and anyone can easily enter your industry then your business could be set for lots of trouble.

14. Lots of cash goes in before cash comes in. If your revenue cycle requires large outflows to generate cash inflows, then you are perpetually at risk of losses. For instance, imagine an event promotion company that needs to put down huge deposits in the hopes that lots of people will come to the event; that is a highly risky business and it is no wonder that so many promotion companies come and go.

15. You can’t easily predict future revenues. The best businesses know that $X in marketing will generate $Y in sales, every time. The worst businesses face highly predictable revenue streams. To bring back the example of the promotions company, it is extremely difficult to know on a given date whether lots of people will come to an event or not, especially events with large ticket sales the day of a show. Poor weather, competing events, local traffic jams, and shocking news can all ruin an event.

If your business meets even a few of the above criteria, I wish you the best of luck. You are going to need it.

I started “Fake It Until You Make It” to provide women owned small businesses with tips on using technology. I see so many women not investing in technology or training for the business or themselves. Having no (or poor) technology doom most who try, and prevent others from even trying. They are constantly working harder not smarter because they are afraid of technology.

Now don’t get me wrong, I am not saying an accountant can try, then, instantly become a database programmer, nor can a commercial real estate trainer morph into a web designer. Even if you aren”t particularly savvy with technology, that doesn’t mean you should be afraid of it.

How many of us knew how to walk, talk or do anything when we were first born? NONE! As we grew from an infant to a toddler we learned you had to crawl before you walk. That same philosophy holds true as an entrepreneur, however when it comes to technology we let 4 of the most dangerous words in the English language stand in our way. . .

“I DON’T KNOW HOW!”Some entrepreneurs fear of technology, lead them to utter those 4 words (not to be confused with four letter words, that’s another topic!) more often than they realize. As a result, it’s hard and overwhelming to get started.When was the last time you updated your internet (web) browser software? “I DON’T KNOW HOW!” Regular software updates can provide better service and quicker service, are crucial to keeping your home office computer or your home office network as secure as possible.

When was the last time you updated your Office templates? “I DON’T KNOW HOW!” Microsoft offers free templates for work, home, and play. Importing pre-designed templates into Microsoft can save you time and money.

When was the last time you attended technology training from your home or office just using your phone and computer? “I DON’T KNOW HOW!” WebEx offers free live and recorded webinars and webcasts from industry experts. Principal Financial Group offers free teleclasses for Women, from Leading Experts.

You get my point?

I challenge you to replace 4 of the most dangerous words in the English language with these “I WILL learn how” to use technology to propel my small business to the next level.