Do not just by stuff – because you get told to!

Hi, I have been working on my website for the last 2 hours fixing something very bad that I did to this website when it was still brand new.

I want to warn you not to be attracted to any new “shiny” products that are being advertised that are supposed to catapult your website into the huge earners zone.

I did just that and bought and installed a clever autoblogging tool that would put articles and posts onto my website daily – without me having to do any work at all.

It seemed like such a good idea at the time, and I liked to idea of not having to spend an hour or two daily working on this website. Now what they promised me, and what I got were two different things naturally. I added close to 700 posts to the website and was still down in position 800 on the search engine results pages.

I did know better, and because of the “cowboy” in me – I cannot help myself sometimes – I still went ahead at the time and did it.

Not the funny part is that I did not really regret doing it, because I have learnt a valuable lesson. I wanted to give you the same lesson without you having to waste 6 months of a websites life to find out that it is a bad idea.

Do it the hard way – and do it right, and you will find yourself in a better financial position much quicker.

If you are ever confronted with some sales page that came into your email, and you are busy seeing “proof” that someone is making truck loads of cash from a-simple-and-easy-to-implement-system, I want you to think about this…

Why would that person try to sell you his clever system for only-$47 when he is supposed to be making so much money with it?

Why does he need your $47?

Why would he create competition with his system?

Why would he risk the system becoming overexposed and being found out by Google?

Yeah why?

So then close that sales page and go back to doing the work the ethical way. Even if it seems like hard work, and very boring.

That’s it – finished lecturing you all for the day,

Rob

Komposer Training Video series.

I have been going through a lot of trouble recently setting up my Business-in-a-crate product, and in the process have been making a lot of videos that show you how to edit the mini-sites that you get with your purchase.

Now while my training does go over the basics on how to edit your details in your HTML mini-site, I thought that I should go and find a better (well – more detailed ) version on how to do all the tasks using Komposer.

I have just put a page up on this site…

GO HERE _ KOMPOSER TRAINING VIDEOS – to see what I have to say about it.

Starting up a business decorating cakes

I am excited to add another page to this website relating to a great small business opportunity, cake decor.

I wrote out all the details that you need and put them onto a page here on my website for you to go and look into – if you are wanting to start up a small business and like to decorate cakes.

The amount of people that are searching for cake decor related things monthly are very high. On the page that I did I have added a picture of the search numbers that the Google keyword tool shows me.

Quite simply, if you are shopping around for a business idea, and you have a passion for cake decorating then you will be well advised to look into this opportunity a bit deeper.

Please click on the picture to be taken to the page that I detail more fact for you to help make you a business decision.

Thanks

Rob

Crafters on the internet, or perhaps, crafting websites are a fantastic way for crafters to get recognition or riches from their crafting products and abilities by owning and promoting a craft internet site on the internet.

I am so fanatical about these two words that putting them together makes me all worked up about explaining to you all the conceivable possibilities that there are in relation to crafts online.

Introduction

Blogs websites and forums are on the internet in their thousands and this is good. The common trend is for crafters to not be very skilled at marketing and they sometimes teach each other which big crafting websites are the ones where they can go to and offer the items that they have manufactured.

While this is a perfectly great way for all the artists and crafters to earn pocket money you will never get exceedingly wealthy using this option.

Now there are many ways that a crafter that does not want to turn themselves into a big business, and would like to still have time to do their crafts and run their businesses, can get ahead online with their websites

Serious about business?

If you are not moved by the option that you could get a great income from your crafting skills then I respect that, I would also prefer to be able to only need to share my efforts with those friends that I have both offline and on the internet and not need to get funds from my crafting items.

If you are more than happy with the friends version, a simple blog or one of the free Word-press websites might be good enough for your requirements, and then you could go and join some of the chat rooms and pretty soon you will have all your needs organized online.

However if you are thinking of having a more professional businesslike online business, then a few changes that you will need to take care of with your website. This is rather a extended list and I would not have the space to go into all the details here, but needless to say that you would need to be serious about the idea. Enjoy yourself by all means but you will still need to be given a step by step plan and then you will then need to stick to for your business concern to reach its end result.

Problems

Having any sort of website presence can and in fact will certainly affect your previously available free time. That is and more than like always be the biggest obstacle with artists that are also online, a business domain needs a minimum of 2 hours a day for it to grow and flourish online and if you commence to neglect that side of your online business then you might fail.

Another problem here is that if you do not have a mentor that has vast marketing knowledge about the internet, you might find yourself chasing knowledge and worse applying incorrect marketing systems. Beware of this problem.

Opportunities

Selling your products online is great because it gives you the choice on which direction you would like your website or internet business to develop in. You could do drop shipping and sell in bulk to different crafting outlets around the world. You could even write and promote e books and training courses and sell those to beginners that need training.

Finally you could simply take orders on your items and trade them direct to people who would like to buy directly from you.

Where you could end up

I am a firm believer that the craft industry will grow and develop online; It is becoming increasingly easier to do web seminars and other methods of communicating with people all across the world. I am convinced that there will come a time when we seldom even notice that the world is really becoming smaller and we will be happily ensconced in it and still doing our crafting.

I believe that websites that we now call membership sites will have become normal, and designers internationally will be co operating with each other in many different ways.

Are you going to be involved in it?

Getting the best advice possible

I have 20 years of craft market experience, and now 36 months of internet marketing, and the combination of these two skills can be a massive advantage to your craft business. If you would like more information or any help at all, I suggest that you  contact me, get a copy of my report or simply buy my training course on Flea markets and craft markets

Get a Copy of My Small crafting business report from the banner adverts on the side of this website

 

Are you one of the business owners who think they know about website marketing?

Very few South Africans are fully aware as to how powerful the Internet is going to become as far as business goes. If you ask them – every single one will tell you that they do know, but they are generally just doing the knee jerk type answer.

Seriously – the size and scale that the internet is going to reach is going to be all encompassing, and soon every single person (that is financially able) will own  high quality smart phones, will own massively powerful notebooks and will have access to all sorts of I Pad type entertainment and business tools.

How we go about receiving and looking for our information will change dramatically over the next few years.

Those small businesses that are left behind might never recover.

What make me the clever one to call most of you “un educated” about online marketing?

Well it is very simple, I have been doing 16 hours a day online learning each and every method that exists online – and offline.

I have learnt and applied tricks that are obsolete within days and weeks.

So does that make my comments true yet?

No, BUT I have been telecanvassing a lot to local small businesses.

Now I realize that you are all getting so many SEO experts calling you up everyday and will naturally give us the knee-jerk response.

No Problem (and I very seldom get those bugger-off comments because my marketing is a little weird and some would say bizarre, but it works)

But I can still read between the lines.

95% of small business owners out there, still think that their website builder is an expert. They are very likely months or even years out of date.

Then there are others that simply apply some nasty software trick to your website to earn the R2500 a month that you are paying them, and you are getting crooked in a massive way.

It is your families future that you are shrugging off.

Make sure that your website is getting at least 7 of the following  items!

1. Fresh daily content

2. Original content

3. Every Image must be optimized

4. Most incoming links that you engineer must be contextual

5. Your fan page on face-book is fresh and current – fix and add daily

6. You belong to – and participate in – at least 3 social sites like twitter

7. You have a very carefully worked out e mail marketing system

8. You don’t just add posts to your website, you must add pages

9. Every single post and page must have an underlying keyword campaign running – never just do stuff willy-nilly!

10. You have a blog system running (at least 5 of them) and they are used to supply you with the contextual keywords

11. You are adding keyword related videos at least every third day

12. You are adding slides – also keyword related

13. You create very high quality keyword related articles and post those up every third or 4th day to high PR websites and directories.

14. You add an occasional hub-page or squidoo or any web 2.0 property

15. you post and tweet every move you make

16. you keep your Google maps information up to date

17. You join directories all the time

18. You run classified adds all the time

19. Ha Ha – are you still having fun? there are a lot more, like getting your RSS systems running, setting up your feedburner, joining forums…

If your SEO specialist is doing all of those things to your website you are a very lucky business owner! Hang on to your SEO person, and know that your business will be involved in the future in a big way! Well done!

Look around this website.

It is one of about 15 big sites that I have, and I have another 100 if you allow for sub domains and blogs. (an update here – I got to 150 websites, and the Google changes that they made to their search engine system caused me to have to cut right back down to the main 15 websites - this has taken from February 2011 until now September 2011 and I am still changing my websites)

I do know what is going on out there.

You are welcome to contact me for help.

Rob Anderson

Small business adviser