Dec10

Social Media and the Decline of Authority

by Don on December 10th, 2011 at 2:14 pm
Posted In: Guest Posts

Mao Tze-Tung once famously declared that power comes from the barrel of a gun. He was wrong. Power comes from communication. One person can, after all, wield only one or at most two guns at a time, which is seldom enough for those weapons to give him any real power. If Mao himself had been unable to communicate effectively, no one would have wielded any guns on his behalf, and he would never have prevailed against either the Japanese or the Kuomintang.

Power comes from the ability to communicate. With the rise of the Internet and, especially, of social media networks such as Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube, the ability to communicate has become more and more decentralized. As that happens, power is decentralized as well, with the result that central authority on all levels of society – religious, business, and social as well as governmental – is breaking down.

The old model of communication involves a single speaker whose words and ideas are communicated to many listeners. This is the model employed by the printing press and broadcast media alike. A newspaper communicates the words of its writers and editors, and those of others that the writers and editors see fit to quote, to all of the readers. A similar model prevails in broadcast media. A radio or television show communicates the words of its writers and producers spoken by on-screen or on-air personalities, along with those whom the show’s producers deem worthy of being filmed or reported. Always leaders in various walks of life, political, business, religious, and social, are communicated, but most people have no access to the tools of communication. The model is like a wheel with a single hub doing the communicating to all points on the rim.

This model supports central authority. The government’s words are communicated effectively, but those of critics of the government are not, except those of the “official” opposition represented by the opposing political party or parties, who are themselves part of the authority structure of the state. The same is true in areas of life outside politics.

But social media follow a different model. Anyone can publish a page on Facebook or a compact Tweet or a YouTube video. Communication being the medium of power, power has passed from concentration in the hands of a few to dispersal among the many. We are only beginning to see the consequences of this transformation. Already the ability to mount an effective protest campaign has increased dramatically, along with the ability to compel business activity through threat of a boycott. Several governments have been toppled, literally, by means of Twitter, Facebook, and YouTube. Religious leaders decline in their ability to command obedience. In the words of W.B. Yeats, “Things fall apart, the center cannot hold.” Will mere anarchy be loosed upon the world? Or will we find new ways to achieve order without central authority?

Today, the social media has totally become powerful that it has effectively bypassed some important things in the less electronic world such as the power of authority. Learn more about this at http://www.findermind.com.

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Dec08

Earn fast cash through affiliate marketing with little effort

by Don on December 8th, 2011 at 3:58 pm
Posted In: Affiliate Marketing, Guest Posts

Earn fast cash through affiliate marketing with little effort

Online affiliate marketing has gained popularity as a fresh way of earning quick revenue amongst the Internet users. Just like in any other marketing process, the make money affiliate marketing programs promote a particular product or service of the merchant company. You can work as an affiliate, and the merchant website, in return, offers a fixed commission for driving traffic from your website or blog to them.

The merchant company inserts a link into your website which is directly connected to their own. When a consumer clicks on such a link, he or she is immediately sent over to the merchant’s website whereby he/she performs some desired action. You get your commission on the number of persons completing that action.

So, for each successful marketing transaction, participation of three individuals is necessary:

The merchant website – They provide the link and pay you after completion of each action.

The marketer – You only act as the marketer, since you send over the consumers from your website or blog traffic.
The consumer – They are the most important parties involved. The merchant waits for them, and you can make money with affiliate marketing, through them.

Affiliate marketing has grown into a chief source of profit in the recent times. Payment offered through affiliate marketing depends on individual merchant companies. Based on how the marketers are paid, the make money affiliate marketing programs are classified into 3 types:

Pay per click – Each time any consumer click on the provided link, you get the money. The consumers are then transferred over to the merchant website. They may or may not be an active participant of the offered sales process. Nevertheless you get paid.

Pay per lead – The affiliates get paid when the consumer performs the desired action on the merchant website. Those may include enrollment for trial membership or free consultation, newsletters, filling out of forms or downloading of toolbars or screensavers etc. Leads are generated when the prospective consumers give any form of contact information like their personal numbers or e-mail id.

Pay per sale – In this type of make money affiliate marketing program, you can only earn revenue, when a consumer concludes a sale with the merchant company. You either get a fixed amount on each purchase or a percentage of the actual sale.

Risks involved in affiliate marketing

However, you need to be very careful while choosing a relevant merchant company that your website or blog audience can associate with. Lots of irrelevant and low quality links may irritate your readers, and may reduce traffic to your website or blog. Thus lack of oversight while affiliating with an online marketing program, may hamper your reputation and dry up your chances of earning money.

You can choose any make money affiliate marketing program that suits you. The process is simple and doesn’t include a lot of responsibilities on your part. It is effective as a way of promotion and helps you to increase your income.

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Dec04

Affordable Advertising on Craigslist

by Don on December 4th, 2011 at 3:38 pm
Posted In: Advertising

Affordable Advertising on Craigslist

The advertising on Craigslist is certainly affordable. In fact there is no fee for the majority of posts made on Craigslist. Craigslist began as a non-profit organization but in 1999 it was converted to a for-profit organization. However, operating costs are supported by charging nominal fees for help-wanted advertisements placed on the San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York City Craigslist websites. Additionally, there is a fee for brokerage apartment listings in New York City.

The vast majority of those posting advertisements on any of the Craigslist over 300 websites are not paying a fee to do so. This definitely makes posting advertisements on Craigslist to be worthwhile from a financial standpoint. While the advertisements are free, care should be taken to post these advertisements judiciously because although there is financial loss, poor posting can result in a loss of time and resources if it leads to poor profit potential.

Why Craigslist is Free

Although the founder of Craigslist, Craig Newmark, was approached in 1997 about the possibility of running banner advertisements on Craigslist to generate a profit, he made the decision to keep Craigslist as a noncommercial website. Even after Craigslist was converted to a for profit organization commercialization did not infiltrate the website. The points listed in the Craigslist mission statement demonstrate why Craigslist has remained noncommercial:

• Giving each other a break, getting the word out about everyday, real-world stuff
• Restoring the human voice to the Internet, in a humane, non-commercial environment
• Keeping things simple, common-sense, down-to-earth, honest, very real
• Providing an alternative to impersonal, big-media sites
• Being inclusive, giving a voice to the disenfranchised, democratizing…
• Being a collection of communities with similar spirit, not a single monolithic entity

Advertising on Craigslist vs. Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is another type of marketing which many business owners find to be both worthwhile and affordable. For many, the appeal of affiliate marketing is the affiliates are not compensated for their efforts unless the business owner sees some type of gain from the advertising. This gain may be in the form of website traffic in the case of pay-per-click marketing, in the form of sales in pay per sale marketing or in the form of potential leads when a website visitor performs a specific action such as registering with a website or signing up for an offer.

While affiliate marketing is very appealing, there are others who prefer advertising on Craigslist. The advantage Craigslist offers to advertisers is, of course, that the advertisers never pay for their business advertisements and the community receives a great deal of website traffic already so driving traffic to the website is not a concern.

Why Free Is Not Always Better

However, there are some specific instances where free advertising is not the best type of advertising available. Consider a product or service for which Craigslist does not have an appropriate category. In this case advertising on Craigslist may not be worthwhile because although the advertisement is free, it is also not likely to receive a great deal of attention from members of the target audience. In this case, advertising on Craigslist may be a waste of resources.

Another example of an instance when Craigslist may not be a great advertising option is when the market is already saturated with competitors’ advertisements. In this case it can be difficult to sway customer loyalty so it might be more worthwhile to pay for advertising in a less crowded market.

About The Author
Don Jeffre is the Owner of Don’s Sales, a computer repair business based in Vilonia, AR. USA. He owns and operates Really Unique Online Business Concepts, a blog dedicated to providing social media marketing and search engine optimization information. With over 14 years of industry experience, Don Jeffre shares his knowledge by posting daily SEO tips to his blog. Contact Don Jeffre at 501-796-2525, Skype: revenue4u, or Facebook

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Nov29

Email Marketing Mistakes

by Don on November 29th, 2011 at 3:10 pm
Posted In: Email Marketing

Email Marketing Mistakes

Many business owners who opt to try email marketing make the mistake of believing any type of email marketing is beneficial. This is simply not true; there are a number of mistakes business owners can make when they organize an email marketing campaign. Examples of these types of mistakes may include allowing promotional materials to be tagged as spam, not following up with promotional emails, not being prepared for an influx of customers after an email marketing effort and not marketing specifically to the target audience.

We will begin our discussion on email marketing mistakes with spam. Spam is a problem which is reaching endemic proportions. Each day Internet users are bombarded with spam from around the world. This may include a host of unsolicited emails which are promoting products or services the recipients may or may not be interested in purchasing. A critical mistake business owners can make in email marketing is to issue emails which are likely to be construed to be spam. This may result in the emails never reaching the recipient or the emails being deleted, without being read, by the recipient. Avoiding the potential of falling into the spam category is not very difficult. It basically involves ensuring your promotional emails contain more useful copy than blatant advertising. This will make it more likely for your emails to be taken seriously.

Another email marketing mistake often made is failure to follow up on promotional emails. Sending out emails to interested parties can be very beneficial but it is even more beneficial to contact these email recipients by other methods such as mail or telephone to answer any questions they may have and offer any additional information they may require. This type of follow up can be much more effective than simply sending an email and allowing it to fall into the abyss of an overcrowded email inbox.

Business owners may also run into the mistake of not preparing themselves for an influx of customers after an email marketing effort. The express purpose of email marketing is to generate increased interest in your products or services. Therefore it is critical for business owners to anticipate an increase in business and be prepared to accommodate this increased demand for products and services. This is important because potential customers who have to wait for products or services may seek out your competitors who are better prepared to provide them with products or services immediately.

Finally a critical mistake made by business owners is to not tailor an email marketing campaign to their specific target audience. This can be a problem because it may result in the email marketing being less effective. Business owners typically make this mistake because they fall into the trap of believing that it is more important to reach a large audience than it is to reach a target audience. You may blindly send your email marketing materials to millions of recipients and only generate a few leads. However, you could send the same email marketing materials to a smaller group of only a thousand recipients who all have an interest in your products and services and will likely generate more leads from this smaller email distribution list. It is not only important to send your message to members of your target audience but to also tailor your message to suit this audience. Creating an email message which will appeal to a variety of individuals is not as important as creating a message which will appeal to members of your target audience.

You will need an autoresponder system to market with email.

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Nov28

Choosing the Right Plastic Shopping Baskets

by Don on November 28th, 2011 at 5:10 am
Posted In: Guest Posts

Choosing the right plastic shopping baskets for your store can make a big difference in the shopping experiences of your customers. Several key considerations should be taken into account when choosing the right shopping basket for you.

Space

Choose a basket that provides the right amount of space for your shoppers. If your store sells larger items, you will need larger baskets; small, light items require less space. In addition to the space within the basket, consider the space required to store your baskets. Plastic trolley baskets with wheels have more space for shoppers’ needs, but will take up more space in your shop. Stacking plastic baskets are smaller, but take up less storage space. Consider purchasing a basket plinth to keep your baskets neatly stacked and readily available to your customers.

Customer Demographic

Consider who will shop at your store. Young urban shoppers may prefer baskets they can carry, while older customers, particularly the elderly, will likely prefer baskets with wheels that they can pull along as they shop, saving their arms and backs. Both styles of plastic baskets come in several different colours that will suit the specific needs of your customers.

Comfort

Consider the comfort of the handle for shops where larger or heavier items are sold. Thicker plastic handles are more comfortable for the crook of the arm. To determine the comfort of different styles of baskets, consider taking a day to shop at various stores with different kinds of plastic baskets. Load up the basket with heavy goods and carry it in your hands and over your arm to check for comfort. Let your personal experience guide your choice of basket for your customers.

Colour

Plastic baskets come in a variety of colours. For boutiques and other shops where even the smallest details matter, consider black, which is unobtrusive and goes with nearly any decor. In addition to your shop’s decor and your personal preferences, consider colour psychology when choosing a red, green or blue basket. Red is a strong, quite aggressive colour. Blue is the colour of productivity and serenity. Green is a calm yet stimulating colour. If your shop is a quiet place where customers tend to browse and linger, you could choose green or blue. If your shop is a quick stop for customers who know exactly what they need, red would be a logical choice.

Whatever style of plastic basket you choose for your shop, make sure you and your customers will be happy with the colour, style and comfort of the basket. Plastic shopping baskets are durable and will last a very long time, so making the right choice from the start will save you money in the long term.

Choosing the right plastic shopping baskets is a process that can be overlooked, so as a fellow shopper I felt the need to address this issue.

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