Tag Archives: online business

Ads4Bucks Raya Merdeka Offer 2011 – Opencart, WordPress, SMS Blaster And Workshops For Only RM250. One Time

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Ads4Bucks Raya Merdeka Offer

Ads4Bucks Raya Merdeka Offer

Are you looking for an online business solution? How about a complete business solution package? What do you get? You get this amazing package of:

  1. Opencart Shopping Cart System
  2. WordPress Content Management System
  3. SMS Blaster System
  4. Opencart 1 day Workshop
  5. WordPress 1 day Workshop

All the above for a single payment of ONLY RM250!

Lets take a look at the three components for a little bit.

Opencart

Opencart is an open source shopping cart system. It is currently the leading shopping cart system in the market. I’ve tried a few open source shopping cart systems – osCommerce, ZenCart, WP-eCommerce, Opencart, etc. I find that Opencart is the easiest an most user friendly. It took me more or less just two hours to learn all its features.

Speaking of features, Opencart comes with loads of it. Following are just a few of them:

  • Unlimited Categories
  • Unlimited Products
  • Unlimited Manufacturers
  • Multi Currency
  • Multi Language
  • Product Reviews
  • Product Ratings
  • Open Source
  • Free Documentation
  • Templatable
  • Automatic Image Resize
  • 20+ Payment Gateways
  • 8+ Shipping Methods

Basically, with Opencart, you can sell whatever you want (within the boundaries of the law in your country, of course), from whoever you want, to whoever you want, using numerous payment and shipping methods in various types of languages and currencies.

Me and U Creative - Interior Design

Me and U Creative - Interior Design

Sawda Cafe - Sawda Based Products

Sawda Cafe - Sawda Based Products

Total Image

Total Image - Health and Beauty

XES - Shoes

XES - Shoes

Those are just but a few of the companies already running their online business on the platform provided by Ads4Bucks.

WordPress

Now, perhaps many already know or may have heard what WordPress is. Anyway, for those who don’t know,

WordPress is web software you can use to create a beautiful website or blog. We like to say that WordPress is both free and priceless at the same time.

~from WordPress.org

Yes, you can use WordPress to build a corporate website, blog and many other types of websites if you want to. Most people, however, just use it for a blog. Just have a look at the following sites:

Kemaman Saloon

Kemaman Saloon

Akademi 69z
Petua Health

Petua Health

Whether you want to utilize WordPress as your corporate site or just a blog or even both, is totally up to you. The platform is provided for you to use as you wish.

My recommendation, use it as a blog and link back to your official corporate site (could also be on the same site). Add SEO juice to your corporate site.

SMS Blaster System

The third piece of the pack. A pretty powerful marketing tool every business should have. SMS is probably the best way to do your direct marketing. Send SMS in bulk directly to your customers and prospects. Inform them about that special promotion event you are having in the near future. Send coupon codes to your customers.

Nothing else beats SMS as a direct marketing method. A large part of the world population has at least one or two mobile phones. SMS are normally read instantly by the recipients.

With an SMS Blaster System, you can schedule your SMS promotional messages automatically throughout the month or year. Set it up once and forget (of course, you’ll need to do some monitoring. Can also be automated, though).

Take a close look at the SMS Blaster System Interface

SMS Blaster System Interface

SMS Blaster System Interface

This seemingly simple interface brings you a wealth of SMS Blaster features like

  • Contacts Management via Phonebook and Groups
  • Credit Monitoring
  • Message Scheduling
  • Message Monitoring

Personally, an SMS Blaster System comes in handy for those who are ever so forgetful about important dates like anniversaries and birthdays. Set it up so that the system sends that all important SMS every year on the dot. Set it and forget.

Workshops

Now, the two workshops – Opencart and WordPress provide you with in depth knowledge about the two systems in the package. In the workshops, you not only benefit from getting to know how to use the systems. You also benefit from gaining knowledge on how to optimize your sites for better positions in the search engines.

Using The Keyword Tool

Using The Keyword Tool

Yes, you gain Search Engine Optimization (SEO) knowledge and how to apply them in Opencart and WordPress. Among the knowledge you would gain:

  • How to determine keywords people use to search for your products.
  • What are the best set of keywords to use in your websites.
  • How do you use those keywords in your websites.
  • Where can you put those keywords in your websites.

A truly valuable knowledge to have if you want to become successful in your online business.

In the workshop, you will also learn how to utilize all three systems in a unified way so that you maximize your online marketing coverage.

Oh yes, workshop participants are allowed to join the workshop any number of time. Attend the workshop as many time as you want without incurring any extra charges.

If you are in the market for a complete online business package, then this Ads4Bucks Raya Merdeka 2011 Special Offer is certainly a must have. For a measly RM250, you get the entire package to start a successful journey on the Internet. It’s also a ONE TIME ONLY payment!

What are you waiting for? Click Here and Register Today.. and share this post with your friends.

5 Things You Can Do Before May 10th 2011 To Help Build A Successful Online Business

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Are you running your business on the Internet? Are you thinking about running an online business? If you fall in both these categories, then this entry is meant for you. I am going to provide you with 5 action items that will definitely help you get the best results from your Internet business.

1. Register Google Apps For Your Business Domain

Google Apps

Google Apps

Google Apps is Google’s Communication and Collaboration Suite of Applications. It’s a set of 4 core applications that allows a business to share knowledge and information among staff and others. The 4 core applications are:

  • Google Hosted EMail
  • Google Calendar
  • Google Sites
  • Google Docs

If you’ve been following my posts, you would have read about Google Apps limiting the number of free user accounts in less than a week from now. So, if you are currently running or have plans to run an operation with more than 10 users, you should get your Google Apps registration now.

2. Grab Darren Rowse’s 31 Days To Build a Better Blog

31 Days Build Better Blog

31 Days Build Better Blog

A blog is an essential part of your online business. Today, a business operating on the Internet will not be able to compete without a blog. So, if you have yet to start or if you want to build a successful business blog, I strongly recommend that you grab the Problogger’s 31 Days To Build A Better Blog.

31 Days to Build a Better Blog is a downloadable e-book designed to help you revitalize your blog by giving you 31 tasks that will all help to turn it into the page view powerhouse you’ve always dreamed of.

You should also get the 31DBBB before May 10th 2011. You’ll save RM30 by doing so because Darren will be raising the price then.

3. Attend The Internet Marketing Workshop: Online Store Module

Internet Marketing Workshop: Online Store Module

Internet Marketing Workshop: Online Store Module

You have just started or planning to start an online store and you are not really clear on the details and how to’s. Don’t worry too much about it. Just register and attend this Internet Marketing Workshop: Online Store Module.

This one day hands-on workshop provides you with all the necessary details about running your Internet store. You will learn the basics required to run a successful Online Business

During the workshop, you will identify the feasibility of your business on the Internet. You’ll get to experience the steps to set up, configure and maintain the operations of an Internet eCommerce solution.

4. Attend The Ummiku Sayang Learning Center Design Your Own Blog Seminar

You will certainly want the best design for your business blog don’t you? Well, you can opt to outsource your blog design and pay for it. However, if you are just starting up, the best alternative is for you to do the design on your own and save on the cost of hiring a designer.

If you opt for doing the design on your own, then the Design Your Own Blog Seminar is your chance to learn about blog design on your own.

5. Grab The 69z Academy EStore Package Special Offer

This last item, is especially for those who are just planning to start your Online Store. The 69z Academy EStore Package is certainly the best eCommerce Startup Package available today. The package gives you:

  • Online Store System
  • Corporate Website and Blogging System
  • SMS Blaster System
  • Complete Training Modules
  • Unlimited Classifieds Advertising

Be reminded that a couple of these items require that you take action within this week in order to enjoy savings. So, if I were you, I’d take action right away and grab Google Apps and 31 Days To Build A Better Blog today.

Your Online Business Blueprint For 2011

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2011 Making Your Online Business GreatThe time is just right to brief you up on the Basics of Online Business Blueprint for the year 2011. How did your online business do in 2010? With 2011 approaching fast, you need to prepare your business for the new year. Lets take a look at how you can plan for an even better business in the year 2011.

Before you start, however, it’s best if you were to first reassess the current status of your business. Where are your pages at in terms of the Search Engines Result Page (SERP) for your targeted keywords? Are your pages climbing up the Google Page Rank? Are they somewhere in the Search Engine limbo? Did your blog achieve what it was meant to do in 2010? How many of these 13 Blogging Blunders did you make?

What Is Your Online Business Objective in 2011?

As the saying goes, “He who fails to plan, plans to fail”. So, before the start of the new year, I’d say it’s best if you plan your business upfront. While planning, figure out what is it that you want to achieve next year with your blog.

What’s the goal of your business blog in 2011? Do you want more sales? Do you want more subscribers? Do you want more of your readers to click on your Ads? Do you want to change the focus of your blog to a new aspect of your business? Would you like to attack the market from a different angle?

Planning The Work To Be Done In Your Online Business

[ad#Google Adsense-2]
Once you’ve laid down the plan and objective of your blog for 2011, it’s time to plan how to achieve that target. What are the keywords to target for in 2011, if going for new set of keywords. Who is going to write the articles for the targeted keywords? Outsource? Internal staff? Self written?

Who will be in charge of marketing your business? Where do you plan to market? Again, will you also outsource this? Assign it to a specific staff or do it on your own? What are the tools you need for marketing?

Backlinks are also important for your online business success. You need a lot of backlinks in order to climb up the rankings. Where do you get these backlinks from? How do you get them? Directory submissions? RSS Feeds? Podcasts? Do you assign them to external parties or do you work on them yourself?

Wait a minute! All the above seems a little bit too much for one person to handle. How can one person do all the above and still work on the business?

Well, with proper planning and execution, you can certainly do it. Yes, it seems like too much for one person to handle alone. However, if you were to follow a proven blueprint or system, it can be manageable. Still, it would certainly be good if you have at least one assistant or partner to help you out.

Working On Your Online Business In 2011

Seriously, you don’t really need to write content or articles every day. Of course, if you have a fairly new blog, that’s a different story. If your business blog has been up for a while with existing content, then two articles per week would do just fine. So, that makes it about 8 or so articles per month.

How long does it take for you to churn out 8 articles? 4 hours? 8 hours? Seriously, it should not take you too long to produce 8 keyword targeted articles per month. Spend one day at most to write the articles and schedule them up in WordPress. Set it up and forget. WordPress will automagically publish your articles accordingly.

Go and install the Editorial Calendar Plugin. This wonderful plugin allows you to visualize your editorial plan for the month. It will certainly help you out in planning your article publications.

Add Rosalind’s 2011 Holiday Calendar and your local Holiday Calendar if you have one into the mix. Combine them all together and you will have yourself a pretty complete list of events to plan your articles around for the entire year.

Now that you’ve got your contents all ready for publishing. You can set some time for marketing and getting backlinks. Yes, you need to submit your site to directories, RSS feeds, podcasts and you need to gather some backlinks. The truth is, you don’t have to do it all at once. Can you spare 30 minutes a day? That is already more than enough to cover it all.

Every day, you submit your site to a web or blog directory. Submit your RSS feed to a Feed directory or aggregator. Just submit to two or three per day. That should only take you about 5 to ten minutes, probably less.

You now have about 20 minutes to spare from that 30 minutes. You’ll need a list of relevant forums in your niche. Spend the remaining time to promote your business in these forums. How do you do this? Be active in the forums. Post questions or provide answers to some one else’s question. Help people out. Link back to your site in your signature. That’s it.

That 20 or so minutes could also be used to make comments on other relevant blogs in your niche. Do what you do in the forums. Post questions. Provide answers. Bottomline, add value to the conversation.

Another way to spend that 20 minutes is to rewrite those articles you have written. Use an article spinner to speed up your writing. Submit these rewritten articles to article directories. You could also add them into web 2.0 sites like Squidoo and Hubpages. Spend at least one week marketing your business on these web 2.0 sites.

You can rotate what you do for the 20 minutes. You don’t have to do them all in the same day. One day the forums, another day blog comments, one day articles and so on. Just stick to spending about 30 minutes every day on marketing.

So, are you ready to work on your online business in 2011? Bare in mind that the 30 minutes a day mentioned is really just the minimum amount of time you need to work on your online business. That is if your online business is just a small part of what you do – you have a full time nine to five job.

If you are fully committed to your online business, then you could probably spend more time on it rather than just 30 minutes a day. It’s all about putting the relevant pages of your online business in front of those who are looking for it. If you intend to make 2011 a successful year for your business, then you should start it right.

You’d do great if you follow a set of proven online business blueprint. It will surely help you out in making 2011 a highly successful year for your Online Business ventures.

Comments? :)

Two Weeks Of Shopping (Marketing) Left

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Two more weeks to go. Yes, for those of you who are into last minute Christmas Shopping, you have about 16 days of shopping window left. If you are shopping online for bestsellers, you need to minus of another day or two for delivery.

Now is indeed one of the most hectic shopping period of the year. What does this mean for people like me and you who are interested to cash in on a piece of the action? Well, it’s time to market your product sites like crazy!

Of course, this is assuming that you have got your sites up and ready for promotion. If not, well, you could probably create a site in one day if you know how. But seriously, these 2 weeks that you have left, should really be spent entirely on marketing marketing marketing.

1. Initial Marketing

You really should have at least performed some initial marketing of your site when you created it. However, just in case you haven’t. All you really need to do for initial marketing is create an account at Ping.fm and the related sites provided in the service. Once registered, just promote your site on Ping.fm with something like, “Hi all, I’ve got a new site up. If you are looking for <Your Keyword Here> , please take a look at it.”

Off course, don’t forget to provide the link to your website.

2. Feed Submission

First, do you know what a website feed is? If you don’t click this to learn what it is. If your site is built on WordPress, you already have a feed link. It’s at http://yourdomain.com/feed.

That’s the link you will use to promote your site on the following feed directories.

There are a lot of feed directories that you can send your feed to. However, just start with the above first. Be aware that you should only add your feed to about 3 – 4 directories per day. You don’t want to go overboard. It may look spammy and unnatural in the eyes of the search engines.

3. Podcast Submission

You are probably thinking, “But.. I don’t do podcasts”. Well, worry not, I’m not going to ask you to. All you need to do is register your site at Odiogo. They will automatically create podcasts of your entries. Cool? Instant podcasts!

Once you’ve done that, the next step is to promote your podcasts to podcasts directories.

Head on over to PodcastDirectory.com for a list of podcast directory you can use to promote your podcast feed.

Spend these two weeks to promote your sites using the above methods. Of course, don’t forget to join all the various forums in your niche. Just Google for “<Your Keyword Here> forum”. Join the forums and participate. Be active. Add value to the discussions. Help people solve their problems. Put your site in your Signature.

Do all the above religiously, you will find your site moving up the charts in search engines and traffic building up to your site.

Of course, you should also keep adding content to your site. Hopefully, you’ve got this automated or scheduled. This will allow you to focus solely on marketing.

Do you have any other quick online marketing tips? Please do share it here with everyone.

Did you like this entry? Do click on the “Like” button and share this with your friends.

Go Get A Proper Domain La!

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Yes, this posting is meant for all the businesses out there (especially Malaysian Businesses) who are currently creating your Internet presence solely on Blogger or any other free blogging services. There are just so many of our local businesses doing this. It makes me wonder if they are really serious with their business.

Why? What is wrong with running a website on blogger? Well, there’s nothing wrong with using the Blogger system to run your website. Use the Blogger system if you are most comfortable with it. However, please please please get your very own domain name. Do not use yourname.blogspot.com if you are building a website on Blogger.

You should head on over to the following domain registrar (NameCheap) and purchase a domain for your business.

Try to get a .com as hard as possible. If your company or business name is taken, be creative. Look for a domain name related to your business.

Say your company name is Firefly Enterprise. Just so happens that firefly.com is not available. I really do not recommend you go for .net or .org even if the two are available. Why? Simply because, to most people, when they type the website name in the browser, they will always type in .com and not anything else.

Lets just say that your business provides cheap taxi fare for customers, then you could certainly go for a domain name like cheaptaxifare.com. As a matter of fact, I’d highly recommend that you go with the CheapTaxiFare.com rather than anything else.

And yes, do not compromise by adding numbers or additional letters to your business name. I mean, your business name is Firefly, so don’t go and use a domain like 1Firefly.com or Fireflies.com. It will just confuse your customers. Besides, it looks kind of funny when your logo says Firefly and your domain name says something else.

Here is a hint for those trying to find a suitable company name. Do a domain search for your company name prior to registering it. It’s best if you can register your business with a name which is still available on the Internet. Seriously, it’s not so hard to do. Just go over to any domain registrar site and do a search. Should take you at most half a minute.

An Internet domain name is not going to cost you an arm nor a leg. A .com domain will set you back for about USD10.00 more or less. USD10 per year means you are paying less than a dollar per month. Think of it as cost for promoting your business on the Internet. I would say it’s one of the cheapest form of advertising you can get. It also runs 24 x 7 x 365.

Of course, if you would like to register a local domain name that ends in .com.my or .my, you can do so by registering at Exabytes, EmbunWeb or other local domain registration sites. Local domain name will set you back a little bit more, though.  A .com.my will cost you about RM80, while a .my will cost you about RM120 per year. You should still be able to recover the cost in a jiffy.

Why you MUST have your own domain name?

Offline and Online Business Branding.

You want people to recognize your business don’t you? Lets take a look at the following names – abcdef.blogspotcom or 12345.blogspot.com or fancyname.blogspot.com. Now, whose name do you think is more prominent in all the three sites above? It’s obvious that people will see blogspot.com as the prominent branding.

By having blogspot.com in your website name, you are directly promoting the Blogger brand, for FREE too.

Online Business Credibility.

Would you buy from a website if the site doesn’t seem credible? So does everyone else. Your own domain portrays some form of credibility about your business. Yes, it takes more than just a domain name to portray credibility. Domain name is just the starting point.

Online Business Continuity.

Today you are on yourbusiness.blogspot.com. What will happen to your business should Google decide not to continue supporting the blogspot domain? Now, don’t think that you are safe just because Blogger is backed by Google.

Just look at all the millions who were running on Windows Live. As I’ve pointed out in my last post, Windows Live is closing down. That’s a service provided by Microsoft itself. Today, there are only two major blog service provider left – WordPress.com and Blogger. Who knows what will happen in the future.

Even if the provider is strong today, the provider could be asked to close down the service by the law. This happened very recently to one Free Service provider who was forced to shutdown their service by US Authorities. As a result, 73,000 blogs and websites went down.

So, lets say Blogger kills blogspot.com. You will then have to move to another service provider with a different domain name. Lets say another major player shows up. You join them and create yourbusiness.blogx.com. You now have to re-market your business under a new domain. Change your business cards and all marketing materials to reflect the new domain name. Your existing customers will probably have a hard time trying to get to your site. You will SURELY lose a lot of business.

If you have your own domain name. You will never face this problem. As long as you keep keep on paying the domain fee annually, the domain name will always be yours. No matter what ever happens to your hosting or registrar, the domain name will stay with you. You can bring the domain name wherever you decide to host with. Even with Blogger.

Can’t justify the costs needed to purchase a domain name? Please.. please.. please.. cut the crap. From what I can gather, from the Internet and local media, most businesses who are now running on free blogging services are putting up ads. Every single day, when I read the local newspapers, I see ads that contains reference to a website like xyz.blogspot.com.

People.. If you can afford to pay premium media ad slots, how can you say you can’t afford to purchase a domain name?

Now.. Go Get Yourself A Proper Domain Name La.. As long as you don’t have your own domain name, you don’t own your online business. Need help in setting up your domain and website? I can probably help you out. Just drop me a line in here.