Getting Organized and Profitable for 2009

Here’s a great freebie that I just heard about and wanted to be sure to pass on to you. If you’re looking to have a more focused, profitable and stress-free 2009 (it’s closer than you think), hurry on over to download it.

It’s put together by Alice Seba, my go-to gal when it comes to running an efficient and profitable online business. She has put together a printable planning calendar that shows you exactly how she plans out her year to keep a steady income without breaking her back.

Interestingly, she calls it a “Planning Calendar”, but what she’s giving away really is a full planner system that you can print out and adapt to your own unique business. It’s a definite must-have and I’ve already grabbed mine.

Get yours with no opt-ins or strings attached:

Free Planning Calendar

Three Red-Carpet Service Tips for Product Sellers

Michelle’s Note: I purchased Donna’s book, Insider Secrets to Delivering Red Carpet Customer Service, on Amazon and received it about a week ago. I have read most of the book — and can say that she has some awesome information. Her advice and insight will help you change your perception of what is excellent customer service.

But she doesn’t stop there. I have written several blog post on customer service and how it is a partnership. Donna goes a step further and has an entire chapter of her book dedicated to describing how to be a better customer. Not only will this help you in your role as a customer, but will also help you identify the star customers in your business.

I’m also proud to announce that Donna has written a guest post for me to share with you about how you can provide red-cart service for your customers….

Three Red-Carpet Service Tips for Product Sellers
By Donna Cutting

It’s Award season again! That time of year when Hollywood rolls out the red-carpet for the fabulously famous and their entourage at the Emmys, the Golden Globes, and the cream of the crop – the Academy Awards. What better time to take stock and ask yourself, how can I give my customers a little red-carpet treatment of their own? Here are three ideas you can implement right now to give your customers The Celebrity Experience.

1. Give Them SWAG! – One of my audience members told me this story: She found a clothing store that she absolutely loved. She bought a few outfits, and wrote to the CEO of the store about how happy she was to find them. Two weeks later there was an unexpected box at her front door. She opened it to find 3-4 outfits, in her size, from the store with a note from the CEO: “These are for you with our compliments! We’re so glad you found us – and we look forward to your continued business.” Do you think she shops there regularly? You bet she does! Do you think she tells that story to everyone she knows? You better believe it! If you’re not convinced at how much giving products away can create buzz about your business and bring new customers, ask Ben & Jerry how much press they receive when they hold “free cone day.” It’s the kind of buzz that enabled a small scoop shop housed in a renovated gas station to grow to a $4 million business in six short years, and later to be sold for $326 million.
2. Let Their People Talk to Your People – If you sell products online, you want the online experience to be so easy, so smooth that the customer can simply make their selections, enter their credit card information, and cha-ching – they’re happy and you are that much richer. However, when your customer has a question that they can’t find an answer to online, or they simply want to talk with a live person, nothing is more frustrating than not being able to locate a phone number on the website. Delivering red-carpet customer service means being approachable and accessible. Otherwise, it’s like walking into a store and finding no one who wants to help you. Frankly, online it’s even easier to simply find another store. Give your online store a personality. Put your photo up, tell your customers a little about you, and let them know how to reach you. They may never have to – but it will ease their mind to know that if they need you, you’re there.
3. Give Them Star Power – Celebrities have choice, a voice, control, influence, and power. If you want to give your customers a true Celebrity Experience, consider giving them more power and participation in your business. Give them a choice – online ordering? In person? On the phone? Give them voice – write a blog and allow your customers to post comments.  Give them influence –Invite people to make recommendations about your products or give you suggestions for new ones. Remember when the Mars company invited customers to vote on what color would replace the tan M&M’s? Give them the power of an inner circle. Create an elite club and make your regular customers the members. Look at Harley Davidson’s HOG (Harley Owners Group) club for a great example of how this can work brilliantly.

Donna Cutting is the author of The Celebrity Experience: Insider Secrets to Delivering Red-Carpet Customer Service (Wiley, 2008) and is a full-time keynote speaker on the topics of employee engagement and customer experience.

This guest blog post was done as part of a virtual blog tour for Donna Cutting.

Yesterday the blog tour stopped at these blogs:

Phil Gerbyshak displays a book excerpt from Donna’s book
Melody Campbell / The Small Business Guru

Today, the blog tour is featured at these blogs also:

Terri / Pop Art Diva
Dawn Goldberg / Write Well Me

And tomorrow the virtual book tour continues with these blogs:

Dr. Sally Witt will conduct a book review on her blog.

First Product Sellers Seminar A Success!

If you’ve noticed a few crickets chirping on my blog this week, it was for good reason. I’ve spent the past couple of weeks running double time to prepare for the first annual Product Sellers Seminar, an online interactive seminar for physical product sellers.

Despite a few technical challenges, it turned out to be a bigger success than even I had anticipated. We had awesome speakers and I had the best support from Teresa, an expert in online event promotion.

I just want to take a moment to thank everyone who attended this year’s Product Sellers Seminar. We had several amazing speakers and vendors who all had a ton of information to share.

We learned a lot, we made new friends and we had fun, too!

Some of the comments from this year’s seminar:

This entire seminar is doing it for me!  This is one of the best that I have attended in a while and I try to make as many as I can.

–Elizabeth Roberts

I am ejoying all of this. I am new to the work from home arena and learning about running a business and figuring out all the website stuff has been overwhelming. I haven’t even gotten to marketing yet, so I have learned so much about some of these issues.

–Lesley Dubiel

If you missed any or even all of this year’s sessions, you’re not too late! For this week, we are continuing to sell the speaker and vendor recordings, for $20. You can buy the Product Sellers Seminar Recordings Pack until Friday.

Also, we’re already starting work on the 2009 Product Sellers Seminar, so stick around go ahead and join our notification list and we’ll keep you updated!

How To Increase Web Site Traffic With Onsite SEO

Figuring out what good search engine optimization is — and what it is not — can take months, if not years. As a busy home business owner, you don’t have time to hunt through 10 SEO forums and blogs, and wade through bad information to find the truth.

So, I’ve put together a list of steps that you need to complete in order to optimize your website for the search engines.

Before you start, you need to understand that SEO is an ongoing process that starts with making sure your web pages are relevant to the search terms (keyword phrases) your potential customers enter into search engines to find your product or service.

To start, just follow this list:

1. Do your keyword research. Make a long list of all keywords associated with your product/industry.
2. Choose one, most relevant, keyword phrase for each page on your site.
   
3. Integrate the most relevant keyword phrase for that page into the title tag.
4. Include your keyword phrase in the meta description tag of your page, with a call to action.
   
5. Add your keyword phrase to your heading tags on your page.
6. Add your phrase to the image alt and link title tags.
7. Make sure you use close variations of your keyword phrase on the page in some elements, to avoid excessive repetition.
8. Add your keyword phrase or variation once or twice to the content (paragraphs of text) on your page.
   
9. Review your page to make sure the content reads
   properly for your human visitors. You don’t want to run them off with
   overly optimized content and headings.
10. Repeat these procedures on every page of your site.

Some of these steps may not make sense or may be confusing. Other
steps, such as submitting your site to search engines or adding keyword
phrases to your meta keywords tag, have been purposefully left off this
list. To learn why — and more importantly, to learn, step-by-step
exactly what you need to do, in what order and with visual aides, join
SEO Power Up.

SEO Power Up includes all the information you need to optimize your web pages — and beginning to advanced tips and instructions for offsite SEO and ongoing optimization. Read more about this membership at SEOPowerUp.com.

How To Start A Business With No Money

Most physical product sellers have a passion for the items they want to sell, whether it’s baby slings, cloth diapers, wooden toys or jewelry. Unfortunately, because of the current economic situation, many moms need to start a business with no money.

So what can an aspiring physical product seller do to jump start her business with no money down? Most successful business owners know that it can take up to two years for a business to turn a profit. Wwhat can she do?

I’ve put together a list of ideas to help you start a product-selling business with no money:

1. Take a look at what equipment you already have. If your household already has a computer and Internet access, you’re halfway there.
2. Talk to your family and friends, offline and online. Find out what kind of products or they need. One of my clients started a business after creating a baby sling to fit her needs. After dozens of people stopped her on the street or in the store to inquire about it, she hung her shingle online.
3. Create a business plan. This can be just one sheet of paper on which you write down your short-term and long-term goals for your business. Consider this your map, afterall, you’ll spend more trying to get where you’re going, if you don’t know where you’re headed.
4. Decide if you want to sell your own products, or someone else’s products.
5. If you want to sell your own products, that you create, look around your house to see if you have materials you might need to create a product. For example, if you already have a jewelry-making hobby, perhaps you can sell the jewelry. The same with a candle or sewing hobby. The trick is to figure out what you can offer that is unique (or delivered/presenting in a unique way) from your competitors.
6. If you truly don’t have what you need in your home to start creating your products, try holding a garage sale, or getting rid of some extra stuff on ebay. This can help you earn the money you need to invest in your business. I know some people who did some babysitting for awhile to earn the money they needed to start a business.
7. Once you have chosen a product to offer from the materials you have on hand, or have purchased with your babysitting earnings, you can start making testers for your friends (make sure they will be honest with you and that they are truly part of your target market) and make adjustments according to their feedback.
8. If you decide to market other people’s products, look around for products that you already use, that you are passionate about and that offer an affiliate program.
9. Start a blog at Wordpress.com and start promoting your products. Make sure you talk about yourself, and your expertise in the industry related to your products as well.
10. If you’re selling your own products, market them on Craig’s List and in your forum signature (if the rules allow). Ask your blogging friends to write about your product.
11. If you’re selling other people’s products on your blog, start contributing to other blogging communities, making sure to include your blog address when you sign up. (Don’t include the address in your actual comment though. This is spam.)
12. When you’re ready to sell the product you created on your own website, start out with one from Free WAHM Hosting. Keep in mind though, once you start earning money, you’ll want to upgrade to a more professional site.
13. When you’re ready to upgrade your Wordpress.com blog to a professional blogging site, take a look at Watersweb Solutions. We offer blog hosting and customization. We also offer business consultations to help you decide what services you need.

These 13 tips will help you get started with your shoestring budget product selling business. And remember, if you have any questions, check out my coaching services. I’d love to help you find the right direction!

It’s Official: We Are Moving

After some confusion earlier this month, it is now official that we’re moving. We’ve packed up books in my office that I don’t have to have and are going to move them into storage for now. Since we’re moving in town and have an entire month to carry out this move, we’ll be taking our time.

The first thing we did after we signed the papers, is get the electricity turned on at the new house. We have a well and the house is all electric, so that’s the only utility we needed to worry about.

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Press Release Missteps

What You Don’t Know Can Make All The Difference

Michelle’s Note: My friend and colleague Patrysha wrote this article to help you understand why your press release submissions aren’t working. She is a public relations superstar who has many years experience and has now started a home-based business to help small, women-owned companies profit from publicity. I read the free special report that Patrysha offers at the end of her post and it’s full of excellent advice!

By Patrysha Korchinski

As a publicist, my job is to help my clients get media coverage. The tool I use most often on their behalf is the simple, but highly effective, press release. What I do isn’t rocket science; seeking publicity can be an in-house job for most small business owners.

Press releases can seem like a panacea for small business owners. The prospect of getting free publicity in exchange for a couple of hours of writing and submitting a 400 word release seems like a great deal. And on the surface – it is a great deal.

The publicity generated from one release picked up by a major media outlet can increase awareness and sales with a far greater impact than buying advertising in the same outlet.

Under the surface though, lurk thousand of disappointed publicity seekers who for one reason or another did not get the coverage they desired.

I used to believe that the reasons for the failed attempts lay mostly, if not entirely, on the message within the release.

• The headline wasn’t strong enough
• It read like a sales pitch rather than news
• The subject wasn’t newsworthy

While those are definitely factors that will get your press release a one-way ticket to the circular file, most serious business owners I’ve met don’t fall victim to these mistakes. They took the time to craft newsworthy releases that were topical, relevant and well-written. They had the initiative to create a targeted media list to submit to – and yet still they struggled to get coverage.

What was going on?

It was only when I dug deeper and examined other aspects of their failed efforts that a few trends began to emerge. There are factors in press release pick up that the professional publicist innately utilizes for the benefit of their clients that most small business owners just aren’t aware of.

The timing of your submission is one component that is often to blame for poor results. You see, each media outlet has what is called a lead time. This is how far in advance they need to start working on stories that will eventually appear. Magazines with a large circulation tend to have the longest lead times, often 9 months or longer. If you send out a release geared towards Christmas to a major magazine in November, you’ve missed your window of opportunity by eight months!

You don’t necessarily need a publicist to get over these hurdles, you just need to be aware of what hurdles exist. Overcoming them is usually a fairly simple matter. As I said before, getting media coverage is not rocket science. You can improve your odds significantly with a little fine tuning.

For more tips on turning the odds in your favor, you’ll want to grab the free special report You can’t write just one – A long range approach to getting the media attention you crave.

Should We Move, Or Should We Not

So, everything is still up in the air with The House.

I still love the inside, love the landscape, and can live with the shop.

My husband assured me back in May, when we first found The House, that he’d be able to make The Internet work out in The Boondocks. That we might need a 50-foot pole, but we could get the good service, as opposed to the terrible satellite service.

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We Might Be Moving — Again

So, we might be moving again. Yes, I said again.

Anyone who knows me for longer than a year, knows that we tend to move often. (Of course, thanks to the Internet, my business just packs up and moves with me.)

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Do You Value Yourself?

I bet if I asked you that question directly, you’d say, “Yes! Of course, I do.”

But do you really?

Take a close look at your business, crunch the numbers, and then see, do you really value yourself? If you figure out exactly how much money you’re making per hour, would you be like the woman in my colleague Kelly McCausey’s “I Need More Money Now!” post, who is really only making $2-3 per hour — and is happy about it?

Kelly is talking about get rich quick schemes. But I know of several women business owners who are making pennies for the products that they create at home. And I know other women who are in the same boat — and who gripe about having to pay “too much” for products created by women who DO value themselves and their time.

Read through Kelly’s post and you’ll hear the desperation in this woman’s post. And you’ll see the answer in Kelly’s reply.

In short, you need to value yourself, to be willing to accept — no expect — to be paid well for the time, love and sacrifice that you put in to your work.

So what can we do?

The first thing, is to realize that you are valueable. God created you and he doesn’t create junk. You deserve to be paid for the time, effort and expertise you put into the products that you sell.

Second, you need to raise your prices. You need to be paid for your time, for your expenses, for your materials. And you need to be paid well.

Third, the work at home mom and women-owned business communities need to get their heads out of the sand and start looking up to those women who DO respect themselves and figuring out how create our own success.

If you have any questions about how to increase your prices, or how much you should charge, head over to my business coaching page. I’d be happy to spend an hour helping you realize how valuable you are.

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