By Michele Schermerhorn

Millions of people start new small businesses in the United States every day. Many fail. What causes one business owner to succeed where another fails?

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Popularity: 5% [?]

By Christine Taylor

Technology vendors often contribute bylined articles to trade journals. The articles are great exposure for these companies but they don’t come cheap – the trades rarely pay for these articles but the vendors spend time and resources to assign pieces, write them, approve them and submit them. Your PR agency can help your clients leverage their investment by wringing top value out of these articles. Here are some possibilities:

1. Reprints
2. White papers
3. Product briefs
4. Booklets
5. Speech outline and handouts

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Popularity: 4% [?]

Please see Part 1 from 12 March 2007 of Scott Allen’s interview with Christopher Knight.  Allen runs the entrepreneur’s section at About.com and Knight is the founder of EzineArticles.

SA: Tell me about your entrepreneurial background – did you start young or later? What, if anything, in your upbringing led you to entrepreneurship?

CK: When I was in grade school, I bought bags of Kit Kats and sold them individually on the playground during recess.   I saw a market need and filled it.

At age 16 I started a professional DJ service to spin music for proms, homecomings, weddings, sock hops, company picnics or any type of party event.

My father is a farmer / entrepreneur and, while I didn’t join him in the farming family business, I did learn many lessons about how to work with customers, vendors, employees and eventually, banks or financial institutions.

I really think entrepreneurs are born and not made. It either comes naturally or it feels completely foreign to you. To me, I have a knowing of certainty that this is what I was meant to do, and I love it.

Who have been your role models, mentors, or other inspiration for you, both in your personal life and public figures?

Tony Robbins helped me get into massive intelligent action, Dr. Wayne Dyer helped me order and focus my intentions/thoughts, and Strategic Coach Dan Sullivan coached me on how to better organize my time.

Personally, I’m inspired by great athletes who rise to the top of their game. Too many to list here, but I track top athletes in business and in sports to better understand how to create even higher performance in my life.

What specifically led you to start your current business(es)?

I really like the advertising-based revenue model and as I looked at all of the web properties I had spent hundreds of thousands of dollars acquiring between 1995-2001, I asked myself this question: “Which web property is succeeding the most despite no investments of time or effort on our part?” When I identified that EzineArticles.com was that project, I organized a plan to invest tens of thousands of hours of attention to find out how big the project could become. I’m still working on figuring out where the ceiling is on this project.

How has the business been funded? What has been the upside/downside of how you’re funded?

In 2002 I had sold SparkLIST, an email list hosting service provider business to Lyris and, upon the closing of that transaction, I concurrently bought out my VC partner on a failed advertising-based revenue project called List-Universe.

I was left with no money, no revenue, and a bunch of domain names or websites of near useless content. My pride was somewhat in tact as I did the right thing for my former customers and found an exit for my VC partner at the time that was amicable.

Borrowing against my home mortgage, I invested a few hundred thousand to get back in the game and hired a small team of former employees who helped forge the start of the current business we’re in.

Upside of being self-funded is that I answer to no one externally for how profitable or not we are.  This brings the responsibility to find a return on capital on myself. VC’s have been knocking on our door, but they are going to need to bring something more than just capital to the table, such as key partnership relationships or exclusive long-term advertising deals.

What has been your biggest challenge and how did you overcome it?

Convincing my family to stick with me during the lean years.

I overcame this by ignoring any doubt they brought to my attention.

What motivates you every day when you go to work?

My life is on purpose. How much more excited can you be when you know you are doing exactly what you are suppose to be doing with your life and time!

I’m humbled at the expertise our collective author community brings to the table and honored to work with a very innovative team of web developers and highly efficient editors who take care of daily operations.

Further building our management team also motives me because they free my time up so that I can work on further innovations or creative marketing solutions to reach our goals faster.

What is the best advice you have for new or future entrepreneurs?

“Do it and stop talking about ‘doing it.” Get into massive action. Learn and read like mad every single day. Listen to your stakeholders and earn their respect by taking an enormous amount of action that proves you heard what they had to say. Create and design a business that allows you to step out of daily operations. If you are running your business, you are a manager and not an entrepreneur. Nothing wrong with being a manager or even an ‘entrepreneurial-spirited manager’, but true entrepreneurs in my mind unlock the creativity and innovation in market potential for their business and industry — they can only do this if they are not involved in daily operations of the business.

Popularity: 5% [?]

I think that writing and marketing articles is a great way to get free publicity for your business.  If you haven’t looked into it before, you should.  The below is an interview with Christopher Knight, the founder of EzineArticles.com, one of the premier article publishing sites on the Internet.  Another article site you may want to check out is ArticleCity.

Guest Article:  From Scott Allen, Your Guide to Entrepreneurs at About.com

Christopher Knight is founder of EzineArticles.com, the Web’s largest community and content distribution system for articles by expert authors, with over two million monthly visitors. He is widely considered one of the top experts on the practice of “article marketing.” I got some time this week with Chris to get his perspectives on how entrepreneurs can best make use of article marketing to grow their business.

SA: I think the term “article marketing” is sufficiently self-explanatory, but if you want to have an actual meaningful strategy, rather than just kind of tossing out an article randomly every now and then, what does that consist of? What does a good article marketing plan strategy look like?

CK: There are two types of “Article Marketing” strategies that I see every day:

1. Intentional and consistent distribution of quality original articles every month to a small list of highly relevant publishers.  About 15% of the market does this.
2. Stab, stick and blast. In other words, they take a stab at writing articles without a plan, they stick it anywhere they think they should and when this doesn’t pay off in traffic attraction dividends, they blast it to everyone (relevant and not so relevant sites).

A good Article Marketing plan really depends on what the end-outcomes are . . . and how many qualified leads or qualified visitors an author or expert wishes to attract.

If a business person was serious about achieving results via article marketing or the distribution of quality original articles, they would write the content themselves or hire someone to write original articles that would be exclusive to them, meaning, no PLR (Private Label Rights) content. The articles would be 300-700 words and they would be distributed to two different select tiers of sites:  Tier 1, high traffic distribution sites such as ourselves and Tier 2, highly-relevant niche publishers that won’t have the same high-level of traffic as the first tier, but they will have a highly relevant and qualified visitor base to refer to the author.

For infopreneurs or consultants, the benefits of article marketing may be more readily obvious. What about other businesses? What if I’m, say, a restaurant owner, retailer, etc.?

Article writing and syndication or marketing can be applied to any industry, but it is true that there are a few industries that won’t benefit the same.

Example: A B2B highly complex multi-million dollar paper-machine manufacturer who wants to write about the inner workings of how their paper machines operate. It’s not that they couldn’t, but that their market normally expects white paper PDFs that go into great depth and detail that just can’t be done in a less than 500-word article format.

Another example: Anyone who needs to cite references or source material for their article . . . isn’t a good candidate for article marketing. You want to limit and control your exposure to risk and I’ve found that footnotes in an article are better left for article content that is not syndicated in full.

What if my business is local only? How can article marketing help me? And how can I get my article seen and re-published by local-oriented publications?

Restaurant owners and local retailers can benefit from article marketing, big time!

In fact, about six months ago I did research into how entrepreneurs/marketers could leverage the growing trend of localized search. The solution is to include your locality in the article title and near the top of the article and you’ll increase your chances of being found by those who are searching for localized content. This market is just getting started and is at the foothill of an emerging market that is only going to attract a larger audience.

Your chances of getting competitors from your industry to run your localized article content are pretty slim . . . so I’d recommend focusing on the intelligence of your article titles as they relate to what your local audience is searching for.

How does a service like EzineArticles differ from conventional web or print publications? What are the pros and cons of each approach, and can they work in complement to each other?

We’re quite a bit different than print publications because, in most cases, we don’t go very deep in any of the articles. This is not about writing a book and giving away all of our expertise, but rather Article Marketing or “educational marketing” is about offering a sliver of your expertise and a resource box at the end of each article to tell the reader how they can learn more if interested.

A major differentiator of article marketing vs. conventional print or web publications is in the level of syndication that accompanies the article content. The standing order in the conventional world is that no content is to be reprinted without written permission, whereas in the article marketing world, full reprint rights permission is granted for anyone to use the content provided the follow the reprint rules as outlined on the website.

Conventional non-syndication published content reaches the audience it was written for only in the time frame it was released while article marketing content takes on a viral nature and drives qualified visitors for many years to come.

The major con to article marketing is that a very small percentage of unscrupulous publishers will use your content without giving you proper credit or an active link in your resource box at the end of each article.  Our seven years in article marketing has taught us that the positive avalanche of traffic each author receives from article marketing activities far outweighs the losers who don’t follow the reprint rules terms of service.

Let’s say I’m not much of a writer myself. I’ve got good ideas, but just don’t know how to put them together effectively. Can I get help with that? And how much will it cost me?

If you want to be the originator of the content, then I’d recommend hiring a local college student with a journalism or similar major to help clean up, put in order, and organize your thoughts. Many can be hired for $6-$12/hr USD. Another option is that you could create an outline for yourself and then speak into a microphone for 15-20 minutes per article.

Transcription specialists charge about $40-$90 USD per hour to convert your MP3 to written transcripts that could be converted into excellent article marketing content.

You could also outsource the entire project to either an in-house part or full time editor/writer, or you could outsource to an article ghost writer. Expect to pay between $4 to $40 per article for quality original content, and make sure you get an exclusive right or license to use that content under your name or a pen name.

I’ve learned the hard way that publicity does not automatically equal lead generation. Do you have any tips on how to generate more leads from article marketing? In that regard, is it more important what you write, how often you write it, or where and how you distribute it?

Some short tips:

• The article headline will determine 90% of how much traffic and viral distribution your article will receive. Be sure to optimize this with relevant keywords that your potential reader will be searching for.
• Be sure to include at least two active URLs in your resource box and make sure they include the full http://your-company-name.com/ format instead of an anchored text link – this will maximize your ability to get active links back from publishers who reprint your content.
• 100 articles distributed to five sites or ezine publishers will normally produce far greater results than five articles sent to 100 sites.
• Consistency is key. You market or advertise your business every month, right? So why not write articles and distribute them monthly also?

How do I get started?

Identify the web publishers and/or ezine publishers who have an audience that you want to attract. Study their websites or ezines, read their editorial guidelines, check to see if they have an editorial calendar (to increase your chances of writing timely relevant content) and create an account with them to send in your first set of article submissions.

Of course, I’d invite you to submit your best articles for massive exposure to our high-traffic EzineArticles.com project. When you submit your articles to EzineArticles.com, your articles will be picked up by ezine publishers who will reprint your articles with your content and links in tact, giving you traffic surges to help you increase your sales. To submit your articles, set up a free basic membership account today: http://EzineArticles.com/submit.

 

Popularity: 5% [?]

Guest Article

Have you ever wondered what teleclasses are all about? And have you ever wondered how exactly you could use them to grow your business and make money?

Do you remember the last time you decided to schedule a workshop in your diary? If your diary is anything like mine, it probably needed military precision. The kids may have been shipped off to your neighbors to allow you beat the morning traffic. You may have spent an hour or so on Google maps, trying to make head or tail of the one-way system and figure out the best place to park. Not to mention the indecision of what to wear (“Should I wear a suit or could I get away with jeans?”)

I know for a fact that a few ladies I have spoken to recently admitted to being “too busy” to make the time for learning something new. “Frankly, Karen, I just lack the confidence to go to a workshop where I may have to admit in public that I don’t know very much” was one comment I got. But surely that is why this lady needed to go and learn about what it was she felt she knew nothing about.
And I believe this is why teleclasses are proving more and more popular in today’s business community. A workshop or a class that is held via the phone allows us to fit in an hour here and an hour there without all the organization of childcare, traveling time and dress-stress.

I am not suggesting that teleclasses will ever replace the need for face-to-face human interaction. Human connection is essential when you are running your own home based business — we would go mad talking to the cat all day, wouldn’t we? But teleclasses are appearing more and more in businesses’ offerings and many of you reading this may be able to think about how to use the teleclass structure to help promote yourself AND make additional revenue streams.

These are my top 10 ways of possibly using teleclasses to help get you clients and make money.

1. Offer a free introduction to your services. What better way of reaching out to groups of people without the need to hire rooms, spend money on refreshments or even handouts. Invite your newsletter readers to phone in at a particular time to listen in to your “Top 10 tips on — whatever your expertise is.” This is especially useful for the coaches and consultants out there who are selling themselves on a one-to-one basis.

2. Record your teleclasses and build up an audio library to have on your website. Great for reputation building and getting Web visitors to hang around.

3. Go that one step further and sell your audio recordings as downloadable products. A simple passive revenue stream that can be automated.

4. Interview a leading expert in your field and invite your prospects to listen in. If you are running a wine tasting business, your client base may be interested in a quick 20-minute interview with one of the top wine growers in the country. And why not charge for it?

5. Offer quick 30 minute How-To Guides on your latest products. You may be running an online community magazine or local advertising directory and by giving a group guided tour over the phone, directing them through a website possibly, you could be bringing your product to life and people may understand the benefits better.

6. Hot Seat Sessions. These are great for experts who may be PR specialists or website designers. Invite your prospects to phone in and you will be there to answer all their burning questions about the problems they may be experiencing. You may get a few freebie hunters, but by sharing your wealth of knowledge, people will trust you and be more inclined to spend money with you to buy the full service that you offer.

7. Get your audio recordings transcribed. Wow — instant ebook!

8. Design accessible group programs. If you are selling one-to-one support, for example as a nutritional therapist or image consultant, you may like to consider group programs that could be delivered by phone. It can bring your rates down to capture prospects who couldn’t afford your one-to-one fees as well as dramatically increasing your overall hourly rate. Design a workbook to run alongside if you still want to work with visuals.

9. Get podcasting. We often talk faster than we can write. So if writing articles isn’t your thing then record yourself talking on a particular topic for 5 or 10 minutes. Bingo. An instant downloadable audio recording that can be fed through your blog, by email or direct to someone’s MP3 player.

Actually, I only intended to have a top 5 and I can’t quite believe that I came up with 9. Writing this article has just proved to me that there are plenty of opportunities for you to use teleclasses to promote your business and make additional revenue.

So, what’s next? Where do you go from here?

If you want to take action but the how-to aspect of running teleclasses is proving overwhelming, then check out this Step-by-Step Guide to Running Your First TeleClass.

Karen Skidmore is a business coach and mentor for women starting up in business. She created CanDoCanBe in September 2004 because she was frustrated by the lack of business support choice for women who wanted to build their own business. CanDoCanBe offers networking events, business coaching and mentoring.

Popularity: 4% [?]

If you’re thinking about going the franchise route to start your own business, you may need to come up with a large pile-o-dough just to open the doors.

According to Entrepreneur Magazine, here’s what some of the more popular franchises are going for these days:

1. Bally Total Fitness:  $1 million.
2. McDonald’s:  $511,000
3. UPS Store/Mail Boxes, Etc.:  $154,000 — $267,000
4. Quiznos Subs:  $185,000 — $265,000
5. Subway:  $86,000 — $251,000
6. Jackson-Hewitt Tax Service — $47,000 — $75,000
7. Curves: $36,000 — $43,000

 

Popularity: 3% [?]

Teachers and trainers wanted to develop (from scratch or using existing materials) lesson plans, worksheets, online lessons, slide shows, Powerpoint presentations, and other digital teaching materials. If it’s something you use in the classroom and it’s in a digital format, we’ll likely be interested. All topics, all grades . . . from K through adult education and professional development in the corporate world.  We will buy outright ($10 to $1,000, depending on item) or offer 65-75% royalty if you choose to sell your materials directly through us.  InfoSource has been in the online learning business since 1983 and serves teachers, schools, and professional corporate development throughout the world. For more information about our company and this project, send email to mwerner(AT)InfoSourceLearning.com (use the @ symbol in the email address, of course). Please provide your school district or organization name and location.

Also, check out the TeachMarket site for other ideas for teachers/trainers to earn supplemental income.
 

Popularity: 15% [?]

Hey Dream Jobbers . . . have a special for you today.

With almost 70 full pages of  descriptions, links and tips on resources for advertising free on the Internet, the Encyclopedia of Free Online Advertising is a must have ebook! This valuable guide reviews all of the best free online advertising tactics and techniques that everyone who markets on the Internet needs to be aware of. Meticulously organized and categorized, each resource is fully described, analyzed, and even effectively rated on suitability for your purpose.

Read more »

Popularity: 6% [?]

While I’m not one who believes that you can teach entrepreneurship (I’ve seen so many entrepreneur wannabes who simply don’t get it no matter how much they study. In fact, I think you’re either cut out to start and run a business or you’re simply suited to working for someone who is), some of the world’s leading universities tell us otherwise.

Here are the top 5 undergraduate programs for entrepreneur wannabes:

1. University of Arizona
2. Syracuse University
3. Depaul University
4. Temple University
5. University of Dayton

And, here are the top 5 graduate schools for same:

1. Syracuse University
2. Depaul University
3. Northwestern University
4. California State University, San Bernardino
5. University of Washington

What do you think, Dream Job Entrepreneur?  Can you learn about starting and running a business in a classroom?

Talk to me!

 

Source:  Entrepreneur magazine, October 2006

 

 

Popularity: 3% [?]

Isn’t it great when you can go to a trusted friend who knows everything about a particular topic, issue, or industry and from whom you can get the inside scoop?

I love that.

So, it was really a pleasant surprise when I came across Chris King’s Chris Recommends site.  I’ve known Chris for a few years as she’s the author of two books in the Dream Jobs To Go series (Storyteller and Fitness Instructor), but until recently I hadn’t paid too close of attention to her Recommends site.

Mostly designed for online entrepreneurs, Chris has used and trusts everything she recommends, and I like that.  She cuts through the hype and tells you about services and tools that have worked for her, in the following categories:

• Info Products
• Marketing
• Presentations
• Useful Tools
• Motivation
• For Fitness
• Careers
• Articles

Good stuff; check ‘er out.

Popularity: 2% [?]