[photopress:Jeremy_Schoemaker_adsense_check.jpg,full,alignleft]Jeremy Schoemaker with his famous online nickname ShoeMoney is an inspiring internet marketer for many beginners who are trying to make money online. His fame in the online world, and well known forums have increased tremendously after posting a picture of himself holding a Google Adsense Check for $132,994.97 at his website.

His story is another true inspiring story, now he owns a company called ShoeMoney Media Group where he manages his affiliate marketing projects, and other ventures. His big time cash maker in affiliate marketing was ringtones niche. But after he’s started blogging, there are so many affiliate marketers jumped into ringtones niche, and it’s more saturated than ever now.
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[photopress:unleashing_the_idea_virus.gif,full,alignleft]As we all know, Seth Godin is the 21st century’s marketing genious. He’s written a number of worldwide bestseller books.

This will be a short post to remind my readers about Godin’s Unleashing The Idea Virus Free eBook download. If you haven’t heard about it yet, yes, Godin offer his book about viral marketing for FREE.

It is a must read along with other Godin Books.

Amazon Editorial Review of Unleashing The Idea Virus

Treat a product or service like a human or computer virus, contends online promotion specialist Seth Godin, and it just might become one. In Unleashing the Ideavirus, Godin describes ways to set any viable commercial concept loose among those who are most likely to catch it–and then stand aside as these recipients become infected and pass it on to others who might do the same. “The future belongs to marketers who establish a foundation and process where interested people can market to each other,” he writes. “Ignite consumer networks and then get out of the way and let them talk.”

Godin believes that a solid idea is the best route to success in the new century, but one “that just sits there is worthless.” Through the magic of “word of mouse,” however, the Internet offers a unique opportunity for interested individuals to transmit ideas quickly and easily to others of like mind. Taking up where his previous book Permission Marketing left off, Godin explains in great detail how ideaviruses have been launched by companies such as Napster, Blue Mountain Arts, GeoCities, and Hotmail. He also describes “sneezers” (influential people who spread them), “hives” (populations most willing to receive them), and “smoothness” (the ease with which sneezers can transmit them throughout a hive). In all, an infectious and highly recommended read. –Howard Rothman

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Most people think link baiting is for only blogs, but they are wrong. Blogs might to better link baiting due to their freshly updated content. But I’ll show you some tricks about link baiting for ecommerce sites.

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What is Link Baiting?

Create a free content to offer the web community. It may be an article or a blog post on your blog, a press release, or an authority article sent to an article directory, basically any content you offer freely on the internet. Then the web community will find your content valuable and link to it. Bingo!!! You start receiving free backlinks instead of paying for them or spending hours finding them. Link baiting is a part of Viral Marketing.

Why is it called Link Baiting?

It is exactly like fishing. With the bait, you have the chance to catch some fish.

Free Content => Bait

Free Backlinks => Fish

If you have a community related site, or a blog, or an article/authority type site, it may be easy to do link baiting. But I receive many questions from ecommerce site owners about how to do link baiting.
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UPDATE: I have written a detailed and updated post about Making Passive Income as an eBay Affiliate Marketer. Please visit the updated post.

[photopress:ebay_affiliate_site.jpg,full,alignright]eBay has been an increasing revenue source for many home based and small businesses. If you have never tried to make money with an eBay affiliate site get prepared to learn some insights. I’ll walk you through how to create a product niche website which generates eBay affiliate sales, and creates a longrun income stream for you.

As a longtime gold level powerseller on eBay, I may call myself an eBay expert. I have helped many beginners to start their eBay businesses successfully. With eBay’s expansion into international markets, everyday it’s becoming harder to make a profitable eBay business. Even some manufacturers are selling on eBay and shipping direct from their factories (how could you compete with that?). If you are a true entrepreneur, you will find a way to increase your sales in any situations. Here’s my motto for eBay success:

If you can’t beat the competition, help them to generate more sales.
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[photopress:trademark_filing.jpg,full,alignleft]It doesn’t matter how small your business is. If you want to create your business name as a brand and invest in it, your first step should be to trademark it. As a small business consultant, I hear horror stories about trademark issues from business owners.

How To File A Trademark?

Assuming that you’ve done your research and the trademark you will be filing is not already registered, you will have 3 options.

1) Hire A Lawyer To File Your Trademark

A lawyer would charge you approximately $1,285.00 to create and file a trademark application. This amount may increase, but will not go below $1,000.00 . If you are very busy, and don’t have any time/staff to file the trademark, then this is your option.

2) File Your Trademark Through LegalZoom Online Service

When I started my first online business, I have asked a few friends about trademark filing, and one of my buddiest have recommended this website. You can File Your Trademark Online in 3 Easy Steps at LegalZoom.com and they charge only $159.00 for this service. It has all the information, tips and tricks which you need to know. They are reliable and very well known name in the industry. Their website claims that last year they have filed more trademarks than the 10 largest law firms combined in the US.

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[photopress:international_market_research.jpg,full,alignleft]Your business is growing, and the US market brings great profits, but remember there are so many countries out there with fast growing IT industries.

It doesn’t matter what your product is. You may have a very basic time sheet management software written by you or a potential CRM software or maybe a complete small business software. You might be selling 10x more to international markets if you have the accurate market research data and know which country/industry to focus first.

Many US based hardware suppliers are busy with dealing US market. Cheap hardware suppliers from China and other Asian companies have strict limitations getting into European and other world markets due to import restrictions. Therefore as a US based business, you will have a head start and will be able to make handsome profits by focusing international IT markets.

I will tell you, step by step, how to get your business into International IT Markets.
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Viral Marketing

by Ahmet Kirtok on October 30, 2006

Viral MarketingViral marketing, commonly being identified as the word-of-mouth on the Internet, is one of the economical advertising techniques where the promotion of any service or product takes place through the pre-existent social networks. It is a marketing technique being used by many affiliates in creating extensive mailing lists and generating a flow of customers for the sponsored affiliate programs. Fundamentally, there are two forms of viral marketing; Service-based and Incentive-based. Service-based viral marketing is described as the commercializing technique in which the consumer is required to spread the word about the company and its products while incentive-based marketing presents several inducements to the consumers such as cash or other rewards for their services’ promotion.

The best viral marketing is not just word-of-mouth, as some people carelessly assume. Nor is it multi-level marketing, where Juan sells to Alice and then gets a cut of whatever Alice sells to Fred. It is when users actively recruit other users, not for pay, but because they benefit from a larger user pool, just as virus DNA benefits from the spread of a virus.

—Esther Dyson

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Living in NYC, and being an entrepreneur myself, I work more than a regular employee. I do 90% of my shopping online and my main problem was ordering something online and getting it delivered to my apartment.

We don’t have a doorman at our apartment, and outside door is always locked. If my online order is being delivered by Fedex, DHL or UPS, there is a big chance that I will find a failed delivery attempt slip on my door. I don’t like getting my order delivered to my office, because I have to carry it back home. If it’s a small package, it may work, but if it’s a large one, it becomes a big hassle.

While trying to find a solution for this problem, I have found a website called Doormanonline.com , a New Jersey based service company delivering your packages afterhour or during the weekends. For now, they serve to New Jersey and expanding to New York Metro Area, and they have plannings expanding nationwide.

Their business model depends on a simple, but smart idea. Here’s how it works (from Doormanonline.com) :

How it works?

It’s simple! When you’re done with your online shopping, at the checkout specify the Doorman Online address as the shipping address and state c/o Doorman Online LLC, along with your own name as receiver’s name. Then go to our website, register your purchase and indicate the desired delivery time. We will inform you as soon as we get your package, confirm delivery time with you and deliver the package.

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Yesterday, I have written about Verizon’s internal communication problems within the company. If you have read my post, you know the case.

Our latest installation was scheduled today, and nobody showed up.

A big corporation like Verizon, their main product (phone service, and DSL), a customer willing to purchase their product, and THEY DO NOT WANT TO SELL THEIR PRODUCT.

This is what happens when you become a giant corporation. I am sure if the CEO or founder of Verizon read this, they’d be so disappointed.

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All companies say they care about their customers, in fact big corporations spend millions of dollars on CRM softwares, trainings, etc.

Ok, it all sounds good. You are a big corporation, you have millions of customers, and with the state of the art softwares, now you know all the information about your customers. But how about the internal communication within the company? Isn’t this an important part of CRM?

Here’s a story of what happened recently;

We have decided to move to a new suite within our building. It is 3 times larger, and it has a great Manhattan view. We have moved all the office within a day or two, and Verizon was supposed to come over to setup our local phone line and DSL. This was in July 17th, and today is August 3rd. At the floor where our office is, there are 40 offices, most (almost all) use Verizon as their local phone company. Verizon’s headquarters are across the East River, and I can see them from my window everyday. Now, after so many phone calls, they can’t figure out why couldn’t set the service up.

After a few days, I have called them and reminded them that we had still been waiting for the installation. The lady on the phone talked about some cabling problems outside the building, and has blamed the engineering department. Today, after 5-6 phone calls, some customer service person used this exact sentence:

“How am I supposed to know why your phone wasn’t installed?”

And I replied:

“I’m sorry, I thought I have called Verizon.”

Then she said:

“Yes this is Verizon.”

Then I said:

“I guess I will take the subway to your headquarters and start screaming at the lobby”.

She was confused…

I was confused…

As a small business owner, I never thought about blaming an employee or a department if a problem occurs with a customer in the company.

I have had similar problems with different corporations in the past.

I remember spending 3 hours 30 minutes within a phone loop (customer reps in India) when I tried to solve a wrong shipment with Dell.

As a prospective customer, I will give a few more days to Verizon, then I’ll call another company for local phone service, and DSL.

I’m sure they are losing so many customers even before they officially become their customers.

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