Identify Your Potential Customers By Doing Effective Keyword Research
The first part of the 3 Part Business Model is to focus on identifying your potential customers. Without customers, there would be no business, as there would be no one to sell to and hence generate sales and profit to make your business profitable.
At this very early stage of the process, many people make the mistake of thinking about their passions or their favourite product or hobby when deciding which business venture to go into. Having built their store and now ready to begin the final stage of promoting their new business, they then struggle to find potential customers for their business as after carrying out research at this later stage, they discover 2 problems.
Firstly, that there is no demand for their product or service, and secondly, that where there is a demand and a large customer base, the market itself is simply too competitive to get into, due to much larger and established businesses already dominating that market. What do you do with your store now? Well without customers, your only option is to give up on that business!
So there is a reason why this 3 Part Business Model has been prioritised to do things in this order. You will ALWAYS find it easier to identify potential customers first as well as analyse how competitive a market is. Then once your store is built, you will find that matching potential products to meet these customers needs will be very easy. WHY? Because there are thousands upon thousands of affiliate products available to promote on the internet.
Companies such as Amazon, Ebay, Clickbank, Affiliate Window, to name just a few will give you access to hundreds of thousands of products from retailers and publishers from all over the world. By simply signing up to their affiliate programs (most cases this is free) will enable you to get access to promote their products to your researched customer markets within your website or blog. They also provide great promotional support too by providing free banners and customisable widgets that automatically display your desired products for you on your website or blog.
How To Carry Out Effective Keyword Research.
Let’s take another look at part one of our business model:
To firstly find a customer market, and then secondly analyse the competition within this market requires the use of software tools. Now there are many products on the market, but in my experience, I have narrowed the best options down to a handful of choices.
My first keyword research tool of choice would be Keyword Elite 2. Primarily because of the support that you receive in the form of in depth training videos but also due to the fact that the previous version was the number one keyword research tool on the market. Version 2 has recently been launched with major improvements, extra functions and projects new to version 2, as well as having a newly user friendly designed interface.
The only downside to this software tool is firstly the price (it is not cheap!) and secondly, I would say it is too powerful for someone who just wanted to research keywords to find potential markets to build a business for. Keyword Elite 2 is ideally for the professional internet marketer who would also be venturing into the world of PPC marketing. So as an investment for the future, if you wanted the best software tool on the market, Keyword Elite 2 is the way to go.
My other keyword research tools of choice are Precision Keyword Finder, Keyword Research Pro and Micro Niche Finder. However, out of these 3 tools which I have purchased and tried myself, I have only kept Precision Keyword Finder. Whilst all of these software tools are simply down to personal preference, Precision Keyword Finder had 2 main advantages over all of the others, as well as being the cheapest of them all.
The first feature which I really liked was the built in proxy manager. What this feature will allow you to do is to run as many enquiries as you like, as it allows you to load hundreds of proxy addresses into the software, which it then churns through as it sends enquiries through to Google to retrieve keyword search volumes (size of customer markets), as well as CPC data. This is of great value because Google will only allow you to use your single IP address so many times before they decide to block your computer from accessing their database for anymore data. So in theory you could carry out keyword research as often as you wanted when using the proxy manager feature.
The second feature, which none of the other keyword research software tools have, is a built in SEO link analysis tool. This is an essential tool which enables you to analyse the number of links a website has as well as analyse which anchor text (keyword) it is using to rank for. This information is essential to know, as this basically is telling you how competitive the market is. To get a higher ranking in the search engine than your competitor, you will simply need more links than your competitor for the particular keyword you are analysing
There is a slight downside to this tool though. As it uses proxy addresses to allow an almost limitless number of searches, some of the proxies that you use may be extremely slow. As a result, when I run the back link analysis tool in the Precision Keyword Finder software, it can take a while before you get the results back. Because of this, I found another software tool which is extremely fast and solely a back link analysis tool. It’s name? WebComp Analyst.
Now, when you combine the power of WebComp Analyst with any of these other keyword research tools, you have the best tools on the market for perfecting the first part of this 3 Part Business Model. Remember what that was? To firstly, effectively carry out keyword research to identify the potential customer markets. Secondly, to analyse the competition (back link analysis) so that you can make an accurate decision about pursuing that customer market.
When you have completed your keyword research and have decided on which keywords you will want to target, you will then be ready to move onto part 2 of the 3 Part Business Model, Build your work from home employment store.
Promote Your Work At Home Employment Business
Filed under: Article Marketing, Business Models, Link Popularity, SEO
Let’s take a look now at the third and final part of the 3 Part Business Model.
By now you should have part 1 and part 2 completed. So you should know what your keywords (potential target customers) are going to be which was covered in part 1. You should also have completed building your online store be it a website or a blog, as covered off in part 2.
So you have finally finished building your online store (website or blog) and all you need now are customers to come visit your store and start generating you some money. So just how do you get these targeted customers to your store. Well, you remember those keywords that you researched in part 1? This is where those keywords will come in use again.
There are many methods that you could use to get customers to your website. Everyone has their own preferences, but I will only mention the 3 most effective ones that I have come across and then go through in more detail my favourite method that I use and will continue to use, simply because this method works and does not cost me a thing except for my time.
SEO, PPC and Article Marketing are the three most effective ways of driving customers to your business, website or blog. SEO is more for the long term as it takes longer to set up and involves a lot of patience in waiting for results to happen (3-6 months), even though the initial work is quite small. But then when the results come, they come continuously every month, and this can be achieved for free.
The best tool that I have been using for almost a year now is SEO Elite. I use SEO Elite mainly to build links to my businesses as well as check my search engine rankings and analyse competitors, but it also has other very useful projects built in. SEO Elite itself is definitely worth the investment and also comes with a complete set of training videos. Before purchasing this software, I knew nothing about SEO and how it can get your business to the top of any search engine for any keyword, but after watching the training videos, and using each of the projects within SEO Elite, I can now consider myself a little bit of an expert on SEO, and you will feel the same way too!
The only other tool that I have come across that gives SEO Elite a run for its money is IBP – Internet Business Promoter. This really is a complete set of tools that incorporates the entire SEO process from keyword research to building links and monitoring your rankings in the search engines. If I had seen IBP first, before I spent my money on lots of different programs that on their own fulfilled each of my objectives, then I would have definitely invested in it. Just for the sake of convenience of having to use just one tool to achieve all of my objectives of getting customers to my businesses, IBP would definitely have been worth the investment.
IBP is also the only SEO tool that offers a “Top 10 ranking money back guarantee”, so if you fail to get results from using their software, they will give you your money back. You can also download a free trial, just to see for yourself how good this SEO tool really is before you decide to invest into it.
PPC Marketing however will give instant results, but can also be quite expensive. It simply involves placing ads with Google, MSN and other ad networks and your ads can be live within minutes generating customers to your website or blog immediately. When ads are found and clicked on by potential customers, they are taken immediately to your site, but at a cost to you. The cost involved of generating this instant business can be quite expensive, especially when the cost of each click could set you back as little as 7 pence or as much as £50 depending on the keyword that you decide to use to target your adverts with.
For this reason I have personally avoided PPC marketing, as effective as it may be, simply because I do not wish to spend the money needed to generate success, certainly when there are free alternatives available. Remember that you will need a constant stream of customers every single month for your business to continue to generate profit. Hence PPC marketing will require a continuous cash injection every month to keep your ads running, and the customers coming
Article Marketing is a longer process as it involves writing original content around your selected keywords, and then a fairly lengthy process of submitting these articles to article directories and then waiting for them to be approved and published. Different directories have different criteria as to what they will accept into their directory, so it can get a little tricky at times, as well as there being a considerable delay in seeing results happen.
Some of the main benefits of article marketing are that the process is free and there is no limit to the number of articles you can write. When published on article directories, they can provide a permanent source of customers to your business as article directories have their own customer base of individuals visiting their websites, so when a potential customer finds and reads your article, they will click on the link to your website or blog.
They can also generate a large number of links to your business which will have a huge positive impact on your rankings in the search engines, as long as you use the right keywords in your links. Also by submitting to more than one article directory, you will get links to your business from a variety of different IP addresses which carries much more weight with the search engines when your links are being indexed.
The tool that I recently invested in which really saves a lot of time and automates the entire article writing and submitting process to the top 10 or top 20 article directories is Mass Article Control. Take a look at the website now and watch their instructional videos as they explain in much more detail the true power of Article Marketing and how Mass Article Control is an essential tool for generating a constant stream of customers to your website business.
Build Your Work From Home Employment Store
Once you have completed part 1 of the 3 Part Business Model, you are now ready to move onto part 2, Build Your Store. There are a number of factors to consider before progressing any further.
Once you have signed up with the relevant affiliate programs that match your keywords (potential customer markets), you are then in a position to choose which products you wish to promote. Some of the best affiliate programs on the internet are Ebay, Clickbank, Affiliate Window, SaleHoo to name just a few.
There is very good software tool called Affiliate Elite which will help you to find and promote profitable products. Affiliate Elite allows you to see which products others are having success with promoting, as well as tell you which keywords (customer markets) they are targeting, so you can then replicate their same success and apply your business model to the same combination of their chosen products and keywords. Affiliate Elite also comes with its own free in depth training videos which will further support you in how to use the software successfully to promote your products.
Having decided which products you will promote, the next step is to put the infrastructure in place for you to build your store (website or blog). Firstly, you need to make the decision over which web hosting provider to go with. You may well ask, “why do I need one of those?” To answer, you will need a web hosting provider so that your shop (website or blog) can be viewed online by your potential customers. In effect, your web host provider will ensure that your shop stays open 24 hours a day.
Now to find a good web hosting provider can be quite overwhelming, simply because there are hundreds and thousands of web hosting providers all running different offers, with varying levels of after sales service, and uptime guarantees, some with restricted bandwith, others with unlimited packages etc etc. I could go on, but the features that are offered are just too long to list.
To simplify things, let me start by sharing with you which 2 hosting providers I have decided to go with and explain why I have chosen them. Then maybe you will understand why these 2 are the best choices available on the internet when you want to compare features, value for money, service, free software and after sales support.
I started off with Heart Internet for my first hosting account. Then as I expanded my portfolio of internet businesses I found that being with Heart Internet was not enough to support my entire network of businesses and was recommended Host Nine, who are a provider of global web hosting. I will tell you more about Host Nine in a later blog post.
When I was first starting out into the business world of the internet, I was studying a course on Dreamweaver and was still learning how to web design. At that point in time, I thought Dreamweaver was the best software to use for building websites, but in hind sight, I was quite clueless at the time.
The fact of the matter is, there are an untold number of alternatives out there, and by signing up with Heart Internet, they gave me a web design program for free as part of the sign up deal. A program designed by a company called Serif, and the name of the software is WebPlus X2. Now Serif retail this product at £59.99 on their website, but Heart Internet give this program for free for all new customers who sign up for a Home Pro or Business Pro account.
Now this software is not just some cheap run of the mill web design program. Oh no! This is real state of the art stuff, and with the free tutorials and training material that comes free with the software too, getting to grips with the software was a real breeze. Serif even provide you with a nice selection of professionally designed templates, just so you can get a head start on building your first website.
The main benefit for me in switching from Dreamweaver to WebPlus X2, was that there was no html coding or programming involved. (Something I was never any good at and had little to no experience of). The software is literally controlled by clicking and pointing. It is that easy to use!
If however you decided not to venture down the road of utilising websites to be your main platform for building your online store, you could alternatively use blogs as your platform of choice. Both Heart Internet and Host Nine have 1 click installation features that allow you to quickly and easily set up a WordPress blog to your new domain within minutes. So definitely a much easier and quicker alternative to designing your own website.
The only downside to this though is that you will lose the ability to design a platform that is totally customised to look and function exactly how you want it to. Having said that, WordPress do allow you to get instant access to a choice of hundreds of free blog design templates, and thousands more if you are willing to pay to use the theme.
Once you have built your online store (website or blog), you can now move onto part 3 to learn how to promote your work at home employment business.
Work At Home Employment 3 Part Business Model
The first question which many people ask is:
Is There Such A Thing As Work From Home Employment?
The simple and short answer to that question is YES!
Individuals have been making solid streams of income through work from home employment businesses for many years, and with the continued growth of the internet and the number of internet users on the increase, this trend seems set to continue.
The slightly more complicated and longer answer to this question is that not everyone succeeds at work at home employment due to many factors. In most cases, the simple reason why some succeed where others fail is due to their choice of business models. It is imperative to get your business model perfect in every respect, be it in the choice of tools that you use, but more importantly, that through trial and error and experimentation, you perfect every part of your process which you plan to use to make your work from home employment a success.
Once you have perfected your business model, you will then be in a position to quickly replicate your successes and apply your business model to more than one market. Due to the nature of the internet, new customer markets are emerging every second of the day, with new internet users typing in different searches into the engines every day around the world. This potentially means that you can enter into any infinite number of niche markets with your perfected business model to repeat your success over and over again.
Regardless of the product/service, business platform or market of any business, be it high street retail or online internet business, every business is the same in essence. All businesses need customers to survive, so the first step will be to identify these potential customer markets. All businesses need a platform to reach these customers be it in the form of a supermarket, off licence, restaurant, website or even a blog. These are all just platforms which are used to communicate product offerings or services to the potential customer.
Every business will also need a product or service which will be used to generate sales resulting in profit, so choosing the right product which will satisfy the needs and demands of the potential customer is imperative.
Finally, the last thing all businesses have in common is that they all undertake some form of marketing or promotional advertising to enable these potential customers to find the product/service offerings. This can be summarised by the following key processes:
Although this may seem very simple or even crude to summarise a successful business plan in just 3 points, the fact of the matter is, it really is that simple to build a successful business.
The next step of the plan is to now focus on each of these 3 points and build an infrastructure for your business model, ensuring that each of these 3 points are perfected, so that your work from home employment business can succeed with any product or service in any market and country in the world as you get global access to billions of people instantly due to the dynamics of the internet.
You can view each part in more detail here: part 1, part 2, part 3.
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