Category: Grow a Home Business

Special Reports

close up shot of notepad and pen

 

 Build your List and Make Money

Does your business enterprise need a boost? Consider using special reports to add revenue and build a business contact list for future use.

What are special reports?

Special reports are short reports that contain helpful information on a subject. The reports are anywhere from a few to 30 or so pages in length. If you have the know-how, you can write them yourself or hire a writing service to do it for you. There is very little work involved in creating them but they are versatile tools for building an online business.

One popular subject for special reports is how-tos. They direct a reader, step by step, how to do something. If you are knowledgeable with computer software and hardware, that is a perfect niche for special reports on your website. People are always having trouble figuring out their computers and you could help.

Marketing special reports

There are options for marketing your special reports. If you are trying to build a business list of customers, use these special reports as a freebie when any visitor signs up to be a part of your email mailing list. For this type of promotion, use a shorter report like a five page report on how to navigate problems with Windows Vista (if your website has a computer niche).

You can create a five-part course and use the first part as the free promotion. It is your hook. Once they sign up for the mailing list, you can grant them access to the other installments through emails that also advertise your website products. Signing up for a business newsletter subscription can also be the reason to gift a free special report.

Making money

All of your special reports don’t have to go towards list building. Besides your other products or services, you can sell special reports on your website. Many reports sell for between $5 and $20 a piece, but if you offer very valuable information, you can command a higher price. Sell single reports or create various courses to interest your customers.

People love to learn about money-making opportunities. They will pay the money for any information that is a how-to guide to making money on and offline in various ways. How have you made money? Begin there with the subject of your special reports.

As your business grows, create an affiliate program. This gives customers a way to help you make more money and also make some for them. Offer certain special reports as additional compensation for reaching a certain selling level in the affiliate program.

There are a number of ways to use special reports. As you build your library and your lists, alternate the free promotional reports and continue to sell your entire library, creating combination offers such as Buy Two, Get One Free.

While your special reports are building your contact list, they are also making you money. With such a low cost to create them, your profit margin will rise.

For more marketing tips, subscribe to The Business of At Home Business newsletter. 

Top 10 things not to do in a Google Hangout on Air!

 

 

television set retro icon

 


Why did I want to do the Youtube video you see above the article? I wanted to create a video/audio version of the “Think Like an Entrepreneur” article on my website. Then I would take a copy of the audio out and put it into an audio player. I wanted to place a text, video and audio version of the Think Like an Entrepreneur all as one post on my website.

People have different ways that they like to consume and more importantly remember information. Some people like to read the article, some like to watch visual pictures and some like to listen to information. This is called VARK model- visual learners, auditory learners, reading writing learners (that ‘s me) and kinestic learners (not sure, i can accomodate those learners but we will try ). It is a type of (NLP) neuro linguistic programming which is a simple way of saying either I love to see pictures, I love to hear, I love to read text or I love to touch. Anyway, i expect the only way I could accomodate the Kinestic learners is to get them to do an exercise like mindmapping with blocks – worth doing to figure out how to think like an entrepreneur!

So, anyway, while I tried to make the multimedia version of the article with Hangouts on Air because it is a free, yes, free way to record yourself or your monitor screen, these are the 10 ways I screwed up doing my first Hangout on Air video.

1.  No light – always have lights shining if you want to be seen. It was dusk. 
2.  Messy background- don’t have distracting messy background -hide it with backdrop.
3.  Don’t press “Start Broadcasting” until you are ready to broadcast. That is why I am wondering if I had        stopped the previous broadcast recording. 
4.  Press Screenshare button before you press Start Broadcasting as (you can see) I hadn’t planned to        be in recording.

5.  Before you start a recording

    • Check your appearance
    • Check your background
    • Get some lights on 
    • Clear your throat
    • Blow your nose
    • Swallow the saliva
    • Take a deep breath

6.  Print out the article to read and read it a few times beforehand so you aren’t staring intently at screen         trying to read the article at same time. 

7.  Move the webcam or Camera to eye level so you don’t look like a munchkin staring up at camera.
8.  Remember “ScreenShare” means all of your computer desktop screen and you don’t have                        control over it.  So either:

    • Zoom in to what you want to share so it covers the whole screen 
    • Create a Powerpoint Slide of what you want to share and then make it a Full Screen Presentation. 
    • Even better, create a video of what you want to share and just run the video full screen!
    • Or just put your “Profile” picture from Google+ up on screen (that is one of the choices) and read your article into the microphone

9.  Remember to say out loud or read out load what you want to say a couple of times before you record.      As I loved the improvising “Thank you for coming” but I didn’t like the fumbling speech.
10.  Also be mute whenever you aren’t speaking your text, otherwise, you will be like me and mumble.

Edit your video afterwards either in Youtube Video Manager before publishing to edit out mistakes or download it from Youtube onto your computer to edit in your favourite Video editor like Camtasia Studio. Remember that there is always someone who had the same challenge as you. I did a search in Youtube for “how to download video from Youtube and I found an expert who demonstrated using a Firefox browser add-on you can use to download any video from Youtube. Of course, you should always have the rights to any video you use in the future.

 

Google Hangouts great tool for business

Why Google Hangouts?  Why Not Google Hangouts!  It is free and it can help your business grow! I did this Google Hangout On Air in 10 minutes, imperfect but viewable.  


Google Hangouts is a free video chat service from Google. It makes it possible to participate in one-on-one chats as well as group chats. Presently, group chats can have up to ten people at a time.

While video chat isn’t anything new – Skype, FaceTime and Facebook Video Chat have been around for a while; Google Hangouts provides much more in terms of technology and usefulness.

Google promotes what’s often called “face-to-face-to-face” group interaction. You can easily switch the focus of the hangout to the person who is currently talking.

Google Hangouts is also readily accessible. It can be accessed via laptop, desktop or mobile device, including Android and iOS powered devices.

Google Hangouts also offers more than the traditional video chat. You can share documents, YouTube Videos, scratchpads and images. There’s also a feature that lets you broadcast live video conversations and make them available to anyone online.

pressSync works!

ipad

ipad

 

An app to help you blog without being in the office is PressSync which I am using now with my phone!

All you need is free Wifi wherever you are and you can send your post up onto the website.

You can even upload a picture…. this looks like you have to only pick pictures from your library so take a live picture first and add to library then you can post.

Will have to add picture later
via PressSync

Grow Your Business

 

mature businessman reading newspaper

Fred had a successful consulting service serving many clients in his community. He enjoyed his days in his home office but he was finding that he wasn’t spending the time with his family as much as he wanted to do. He hadn’t had a vacation in a year and he wasn’t sure he could be away from his home office without his clients being angry.

He took the time one day to look at his options for decreasing his workload while maintaining his lifestyle.
He could:
1. Hire and train an employee to help with client related documentation.
2. Partner with another consultant in his field sharing some of the workload while getting a “finders fee” for sending the work to the sub-consultant.
3. Find a support desk for his office administration who do all the office paperwork leaving him free to do the consulting.
4. Increase his consulting work by marketing his services on the internet to companies in other communities and setting up a virtual business with lots of automation to reduce his time and expenses in maintaining a home office. He would have to think “outside of the box” as it would be a new way to market his services.
Fred decided that spending time with his family was a high priority for his lifestyle so he put all four ideas into action by getting advice on resources available on the internet to help him decrease his workload while increasing his revenue. He hired and trained a personal assistant for his home office knowledgable in his consulting work. He paid for virtual office support and he got training in how to sell his consulting service on the internet.
If you are wanting to move your business onto the internet and international community, you should subscribe to The Business of At Home Business newsletter for tips and resources.

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