Online Business Adviser

The Forum For Online Business Success

I’ve just finished reading Gary Vaynerchuck’s Crush It. The book was released in October last year, so I know that a lot of people may have already picked it up, but if you haven’t and you are new to online business, looking to take it to the next level, or have any interest in social media at all – buy and read this book now.

For those of you not familiar with Gary’s work, he took his father’s $4 million a year wine business and managed to turn it into a $60 million a year goliath through the power of social media and personal branding.

There are many things I loved about this book. Firstly it’s less than 150 pages long, which makes it a very quick read. In every one of those 150 pages, it’s almost like Gary himself is there telling it to you. Watch him on www.winelibrary.tv to see what I mean. Rather than talking about how to run a business that will make a fortune, he talks about capitalising on your passion in order to be successful – whatever that success looks like.  Read more...

As I covered in my last post, affiliate marketing can be a difficult area of online marketing to navigate for someone just getting started in online business. So I thought I would talk more about two programs that I think could work well with pretty much any model, and how you go about finding more to suit your business.

eBay Partner Network

I’ve mentioned eBay’s partner network before, as I believe it is one of the most widely applicable available. Considering that eBay offers such a breadth of products and categories, it is difficult to think of a site that it would seem out of place on.

Virtually every version of eBay will have a partner program (with the exception of Hong Kong and Singapore whose programs were recently closed), and you have the option of applying to join one or all of them. US and UK approval can take a while to come through, but when they do you have access to Geo-targeted ads and links that will link through to the appropriate site depending on where your visitor comes from.  Read more...

While your key product offering on your site should always be your main consideration, as a supplemental revenue stream, you should consider some form of affiliate marketing.

Basically affiliate marketing is the webs equivalent of a referral – where other sites will pay you to drive traffic to theirs if that visitor buys something. Many of the world’s biggest companies have some form of affiliate program, and one of the oldest is Amazon.com’s, called Amazon Associates. eBay also has one, which pays based on new users who purchase goods, and the adult entertainment online universe probably has more than anyone. Overall, commissions always vary widely depending on who it is, and there are certainly some out there that are dodgy that you need to watch for.

As an online business owner, affiliate marketing could be a great opportunity to generate some extra revenue from your site. There are a few key points to think about here:  Read more...