Online Business Adviser

The Forum For Online Business Success

Yesterday I was sifting through ninemsn’s News site, when I was confronted by what you see in the screen grabs on the left (click the thumbnails to see what I mean). This all out advertising blitz consisted of no less that eleven advertising placements, two of which expanded even more when rolled over with the mouse. I’ve had to crop the second screen grab because of its size!

Certainly the clash of brands you see will not make advertisers too happy, as they would have all had a reasonable expectation that their ads were going to cut through. While the side panels do relate to the Codral ads, you wouldn’t know it at a glance, and this becomes even more confusing once the wine ad almost pushes Codral branding off the page all together. I really wanted to call this post “When Advertising Attacks”, but I want to use these examples to illustrate a different point.  Read more...

I’m just back from the first Affili@SYD conference, and wanted to share what I considered some of the highlights and point you in their direction, as I think there was some incredibly valuable content that anyone starting an online business should know.

The keynote was from Jay Berkowitz, the CEO of www.tengoldenrules.com, and was certainly one of the most engaging presentations I have heard on online and affiliate marketing. Jay spoke on 10 Super Success Strategies for Internet marketers, which covered effective SEO, blog building and the importance of personal brand and what tools you can use to build it. One such site was PeoplePond, which allows you to aggregate all of your online presences and manage your reputation, something I will be covering in depth soon. Jay’s advice is incredibly practical, I recommend checking out his site TenGoldenRules.com  Read more...

Despite the fact that it has been around for 2 years, the latest social networking tool that everyone is jumping on right now is Twitter. Celebrities, companies and even world leaders like Barrack Obama are avid Tweeters. For the uninitiated, Twitter is basically like your Facebook status, but you only have 140 characters to work with. People can “follow”your tweets (the term for each short message), and you can in turn follow them.

So can 140 characters in Twitter be used for your business? It really depends on what you want to achieve, but if you are going to use it as a business tool you need to make sure you are delivering something of value to your followers. If you run an information business, promoting your latest blog post is a good way to remind your followers to come back. If you are in retail, consider using it for special offers available only to your followers. Services business can use it as a means of answering common questions from the larger consumer base.  Read more...