How Blogging gives Small Businesses the Competitive Edge - By David Skul

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Blogging produced a revolution in the business of online marketing. While blogging is a great Web 2.0 marketing tool for any business, it has become, especially for new, shoestring budget start-ups, a vital means to getting website traffic.

The following are ways blogging has helped level the playing field between well established, corporate giants and small businesses just starting out.

Setting up a Blog is Fast, Free & Easy

There was a time when setting up a business online wasn't free. Many businesses were at the mercy of the technologically savvy—the "gurus" who knew design. Then the concept of "free" became synonymous with blogging. Now, it's incomprehensible to think otherwise.

For startup businesses, blogs provide a great alternative to quickly and affordably setting up an online presence. There’s no technical knowledge required other than basic internet skills.

With so many blog building tools and software freely available, creating a blog is faster and easier than setting up a web site. There’s no need to send yourself, or staff, to expensive training programs or seminars. Once you’ve decided which software and tools you’d like to use, it will usually take less than ten minutes to be up and running.

Maintaining a Blog is Fast, Free & Easy

Content is good but unique content is the key to your success. Carefully crafting timely and relevant information potential customers can identify with is essential.

If you're passionate about your business, you shouldn't have trouble creating the content your blog needs to keep rolling. On the other hand, the excitement of launching a blog can give way to dread as a small business owner realizes that a blog, by nature, isn't static.

Planning ahead with an editorial outline will greatly reduce the stress of trying to figure out what content to post next. It doesn’t take a lot of content to be successful. It just takes consistent effort.

Marketing a Blog is Fast, Free & Easy

If done correctly, publishing your ideas, articles, sales pitches and assorted web page links on your blog can be just as effective as advertising anywhere else online only without the excessive costs. A blog is real time, which means you can communicate with your customers and your customers can communicate with you 24/7.

The upside to blogs is that they're fast, easy, and free. The downside to blogs is that…they're fast, easy and free. Blogging removes the technological barriers to small businesses. But, it also requires a small business to focus on content.

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Starting Your Internet Business - Free vs Paid Services

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When you are just starting your Internet business and you have no experience, you want to keep your expenses down. This gives you an opportunity to explore the business without spending much money. For that reason alone, it is a very good idea. Let’s face it, some people are not equipped to operate a website. As in any business, some people are better at it than others. So, if you can try out an Internet business for free, you should probably do so.

Almost everything you need for your Internet business can be obtained for free. Do you need a free payment processor for your website? PayPal, along with a number of other companies, can handle that quite nicely. How about a free autoresponder? A search will provide many alternatives for you. What about traffic, is it available for free? It sure is, writing articles, visiting forums, placing free classified ads, and posting to your blog are all free methods to generate traffic. By doing a search, you can find many more ways to get free traffic, but you’ve probably got to put some effort into it, and it won’t happen quickly. But, it is free.

The final item that is required to operate an Internet business is a website. Are there any websites that are available for free? You bet! Doing a search for free websites will bring up hundreds of possibilities.

And that brings us to the point of this article. Is there any advantage of using a paid webhost versus a free one? That depends on the type of website you need. If you are just using your website as a photo gallery so Aunt Mary can view a few pictures of the new baby, you’re probably fine with the free version. However, if you have a commercial website and you are trying to make money, paid webhosting is something you will want to explore as soon as you can afford it.

In addition to the fact that free websites load more slowly, free sites contain ads that are embedded on your site by the host. You make no money from these ads, the company hosting your site profits from these. Sometimes they can be very distracting to your visitors, especially if they use numerous pop-up ads.

Another big disadvantage to using free websites is the limited amount of bandwidth allowed. Each time a visitor comes to your site and downloads something; they are using some of your bandwidth. Free websites provide you with a very limited amount of bandwidth each month. If you have used your monthly allowance of bandwidth, visitors to your site will see a message that says, ‘Website Closed – Exceeds allocated Bandwidth’. This is not acceptable if you have a commercial website. If you see this happening to your website, you need to investigate paid webhosting. Most paid hosting solutions will allow you to have many times the bandwidth available versus your free website. And the cost is quite reasonable, you can have your website hosted for as little as five to ten dollars per month.

As you can see, it is possible to start an Internet business with little or no money. However, if you are operating a commercial site in order to make money, you should switch over to paid services as soon as your budget permits. In almost every case, the paid service is far superior to the free alternative.

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Making My First Million on the Internet

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Like many of you, I began my Internet business full of hope and optimism. I planned on making my first million within a year or two. At that point, I’d tell my boss what he could do with his job! We’d get that house on the beach and the black Jaguar we always wanted. Ahhh, life will be good!

Having no idea how an Internet business worked, I did some research. The information I learned, enticed me to buy three or four ‘How to Make Millions’ programs. In addition, to further my studies, I joined list after list to increase my knowledge. Soon, my email box was stuffed every day with more and more ‘Get Rich Quick’ offers. Because I’m a slow learner, I bought a couple of these programs and again, I lost money. I was beginning to think that Internet businesses were nothing but scams. Not only did I NOT make my million dollars, I was losing money left and right trying to get rich using worthless programs!

By this time, I’d been in business for a couple of months and already I was out a thousand dollars. And to make matters worse, I’d only made about $25 in profits. At about this time, I finally figured it out; it’s not really possible to get rich quick (unless you’re very lucky). There had to be a better way!

I did more research (and this time, I did not visit sales pages). I investigated how the most successful Internet entrepreneurs made money. I found out that almost all of the most successful gurus’s have their own products to sell. Most of them use digital products and they depend heavily on affiliate programs to make their money. They get hundreds, or even thousands of us to sell their products for them. And each time an affiliate makes a sale, they make money.

So I set out to copy their efforts and develop my own product. Not being a writer, I needed a way to get my ebook written by someone else. And I needed to get it done by spending as little money as possible. I developed 3 methods to get others to write my ebook for me. Two of those methods are absolutely free. I started my own affiliate program and within a day, people were joining my program. Within 4 days, some of the affiliates were beginning to generate sales. And I was making money! Not millions, but a few dollars here and a few dollars there. Soon, I was making money on a consistent basis. During my third month, I made almost 500 dollars. It wasn’t a million, but that is the real way to make money on the Internet.

I took meticulous notes on every aspect of my plan and documented the entire process. I wanted to make sure that others could duplicate my techniques. I put these notes into a file for future reference. Two months ago, I found my original notes and developed them into an ebook. If you want to make money on the Internet, forget the ‘Get Rich Quick’ schemes, they don’t work. The real money on the Internet is made by developing your own product and starting an affiliate program.

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