How To Grow Your Business Fast With Affiliations

If your outfit is new or young, it does not mean you have to wait around for an eternity for your business to become visible and recognized. What you need to do is to find huge businesses that have the clients that you need. Piggyback on established businesses and growth can explode once you execute properly. To quote from a famous writer,"Rich people look for and build networks. Everyone else looks for work". Many small business operators seem to think that things will only be done right if they did them themselves and they often end up having no personal life or recreational time. Delegation can save this. Connect and form AFFILIATIONS with larger outfits that can ease some of the stress of starting up a business.
1) Let's say you have a website that sells products or services, you spend time and money advertising and promoting the site so as to increase traffic and increase the probability of generating more sales at your site. There are a number of companies that actually do promotion for you at cheap rates. These companies already have clients and users who shop other people's site through them so why not jump into the pool as well. Visit this site and register to watch your business grow and sales increase. I've done it already and there's nothing like a sweet piggyback ride to success. Why should you do all the work by yourself.
2) I've observed this phenomenon since as a child and now it makes so much sense to me. There will always be a dominating and well known Disc Jockey who develops a huge following and who people can relate to and respond to simply because he's familiar to them. However, if you are a newcomer to the business, regardless of how cool your name is or whatever, your establishment as a "hot" DJ can be troublesome to attain. So what do you do? You form AFFILIATIONS. Try to hang out with the "big boys" and believe me it's a lot easier than you think. Over time you can be involved in gigs where you play in the early part of a concert or party with the popular DJ as the main attraction for later on in the show. You gain exposure to his followers before he plays for them. It's only up to you to impress them greatly enough so as to establish yourself. After a few weeks or months of doing this people will begin to recognize your name then you will be able to stand on your own.
3) Let's say you have just opened a vehicle rental business and you're trying to get things off the ground. What do you do? You don't rely solely on press releases and advertising. You FORM AFFILIATIONS with people who can support your rental business. HOTELS are perfect. Think of yourself as a tourist in a strange country. You have to go through the trouble of finding a hotel in the first place then you may need to get around so you leave your bags in the hotel room and go wandering down the street in search of rental companies. What if you could have access to rental services from right there in the hotel?
As a rental business owner, you must AFFILIATE yourself with several of the local hotels and partner with them so that you become an instant "go to" guy for vehicle rental services. The hotels are always welcoming guests so having a rental company at their beck and call will be very convenient for them and your business will grow.
4) Even huge companies grow in this way. You've seen ads on TV where two companies offer different services that are linked to each other. One such promotion was a campaign between Apple Computer and Pepsi.(Drink Pepsi and look under the bottle cover for winnings from Apple Computer.) You want the benefit from Apple so you drink Pepsi. Both companies win. Pepsi may have very well seen an increase in sales during that promotional period with Apple.That's like killing two birds with one stone. Affiliations can be very powerful when the promotions are carefully planned and executed.
5) I've visited a Botanic Garden that was very well established and eternally beautiful. It is a popular site for visitors and locals alike and the owners opened up a cactus garden in another part of the island. What did they do to establish it? On entering, when you purchase a 6.50 euro ticket for entry to the garden, you instantly got a coupon for a euro off on an entry ticket(5.50 euros) to the Cactus Garden. "What perfect business sense!" I thought to myself. It eases the job of heavily marketing and advertising the cactus garden. It's just like when you're shopping at Amazon.com and they display a list of products that are similar to the one you are purchasing, that may also interest you. BRILLIANT!
Business is a lot of common sense and logical reasoning. You will definitely learn a lot of these tips from experienced AND SUCCESSFUL business people. I stress on SUCCESSFUL because doing something for 20 or 30 years doesn't mean you do it well. Some people have been fishing for 20 years and still don't do a good job of it. Be sure to use the power of AFFILIATES to the best of your ability and take advantage of what the "heavy hitters" have to share about their success stories. Experience is surely the best teacher but it doesn't mean you must experience everything in order to learn. Making your own mistakes is important but whenever possible, please try to avoid it and take time out to learn vicariously from some real winners.
Thanks for reading this mouthful.
Whew !

10 Businesses With Focused Niches

The importance of identifying and focusing on your business niche can never be overstated. When you properly organise your business and keep TARGETS in mind, you increase your success rate. This eliminates a lot of frustration and you can clear more time to build other aspects of your business. I've accomplished this quite effectively by including Google Adsense on this blog. If you have a website you can click on the little button on the left of this page (below profile) and begin having targetted ads on your site that generate additional income for you.
I've sought a number of businesses and products that have successfully focused on their niches. The list is below.
1) Pregnancy Without Pounds
2) Starting an Import Business
3) Outsmart Search Engines to increase your hits
4) Great Public Speaking
5) Earn Thousands From Google Adwords
6) Improve Your Google Ranking
7) Lazy Man's Guide To Online Business
8) Proposals & Business Docs Made Easy.
9) Raising Prices Without Losing Sales
10) Sales Training For Engineers & Techies

Small Business - You MUST Network

Oh how important marketing is to growth in business! Lots of entrepreneurs fall short when it comes to effectively “selling” themselves. It has a lot to do with vision. One has to see opportunities to position himself wherever possible so as to reduce the negative effects of budgetary constraints and size limits. Marketing can be relatively cheap or rather affordable even with a small budget. The power is in the strategies that are employed.
Many businesses are started based on an intriguing idea but many owners don’t have the slightest clue as to how to properly market their product or service. Your main priorities in a small business should be sales and marketing. Marketing takes many forms. One common form is ‘word-of-mouth’ marketing. This is extremely beneficial to any business but there must be a track record to create the buzz about that particular business. A new business does not benefit much from word of mouth marketing because this form of marketing comes from satisfied customers. During the first few months of its existence the business is building the foundation for the word of mouth ‘campaign’ to begin. One happy customer tells his/her friend or family member about his/her experience with your business and the word spreads from that point onwards. Traditional businesses do not rely too strongly on this avenue for growth. On the other hand, this is how network marketing businesses function and the growth is exponential and the business owners can earn tremendous incomes this way, while keeping operational costs to a minimum. The key factor for success in this form of business is a powerful product with great appeal. I only became familiar with this network marketing concept in the last year or so and I must say I was quite happy step outside of the box to start one of my own.
Networking however can be incorporated into just about any business model. The same word-of-mouth effect described above can be achieved by maintaining direct contact with clients via email or perhaps trade publications.
Having a small business does not necessarily mean your marketing program should be small as well. One must think BIG. Think outside the box and reach for the stars literally. Commit yourself to training to swim in deep waters. An earlier post may give you some ideas. Swim with the sharks if you can because you may stand a slight chance of landing a really huge deal with an established reputable company. Networking is the key to great success in business because people love to do business with people whom they know and trust. This is where the power of relationships comes in(Search previous posts for article). A huge client can be a well-known company and such companies can be very influential. People like to follow leaders to achieve similar levels of success.
Another important aspect of marketing is your business card. It may seem trivial to some but it is extremely vital to have a decent business card. This is often where people get the first impression of you and or your business card so it has got to be very simple and professional in appearance and it must do justice to your business model as well. Remember, you only have one opportunity to make a first impression so it MUST be done right the first time.
A common mistake that many businesses make is where they may be very successful and are having ‘fun’ writing checks and they do not put much energy into marketing at that point. This is a bad idea. NEVER put all your eggs into one basket. Success is not measured by how much you reap...It is measured by the number of seeds you plant. Marketing is like planting seeds and it is a practice that you should never abandon regardless of how successful your business is.
The thing is, many businesses are held back because they take little or no risks. There leaders are not taking the time to delegate properly within their teams so they end up trying to do too many different things. It’s like being “Jack of all trades” and “Master of none”. Regardless of how many years experience you have in business, there’s always someone who has the “Knows more about that” than you do. Never be afraid to seek help and when seeking help, seek the best and most competent help you can find whether it’s an attorney for your legal department or an accountant. When you delegate effectively, you create the time where you can focus on the items in your ‘active portfolio’ and productivity goes through the roof.
Finally let me say a bit about goals. It is of utmost importance to set goals...6 month goals, 1 and 2 year goals and so on. Goals change the way everyone thinks. It’s the opposite of just doing the work as a routine. WRITE DOWN what you want your business to look like at the beginning and at the end in terms of sales, clients and so on.
Remember, marketing can make or break a business so be sure to get it done the right way all the time.
Thanks for reading.