The challenges are very similar:

• managing your time
• budgeting
• the feeling of isolation
• not quite knowing what you want to do as a business and if you do know, how do you get started

These are just a few of your concerns I’m sure but how do you work your way through them? Typically, most women will gravitate towards the beauty industry looking for a type of business that they can start on a small scale and grow it from home.  Look at some of the  mentors we’ve had to look up to:  Annie Malone (She taught Madame C.J. Walker), Madame C.J. Walker, Mary Kay, Estee Lauder and Naomi Sims. These were all great women helping other women to become very successful.

These women all started in the beauty industry … skin, hair, perfumes, body products … just to name a few.  I’ll be willing to bet that you’ve sold or know someone that’s sold one of their products.  And now you’re looking for a product to sell or create that will take you to your financial freedom.

Here are a few things to consider before you rush off looking to become the next “Blend Queen” of beauty products or begin to sell any product for that matter.

• How much will it cost you to start your business from home?
• Can it be done using the internet?
• If you’re a mom planning your business from home, how will it affect your home life?
• If you work another job and want to bridge your way out of your current job environment, will you have enough energy, time and money to make it happen?
• How much do you know about running a business?

This list will grow and decrease in size as you grow in the knowledge of how to run your business and become very successful at it.  But until then, you’ll have to become one very organized individual.

Here’s to Your Success as A Woman Working From Home !!

Juliette & Robert

http://www.beautybusinessblueprint.com

Here are a few convenient rules of thumb to keep in mind as you
start up and operate your own Internet marketing business:

1- The 10/10 rule.

This rule says always give your online customers a discount off
the list price, but the discount doesn’t have to be huge; either
10% or $10 off will do.

2- The 99/1 rule.

99% of your affiliate sales will come from 1% of your affiliates.

3- The 90/90 rule.

90% of the people who opt into your e-list who are going to buy
something from you do so within 90 days.

Therefore you want to get as many new subscribers as possible to
make a purchase within that time frame – otherwise, they may
never buy.

4- The 3-month ROI rule.

This rule applies to buying traffic and new names for your
e-list.

It says that ideally the revenue generated by new names added to
your list should pay back the advertising cost to acquire those
new names within 3 months. If not, you may be paying too much per
name.

5- The 10 X 10 = 100 rule.

If you can increase your click through rates and conversion rates
each tenfold, you will increase your revenues one hundredfold.

6- The 8:1 rule.

The minimum selling price of a product should be at least 8 times
the cost of the goods. So a DVD set that costs $10 to make must
sell for at least $80.

7- The 0.1% rule.

Each time you broadcast an e-mail to your list, no more than 0.1%
of your subscribers should unsubscribe.

For a list of 100,000 subscribers, that would be a maximum of 100
opting out of the list.

If your opt-out rate exceeds 0.1%, consider throttling back on
frequency or improving the content.

We hope you enjoyed the read,

To Your Success,

Juliette & Robert

beautybusinessblueprint@gmail.com

Source:

Bob Bly

www.bly.com

Make sure your content  includes tips, how-to-articles and information that will help your reader.

Don’t make it complicated or over think it.  Have someone video tape you preparing a scent blend, or making potpourri, making melt & pour soap … you get the idea.  If you haven’t started a blog yet or launched a website, you might be able to hit two birds with one stone.  Meaning!  You can have a wordpress blog that will enable you to create written content in the form of post and upload an image of your product in the post you’re writing.

You can put a price, a code and quantity field on your blog and ask them to pay you via paypal using the product information on the post.  It’s a great way to test your market, your product and the interest in your subject before you launch a full blown site.

The blog post will act as articles for your site.  You can also ask other site owners in your field or related fields, to post your articles on their blogs. Why? Because when they take an article from you, it gives them content that they did not have to write.  And, it makes them look as though they are helping their readers by giving them objective information. The link that you create in your blog post brings them back to your site to also read or purchase what you have produced.  It’s a win – win situation.

Pod cast are like talking to your friends.  There are services that allow you to have a conversation, record it and upload it to your blog and podcast directories, sharing your information with the world.

Every time you create a new product, you want to announce it to the world.  So, you do a press release.  This will allow your announcement to be known world wide and all eyes will point back to you because you’ve put your contact information and a short Bio in the press release.

These are just some of the ways to create content for your Beauty Business.  They are simple but not necessarily easy.  If you can’t write, then you will have to find someone who can write for you.  It might cost you a small fee but as start ups you don’t always have the extra money.  So an alternative might be to go to the Journalism or English department at the local college and ask the department chair for their top students and create an internship that will enable them to write your articles for you.  If your best friend is an article writer, that’s even better.

Lots more to come, so keep coming back to visit us at Beauty Business Blueprint, this way you won’t miss the great information we’ve got coming for you.  We’d like to hear your feedback about what we’re writing and also let us know what you have an interest in.

Until next time,

To Your Success,

Juliette & Robert

beautybusinessblueprint@gmail.com

Keep your attention on the questions that your market might have, paying particular attention to the problems that they might have.  If a number of people come out with the same problems or challenges, you’ll know for certain how to address them and how to provide a solution for them.  This is how you will come out with products and services that will virtually sell themselves.

Make it your business to visit these sites at least three times a week so that you can stay on top of your market and their concerns. You can do a keyword search for blogs at:

• www.blogsearchengine.com
• www.technorati.com

For discussion forums and groups you can search:

• http://groups.google.com
• http://groups.msn.com
• http://groups.yahoo.com
• www.forumgarden.com

Social networking sites such as:

• www.myspace.com
• www.facebook.com
• www.meetup.com

So get started and see what you can come up with for your business and let us know what you find.

To Your Success,

Juliette & Robert

We’ve learned over the years that all of these Essentials have proven to be true.  For now we will list them as they were given to us.  Don’t panic, as you begin your Education in Marketing Online, you will come to understand the position for each of them as you grow.

1. SEO-Search Engine Optimization
2. PPC- Pay Per Click Advertising
3. Copy Writing
4. Analytics/Conversion Testing
5. Email Follow-Up Marketing
6. Joint Ventures & Affiliates
7. Blogging
8. Social Media

In time we will talk in detail about the importance of each of these essential elements in marketing your online beauty business.

To Your Success,

Juliette & Robert

Are you organized and on a schedule?  No? Then you’re probably in overwhelm.  Did you make a list the night before of what you wanted to or needed to accomplish? You’ll find that you will have to remind yourself, to remind yourself.

As you begin to set your beauty business up, the more organized you are the better.  Have a notebook that’s designated just for your beauty business.  Create a list of goals that you want to accomplish.  When you create your list be sure to begin with those things that are the most important/high priority.  There’s a rule known as the 80/20 rule.  80% of what you do gets you 20% of your results but that 20% is your goldmine that will help you move your business forward.

Cleaning your home office will not contribute to your bottom line, especially if getting 10 articles into syndication  that week will get you further.

Does this make sense to you?  If it doesn’t, you might want to find the answers to these questions  quick fast and in a hurry, because these questions and may more are going to have to be answered before you can effectively move forward.

Yes, you make soaps, candles, body products and skin care but if you don’t have organization within your camp, you’re in for a long hard ride. With great structure and organization, you’re sure to add profit to your bottom.

To Your Success,

Juliette & Robert

juliette@beautybusinessblueprint.com

There are many website properties that fall under the social media or social networking umbrella. These sites include Facebook.com, LinkedIn.com, Twitter.com, and Squidoo.com. Another would be MySpace.com which has been consistently falling out of favor in the past year. Of course, there are many other less famous forms of social media that include web blogs, instant messaging, vlogs, podcasts, internet forums, and of course, email. As you can see, there are different categories of social media that include communication, collaboration, entertainment and multimedia.

For a small business, social media and networking can be a goldmine! These new outlets present a business owner with multiple opportunities to reach out to new markets, increase market share and attract new customers.

Creating and building customer database, and using it to reach clients through email, is a great form of social networking. Another prime example is a business blog – your website is not complete until you have one and is an exceptional way to educate your audience and link that education to your beauty business.

You could have a Twitter account and send out tweets to your registered followers. This could include advertising special site updates, promotions and other interesting factoids about the comings and goings of your business.

You may want to be included on the LinkedIn.com website, and build a circle of contacts, many of which may be from your college days. This is a good way to reconnect and perhaps make new customers.

Another possibility is to establish a Facebook.com website for your business, or start an interest group on Facebook and begin to amass a following. A new feature for Facebook is to import blog posts so that your Facebook account is always fresh and current.

Squidoo is also another good source for establishing your expertise in your niche area of the beauty industry. By creating a lens for each area or topic, you can build up quite a nice little knowledge base of expert information that all links back to your beauty business website.

Social media networking has levelled the playing field, allowing small and budding business owners to reach out to the masses, present information and participate in relevant exchanges of content. No longer do the large companies with endless marketing budgets have the upper hand when it comes to building client bases and increasing business revenues online. An entrepreneurial small business owner, within the beauty industry, can now be a shark instead of just a very small fish in a very large pond.

To Your Success,

Robert & Juliette

juliette@beautybusinessblueprint.com

1. Establish a product for which there is a demand. If people don’t need or want your information product, no matter how well written it is, they just won’t buy it. If you have to set about creating a demand that can be awfully difficult and take a lot of time. It’s better to sell an information product for which you know there is already a demand. That way people will know they need your information product; you won’t need to spend time convincing them of that fact.
2. Make your information product of the highest quality that you can. Don’t try and make a fast buck with an inferior product. That is just scamming people and that can get you in an awful lot of trouble. If you take the time now to make sure your information product is the highest quality that you can offer, you will reap the rewards of higher sales and higher profits.
3. Your information product should be well presented. It should look professional, and be free from errors. Also, get yourself a company logo and use that on your info, for example, your e-books. You should also make sure that any e-books that you attempt to sell have an attractive front cover. You may want to get professional graphic design help with that, but packages available for your computer make e-book design quite easy these days.
4. Aim for repeat business. It is much easier to make a second sale to an old customer than it is to find a second customer to whom to make a first sale. Information products are usually quite inexpensive, so if you want to secure a reliable income long-term, you really need repeat customers to be coming back to you. For that reason, at the outset of deciding your information products, keep in mind where there is potential for sequels and updates in which people who bought your first information product would be interested.
5. Get the legal details right. Take care not to violate trademarks for instance by doing something as simple as using the Google logo in your information product without express permission. It is also important to check that the names of any of your information product are not already protected by a trademark. Now you are ready to produce a killer information product that anyone would want to buy. Here are some things to bear in mind.
6. Do thorough research. You need to find out what sort of information products for which there would be a demand. You also need to make sure your information product contains only correct information.
7. Get the format of your information product correct for the information you want to get across to your audience. Don’t write an e-book where an e-mail course or article would be better. Also, whichever of these formats you choose, make sure they are set out in a way which can be clearly read and understood. Don’t sacrifice clarity for a fancy design.
8. Create your product after looking what else is available on the topic. Don’t try to re-invent the wheel with information products which have already effectively been written.
9. In order to sell more information products, consider giving some away. Through this initial free product you can build up people’s faith in your information products and encourage them to buy others from you.
10. The Golden Rule of selling information products is to create trust. Give people a reason to trust you. You can do this by publishing testimonials from people who have read your information products. Be careful to only use people’s names and e-mail addresses etc if they have given you permission in writing to do so. Also, offer them a money-back guarantee if they aren’t satisfied with your information product. Don’t panic about offering that. It shows that you are a reputable business owner and it shows that you have faith in your own product. People will be impressed by that.

Following these ten simple steps should enable you to sell as many information products as you want to.

To Your Success,

Juliette & Robert

juliette @beautybusinessblueprint.com

If someone is searching for the phrase “Corn Commodities” an article or page that has been optimized for that exact phrase will gain higher ranking in the search engines than “Coy About Corn Commodities” because the words “Coy About” are  getting in the way and diluting the exact search term “Corn Commodities”.  This is very important to you – or should be – because the higher up you are in search engine rankings, the more likely it is that people will visit your website.

Approximately five times as many people read headlines than read the body of an article. The trick in online marketing is getting the other four fifths of people to read the rest of your article or webpage, by creating very persuasive headlines.

So how do you do that? Here are some templates you can use to create compelling headlines which will have people eager to read on and find out more of what you have to say:

Put quotes (“ ”) around your headline. People will then view your article or webpage as something important that has been said by a reputable source.

Don’t use ALL CAPITAL Letters. It makes the words more difficult to read. Use Title Case, which capitalizes the first letter of every word, even the minor ones.

Be truthful and don’t over-hype in your article or webpage. Sensationalism just makes people not trust you.

Don’t substitute a logo for a headline. They are not the same thing and the logo will mean very little to people in comparison to an informative headline.

Test out your headlines in split tests. Use different headlines on the same article for your split tests and you will soon see how important they are in terms of traffic and conversion.

So, let’s now look at some templates for effective headlines that you can adapt for your own purposes:

Top Ten…

Top Ten… And What To do About It

“A Simple Cure For…”

“How I _____ And How You Could Too”

“How Doing These (Number) Simple Things Can Transform You Into A…”

“How To _____ & Why It Works”

(Number) Secrets Of ______

“How _______ Will Get You _____ Time and Time Again”

“What Your _______ Isn’t Telling You About _______ That Could _____”

“______ Advice From The Pros”

By using the above advice and inserting your own relevant and specific information into these headline templates,  should give you compelling headlines which make people want to read on, trusting you to tell them more. It should also help to build trust so that your headlines on articles and web pages lead to more conversions.

This might seem a bit overwhelming  to you right now. If so, store it in your mental data base because you’re certainly going to need it.

To Your Success,

Juliette & Robert

]]> http://www.beautybusinessblueprint.com/how-to-optimize-your-articles-using-headlines/onlinemarketingstrategies/feed 0 http://www.beautybusinessblueprint.com/how-to-shop-for-an-autoresponder-for-your-beauty-business/onlinemarketingstrategies http://www.beautybusinessblueprint.com/how-to-shop-for-an-autoresponder-for-your-beauty-business/onlinemarketingstrategies#comments Mon, 23 Nov 2009 19:48:50 +0000 http://www.beautybusinessblueprint.com/?p=229 Autoresponders are a huge advantage for your business. They allow you to automate a whole range of  electronic product information. They keep you in touch with your clients, building your brand and helping your business, even while you sleep or take a vacation.

However, the array of autoresponders available now can be quite dazzling. You need to get the right one for your particular needs, especially as autoresponders vary in price from absolutely free to quite expensive.

Here are a few considerations when shopping for autoresponder service:

You must have personal control over your autoresponder files. In other words, you should have the ability to upload new autoresponder documents any time you want. This allows you to change your documents 24/7, instantaneously.

The autoresponder must be user-friendly. For some autoresponders you need to specify an exact “subject” or “body” message in order to retrieve your document you want. These are difficult to use and you risk losing the sale as people who might have been your clients just won’t bother to work it out.

So, you should use an autoresponder that will send a specific message back to the requester no matter what is in the subject or body of the e-mail message that was sent.

Most autoresponders will only send up to 32 K of information. This is really important to know, because if you are using an autoresponder for your business, you don’t want one of these. Ideally, your autoresponder should have the capability of sending any size of email and attachment. This will give you the freedom to sendgraphics, software, and detailed ebooks, etc.

Find out how fast your server will set up additional autoresponders if necessary. You may have need of more autoresponders, to allow you to trace advertisements for split testing; this means your ISP must set up these quickly or allow you to set them up for yourself.

Will the autoresponder capture/log all the email addresses that request a response? This is vital to enable you to follow up on every one of these potential customers. Ideally these logs will also show you the time and date of the request to allow you to track activity. Avoid autoresponders which don’t allow you to do that.

Make sure the ISP’s autoresponder software will allow you to download the autoresponder log (I download mine every 21 -30 days) and rebuild a new log automatically so you don’t wind up with duplicates. This allows you to strip out e-mail addresses from each log and correspond with the potential customers again.

You should avoid autoresponders that:

charge high set up fees (i.e.: $25-75 is unacceptable),

charge high monthly fees,

charge a “per hit” charge each time a document is requested,

don’t allow you the ability to upload and change an attached document yourself.

The most common use for autoresponders is to send out free information products like articles, sales letters, etc, or post ads in newsgroups, discussion lists, forums and classified ads.

I know, you just wanted to create your beauty products.  Well without some organization of your list (hope you’ve got one or at least you’re building one) how will you communicate with them.

A word from you on a weekly basis helps to establish a bond between you and your list.  You can send them announcements of new products, update them on product ingredients and so forth.

Being creative is a beautiful thing but being organized keeps you much more sane.

To Your Success,

Robert & Juliette

juliette@beautybusinessblueprint.com