Pareto’s Law – The Definitive Guide to Bigger, Easier Profits After you’ve heard the adage “work smarter, not harder” for the gazillionth time, you probably want to gag. Reading Timothy Ferriss’ The 4-Hour Workweek, you’ll find it again; this time, swallow the gag reflex and pay attention.

It comes in the form of Pareto’s Law, the 80/20 principle (another teaching point that’s been around the block more times than a new driver in a Mini Cooper). Never mind. You really do need to learn this principle – and put it to use – if you want to boost the bottom line and still have time for a life.

Even just the title of Ferriss’ book should be enough to nudge your imagination. What would you do with a workweek that only lasted four hours or less? If it’s really a possibility – and it is – it’s worth taking another look at something that actually works, and not just looking, but putting it to use.

Here’s how it works: Pareto says you get 80% of your results (good or bad) from 20% of your input (what you do). In business, it can look like this: 80% of your sales come from 20% of your customers. That means that you’ve got a dead weight factor of 80% among your client base. They’re requiring an inordinate amount of work, and are only producing a small portion of your revenue. Translation: not good.

How do you put this principle to use to boost your profits?

1. Track everything.
First, you’ve got to be able to know which clients are the most profitable. If you’re not keeping track of this info, start. If you’re in an MLM selling health and beauty products, you need to know which clients buy the whole anti-aging line – on the autoship plan, and which buy the occasional mascara, if you call them… after seven attempts to reach them. It works the same way for every business – product- or service-driven, from haircuts to custom-built private jets. That same 20% of your customers are easy. They know what they want. They buy it from you. They’re happy. You’d better know exactly who they are.

2. Know that 20% like you know your own dog.
You want to be able to pick these customers out of a lineup because you know them so well. What makes them such great customers? What trends do you see? How do they like to be contacted? What are you providing that compels them come back for more? How did you find them? Where can you go looking to find more just like them? By taking the time to get to know them, you can learn a lot – it’s time well spent. Essentially, by learning all about these customers, you form a blueprint for your ideal customer. With this blueprint in hand, you take the first step in designing your customer base.

3. Be picky.
When you’re new in business, you’re so grateful to have anyone come through the door that you’ll put up with a lot just in hopes of making a sale. It’s not a good precedent to set for your business, but it happens. The trick is moving away from that as quickly as possible. Given the choice, why would you gather unpleasant, high-maintenance, penny-pinching customers who tax even your best customer service person’s patience? Instead, you could assemble a group of loyal, quality-driven, appreciative clients who value what you provide and make doing business a pleasure. It’s a matter of choosing quality over quantity, at first.

4. Get into cloning.
Well, not really. But you do want to redirect your efforts from how you used to do marketing and sales – anyone with a pulse – to attracting more who fit the blueprint of your ideal customers, and by spending more time and energy on the customers you’ve got who are already ideal. You can find more of these precious gems by asking for referrals, by going where they go and doing what they do, and by doing everything you can to provide exquisite service to them.

5. Systematize it.
You’re probably not in the position to just go willy-nilly firing clients who don’t meet your dream come true blueprint. But you can definitely make sure that your new clients are the ones you choose. Set up a ranking system so you’re able to keep track of your clients and their profiles. Customize your service so you spend the bulk of your resources on the most productive clients – while still providing excellence to your B-list clients.

It’s always possible that today’s 80%-er may become tomorrow’s best client – or they may introduce you to that dream client. Regardless, your goal is to provide excellence to all clients, while actively pursuing the ones that’ll make your life easy and your business boom.

An internet business isn’t something you want to jump into without any training – but with a bare minimum of tech skills, anyone with a computer, internet access, and a hobby or interest can build a business.

Additional Resources on this topic:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pareto_principle

Using Google Alerts to Your Advantage

Google has come out with some time saving and useful tools over the past few years and one of the most useful and powerful free tools that they offer is Google Alerts. With Google Alerts you can be notified via e-mail when there are blogs, websites, or news snippets that contain certain keywords that you choose. This not only allows you a handy way to keep track of topics you are interested in but it opens up a whole world of online leverage that you can use to your advantage.

There are a number of different ways in which Google Alerts can help you to thrive online, here are just a few:

Your Website: Create an alert for your domain name leaving off the www. This will allow you to track how often your website is talked about online.

Your Personal Name: If you are looking to become an authority in your market place then it is imperative that you are mentioned frequently. By creating an alert using your personal name you will be able to see how often you are mentioned and thus better gauge what is and isn’t working for you as far as spreading your name online goes.

Your Business Name: Creating an alert for your company name will allow you to see what other websites may be mentioning your business’ name. This is common practice with the big boys as it allows companies to send thanks when positive remarks are posted and allows them to address issues that may arise due to a negative posting.
Your Blog: Using the same methods as you did for your domain name create an alert for the blog that you host. This will allow you to see who like and dislikes you blog.

Your Articles: When you employ article marketing as part of your online marketing strategy you can create alerts using the title of the articles. This allows you to see where your articles are being posted and re-used.

Your Industry: Stay in the forefront of the industry in which you are in by creating alerts using keywords and key phrases which will provide you with the most up to date news about your industry possible.

Your competition: By using your competitor’s domain names you can created alerts about them and conduct your own personal online espionage. See who is talking about your competition and what is being said about them.

Your Leads: Create alerts using your leads names and what you will receive in return is a whole host of information that you can then use to close the deal.

Your Best Clients: Set up alerts for all your top clients so that you can stay abreast of any major happenings that go on with them. If something big happens, such as a merger or an acquisition, you can quickly send over a note of congratulations.

Of course to maximize your efforts it is important to know how to streamline your alerts. To do this you have to choose quality words for your alerts. This can be accomplished in one of the following ways utilizing Google’s search method:

Exact Keyword Search: If you conduct a search for the word plumb, Google will also return everything that is related such as plumber, and plumbing. However, you can get result for just one word if you use a “+” at the beginning of the word. In this case you would search, +plumb.

Exact Key Phrase Search: If you search plumbers in Atlanta, you will get everything back containing those words; even if they are not next to each other. Capture what you are after by using quotes to get only those words used in a phrase. In this example you would type, “Plumbers in Atlanta.

Alternate Keyword: If you want to get results for one word or another you simply type in OR between the words. Be sure or is capitalized and remember to enclose in quotes to streamline your returns.

Like Keywords: If you are looking for synonyms use the “~” symbol in front of the word.

Once you have found the words and or phrases you want to keep track of, go ahead and set up your alerts. There really is no better way to keep track of everything related to your online presence. Utilizing your imagination and Google Alerts can help you to stay light years ahead of your competition.

Written by Mb

Scribd is a social networking website that is catching on at a rather quick pace which allows anyone to publish their documents and images and make them available for the World Wide Web. With Scribd you can easily turn almost any type of file such as PDF, Word Document, or Excel Document into a web document that can be viewed for the entire online world. Scribd offers the perfect solution for those that do not have a website and makes sharing your thoughts with the world a breeze.

Scribd has over 35 billion words in its arsenal which means it is many times bigger than such free publication sites as Wikipedia and others. The site has over 10 million documents publishes and boasts tens of millions of reader and viewers each and every month. So how do you get involved?

Membership to Scribd is free and creating an account is as easy as a few simple steps. Once you create your account you are given a number of ways in which to upload your files such as:

Copy and paste your text documents.
Type in the URL of existing work you have published on the web so long as you own the rights to it.
Upload files directly from your hard drive.
Use your desktop upload tool to publish multiple files at the same time.

Once you begin to contribute to scribe you can build a personal profile and then begin to build your social networking community. You can find others with similar tastes and interests and subscribe to their work and share thoughts, ideas, and even leave your comments. Others in turn will begin to subscribe to your works should they be interesting enough and they may even use some of your information in their own websites. Plus, published documents on Scribd are typically indexed rather quickly by the major search engines like Google, Yahoo, and Ping. It all boils down to your published work having the ability to go viral in a very big way provided it is good quality work.

This not only means increased opportunities for individuals spreading the word about their work, it also gives internet marketers in the know a distinct advantage.  Internet marketers can use Scribd as a whole new source of social networking leads and find others that are interested in what their clients have to offer. By carefully matching content with members, a win, win situation can occur as a member will get something they have been looking for and the internet marketer’s client gains further exposure.

As with any other social networking website that is online today, Scribd has some finer points and some not so finer points. Here is a breakdown:

THE GOOD

Use of iPaper: Scribd uses a technology that is powered by Adobe Flash called iPaper. iPaper allows document to be embedded on web pages much in the same way as videos from YouTube. What this means for you is that you do not have to know any fancy computer lingo, download any software, nor do you have to have a website in order to publish your work. With Scribd you can publish your work with just a few clicks of the mouse.
Privacy Settings: With Scribd, you decide who can and cannot view your files. You can choose to share a document with the entire world, or limit it to certain members within the site community; it is all up to you. You can set different parameters for each article or you can set a blanket parameter for all.
No Commitment: Once you decide that you no longer want your files to be viewed, you can easily remove them from Scribd. You can keep files active for a day or forever; again, the choice is yours.

THE BAD

Searchablity: Scribd is a bit unorganized and it is sometimes difficult to find what it is you are looking for. Scribd continues to make strides in this department and has various ways to navigate through the website, but you are usually left with a good number of things to sift through before you find what you are after.
Plain site: Compared to other social networking sites, Scribd is not all that flashy. While that is not necessarily a bad thing, some may view it as a negative.

Scribd is relatively new when it comes to social networking and has only been around since 2007. But the website and its community continue to grow by leaps and bounds. With the ease of uploading documents and the growing number of members it is easy to see why Scribd is rapidly catching on in the ever popular world of social networking.

Keywords and more Keywords…

If your website has been lucky enough to get onto the first page of a Google search, you must be doing something right. This is especially true if you got there using only short tail keywords because these types of keywords hit a lot of generic sites. Sitting back on the laurels of this listing is not something you want to do and it may be time to invest some energy in looking for those long tail keyword visitors.

It is true that you will not generate as many hits using long tail keywords as you would with the short tail variety; however, with long tail keywords, it’s not the volume that counts. When you make use of long tail keywords you are going for the quality visitor who is more likely to generate a sale or just the right click-through you need.

How does one go about nailing down the right long tail keywords choices? This process can be a tad bit time consuming but, when done correctly, profits and sales will see a definite jump when compared to visits. The first thing is to choose the short tail keywords which match your website. There are specific tools and procedures you will need to look into to make this happen for you.

Know Your Short Tails

Knowing the short tail keywords which most directly link to your website is incredibly important. Using Google’s AdWords Sandbox Toolkit, you are able to discover how people are searching for the type of product you offer. Using this information, you are able to decide what are the best short tail keywords to incorporate into your website.

Linking Short Tail to Long Tail

What happens when a highly used short tail keyword is coupled with a specific long tail keyword? Long tail keywords make it more likely to see your website on the first page of a search because of its more specific nature. This will generate more targeted traffic to you site and this is the type of traffic who is more likely make a purchase if you have what they want.

Knowing which long tail keywords to use is where various analytic systems come into play. You never want to sit back and rely on the keywords you are using. The market is always changing as are the searches people are creating. You will need to research various keywords to see what appears more than others. Simply doing the search yourself can show you this information in your search window through related hits.

Rankings

Once the long tail keywords are chosen, you want to start looking into rankings. If your site is in the top 20 or so for your short tail and long tail keywords, you are on the right track. A little refinement is needed as well as adding additional long tails to the list. However, be careful of a trap some people fall into with this type of keyword work. Just because it’s a long tail does not mean you will rank well.

You have to have the content on the site that relates to your long tail keywords otherwise, search engines will not rank you well. If your long tail is best jackets for men in winter and you don’t have any men’s winter jackets, you will not rate well for those keywords. However, best jackets for men may give you many more hits.

Once the long tails are worked out, you will want to use tools such as Google’s Insights to track the rise and fall of long tail keywords. As seasons change or holidays approach, certain long tails will become better than others and using this tool, you can keep an eye on those as well. This tool will also allow you so see how these keywords are rising and falling in comparison to previous months.

In conclusion, knowing how long tail keywords will affect the traffic to your website is important and can be extremely beneficial. Take some extra time to learn the ones which will best benefit you and continue to do this over the life of your website for continued success.

the Word of the day is “Utility” … with a promotion we try to convince the greater number of consumers to buy … even within your niche there can be more then one group of consumers…thus narrowing your focus too much within a specific niche can leave out a large numbers of profitable prospects

Mb

http://www.flickr.com/photos/39060901@N03/3591443596/

I live in the Buffalo NY area and I took this picture of this billboard today. The billboard was put out by a website called Values.com www.values.com

As Guerrilla Marketer myself I tend to stop and take notice of someone elses marketing attempts…I have learned that marketing is everything we say or do…every encounter we have with our customers or potential customers leaves an impression…yadayada

My main problem with this billboard is that it was placed with in a few miles from where Flight 3407 went down and killed 50 people recently.

Everyone is feeling the pinch in this tough economy and small business owners are no exception. From trying to keep employees paid to making sure the utilities are covered, business owners are searching for new and creative ways to save a buck and keep their heads above water. Bartering is proving to be one practical and effective method for meeting needs and making revenues, even when business is slow.

Whether your business is new or several years established, bartering can be an important part of your money-making strategy. It is defined by exchanging goods or services for goods or services from another business, and it is a win-win situation, benefiting both parties involved.

Barter networks, such as International Monetary Systems (www.imsbarter.com), provide a great way to connect with other businesses interested in exchanging much-needed goods and services. Once you are a member of a barter network, instead of paying for the goods and services, the business giving you what you need will receive credits to use for something they need from you or another member of the network.

Picture this—a professional accountant exchanges her services with a dry cleaning company for credits. Then, the accountant can use the credits for another service she needs for her business or even her personal life, such as carpet cleaning. Rather than having to pay top dollar for goods and services, businesses taking advantage of bartering can have what they need to make their businesses succeed .

The benefits to bartering actually surpass the aspect of quality goods and services for less. A small business that barters is also receiving free publicity for his or her business. Being part of a bartering network means your business name will be shared with many other businesses in the group. This provides an excellent opportunity to network and promote your business without having to pay hefty advertising fees.

Rise Above the Bad Economy

There is no need to succumb to the economic slump we are experiencing in the U.S. Rather than settling for tough times and trying to simply keep your head above water, why not make the goal to thrive in the midst of challenges? Bartering gives you the chance to do just that as you can save significant amounts on business costs. Barter your services and products and earn credits to receive everything from advertising to window washing.

Nearly every business has excess inventory—perhaps even outdated products. Consider bartering them to free up space in your storage areas while exchanging them for goods you need to improve your business operations.

It’s this type of creative business strategy that sets the thriving businesses apart from those that sink to the bottom in times of economic hardship. Hard times call for switching it up and doing something different to ensure your business makes it, and bartering is one tactic that has proven to be extremely effective and beneficial for all parties involved.

Bartering and Your Business

Is now the right time to consider bartering for your business?

•    Are you hurting for new business? A bartering network is a venue through which other members are referred to you for goods and services, providing opportunities to cultivate new business contacts you would not have had access to otherwise.
•    Are you considering reducing the prices of your products in order to get them out the door? Rather than lowering your prices and therefore your profit, bartering allows you to exchange them for valuable credits or trade dollars that can help you to make the most of your business operations.
•    Has your bottom line taken a hit? Joining a barter network can help you to reduce expenditures as you use your trade dollars for necessary goods and services, ultimately contributing to a significant increase in your company profits.
•    Could you use some free advertising? In a poor economy, advertising is one of the first places small business owners try to reduce costs. A bartering network provides a built-in advertising system. Other businesses learn about the services you offer and are likely to either use your business or recommend it to others. Furthermore it is the very best kind of advertising: word of mouth!

While the current economic situation is no picnic for small business owners, the good news is that you do not have to idly stand by and watch your business suffer. Barter truly is better—it’s a smarter way to do business and can give you the goods, services and even the customers you need to achieve a thriving business.

Brian Rooney, autoresponder expert says:

The news is going crazy with talk about a recession. Remember that it’s in the news media interest to get us to watch TV with scary headlines as they make more money when people are watching.

Brian’s entire article Is Internet Marketing Recession Proof?

A friend of mine Newell Nussbaumer and I started a magazine together about 6 years ago and there basically wasn’t enough money for 2 owners. Therefore I was bought out and as payment he gave me a Bose 321 system which I still have and Love…I had always wanted a Bose system and 6 years later I have one in about every room of my house. The following is a copy of a email I just sent to him after I heard that the Magazine was in it’s last issue:

Hi Newell,

How are you?

I have to ask you…who makes these decision to “keep changing the brand identity“? Very bad move.

Buffalo Rising print has gone through a number logo changes (what‘s with this?)…3-4 in about the same number of years it’s been around.

Buffalo Rising print also went through like a 100 different tabloid sizes.

Buffalo Rising online changed it’s color/design theme to this current grayish blue color…a big mistake! It’s drab and dreary. The old design sang Buffalo’s praises with wonderful header photos of the area with a nice framework that mixed vintage colors with a few brighter colors.

www.hyperlocalmedia.com never has it’s site up (at least not when I have checked)…”coming soon” is one of the Biggest SEO mistakes a online Biz can make…this site is always changing it’s look as well?

Now I hear that the print magazine is in it’s last issue…sorry to hear that.

…at any rate, I tend to think that we were mislead by the people that told us when we were young that if we “follow our passions…the Money will follow”. Easier said then done. I have found that it’s a little more complicated then this!

Back to “brand identity” , never assume that we as individuals really know what’s best for our Brand Identity…if you want to make money from the  product or service then the “brand” has to have utility taken into consideration from the people with whom you wish to serve (or sell to).

…… on another similar level, Buffalo Rising issued an apology for a almost Guerrilla Marketing campaign gone arise…(as they sometimes do)…But, sometime the point of the Guerrilla Marking campaigns are intended to do just that! …who said bad publicity is still good publicity?

Paris Hilton is a walking billboard…

I just read a really cool article that I found at www.seobook.com which lead me to this great article that every marketer should read about being a billboard for others thus explaining why Paris Hilton is so popular.

Mb