Marketers Space Forum Blog

A quick way to make money online during the Christmas holidays

2009-10-01T23:19:00.002-04:00

One of the fastest growing and legitimate ways to make money online during the Christmas holidays is to create a service writing Santa letters in your local neighborhood or area. This service is easy to set up online, and to get paying customers. You can make anywhere from $10 and up per letter you write, and that is straight profit. Matter of fact, I’ve been paid $50 per letter many times.

This isn’t a new way to make money, but it is still an easy market to break into because every town or area is wide open, and every child’s dream is to hearing back from Santa. Plus, parents would do almost anything to male their child’s dream come true. The trick is to start early enough before the season starts, and how you market your Santa letter service to the community.

If you are looking for a way to create this service without using any upfront capital, try putting up a Blogger blog, and design it using Christmas graphics, colors, and other seasonal things. Once your blog is up, decide if you will offer different letter lengths or hand written letters versus generic type written ones. All of this should be planned out before you implement your new make money online venture.

What I am saying is that you can offer a variety of things within your Santa letter service. Why only offer one type of letter? If you want to make the most money with this service, be creative and give your prospects some choices. For instance, you can charge $10 for a short 200-250 word generic letter that you’ve previously written, then change the name on each one you send out. If you do this, write 2 different letters, one for boys, and the other for girls.

You can also write each order or letter by hand and charge $49.97 or any amount you chose. This way, the parents get a choice as to what they buy, and they feel like they got their money’s worth. Best of all, you come up smelling like a rose, with the potential of keeping or retaining that client for the next Christmas season. Better yet, these happy customers may start a viral effect and tell everyone they know about your new service.

Of course you will have to write up some letters so you have samples for people to look at when they visit your blog, so be sure to write a few before you put your blog up, and offer a good variety.

You will also want to write a sales pitch for your prospects to see when they7 arrive at your blog. Don’t worry, it isn’t hard to do. The pitch does not have to be of great length. Be honest about what you are doing, why you are running this service, and how this service will benefit the children, parents, grandparents, etc ... And yes, it is important for the benefits of both parties to be mentioned so you get more sales. If you get stuck, try looking at other people’s sales pitches that are in the same market. Just remember, do not ever copy other webmaster’s stuff. It is against the law, and besides, you want to be as original as you can because you become more believable to your prospects in the end.

After you get about 5 letters written, go to PayPal.com and open an account so you can accept online payments from your customers. Put a PayPal button in your sales pitch. You can get the buttons right there in your PayPal account. If you are offering two or three different types of services, put separate buttons for each pay grade, and label them so prospects will know what they are paying for. I usually put something like “regular Santa letters” and “Hand written Santa letters” under the buttons, and line them up one on top of the other, in the center of the page, not off to the side.

Now after you finally have you blog and service up and running where you can now make money with your service, how are you going to market it to the public? Well, you can do both online and offline marketing for something like this. Put some ads up in all the local newspapers, including the free ones. Visit places like the beauty parlors, grocery stores, drug stores and businesses that directly network with clients, and put up some flyers. Get your friends to talk your new service up to their friends and business associates. You can even off to do a few for free to give them incentive to tell other people about the service. You can’t beat real live testimonials.

To get traffic online, try listing your Santa letter service in some of the free classified sites, use pay per click, or have a banner created and pay to have it shown on a site that has high amounts of traffic. Do a search in Google to find other ways to run traffic to your blog. There are gobs of results and ways to get the traffic you need.

Once you get people to order, be sure to mail the letter out to each child separately. Hand write the name and address so it looks like it came from Santa himself. To gather this information from the person ordering, simple find a way to create a form for them to fill out, and add it in your order process. It is easy to do. Simply connect or link the PayPal button to the form before they pay you, or add your email address and request that they send you the information about the child (or children) and the address to where the letters are to be sent.

It is that simple, and you can make as much as 4-5 figures each month or holiday season. It is your choice, and if you get too many orders coming in where you cannot keep up with the service, recruit your friends, other parents or some teenagers to help. Offer them a 75% cut for each letter they write.
If you want to learn more ideas and strategies about how you can make quick money online, visit our Forum and Marketplace.

To your success …

The Meaning and Implications of First Mover Advantage

2009-05-01T22:12:00.003-04:00

Did you ever wonder how some new companies get more popular over others, and can corner a market that another business has been in for a while?

I’ve seen this happen many times in my lifetime, especially on the Internet. Matter of fact, it used to be that netpreneurs considered it to be good for the economy when online marketers started becoming popular.

The newer company usually gets the first mover advantage over the existing companies because they do something new and innovative, that is far above what the existing companies did thus far.

What is first mover advantage, and what are its implications?

First mover advantage is a simple concept really. It is that advantage that a significant company gets over another when they make the biggest, boldest move in a given market.

So you see, it isn’t about how big a company is to start with, it’s what they do to take a market to the next level, far above their competitors.

You can find out more information about first mover advantage by reading this article on our Internet Marketing Forum. The main article shows some examples of what I mean.

To your success …

How Do People Get Started Making Money Online?

2009-04-23T11:44:00.006-04:00

"How do people get started making money online?" is one of the primary questions people ask when they first get on the Internet. Part of it is because of the economy, and the other half is because people who do make money online have a tendency not to mention the "how to" when sharing information.

Generally, marketers, whether they be Internet Marketers, or work in some other niche or service, will share that they make money and how much, and tell people to do. If you are very lucky, you will be thrown a small nugget that you can use to enhance your business.

Why? Well, marketers want to hang on to their secrets so they can keep making money. This way they can sell you more in the end. Think about it for a minute. If you were on the opposite side of the fence, would you do the same?

I know I usually share 95% of what I do on the Internet because I like to help people get started. I'm not afraid of competition, or that I won't draw in the income I need to pay the bills, and other activities. I found that I make more income by sharing as much knowledge as I can with those who seek to learn because they do not forget who was fair to them, or who shared vital information that helped them make money when they needed it.

Sharing more with clients is always better. The outcome of your business depends on your credibility and relationship with your clients.

In keeping with what I mentioned above, here are some tips for people who are new at this game, and want to create an online busness so they can generate a good solid income:

1) The first thing I like to tell people is to start by visiting Internet Marketing forums or other types of marketing forum. There is purpose to it. For one thing, you can gain knowledge about what kind of internet business you want to start with, and what it will take for you to get established. A couple of other reasons for this is so you have a place to ask vital questions, and build business contacts and a network of people that want the same.

Matter of fact, this blog was built to help stear people to our Internet Marketing Forum, so they can get started on the right foot. You can find the link on the left column in the "About Me" section. Or simply type Internet marketing forum into your browser window and start looking for a forum that you want to be a part of. The main point is that you find a place you can get the help and the information you need.

2) Do some research to find out if there is a market for what you want to do. You have to have a market before you can sell anything. I'll post more about researching a market on this blog at a later point.

3) After you do your research, write down your findings on a tablet and start sketching out what kind of an Internet business you want to start with. Do you want to sell your own products and or service, or someone elses? What kind of a product or service?

Then write your short term and long term goals down. For instance, here are a few things you might write: 1) Website or blog, and a timeline stating how much time you want to allow yourself to put one up. 2) I want to be in a specific postition to be able to sell by xxx date. 3) I want to make this much income in a month, a year, a number of years.

In other words, you basically want to state your first list of main goals. Just do yourself a big favor and do not make them where you cannot obtain them.

I like to make my goals a bit high. I also think outside of the box, and come up with very big ideas, which is good, but it sometimes hinders me more than helps, so don't make the same mistake. Write some goals that are fairly high, but yet ones you can reach.

4) Look into getting a business license for your new online business. Make the choice whether or not you want to incorporate it, or be a limited liability company (LLC). Trust me, you need a business licesne so you don't get sued.

Online businesses are no different than brick and mortor businesses. They all have customers, and sometimes unsatisfied ones at that. There are people out there that want money, and do not mind how they go about getting it, incliding ruining someone's livelyhood.

You can add this part to your goal list.

5) Once you finish up the list of goals, write out a full plan of ACTION. Meaning, how you are going to get from point A to point B, and optain every one of those goals you just listed.

This step is crucial. You have to take action to make money online, or to get anything else you want to obtain your goals, but you should write them down. This step will help you take the action when you need to, and keep you on track.

I started out by asking specific questions like these, then doing the necessary research and writing out the answers: 1) What kind of a product I wanted to sell? 2) How am I going to create it, or am I going to outsource the work? To whom? 3) How am I going to market the product online and off?

Remember, you are mapping out a plan to get from point A to point B. If your plan of action isn't in place, or will not get you there in the shortest amount of time, come up with one that does. Work at it unitl you write a good solid one out.

6) Now it's a matter of taking the ACTION that I mentioned earlier. Start with your plan, and don't stop or deviate unless you have to because something else changed around you.

Most people fail with their new online business because they cannot, nor will not take the right kind of action that will enhance their business. Then they believe they are a failure or claim they can't make money. Do you want to be like that, or do you want to be the next millionaire? The choice is yours, but the outcome is yours to claim too.

We can help steer you by telling you every detail about what we are doing to make money online, but you have to take the action. No one else can do that for you!

Now that I've laid out the very basic things you need to get started, be sure to check here often for specific tips and strategies that will help you enhance you business.

To your success always ...