…or do you?

The simple fact of the mater is, if no one gives a you know what about your subject line, there’s no way they are actually going to open the email.

Ouch, that hurts.

But, it’s true.

Chances are, you’re not seeing amazing open rates with your email marketing efforts to start. Marketers and brands have been struggling trying to break open that 3-5% open rate average we always hear about.

The number one way to do it?

You guessed it, fix your subject lines.

So the question is, why are you still sending out emails with subject lines that suck?

It’s time to fix that. Right now.

Here are 10 reasons why your subject lines suck. Learn from even one of these and you’ll see better results with your email open rates.

Let’s go.

# 1. Really Long Subject Lines

It’s amazing that there are people who look so deeply into data they can figure out the ideal number of characters for a subject line.

Thankfully, they’re out there. By the way, the number is 50 around characters, about 6-10 words.

In fact, a study by ShowMeLeads looked at over 260 million emails and found the subject lines that fell in the 6-10 word range had an open rate of 21%.

Compare that to the 14-16% open rate of emails that were shorter and longer, respectively.

So, if you are blowing out subject lines that are 15-25 words long, figure out a few ways to trim those down.

# 2. Repetitive Subject Lines

Yes, it is always good to alert your readers that your subject lines are from you, but that doesn’t mean sending the exact same subject line every single time.

It might work for the first email or two…

…but after that, you’re just going to get ignored, avoided, or deleted.

Is it any surprise? You’ve literally given your readers zero incentive to actually open the email, and the fact of the matter is when people see the same thing over and over with no reward, they just de-commit and move on.

Check out this study from MailChimp and how the open rate of a subject line that just repeats the same thing over and over sinks like a stone.

# 3. No Personalization

I bet you are way more likely to open an email if it feels personal, I know I am. So why aren’t you doing that for your own email list?

Now, personalization doesn’t just mean inserting the old: “Hey [Name]…” into your subject line. It’s a lot more that that, especially if you’re segmenting your list.

Here is where you can pull in some of your targeting and try out a re-marketing campaign or two. Look at areas where you can pull at the heart strings of someone by appealing directly to them and their likes.

That means looking at location, interests and hobbies just to name a few.

# 4. Not Enough Thought on Subject Lines

Raise your hand if you do this…

…write your autoreponder and then at the last minute bang out a headline in 30 seconds.

Oof.

And then you wonder why your emails might not be getting opened? Most people think the content of their emails is the most important thing.

And while content is important, no one is ever going to read it if they don’t actually open the email.

One of the greats of advertising, David Ogilvy, said this about headlines:

“On the average, five times as many people read the headline as read the body copy. When you have written your headline, you have spent eighty cents out of your dollar.”

Think of the headline as your subject line. Don’t just jot something down with no forethought, get that right and you’ll have a much better chance of getting the open.

# 5. You Are Boring

I don’t want to hurt your feelings, but have you ever given thought to the idea that your subject lines are just really boring?

Between friends, spam, work, and newsletters people get hundreds of emails a day in their inbox. And for those who only check it once or twice a day, you’ve got to make sure your email stands out from the crowd.

If it doesn’t, well be prepared to be sent to trash with the other 99 that stink.

In my last post about email subject lines I highlighted one that worked really well for me:

Now, the last thing you’ll ever call that headline is boring. If you saw that sitting in your inbox, I bet you’d click it, just to see what the hell the email was even going to say.

Sometimes in marketing, weird works.

# 6. You’re Giving it All Away

Come on now, everyone likes a little bit of a tease. So why are you giving away everything your subscriber needs to know about your email in the subject line?

Instead, try working on raising the curiosity level of your email list. There are tons of reasons to do this, but here are two:

1. When people are curious, they want to know more. So it means they are more likely to want to find out the answer. That means more clicks.
2. When people who are curious are given an answer for their curiosity, it releases good feelings. The means they start getting mentally trained psychologically to open your emails because of the reward.

Convinced?

Having an open loop, cliffhanger or tease in your email marketing strategy is only going to help. If you are already using those tactics inside your emails, why not try them in your subject lines too?

# 7. You’re Sending Spam

You know what sucks? Thinking you’re doing everything right and then realizing your emails aren’t even getting opened.

Upon further investigation, you find that you’re emails have been flagged for spam.

Doh.

Looks like you weren’t doing everything right after all. How can your emails get dinged? The answer is pretty easy, you’re using spam trigger words in your subject lines.

Here are a few examples of words you should stop using immediately:

• F r e e
• $$$
• No investment
• Eliminate debt
• Get paid
• Spam
• 100% Free

You get the point, right?

Don’t ruin a perfectly good email by attaching an incredibly spammy subject line to it.

Not only is it a sure way to get your emails flagged by your email service provider but a great way to alienate your email list. Both of these are pretty bad.

# 8. You’re Not Asking Questions

One of the best ways to connect with your email list is to get them talking about themselves. The most common way to do that is to start asking questions.

And that doesn’t just mean inside the emails themselves. That also means in the subject lines too.

Using a question in your subject line is a classic strategy that plays off psychology. The question makes people stop and think first and then click to respond because they want to know the answer.

When done the right way, a question subject line can be a pretty powerful tool to increasing the number of clicks you’ll see in your email marketing campaigns.

Try it out.

# 9. Spelling and Grammar Errors

I almost didn’t put this one because it should be so obvious, but really? You spend time spell checking your actual email don’t you, so why aren’t you giving the same tender loving care to your subject lines?

A subject line with blatant spelling and grammar issues is a fast track to spam or the trash can, whatever your reader is feeling at the moment.

The easy fix?

You guessed it, actually reading through your subject lines and making sure they are not blasting out poor spelling and grammar…

…with your name (or your brand’s name) attached to it.

# 10. You’re Not Keeping Mobile in Mind

Did you know that 53% of emails are opened first on mobile devices? That’s according to this study by Litmus. Now, we both know those numbers are only going to rise in the short term.

So, if you aren’t taking those mobile numbers into account and optimizing your subject lines for those devices, you could be screwed before you’ve even begun.

We all know that subject lines read differently on mobile. For example, with most devices the part of the email that is going to be highlighted the most on a mobile device is the “From Line” not the subject line itself.

So, even though it’s good email marketing practice to make sure your from line features your name or your brand’s name clearly, with mobile devices it’s more important than ever.

Like I said at the start of this post, if you fix even one of these subject line mistakes, you’re autoresponder campaign is going to be a lot better right from the jump.

But, we both know you can do a lot better than that.

Let’s face it, email marketing brings in huge returns on investment, remember this stat from Experian:

“For every $1 spent, $44.25 is the average return on email marketing investment.”

So, what better way to start cashing in on your email marketing than to learn from my article, the 5 mighty mistakes of email marketing and autoresponders.

In it, you’re going to learn a lot more than just the mistakes you’ve been making with your subject lines. You seriously do not want to miss out…

…or you could seriously be missing out.

Click here to start reading today.

The post Why Your Email Subject Lines Suck & What To Do About It appeared first on Young Entrepreneurs.

Either way, most online shopping carts aren’t very ‘marketer friendly’. Instead, the majority of shopping cart solutions tend to focus on eCommerce sites that are selling a range of physical products with a more conventional shop-front.

This is what makes SamCart so awesome.

First, it was created by internet marketers, for internet marketers and thus designed perfectly for helping you to create highly profitable sales funnels. If you’re selling an e-book or an online course through your blog, it will be perfect for helping you improve conversions. Better yet, it’s designed to keep things extremely simple so you can begin selling your first product inside of thirty seconds. After all, time is money!

Here’s another article I wrote showing you the 10 ways that SamCart increases your checkout page conversions.

SamCart Quick Start Guide To Setting Up Profitable Sales Funnels

Setting Up Your First Product

So how do you get started with SamCart?

1) First of all, you’ll need to get an account, which is an easy and quick process.

2) Next, you’ll log in where you’ll be greeted with a straight-forward control panel.

3) To get started, click on ‘Products’ which you’ll find in the menu on the left.

From here, you’ll be able to see a list of any of the products you’ve already made. For now though, the page will be empty seeing as you’ll be setting up your very first product now.

If you haven’t yet created a product, I’d definitely look into Web Domination. It’s my personal favorite internet marketing resource. Web Domination will show you everything you need to know about creating, running and outsourcing a successful online business.

If you do already have a product created, on the right, you’ll find a button that says ‘New Product’. As you might have guessed, this is what you need to click in order to get started with your new product.

From here, you’ll be greeted with an incredibly simple form with a set of fields.

These fields are:

• Product name
• Short description
• Thank you page redirect
• One time, Weekly, Monthly or Yearly (Billing options)
• Price

The product name of course is where you’ll enter the name for your product, the short description is where you’ll input some enticing information (benefits) about said product and the redirect is where you want to send your visitors once they’ve bought your product.

Click ‘One Time’ and you’ll find a drop down menu where you can choose between one time and recurring payments (of course you can also choose how regular your recurring payment will be). Right away, this is one feature that many shopping cart services lack and is perfect for marketers who are selling subscriptions, monthly courses and other informational products with recurring fees.

Finally, enter the cost of your product into the box with the dollar sign. Then just click ‘Create Product’ and your product will be set up. It’s really that easy!

Deploying Your Product

From here you’ll be taken to a page where you can see all the details you just entered. Here you can make changes and also add a few extra settings – such as an image to go alongside your product product name.

Get a professional logo or product graphic created cheaply on AwesomeWeb, because this can really help your sales.

As mentioned though, if you want to get your product up and running in a rush, it is possible to start making sales inside of thirty seconds. You’ll be able to come back and worry about all these extra settings later but for now just click ‘Deploy Product’.

Here you’ll find your new hosted checkout link on SamCart. In order to sell your product or service, all you have to do is send people that link. Add this link to your landing page or even embed it in an email to send customers to a well-designed and straightforward checkout page.

If you’re having trouble getting customers to view your products landing page, we have a great video where we teach you how we got over 10,000,000 people to visit our blogs – http://../www.incomediary.com/traffic-domination

All your customers have to do is fill out their details and click ‘Place Order Now’ and they can make a payment with any of the major credit or debit cards.

Remember, SamCart is designed by marketers so their checkout pages have been designed and split tested to combat cart abandonment – in other words they minimize the number of people who give up before entering their details, which can help you secure a lot more sales. 

Once your customer has placed their order, they’ll then be taken straight to the thank you page you entered earlier back on your server.

1 Click Upsells

One of the biggest differences (and one of my favorite features) between SamCart and other checkout services is they offer something different from everybody else in the marketplace – One click upsells. What this means, is that after visitors have purchased their first product, you can present them with a series of upsell products that take a single click to buy, without requiring any additional information.

You can literally setup your upsell funnel with a couple mouse-clicks:

• Click upsells on the lefthand side of your dashboard and then select funnels from the drop down menu.

• Click “new funnel”, add your funnel name and a short description, then click “create funnel”.

• Select how many upsell offers you’d like to add from your product list and then select “enabled”. You’ll have the option to add up to 5 upsells and 5 downsells.

That’s it, SamCart does the rest and even allows you to split test your new funnels!

Split Testing

Proper split testing is a critical piece in optimizing a sales funnel.

Most successful digital marketers split test every single thing they can. And now you can split test your checkout cart and upsells too. SamCart supports split testing on both your checkout pages, and your upsell funnels. And like everything else about SamCart, it’s very easy to setup.

How to setup a split test:

1. Once you’ve created and listed your new products, select the one that you wish to split test and you’ll see a screen similar to the image below.
2. Look for the option to “Attach Upsell Funnel” and select a funnel from the drop down menu.
3. Click “Split Test”

That’s it!

What this means for your business…

If you’re wondering, “Will a $97.00 product convert differently than a $197.00 product?”, you can split test the funnels. Meaning, half your traffic will flow through one upsell process, and the other half will use another. I discovered a powerful insight while doing this, and that was the fact that our $97.00 upsell had the same conversion rate as the same product priced at $197.00. This more than doubled the value of a single customer.

If your conversion rate isn’t quite as good as you’d like, check out the article I wrote, revealing the 9 things most sales pages are missing and why they’re destroying your conversion rate. 

In short, SamCart offers you the easiest interface in the world for setting up new products to sell right away. At the same time, there’s no approval process needed so you can start right away and there’s no limit on the number of products, orders or customers – it’s completely scalable.

SamCart is a fantastic tool for getting started selling products in a hurry and is quickly becoming a favorite among web marketers. 

I almost forgot, they also just set up affiliate order processing/tracking. Now you can have other people sale your products and services without worrying about payouts and refunds – everything is handled for you.

I highly recommend SamCart. If you’re a digital marketer who sells products online, you’ll absolutely want to install SamCart. You can grab your copy here.

The post SamCart Quick Start Guide: Setting Up Profitable Sales Funnels appeared first on Young Entrepreneurs.

If you want to start working for yourself, but haven’t got the resources to start big, then affiliate marketing could be the right avenue for you.

Take a look below at my 5 reasons for starting an affiliate marketing business over the next year.

5 Reasons to Start an Affiliate Marketing Business

#1. Low Startup Costs

Unlike other startups, you don’t need to spend 6 months raising a large capital investment from investors or crowdsourcing sites such as Seedrs.com, or even investing in stock before your business can function.

In fact, in affiliate marketing, you only need to spend $3/month on hosting plus $7 for a domain in order to launch a website (sometimes you don’t even need a website!).

Check out our full list of startup resources.

From then on, your only true costs are content (which you should be able to write yourself), choosing a nice CMS and website design (you can use wordpress, which is free) and then writing a blog to help generate traffic and sales to your site.

Even once you start earning an income with your site, your overheads will still remain low. You don’t need to hire an expensive office to meet clients in, you don’t need to hire anyone to deal with customer support (like you would in an ecommerce venture) and you don’t have live with costs such as chargebacks and credit card fraud, and if you use accounting software such as Quickbooks.com then you don’t have to pay for an accountant either.

#2. Earn An Income Relatively Quickly

WebMakeMoney.com is full of entrepreneurs’ stories of how they made their money. However, in a lot of cases people spent 6 months to a year before they started making a profit and re-investing in their business.

With affiliate marketing, you can literally start making money almost straight away.

If you work in niches such as igaming for instance, then you can earn $100-$500 for every customer you refer to a casino. You only need to refer a few customers every month to make $1,000. This is how I started my own affiliate marketing business around studying at college. I then kept re-investing and doubling my income to the point where I was making enough money to pursue it full time as a career. It really can scale quickly once you start to see your first sales.

Remember, you don’t need to provide any ongoing support or services to your referred customers. Once you’ve referred them, the operator/merchant will take care of the customer loyalty and upsell marketing campaigns.

You also have the freedom to choose and promote different operators in a given market. If you’re operating in a competitive market where operators are hungry for a listing on your website then you can even start to charge fixed-fee listings or distribute your own media pack. This also helps to automate the process of generating an income on your site.

#3. You Can Make Millions From Affiliate Marketing

One of the misconceptions of affiliate marketing is that it’s only for small businesses. However, there are plenty of cases where affiliates have gone on to build multi-million pound brands and ventures.

Mark Pearson launched MyVoucherCodes.co.uk in 2006 for example and sold it last month for £60 million. Mark, aged 27 at the time, set up the website linking to deals for different vendors. It was all set up as an affiliate marketing operation that quickly scaled into something incredibly successful.

There are many other cases of affiliates scaling their operations into million pound ventures such as Money.co.uk, OddsChecker.com, LatestCasinoBonuses.com (which recently acquired another site for $2.5 million) and the newer holiday booking sites such as Hotels.com and Booking.com.

One of the things that most of these sites have in common is that they jumped into an emerging niche early and focused on maximizing customer value to provide the best services possible. This is what helped establish themselves as industry leading brands that created more growth.

One of the lessons to be learned here is to launch an affiliate marketing business in a high growth industry or one where you can add your own unique value to your visitors. This is what will help you scale your site quicker and reach that dream of retiring at 21.

#4. It’s Easy To Scale An Affiliate Marketing Business

Many successful affiliate marketers have discovered that scaling their businesses into white label, drop shipping or whole sale operations was not a terribly difficult task.

An increasingly common thing I’m seeing successful affiliates do nowadays to scale there operations is to launch their own white label operation or skin.

Launching a white label is incredibly easy to do. In niches such as Forex, iGaming, Finance, Insurance and App development for example, you can launch your own white label brand in less than 2 weeks.

Use AwesomeWeb if you need a designer or developer who could’ve started yesterday.

Let’s use bingo for an example; You can launch your own white-label bingo site via the Live Bingo Network skin, which automatically includes a license to meet the necessary UK bingo regulations. Therefore, it’s almost exactly the same as being an affiliate except that you now have a fully functioning website to market.

The advantages of starting your own white label is that you can increase your conversions by reducing traffic leakage as well as recruiting other affiliates to promote your brand on your behalf.

It also is very easy to scale an affiliate marketing site in eCommerce by venturing into drop shipping or wholesale.

#5. Many Monetization Sources

Affiliate marketing lends itself really well to different marketing channels and sources of customer acquisition.

For example, at RightCasino we’ve managed to monetize traffic through industry and entertainment news, Twitter, PPC (we’ve just translated our site into foreign languages to take advantage of cheaper sources of traffic in other countries), email marketing and others.

Some brands even let you advertise your affiliates links directly on media and PPC networks such as Facebook. This means you don’t even need your own website to start affiliate marketing.

If you enjoyed this post, definitely check out the beginners guide to affiliate marketing.

The post 5 Reasons to Start an Affiliate Marketing Business appeared first on Young Entrepreneurs.

As an online entrepreneur, I invite you to get into investing early to secure your financial future and boost your chances of early retirement.

11 tips to help you make the most with your investment ventures:

#1. Learn Before You Get Started

First, if you want to succeed with your investments, you need to know what you are doing. The biggest mistake you can make as an entrepreneur is putting your money into an investment without understanding what’s really going on. You wouldn’t go skydiving if you didn’t know how to operate the parachute, so why would you invest without knowledge?

Finding information isn’t difficult in this era of the Internet. You have plenty of resources to help you out and even reading financial publications, such as The Wall Street Journal, can provide you with a bit more knowledge.

#2. Protect Your Assets

It is crucial that you protect your business, as well as your investments, from creditors. You need to structure your business and your investments properly to ensure that if something goes wrong, creditors won’t be able to access your assets.

Investing is a good way to guarantee your financial future is secure even if something goes wrong with your business adventure. Therefore, you need to make sure that creditors won’t be able to access your personal investments and savings in case things go awry. This ensures you sleep soundly at night!

3. Create a Sound Strategy for Your Business

Naturally, your business also needs to have an investment strategy. In an Inc.com article on steps to take to grow your business, the recommended strategy is all about the 80/20 rule. This means that 80% of your resources should go to core business opportunities and 20% to new adjacency opportunities.

In practice, this means that you focus most of your efforts to your customer base and invest in maintaining their loyalty. But you also want to keep the adjacent opportunities in mind. These are new investing ventures and growth strategies to explore and which can help your business look to the future.

4. Make It Impossible to Touch Your Investments

One of the biggest investment mistakes to make is all about changing and tweaking your investments too often. You should have some of your investments tied into funds and portfolios that are almost unreachable to prevent you from doing this. This ensures that you don’t make decisions too quick and in the heat of the moment.

The truth is that majority of investments fluctuate a lot. If you withdraw your investments every time they go down, you’ll end up loosing a lot more than if you just stick to your plan. Of course, you want some investments easily accessible, but majority of your money should be kept away from reach.

5. Reduce Risk by Diversifying

You don’t want to put your eggs in one basket, but spread them around a little. Even if you are investing into something with a relatively small risk, like property, you still don’t want it to be your only investment venture.

Try to find at least a few different ways to invest. This guarantees that if one venture goes sour, you don’t end up loosing all of your money. The Money Advice Service’s guide to diversifying is definitely worth a look.

6. Understand Your Pain Threshold

Although there are many options that provide you a relatively safe way to invest your money, there are ventures that might just see your investments disappear. You need to, not only understand the risk of losing your investment, but also understand how much you are able to lose.

Investing is more about controlling losses than it is about making a profit. You need to set yourself clear limits for losses that you don’t want to cross. Sometimes withdrawing from an investment with a small loss might be better than sticking it to the end only to lose more money.

7. Get on Top of the Tax Code

When it comes to investing, you want to make sure you don’t end up losing a chunk of your profits in taxes. Tax efficient investing is one of the first things you want to learn about before you start making money with your investments.

It is also important to understand the taxation, as you don’t want to end up doing anything illegal with your investments. You can find plenty of tips from websites like MoneyWise, to guarantee your investments are tax efficient.

8. Learn From the Legends

There are some big names in the investment world that you need to know about. Giants such as Warren Buffet and Jim Slater can teach you a thing or two about investing your money and making it big.

But learning from the legends doesn’t mean that same as copying other people’s advice mindlessly. Even the big names make mistakes and provide advice that might not bear fruit. Don’t expect to look at their portfolio and then get rich by just copying it.

You want to read their interviews and understand their investment methods, but ultimately you need to learn to make your own choices. You are the only one who can make it work in your own circumstances.

9. Remember To Save

Naturally, you shouldn’t just invest your money to different funds and assets. You also must start saving your money as well. Saving is a great way to guarantee your financial future is secure even if your projects and your investments don’t provide the hoped end-results.

Saving for your retirement is one of the most important things you need to do as an entrepreneur. So, you want to look around for different ways to save and invest to ensure you have a comfortable pension waiting for you once you are ready to retire.

10. Find Your Niche

Although you want to diversify your investments, you should still find a niche in investing where you excel. Perhaps you are interested in commodities or maybe you’d like to consider private equity investing.

Having an investment niche helps you in two ways. First, it allows you to direct your energy into gaining knowledge in that specific field. For example, if you are interested in private equity, you can check platforms like the one at Dealmarket to find news and tips regarding private equity investing. As already mentioned, this extra knowledge is essential to guarantee you make the right choices.

Second, finding your niche can help you stay passionate. If you focus on investing things that you are passionate about, you are more likely to yield bigger returns. You’ll have more energy to keep up to speed with your investments, when you don’t just care about the amount of money you make, but you are passionate about the results as well.

11. Be Patient

Finally, the unfortunate truth is that you most likely won’t be able to hit it big overnight. As an online entrepreneur, you know that it takes time and effort to succeed in business and this applies to investing as well. Some investment ventures may be able to provide you quicker returns, but in general investing can take a while to truly start producing you the returns you want.

Patience is one of the key characteristics for making it as an entrepreneur, as well as succeeding in investing. You don’t want to rush your investments. Just focus on what you want to achieve and work hard to achieve it.

If you enjoyed this, you’ll really dig the 10 traits all successful young entrepreneurs have in common.

The post 11 Investment Tips for Online Entrepreneurs appeared first on Young Entrepreneurs.

Maybe you’re a college grad who wants to create a job (rather than finding one).

Or maybe you’re a corporate mouse who’s fed up with the rat race.

In any case, the internet has opened up a world of opportunities for the entrepreneur-at-heart.

We’re about to look at 21 businesses that you can start today and efficiently run with just a laptop and an internet connection.

21 Businesses You Can Run From a Laptop…

Development / Programming

Web developers are programmers who specializes in, or are specifically engaged in, the development of World Wide Web applications, or distributed network applications that are run over HTTP from a web server to web browsers.

#1 Web Developer

According to SBA.gov, there were 29.6 million small businesses in the US and Ad-ology found that 46% of small businesses don’t have a website.

If you’re a skilled developer / programmer, be sure to apply for AwesomeWeb.com to increase your exposure and earnings today.

#2 Mobile App Developer

There were 140 billion mobile apps downloaded to smartphones in 2014. By 2016, the International Telecommunication Union reports that there will be more than 2 billion smartphones in the world and we have every reason to believe the number of mobile apps downloaded annually will increase. 

You can hire a great mobile app developer here.

#3 Blog Maintenance Provider

As tracked by BlogPulse, there were 126 million blogs on the internet in 2010 and most of them suck.

Most bloggers think they just have to write, post, and auto-tweet. So if you know how to properly publish a WordPress blog post, you can offer this as a service to serious bloggers.

Check out our Step by Step Guide to Writing Posts That Rank.

Graphic Design

Graphic designers create visual concepts, by hand or using computer software, to communicate ideas that inspire, inform, or captivate consumers.

#4 Logo Designer

Since there are 29.6 million small businesses in the US alone, that’s 29.6 million potential logo customers. But most of them already have logos… But very few of them have good logos.

Check out 17 Evolutions of Your Favorite Logos

#5 Web Designer

According to Pingdom, there are 234 million websites on the net. Like small business logos, most of these websites look terrible. And even the good ones, know the value of continually improving the design.

These are the 15 best practices for responsible responsive web design.

#6 Book Cover Designer

Right now, there are over 32 million books on Amazon and every one of them has a book cover. According to UNESCO, over 1 million books are published per year. This doesn’t even include eBooks.

If you’re not a skilled designer but feel you could create your own book cover nonetheless, check out youzign.

#7 Mobile App Designer

Much like mobile app developers, there’s plenty of need for mobile app designers. Companies usually contract out to both developers and designers separately to create the app. 

Here are 30 great examples of mobile app design.

#8 Computer-Aided Designer

CAD drawings are typically 3D mockups and virtual prototypes that companies create prior to manufacturing a product. Pretty much every product design starts as a CAD drawing.

These are 10 free CAD software applications you can download.

#9 Web Theme Designer

According to WordPress.com, there are over 75 million WordPress sites and about half of them are self-hosted. This means, WordPress alone has about 37 million sites that need themes.

If you’re not a theme design but still need a great theme, ThemeForest has the best selection of high quality, responsive themes available.

#10 Videographer

Last year Organizational housewares e-tailer StacksAndStacks.com reported visitors were 144% more likely to purchase after seeing a product video than those who didn’t. Website owners realize that video converts higher than any other form of content, so they’re starting to contract out for that work.

Here’s the Ultimate Guide to Making Online Video Tutorials.

Writing

Writing jobs in select niches might be difficult to find on your own, but Online Writing Jobs takes the reins, marketing your name to companies that need an expert.

#11 Author

According to Authors Guild, a successful fiction book sells 5,000 copies and a successful nonfiction book sells 7,500 copies. Also, Jenkins Group (a premier publishing firm) reports that 70% of books published don’t make a profit. Don’t let these stats discourage you, but it’s hard to make a living as an author.

Whether you’re a writer looking to make extra cash or a blog owner in need of content, check out TextBoss.com for all your writing needs.

#12 Editor

Part of the reason books usually don’t earn back their investment is because they have to pay for an editor. You’ll likely earn more as an editor than an author. 

There are currently more than 2,000 content editor jobs available on linkedin alone. 

#13 Copywriter

With 126 million blogs, there are 126 million websites that constantly need content. If you’re a good writer and knowledgeable about a niche topic, reach out to the top bloggers in that niche and ask if they’ll pay you to write for them.

These 200 top blogs accept guest authors – and many of them pay for content.

#14 Transcription

According to Worldwide Freelance, some industry estimates suggest that up to 50% of all non-fiction books are ghostwritten. Often, these books start as audio recordings and the ghostwriter transcribes and spruces up the content. This is just one way to make money as a transcriber.

Alternatively you can create a software or service that does it for you, like this.

#15 Translation

English is the universal language of business, but there are roughly 6,500 other languages in the world. Books, websites, manuals, etc. all need to be translated to other languages.

Google also offers a free translation service if you’re in a hurry.

#16 Blogger

Much like authors, few bloggers make a living strictly from blogging. To attract advertisers, you typically need a couple thousand unique visitors per day. Think of a blog as a platform to attract other business opportunities.

See how Tracy Raftl became a full-time blogger in under a year.

Internet Marketing

Internet marketers utilize advertising and various marketing strategies leveraging the Web and email to drive direct sales via electronic commerce, in addition to sales leads from Web sites or emails.

#17 Search Engine Optimization

234 million websites compete to rise to the top of search engines. If you know how to optimize websites, you can help website owners save a lot of money on internet advertising.

Discover the 25 SEO Tools for Successful Blogging.

#18 Search Engine Marketer

The other side of search engines is paid search. It’s not unusual for internet marketers to have $500,000 per month budgets for PPC (pay-per-click) and CPM (cost-per-thousand-impressions) advertising.

Find customers through paid channel advertising. 

#19 Social Media Manager

You probably know enough about social media right now to start your own side business! A service that helps people set up their Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus profiles and begin to create authentic interaction is completely legitimate. 

Check out this video and see if you’re not convinced that a new social media side project is perfect for you.

#20 Email Marketing Manager

Michael always tells you that the money is in the list, but it takes a lot or work to maintain that list. If you offer to create and automate the email newsletters, it’ll take a lot of pressure off their backs.

Here are 10 ‘fill in the blank’ email subject lines that made us the most money.

#21 Affiliate Marketer

To date, ClickBank alone has paid out more than $2 billion to affiliate marketers. Affiliate marketing is another way to make a living as a blogger and it’s the primary way that Michael makes money.

Here are 5 reasons to start an affiliate marketing business today.

So what…

I know I gave you lots of big stats and that can be overwhelming.

To put it into perspective, Michael has partaken in or hired out at least 14 of these 21 services; this includes over $30,000 on web design updates to IncomeDiary.

There’s a lot of money to be made on the internet. If you have a laptop, an internet connection, and a working brain, the only thing holding you back is you.

The post 21 Businesses You Can Run From a Laptop appeared first on Young Entrepreneurs.

Ask any good business owner that understands direct marketing “what is the one biggest advantage that if you had it could make you millions?”

They are not going to say their list. Although it is a huge asset. Nor will they say there PPC campaign, or their blog.

All of these are great and essential.

And almost all the most successful people online have these.

But the one thing they will all agree on is their secret weapon is their copywriter.

Whether it’s the entrepreneur who does the writing… or if they hire out this work to a direct-response copywriter who has a proven track record.

If you already have your own in-house copywriter, do it yourself or get a ‘hired gun’ you’re already successful.

If you don’t then what I’m about to tell you will rock your world.

When I first started out as a writer 21 years ago, I got into by accident. I was a door to door commission only salesperson.

How’s that for a tough choice?

Imagine having to go up to someone’s front door you’ve never met and ask them to buy your stuff.

Well I was successful, so much so an entrepreneur asked me to work for him.

This was industrial sales. And when I tried cold-calling it didn’t work.

You had to have an appointment or you couldn’t see anyone.

Next I tried telesales. I don’t know if you’ve ever tried this, but it’s pretty soul destroying stuff.

Out of sheer frustration I wrote a letter and sent it out first class.

And guess what?

My phone started ringing.

They were calling me for an appointment.

I liked this. A lot.

I’ve never admitted this to anyone before, but it was so easy it was almost embarrassing.

This got me started on a quest to learn more about writing sales letters.

Over the years I’ve been able to launch new products fast and profitably.

I’ll show you were you can see examples of some of these successful sales letters later.

But for now before you write another piece of copy, or hire someone else, you need to know the number one skill the gives any writer the winning edge.

And I’m going to tell you what that is in a moment. But first let me tell about selling in print.

In order to sell you must get the interest and desire of the person you want to buy your product.

Next you must bond with them. They must see you as a real person.

After that you give some kind of proof.

Only now can you give them a sample of what you do.

So, that’s the foundation laid now to build a strong building you need powerful building blocks.

They come in the form of fascinations.

Just a quick aside here. If your copywriter doesn’t know about fascinations then you’re not getting anywhere near the results you could be getting.

What is a fascination?

It’s like a mini benefit statement.

Some people call these bullets… however they are far more than just bullet points.

They fascinate you to the point where you must have the answer.

Designed to tease but never to give away everything.

The question is often asked, “Why is lingerie sexy?”

Not because of what it reveals, but rather what it hides.

You may already know your job as a salesperson selling what you sell is to turn features into benefits.

That’s obvious right? Wrong! Most people turn their features into ‘functional benefits.’

In other words they’ll tell you the handle on the coffee cup (the feature) allows you to drink the coffee while it’s still hot without burning yourself (functional benefit.)

Do you see what I mean?

A successful marketer and copywriter will spend a lifetime coming up with better ways to talk about benefits.

The ‘what’s in it for me’ approach.

Until you can say that to the reader’s satisfaction they aren’t going to buy.

Let’s say you tell the coffee drinker that drinking coffee at the temperature you like it – not too hot, not too cold – but just right makes you feel really good inside.

I don’t know if you know this, but everyone craves heat. So talking about what the heat does for them before they get the buzz of the caffeine will help you sell the cup.

And that’s the part nearly all marketers overlook.

It’s the real benefit.

Now comes this question of which is better, long copy or short copy.

I think that’s the wrong question.

If you asked which is better more benefits or less benefits you’re going to get the answer you’re looking for.

Because you don’t know exactly which benefit makes your readers buy.

So putting more of them is almost always going to give you a better chance of making that sale.

So what’s the best way to state a benefit?

Say it in a way that fascinates your reader so much they want to own your product.

A fascination is an advanced way of writing bullet points. It gets to the core emotions of the reader.

It’s what I call ‘State of the Heart Selling.’

How to make this work for you

Let’s imagine your selling an information product.

Hire someone to read it and give it back to you with highlighted sections of anything that’s a benefit, or newsworthy or a breakthrough.

Especially anything that’s exciting or fascinating.

Now you take all of these statements and put them into a word document and reword them into paragraphs that make sense.

Essentially you’re just cutting and pasting at this stage.

Here’s my little secret.

Look for themes you can turn into headlines and sub-headlines.

That way you create desire and interest right from the start.

If you want examples of how I did this then go to my website http://www.scienceofgettingclients.com and look under the tab on my home page called portfolio.

Scroll down until you see the document reseveratrol 500.

On the first page you’ll see examples of fascinations. But even better is the headline.

This got me a 24% response rate.

That’s the power of these fascinations.

You come up with as many of these as you can and then design you’re whole promotion around them.

Before I end here today I want to give you the quintessential skill that allows you to come up with great fascinations.

I reverse engineer my fascinations.

Here’s what I mean:

In the reseveratrol promotion I give the bullet point. “What never to drink if you want to stay young.”

How did I arrive at this?

I looked at the ORAC value of dark chocolate. The ORAC value will show you the levels of anti-oxidants in the things you eat and drink.

Dark chocolate has one of the highest ORAC values at over 1200. But when you add milk to it the ORAC value is halved.

And the less anti-oxidants you have in your body the faster you age.

So there you have it… some of my best secrets only ever given here at Income Diary.

One last thing, then I’m out of here.

Once you’ve written your piece you show it to people who could buy your product. But DON’T as l them what they think.

Instead watch their reaction.

If they say, “Where can I get this?” You’ve done it.

There are however, one or two pitfalls in getting people to do this.

And it has to do with your language and they way you use it.

I have a recording I would like to give you called, ‘Why People Resist You and What to Do About it.’

All you have to do is write in the comment box below the word “YES” and I’ll give this to Michael so he can make it available to you.

That’s it for this month. You now have the unfair advantage to take you to the next level

Clive Cable

The Quintessential Copywriter.

PS If you want me to take a look at one of your benefits and turn it into a fascination you can email me: [email protected] it won’t cost you anything. However I’m only offering this for the next seven days otherwise I’ll be swamped.

The post Copywriting Guide – Fascinations appeared first on Young Entrepreneurs.

Hi Everyone

I am very pleased to announce that WebMakeMoney.com has partnered with my good friend and Top Online Marketer, Yanik Silver to offer:

Scholarship Attendance To The 2010 Underground Online Seminar

A Scholarship includes Free admission to Yanik Silver’s Underground Online Seminar® 6 to be held at a top-secret location in Washington, DC on March 12-14, 2010. ($3,495 value) plus a host of other benefits – see below….

You can find full details of the Young Entrepreneurs Scholarship here

Yanik offered scholarship’s last year for the first time and at least 5 of the scholarship attendees were WebMakeMoney.com readers. It was truly magnificent event and a year on many of last years scholarship recipients are reporting significant increases in income and growth in their businesses – indeed it was attendance at last years event and what I learned there that allowed me to personally move up to being a 6 Figure Blogger.

Q. Are you a super star emerging young entrepreneur (ages 13-23) who is ready to hang out, network and learn from with the world’s top online entrepreneurs?

Q. Do you have an entrepreneurial success story or drive already?

Q. Do you believe you’ve got what it takes to create the next Internet blockbuster?

If you answered YES – share your story and you might win a scholarship to Yanik Silver’s Underground Online Seminar® 6 Seminar in Washington, DC to be held March 12-14, 2010 (a $3,495.00 value)! Plus an incredible list of exceptional VIP extras to make this the ultimate young entrepreneurs experience.

What is it all about?

The Maverick Young Entrepreneurs Challenge for emerging entrepreneurs aged 13-23. We’re in search of the next generation of young thought leaders and Mavericks ready to make their own rules and build their online success story. We’re on a mission to find 10 lucky winners who’ll get the ultimate young entrepreneurial experience at the upcoming Underground Online Seminar® 6. Winners will be chosen based on an application process and a panel of distinctive business judges.

If you are one of the 10 winners of the challenge will receive the following:

* Free admission to Yanik Silver’s Underground Online Seminar® 5 to be held at a top-secret location in Washington, DC on March 12-14, 2010. ($3,495 value)

* Free admission to the “Underground Young Moguls” pre-day held March 11, 2010 with some of the smartest and most successful Internet entrepreneurs under the age of 25.

* Networking opportunities at the event with 300+ leading entrepreneurs and top Internet business owners including Web 2.0 Visionary, Gary Vaynerchuck and KIVA.org co-founder, Jessica Jackley & many more!

* Private VIP Lunch with Yanik Silver, multiple speakers from the Underground® and members of the exclusive Maverick Business Adventures® group. (Maverick Business Adventures® is a distinct group of 7-figure business owners committed to ‘giving forward’ to young entrepreneurs.)

* Special brainstorming sessions to help you create even BIGGER business opportunities with new or existing businesses.

* Exclusive Maverick Young Entrepreneurs Swag Prize Bag (Special resources and goodies from top online experts.)

* A true one-of-a-kind entrepreneurial experience that you are sure to remember for years to come!

Apply For A Young Entrepreneurs Scholarship Here (Apply Now – Closing Date For Applications 19th February 2010)

Last year was the first year Yanik held this scholarship and here are what a few winners reported back:

“I will be eternally grateful for what I experienced last weekend. I’ve connected with some really awesome people, namely Michael Dunlop who is working with me on some brand new projects I’ve got in the works.” – Tyler L.

“First off, thank you so much for the amazing opportunity. I met some awesome people, started and joined a mastermind, and am well on my way to building an information product on the power’s of outsourcing. My website is almost done, writing is in full gear, and I’m just implementing the first idea. Its all shaping together fast fast fast!” – Marshall H.

“First of all this experience has already changed my life. Beyond any monetary figures or anything tangible, my outlook and belief in myself has changed permanently….The presentations were great..I learned a ton…The people there were so helpful and open and I made some great, life-long friends there.

‘During the lunch with your Maverick guys, I loved the group mastermind idea (especially since I got to go up…true story: when I went to sit down in front of everyone, I had one outlook on my business and where it was going and by the time I left that lunch, I had a completely different idea of where my business was headed…put it this way, I’m able to conservatively project a 2,500% increase in profit in April compared to February…lol..that makes me smile)” – Alex M.

Apply For A Young Entrepreneurs Scholarship Here (Apply Now – Closing Date For Applications 19th February 2010)

The post Young Entrepreneurs Scholarship – Apply Now appeared first on Young Entrepreneurs.

Hi Everyone,

There’s an old Amish saying that goes,

“We get too soon old and too late smart.”

Well it seems that doesn’t apply here…

Yanik Silver has just announced a special pre-day before the main Underground® 6 event (March 11th, 2010) where you can learn from some of the smartest (and youngest) online talent.

This Young Moguls Day is something that Yanik and I are organising the day prior to the Underground Seminar.

You’ll hear from a young breed of upstarts who are completely and totally crushing it online! This new generation of young moguls grew up with a computer and their use of technology, marketing techniques and connection is unprecedented.

This additional day will soon be priced at $495.00 but you get to attend free right now if you register for the Underground before the Early-Bird deadline. (And this is on top of the other Early-Bird goodies like a special VIP networking dinner, Spy mission and lowest price going he’s got going!)

==
Underground Online Seminar – Full Details Here
==

The line-up for the Young Underground Moguls pre-day is still taking shape but here’s who Yanik confirmed already (with others being added each week)…

* Neil Patel – SEO Guru and Social Media Expert, CrazyEgg.com & QuickSprout.com

Not many people can claim to be both an SEO Expert and a Social Media Expert, but Neil Patel fits the bill. Neil is also the co-founder of 2 Internet companies: Crazy Egg, and KISSmetrics. Through these 2 companies he has helped large corporations such as AOL, General Motors, Hewlett-Packard and Viacom make more money from the web. By the age of 21 not only was Neil named a top 100 blogger by Technorati, but he was also one of the top influencers on the web according to the Wall Street Journal. He’s been paid $100,000.00/month to be on retainer for companies and you’ll see why when you hear him speak!

* Derek Johnson, Founder Tatango.com

Just like Bill Gates, Derek, is a college CEO drop out! His innovation was releasing an application in 2007 that allowed you to send text messages to groups of phones from the Internet, at first he offered the service for free but quickly moved to a paid model with over 10,000 members paying between $20 and $200 depending on the package they use. (And the best part is customers keep paying month after month!) He’s also been featured as one of Business Weeks top young entrepreneurs of 2009.

* Kieran O’Neil, Founder PSU.com

At just 21 years old and is already a serial internet entrepreneur with three huge successes online so far! Kieran sold his first website online for $1.25 Million at the age of 19 and launched a new gaming social network which he raised over $1 Million in venture capital investment for and runs one of the biggest PlayStation fan sites in the world with 209,000+ registered users!

As you can see you’ll hear directly from the movers and shakers who are blowing up social media, selling their Internet ventures for a princely sum and developing the next generation of mobile applications.

I truly believe this single pre-day could be well worth your ticket price for the ‘main event’ and I’ll definitely be there!

Sign Up For The Underground Online Seminar Now

Don’t kick yourself for missing out!

To Our Success,

Michael

P.S. Adding the Young Mogul day is just one of the reasons there are NO seminars like the Underground® event and why it’s become THE most exclusive learning, networking and ‘deal making’ event put on each year.

Underground Online Seminar

The post Meet These Young Underground Business Moguls appeared first on Young Entrepreneurs.

Many web business owners have also recognized the viability of affiliate marketing as an excellent promotional tool. Affiliate marketers are able to grow their earnings by directing traffic to certain websites and obtaining new customer leads.

If you want to earn additional Internet-based income, it is always possible to make money with affiliate programs.

Huge earnings from customer leads

It is true that many affiliate marketers currently enjoy excellent earnings, just by generating customer leads. Many affiliate programs require that you make recruits or persuade people to actually make purchases on their site.

However, some affiliate vendors are willing to pay you excellent money for every lead you gain, even if these leads do not actually convert to a sale.

It does not come as a surprise therefore, why many people have already taken up affiliate marketing as an excellent means for them to boost their incomes. A few really successful ones have already quit their day jobs and are now focusing on affiliate marketing instead.

How affiliate marketing really works?

If you are concerned as to how affiliate marketing really works, the equation is actually pretty simple. Before you can become an affiliate of any website, you need to build your own site first. If you don’t have a website and you plan on taking up affiliate marketing seriously, it is high time that you start creating a traffic-friendly site.

Once your site is up and running, you can start choosing from the many affiliate programs available on the web. If your site caters to a specific niche, it is highly suggested that you also choose affiliate sites which are related to your site’s content.

It will be easier for you to gain leads in this manner, since you know that the people who are checking out your site will be interested in the offerings of the affiliate program as well.

A few tips in effective and profitable affiliate marketing

If you want to be really successful in affiliate marketing however, you need to learn a few effective strategies in generating web traffic to your site.

The more traffic your site gets, the easier for you to enjoy bigger earnings from your affiliate programs. Nonetheless, successful traffic generation is often easier said than done. You need to put in the hours and learn to be more patient as you are slowly building up on traffic volume.

When it comes to generating traffic, there is no any other way but the legitimate way. Unless you want to be banned from the listings of search engines, you should steer clear of underhanded traffic generation strategies.

Choose who you want to be associated with.

Finding an excellent affiliate program is also important. Before you even think of earning from affiliate marketing, you need to make sure that the programs you have chosen to become affiliated with are legitimately operating and offer excellent rewards for your efforts.

The last thing you would want is to become affiliated with a web business that has no plans of compensating you for all the work that you do for them.

This is why reviewing each affiliate program is important, prior to signing up with them. If you can’t review each of these programs on your own, you can seek out affiliate program review sites such as Affiliate Scout.

Here you will find that most affiliate programs are categorized according to type, and you can also read up on their reviews. This will help you choose a program that is perfect for the market niche your site is currently targeting.

You may have to contend with tough competition if you’re trying to sell affiliate products, however there are many things you can do to make your site more distinctive and your promotional tactics more aggressive.

Affiliate marketing is one of the best ways to earn lucrative money from the web nowadays. By choosing the right affiliate program and building an attractive site, there is no reason why you should not become a successful affiliate on the web.

The post Making Money Online with Affiliate Programs appeared first on Young Entrepreneurs.

If you are creating a blog with the expectations of generating traffic then there are few means and tools to achieve it.

Though being a king in the contents’ quality is a default condition, it is not the only factor which will be essential to be successful.

Managing the contents and knowing those methodologies to attract/generate traffic will give you the kingdom where you can prove your supremacy.

Twitter is nothing but micro-blogging platform which along with the powerful tools, support applications, and plug-ins will be capable to create the much needed popularity for developing your blogs.

The possible ways in which Twitter can help you save and make money as an entrepreneur are that they can be fun filled and interesting, thus will attract more traffic and it goes without saying that with improved traffic your business will grow tremendously.

You are not required to make big investments with Twitter or spend extensively on other expensive marketing strategies, thus you can save money too. Online business with Twitter could have not got better than this.

Advantages of Twitter for Entrepreneurs

Twitters, in short, is very popular in social networking which enables the users to update their status which consists of almost 140 characters.

You can make the best use of this by using the updates to post interesting information about you or your business along with the URL of you blog/website. It is possible that the onlookers can get mildly interested in what you have got to say with your updates via Twitter and can eventually end up visiting your website.

Remember that Twitter is just the tool which will initiate the potential traffic to your blogs; it is to be understood that you should have good quality contents, attractive profile, browser-friendly options, and more importantly, stay true to your promises if you have to sustain the potential traffic generated by Twitter.

It is indeed an art to survive and succeed in this internet world where thousands of new blogs and websites are cropping up each day.

• Twitters are indispensible in bringing home long lists of prospective customers in a really quicker period. At times, it is arguably even better than the ezines or other similar websites as the visibility while participating in Twitter is quite noteworthy.
• The best part is that you can continue to stay connected even if you are not around in your office as some of the latest Twitter can be used even from the cell phones. There are innumerable features in Twitter for you to ease your work, for instance, the services which the options for you to set up the daily “tweets” while you can arrange for automatically sending them out too.
• Twitter plays an important role in informing your followers the details about you and helps you to have an identity for yourself. Though this is much possible with webinars, seminars, blog updates, or with the articles written by you, Twitter is more efficient and friendly.

As an entrepreneur, to ensure the maximum success with Twitter, you can resolve to tweet regularly and make attempts to go beyond just selling.

Few mistakes which are common while using Twitter are being too sales based, not updating your blogs/source as much you update your Twitter, and lastly, becoming a twit-addict.

Some of the popular Twitter shortcut tools which will save your time are Tweetdeck, Twellow, Tweetie/Twitterberry, Grouptweet, Monitter, Twitterfox, Twitthis, Hashtags.org, WhoShouldIFollow, TweetBeep, Twitterfeed, and so on.

Remember that time is also money and you can still make the best use of Twitter without having to spend much of your precious time.

The post How Twitter Can Help Entrepreneurs Make Money? appeared first on Young Entrepreneurs.