Well, the answer is possibly!

You have to determine several things first:

1. What the average value of a repeat or lifetime customer is.

2. Whether the customer you obtain from an advertising source would otherwise patronize your business.

3. Whether you have a means for following up on one time customers to make them repeat customers.

4. Whether you can obtain new customers through a given advertising outlet for less than their “lifetime value”

THEN you may be able to rationalize using an advertising resource like Groupon.

Here’s one other thing that you should answer… how will you respond to a surge of business. Can you do so profitably?

Check out this story: Baker Forced to Make 102,000 Cupcakes for Grouponers

In addition to the advertising, she had to pay $20,000 in extra wages to accommodate the surge – an extra cost of nearly $3 per customer.

She charged a 75% discount or $10 and obtained 8500 new customers.

Personally I can see how that would hurt.

But if the store can retain even 10% as ongoing customers who turned a profit… would that be worth it?

Choose one:

1. “24 hour turn around on most projects!”

2. “Instant price quotes!”

3. “Unlimited lifetime product support!”

4. “Our prices are unbeatable!”

5. “Office Hours: M-F 8:30-3:30 or by appointment”

6. “Results Guaranteed!”

So which line am I talking about?

You probably won’t believe it, but according to Work at Home Woman, it’s #5!

You can read why at the link, but suffice it to say that it has something to do with CREATING AN IMAGE OF SCARCITY!

See what I mean here: How One Line in My Email Signature Gets Me More High-Paying Clients and More Time With My Family

If you’re ever on a talk radio show interview … these top 10 tip could pay off!

10 Top 10 Telephone Tips to Make Your Radio Talk Show Pay Off Handsomely — a gift from Joe Sabah

1. Have a glass of water handy (room temperature). When your throat is lubricated it’s easier to talk. Plus the water serves as a “cough button” if needed.

2. Stand while speaking. Pretend you’re presenting a seminar. Your voice will carry further. And you’ll sound more animated.

3. Have a copy of their state map on your wall. Refer to cities in the radio station’s surrounding area. This helps make you feel like you are “one of them.” I once made the mistake of referring to South Bend as “South Bend, Indiana.” The host reminded me that I was talking on a radio station in South Bend, Wisconsin. Oops!

4. Listen to their weather and traffic report. This allows you to personalize your presentation. For example: When I was being interviewed on WHIO in Dayton, Ohio I noticed during the breaks they were referring to their metro area as “the Miami Valley.” So it became a natural for me to say “I believe we can help some folks in “the Miami Valley” get their perfect job this afternoon.” What a difference the right words make.

5. Get your listeners involved. For example, before the last commercial break I ask them to get pencil and paper to write down the three tips I guarantee will turn every job interview into a job offer. Then they have pencil and paper ready when I later give out my 800 number.

6. For those who are driving around without writing tools handy, ask your host if the listeners can call the station for the 800 number.
As soon as you’re off the air, you call the station’s receptionist and give her or him your 800 number plus the title of your book.

7. Give the host some quotes from your book to use as segues. I offer quotes like: “Are You Singing The Song You Came To Sing?”
And “If You Do What You’ve Always Done, You’ll Get What You’ve Always Gotten. Is That Enough?”

8. After the host uses these Inspirational Postcard Quotes on the air, I also offer them to listeners who order my book. Another bonus to increase orders.

9. Always thank both the host and the producer for the good job they are doing. After the show, also send each of them a handwritten note of thanks and an offer “Let’s do it again.”

10. You may also want to record your show by using a device available at most phone center stores, that will record both sides of the interview. Then listen to your show to see how you can improve the next one.

Keep on learning.

Joe Sabah has been on 705 talk shows … all from home produced $376,500 in book sales … ALL FULL RETAIL more valuable tips and info at

http://www.sabahradioshows.com

(now with 915 Radio Talk Shows needing guests daily) YOU ALSO GET 2012 UPDATES at NO extra charge

JOE SABAH, CAN BE REACHED AT 303-722-7200
Joe@JoeSabah.com

But does it work to generate business or just give people things like free personalized pencils?  Good question. I think that it would be impossible to tell what exactly did work unless each promotional item promoted a specific offer. For example a garage may have several promotional offers on several different promotional items. Alternatively one could order 250 pens with one offer, 250 with another offer, and 250 more with a third offer. If one pen offered a free tire balancing per year, another type of pen offered a free wash and wax per year, and the third pen made yet another offer, it would be easy to see IF and which offer worked.

Sometimes a business finds that one particular product has better longevity and is better received by customers. I’ve found a variety of interesting products here: GOpromos promotional items

Before ordering promotional items, carefully consider how to evaluate their utility for making sales. Once you find a tool that works for you, you’ll find yourself reordering again and again.

1.Online Surveys

The idea of online survey is that you will be given a survey that has to be completed by you to earn money. This surveys is conducted by companies who are observing the community to discover the best way to market their product or services. The amount of money you can earn per survey depends on the importance or the length of survey. Some survey companies doesn’t reward you with money. Instead, they giving you prizes/gifts or entering you to a lucky draw.

This is one free online survey company that has helped me make hundreds of dollars over the years. Maybe you can make some money too, though there are no guarantees!

2. Information Publishing – Hub Pages

If you know how to do keyword research using a tool like MicroNicheFinder to find unusual niches that let your web page rise to the top, HubPages.com can help you make money from Google Adsense, Ebay auctions, and Amazon.com. Because Hub Pages as a site is an “authority site” with thousands of pages, thousands of inbound links, and thousands of cross links, it ranks well in the search engines. Just writes your content on a tight niche, and put it’s power to work for you.

This is especially good for CONTENT publishers.  You won’t be able to use lots of affiliate links in my experience but if you can make money  from the other options already mentioned, you could see some decent income. I know one publisher who builds niche after niche hub. If he averages $5 per month per hub, he’s making a couple thousand dollars monthly. Don’t get me wrong – that will take immense work. But if you love to write, fire up MicroNicheFinder, identify niches that have little competition, create a hub and move to the next one.  If you follow my next piece of advice, because Hub Pages lets you refer folks to Amazon, you could use Hub Pages to send people to your electronic books.

Using Micro Niche Finder I “brainstormed” a keyword that had little competition and quickly made a Hub that will generate readers and revenues for quite some time.

3. Information Publishing – Kindle

It’s getting easier and easier to be a Kindle Publisher. Follow these simple steps (note, it’s an affiliate link) in the ebook and you will be able to compile your information in digital books that can sell month after month forming a nice residual income.

Here’s an idea, use your Hub Page account to make many niche reports that make money on their own. Compile the niche reports on various topics you’ve already written or purchased, add unique material and an image for your Ebook, and you have a source of ongoing income that lets Amazon do all the selling for you… and, rest assured, they’re good at that.

Then link your pub pages to your Amazon Kindle books. Make money two ways! Cool!

4.Ebay Business

Ebay is a well known service that allows people to sell and buy products through an online auction. You can sell your antiques or stuffs that you no longer want to Ebay. Though selling your old stuffs and sell them to an online auction seems like not promising, there are actual people who has make a full time income on Ebay.

If you can get an EBAY AFFILIATE ACCOUNT, then you never have to participate in an auction. Let others do that! You just point people to the auction. How? Use a Hub Page on a related topic!

5.Marketing Affiliate Programs with Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising

Recently this is maybe the most popular way to make money online without having your own website. The concept is by joining an online affiliate programs that will give you commission to sell their products and then advertise the product on sites that has Pay Per Click Advertising. PPC Advertising is a powerful advertising campaign that charges you a small amount of money when someone click your advertisement. If that person decide to buy the product your promoting, you get profit from your commission reduced by your investment on the PPC Advertising. The most famous PPC service is Google Adwords, run by Google. Just be sure that your investment on the PPC service doesn’t exceed the amount of commission you get from the affiliate program.

As you can see, each program has their own advantage and disadvantages. The last two ways mentioned above is considered more promising than the top three. In order to make a significant income with the last two programs, you have to know its secrets and techniques. Fortunately, there are many ebooks and articles online that can help you to get the best of those programs.

This strategy has the most risk … I’m cheap! I use programs that let me leverage my sweat equity to make money. But there HAVE been times I’ve made good money on niche key words (see MicroNicheFinder) that paid GOOD COMMISSIONS. Just be sure you’re dealing with an HONEST affiliate program.

Best wishes in the New Year!

Note: The above article uses affiliate links.

It strikes me most home businesses will consider Four Square a “non-starter” as far as their business. They don’t want people coming to their house… and usually zoning restrictions prohibit that!

But don’t worry, you can still use FourSquare for marketing even if you don’t have a “location”.

Here’s the one I liked best – can you start your own “brand” on FourSquare?

Unlike a user profile, a brand with a page does not check in or acquire mayorships or badges, it only leaves tips on other locations. There is also a difference in how users connect with branded pages. Foursquare users “follow” a brand’s page, rather than becoming “friends” with them. Branded pages also have more customization options with their header images and description boxes. For larger brands, this is the preferred option. There are many brands with well done pages such as IFC Channel and Time Out Chicago.

“Selling” can be difficult for network marketers… both the retail end and the network building end. It’s easy to enter a Home Business opportunity and say “I don’t want to contact my friends. I will just advertise and find new people.” As they say “that’s easier said than done.”

Often advertising for your opportunity in “mass media” (i.e. a publication not targeted towards business opportunities) fails to generate sufficient “return on investment”. (Your local paper MAY work to sell retail product though. That’s something you can only test.)

To advertise to opportunity seekers, it is important to seek out a Work At Home Directory or similar outlet that business opportunity seekers aim to visit looking for an appropriate opportunity. A Work From Home Advertisement placed at a “hub” site where opportunity seekers congregate will likely have better results than a general ad “somewhere” on the internet.

Furthermore, if you’re in a network marketing opportunity, let’s face it, people have been lead to believe such opportunities are often “scams” and “pyramid schemes”. If you advertise on a website where people visit who do not have this bias against network marketing – you have less heartache and are more likely to obtain a favorable results from your advertising.

This may explain why this network marketer had such good results from an online advertising campaign.

Please recognize though that no advertising is a “slam dunk” – EVER! Also note that this representative “kissed alot of frogs” to get 7 new distributors. There were 49 leads to work through! The results are very good, but they are not “effortless”.

And remember, if you can use advertising to build your MLM network, network marketers need to be trained, mentored, and supported if they are to be successful in making their own direct sales and recruiting their own sales network! Using ads to get people in the “front door” is only the beginning. The advertising outlet has no control of the “backend” though some times they are blamed for not delivering “full grown” new distributors who just take off without needing support!

Note: Thanks to Home Business Bug for bringing this to our attention and sponsoring this post.

I remember one time I ran a financial ad that had my voice mail box so filled with leads I didn’t know what to do. I spent money, got great results, but after that I found I couldn’t deliver. The ad was so sensational no human product or service honestly presented could live up to it I guess. But at least I knew I could write an ad!

It was a new technological concept for me… (this was before the Internet)… I used a newspaper ad to offer a free report and had people call a toll free number to hear another screening pitch and secure their mailing address.  As I said, my actual performance sucked, but at least the ad was a success!

I remembered that when I ran across this post called “Groupon in Retrospect” . Groupon of course is the company that emails local customers and gives them an email coupon local companies hope will build their customer base.

So what happened?

As you may have guessed it DIDN”T make them rich.

In fact, it COST them $8,000! Why? Groupon doesn’t just charge per 1,000 to blast their email list. They do something that in one sense makes sense. They only get paid when they deliver paying customers to your business. They are paid up to $100 of all revenues earned by the retailer for sales under $10 according to this retailer!

This retailer negotiated a lower fee – 50%. Their groupon was for $13 in value for $6 in revenue. $3 for every coupon sold was payable to Groupon.

After 1,000 Groupons pouring in over six months, they figured they had lost $8,000 and that the advertising campaign had cost them more than it returned.

She conceded that for a service business that only uses otherwise “lost time” (if you’re a massage therapist for example and you schedule appointments when you don’t have paying customers anyway for example) Groupon could be great.

I wonder if her opinion will change over time?

She said some  of the people Groupon brought were nice folks, not merely jerks wanting something for nothing.

Let’s say of the 1,000 redeemed coupons 500 were bad apples.

But the other 500 were decent people she’d like to have come back.

Will there ever be a chance that these 500 will buy enough to make her investment pay off?

I don’t know her “numbers”, but it seems to me this still could turn positive. If the average customer is worth $500 per year in sales, she might still see another additional $250,000 per year. (I get that by calculating 500 x $500.)

I don’t know what her profit margin is, but if you can’t make $8,000 back from $250,000 something is messed up!

But let’s examine the “worst case”.

Let’s say her profit margin is 10%.

That 500 would only have to purchase an average of about $3.50 per week for the next year (each) to recover that cost. All future purchases would be “pure profit”.

I’m not sure her Groupon purchase was such a bad buy. It least it holds the potential for breaking even unlike my little adventure.

But beware— sometimes success can be a “bear”!

Read it all at “Groupon in Retrospect”

It starts with a great observation – know who you DON’T want to do business with. If you can find out whom you relate to naturally, that can make you more money than wasting your efforts on people predisposed NOT to buy from you. So, his first step is to as whom will you systematically EXCLUDE as a potential client?

Though it sounds easy, this step may be harder than you think. I have a friend who tested multiple niches until he found one that clicked.

At first he thought his interest was “Internet Marketing” … only to find people who wanted “Internet miracle snake oil” didn’t want his kind of advice. They wanted instant riches.

He thought another market was perhaps his niche but realized that the people he thought would open their checkbooks with gratitude for his advice seemed to yawn instead.

Then, over time, his niche crystallized… people who valued his advice, paid a small (for a business) monthly retainer, and who didn’t call him at 3 AM whining about some small problem and then not wanting to pay for those services.

His niche was a SUBCLASS of the general “Internet Marketing Group” and did slightly relate to the other niche that drove him crazy… except this niche didn’t drive him crazy. They really wanted his help and were willing to pay monthly and they kept his retainer active month after month.

So what is your niche?

Who are the people who will buy what you have to sell at a price you can live with?

More importantly – who isn’t that person?

There’s much more… well worth reading.

Read the rest of “Getting Past No”

The word is that if you promise to help people save money, they’ll flock to you.

Here’s a man that’s doing just that. His program is called “I will teach you to be rich” but his main product is two fold… how to save money (book) and how to make money as a freelancer (a tad pricey!)