Niche Review: Home & Garden Market

At Home PLRAs a PLR provider I’m always on the lookout for hot niches, especially ones that I feel like I will enjoy covering content about.
As writers we can’t always decide what topics we get to write on when it comes to client work. But, when you have your own content store or content membership, you have a lot more freedom to cover your likes.

One hot niche is the home market. I hadn’t really thought about it much until recently, but I have a home and I do like to grow houseplants. I can’t do flowerbeds because I live in an apartment, but when I had my own place, I did my share of planting flowerbeds, fruit trees, decorative trees and shrubs and I even did some vegetable gardening. So this is kind of a natural niche to me in a lot of ways.

If you’re looking for a niche to start blogging about and creating another stream of income, this niche may interest you. It’s definitely not going anywhere. It will be around as long as people have homes and yards.

Just look at these statistics from Businesswire’s Market and Research on the home and garden industry from 2009 and those numbers have only gotten higher.

-furniture & floor coverings – $110.1 billion.

-gardening & outdoor living – $50,259 million.

-homewares – $89.8 billion.

-household appliances – $42.4 billion.

 

…and those are just a drop in the bucket. The home improvement market saw the numbers reaching into the billions. Kitchen appliances is another industry that reached into the billions.
Why am I sharing this with you? Because my newest venture is a new PLR membership site covering the home niche. I’ve teamed up with Sue, who you probably know from comments here and from Buy PLR Today.

If you’ve been thinking about a niche market and if your state allows affiliation with Amazon or other home industry affiliate programs, this is a great time to get in on this market. Summer is coming up soon and the gardening sites will be hopping.

We’re not ready to launch yet, but you can get signed up to be notified when we launch.

Check out At Home PLR, we’d love to serve you and your (new) niche!

Sales Page Elements

If you do any kind of sales or promotions online, you know how difficult it can be to write the sales page. This is a new area for me, copy writing and sales copy have never been my strong points. However, I am determined to master this, at least to some degree.

If you compare any two sales pages and you’ll likely see several similarities. That’s because people read sales pages differently than they do other content. In order to make a sale then, the writer needs to create a format or a structure that appeals to the reader.

Here are some tips I’ve found. One of the best ways to learn this is to start studying sales pages. Since they are all over the Internet, it shouldn’t be that hard to find 2 or 3 that you can study.

Your Basic Sales Page Structure

Your basic architecture consists of a few key elements. They include:

    • The headline – there are many different types of headlines and headline formats. However, you’ll be hard pressed to find a sales page that doesn’t start with one. In fact, some sales pages actually have several headlines.
    • The introduction – after the headline is a paragraph or two that introduces the problem. The main job of the copy at this point is to generate reader interest. You want to motivate the prospect to read more.
    • The benefits – after the introduction you’ll find that much of the body copy is now dedicated to the benefits of the product or service being sold. Now this is achieved in any number of ways. A person may tell a story. There may be, and often is, a list of bulleted benefits. You may find a bit of both. The purpose of this section is to create desire within the reader to make a purchase.
    • The closing – the final section of a sales page is the closing. This is where you will ask your reader to take action. You may find a simply “Buy Now” type button or you may see bonus products, guarantees, postscripts and other incentives to purchase.

 

 

How a Prospect Reads a Sales Page

Interestingly enough a prospect doesn’t read a sales page from top to bottom. Unlike reading a book or an article a sales page reader generally follows this pattern.

    •  1. Headline

     

    • 2. PostScript/call to action – Quite often they are looking for a quick summary of the benefits and the price.

If the PS and Call to Action are compelling the reader will then go back and peruse the copy. Very rarely will they actually read it word for word. Instead, your prospect will scan the copy looking for keywords and benefits to help them make a quick decision. This is why there are often bold formatting, underlining, and red copy, text boxes to call out specific lists of features or testimonials and subheadings with keywords.

Your prospect will scan your copy. If they’re on the fence and cannot make a buying decision they will definitely read your testimonials.

 

Of course now many people are using video and graphics to help sell. Anything that stands out and captures your prospect’s attention is good because it will make them look, read and hopefully take action.

 

Take Care with Formatting

Now that you know it’s important to capture your prospect’s attention don’t make the same mistake many beginning copywriters do. Don’t highlight and bold everything on the page. You want to use your formatting options strategically. Guide your reader’s eyes through the page, highlighting action phrases and benefits.
When in doubt, conduct a simple split test to find out which technique produces the best results. Understanding how your prospect reads sales copy online will help you create top selling sales pages.

 

Don’t forget to add a guarantee too! People are more likely to buy if a guarantee is available.

 

Now you know a little more about sales page elements. If you’re interested in how to use these elements in your WP blog posts AND works with your existing theme, check out the WP Sales Plugin. Make blogging fun! You can use these icons in your regular posts to add some pizazz!

To your success!
Patti

P.S. See more cool stuff you can do with this plugin.

Are You in the Marketing Niche?

Just got this in email and thought I’d share it here. If you need some awesome marketing content, check out this HUGE deal!

  • You get a Social Media for Business Primer – 7 page report
  • 14 quality articles you can use now on hot topics!

This is all at no cost and no opt-in. However, for $5 you can get an extra 51 pieces of marketing content. I’ve used Alice’s stuff before and it’s good stuff.

She does offer a monthly membership, but you can cancel if you see it’s not for you. If you’re in the marketing niche, I think you’ll want to keep that monthly subscription. She gives a lot of high value content each and every month.

The monthly membership will give you:

  • 30 quality articles
  • 10 product reviews
  • a report to give away or sell.
  • Plus you get access to a members-only forum!

Even if you don’t stay with the program, the initial offer is a steal at only $5. That much content WILL keep you busy for a month. ;)

You can grab that at: Free Marketing Content

Have a great weekend & Be Blessed!

Patti

Why Don’t You Blog More Often?

Let me guess, you have at least a dozen excuses why you don’t blog every day or at least 3 times per week. I know, I have the same excuses. I keep telling myself I WILL blog more, but something always stops me.

I have excuses like:

I don’t have time to write my own blog posts because I’m so busy writing other stuff.

I never have anything interesting to say or something that could be useful to someone.

The truth is:

  • I do want to be informative and interesting at the same time.
  • I do want to help more people.
  • I do want to make money from my efforts.
  • I do wish I had more ways to come up with topics.
  • I wish I had more hours in the day.

Well, I don’t know how to create more hours per day, but I do know that the hours we do have—we all have 24 of them—can be used more wisely and we can find timesavers to help us get more writing done.

One great timesaver is something that Peggy Baron has created to help you write more articles in a shorter time period. She’s created a nifty tool called “Easy Article Starters.” They do just that. They help you start (and finish) an article. This blog post is an example of one.

Many people buy PLR articles but hate to rewrite them. Other people simply loathe the use of PLR, but they know they need more fresh content. Well, these are NOT private label content material. These are basically ideas with titles, topics, bullet points, content sparkers—whatever you want to call them. This is one of those product ideas that we all wish we’d thought of.

Go check out the easy article starters and see if you can use any of them. They are at a great price and can be used over and over. You can view some great samples on that page.

Save yourself some time and frustration and grab a pack or two. She also has other categories too.

These are great for marketers and writers in general.

To your success!
Patti

P.S. That link again is: Easy Article Starters.

Use Your Blog Tactfully to get Noticed on the Internet by Being You

This is a guest post by Noah Mark Rodolfo of Best Online Business Guide. Enjoy!

If you are a blogger, you should know how to stay noticed on the net and carry out certain internet practices regularly. Luckily, you do not need to be an expert to understand the tricks of trade. You may be looking for the best strategy to adopt to succeed in your business. In fact, you need to understand and follow basic laws. Let me explain….

You are looking to use Internet marketing with your company and want to know how to get started. When you start reading about internet marketing, there is a lot said about your website and SEO. But there is one asset you have that not everyone does: YOU. Here are some ways to do your marketing by focusing on yourself.

Get Noticed on the Internet by Being You;

1. Start using videos in your marketing materials and write articles on other people’s blogs and websites.
2. Explore your social networking options and join social media sites and interact with other people.
3. Start a blog and establish yourself as an authority and contact site owners about interview possibilities
4. Keep customers engaged and help others for free.
5. Make the design and layout of your website simple and informative and discover how to make SEO work for you.
6. Use web analytics to your advantage and provide access to a mailing list or newsletter.

Write Great Material for Internet Marketing:

Your Internet marketing plan relies on quite a few different things, one of which is how you compose your written content. Use some great tips on how to format your material to best match the Internet marketing medium, such as; get your audience emotionally involved and avoid being cryptic, try to be original and provide a benefit over other competition and say as much as possible in as few words as possible.

Social Media: The King of Internet Marketing:

From Facebook to Twitter to Youtube, you just cannot succeed in today’s business world without doing some form of marketing with social media. Using social media as an internet marketing tool will help broaden your customer base while keeping them informed and engaged. Use the great tips from net for some great ideas on how you can best use social media to help you market your business. Everyone who is on the internet today has used social media in one form or another. Social media has become very slick nowadays where people don’t even realize they are being marketed to by a business.

Increase Hits to Your Website:

You know that your business is not going to get exposure if you do not have a good stream of unique visitors per day. Keep creating press releases and make use of social networking wisely. Consider the use of Adwords and try to get to the front page of a social media site. Always enter customers in sweepstakes and provide benefits for signing up for mailing lists.

Build An Effective Internet Marketing Email List:

Different marketers have different ideas about what it takes to be successful in the Internet marketing industry. One correct train of thought that has emerged recently contends that building an email list is the best way to both capture and retain targeted customers or clients. Some of the essentials points to build an effective email-marketing list are;

1. Make sure that your subscription form is eye-catching and strategically placed on site.
2. Place your form on every page of your site.
3. Encourage your social email list to sign up and register.
4. Provide something of value like eBooks or newsletters with good info.
5. Promote your list offline too.

These are just some of the ways that you can use to create an email list that will be successful and profitable. You will no doubt come up with some creative ideas of your own and ultimately construct the perfect plan for your business.

Use these methods for some of the best ways to bring more traffic to your site. Some methods will work for most people where as some will work for few people. But there is one method that I am sure of works for all including you is to know yourself. Do not hesitate, as you may be missing out on new opportunities. Start today and you will see success.

 

Author Bio:
Noah Mark Rodolfo is an online entrepreneur, Internet marketer and a blogger. He regularly writes various topics about health, cooking recipes, weight loss and make money online tips. Read more similar articles like this one on his website at Home Based Business.

7 Profit Reports for Your Business

In a recent post I mentioned covering monthly topics. I can’t say they are overly fun topics, but they are essential to business building online.
Last week I joined a membership site called Nicheology. I’m loving the content and I haven’t even scratched the surface yet. There’s ton of information in there. One of the things I’m liking best is Paul himself. One of the biggest keys to success is following someone that you enjoy learning from and listening to. There’s been a lot of people I’ve tried to follow and learn from, but they just didn’t fit real well with my taste. Paul is very open and honest and I like his style.
Anyway, the cost of his monthly membership is @$30 per month. I think it’s well worth it, but if you’re not ready for something like that, I was digging around and found these 7 free reports that I’d like to share with you. You do have to opt in, but I’m liking his emails too.
Several of these reports fall in line with some of the themes I’ve been wanting to cover; list building and traffic, just to name two of them. I think you will find these very useful.

These guides include:

The 31 Day Guide to Growing Your List – 74 pages
How to Get F.R.E.E. Traffic – 23 pages
Get Massive Traffic with a 3 Day Firesale – 25 pages
How to Get Affiliates that Explode Your Profits – 18 pages
Email Marketing Secrets – 23 pages
6 Steps to 6 Figures – 17 pages
JV Marketing Propulsion – 19 pages

That’s nearly 200 pages of great content that you can take action on. Paul prides himself on giving solid information that works–no beating around the bush or having you chase your tail. He also believes in keeping things simple and easy while being dedicated to helping you grow your online business and increase your profits.

Grab these free reports and start implementing these strategies to grow your business.

The Trek Into How to Build an Email List

This month on my blog a big focus will be on list building and how to build an email list. I’ve only recently started creating lists, in the past 6 months or so. I haven’t been actively promoting too much. So, this month I’m going to focus on a few tactics and share those with you. I’m ashamed to say that I really haven’t worked out a plan of attack for that yet.

I have set some goals and will do the 365 day challenge that I mentioned in an earlier blog post, but a list building strategy hasn’t actually been worked in.

I recently posted an article at Blogging Tips about the very basics of list building. Feel free to hop over and read that if you’d like. I will highlight some of those points here.

One of the things that can be overwhelming is that the majority of content you find on list building, whether it be blog posts, courses or ebooks you’ve purchased, is that most of them give you WAY too many options in the beginning. I know you’ve read them, you can do this, this, this or this and that, that, or that.

Yes, there are many ways to go about list building, but in the beginning, and especially for newbies, you should focus on one or two methods only. I understand these reports want to give you all the options, but it tends to cloud the main point—choose one or two and do them consistently.

The two methods I will focus on for January is blog posts aimed at my newsletter and social media. Once I get that nailed into a weekly routine I will consider adding a new method or switching out a method.

On to the basics of how to build an email list

One of the first things you should consider is your target audience. Who is it you want to reach? Who do you want to help? Forget about who you want as customers. Your goal is to help people and build a community of followers. The sales will naturally follow if you consistently over-deliver and show yourself as a real person who genuinely cares about their followers.

I also believe you can have more than one target group. In my case, I want to help writers who may be afraid to venture off into marketing, whether it’s their own services they need to market or they want to promote other people’s products. Another target area is newbies. I am pretty new to IM myself, but I’ve been looking at it long enough that I’ve seen a lot of bullshit and I want to dispel the bullshit and share really simple tactics. Information overload is overwhelming and I hope to help others avoid it.

So, for starters, you need to be real, keep it simple and build a community. You want it to feel like a huge neighborhood of friends and family.

The second thing you want to do is focus on one or two tactics to get people to sign up for your community—your list. You can work on the two methods I mentioned earlier, or you can focus on two others. However, I’m not discussing other methods in this post because we’re keeping it simple, remember?

The third thing is to follow through. For January I will work on some blog posts that are aimed at my list and my target audience and post those throughout the month. I will also use Twitter, Facebook and Google+ to promote my newsletter. That is ALL I will worry about for list building this month.

What if you don’t have a clue about what kind of list you want to build? Stay tuned, I will cover that in another post. For now, I want you to think of list building in simple, easy terms and let it sink in that you want to build a friendly, caring community.

To your success!
Patti

 

Growing Big Balls!

I recently posted my plans for 2012. I will focus on a few key things but one of my major goals that I didn’t cover was doing Internet Marketing. Many gurus tell you that it’s the “hardest” niche to get into. It’s not that it’s hard, but it is huge and you do start off as a little fish in a gigantic ocean. That would normally terrify me because I don’t feel I have the “knowledge” to step off into this big bad world. However, I have learned in life that you learn by doing. You can have a lot of knowledge in theory, but until you put it into practice, it’s all just theory.

Another biggie on my list is to become a super affiliate. Until recently I hadn’t thought much about that. I love affiliate marketing. I love sharing products that I find valuable and useful. However, I don’t really promote products as much as I promote the people behind them. I have to like the person before I recommend their product. I do want to be one of the top promoters for great products. I also want to promote physical products as well. We all use stuff in our homes and most of it can be purchased online. If there’s an affiliate program, you might as well use it. Right?

One of the key things for me is to ask myself if I’d promote it for free. If I have to stop and think about the answer, then I don’t promote it.

Another key for me is trying to avoid upsells. I’m not fond of them and I rarely follow any marketer that does this. In the past this has always been a cheesy tactic to me, but I’m starting to find a few who use upsells, but they aren’t sleazy. I’ll save my thoughts on that for another post.

Anyway, growing big balls, stepping out of the comfort zone, making connections and finally getting down to business. I have all of this theory in my head. I have a hard drive full of info-products and courses that contain all the theory I should ever need. It’s time to put it into practice. That’s the goal for 2012.

I’ve decided that I’m not willing to just let life happen to me any more. Life IS what you make it and I believe you can create any life you want. You just have to get off your ass and your excuses and MAKE IT HAPPEN!

2012, for me, is about stepping out of those excuses and comfort zones and going boldly into the future.

What is your goal for 2012? Are you going to dig in and get serious with your business? Are you finally going to become an expert in your niche and be the go-to person for answers? Are you finally going to bust out of the low pay freelance rut and grab some big clients for your writing business?

Whatever business you’re in, I’d love to hear what YOU have planned for the new year.

To your success!
Patti

Direction, Focus, 2012, Make it Happen

The new year is almost here. I’ve spent the past week or two getting plans ready, deciding on my direction and where I want to go with everything.

Tiffany Dow has issued a challenge in the Warrior Forum that I’ve joined. Several people have signed up and one of the main points across the board is to really get focused. It’s top of my list too and why I’ll be blogging and sharing more with my readers.

One of the first things I’m doing is going through Darren Rowse’s 31 Days to a Better Blog program. I haven’t started implementing much of it, but I will at the first of the year. Actually, I guess I am implementing since I’m writing this post. Go me!

I’m also taking a year long coaching program. I’m not ready to say what it is yet. I want to follow it a little more and decide if I like the style of the presenters.

Here is a bit of what I posted for the 365 Day Challenge:

Projects:
PLR Store
Newsletter
Blog
Possibly affiliate sites for boredom and amusement.

Focus:
list building
traffic
recommendations
making connections

Daily/Weekly:
write 1 page of plr
write 1 page of content
put together all the products/reports I already have

Other Areas:

Courses and Workshops – I’ve gained access for some workshops and stuff that I will be sharing if I think they’re good. I did not create them, but I do have rights to some of them or I will share a link to the ones I’m taking.

Monthly Themes – Each month I will focus on an aspect of business building and share my thoughts and findings.

  • January – List Building & Traffic
  • February – Affiliate Marketing
  • March – SEO
  • April – Copywriting
  • May – Article Marketing
  • June – Writing Reviews and six month recap
  • July – (possibly revisit affiliate marketing)
  • August – (possibly revisit list building)
  • Sept. – Dec. – Still open

That’s pretty much the jist of my plan. I’m still putting it all together and need to work out daily and monthly action tasks, line out topics, and other stuff along those lines.

Let’s make 2012 a kick ass year and finally get focused and start creating our own success stories.

Are you with me? I’d love to hear your plans for the upcoming year. Just leave a comment in the section below.

To your success!
Patti

Boost Your Writing Income with Income CPR

I have to start this off with an apology. I can’t believe I haven’t told you about this nice course I’ve been taking. It doesn’t matter if you’re a professional blogger, a freelance writer, or whatever online endeavor you follow to earn money, Income CPR is a great benefit to you.

Also, if you are a freelance writer, you are a perfect candidate to earn some extra money and passive income by utilizing information products. You already have a wealth of knowledge in your head from writing gigs–use it to its full advantage.

Anyway, Nicole Dean will help you increase your online income. This month’s topic was giving away free reports to grow your traffic and spread the word about you and your services–another thing that writers should be doing!

The next lesson will go deeper into free reports and using information products to grow your business. She’s a writer herself, so I know any writer will benefit from her knowledge.

Here’s the catch. She changes out the information on the 15th of each month. If you sign up today (and it’s ONLY $10 per month!) you can grab the current lesson today and the next lesson as soon as it’s available. You practically get two months for the price of one. You can cancel anytime. However, I think this is something you’ll want to keep, and at this price, it’s a great investment. She always over-delivers with her lessons and gives out some great bonuses too.

Plus, if you refer two friends to take the course, your monthly payment is covered and it won’t cost you anything. How great is that?

I’m really sorry I haven’t shared this with you already. I hope you can get in there today and get the current lesson. Since the 15th falls on a Saturday, she may wait until Monday to put the next lesson up–it really depends on how busy her weekend is–but I wouldn’t wait for that to happen.

Again, the link is: http://sassylikes.com/incomecpr.

See you there!

Daily Affiliate Tasks Review

I posted this on my Sassy blog but wanted to share it here. As writers you may benefit from this if you’re thinking about starting on some niche affiliate sites to increase your income from sources other than your paid writing.

Hope you enjoy!

I’m on Week 5 of the DAT Program. I wanted to get a few weeks into it before I worked on my Daily Affiliate Tasks review.

At the time I signed up I wanted to create a few affiliate niche sites. However, my main focus has moved to building up my PLR store, so I’m not working hard and heavy on the niche sites at this time, but that’s okay. Susanne’s course was created for people who are building niche sites on a part-time basis. Maybe you still have a full time job or a business you’re already running. Most of her tasks only take about 30 minutes per day. If you have more time than that, she suggests you run with it and double the efforts of what you’re working on each week.

I have purchased one of her Affiliate Niche Packs before so I felt like she would most likely include some research material, step by step guides and daily checklists. She does.

This course is extremely beginner friendly. When I first received weeks 1 and 2 I thought I was a little farther ahead than that, but today I read over all the lessons again so I could start this review and I discovered some tips I’d missed. If you get this course, try to read each lesson twice a week. Read the lesson when it comes in, start implementing the outline and do the tasks. Later in the week, go back and read it again. You’ll most likely find some little nugget that you missed.

The price of this course is $10 per month. She could easily charge that per week and it’d be a good deal. It’s very basic, but it’s all very comprehensive–especially if you read the lesson twice per week.

The Benefits:

  • You will work on something each day–at least five days per week.
  • It’s simple, easy to follow, but you have to do the tasks or the course is useless.
  • You’ll learn about reusing and repurposing content you’ve already created.

*Note–weeks 4 and 5 may take a bit longer than 30 minutes per day—so try to plan ahead if you can.

She even shares tutorials from her other courses–included as bonuses–to explain what she’s talking about. She also links to articles she’s written and uses some screenshots so you have a visual aid of her directions.

The Drawbacks:

I have noticed a few typos, but I’ve learned that most writers don’t always catch their own typos. I can spot yours a mile away—however, I miss mine all the time. In your own material, your brain already knows what it meant to say and sometimes it skips the typo because it doesn’t “see” it.

This is just a minor pet peeve of mine. Yes, even though I make my own mistakes, I’m a bit typo picky. I also feel a bit petty to share that with you, but if you’re a stickler for those things you will spot them and I don’t want you coming back to me saying I didn’t catch those. End of my pet peeve.

Who needs this course?

If you’re a complete beginner or not seeing the results you’d like in affiliate marketing, this is a very good course for you. If you’re more advanced, this course may not be suited to you. You may find it too basic and easy. However, if you’re not getting results from your marketing plan, you may get a few insights on things you can do or things you can do better.

Don’t have a niche?

Earlier, I mentioned that I’ve purchased her niche research packs. If you don’t have a niche yet and need some help in the research for it, these are very comprehensive packs. You get keyword lists, article titles you can start with and build on, domain name suggestions, etc. Check that out if you’re still not sure which niche you want to do affiliate marketing in.

If you already have your niche and need some help to grow your business, grab this affiliate course so you can get started right away. Remember, most of the work only takes 30 minutes per day.

Muddy, Murky Marketing Waters

Do a Google search for marketing tips and see what you get. No, wait, that may not be a good idea. You could end up with 100 different reports explaining why it’s important, why you should do it, and that you need a plan. You will have an abundant supply of redundant material and most of it will just overwhelm you. You need a really simple marketing plan. Instead you get…

Stuff like: relationship marketing, social marketing, attraction marketing, mobile marketing, Facebook marketing, Twitter marketing, blog marketing, article marketing, Scooby Doo marketing. Okay, I made the last one up, but someone will probably come up with it sooner or later.

The point to marketing is it should be simple. It doesn’t matter what you’re marketing, just keep it simple.

Here’s my really simple marketing plan.

1. Create your product or service.
2. Be friendly to people and socialize.
3. Blog about your product or service.
4. Get on Twitter and Facebook. Talk about you, your product and your service.
5. Repeat steps 2, 3 and 4.

Consistency pays off more than knowledge. If you can’t devise a step by step plan for your marketing campaigns, feel free to use my really simple marketing plan above. It doesn’t come with a guarantee, but it’s free.

Please share your thoughts and marketing plans or strategy in the comments section. I’d love to hear from you!

Blessings,
Patti

 


Sassy PLR | Content Course | Disclaimer | Contact | Testimonials | Mission | RSS