Steve Pohlit – Page 35

Trends In Your Niche Markets Are Opportunities For Increased Sales and Profits

Companies in the retail industry often face significant challenges to achieving consistent growth in revenue and profits. Large companies with very recognizable brands like Dell, Wal Mart, Home Depot and Microsoft as examples have all recently reported issues that have affected profit trends.

No company had ever succeeded long term with a low price strategy. Go to Wal Mart’s web site a look right below their logo. It reads “Always Low Prices…Always!” Now they are modifying their product offer in many stores in an attempt to become appealing to shoppers with more money to spend. Will it work? I wouldn’t do it. However, I am not their CEO and they didn’t ask me. Why are they doing it? They see the results being reported by Target, Kohls and others who appeal to a customer base more affluent than the typical Wal Mart shopper. Is Wal Mart a leader or a laggard on the spending trends? Laggard.

What about some of these other companies? Microsoft was to big and clumsy to recognize how fast and furious Google’s model took hold. They also ignored Apple and the iPod until the results kept hitting them in the face. Firefox has 12% market share and open office is growing at a rapid pace. The information on these trends and others are public information and largely ignored by Microsoft. Now it is an underperforming company.

Not that long ago McDonalds was in the news as being one of the companies that was experiencing difficulties with profit performance. Now that has changed and McDonalds has been reporting very good sales and profit growth in recent quarters while some of the leaders in recent past like Cheesecake Factory, Outback Steakhouse and a number of others have been reporting softening sales and profit.

What’s changed and what has McDonalds done different to capitalize on the changes? The Federal Reserve has just announced the continuance of their “let’s kill the economy program” with the 10th or 14th or whatever in a row increase in interest rates. Then there is the ongoing international issues which continue to keep the price of oil at record highs. So while unemployment remains relatively low, the costs associated with credit card debt and gasoline prices affect a lot of things including where people eat, how much they will pay for a meal and how far they will drive when it is optional. McDonalds is lower priced than many of the sit down restaurants and offers an increasing number of food items that are not as high in calories and cholesterol causing ingredients which leads to another shift in demand patterns. With the increased awareness on price due to the pressures of higher fuel costs and interest expense, this is a perfect opportunity for restaurants to implement loyalty programs with meaningful incentives. It is also a great time to be spending more on the customer service experience in the restaurant. Of course just the opposite is occurring with increasing regularity.

There is frequent publicity on the obesity issue in the US. This new story for the media seems to have had an impact on what foods people order to eat. McDonalds recognized this trend and started adding appealing salads to its menu about three years ago. The salad category is accounting for a significant portion of their increased sales and profits. At the gym I visit there is a big poster ad for McDonalds grilled chicken salad. Not only is it big, it is appealing. Applebees is devoting more of its menu to health conscious customers but I have not seen much change in the Outback chain or others. I have noticed more convenient stores offering a wider selection of higher quality foods including soups and salads. Many convenient stores seem to notice what people want faster than other companies and adjust.

Many of the examples used in this and other articles are taken from information published about public companies. This information is readily available as public companies are required to report on their business to their shareholders. This information often offers tremendous insight as to strategies that work and ones that don’t. Today’s Success Tip: pay close attention to the trends for your niche markets and adjust your offer accordingly.

Steve Pohlit, Business Consultant
“Helping Business Make Extraordinary Profits Now”
www.stevereports.com
www.stevepohlit.com

Blogging for Profits Issue No.8: Increase Sales and Profits of Less Popular Products and Services With The Help of Your Blog

Blogging for Profits issue No. 8:
Increase Sales and Profits of Less Popular Products and Services With The Help of Your Blog

Reviews of recently released book "The Long Tail" by Chris Andersen summarizes his focus on niche markets and the resulting sales and profits from product sales that are generally obscure to the mass markets but appeal to special interest
groups.

Ed Dale and Frank Kern are guiding thousands through the updated 30 Day Underachievers program. This is designed to teach you how to identify a profitable niche market and create a product that will meet a need in that niche. If you are an internet marketer or otherwise interested in using the tools of the Internet, you will be well served to pay attention to this program (www.underachieverlife.com).

This series is about how to achieve a dramatic increase in profits for your business by developing and managing a blog. In The Long Tail Chris says only 20% of the items offered by retailers are hits. Of course it is by no coincidence this is consistent with the 80/20 rule I have mentioned in previous issues. In summary, 20% of the items, or customers account for 80% of the revenue and profits. Ed Dale and Frank Kern teach you how to identify the top 20% of the keywords in you niche market research. I spend most of my time helping clients identify and focus their resources on the top 20% of their offer. In other words spend 80% of your time on the 20% of the items that account for 80% of your sales and profits. Rich Shefren teaches this extensively to his coaching students. Read his interviews with two students at http://www.strategicprofits.com/interview

Part of what both Rich and I advocate is the leveraging of skills. For example if you are great at sales, it would be a mistake to have you devote a lot of time to maintaining the accounting system. I am sure you understand the principle.

Register for Blogging For Profits and read all of this
post plus issues 4-7 in their entirety. Registration is FREE at
www.stevereports.com

Biggest Successes Result From Simplicity

Do You Recall Economics 101 by Father Guido Sarducci on Saturday Night Live?

I remember most of the skit like it was played this morning. Father Sarducci would explain how he was able to master four years of economics theory by learning one principle: The Law of Supply and Demand. He said it was the only law anyone who studied economics remembered.

The Law of Supply and Demand is easy to understand. If you lower the supply and keep the demand constant, price will rise until the demand equals supply. Father Guido Sarducci successfully explained this principle in about 5 minutes to a Saturday night crowd up late and heavily influenced by recreational medication and alcohol. Even with those most challenging environmental factors, most of the audience in the studio and in front of their TV sets learned more about economics in those five minutes than in any economic classroom.

Many economic theories are hard to master. The law of supply and demand is relatively easy and it works. The notion that complexity is required for something to work is wrong in most cases. I see countless examples every week of companies working to make business hard? Here is another recent example:

USA Today reported on the disastrous test results experienced by passengers boarding Southwest Airline’s flights originating in San Diego. What Southwest was testing is the procedure already perfected by nearly every other airline which of course is assigned seating. Southwest decided to came up with their own definition of assigned seating. They literally assigned you a seat and it didn’t matter when you made your reservation, showed up at the gate or where your preferred to sit. Apparently some people arriving early and preferring a window seat in the front of the plane were assigned middle seats in the back of the plane. In summary, Southwest pissed off a lot of people and as a frequent flyer of Southwest and other airlines, I could imagine not being a happy camper.

So what does this have to do with Father Guido Sarducci? The lesson is keep it simple and do what has been proven to work. I am astounded that the leadership of Southwest Airlines could not have copied the already perfected system of assigned seating developed by other airlines and tested that. I am even further amazed the CEO of Southwest basically downplayed how rattled some of the passengers were by this stupid test. I noticed he was not part of the test group. I also notice Southwest employees flying Southwest board before all other passengers. I believe if the executives and other employees were automatically put in Group C or in middle seats of their assigned seating test things would change fast at Southwest.

There is another important item about Southwest as report by USA Today. Southwest has raised prices nine times in the past 12 months and their stock price has hardly budged. I just checked fight availability on a midweek flight from the Midwest to Florida. Looks to me like it is nearly empty a week in advance. I wonder why?

Let’s bring this back to your business. The simplest thing to do is look at your business from the perspective of your customer. If you have a retail store, shop it or hire a mystery shopper. If you have a customer service center, call them. If you develop information products that you sell on line, ask your customers 90 days later how they have benefited from the product and what else they would like to have seen included. If you have a membership program, and someone drops out, stay in touch to find out what it takes to get them back. Recently I discontinued a membership program where I was paying a lot of money each month – much more than $100. I have not received one call or even one email asking me why. This is really amazing considering how much money it takes to get a person to sign up for the basic plan yet alone the plan I was in.

Now here is a big bonus for those who have read this entire rant: Follow Your Instincts! I have said this before and will be saying it in many articles in the future. Every client I have worked with knew the fundamental solutions to the issues they asked me to help them with. For a whole host of reasons they didn’t act and accepted inertia. In nearly every case the solutions were obvious and intellectually simple.

Right now list the top 3 issues that are holding you back from making breakthrough profits in your business. Then starting right now, spend at least 80% of your time solving those three issues. Once solved, do it again and keep doing it. Simple stuff.

Be well and prosper,
Steve Pohlit, Business Consultant
www.stevereports.com
www.stevepohlit.com
“Helping Business Make Extraordinary Profits Now! No Reports..Just Results”

Blogging for Profits Issue No.7: Earn Massive Profits With Your Message

Blogging For Profits Issue No.7 Earn Massive Profits With Your Message

1.Is one blog enough for your business?
2.What is the goal of your blog?
3.How often should you post information?
4.How do you measure the effectiveness of the time and energy spent in developing and writing the information in your blog?

These questions and more are answered in this issue. Follow this series and you will earn massive profits for your business – guaranteed!

Register for Blogging for Profits now at www.stevereports.com and receive all the back issues starting with Issue.No.4 The first three issues are posted in their entirety on the blog.

The Buzzwords May Change, The Profit Growing Principles Do Not!!

(This article links traditional business with entrepreneurship. The focus is on sound success principles that are proven to work and not on their labels.)

Phred Dvrak writes in the Wall Street Journal that management trends fade quickly. He refers to consultants as fashion surfers and uses dramatic declines in articles published on programs including “Business Process Reengineering” and “Total Quality Management (TQM)” as evidence of his statement. In a nutshell, he believes consultants jump on the latest management theory buzzwords as a means to sell work.

There are a lot of consultants in the world. Like any other profession, there are those who are totally professional and absolute experts at what they do and there are those who are not. Most people in business have their favorite experts. There is a growing list of very credible experts in specialized field and every industry. There is also a growing list of people who pretend to have a lot to offer but really don’t.

The best experts consistently offer guidance based on proven business principles. In a previous article I discussed the importance of testing and cited two retail stores with dramatically different results. If you read material published by direct marketing experts, they have been advising testing for decades. When you read the books and articles published by management experts, the ones who have actually successfully operated one or more companies, you will consistently find they focus on creating a culture for consistent improvement in business performance. It doesn’t matter if the the process is called Business Process Reengineering, TQM, Six Sigma, Kaizen or anything else. What matters is that a company maintains a consistent discipline to examine all details of their business for the purpose of improving business performance.

It is not that hard to know what to do. Every owner or CEO I have worked with always says “I knew what to do. I just did not consistently implement.” My course How To Increase Profits by 30% or More in 90 Days or Less, which is available FREE at www.stevepohlit.com is mostly about the disciplined process of making money in your business.

Consistent discipline is the hardest part. Most CEO’s don’t follow a disciplined management system in running their business. I get paid to remind them and their team how to do use an focused sequential process for running their business and most of all I show them the consequences of not doing that. Sometimes I am called in when the patient is critically ill and they are looking for a way to reverse the slide. Sometimes they are too far gone.

A disciplined approach to running your business applies to multi-billion international companies and home based entrepreneurs. John Reese discusses the benefit of rational work long term. He consistently reminds his readers that his current success is a product of working consistently on his business for quite a number of years. Read Dan Kennedy’s book on time management. You will quickly understand the discipline he applies to his business. Everyone I know who has achieved a measure of success with their business has experienced disappointment, financial setbacks, the wrath of creditors and family members. However, they remained focused on their goal and followed a disciplined plan of action to achieve the goal.

In my own career, I have experienced huge success and huge failures. Today I work in two arenas. I work with traditional businesses helping them get stronger and I work on further developing my entrepreneurial interests using on line and off line tools. Many days I am more successful making sure my clients follow the work plan than I am following my own work plan. So I have stepped up my efforts to be in the right mastermind group and I am considering having a business development coach to assist me in accelerating the development plan for my business by holding me more accountable and challenging my priorities.

Most of us need to reinforce the importance of following a work plan to accomplish our business goals. Now this assumes you have clearly written goals and a work plan designed to accomplish those goals. Most people and companies do not have a current definition of their goals, a current work plan designed to achieve those goals and feedback system designed to monitor progress. As a consultant, I help business with that process in all areas of their company and it works very well. As a consultant I know this process works for entrepreneurs which is why I may I am stepping up my own process for achieving optimal results for my own business.

Steve Pohlit, Business Consultant
www.stevereports.com
www.stevepohlit.com
“Helping Business Make Extraordinary Profits Now! No Reports…Just Results!”

P.S. Issue No.7 of the very popular, Blogging For Profits will be published in three more days. You don’t want to miss another issue. Register now at www.stevereports.com Registration is free.

Market Tesing for Maximum Profits

Zale Corp. vs. Signet: One Tested…The Other Didn’t…Look At The Dramatically Different Results

Ann Zimmerman and Kris Hudson reported a very interesting article in the Wall Street Journal that describes the dramatically different results of two very large mass market jewelers – Zale Corp. and Signet. Zale’s jewelry division is headquartered in Texas. Signet which owns Kay’s Jewelers and Jarid is based in the UK. Both companies target market share in the huge U.S. market.

If you are in business, you must read the papers and magazines that deliver lessons and ideas that will help you. A quick review of the articles I publish reveals many examples taken from publications that are used as valuable lessons. Today’s article is no different.

In direct response marketing circles there has always been a lot of attention to the importance of testing. That industry uses what is called the “control”. This is the direct mail piece that has a predictable rate of response when mailed. Once established, writers are challenged to beat the control. The best copywriters, the ones with long running controls, make a ton of money because they deliver the goods.

I was trained in retail by some of the best in the industry in the 80’s. Then I worked with fashion retail, mass merchandisers and specialty stores. The divisions of The Limited were particularly skilled at identifying fashion trends that were popular in foreign markets, replicating enough of an item for a market test and then if the tests met their expectations, they would quickly mass produce the item and fly finished production to their US distribution center where the garment would be in the stores in a matter of weeks.

Every successful retailer is constantly testing market response. Every successful internet marketer is constantly testing market response. Market testing is critical for maximizing profits at companies. So what was Zale Corp. thinking when they implemented a complete change in jewelry merchandising strategy following a lackluster Christmas selling season in 2005? I don’t know and if it has worked the story might be different. But moving from a mass market strategy to an upscale market strategy in a matter of months chain wide end in a financial disaster for Zale and possibly the end of the careers for a number of people at the company including the CEO. Signet on the other hand is following a strategy of consistently testing and modifying its product offer based on the results of the testing. They base their merchandise strategy on listening to what the consumer wants as evidenced by how they spend their money.

I have been in business long enough to know that the former CEO of Zale Corp. probably has his side of the story and it is different from the message published in the WSJ. However, the financial results of the two companies speak for themselves and reinforce the importance of testing.

The roadmap to success in business is relatively easy to follow. Every day I am working with companies who realize hire me because they know they can be doing better and need a refresher on the fundamentals of doing business. Testing is one of the fundamentals for most businesses. If you are not doing it, or if you do not have a formalized testing process in place with the details of the tests being run presented at management meetings, start now.

Steve Pohlit, Business Consultant
www.stevereports.com
www.stevepohlit.com
“Helping Business Make Extraordinary Profits Now! No Reports…Just Results!”

Blogging for Profits: Issue No.6: Do This One Thing A Explode The Profits From Your Blog

In previous issues we have reviewed the mechanics of setting up a blog and the information strategy you should be developing for your blog. If you need help with setting up a blog, go to one of the outsourcing job boards like www.rentacoder.com or www.elance.com and issue a request for a proposal. Quite candidly I recommend you or someone in your business learn how to set up a blog because it is likely you will find opportunities for operating more than one blog as you get better at defining your niche markets. But do not delay getting started. I personally used a person skilled in Word Press blogs to help me when I started www.stevereports.com Now I update the site and make changes for the content I post. For this blog I am the writer so I find that is the easiest and fastest way for me to do it.

The goal of Blogging For Profits is to advise you on how to maximize the profit potential of a blog for your business in the shortest amount of time. As promised, I am now going to disclose possibly the single best action you can implement right now to explode the profit potential of your blog. This action item is not being discussed by internet marketers and I have not seen it discussed in business magazines, newspapers or in on-line forums. However since it is impossible for anyone person to monitor all on line and off line content for a topic I am not claiming to be the first to reveal this powerful tool. On second thought yes I am until someone can show me an article or forum discussion that is legitimately dated prior to June 30, 2006.

(The remainder of this article is FREE for subscribers to Blogging For Profits. Register now at www.stevereports.com )

Blogging for Profits Issue No.5: How To Prioritize Information In Your Blog for Maximum Profits

The goal of your blog is to further fuel your revenue and profits. Do not major in minors. Start with the most important revenue and profit drivers of your business.

Who are the 20% of your customers that account for 80% of your sales?

What do they buy?

What do they buy the most of?

(You are invited to read the the remainder of this article and all prior articles by registering at www.stevereports.com )

How To Use Real Estate For A Competitive Advantage

Columbus, Ohio was once the home and headquarters of Sun TV. This company had the products and format of what today might be Best Buy. If you needed a TV, dishwasher, washing machine or some other appliance, many people in the Columbus market thought Sun TV and bought at Sun TV.

Macy Block started Sun TV and I had the opportunity of spending some time with him as part of a consulting engagement. He told me he would not let a similar format competitor in the market. Macy would strategically locate stores that were easy to get to then he consistently promoted low price for select name brands in print and on television. Sun TV owned the market. Many competitors tried to enter that market and in a short time they were out of business.

What happened? We all get older and Macy did as well. He accepted an offer from an investment bank and he sold half the company. Several years later the investment bank took the company public. By that time there was a new CEO and Macy was able to sit back and enjoy the monetary rewards of what he built.

The new management team had new ideas about how Sun TV should be run and did not stick with the “let no competitors into the market strategy”. Rather than cut prices so deep that a competitor could not make money like Macy did, the new team maintained margins so they would have good reports for their shareholders. They also invested heavily in non retail-store assets that contributed nothing to sales and profits.

Sun TV is out of business today. Liquidation resulted from competitors doing a better job of store site selection, product offering, service and price. They never would have had that opportunity under Macy’s watch.

What reminded me of this story was a recent article in the Tampa Bay Business Journal titled “Bank Enlarges Footprint To Steer Competition Away.” The story is about Bank America’s strategy in certain parts of Florida to use location plus hour of service as a competitive advantage.

Time will tell if this strategy will work. It appears to have a lot of things going for it. The Bank America story also is a good reminder of the opportunities in what appear to be crowded markets. Sometimes companies have a tendency to think they must expand into another part of the country to succeed. That may be an appropriate part of a long term growth strategy, but if you are a retailer or some other business that is dependent on “foot traffic” you should be addressing the opportunities of market dominance from multiple locations strategically selected.

I don’t know about your market but in Tampa Bay and many other markets in Florida, the drugstore closest to your home or place of work gets your business. You will find a Walgreens, CVS or both near every major intersection. Do these companies make money? Just look at their annual reports and you will see that they make money. Does every store make money? Probably not but they contribute to a market dominance position plus they gain tremendous advertising dollar leverage of the advertising when there are multiple locations.

If your business depends on customers walking through the door, then you will be well served by having a clearly defined real estate strategy as part of your profit optimization mission. There is a lot more to it than merely finding or building a building. Demographics, traffic flow, market trends, competitive analysis all play a part. Work with a commercial real estate expert and an expert business consultant who will objectively evaluate the information and return on investment estimates.

Steve Pohlit, Business Consultant
“Helping Business Make Extraordinary Profits Now! No Reports…Just Results”
www.stevereports.com
www.stevepohlit.com

Blogging For Profits, Lesson 4: Sales on Steroids From Blogs

Sales On Steroids From Blogs

"Blogging For Profits" Lesson 4 Sales On Steroids From Blogs

There are only three ways to increase sales:

1.More transactions with existing customers: for example if a customer buys from you once a month, increasing that to twice a month doubles your sales assuming the transaction size is the same.

2.Increase in the average sale transaction: for example if your average sale is $40.00 and you increase the average sale to $50.00 then you have increased sales by 25%. Of course that can be achieved by raising price, selling more items or both.

3.Increase the number of customers.

Achieving all three results in sales on steroids. Here is how blogs can help you realize maximum sales performance:

Continue to the rest of the article by completing the following information. I respect your privacy. Your contact information will not be provided to anyone – ever!

Blogging For Profits: Lesson 3 These Steps First

In the previous lessons, we have covered the definition of a blog, RSS and why this technology will help you deliver your product, service and message to a targeted market fast. Many are experiencing blog-based sites being re-indexed by Google and Yahoo the same day a new article or other item of valuable content is
added.

Note: I write these articles fast. If something does not make sense or you see an edit I should make please email me
with your comments.

There are many FREE resources on how to start blogging. This series is about what works and the problems you can avoid by following this roadmap.

If you are new to blogging, you will soon be familiar with the free service Blogger by Google. Some readers have an active blog at Google’s Blogger. Many other companies offer their own blog technology including AOl and My Space.

I Do Not Recommend Any of The Heavily Promoted Services For Your Blog If You Want Your Blog To Help You Grow Your Business.

It is very important to be in control of the sites and content you create or use to develop your business. This means that whether you are developing a blog, website, lead capture page or autoresponder with content that is delivered to your target audience, that you have a back-up copy ready to go on another server. If a problem should develop, you move your domain to another host and you are in business in 24 hours or less. It is very difficult to implement a back up plan quickly if you use Blogger and other blogging services that are not operated from a domain name you own registered to your own domain hosting account. I didn’t follow this advice for nearly a year and lost tons of great content. Never again. Stay in control of your business.

Just this week I received an email from a very well known and successful marketer who described a horror story of his partner becoming disgruntled and destroying all the files on their server. Yes some of his business is backed-up, but a lot is destroyed. In 2001 I was in a joint venture for technical support for an entire Internet business I started from scratch in 1995. I woke up to find a message on my company’s home page announcing the business had been "sold" and for all customers to direct their payments to a new location. I did not have back-up servers and data. I lost most of the business.

One story is from five years ago, another is from about 18 months ago and another this week. Two of the three instances are ones I experienced personally and another is one I read about. I could write a book on the disasters I am aware of, but by now I know you understand the message that your list and your content are your most valuable assets when you are developing business using the tools of the Internet. Set up your services right and have a backup ready to go at all times.

Here are the Steps:

Establish a hosting account with at least one of the major players. I useHost Gator because they have all the tools I need and offer hosting for virtually an unlimited number of domains for $14.95 a month. I also recommend using more that one host provider. I use three and will likely use more soon.
Host Gator remains my top pick. Whatever host provider your choice, make sure they have C-Panel, Fantastico and complimentary WordPress with each domain. These will make your life a lot easier.

You will need to select a company where you can register domain names. If you plan on registering or are currently managing more than 20 domain names then I suggest using Moniker. If you are at that level then email me and I will help you get a deal for not more than $9.00 a year for .com domains. I know there are companies losing money on registrations by offer better deals. I want to pay the right price long term to a very reputable company and I want my domains easy to manage. If you are not at the bulk name registration level, go for the lowest price you can find but have your hosting service selected first so when you register your domain name you will have the information you need to finalize your domain name registration.

You will need an Adsense account with Google and an affiliate account with at least the following companies to start:

Clickbank
Linkshare
Commission Junction

With a domain name hosted on a server with C-Panel and having Fantastico for the install of Word Press you can begin making additional money within a day or two from your blog based product and information center (assuming you have set up your Adsense account.)

There are other tools I use including registration forms and autoresponders. I will talk about them in later posts. They are not required for you to start Blogging for Profits right now. You can implement what I am recommending in one day if you take action now.

You have the basics and you now know you will need to learn a few infrastructure building blocks. If you are a business owner with people having narrow skills working for you then you will need to learn some of these details even if you outsource many of the tasks. I know there are a number of very successful people who strongly advocate not spending time learning many of the details necessary to operate successfully in the Internet world. Those details include how to set up a hosting account, how to activate Word Press for your first blog based site, how to use an html editor and more. For me, I am in a better position to manage outsourced tasks as a result of developing basic skills.

In this lesson I have given you steps you will need to work through to get started. In the next lessons I will be covering how to use a blog to build traffic and incremental profits in connection with and existing website you have. This is very relevant for companies who already have a corporate web site and small business owners and entrepreneurs who either already have a main site or have been thinking of developing one for their business.

You will need to register to receive future lessons. How many are there? Well I don’t have a finalized outline of all the topics I will cover, but it looks to me at this point like there will be at least 8-10 more lessons. Before concluding, please do not delay getting started. If you need a domain name and hosting account, get them. If you need an Adsense account with Google – get one. If you need an affiliate account with Clickbank, Commission Junction and Linkshare (others discussed in future lessons) get them. These steps should be done now even if you are a major corporation. You will soon see why.

Happy Blogging,

Steve Pohlit, Business Consultant
www.stevepohlit.com
www.stevereports.com

"Helping People Make Extraordinary Profits Now..No Reports, Just Results!"

Blogging For Profits: Lesson 2

Business Consulting Expert offers Lesson 2 on Blogging For Profits
At the start of this lesson there is an assignment. Please do this first before continuing. Go to www.rssreader.com and download the
software. It is FREE. Once you have installed RSS reader, click on the Add link at the top of the screen and in the space provided add
http://wwww.stevereports.com/feed You can add folders to organize your feeds to suit your interests.

I personally use RSS Reader to track news releases in topics of interest including local market business news in areas where I often do consulting work. I also track each of the RSS feeds for niche sites I have developed to make sure my reports are picked up by the directories within an hour after they are released.

If you have done this properly, you will now receive in your reader a list of articles released from Steve Reports including this Blogging For Profits Course. Of course you have just learned by example how an RSS feed reader works and you can now add any content distributed using RSS. Look for the RSS symbols like the little orange one in the right hand corner of Steve
Reports.

This course will give you, as promised, the exact steps of what you need to do to make money for your business using blog technology. Before we get into the nuts and bolts I want to make sure you are already thinking about how you can take advantage of what you are learning to make money. When you have a view of the end result you are working for, the details will be more interesting, relevant and you will stay motivated to implement the steps as we go through
them.

The primary ways to make money using a blog are:

1. Advertising revenue from contextual ads. The number one source of relevantcontextual ads is Google and Google’s adsense program. You will find examples of Google adsense ads in various places at Steve Reports. I use Google adsense on nearly every page of every site I own. If you do not have a Google adsense account, go to www.google.com and click on advertising at their home page then click on adsense and set up your account. You will need that active soon.

2. Selling other people’s products and earning affiliate revenue. www.Clickbank.com is a great source of information products. There are others and we will cover more of them as this course progresses. There are many sources for information products, software, and physical products that offer affiliate revenue when you make a sale. I am a member of a number of programs for physical products including Commission Junction and Linkshare.

3. Selling your own products and services.

Of course, using combinations of the above can optimize your revenue flow. Steve Reports is designed primarily to market my professional consulting services. It is also set up to capitalize on adsense revenue and build a contact list where, just as in this course, I reference other people’s products as an affiliate.

Often there is resistance when I advise people to take advantage of as many revenue sources as possible. For example a retailer with an online store objects because they do not want to promote competing products and do not want people to leave their site by clicking on an ad.

Here is my advise and you are encouraged to test it and, of course discard it if it doesn’t work for you. In summary, most sites can promote complementary products and capitalize on traffic looking to spend money. In the case of a retailer with an online store, I first advise to capture the contact information in a database of everyone who buys. Then I recommend a compelling offer be made for visitors to leave their name and email address so autoresponder technology
can be used in a follow-up campaign.

As this relates to contextual advertising, test the results. It may be that you are better off using specific niche content websites to promote a specific offer and use contextual advertising and affiliate programs to generate incremental revenue from visitors who don’t buy from you. On the other hand, you may be better off focusing on capturing name and email addresses and implementing a follow-up campaign. In the follow-up campaign you can reference complimentary products where you are an affiliate. What is the optimum answer? I have no idea. You have to test.

Now, everyone is anxious to learn from this course and make more money. In the next lesson we will proceed with some of the boring stuff you need to do to be able to implement you making money strategy. However, you must have a strategy so begin right now to define what you think will be your best approach for making money? I do this then hedge my conclusions by implementing multiple strategies. You can too but you need to pick one and then you can select
derivative strategies from the one.

Please avoid analysis paralysis. If you are not sure about your strategy, then simply follow the instructions to set up your RSS reader, Google adsense account and your Clickbank account. At this point everything is FREE. In the next lesson you will learn about the primary infrastructure you must have in place to implement the Blogging For Profits plan.

Author: Steve Pohlit, Business Consultant "Helping Companies Make Extraordinary Profits Now!…No Reports Just Results" using The Profit System. Register for the FREE course "How To Increase Profits by 30% or more in 90 Days or Less" at www.stevepohlit.com

Blogging For Profits 1

This is the first in a series of articles completely focused on blogging for profits – your business profits. This blogging for profits series is presented at Steve Reports. While Steve Reports has some appearances of a website, it is actually business profits building content presented and published using blog technology.

I will use Steve Reports as the primary example of blogging for profits since it is achieving most of what I am recommending in this series and I it is one of my sites where I am building targeted traffic.

I assume everyone knows what a blog is, but it is important to cover one very important attribute of blogs which is RSS. RSS stands for really simple syndication. Think of a press release or a news wire. Information is written and electronically published by news services. The description of the technology is not important. What is important is that when you publish information on a blog that is properly configured, RSS readers around the world instantly display that content. If you are a subscriber to Steve Reports either by registering here or though one of the many blogs when I publish an article, it is available to you at lightning speed. It is also available to people doing searching for information on a topic I have written about. My content is more available than general information found on a web site because the search engines pick up on my topic keyword optimization. You will find that my articles are written first for the search engines because if they donâ€™t find me neither will your target audience. This is a very important point that most people in business never fully appreciate.

This process that I am beginning to describe may be the most valuable search engine optimization tool in the market today. Google, Yahoo, MSN and others are visiting sites publishing content (articles, press releases, etc.) very frequently. This means that when you feed the search engines relevant content, your site will be found by targeted visitors.

There is no downside! None! Done right, there is no limit to the business profit building opportunities using web sites based on blog technology.

In the next article, I will summarize the building blocks you must have in place to get started plus a lot more. Do not miss a single article. Register today for updates by email using the form at the top right hand corner of this site.

Risk Running Out of Cash Unless You Follow These Principles

Risk Running Out of Cash Unless You Follow These Principles:

This week I was working with a rather large company with multiple locations. Strengthening the controls over cash deposits and available cash was the goal. The timing of actual cash deposits varied since the company accepts cash, credit cards, third party financing and sales on credit. Reports were developed to clearly account for all sales daily and the deposit of cash daily. We then refined our controls.

The key objective was to measure and report available cash. This is cash in the bank that is available for disbursement. Many companies do not measure this number daily and if they do it is often measured incorrectly. The number one mistake is to ignore some or all of the disbursements that have been made that have not cleared the bank. Another mistake is to assume all cash is deposited when due. For example, deposits from credit card sales generally take approximately three days to be recorded in the bank. Deposits made from a remote location are often made using night depository, Those deposits are physically in the bank but often are not visible using on – line banking until the second day after the night deposit. All of these timing differences must be taken into account in calculating available cash.

My business (www.stevepohlit.com ) teaches clients how to improve the controls over physical cash and reporting cash availability. Of course that is the first step in the process of forecasting cash positions and strengthening cash.

I apply these principles to my own business. My expertise spans numerous industries. Most of this experience is with retailers, manufacturers, distribution and trucking companies.

Discover “How To Increase Profits by 30% or More In 90 Days or Less” by registering for my FREE course at www.stevepohlit.com

All the best,

Steve Pohlit, Business Consultant

“Helping Business Make Extraordinary Profits Now…No Reports…Just Results”

American Idol Advertisers Are Not Advertising Idols

American Idol Advertisers Are Not Advertising Idols

It is amazing to me that so many companies missed a great opportunity to attract loyal customers by using proven marketing techniques targeted to their customers and prospective customer in the group of more than 43 million people watching the American Idol finals. Nearly every company paying all or a portion of the $739,000 per 30 second spot missed the mark. Several were ridiculous in their presentation and message.

Two of the foundation marketing principles that I use to help companies drive high profitable sales growth are:

First: The message should be developed to appeal to your target audience.

Second: The effectiveness of the promotion must be measurable so you can calculate return on investment. This means you need to be able to track the response to the marketing promotion. This is the foundation of direct response marketing.

As to direct response marketing. Many in the advertising agency business argue for building brand awareness. That is a legitimate and worthwhile goal. Cingular is a cell phone brand. They ran a promotion for a hot monthly subscription price and an even hotter free phone if you called a special 800 number. It seems to me that they had a plan to build brand awareness and track response to the promotion. It also looked to me like they may have been doing some split testing since other ads run during the American Idol finals did not have the same direct response features. If in fact that was a planned split test campaign, I am not sure how they were measuring the effectiveness of the non-direct response advertisements.

Coke Cola, a traditional institutional brand advertising company at least on television, moved to testing direct response by encouraging viewers to go to a specific web site for a promotion. It moved pretty fast so I didn’t get the website address or even remember the special offer. I imagine a lot of other people didn’t either. But they are moving in the right direction by linking a promotion to a measurable call to action.

I am not in the target age group for Ford’s "bold moves" campaign but I wonder
how showing a woman cutting her hair off and a man competing with one leg makes you want to buy a car. If it does, how would they know?

43 million people watching the finals and Wendy’s promotes a big frosty. With the awareness of high calorie, fat building foods going through the charts, I wonder how many people were motivated to go to a Wendy’s after that commercial. Now I could be very wrong here so if Wendy’s really wanted to know the effectiveness of that ad, why not "GIVE AWAY A FROSTY TO ANYONE GOING TO A SPECIAL SITE SET UP TO CAPTURE NAME, ADDRESS AND EMAIL. IN EXCHANGE THEY CAN PRINT OUT IMMEDIATELY A COUPON FOR A FREE FROSTY." Now there is a test with multiple benefits.

If someone can explain to me the point of a bunch of people running around in madras shorts and tops, pleaseemail me. I just could not see how that ad would make anyone want to jump in their car and get over to Old Navy. No wonder same store sales for The Gap are tanking.

A couple other ads fell into the Old Navy category. One was Fantastic Sams. It didn’t well – it just didn’t. One of Sony’s ads went so fast that I couldn’t tell what it was they were offering and I was paying close attention to the advertising. Most people watching American Idol most likely did not watch the ads that closely.

State Farm directed people to a web site where they could register for a free car. Good example.

Home Depot ran a promotion on a specific product. Fine but since the American Idol finals are in advance of the Memorial Day long weekend where Home Depot is running a lot of other specials in print circulars, there is no practical way to measure the effectiveness of the money spent on the American Idol ad.

Many other companies promoted product with no specific offer or ways to track it. It is a waste of money and the ad agencies who came up with the ads and the executives who approved the running of the ads should be … well you come to you own conclusion.

Do not think that marketing and advertising is simple. It is not. But it is not hard to test. It is not hard to add a tracking element to even bold institutional type promotions

Most big companies will not change much soon. However, use these examples as lessons on what to do and what not to do. As to upcoming comments on TV advertising, well there probably won’t be many since I am not in front of that medium very much. So stay tuned for rants in other areas of business development.

Coming up is my series on building blogs for profits. You are not going to want to miss it. It will help you start making some incremental money right now.

Steve Pohlit, business consultant writes articles based on his experience helping companies make extraordinary profits in a short period of time and structuring their business to continue making extraordinary profits. Register for his free course â€œHow To Increase Proftis by 30% or More In 90 Days or Less at www.stevepohlit.com