The New Era of Copyrighting
May 15, 2009 by Justin
Copyrighting your original works is a good thing. It ensures that no one steals your intellectual property and profits from it. But the copyrighting process can be long, tedious and costly, with the original intent of protection often getting bogged down in the legal process. Now there is another choice that offers a streamlined process, yet ensures that the needs of all parties involved are being met.
Creative Commons allows people to promote and market their intellectual property in a less restricted manner while still enjoying copyright protections that are necessary for their particular work. Anything traditionally covered under copyright law, including books, songs, films, videos, photographs, audio and visual recordings, websites, blogs and software documentation, is protected under a Creative Commons license. While this approach gives you more freedom with creative opportunities, you might still want to copyright your work for complete legal protection.
Creative Commons is a nonprofit Massachusetts corporation that provides free licenses and legal tools so a creator of intellectual property can easily indicate how the work can be used. Creative Commons offers three different license formats: Commons Deed, which is a summary of how the intellectual property can be used; Legal Code, which displays the legal wording of the actual license in its entirety; and Metadata, which contains the important elements of the license in machine-readable coding so it can be found by search engines.
With a Creative Commons license, you have the option of offering your work with “Some Rights Reserved” or “No Rights Reserved.” For example, you can allow your work to be shared, distributed, copied, or remixed by others as long as credit is given to you; give permission for remixes or adaptations of it with certain distribution restrictions; grant or restrict commercial use in which someone profits from your work; or allow full use in the public domain as is.
For online works, an html code is designated for your work and a license button and statement appears on your piece. Anyone who comes in contact with your work will be obligated to follow the terms you set under the license agreement. For published works not on the Internet, you can include a statement on the work or include a graphic of the license button, licensed statement and URL link.
An important feature of a Creative Commons license is its non-exclusivity. You can protect your work from unauthorized use in the public sector while maintaining the right to enter a separate non-exclusive license agreement to sell your work to an individual or company, or receive royalties from it. You can also decide to stop distributing your work at any time under a Creative Commons license.
With the evolution of technology encouraging the sharing of words, music and pictures to create new and better creations, a Creative Commons license is a welcome format for offering blanket protection for proprietary rights. It opens up a world of opportunities for co-sharing while honoring the rights of the creator.
Have you been using Creative Commons to adapt your work? We would love to hear what you have been doing with these rights - leave us a comment!
Adam Toren
15 Helpful Business Tips to THRIVE in Tough Times!
May 11, 2009 by Justin
I was thinking a lot this weekend about the downturn which almost every country throughout the world in going through. I was also thinking how this can have an impact on the performance of so many businesses. It’s only natural that entrepreneurs of small and large companies are feeling the pinch during these challenging economic times. But rather than viewing the tough economy as a bad thing, look at it as an opportunity to improve your business practices so you can not only survive the tough times, but thrive during them. Here are 15 ways you can position your business to face any type of diversity that comes its way.
1. Streamline Business Practices.
This is an opportune time to review your business procedures for effectiveness. Consider areas that can be combined into one or structured differently to reduce costs. Think about sharing resources, like administrative or payroll work, with other entrepreneurs to reduce overhead. The goal is to streamline operations so you can still provide a quality product or service, yet realize a greater profit by reducing the expenses to produce it.
2. Work Smarter.
As a successful entrepreneur, you know you have to work smart to maximize business potential. But are you using the latest advances in technology to their potential? Look at all areas of business operation where you can cut waste or work faster and better by investing in automation software, new equipment, or web based applications.
3. Customer Appreciation.
Remember that your customers are going through a tough time, too. In order to retain their business, implement measures to express your appreciation. This could be a one-time price reduction, a customer loyalty card, or a referral incentive. Whatever the strategy may be, it should be something of value to the customer and within your marketing budget.
4. Evaluate Marketing Tactics.
If you are conducting marketing activities that cannot be measured for effectiveness, then it’s time to evaluate your approach. It is essential for an entrepreneur, regardless of their type of business, to conduct marketing efforts that show measured results. For example, if you run an ad in a newspaper without a coupon, then there’s no way to determine its effectiveness in growing your business. With marketing, it’s important to know what is and isn’t working for your business.
5. Get The Most From The Web.
The Internet offers a multitude of opportunities, many of which are entrepreneur focused. There are free services that can help you streamline administrative functions, enhance selling strategies and expand marketing efforts. For starters, ask yourself if your company website is making the most of email marketing, keywords, search engine optimization and other online marketing efforts. Attracting online buyers goes well beyond a company website. In these challenging times, it’s worthwhile to tap into entrepreneur blogs to learn about ways to enhance your online presence.
6. Expand Your Customer Base.
Rather than rely on the traditional avenues for attracting customers, it’s time to think of other ways where you can reach a whole new segment of the population. Target your product or service to a particular age group, lifestyle interests, or income group. By refocusing your reach, you can increase your customer base.
7. Position Yourself As An Entrepreneur Expert.
Chances are your local media is doing a lot of stories on how businesses and people are surviving these tough economic times. Here’s your opportunity to be a resource for their story or article by providing a quote and getting free exposure for your company at the same time. Keep your message positive and portray the entrepreneur spirit of optimism! Use the Internet to get national recognition from email publishers of entrepreneur and business publications. You can also become a speaker in your area of expertise at seminars, conferences, or conventions in exchange for advertisement in the event booklet.
8. Get Involved.
When business slows, it’s time to let everyone know that you’re still around with a valuable product or service. The most effective business comes from word of mouth. So become more involved in community functions, events or organization. As an entrepreneur, you should also tap into any trade organizations, such as your local chamber of commerce, small business forum, associations related to your line of business, and entrepreneur groups.
9. Focus on the Core.
If you’ve branched out into different areas over the years to improve market reach, it might be time to regroup and focus on the core of your business and outsource the rest. Evaluate what is and isn’t working and put more efforts into what started you out as a successful entrepreneur in the first place. It’s important to get in touch with your core business and make sure it continues to meet the changing needs of customers.
10. Change Pricing Strategies.
Depending on the financial outlook for your business, you might need to consider revising your pricing strategies in order to thrive long-term in an unfavorable economy.
11. Evaluate Vendors.
If you use vendors for packaging, labeling, distribution, or in other areas of your business, this is a good time to do some price comparisons. There is a lot of competition among vendors to attract new business, so you could realize some serious savings in this area. Since no one wants to lose business during a bad economy, chances are good that your current vendors will meet the competitor’s price. If not, it’s time to move your business to the lowest bidder, just as long as you’re not sacrificing quality!
12. Keep An Eye on the Budget.
Be more diligent in how you are spending money. It’s important to be frugal and aware of your income and expenses. By doing a line item cost for each expense, you will be able to identify areas that need greater attention. It’s also important to get a handle on any debt or to manage inventory.
13. Develop Staffing Strategies.
No one wants to layoff people during a rough economy, but there are other options that might better suit your business operations. Consider reducing hours, shortening the workweek, or job sharing. You might also want to introduce incentive strategies that award employees for generating business or reducing expenses.
14. Tap Into New Marketing Opportunities.
Many great entrepreneur ideas come out of adversity. For example, a joint marketing campaign with another entrepreneur that offers a product or service that complements yours without competing with it is one proven way to grow a business. Another affordable marketing effort is a text messaging campaign. Utilize all forms of media when brainstorming ideas.
15. Enhance Sales, Distribution and Customer Service.
Focus your support on the areas of your business that bring in customers and retain them. Develop cross selling ideas to help your sales force, implement measures to ensure customer service goes above and beyond customer expectations, and enhance your distribution methods so that your product or service is delivered as promised. Create ways that make it easier for everyone to do business with you.
The world has faced tough economic times before and many a company has survived and even thrived during them. The successful ones are those that are led by an entrepreneur who understands the value of their business and is proactive in meeting a challenge head on with a positive and motivating attitude.
Do you have anymore tips to add? Leave them in a comment!
Happy Monday! have a great week.
Adam Toren
Write Your Own Ebook for Profit or Traffic
March 17, 2009 by Justin
Ebooks have slowly developed into an important and valuable asset for any online business. They are written on any topic under the sun, and can range from between 20-200 pages, depending on their purpose. We did a post on the Top Ten Free Ebooks for Entrepreneurs earlier this year (check it out here). If you have some special information that you think your readers would benefit from, consider writing your own ebook to sell or to boost the traffic on your site.
Writing an ebook is not as daunting a task as you might think. If you can write a blog, you can write an ebook. You don’t require some special set of skills, although if you do feel your grammar and spelling are weak, you should have someone edit it for you before you put it out there to represent your business.
Obviously, the best place to start is to create an outline that will help you build comprehensive and useful content. Once you’ve got that, you should just sit down and start writing without worrying about format. Get as much information as you can down on your document and then take a couple days off. When you come back to review it with a fresh pair of eyes, you can start the editing process by making sure it reads coherently and flows from section to section.
Read through it a couple times, refining the content as you do. When you feel confident that the majority of the book is the way you want it, you can start tweaking the small stuff like spelling and grammar. Remember, there will never be a time when you can walk away from the book and say “It’s perfect!” No author, regardless of how experienced they are, has ever truly “finished” a book. Try not to get overwhelmed with the idea of creating a perfect manuscript.
You’ll also want to enlist the aid of a close friend, spouse, or your business partner to read it and give you their perspective on it. Be sure to take their comments to heart and try not to be overly sensitive. All great writing is a collaborative process.
Finally, you can choose a title and begin formatting the book. There are some ebook creation programs out there, but all you really need is Microsoft Office and a PDF plugin that will let you turn your ebook into a PDF file with different security controls. Make sure when you are formatting your ebook that you don’t go overboard with color or patterns. Choose a reasonably sized font, use attractive photos and insert charts/graphs sporadically to break up the text and make it easier to read.
Once you have a final product you can market your ebook in one of two ways. First, you can sell it outright from your website. That means, of course, you’ll have to set up a shopping cart system for people to select the book and process a payment. Most ebooks sold this way are immediately available for download from the website once the payment is accepted. You don’t have to charge a lot for your ebook to make money. Luckily the process of writing an ebook is very inexpensive, so even selling it for $4-5 will add up once you sell a couple hundred copies.
Another possible way to market the ebook is to offer it for free to individuals who sign up for your website’s newsletter. The purpose of this is to create a database of emails that you can use for future marketing campaigns. Many people are happy to exchange their email for a free ebook with some valuable information in it. It’s a win/win! We just released our ebook, FREE and it has already been getting a lot of buzz and attention. You can download it free by joining our newsletter to the right———->
Whether you write you ebook completely alone, or you employ a freelancer to help get it into a final format, the whole process can be inexpensive, fast, and rewarding.
Making the Most of Your Affiliate Networks
If you have any kind of Pay Per Click or Pay Per Action advertising on your blog, you’re already familiar with affiliate networks. Basically, these organizations offer individual website owners and bloggers the opportunity to place ads from a huge range of companies—from Amazon.com to small independent retailers—on their webpages. The affiliate network assigns a special code to your blog, and when the customer clicks through your ad and buys something, you earn either a commission on the sale or a flat fee (depending on the specific agreement you have).
If you’re new to affiliate marketing, here is one of the most comprehensive lists of affiliate networks I’ve found: http://www.paulsonmanagementgroup.com/affiliate_center/affiliate_networks.php. Most of these networks require that you apply to them before you can use the ads; but this is just a way to make sure you aren’t misusing the ads and that your website is not doing anything illegal that would affect the retailers’ reputations.
Assuming you have already joined a network or ten and you’ve chosen some ads, how can you make the most of your network to ensure you’re earning money on your blog? One of the best ways is to stay in contact with your affiliate marketing rep. The majority of these companies assign each site owner to a live person who manages your account with them. These individuals work on a commission as well, and they are highly motivated to help you earn money from advertising. Once you develop a relationship with them, they will make sure you get the best information about the ads in your network; and this includes inviting you to be part of special promotions that will earn you higher rates per click or per action.
Another important tip is to review your affiliate networks daily for new promotions and banner art. Changing up your ads on your site can help keep things fresh and catch the eyes of visitors who come there regularly. You want to shy away from making your site into a single wall of blinking, rotating graphic banner ads. The reader will be overwhelmed and it will end up defeating the purpose of the ads by causing them to lose focus on your website. A couple wisely chosen and placed ads can be just the thing to augment your site design, and grab attention.
If you have other forms of electronic communication with your readers or members, such as a regular newsletter, ezine, or email list, you can incorporate links to your affiliates in these as well. Each program within an affiliate network offers several choices in links—banners of every shape and size, text links, and even codes to build forms so that you can be creative with your advertising.
Of course, the most important element in making money with affiliate advertising is getting enough traffic to your site. These ads are absolutely a numbers game, and you need to do everything in your power to get people to you website to view them in the first place.
The bottom line is that earning money from affiliate marketing isn’t just about throwing up a few banners here and there. You need to think strategically and make sure you are using all the tools provided to you. You also want to make sure you stay in compliance with any regulations that the retailers have about advertising. You will void your affiliate network membership if you engage in spam or other unscrupulous advertising practices.
Here are my Top 3 favorite affiliate networks to join and would highly recommend you join (the customer service and product network are top notch!):
16 Ways to Make Money Online
January 16, 2009 by Justin
The internet is not just good for reading The Onion and posting pictures of your pet hamster to your social networking sites. If you spend any amount of time online, you know that there is money to be made out here in cyberspace; and many of the pioneers in this still vastly uncharted territory have struck it rich with little more than their personal computers and an eye for opportunity. So, how can you get in on the action? Here’s 16 ways that just about anyone (not just geeks) can use to make money online:
1. PPC and CPM Advertising
PPC (Pay Per Click) and CPM (Cost Per Mille) advertising are similar animals. Both require that you place a small bit of code on your site which automatically generates ads of various shapes and sizes (usually depending on your preferences). PPC ads pay you per number of time someone actually clicks on the ad; CPM pays you per number of impressions that their ads get on your site. The amount of the payout is very small—often a fraction of a cent per click or impression–but if you have a large volume of traffic to your site, it can add up quickly.
Learn More: http://www.payperclickuniverse.com/
2. Affiliate Marketing (a/k/a CPA)
Affiliate Marketing requires that apply for membership in an ‘affiliate network.’ That is, an agency that maintains and monitors accounts for various companies who are willing to pay individuals for sales generated through their websites. Again, a small bit of code is placed on your site to generate ads; and when someone clicks on the ad, your unique affiliate number is automatically associated with that person’s IP address. If that individual buys a product from the advertiser, you receive a commission on the sale. Commissions can range between 5-20%, or they can be a flat fee per sale.
Learn More: http://www.affiliatetips.com/
3. Banner Advertising
Banner advertising is used along with PPC, CPM, and Affiliate marketing. A banner is simply a graphic ad that you can sell in any size or shape you wish. Banner ads can be animated, they can rotate through a series of images, or they can be static. In addition to being used with other types of advertising, individual website owners can simply sell banner space at a flat fee or negotiate their own PPC/CPM with independent advertisers which don’t belong to an affiliate network.
Learn More: http://www.davesite.com/internet/webads.shtml
4. Audio Ads
Audio ads begin playing as soon as you land on a website where they are installed. This is a relatively new development in the world of online advertising, and there is some debate about whether or not these are effective or annoying. Audio ad pioneers say they are incredibly effective in getting the user to respond to the ad. Like other ads, you get paid per play or per impression, depending on the advertiser.
Learn More: http://mashable.com/2008/10/03/audio-ad-networks/
5. In-Text Advertising
In-Text advertising is one of the least obtrusive internet advertising techniques. Basically, hyperlinks are placed within relevant text on your website and distinguished from regular links by a double underline. When you place your mouse cursor over the text, a small box appears with additional information on the product or service being advertised. There are advertising services which, when installed, will automatically place the links for you and will even allow you to set parameters for the products you allow to be sold through your site.
Learn More: http://www.wiliam.com.au/wiliam-blog/considering-in-text-ppc-advertising
6. RSS Feed Ads
RSS Feeds are incredibly convenient for websites that update content frequently. The feeds deliver all the new content from websites that the reader subscribes to; making it possible to stay updated on news and information on multiple websites without having to visit each one. That’s great for the reader, but not so much for you if you rely on fresh eyes for your advertising revenues. Thankfully RSS Feed Ads are now available. These allow you to place both graphic and text ads within your RSS feeds so that they are visible to all your subscribers.
Learn More: http://www.doshdosh.com/monetize-rss-feed-advertising/
7. Popups
Popup ads were, at one time, all the rage with online advertisers. When you visited a site, a box would immediately pop up (hence the name), preventing you from seeing the information you needed until you either entered the information required by the advertiser or at the very least, read through the ad inside. Then, tragedy struck! Someone invented the popup blocker. To be fair, pop ups are pretty annoying; but they are still fairly popular with online advertisers. They are especially useful for capturing bits of information for PPA (pay per action) ad campaigns where you are paid for capturing email addresses or other pieces of information from the user.
8. Sponsored Reviews
A sponsored review is basically an advertiser paying a blogger to write about their product or service. This can either be done through a ‘review site’ which facilitates the meet ups between bloggers and advertisers; or it can be done by individual bloggers who offer the service to advertisers for a flat fee.
Learn More: http://weblogs.about.com/od/monetizingablog/p/SponsoredReview.htm
9. Paid Surveys and Polls
You get paid when someone takes the poll that you place on your site on behalf of an advertiser. Polls encourage people to interact with them, and they can be a lot more engaging than regular old banner ads.
Learn More: http://www.vizu.com/index.htm
10. Private Forums
A lot of popular websites will incorporate a message board or forum for their readers to interact with one another. You can generate revenues by charging a small fee for membership on the board, or for access to special sections of the board. This creates a sort of ‘exclusive club’ where members can talk about industry-related topics, exchange valuable information, and socialize. Charging $5-10 a year per user can add up after membership starts to grow.
11. Donations
Don’t laugh. This actually works. If you have valuable content on your site that you are offering for free, it doesn’t hurt to put up a donation link and point people to it once in a while.
12. Ebook Sales
If you’ve got a blog or website about a particular niche, why not capitalize on it by writing an ebook? Believe it or not, you don’t have to be a brilliant writer to create a useful handbook on a subject that you are familiar with. If you write a blog, you can write a decent ebook. However, if you don’t have the time or the energy to write one you can hire a ghostwriter and then all you need to do is worry about marketing and selling it.
Learn More: http://www.zizzoo.com/guides/ebook/index.php
13. Sell Your Website
Some people live for the thrill of a new project. If this sounds like you, then you may want to consider earning money by starting up and establishing new websites and then selling them off for profit.
Learn More: http://www.entrepreneurs-journey.com/266/how-to-sell-a-website-how-much-is-your-website-worth/
14. Sponsored columns, events, or posts
This is a simple idea that gets back to basics. Simply having a sponsor for regular columns or posts on your site is a great way to earn money. “The Weekly So-and-So brought to you by…” not only earns you money from your sponsor, but it builds a steady readership as people come back week after week for your special content.
15. Premium Content
If you’ve built up a solid website with some really excellent resources, you may consider charging people for access to your premium content. That means creating an area that non-members cannot access unless they pay a small fee. For people who are able to offer readers valuable information, this is a great way to generate some income and help your readers appreciate your content more.
16. Job Listing Bulletin Boards
If you’re involved in a specific market, you may consider creating a job listing board and either charging employers to place ads there, or charging job seekers to access it. (Or both). This may take a little time to maintain and will require special software, but if you’ve got a loyal following it can definitely bring in revenues.
Learn More: http://www.jobcoin.com/
