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Testing is defined in the dictionary as: “A procedure for critical evaluation; a means of determining the presence, quality, or truth of something”

And that’s exactly what it is, a way for you to determine the presence, quality and truth of every aspect of your business, in other words, a way for you to find out exactly what works and what doesn’t work, what produces results and what wastes time, what makes you money and what costs you money.

This is why it is so vital to your business

Testing is one of the most important aspects of building a business that you can possibly do, it really is, testing can be the difference between $100 a month and $10000 a month, it can be the difference between a 1% conversion rate and a 5% conversion rate, it can be the difference between success and failure.

That may sound a lot like hype but it really is the truth, if you’re not testing aspects of your business and marketing process then you’re leaving money on the table, possibly a LOT of it.

Testing is vital when it comes to Internet business, there are so many factors involved in running web sites and marketing them that it is simply a must to test, otherwise, you may find that your dreams of building a huge business online quickly becomes something that is only ever going to be a dream.

There are seriously so many different reasons why you must test that I couldn’t list them all here, it would take me forever and I’m not exaggerating, nearly every tiny detail of your business and marketing process can be tested in some way in order to improve it.

Even more important than all the things listed above is this:

You can then take that data and use it on your next site and the one after that and so on!

Just think about that for a second, you put a site up, you start marketing it, you test everything you can about it until it is making the most money for the smallest investment, you now have concrete data that tells you “x produced twice the conversion rate as y”, you have data that is a result of testing and you can now use that data when you create your next site.

You can do this for every project you do, use the data you already have from your previous tests in order to make sure you get the best results even faster than before with your next project.

This is really powerful stuff, it may not seem it right now but it is.

When you use testing to improve your business you will be very surprised at just how small a change can make such a big difference.

I hope you realize just how important testing is, most marketers think that the best way to increase their sales is to increase their traffic, well, it’s true that doing that should work, however, you can probably increase your sales with the exact same amount of traffic as you have now, there’s only one way to find out and that is to TEST it!

What Is Split Testing

Split testing is a very simple concept, you basically use a script to rotate two web pages on a domain for every other visitor that comes to your site, it would then provide you with data that would help you understand which page produces better results and more importantly why.
For example, let’s say you are selling an ebook about how to relieve stress, what you would do is create two different sales pages to sell the same product, you would then use the split testing script to rotate both the pages so that they are both exposed to equal amounts of visitors, the script would then let you know which converted better and you would be able to use that one for your permanent sales page.

Can you see how profitable this can be?

You can use split testing to constantly increase your conversion rates and therefore put more money in your pocket, sometimes just the slightest change can make a huge difference to your bottom line and it’s so easy with split testing.

Let me give you an example of how profitable this can be, if your ebook is selling at $27 and your sales page currently has a 1% conversion rate, for every 100 visitors you send to it you will make $27, so after 1000 visitors you would have made $270.

Now, if you can use split testing to increase your conversion rate to just 2%, not a big change, you would instantly double your sales and your profits, so for running a simple little test you would have added an extra $270 from those 1000 visitors to your income!

A split testing script gives you the ability to test multiple pages in order to find out which one produces the best results. For example, if you are going to put up a squeeze page for a niche market you want to start selling to then you could create two versions of the page, just word them a little differently, try different images, things like and then your split testing script run them, all you need to do is drive traffic to your domain name and the script will automatically rotate the pages so that each page receives the same amount of visitors.

The script will provide you with the data you need and will show you which version of the page produces the best results, then you simply go with that page or even better, create another one and see if you can beat the results, if you continue doing this then you will be constantly increasing your conversion rates.

Carl Ringwall is a split testing script and internet marketing tech expert:

http://www.datasystemsplus.net

Ecommerce is essentially the art of meaningful connection. When online businesses perceive their role as merely seller they are liable to find themselves in a ‘disconnect’ with their customers.

Connection # 1 – Know Your Customer

The best step in connecting with your prospects is to learn what they want. This generally involves research and being willing to ask questions. There will be those that are captured by an idea and launch it without gaining an understanding as to the marketability of the product. This first point of connection is essentially the first building block needed for ultimate client connection.

Connection # 2 – Content is King

Once you establish a product or service that is in concert with the expectations of the consumer, you need to establish a trustworthy website that provides information that allows the dots to connect for your visitor. Far too often websites simply provide a photo of the product and a brief description in the ’store’ section of the site.

In brick and mortar stores consumers are able to visit with a store clerk to determine the value of a product. With a website, you must find ways to answer their questions. Often this function is of greater importance than a simple FAQ section.

Connection # 3 – Provide Firsthand Knowledge

If your customers have questions not addressed in your information-based website you should provide reasonable access to you for further clarification. Your availability may be the most potent form of connection.

Connection # 4 – Don’t Sever Connections at the Point of Sale

Once a transaction has been made you should provide a means of connecting with your customer to let them know you appreciate their business. This is often accomplished through the use of autoresponders, but may be enhanced with a series of available informational articles specifically designed for those who actually make a purchase. You may also have an ecourse that you can make available. Some online businesses make evaluation forms available on their site. Customers are then invited back to the site to provide feedback. Discounts on new purchases are often a gift that can be given for taking the time to fill in a questionnaire.

Even in cyberspace your customers want a connection, but the connection seems to be increasingly dictated by the consumer. Online business is responding by making their customer connections worthwhile and knowledge-based. Those who do not provide this type of connection are often finding a downturn in new customer sales as well as a lack of enthusiasm from existing customers.

Scott Lindsay is a web developer and entrepreneur. Make your own website in just 5 minutes with HighPowerSites at: http://www.highpowersites.com or Build A Website at: http://www.buildagreatsite.com. Start your own ebook business with BooksWealth at: http://www.bookswealth.com

With the explosion of new technology and IT products in the marketplace, what used to be an expensive venture (customized intranet solution) has now become a very affordable product. There are several companies that will provide you a hosted service that gives you an intranet software solution. By renting the software, you are in effect, gaining the use of the software that resides on the company server that you are renting from.

They take care of all the backend stuff, things you would normally need an IT geek to do for you. Its safe, effective, and downright powerful stuff. And the pricing is affordable for even a one person operation. Best of all,you can find plenty of books at amazon or ebay on this technology so there is no excuse in procrastinating.

Obviously you need to shop around and determine what is best for your needs and how much you can afford, but for a small company with 1 to 50 users,you can find an intranet solution for under $50 month. In the big scheme of things, that less than the cost of a few magazine ads or a few weeks in a local ad. And the great thing about these rentable sites is you can have a site up and running in days or hours as opposed to months waiting for a customize site being built.

If you are convinced that an intranet is an affordable proposition, here is what you need to do to successfully create this capability. From everything I have studied and read about knowledge management and managing communities of practice sites, which is what an Intranet is, organizations that implement the capability based on a strategic plan seem to have the best success in changing the corporate culture and getting employee buy-in. So with that in mind, here is what I propose to your leadership team:

A. Build a strategic plan for intranet utilization with eight major parts:

1. Define the company business objectives for an Intranet
2. Select and prioritize functions to rollout over time.
3. Develop a metrics program (beyond just usage rate) that might include things like:
– Surveying users, real life stories, how the Intranet is adding value to the company, usage rate improvements, improving efficiency, etc.
4. Governance- an company leadership group should periodically meet to discuss the program and provide oversight and leadership to the users
– A leadership team should provide:
— Vision (example: Intranet is the primary means of communication and data storage for Company XYZ)
— Guiding Principles
— Policies
— Procedures
— Roles and Responsibilities (sites must be managed)
– Suggestions for governance board makeup:
— VP-HR, CFO, VP-Ops, IT rep. Business Owner, Project lead rep, etc
— There should be an executive sponsor (recommend VP-Ops)
— Business Owner is defined as the person managing the overall design and site functions.
5. Content Management- Determine steps to keep the sites current and not stale to encourage employee usage and viewing.
6. Rollout: (once it is rolled out, start communicating to employees about it):
– Communications- newsletters, town hall meeting, CEO memo, etc
– Training (providing train the trainer classes)
– Launch and content conversion (moving from the company shared drive to exclusively using the intranet site, or whatever percentage usage you want to use)
7. User support. Clear articulation of who provides support from the IT department and the business owner.
8. Incentive and Rewards- content management becomes part of an individual performance goal and is managed by supervisors through the performance appraisal system.

You owe to your business to protect against disaster, improve communications and efficiences with your content management and intellectual capital. Intranets are here to stay! Find out why!

Kevin Bushey is a management consultant in Northern Virginia specializing in strategic planning and leveraging web portal technologies to enhance small and medium businesses. Claim a FREE chapter of my Intranet Strategy book at http://www.masteranintranetstrategy.com/ts1/index.html

Getting started on eBay your feedback is extremely important to success buying or selling. Feedback impacts your ability to sell more than your ability to buy, but it has a significant impact on both. eBay won’t let you sell an item using a buy it now unless you have ten positive feedback. I’ll show you how to buy feedback to help you get started.

Without the “Buy it Now” option, you do’t give your customers the ability to buying your item on impulse. They have to wait for the auction to finish, just like everyone else. That can be terribly inconvenient. Also, people tend to not trust a seller that has a low feedback rating. Thus, it is imperative that your feedback rating is exceptional. Also, if you ever want to be a power seller, you need a very high feedback rating.

So, if you want to be able to sell things, you need great feedback, but to get feedback you need to find a way sell things right? Wrong. You can get positive feedback from buying things! The quickest and easiest way is to buy inexpensive items that are say below a dollar.

One other idea is that you could buy items on eBay and then sell them again. This could be really useful if you see something that you can buy cheap, but you can sell for more by changing the listing. If done properly, this technique should allow you to at least break even, or limit your cost to buy positive feedback.

You also are improving your online selling skills at the same time. The other great thing about selling the things you buy on eBay again on eBay is that you know that there are willing buyers out there. After all, you just bought that item too didn’t you?

The last trick is the least obvious and the most sneaky. Do a search on eBay for “positive feedback” and you’ll likely come across an auction that is selling positive feedback indirectly. Essentially what the seller is selling is an automatic positive feedback to your account.

Some sellers might actually print out a piece of paper with a cool design and mail it too you, but mostly it is a way to sell a positive feedback rating without getting in trouble with eBay. Many positive feedback auctions sell for about $1 each, so to get the twenty feedback you need to get off the ground will cost you about twenty bucks.

One word of caution, if you are buying positive feedback, try not to go overboard with it. Get enough that you can sell effectively without spending too much time or money. If your goal is to sell things on eBay for a profit, having stellar feedback is just one part of the equation, it’s not the golden ticket to your success. The secret to that is hard work, determination, and luck.

Brian Knapp is an eBay fanatic. He loves finding interesting online auctions and sharing them at http://www.onlineauction.me/

For real estate professionals, advertising luxury homes requires different strategies than selling more typical homes and properties. When trying to sell a half-million dollar home, an ad in the local Sunday newspaper is not the most effective approach to take.

How to Distinguish a Luxury Home

The luxury home market is usually defined, depending on the local market, as the top 10% of homes listed by asking price or homes listed above $500,000. Something that makes luxury home sales different from others is that each property often requires its own marketing plan. Another difference is that the buyer is more likely to be from out-of-town or state, often more than 500 miles from the location of the property.

Traditional Marketing for Luxury Property

Placing ads in newspapers, local real estate guides, and running open houses is not the most practical approach to reach potential buyers of these homes. These tried and true techniques of selling homes often do not reach people genuinely interested in purchasing high-end luxury properties. Rather, they often attract people who are described as interior decorating tourists or just those curious about what’s inside these stunning homes.

List a Luxury Property Easily

In addition to multiple listing services (MLS), the Internet is also home to a variety of sites offering other ways of listing real estate for sale. There are listing sites that sell nearly everything imaginable and others that are exclusive to homes and property.

With the ability to include detailed description of a luxury home and its amenities as well as photos and, sometimes, virtual tours or at least a link to drive traffic to an external site for more information, these sites are very economical to a real estate agent’s advertising and marketing budget. Some offer free listings or charge a nominal fee while others charge more for deluxe features.

Websites Where Luxury Property Can be Listed

Craigslist(dot)org is one example. Anyone can list almost anything, including real estate, largely for free. Craigslist(dot)org is a collection of some 30 million online classified ads in 450 markets in all 50 US states, and over 50 countries. With billions of page views each month, craigslist(dot)org is one of the most visited English language sites.

There are sites that are more specific to buying and selling real estate. One example is houselist(dot)com. This site has different levels of listing from free to several hundred dollars annually. Each level includes more selling features for an unlimited number of listings. Like craigslist(dot)org, houselist(dot)com is searchable by state and city or by country.

Another option is to use an auction site. eBay is probably the best known of these online companies. Listing expenses are generally linked to the value of the item for sale. There are nominal insertion fees for posting the item on the site. When the item is sold, additional fees are applied amounting to a percentage of the value of the sale.

When developing a marketing campaign for a luxury property, consider listing it online. The Internet is an ever-growing and changing wealth of advertising and networking opportunities that should not be overlooked. It is the latest twist on the “six degrees of separation” that many real estate agents and brokers rely on, especially when selling high-end luxury properties.

http://www.HighEndCrazy.com is the ulimate free online auction site. The site features free online auctions and classifieds, and makes it easy to set up your own store.

Salehoo is one of the most popular wholesaling and dropshipping directories in the World Wide Web for two reasons. First of all, the membership fee is definitely way affordable than those of other directories. Second, it has an excellent customer support.

However, for you to maximize the benefits that you can get out of Salehoo, you should know one thing: how to dropship. Now a lot of people, especially the beginners, would be struggling learning the trade in Salehoo as educational resources are not that extensive. Thus, to help you out, you can take note of the following tips:

1. Search for products to dropship. One of the first things you need to do is to look for possible products to dropship. You can simply click on the Suppliers tab, where you can see various categories, such as antiques and collectibles, books and magazines, cameras and photo, and cell phones and PDAs, to name a few. Clicking on their subcategories will give you a very comprehensive list of various dropshippers and wholesalers.

Nevertheless, if you think that this is going to be a time-consuming process, you can make use of the Search bar of Salehoo. You simply need to enter the product or the brand and choose Dropshippers Only. It will give a list of those companies that are offering you the product or brand that you are looking for.

2. Get the contact details of the dropshipper. When you have already chosen the dropshipping company, make sure that you can obtain the contact details. You may have to log in to your Salehoo account, as only members can have full access to these.

3. Understand their terms and conditions. The mechanics of dropshipping among different companies are basically the same. They differ, however, on their policies. As a dropshipper, it is very important for you to have complete knowledge and understanding of them. This is so you can better deal with your buyers in terms of product delivery and costs. You can also establish a much better and longer relationship with your dropshipping company.

4. Read the forums. There are not really a lot of tips for dropshipping that you can get from the Salehoo message board. Still, there is a possibility that someone had already answered a question that you may have in mind. You can also start your own thread and allow other members to help you out with your issue.

5. Sign up on their newsletter. Salehoo has a newsletter that you can subscribe. You can obtain a lot of excellent tips from the experts and veteran dropshippers, as well as any update on the website and on their directory. The newsletter will be delivered directly to your inbox. Hence, see to it that it does not end up in your Junk Mail folder.

There could be some things you wish Salehoo has, including a detailed process of how to dropship. But the online dropshipping directory is doing well, in terms of giving members an extensive list of legitimate dropshippers all over the world.

Greg is an internet marketer. He has come a long way,from drug addict in major debt, to young online business owner making 6 figures a year! You can get more info. on Salehoo at http://www.MeLoveMoney.com – Reviews Of Wealth Programs, Drop Shipping And More!

Selling goods on eBay and other such websites can be a profitable venture. Most people who sell products on eBay are into something called wholesaling. It is a business where a person gets products from a supplier on a wholesale price then sells these products to other people after marking up the original price for which he bought it. The difference in the prices makes up the profit for the seller.

Perhaps the best and most efficient way of getting wholesaling done is by joining a wholesale directory. A wholesale directory ideally acts as a database of contact information of wholesale suppliers in various industries, as well as profiles of the products they sell. Wholesale directories bring together suppliers with possible sellers.

Signing Up with a Wholesale Directory

It is rather easy to get started on a wholesaling business. All one needs to do is to sign up with a wholesale directory. Most reputable wholesale directories are membership-only websites, and thus, signing up is necessary to acquire access to the website’s features and contact information on wholesalers.

The one downside to signing up with a wholesale directory is the membership fee. While most wholesale directories charge a one-time fee that provides lifetime access to the directory, this one-time fee can be hefty, amounting to some hundreds of dollars. Most people who are just learning the ropes about wholesale directories may find this fee too expensive.

Despite the costliness of the membership fee, this amount will eventually pale compared to how easy being part of a wholesale directory makes the business. The profits can soon cover the membership fee. The challenge for wholesalers, after getting over the deal around paying up the membership fee, is figuring out what to sell to their target customers. In wholesale directories with a vast database of suppliers, it would help a lot to narrow down what to look for. Otherwise, the wholesaler will only end up confused and overwhelmed by the site.

Wholesaling Categories

One way of narrowing down choices in a wholesale directory is to understand the three wholesaling categories that one can engage in. These three categories are:

1. Light bulk wholesaling. This refers to getting products from suppliers who do not impose any minimum orders.
2. Liquidation wholesaling. This pertains to acquiring overstock or overrun items from companies who have too much inventory and are trying to recover investment on unsold goods.
3. Import wholesaling. This is about selling products from companies abroad who are willing to take care of shipping charges from an international location to the goods’ destination, as well as customs duties.

It would be very helpful if the wholesale directory has these categories of wholesale suppliers segregated neatly. It makes selection of products and suppliers a lot easier for wholesalers.

What About Credibility?

Inasmuch as money can be made through wholesaling, it can still be a risky business to get into. It is essential for a new wholesale seller to be able to check if the wholesale directory he is joining is a reputable and credible one. Many complaints and cases have been filed against wholesale directories that are actually cover-up schemes for money-making scams.

To be sure that the wholesale directory that one is joining into is the real deal, one should check out any product reviews about this wholesale directory first. It would not hurt as well to check agencies like the Better Business Bureau.

Greg is an internet marketer. He has come a long way,from drug addict in major debt, to young online business owner making 6 figures a year! You can get more info.on Getting Started on Using a Wholesale Directory at http://www.MeLoveMoney.com – Reviews Of Wealth Programs, Drop Shipping And More!