Perhaps you are already trading online as a coach or a consultant but finding that you just not attracting enough clients. One of the main reasons I see for this is lack of a clear message explaining what you do and which people you help.

When a visitor lands on your blog or website they should immediately see who you are and what you do – this isn’t always the case, especially if you are in the professional service sector. You may find it really hard to explain what you do – this is another big drawback when you are building your brand.

All too often I see coaches trying to explain the features of their services ie, how the program is structured, what time the webinar/coaching call will take place, when they should be totally focusing on the benefits and results their prospective clients will have after working with them.

So, for example, a nutrition coach should be sharing the fact that after taking her program most of her clients have gone on to have a significant weight loss – but ALSO have changed their lifestyle and eating habits to keep the weight off (this is always the hardest part of being on a diet, right?).

Can you see where I’m coming from with this? How people perceive you will affect your branding. If you’re just one in a hundred weight-loss coaches you won’t stand out – but if you are branded and considered to be the coach who can help you lose weight AND keep it off in the long-term then you’ll stand out from the crowd.

My own example is quite unusual as I have advanced technical skills – but I’m also fully qualified to deliver advice and guidance, and a certified coach. So my skillset and credentials can be a great asset in my marketing and branding, as I don’t just tell you how to do it, I can also demonstrate the technical side too if need be.

OK, so let’s cover the three reasons why you need a sizzling signature brand:

1. Position yourself as an expert

Without a strong brand and the reasons we’ve mentioned above, you’ll find it hard to build your credibility and reputation, no matter which field or sector you’re in. Being able to demonstrate your expertise, knowledge and skills, as well as your clients success stories are what will make you stand out from your competitors.

2. Increase the perceived value of your services

If people feel they are dealing with an expert they will more than likely expect to pay more for those services.

Just because you are just starting out doesn’t mean you don’t have expert status already – don’t undermine yourself and your expertise. You should charge what you are worth and based on the results you’ve had in the past.

When I was a Career Advisor for a government-funded program a few years ago I was on a typical civil service salary, however, when I decided to go freelance and set up my own business I was soon in demand and earning in ONE day what I had earned in a week previously.

3. Deliver a clear, consistent message

Once you are clear about your branding your position in your field, you need to be crystal clear on your message. This should be delivered consistently whenever you update your status on Facebook, post on your blog, make a Tweet or write an article. In other words everything you do online should have your powerful message attached so people can hear it loud and clear.

My own message is pretty clear, I help women who want to fit their online business around their lifestyle by using technology to run their business on autopilot. This positions me as an expert in my chosen areas instead of being an Internet ‘Jack of all trades’ or should I say ‘Jill of all trades’.

Article writing is fast becoming the way to raise your online visibility with paying a fortune. I’m really pleased to have reached the heady heights of ‘Diamond Author’ with Ezine Articles – and from someone who doesn’t really enjoy writing that’s a small miracle! You’ll find Ezine Articles is the most popular article directory on the planet, it’s ranked very high in Google. This means if you have an interesting, original article you can find yourself also listed high in rank engine searches.

However, to acquire prestigious ‘Expert Author’ status there are a few important rules you will have to follow to ensure your articles are approved by the team. Let me share some of their guidelines so you can have a better chance of your article being accepted immediately.

The EzineArticles team read every article, this is not an automated process, which means human beings look over every article submitted and ensure they all fit into their high standard before being authorized for submission.

My 10 Top Tips to get your your articles being accepted by articles directories:

1. Do not copy the work of others. Your articles should be original and offer good quality information.

2. Write your articles with the intention of providing your reader with information they can find useful and beneficial.

3. Do not just rehash PLR (Public Label Rights) articles; your work should be original.

4. The main section of your article is for you to ‘give’ not to ‘sell’.

5. Use the resource box to promote your services or goods, but do not go overboard.

6. If you are using other quotations from other authors, make sure you give them credit.

7. Limit the number of keywords, remember your article should not be just a sales pitch.

8. Make sure the body of your articles is delivering what you promised in your title.

9. Do not submit any articles that contain illegal mp3 files, instructions on how to make bombs or steal, or expressions that promote hatred or profanity or racism or bigotry, or contains pornography or exploits children or animals or any human, or any other unlawful activities.

10. Finally, enjoy sharing your tips, techniques, strategies and expert advice with others through the gift of your writing!

You want to start an online business – so the first thing you have to do is find a name for your home on the internet.This is where you are going to live online - this is your home – and this is where your ideal clients will find you.

The first thing you need to decide is how to brand yourself or your company or product online.

• How do you want people to find you?
• What image do you want to send out?

Do you want to brand yourself as the product? As an individual you could follow the example of Martha Stewart – MarthaStewart.com or Oprah Winfrey Oprah.com, who have both built up a fantastic online brand using their own names.

This can be very handy if you want to do interviews, talks or live events as your ‘public personally’ is more interesting than a company. However, to enable you to sell various products and services online you may want to choose a domain name that reflects your company name.

Alternatively, you could choose a domain name after your products. Of course, there’s a big possibility that the name you want has already been taken – but there’s a way around that which I’ll cover later.

Choosing your domain

This is a very import part of your online identity so you need to give it a lot of thought. Take a pen and paper and write three columns:

Personal…………….Company…………….Products

———— ……………————- …………… ————

———— ……………————- …………… ————

———— ……………————- …………… ————

———— ……………————- …………… ————

Under each column make a list of your choices for a domain name.

Here are some points to remember:

1. .com is the BEST!

Choose a .com domain – it may cost a little extra, but remember you’re planning to have the whole world as your market – so give the impression you’re ready to do business globally right from the start – and not just where you happen to be based.

2. No Hyphens or dashes

Don’t choose a hyphenated name (if possible). I realize it may be difficult to get your first choice nowadays – but if you can avoid hyphens or dashes, it just looks so much more professional.

3. No numbers

Don’t include any numbers (unless your company name includes numbers) I say this from experience as my company name is, Potential2Go Ltd, and does have numbers so I’m stuck with the domain Potential2Go.com – but the number of times I have to keep saying, “You know, ‘2’ as in the number, not ‘two’ as a word” so be warned – don’t make the same mistake I made!

4. Keep it short

Aim to make your domain name as short as possible, again this can be difficult as most of the really good domain names have already been taken a long time ago. However, you can be creative, for example, if the name MaryJones.com has already been registered you could consider adding your middle initial (if you have one) and end up with MaryPJones.com – chances are that domain would still be available as there are fewer people around called Mary P. Jones, I would imagine.

5. Which brand to choose?

In some cases business owners have successfully blended their own name and their business sector together, for example, Mary Jones, the Coach could trade as MaryJonesCoaching.com or Jennifer Taylor who is a Dog Trainer could be JenniferTaylorDogTraining.com.

6. Keywords

One thing to remember though, the whole purpose of choosing a great domain name is to get the attention of the search engines by choosing the right KEYWORDS so they can find you and list your website or blog when someone types in a query into Google or Yahoo, etc. So make it easy for them!

7. Now put it everywhere!

Once you’ve decided on a domain name for your business then put it on very piece of advertising space you have from your email signature, business cards, letterheads, Twitter profile, Facebook profile, the lot.

The 10 reasons why it pays to run a home-based web business:

1. Independence
You get the chance to choose where you want to work and when. If you’ve spent hours in traffic communting to work over the past years you’ll know what a great advantage working from home can be. According to the US Federal Highway Administration the average American spends 348 hours each year commuting, this means working from home suddenly gives you all those extra hours to organize your work schedule.

2. No bosses
 Imagine, you’ll have no dress code, no set work schedule and no office politics to listen to, day in, day out. However, you will need the drive, discipline and time-management skills to organize your own work schedule and meet deadlines when you work from home.

3. You can keep every penny you earn
You control how much money you earn, so no need to wait for a raise or performance pay to help you pay the bills. The harder you work, the more you’ll earn if you get the processes right.

4. Low start-up costs
You can literally start a home-based web business with a computer, an internet connection, a domain name (web address) and purchasing a hosting package for less than $100 for a whole year. Your innovation, imagination and drive will help you do the rest.

5. Less risk
Starting a home based web business is less risky than having to buy or rent a physical business location. Plus, one great advantage of running an internet business is that it means you get to do business golbally – even while you sleep or are on vacation (provided you’ve got the right systems in place).

6. Tax advantages
You may want to check out the advantages of working from home with your local tax advisor. You can often deduct a part of your home’s operating expenses, such as fuel bills on your home-based business expenses. In some cases this can also be property taxes, insurance, utilities, maintenance and mortgage payments.

7. Spend quality time with your friends and family
 For parents with children who are school-aged this is a great advantage, no more worrying about who is going to do the school run. Plus your kids get to see you when they return home each day instead of going to a neighbor’s or relatives house.

8. Less stress
 When you’re at home all day you are able to deal with the stresses of family life a lot easier, for example, when a family member is ill or you have to attend an important school event. It’s just so much easier than asking your boss for time off or having to use your vacation time.

9. Self-fulfillment
 Running your own home-based web business can award you the chance of great personal satisfaction as you can follow your dreams, passions and interests and have the opportunity to create multiple revenue streams to achieve financial freedom to buy the things you love for your family and friends.

10. Creativity release
When you no longer have to spend time commuting to work, and attending futile meetings or engaging in useless office politics your creative juices can take on a life of their own and be allowed to flow… generate winning ideas that can make you money even while you sleep or are on vacation.

But the really smart marketers know that the eBook is just the beginning of the process to making a lot of money online. You see the eBook is a way of you introducing yourself to the your ideal target audience. It can be free and offered as a giveaway from your Squeeze Page or if it contains really ‘hard to find’ information, you can charge for it.

The ‘secret sauce’ of the simple eBook

What you may not know is that most successful internet marketers repurpose everything they ever create. They use their content over and over again in different ways and I’m going to walk you through 10 ways you can do it too (after you’ve written your eBook that is!).

1. Directly selling the eBook
After you’ve tested the waters and made a few sales start to sign up affiliates and pay them 50% commission to reach the people you can’t reach so it’s a ‘win win’ situation.

2. Give away your eBook as a way of building your list
As we mentioned previously, eBooks are a great way to capture your visitors contact details and build an army of raving fans.

3. Give away your eBook for free – but make it rebrandable
Affiliates are always looking for content and you can drive people back to your blog or website

4. Turn the eBook into a ‘Mini-site’ and ‘Flip-it’
If you don’t like to market the book yourself get help to turn it into a minisite – add some graphics and put it on www.Flippa.com for sale.

5. Turn it into a Kindle or physical book
You can always repurpose the content and turn it into a Kindle book – or even self-publish as Amazon have made it so easy with Createspace.

6. Sell it as PLR (Public Label Rights)
Create a complete package with website and graphics and give others the rights to use your material

7. Add it as a Bonus for your higher end products

8. Split the eBook into Chapters and repurpose as Short Reports

9. Create videos from the content and double the price

10. Go on to write another eBook in a series

Ready to get started and MAKE MONEY from your expertise by Writing an eBook?

Here’s a great resource I’ve found for you (you can rest assured I vet all the products I recommend to you).

“How to Write an eBook – Even if You Don’t Like Writing!”

Click Here Now To Write Your eBook! <–

There’s lots of ways to get the attention of the search engines, for example the various social media and social networking sites are great and I’ll cover that later, but for now it’s important that you submit your site to Google

As bloggers it’s important to include the right keywords for Google to find exactly a good match for what their customers are searching for, so don’t forget to include these words in your blog titles to make it easier to get the search engines attention. For example, a wedding planner could include write a blog post all about which order to start planning your wedding and call it “7 Steps to Plan for Wedding to Ensure Success”. That would get the attention of Google is a bride-to-be was seeking advice her up and coming wedding.

For most of us who have been involved in information marketing for a while it isn’t too surprising to hear that downloads of eBooks for Amazon’s Kindle have now outsold physical books. You can read all about here on Fast Company

You see people want convenience and eBooks are just one of many ways you can offer information to your target audience. By creating info products in the form of special reports, eBooks, audio files or videos is now seen as one of the easiest ways to make money on the internet. These information products are delivered digitally and are frequently downloadable in seconds, much to the delight of the 2+ billion internet users worldwide who constantly seek solutions to their everyday problems.

Let’s face it – with so many households now having access to high speed Internet connections there couldn’t be a better time for you to convert your knowledge, expertise and skills into digital form to sell on a ‘one to many’ basis instead of the old way of one-to-one.

That’s not to say you won’t be seeing your clients one-to-one, it just means this part of your business is now premium and sold at a price that is far too low for the amount of value you give. Private coaching and mentoring should be at the top end of your business – not as an entry point.

Years ago, before the introduction of the internet, people would visit a library to find a book or report on their chosen topic. Libraries are, of course, still a great source of information – but what has changed is people’s attitude to time and in particular, the LACK of time they have available in their busy lives.

Keep in mind, hundreds of thousands of people are searching online for solutions to everyday problems via the search engines like Google. Often they are looking for information on how to find a new career, how to lose weight, how to find the perfect date, how to get over divorce. They are constantly looking for good quality information to make their lives easier.

Imagine if you were to produce info products on specialized topics you have gained through your hobbies, interests or qualifications enabling thousands of people to save lots of time and effort? The result could be phenomenal.

So, think carefully before you spend a lot of effort in producing information in the traditional tangible format like physical books instead consider using the fast digital downloadable route to market in future.

 Daddy of them all – Ezine Articles

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 Article Dashboard

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Idea Marketers

The phrase permission marketing was coined by Seth Godin, a thought leader in the internet marketing world, and is the opposite of the traditional interruption marketing. Permission marketing is all about building an ongoing relationship of increasing depth with your customers. Seth described it as “turning strangers into friends, and friends into customers.”

Publishing your own Ezine is a great way to stay connected with visitors to your blog or website who have given you their permission to send them useful information on a regualr basis.

Here are “5 Top Tips to  Successfully Publish an Ezine” to help you get started on your Ezine:

‘Turning strangers into friends and friends into customers’

 Tip #1 – Let an Autoresponder to Do All the Work

Don’t make the mistake of thinking you have to physically send out each edition of your Ezine yourself. This is the mistake a lot of new entrepreneurs make when they take their offline business online – thinking they have to reply to every email themselves! Do NOT do this! The technology is out there to help you — you’ve got to start using it to work SMARTER and the solution is an Autoresponder. There are several Email Marketing companies out there who do a good job, I use 1ShoppingCart mainly because it integrates my shopping cart with my autoresponders (making my life a WHOLE lot easier) but I believe Aweber is really good and a friend of mine uses Constant Contact and loves it. So there you are – make sure you let the autoresponder do all the hard work and not you!

Tip #2 – Never Sign People Up Without Their Permission

Another big mistake I see newcomers make is adding everyone they know to their Ezine mailing list and hoping for the best — this is definitely a big ‘No, No’. The ICANN anti-spam rules which govern this area state you must have the person’s permission before you send them commercial emails. So even if you’re making only 3 cents with Google Adsense – you are effectively a commercial user. If you don’t adhere to these rules you’ll end up in a lot of trouble and worse still, your reputation will suffer and you could be labelled as a spammer.

Remember, you always need permission before you send out unsolicited emails.
But there is always an ethical way to go about your business and send out your
Ezine, here are three ways you can stay on the right side of the ICANN rules:

Ideally send your friends or business contacts to a one-page website, also known as a Squeeze page, that you’ve created stating all the benefits of your newsletter and include an opt-in box where they can provide their name and primary email address. Once they sign up – you’re ‘good to go’.

When attending conferences, presentations, etc make sure you make people aware you have an Ezine, then make a point of writing a big ‘P’ on the back of their business card to remind yourself to add them to your list now they’ve given you permission to do so.

 If you’re invited to speak at an event, prepare a form beforehand and give people the opportunity to. The form should say something like ‘I would like to receive………………’s newsletter for tips and techniques on ………………’. This way you are absolutely sure they have given you their permission before you start sending them emails.

Using these three methods will keep you on the right side of the ICANN rules.

Tip #3 – Make Sure Your Content is Useful

People have signed up for your Ezine because you’ve promised to deliver the latest news or weekly tips – so that’s what you’ve got to give them! Don’t just fill your Ezine with adverts for your affiliate products or your Joint Venture partners. Follow the 80/20 Pareto rule – give 80% content and 20% promotion. You probably wouldn’t care much to receive a newsletter full of adverts and hardly anything else, would you? So make sure you don’t fall into this trap right from the beginning.

Tip #4 – You’re in Business – Don’t Forget This!

Although we’ve just covered the useful content subject in #3, let’s not forget you are actually here to make money! You’re in business now and whilst it’s great to add useful content… don’t go overboard, you’re main reason for sending the Ezine (and doing all the hard work!) is to education your prospective customers and build an ongoing relationship – so make sure you promote a product or service (ideally your own or as an affiliate) you personally think will also be useful to them. At the end of the day, it’s your reputation online — you’ve got to protect it.

Tip #5 – Keep To A Schedule, People Expect It

No matter what schedule you decide to publish, ie weekly, bi-weekly,or monthly just make sure you DO actually meet your deadlines. Remember, a lot of your content can be repurposed for the future… or you can look at what you have produced in the past and rework it. Just make sure you meet your customers’ expectations by being professional and getting it to them on time.

Always work at least one or two weeks in advance and ahead of your schedule,
this way if anything unexpected happens (and it will, believe me!) you’ll be ready to publish your newsletter… no matter what.

To create your own electronic newsletter sign up with AWeber or Constant Contact and get started today!!

1. Around a quarter of women surveyed shop online once a day
2. A high percentage of women are keen to pass on relevant information to their friends and family
3. Most see their mobile/cell phone and computer as a extension of themselves
4. Women are very keen to build their own private 'address book' database and often have 150+ contacts

1. Email is a very important part of their lives and features high in the list of preferred type of communication
2. Stay-at-Home and Work-at-Home Mums are a growing army of internet fans often feeling isolated at home
3. Many new mothers are keen to search, find and share useful information with others in the same position