This is a guest post from Laura Jorgensen of Cedar Fort Books. Follow Cedar Fort on Twitter and Like them on Facebook!

Why should people network?

The answer might be obvious to many who have benefited from the effects of networking.

“Many people make introductions, get promoted, or jumpstart career transitions because of networking – having the courage to meet new people and having the discipline to maintain familiar contacts,” says Caroline Ceniza-Levine of SixFigureStart.

For myself, about half of the jobs that I’ve had were because I knew someone who already worked there. From an internet point of view, networking is a way to get your message heard by as many people as possible. The more friends you have the more people willing to listen and repeat your message.

You’re probably saying to yourself about now, “Wait! I thought you were going to tell us how to not network.” So I am, but first I wanted to set the stage of what networking can do.

Recently I went to two different conventions, one for fun and personal interests and the other for work. Conventions are great places to network because it is a bunch of like-minded people getting together to talk about something that they’re passionate about. You don’t have to seek them out, they’ve gathered together for you.

Unfortunately I mostly failed at the whole networking thing, especially at the second convention (granted the second day I was sick, but still). I only gave out my business card to one (count them, 1) person total, and that was because I told myself I couldn’t leave until I did (I left right after). I was able to say hi to some of the panelists, but it wasn’t anything that would make them remember me out of the hundreds of other people that were there trying to network too.

On the whole, the one good experience was definitely a foil for my many other failures. And from those, here is what I’ve learned about how to NOT network:

6 Ways to Network Unsuccessfully

1. Blend in: If they can’t see you they won’t know that you’re there.
2. Don’t talk: Not even to your neighbor, not even about the weather, cause that might lead to something else.
3. Be obnoxious: No I wasn’t (at least I don’t think I was), but I noticed some people that, even though they had good resumes, I wasn’t sure that I’d want to be in contact with later.
4. Be sick: Well I guess that’s not really a requirement, but being grumpy and miserable is indeed a turn off. If you really want people to stay away you could hack into a handkerchief every once in a while.
5. Be self-centered: One-sided conversations, are great ways to not get to know other people.
6. Don’t have a purpose: At the first convention I knew more the type of person that I was interested in networking with. At the second I didn’t. So I ended up just swiping swag off their tables and not really talking to them.

Moral of the story: Don’t do what I did at the conventions.

Go talk to people. Be memorable. Be interested in other people and they will most likely be interested in you. Be a likable person so that people will WANT to be your friend. And don’t be afraid to talk to strangers–they may be just the person you’re looking for. Also stay in contact with old and new friends. You never know when you might hit a gold mine.

Email Marketing is, or should be, an important part of every business owners efforts to connect with their clients, remind them about products or services, and keep them in the loop of upcoming events.

There are quite a few different email autoreponders in the market. When I first started internet marketing Constant Contact was the email autoresponder I decided to use. It wasn’t a bad product at all, but I didn’t really understand the true value of email marketing and probably didn’t use it as well as I could have. I was also new to a lot of the “code” stuff like HTML and didn’t really understand how to make my email campaign look similar to my website.

Since that first trial, I’ve been testing other email newsletter options. One is Get Response and another is AWeber.

I’ve done quite a bit of research and here’s a bit of info on what I found out about these two email autoresponders:

The Pros and Cons of Aweber and Get Response:

AWeber

Pros:

• Customer Support: Aweber is great at customer support: they’re thorough and helpful
• Feedback: Aweber allows unsubscribers of your email list to fill out feedback form
• Testing: Aweber encourages you to create an A/B test campaign
• Analytics: Aweber offers Google Analytics integration to keep track of stats

Cons:

• No picture hosting! This means that if you want to have pictures in your email campaign, you’ll have to host them at a place like Flickr.com – which can be a pain if you’re new to HTML.

Get Response

Pros:

• User Friendliness: Get Response has flexible and easy-to-use templates and an email editor for simple email creation
• Customer Support: Get Response has thorough and helpful customer support
• Reports: Get Response provides comprehensive reports analyzing subscriber actions
• Picture Hosting: Get Response allows 1 GB of picture hosting – that’s a ton!
• Testing: Get Response lets you to create A/B test campaigns
• Analytics: Get Response integrates with Google Analytics
• Flexibility: Get Response email templates are incredibly flexible

Cons:

• I really couldn’t find any cons yet, although I’ll continue looking and keep you posted.

Here’s a cool video about creating a newsletter with Get Response:

Try Get Response!

I’ll continue to test but up to this point, I recommend Get Response.

Which email autoresponder do you prefer?

I’ve talked to clients a lot in the past about one key question:

What have you done TODAY to make a sale?

I’m going to take it a step further today and ask another simple question:

What have you done TODAY to find a new client?

Some might ask at this point, “Isn’t making a sale and finding a new client the same thing?”

In the past, my answer was yeah, sure. However, as I’ve thought about it more, I realize that I can make one sale today but then never, ever see that customer again. On the other hand, if my goal is to find CLIENTS, I’m really not only looking for a “sale”, but I’m also looking for a long-term business relationship that I can develop, leading to sale after sale after sale to the same client.

I was reading an article today titled “5 Smart Ways to Find Clients“. They mentioned that finding clients is something almost every small business owner struggles with from time to time. There are quite a few ways to do it, but finding new clients really boils down to putting yourself where your clients are, being approachable, and fulfilling a need or solving a problem. It doesn’t have to be much more complicated than that.

Who’s Your Ideal “Golden” Client?

Do you get so many emails that you don’t have time to really focus on anything else?

Are you sick of getting SPAM or stupid forwards from your family and friends that simply waste valuable time?

I read an article quite a while back on Zen Habits stating the author was ditching email all together; at the time I was honestly like – “Yeah right!”

As of today, though, I’m seriously considering ditching my email too.

But, thanks to Google and a few other cool online tools, I’m considering a couple options before I throw email to the curb:

1. Use Twitter for all correspondence. Leo Babauta from Zen Habits uses Twitter for the majority of his communication. Here’s why:”What I love about Twitter is that it’s very limited (140 characters), so you have to keep things brief, and also there isn’t the expectation that you’ll respond to every message, as there is in email. Friends can DM me on Twitter for personal communication.”

   Another great thing about Twitter is that, if you don’t want to get messages from specific people, you can block them or just not follow them.

2. Set up a Gmail Account!

Gmail is always coming out with cool new functions. One I discovered today is Priority Mail. Check out this cool video:

Here are a few more details from the Gmail Team:

Get through your email faster

Try reading and replying to the messages in the “Important and Unread” section first. Mark anything that requires follow-up with a star, then go through the “Everything Else” section. If you leave Priority Inbox, you can return to it by clicking the link next to Inbox on the side navigation of Gmail.

How it works

Gmail’s servers look at several types of information to identify the email that’s important to you, including who you email and chat with most, how often you email with these people, and which keywords appear frequently in the emails you read.

Train Priority Inbox

If Priority Inbox makes a mistake, you can use the buttons to correctly mark a conversation as important or not important, and Priority Inbox will quickly learn what you care about most.

And more…

• Customize Priority Inbox: You can change what type of email you see in each section (like switching the “Important and Unread” section to just “Important”). Just click on the section headers or visit the Priority Inbox tab under Settings to customize.
• Use filters to guarantee importance: If you want to be absolutely sure that some messages are always marked as important (like email from your boss), you can set up a filter and choose “Always mark it as important.”
• Search by importance: If you want to see all the messages that have been marked as important, both read and unread, do a Gmail search for “is:important.”
• Switching back to your old inbox: If Priority Inbox isn’t for you, you can easily switch back to your normal inbox by clicking “Inbox” on the left or hide Priority Inbox altogether from Gmail Settings.

To learn more about managing your email with Priority Inbox, check out the Gmail Help Center.

So, set up a Gmail Account and save yourself some time!

Why aren’t you using Gmail yet?

Do you make money online?

Why?

Or maybe a better question is, Why not?

Last year alone, Amazon.com made $24.5 BILLION dollars in online sales.

Why didn’t you get a piece of that pie?

I’ve been running online businesses and teaching others how to start an online business for over six years now and have learned one main point that I can’t teach clearly enough…

Online Marketing is about SALES!

If you want to actually make money online, you have to provide a product or service that has enough demand and that you won’t have to compete with the likes of Wal-Mart and Costco to sell.

Online marketing is NOT just about selling products ONLINE!

To me, this is one of the most common misconceptions about an internet business – that most, if not all, of the sales are made online.

First off, yes, your eCommerce website can be the PORTAL to sell your products online. But you’re not necessarily LIMITED to only selling them there.

Some of the biggest sales I’ve made online have been because of connections made OFFLINE that then got the ball rolling to finalize the sales online.

Do you have an affiliate program for your website?

I was talking with a client today about his website that sells cool pencil cases. He’s using a website builder that has a custom affiliate program BUILT IN! I was pretty excited for him when I heard that he’d made about 70 sales within the last week.

I asked him how many of those sales he’d made were now affiliates that were promoting his products to their friends and family in exchange for a little commission on sales they helped create.

He told me 1 person was and they’d helped generate FOUR sales already.

I then did the math. 1 person for 4 sales….?

That means, if he got all 75 people who bought from him already to do a bit of affiliate promoting…. He be “in the money” for (at least) 300 sales!

From 4 sales to 300 sales is actually  A LOT MORE than TRIPLING YOUR ONLINE SALES!

Are you seeing where I’m going here…?

How to Build a Successful Affiliate Program for Your Ecommerce Store

As we talked more, ideas started coming about what he could be doing. Here are some I want to collect on “paper”.

1. Have an affiliate program built for your eCommerce store or find one.
2. When a sale is made and a new client is added to your database, email them right away to thank them for their business.
3. In that same email, or in follow up emails, ask them questions and build the business relationship:
   1. How did they find your website?
   2. Do they have any recommendations or suggestions for your website?
   3. What did they like about the product(s) or service?
   4. What can you add to the site that would make it even better for the end user?
   5. What other products would they like to see in the future?
   6. Would they buy from your website again in the future? Why or why not?
   7. If they could refer the product(s) to their friends and family for a commission, would they?
   8. Do they know what affiliate marketing is?
4. Make some of these questions direct links to a page on your website that explains more about what they can do to make money or help a cause or whatever…(a landing page with an invitation to do something)
5. On the landing page, teach them how they can set up their own affiliate program on your site and get PAID as they refer your products to friends and family who then BUY your products.
6. Teach them about http://bit.ly – a website address shortening service that basically “hides” all the affiliate tracking information and keeps the website address short and easy to remember.
7. If they want to do “Offline Sales”, teach them about how they could collect the money from buyers of your products offline and then go through their own affiliate link to make sure they get credit for the sale.
8. Encourage them to think about their email list, their friends on Facebook, and offline connections too.
9. Start helping them make a list of people they think would be ideal for the product or service you offer.

These were just a few of the ideas that came to mind as we talked about the success he was having so far with his new online business.

What are other suggestions you have to double, triple, even QUADRUPLE your sales online?

(by the way, the title is an example of a Flashy Headline and nothing else; yes, I do think a process like this has potential to triple sales overnight, but I DON’T believe in “get rich quick” schemes at all…)