Businesses rely on statistics to tell them what’s working and what’s not, and marketing videos have been put under the statistical microscope. A number of reports show that marketing videos are having significant success for both increased traffic and ROI (Return on Investment). A BIA Kelsey report shows that viewers are more engaged after watching a marketing video, with click rates for more information increasing by 30 to 40 percent and phone inquiries by 16 to 20 percent.

Another report states that 59 percent of survey respondents watch online video. Plus, YouTube reports that it has had an impressive 2.4 billion page views – and YouTube has only been around since 2005! The implications and possibilities of these findings are very good news for your business, in more ways than one.

Using Marketing Videos

We’ve definitely become a 30-second kind of world. Television commercials have been around long enough that most people don’t even remember a world without them. With the internet now becoming a tour de force in every aspect of life, it makes sense that marketing videos, and online videos in general, are playing A-list roles in advertising over the World Wide Web. The nice thing, especially for small businesses, is that it doesn’t cost tens of thousands of dollars to make marketing videos, like it does for television commercials. There are a number of video marketing companies that specialize in making online advertisements.

Getting marketing videos made can significantly increase your sales and your presence online, as seen by the above statistics, and the success of YouTube. The trick is making the video entertaining, authentic, and informative with a significant call to action. Having a video is terrific; getting one made that shines with personality, makes your company stand out, and impels people to learn more is the key to making money online.

1. A Myriad of Payment Options – Generally speaking, the more payment options you offer, the more customers you’ll have, so make sure any payment gateway you are considering offers a myriad of payment options. These should include all major credit cards, signature debit cards, and perhaps payments via electronic checks or eWallet accounts.

2. Fraud Prevention Features – Most well-established, reputable payment gateways offer their clients a variety of fraud prevention features. Such features should help you identify suspicious transactions and offer standard fraud prevention tools.

3. PCI-Compliance – Remember that the payment gateway you select will be handling all of your customers’ sensitive, confidential information so make sure they are PCI-compliant and store such data on a secure server.

4. Comprehensive Customer Service – Look for a payment gateway that offers a comprehensive customer service platform that is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. Be wary of any service that only offers email support. Many good payment gateways also offer live technical support to merchants and online user guides and how-to’s.

5. Quick Turnaround Time – Ask potential payment gateways how long it takes for funds to be deposited. Many services allow merchants to receive payments quickly, depositing funds into merchant bank accounts within just a few business days.

6. User-Friendly Interface – The payment gateway service should offer an easy-to-use and intuitive interface that allows you to manage all your transactions. You should be able to control and monitor payments directly through your website and access built-in features and tools.

If you’re looking to start an e-commerce website, you can check out the following posts of mine:
6 Things Needed to Start an eCommerce Site
7 Tips for eCommerce SEO

1. Regularly write articles and have them submitted to various article directories.

2. Create eye-catching headlines & titles for your posts/articles for higher pageviews.

3. Make frequent posts. Regularly post to forums in your niche and drop signature links pointing to your site.

4. Network! Contact owners of other related sites and blogs. Talk to them over the phone, through Instant Messaging, or even e-mail. You can even explore the opportunity to attend different business events and keep the networking going. If they know who you are, it increases your chances of having a business relationship with them down the road.

5. Offer your visitors a free product or service for subscribing to your list, or just for stopping by. The most common types of gifts are e-books and software.

6. Check out other blogs in your niche and leave comments – this will result in good backlinks and traffic for your site.

7. Contact the owners of sites in your niche and inquire about a link exchange. Just make sure it’s a fair deal for both parties, and that your link is kept up.

8. Visit the Yahoo! Answers site and answer questions, providing a link to your website at the bottom.

9. Craigslist is becoming increasingly popular. Try submitting an ad on that site with your website in the listing.

10. If you offer a product or a service, send it to blog owners in your niche and ask them to review it on their site.

11. Continually submit your website to search engines, ping sites, standard directories and RSS directories. You can even submit your site to this blog – click here.

12. Have an opt-in form in a top position on your site and an auto-responder to handle the mailing list. This will ensure that people will return to the site for future offers and promotions. If you take a look at the top right of this blog, you’ll see the opt-in form… give it a try!

13. If you find products with Master Resell Rights (MRR) and offer them as free downloads throughout your site, you will certainly notice an increase in your traffic levels.

14. Constantly submit your posts and articles to social bookmarking sites. I recommend Digg, Mister Wong, Reddit, StumbleUpon, and Delicious. Hey – why don’t you try out social bookmarking by submitting this blog post! There’s a little widget at the bottom to do it.

15. Utilize social networking websites such as Twitter, Facebook and MySpace. Create an informative profile and include a link to your site. For more information on getting traffic from Twitter, check out my other post here.

16. Keep the world’s view of your blog up-to-date by using services like Ping-O-Matic to announce that your blog has been updated. If you’re using Wordpress, you can have this done automatically.

17. Visit websites that allow you to post classified ads and distribute your link in the listings. Just make sure that you aren’t spamming these sites, or you’ll be banned and give your site a bad name. Did you know that you can submit your classified ads to this blog for free? Click here.

18. If you offer a product or service, you may engage in affiliate marketing by allowing other people and websites to sell your products and keep a fraction of the earnings.

19. Consider engaging in a Joint Venture project. One such example would be to find a website owner in your niche who has a large mailing list. You could then work out a deal with that individual for being mentioned in an upcoming newsletter or for access to the list.

20. The biggest tip for increasing your traffic is to always be on the lookout for creative ideas to advertise. You could make clever business cards and ‘drop them’ in stores, businesses, bathrooms – anywhere! You could write your URL in the sand the next time you visit the beach. Always keep your eyes open for opportunities. You can also read another list I made here.

I figured I’d start off March a bit early. The question for this poll is, ‘How much do you make online monthly?’ Simply select the answer that best matches how much money you produce each month through your online business efforts. When the end of March comes, I will review all of the answers and determine what information to start posting on my blog that can help you guys out the best. Please make sure you answer the poll honestly, and then feel free to comment on this post with additional thoughts or comments. Thank you!

You will find the poll located at the top of the page on the left side. Go ahead and place your vote now!

1. Write Unique Content – Forgo the stale manufacturer descriptions for your products in favor of detailed, unique content. Not only is unique content viewed favorably by the major search engines, you won’t be competing against the multiple other online retailers with the very same descriptions.

2. Allow Product Reviews – It’s a great way to garner more unique content and drive traffic to your site. Give customers the chance to rate and review products they have purchased and comment on other reviews.

3. Utilize Social Networking Sites – From Facebook to Twitter, social networking sites have given small business owners new platforms to promote their products and interact with prospective customers.

4. Don’t Keyword Stuff – Stuffing your website with keywords you want to rank on is useless and shoddy and believe it or not, the search engines are smart enough to pick up on when you’re doing it. Refer to tip number one and instead write unique, keyword rich content.

5. Minimize the Amount of Flash on Your Site – While flash allows you to add visually compelling animation and images to your website, search engines have trouble recognizing and categorizing any content that is flash.

6. Name Each Page – Use relevant titles on each page of your website, not just your main ones. Search engine results list page titles so it’s imperative you give page unique and relevant page title.

7. Use eCommerce SEO Software – Most eCommerce SEO software programs are designed for small to mid-sized businesses with no SEO knowledge or experience and no budget to outsource their internet marketing. They can show you step-by-step how to complete SEO for your website that increases your rankings in the search engines. Look for a program that is web-based and charges a nominal monthly fee.

1. Hosting Service – A hosting server gives your website a place to reside on the Internet; without a hosting service, visitors cannot access your website. Most hosting services are available for a nominal monthly fee. Make sure the hosting service is compatible with your shopping cart software. (DreamHost offers great service and you can use the promotional code Kovich for $50 off!)

2. Website – Once you have place for your website online, next is the website itself. There are a myriad of available options when it comes to creating your website. If you already have an existing website, you can integrate e-commerce capabilities. If you are building the website from scratch, there are a handful of software programs that can help you build a website with no HTML skills or you can have your site designed by a website design professional or firm (typically the most expensive alternative).

3. Shopping Cart Software – In order for your customers to actually choose which products or services they want to purchase from your site, you need shopping cart software. Look for software that offers merchant tools, supports a myriad of payment options, shipping and taxes configurations, real-time statistics and reporting, and security features.

4. A Merchant Account – Available through conventional banks and financial institutions, merchant accounts allow a business to accept credit cards as payment. A merchant account is essentially a contract between the merchant and the bank and outlines how transactions will transpire.

5. Payment Services – In addition to a merchant account, you will also need payment services (also known as a payment gateway). This allows you to actually process payments and determines whether or not a customer’s credit card is accepted or declined.

6. Marketing – Your website is worthless if you don’t have any people visiting it. Be sure to market your website by engaging in the various search engine optimization (SEO) techniques that can help jumpstart your website’s rankings in the major search engines and attract more site visitors. I’ll post about search engine optimization for e-commerce sites soon!

Be Proactive – Many consumers won’t take the time to rate a product or service without encouragement to do so. After a customer makes a purchase on your site, send an email thanking them for their purchase and inviting them to submit a review.

Offer Incentives – Customers will be more inclined to complete reviews and rate products with an incentive. Offer small enticements such as a minor discount or free shipping on their next order if they complete a review; this will not only boost reviews and ratings, but prompt customers to shop on your site again.

Simplify the Review Process – Customers don’t want to be bothered writing reviews or completing product surveys that are lengthy and open-ended, so simplify the review process as much as possible. In addition, consider allowing reviews without registration.

Think Short and Sweet – In a similar vein, keep the review process short and sweet. For example, you may want to have a simple five-star rating system where customers can rate a specific product and a text box for any optional comments.

Keep the Negative Reviews – It may seem counterproductive but allowing negative reviews to be posted on your site is actually good for business and gives consumers a sense of transparency. If every single review is positive, it definitely raises a red flag among consumers and appears artificial.

2. Beware of a knowledge gap – Don’t assume the recipient of an email has the same level of knowledge you do. For example, if you are trying to sell a product or service, give the recipient plenty of information so they thoroughly understand what it is you offer. In addition, include all previous email threads so a recipient knows all the background leading up to the email.

3. Speak their language - Depending on who the recipient is, use language that is clear, concise, and easy to understand. So, don’t speak legalese to someone not familiar with the profession.

4. Include your signature block - Typically at the bottom of each email. An email signature should be a source of contact information for the recipient so include your full name, title, company, address, phone number(s), fax (if applicable), and website.

5. Email Backup - Considering how much information most businesses store in emails, email backup should be performed regularly. Make sure to backup email bodies, attachments, your address book, and anything else that may be stored in both local and web-based business email accounts.

6. Email length – Assume everyone is just as busy you are and keep your emails short and sweet. Brevity is key and each email you send should be as brief as possible. Not only is this a standard courtesy to your recipients, it also makes for easier reading of emails on smart phones and handheld PDAs.

7. Proofread - Always review your message before you click send. No email should ever be sent without revision and a quick proofread. You can’t “un-send” emails and a silly error you missed could reflect poorly on you and your company.

8. Be professional - Unless the email is an informal message between colleagues, Internet jargon, text messaging acronyms, smiley faces, and other emoticons are hardly ever appropriate in a business email.

Now, let’s see here… where to begin? Allow me to describe what the forum is and how it can help you. It’s a very unique private earners club that works to help its members bring in a residual income month to month. Let’s be honest here. Most people really suck at marketing. Statistically speaking, you’re probably one of them! That’s why I work really hard here to help everyone do better with their online business – and that’s why I’m introducing you to NicheChoppers.

The successful business owners that hang around the forum love to discuss their methods and educate you on how to replicate them. Have you ever found this with the authors of the e-books you’ve purchased on other random forums? Sure, they’ll tell you in one static piece of information all about how they earn money… but they never tell you the real methods or the story behind the methods themselves. Plus, they will never be around to chat with and get to know! So what’s the point in wasting money on useless e-books when you can be involved in an active community?

Fortunately, the forums have over 1500 top-level affiliates who are extremely active. There are simple blueprints and detailed outlines that tell you precisely what to do to start bringing in earnings. These aren’t vague ‘reports’ that tell you obvious facts that just waste your time. NicheChoppers is a value because it allows you to really get involved with the process.

So how am I using this information to benefit myself? Well, it’s pretty simple. I’ve been doing online marketing for years and I’ve found a lot of success. I had a good understanding of the subject but the forum really introduced me to ideas and concepts that I had never before even considered! After thoroughly reading everything I could, I started up some new sites and am working hard on making them as profitable as possible.

The community over at NicheChoppers is actually helping me every step of the way and providing me with useful feedback so that I’m not just earning a lot of money, I’m earning A LOT of money. Personally, I find it to be extremely worth it and quite valuable in helping me to increase my earnings quickly. I mean hey… if it wasn’t working, would I risk my reputation by posting about it here? No way!

Now, your next step should be to click here and read the information on that page, then go ahead and sign-up and see what happens! Make sure you contact me afterward and we can share information and experiences and I will help you out and recommend some methods that worked for me. I’ll also share some other great residual income secrets with you. Due to new FTC regulations, I need to inform you that my review is genuine and I have not been paid to post this, but if you sign-up with my affiliate URL, I will receive a commission.

Advertising Networks. Two of the networks that I hear about most often are Google AdSense and AdBrite (use my referral link!). Each available network in the industry offers its own advantages and disadvantages, but I’ll save that for another day. (Just watch out for the more suspect advertising networks, like this one.)

More to the point, you profit by placing a certain code from your advertising network on your site. It is then served with a variety of possible ads, which will generate revenue. Typically, such income is produced in these ways:

Cost Per Click (CPC): Money is earned when a visitor clicks on an advertisement.
Cost Per Milli (CPM): This method produces an income though impressions, with the rate being tailored to what you receive for every 1,000. An impression is defined as the advertisement being loaded on the page for a visitor to see.
Cost Per Action (CPA): You receive earnings every time a specific action is completed. It could be a purchase, a sign-up, etc.

Direct Selling of available advertisement space. Through this method, you will contact people who might have an interest in buying ad space on your site and tell them what you’re selling and for how much. It’s important to conduct yourself in an extremely professional manner if you decide to take this route.

Give them as much information as you can and ensure it’s both accurate and highly organized. However, remember that you’re also playing the role of salesman and should introduce them to a number of reasons why it would be in their best interest to advertise on your site. You might also consider making an ‘Advertising’ page that people can view to see what you have to offer.

Try visiting a marketing or webmaster forum and have some ‘experts’ appraise the value of an advertising slot of your site – that way, when you try the direct method mentioned above, you have an exact price on hand (you can always leave it open to negotiation) since people don’t like to be approached and then told to make an offer.

Sponsorship Links. The name gives this one away. You can sell text links and refer to the advertisers as ‘Sponsors,’ which always looks better to the average visitor than ‘These guys gave me money to put these links here!’ You can find a variety of places for these links to go on your site… the sidebar, the footer, in posts and articles, etc. Just be creative!

Physical Products. Selling physical products (online retailing) often entails a lot of work. You need to have the items in stock. You’ll need to pack and ship them, then ensure that they reach the destination safely, and handle any disputes that may arise if they don’t (Thankfully, the United States Postal Service offers Delivery Confirmation. It’s a lifesaver!) or if the customer may not be pleased with the product itself. Effectively dealing with customers is critical in all aspects of business, but the stakes are much higher when in the business of selling physical items.

Arguably, one of the best things about physical products is that you have the ability to expand your horizons and sell your inventory on your site, on eBay and Craigslist, the Amazon Marketplace, at local flea markets or garage sales, and more! So, those in the online retailing business are certainly not lacking available venues.

Furthermore, you may also try the drop shipping business. For example, I know a guy that purchases electronics at wholesale prices from China and has then shipped directly to his customers. He doesn’t have to pack or ship anything and (fortunately) never faces the dilemma of, ‘My inventory isn’t selling… what am I going to do with it?!’ You just need to do a lot of research into the company you decide to drop ship with. Scammers are everywhere!

Digital Products are the products you’re most likely to see for sale as you venture across cyberspace. They offer a lot of benefits: No unsold inventory. No shipping. No packing. No physical storage space required. The list goes on… However, there are also some downfalls to digital products. For one, they’re much easier to replicate and resell. Think about it. Are you able to just copy your toaster or microwave? Of course not. So branding your products is essential.

Digital products just don’t carry the baggage and same spectrum of up-front costs for the business owner that physical products do, making the business exponentially more versatile. However, you’ll still need to address the customer satisfaction end of things and work hard on your landing page.

Some examples of products that sell well are: e-books, content and memberships. You can also include your skills and services as a digital product and market them online. I’ve seen many people create businesses off the sole talent of writing articles, designing websites, and almost whatever else you can think of.

Well, that’s all for now! I’ll be posting Methods of Monetization: Part 2 soon, so check back often. Also, feel free to leave your comments below about which monetization methods have worked best for you and which ones weren’t so hot. They might be included in Part 2!