Every Sunday millions of online business owners read their Sunday newspaper, throw it in recycling and don’t think much about it until the next Sunday

Wait! Before you recycle that paper, read on to find 7 ways you can make money in your online business  from that $2.00 investment!

Your Sunday newspaper is what I call an Idea Hotspot™. Idea Hotspots are fertile ground for money making ideas, topics to blog about, products to sell and marketing springboards!

1. Spot the trends! Your Sunday paper is filled with product ads showcasing the latest products, styles, colors and trends! All you need to do is observe! What colors, styles and products are the stores advertising? What is the messaging that you see? If an says “Save 20% on our brand new line of bicycles.” and you sell bicycles, pay attention to what they’re advertising!  What are the features, the benefits, the brands?  What are the new “it” buzzwords.  These are clues that will help you expand what you sell online.

2. Improve your sales copy. One of the hardest things for online sellers can be writing snazzy sales copy for their products. Your Sunday paper is filled with great sales copy! Look for headlines, phrases, clever sound bytes, attention grabbing headlines and jot them down.  Copywriters call this a “swipe file”  – a common practice used by copywriters and advertisers to create a reference of ideas for projects.

Note: This is not about plagiarizing other people’s work!   Swipe files are a great jumping-off point for you to use your own creativity in your copy.

You don’t need to have a degree in marketing to do some great marketing for your own business.  There are marketing ideas all around you – you can learn by observation.

3. Put your finger on the pulse of  timely blog, Facebook, eBook or teleseminar topics. What’s the world talking about? You’ll find it in the Sunday paper! Whether you’re an online retailer, an information marketer, or an author, speaker or consultant, you’ll find pages after pages of timely topics to blog about, use for Facebook marketing, create content for your product pages in your online store.

Take a look at the Lifestyle section of the paper and see what the latest fashion trends or home improvement trends are. Papers are built around these types of articles. Are you an eBay education specialist? Check out the Business sections for articles on the rise in popularity of home based businesses. Want to create and market an eBook on a topic that people are interested in? There was a great article in my local paper recently on the huge popularity of in-city vegtable gardening.

This article could spawn ideas for blog posts, a value-add eBook for your physical product sales, an eBook to sell on Clickbank, a blog post, even a brand new business that you might start as a speaker on the topic of in-city vegetable gardening!

When you look at your Sunday paper as an Idea Hotspot, you’ll be amazed at what you’ll find there!

4. Retail Resale. If you sell products online, you’re always looking for great deals on inventory. Sunday papers are chock full of coupons and limited time deals. By One, Get One Free Offers, door buster specials and clearance sales are all advertised in your Sunday paper. Grab a paper when they come out on Saturday and hit the sourcing trail early Sunday morning for some great inventory at below wholesale prices.

5. Classifieds. While Craigslist has taken a huge chunk of ads that used to be posted in the Classified section of your paper, there are still people who prefer to post a classified newspaper ad over using Craigslists. Yard sales, estate sales and merchandise for sale or for free can all be found listed in the Sunday Classified Ads.

6. Learn about upcoming consumer shows. Do you sell wedding products, home remodeling products, products geared to women, vintage jewelry, boat accessories, motorcycle products, RV accessories, sewing products, craft products? Then there’s likely a consumer products show in your niche coming to your city or a city near you soon.

If so, you’ll see it advertised in the newspaper. Consumer product shows are a great way to scout new merchandise, talk to vendors, even find out about exhibiting your products at next year’s show! Use these shows to get out there and see what’s happening in your niche or potential niche.

7. Find Centers of Influence. Every Sunday paper contains articles about experts or people who are centers of influence in a certain niche. You can learn about people to connect with on Facebook and Twitter. Maybe you’ll see the perfect expert to contact for your next teleseminar. Some of these people may even be appearing at events in your local area! The perfect way to get connected!

As you can see there are many creative ways to use the Sunday paper to make more money in your online business.  Opportunities come to those who learn to see the extraordinary in the ordinary. If you’re reading the paper anyway, why not make the most of it and read for profit!

-Lisa

Next to email, the #1 tool you need to use in your online business is WordPress.

And while you don’t have to know the techie aspects of WordPress code, you do need to know HOW you can use WordPress to grow you online business.

In working with online business owners and start-ups, I find that most people are either unclear about how WordPress can benefit their business or they are intimidated by the thought of learning about a new technology.

So in this post, I’m going to get you started on understanding how WordPress will benefit and help you grow your online business; and focus on the benefits, not the features of WordPress. This will help you decide which is the best use of WordPress for your online business.

7 Ways To Start Using WordPress to Grow Your Small Business

Business Blog. While you’re familiar with WordPress blogs, many small business owners still don’t see how it will benefit their business. Many start-ups think they’re too new for a blog. Others protest they have nothing to write about.

So here’s the bottom line:  a business blog is your home on the web. It’s not an option, it’s a requirement to do business online these days. Just like you need a professional email address and a logo to be taken seriously as a business owner;  customers, colleagues and business partners will look to see if you have a blog. They want to find out what you’re all about. No matter what you sell or where you sell it, your customers want a sense of who you are as a company. You can’t give them that in a one page “About Us” spiel. Today’s consumers expect more. They expect a blog.  If you want to be taken seriously as an online business owner, start even a simple blog now.

Content Marketing. Content marketing IS the future of marketing on the Internet. Google demands it. Your customers expect it. No matter what you sell or where you sell it, you need to combine the powerful marketing package of WordPress and content marketing.

In fact, this topic is so important that the industry leading publication AuctionBytes dedicated a significant amount of space for me to write a two-part series on the topic.  If you haven’t read the series yet, you don’t want to miss it:

• In Part 1 of the AuctionBytes series I explain what content marketing is, how to use it in  your business, why you want to pair it with WordPress.
• Part 1 is also  chock full of examples of businesses successfully using WordPress.
• There’s even a step-by-step guide on where to host your WordPress blog and how to install it.
• Part 2 of my AuctionBytes series continues with simple steps for creating great content (even if you hate to write).
• The series sidebar gives you the names, descriptions and links to the top plug-ins for WordPress optimization.

The series is jam packed with information and a must-read for all online business owners!

Quick and Easy Web Pages (of all Kinds). WordPress is quickly replacing HTML for every type of web page. And while HTML code itself won’t go completely away, websites coded in HTML are fast become extinct. Need to create an opt-in page to build your mailing list? Put together a brochure site for your brick and mortar business? Create a portal site or gallery for your artwork?  Maybe you want a directory site or to build an online community.  WordPress can do all of this for you simply by choosing the right themes and plugins! One of my favorite theme sites is Woo Themes. They offer a very polished class of business themes that are easy to use.

Ecommerce Websites. A lot of people are shocked when I tell them you can take WordPress and turn it into a fully functioning ecommerce site that integrates with the most popular payment processors such as Authorize.net or PayPal. And while there are a lot of companies that create ecommerce themes that require your own shopping cart, ShopperPress has full integration with PayPal, Google Checkout, Authorize.net etc .  Not only will ShopperPress manage your inventory for you, it allows you to easily integrate content marketing in with your product pages giving you built in SEO.  While it’s not designed for big etail stores, ShopperPress is perfect for start-ups and small ecommerce operations selling physical or digital products.

Another big benefit of ShopperPress for physical product sellers – Many wholesale suppliers will ask to see your website before they open an account with you. Even if they allow you to sell your products in a marketplace like eBay or Amazon, they still like to see a website focused on your niche. A quick and easy ShopperPress website lends immediate credibility to your business. All for under $100! You can easily have your ShopperPress site up in a day or so and have a professional presentation before you make your next supplier contact.

Membership Sites, Courses and Information Product Sites. A few years ago,  if you sold an info product or an online course, you delivered the MP3 and PDF files via an HTML download page. Membership sites were created in ugly turn-key software. With WordPress it’s the dawn of a new day in digital product delivery! You can set up a paid or free membership site and manage your member accounts easily with Wishlist.  And it doesn’t take you weeks to set up.  Using the step-by-step video training from Dr Jeanette Cates at One Hour Membership Site, I was able to set up three separate membership sites in one day! (In 2004 it took 30 days to set up and configure my first membership site.)

Even if you’re selling an information product, eBook or online course, you want to put that digital data inside a membership site set up. By putting the files inside a protected site, you can add updates at any time – you don’t need to email the updates to your customers.

Build Your Customer List. Because WordPress can easily be themed and turned into any type of website, you can easily attract targeted traffic to your site and by adding a simple opt-in form generated by an Email Service Provider like Aweber. For example, a vintage car-parts seller who travels the country taking videos at vintage car shows and posts them on his WordPress blog could build a huge mailing list of interested followers by simply adding an email opt-in form right there on the home page of his blog.  Sites like Money Saving Mom have built a massive customer list by combining the power of WordPress, money saving tips and an email opt-in form placed strategically in the header of the site.

Become Your Own “Internet Traffic Controller”. This is one of the benefits of WordPress I love the most. Because your blog is your home on the web, you can attract all sorts of traffic and then direct it anywhere you want. You become your own Internet Traffic Controller. You can send people to your online store, individual product pages, affiliate product sites – anywhere you want to send people. From within this single blog post, I can direct interested readers to my Power of 10 Product Sourcing Home Study Course, my latest training audios on the eBay Fall Seller updates, or people who are interested in learning how to set up their online business to work with wholesale suppliers.

Now that you’ve read through the 7 tactics that any business owner can use… tell me how you’ll use WordPress in your online business?

-Lisa

Do you have a skill, hobby or passion that you are an expert in?

Did you know you can take that expertise, package it up and sell it to an audience who is interested learning what you know?

Jeanette Cates is an expert in taking what YOU know and helping you turn it into a product that you can sell.

This week on Edge Ecommerce Radio, Jeanette shared a powerful way to generate an income stream in your business by leveraging your expertise.

On the show we discussed:

- how to decide if and when you’re an expert
- why you want to start leveraging your expertise into info products
- three quick info products you can create
- why talking may be the fastest way to write
- the mistakes that people make that keep them from profiting from their info products – and how to avoid them!m

Click here to listen to the interview with Jeanette and find out how YOU can leverage your expertise.

I just finished watching an excellent webinar interview conducted by my colleague Jim Edwards with Mr Rich Cleland of the FTC regarding the upcoming changes on 12/1/2009 to the current FTC policies on endorsements, affiliate marketing, testimonials, and product or results claims.

• If you are an affiliate marketer, information marketer or blogger who has any type of ads on your blog, you’ll want to listen to this webinar.
• If you sell physical products online and review them or post reviews/claims from your customers “This brand new men’s leather belt shaved 3″ off my waste size.” you’ll want to listen to this interview.

In it, Jim goes in-depth with questions on what these policies updates really mean. You can watch the interview in webinar format, listen to it in audio format or download the PDF of the interview.  The interview is free to everyone here.

Here is just a sampling of what Jim covers with Mr Cleland in the interview:

• How these policies apply to online marketing (and offline marketing).
• Whether or not this applies to non-us sellers
• The biggest misunderstanding that people have about the new FTC rulings.
• How to know if you’re inadvertently stepping over the line.
• What affiliate marketers have to do/say when promoting affiliate products.  (And there are several different scenarios to be aware of.)
• How to handle customer testimonials (for both  your products and other people’s products.  (Pay particular attention to the segment on Customer Testimonials.)
• What does this mean for bloggers, blogger reviews and banner ads.
• How to word your disclosures if you are an affiliate marketer.
• The difference between results based testimonials versus satisfaction based testimonials.  Can you still use results based testimonials?
• The difference between advertising statements and endorsements.
• How this affects promotions you do in social media sites (this is big considering that we are moving rapidly into the world of social commerce.)

There are many additional points covered as well.

I watched the webinar version of the interview because Jim has it split out by segments.  All you need to do is click on the segment you want to listen to first and away you go!  (However, you really should take the time out to listen to the whole thing.)

There is so much misinformation being posted on the web about this topic.  Including the fallacy that the FTC is going to fine violators $11,000+ for each violation (you’ll hear about the fine/penalty issue as well.)  This is why Jim went right to the source – the FTC and went in-depth to get the answers.

So click here right now and download, view or read a copy of this interview. If you’re selling something on the web, it’s your responsibility to make sure you are up on this issue.

** BTW, in keeping with the new FTC regulations, I’d like to disclose that I am not getting compensated by Jim for passing on this valuable interview to you.  It’s very in-depth and the best coverage I’ve heard on the topic.  Because it is key information to all online sellers, I want you to be up to date!