5 Brazen Ways to Take Your Online Business to the Next Level

So you’ve reached your earnings potential with your online business. You have sustained the highest profit for the past few months, and there’s no stopping you. You have been observing the best practices to optimize your sales and run your business smoothly. What’s the next step to take?

Breaking through the glass ceiling, of course!

There are no bounds to how much success you can achieve with your online business. Whether it’s an affiliate blog or an eCommerce site, there are always ways to do better and generate higher sales than you can imagine.

Below are bold ways through which you can elevate your online business to greater heights.

Conversion Rate Optimization

One of the biggest concerns you should have is your site’s conversion rate. Most of the sales that webmasters get come from transactions on their sales pages. As much as possible, you want all visitors to your money pages to convert. In reality, however, that’s not always the case.

There are lots of factors involved that explain why some visitors don’t convert on your pages. This is where conversion rate optimization or CRO comes in.

Aside from tweaking on-page factors to improve conversion, CRO analyzes user behavior to help you identify pain points on your site pages. These are issues that cause users to abandon their carts or abruptly leave the page.

There are tools you can use to analyze CRO. One of the more popular ones is CrazyEgg, a heat mapping tool that tracks user behavior on your site. The individual behavior can help you determine why some people leave and what you need to do to prevent them from bouncing.

Other tools that you can use are Hotjar and TruConversion.

Using any of these tools will provide you all the data you need to set up a more optimized site for conversion.

For more information about conversion optimization, read this excellent guide on CRO at Qualaroo.

VPS Hosting

When your online business started out, you chose a shared hosting to keep your costs low. While this is a rational choice, you should be aware that you need to provide your website with a premium hosting service to avoid alienating your audience.

The hosting is responsible for sending information to the browsers of visitors so they can view your site on their end. If your site picks up traffic, then the hosting works double time to keep up with the back and forth of data. When the traffic is too much for the hosting to handle, your site will break and go offline.

If this problem keeps recurring, then you need to consider moving to VPS hosting and maintain the momentum of your business.

Virtual private server (VPS) hosting proves to be a viable option for online businesses receiving massive traffic. This hosting is a step above shared hosting but a level below dedicated hosting. It is a server found within a bigger server, which is similar to shared hosting.

However, VPS provides server root access and dedicated resources in an isolated environment.

As a result, your site will be able to manage heavier traffic, on top of having better protection and customization.

Influencer Marketing

If you could get help from a person with thousands of social media followers and who attracts millions in monthly site traffic, would you say no?

Through influencer marketing, you can tap into the followers of influencers related to your niche or industry so you can drive more traffic to your website and raise awareness for your business.

Unlike other strategies, influencer marketing is built upon trust. Since there is an established rapport that exists between the influencers and followers, promoting your business through influencers should have a more positive effect on your downline.

Followers will be more receptive to what influencers say because they trust them. This is in complete contrast to ads where you promote your business to strangers or people with whom you do not have an existing relationship.

To join in the fun, you need to sign up as an advertiser so you can connect with publishers from different fields. There are lots of influencer marketing platforms with which you can sign up. Below are the most popular ones:

• Neoreach: Build your network of influencers and run your campaigns so that you have full control over how they will turn out. You can also hire in-house experts to develop the campaigns for you.
• TapInfluence: Get help from influencers to create positive content related to your brand. You can then amplify best-performing content for maximum impact using the platform’s distribution channel.
• Little Bird: Find influencers on Twitter and use the data unearthed by the platform to leverage them to your advantage.

User-generated content

If you already have a vibrant online business community, then it would be advantageous if you could mobilize your members to create content for you.

User-generated content (UGC) comes in the form of testimonials, reviews, submissions, social media posts, and so on. Your customers or entrants will create content that you can use to the benefit of your online business.

One of the many benefits of UGC is that you get to work with your audience members and strengthen your relationship with them. Doing so is crucial, especially if your business is getting bigger and out of hand. Asking your customers for help in developing content allows you to keep in touch with them on a more personal level.

More importantly, your conversion rate will improve. Since 70% of customers rely on peer recommendations for making purchasing decisions, user testimonials result in a 29% higher conversion rate compared to campaigns and websites that don’t boast UGC.

As far as tools are concerned, Yotpo is one of the more popular ones out there. It allows you to leverage UGC as part of your content marketing strategy. By gathering authentic customer reviews using Yotpo, you can increase engagement and sales of your online business.

An up-and-comer in the field of UGC marketing is StoryBox. This platform lets you gather different types of content from users that you can feature on various pages on your site. From StoryBox, you can monitor the progress of your campaign using different metrics to measure its effectiveness.

5. Automate your marketing

You’ve built your online business virtually brick by brick. While the fruits have been plentiful, the process is arduous. To maintain the level of success you are at, you need to find a way to take the load of menial tasks from your shoulders so you can focus on

5 Brazen Ways to Take Your Online Business to the Next Level

When Should a Brand Take a Stand? When It’s Values are Clearly Defined.

Whether SNL knows it or not—they have just nailed the kinds of meetings marketing executives on both the brand and agency side will be having for the months if not years to come. While one team pitches «Cheeto executives» the same idea over and over again of political hot topics with the brand tacked on at the end—the other team in futility keeps trying to bring the brand back to more basic truths. People eat Cheetos because it’s fun and they taste good. 

The spoof was in reaction to the 2017 Superbowl, where several brands in reflection of a polarized climate took a definitive stance on where they stood. Knowingly or not, SNL hits a very real chord that marketers must carefully evaluate. Brands don’t like being irrelevant or out of touch with culture, and when a culture is divided and polarized—it puts pressure on the brand to become or stay relevant. But in that rush to relevancy, brands are going to have to answer some key questions or risk out of touch with what they actually are. 

Key Questions Brands Will Need Answered Before Taking a Definitive Stance

Do we have a right to weigh in on a specific societal issue?
When marketers wax poetic over the effectiveness of value-driven campaigns such as #Likeagirl, they often overlook that the brand in such case (Always) has a built in right to cultivate a conversation around woman empowerment. Without a genuine right to join or lead a conversation—a brand stance will fall flat. 

Have we uncovered and articulated our core values?
Brands have personalities like people—and they can often hold values. Not all brands have done the work needed to define what that guiding «north star» is and without this—they risk sailing into consumer activist waters without a compass. 

Do our core values align with our value proposition to the consumer/customer?
Does the average Nordstrom consumer have the same values as a Budweiser consumer? Brands must go beyond traditional demographic data and see their consumers in more nuanced ways. 

Is our brand’s business operations a good representative of the values we are championing? 
Audi’s Superbowl ad looked different from the faces and gender of their executive ranks. Brands that haven’t aligned marketing with business operations must way the risk and rewards of taking a stance especially if there is a gap between communications and operations. 

Does the societal issue fit into our higher purpose at the company/corporate level?
Does your brand operate under a broader «corporate» brand structure or are they the same? Either way when engaging with consumer’s and taking a stance—a brand’s values should align with the corporation. 

Who will we possibly alienate—who doesn’t share the same values we do? 
Taking a stance doesn’t guarantee that everyone will agree with you even if the company and CMO think it’s the right thing to do. Brands will need to be prepared to handle scenarios where even the most positive messaging may be as interpreted as offensive or disingenuous.  

SNL’s Cheeto skit may have been fictitious but it’s closer than they likely know in terms of how brands will wrestle with when they should stand for something or not or if so, how. And in polarizing times—the stakes have never been so high. 

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When Should a Brand Take a Stand? When It’s Values are Clearly Defined.

Ways to Take Blogging to Another Level

We live in an exciting day and age, and it’s now possible to reach a large audience at the click of a mouse. A growing number of people are choosing to express their thoughts, ideas, and opinions online, and the number of blogs in the world from 2006 to 2011 was estimated to be at around an impressive 173 million.

If you’re just now getting on board the blogging train, you’ll be surprised to see just how easily you can get started. In just minutes, you can have your platform up and ready using sites like WordPress, and you can soon be on your way to sharing your valuable thoughts with people across the world. No matter at what point in the process you find yourself in the establishment of a successful blog, there are three tips to take your efforts to another level.

1. Ensure You’re Well Rested

It can be easy to overlook the vast importance of sleep. While diet and exercise are obvious in the maintenance of our overall health, it can be easy to see fighting sleep deprivation as a challenge you must tough out on a busy day. However, lack of sleep causes more problems than you may realize that can directly impact not only the frequency of your blog posts but also on the quality of the content you’re providing your readers and/or viewers.. Just a few negative side effects of sleep deprivation include:

• Inability to focus well for extended periods of time
• Irritability
• Inability to take advantage of your full imaginative potential

If you’re one of the many who tosses and turns all night thinking about things like your next blog post when you know you have to wake up early the next morning, there is a solution. Consider the purchase of a mattress topper. This option gives you the feel of a new mattress at a fraction of the cost. Some products even have features such as cooling functions to help promote and facilitate a restful night’s sleep.

2. Get Out and Meet New People

The Internet exists because people want and need to interact with one another. Whether the interaction be personal or business in nature, the Internet has allowed us to easily find like-minded individuals with whom they can share thoughts and enthusiasm on any topic. This is what led to the rise and popularity of blogs. Here, you can reach out to so many people, and chance encounters that can lead to further opportunities are more likely to present themselves when you take time to meet new people. Whether this be online or in real life, networking can help open up new doors and keep you in-the-know on your blogging topic

3. Use Motivation Tools Regularly

If you’ve been blogging for awhile, you very well may have reached a certain point when the idea of a platform open for all to see completely regulated by you begins to lose its luster. In fact, many bloggers begin to find the maintenance and regular updates on their sites becomes more of a job than anything else.

Unfortunately, one of the biggest keys to success in the blogosphere is to provide fresh content on a regular basis. All too often, enthusiastic bloggers lose their fire and begin to abandon their blogging efforts. You can increase your chances of success by acknowledging this fact and utilizing tools to help keep you motivated. Just a few ideas you should consider implementing include:

• Create a vision board to be hung where you’ll see it frequently. Include on it various goals you plan to achieve along with images depicting what the goal means to you.
• Switch up your game plan. For example, if you notice you’re not getting the traffic you would like, try a Youtube channel to supplement the blog and contribute to each regularly.
• Don’t be afraid to take a break. Life happens, and your audience will understand if you have to take a day off. However, if you can let them know in advance, that’s appreciated.

Sharing Your Thoughts With the World

Successful blogging requires time, attention, and consistency. Whether you’re trying to get the word out about a product or service you have to offer or just want to raise awareness, this can be a great way to grow an impressive following. However, you must understand that there are thousands of people out there with the same goal in mind. In order to keep up with the competition and achieve the organic search results you need to continue to grow, these three tips will set you up on the path to success.

The post Ways to Take Blogging to Another Level appeared first on Blogtrepreneur — For Busy Entrepreneurs.

Blogtrepreneur – For Busy Entrepreneurs

Ways to Take Blogging to Another Level

Take Credit for Properly Running Your Business

In today’s business world, it is imperative that business owners have their eyes on the prize when it comes to finances.

That said you may find yourself at times scratching your head as to why your revenue stream is stuck in neutral or even going in reverse.

One of the ways to make sure your finances are not in the red on a regular basis is properly accounting for all of your expenses. In making sure customers pay their bills on time, you need to be a financial wizard.

When it comes to customers paying you in a timely manner, this typically involves two scenarios.

Many customers will pay you at the time of the business transaction, while others will be billed for your services and/or products. Either way; making sure you’re not running a deficit is crucial.

So, can you definitely take credit for properly running your business?

Avoid Piling up Various Expenses

In order to keep your business financially solvent, keep in mind the following pointers:

• Timely payments – First and foremost, make sure customers are paying you in a timely manner. While the majority of people doing business with you will be on the up-and-up, some will try and work things to their advantage. If you end up invoicing them for services or products (see more below), some may delay paying you for a variety of reasons. Some of these reasons can include that they never intended to pay you in the first place, they didn’t leave the proper forwarding address for the invoice, and they are behind on other bills and you’ve been dropped to the bottom of the priority list. No matter the reason, you’re now left without a payment, meaning you have less money coming in for your own business and personal expenses;
• Disputed payments – Another matter that oftentimes arises for many business owners is the issue of disputed payments. In such cases, the customer will dispute the charges for the products and/or services you charged them for. By doing so, they reach out to their credit card issuer and ask for a stop payment, leaving you once again in a situation where you are a put in a financial hole until the matter is ultimately decided. In order for you to go about preventing chargebacks, there are options available to you. Most notably, you can use a chargeback management program, one where your payments are in fact protected. Not only does this mean that you will get paid for the goods or services you provided, but you can oftentimes avoid costly fees, not to mention wasting your time following up on such problems. Keep in mind that a number of credit card processors will grant you a handful of chargebacks each month without a fee, though you should definitely know ahead of time which ones operate like that. At the end of the day, chargebacks can have quite the negative impact on your business, so don’t brush them off.

Are You Billing Customers on Time?

• Invoicing Payments Due – Lastly, another crucial factor to help you take credit for properly running a business is making sure you are invoicing customers who do not pay you immediately for purchases and/or services. For example, if you have a set date each month when it comes to invoicing, don’t skip it. Yes, it can be easy to miss that date when you become overwhelmed with work responsibilities, but stop for a moment and think about the negative repercussions to doing so. Your invoices get sent out late, the customer receives them later than normal, and you end up scurrying to pay business and personal bills. If you find yourself getting too busy to handle the regular invoicing needs, consider hiring a part-time assistant to oversee that need. No matter what it takes, stick with a consistent invoicing schedule. Doing so not only allows you to get paid on time, but it lessens chances customers will forget to pay and/or possibly dispute paying you in the first place.

If you can’t take credit for properly running your business at this time, then you obviously have some work ahead of you.

For your business and personal well-being, never overlook the importance of being a financial wizard.

As a current business owner, how do you go about handling financial disputes with customers?

Photo credit: Pixabay

About the Author: Dave Thomas covers business topics on the web.

The post Take Credit for Properly Running Your Business appeared first on Successful Blog.

Successful Blog

Take Credit for Properly Running Your Business

Is Now the Time to Take Your U.S. Judgment to China?

 

Just read a post over at the China Law Prof Blog on what Professor Clarke rightly calls “an interesting case in which a Chinese court (the Nanjing Intermediate-Level People’s Court) enforced a Singapore court judgment.”

Professor Clarke then goes on to explain how Chinese courts “may enforce foreign judgments that are not fundamentally offensive in some way under two circumstances: (1) there is a treaty with the foreign country calling for mutual enforcement of judgments; or (2) on the basis of reciprocity, which has been interpreted to mean that the foreign country has a practice of enforcing Chinese judgments, or at least has done so before.” This has been the law in China for quite some time.

Clarke then states that there is no Singapore-China treaty calling for mutual recognition and enforcement of judgments, which is my understanding as well. But — and this is the kicker — the Nanjing court nonetheless decided to recognize and enforce the Singapore judgment because in 2014 a Singapore court had enforced a Chinese judgment. And get this: the judgment the Chinese court enforced was a default judgment against a Chinese corporate defendant. I say “get this” because courts everywhere are far more reluctant to enforce default judgments (typically given out because the defendant failed to appear or defend) than to enforce a judgment on the merits of the case.

Professor Clarke does not know if this is the first foreign judgment Chinese courts have enforced on the basis of reciprocity and I too do not know whether that is the case. Professor Clarke does add though that he thinks “it’s fair to say that such cases are pretty thin on the ground.” To which I will add, yes that is for sure.

Now here’s the million (actually probably billions) dollar question this case raises: does this mean China will start enforcing U.S. judgments? I mean U.S. courts have enforced Chinese judgments (my law firm haas secured such an enforcement order) so does this mean Chinese courts might do so if the case is right? Professor Clarke has this to say on this question:

But if I were trying to enforce a US judgment in a Chinese court, I’d certainly bring it up. To the best of my knowledge, Chinese courts have not yet enforced a contested US money judgment. (I’m attaching those qualifications because they may, for example, have recognized a US divorce decree for some purpose.)

Just a few months ago, in Enforcing US Judgments in China. Not Yet, I said “no way”:

At least once a month, one of our China lawyers will get a call or an email from a U.S. lawyer seeking our help in taking a U.S. judgment (usually a default judgment) to China to enforce. The thinking of the U.S. lawyer is that all we need do is go to a China court and ask it to convert the U.S. judgment into a Chinese judgment and then send out the Chinese equivalent of a sheriff to the Chinese company and start seizing its assets until it pays.

As we have consistently written, nope, nope, nope.

I then went on to talk about how my firm’s China lawyers are often called upon to conduct research on this very issue (oftentimes for lawyers or companies wanting to prove to their insurance company or to a court that it would be futile for them to pursue enforcement of their United States judgment in China) and I pulled a large section from the latest of our memoranda on that topic, and I do so again below.

Article 282 of the PRC Civil Procedure Law, requires all of the following conditions be met for enforcement of a foreign judgment to be recognized in China:

The foreign judgment has taken legal effect in the jurisdiction in which it was rendered.

The country where the deciding court is located has a treaty with China or is a signatory to an international treaty to which China is also a signatory or there is reciprocity between the countries.
The foreign judgment does not violate any basic principles of Chinese law, national sovereignty, security, or social public interest.

Though China is a signatory to the New York Convention on the Recognition and Enforcement of Foreign Arbitral Awards, it is not a signatory to any international treaty on the recognition and enforcement of foreign court judgments. There is no bilateral treaty between China and the U.S. on recognition and enforcement of foreign court judgments. There also is no bilateral treaty between the two countries on civil or commercial judicial assistance.

Even judgments from countries that have an enforcement treaty with China, are oftentimes not enforced in China. For example, China and Australia entered into an agreement on reciprocal encouragement and protection of investments in 1988 that mandates both countries promulgate laws recognizing and enforcing each other’s judgments. But in response to a 2007 request by the Guangdong Province High People’s Court for instructions regarding an application by an Australian plaintiff for recognition and enforcement of an Australian court judgment, the Supreme People’s Court of China (the “SPC”) rejected enforcement since there was no international treaty to which China was a signatory nor any treaty between China and Australia on mutual recognition and enforcement of court judgments, nor any reciprocity between the two countries, the application should be rejected.

Since China is not a signatory to any international treaty on recognition and enforcement of foreign court judgments nor is there any treaty between China and the U.S. regarding judgment enforcement, the only possible way to get a U.S. judgment enforced in China would be if there were reciprocity between the two countries, but there isn’t.

In considering the question of reciprocity, a Chinese court will consider whether there is any precedent indicating reciprocity. In other words, the court will seek to determine whether there are any prior cases where a U.S. court recognized or enforced a Chinese court’s decision. If there are no examples of a U.S. court having enforced a Chinese judgment, the Chinese court will almost certainly rule against enforcing the U.S. judgment because the reciprocity

Is Now the Time to Take Your U.S. Judgment to China?

China Trademarks: Register in More Classes, Take Down More Counterfeit Goods

China trademark takedowns

China’s lack of an affirmative trademark use requirement allows trademark owners to register marks in more classes and covering more products and services than what they actually sell. Starbucks is a prime example of a company that has taken full advantage of this strategy by (for example) registering “STARBUCKS” as a trademark in all 45 classes of goods and services.

The benefits of registering in a whole host of China trademark classes really comes into play when dealing with infringing goods on Alibaba and other e-commerce platforms. Many of our clients have found that infringement starts with their core lineup of products but quickly moves to things they haven’t released and perhaps never will. Any consumer product is fair game for knockoff artists. If they can imagine it, or more precisely if they can imagine someone buying it, it will turn up on Alibaba.

Though Alibaba is responsive when you request a takedown for a product covered by your trademark registration, they often will decline to take action if the product is outside the scope of your registration. So if an enterprising Chinese merchant began selling Game of Thrones brand deodorant on Alibaba, HBO might only succeed with a takedown request if it had already registered a trademark covering deodorant.

Registering your trademark is the only realistic way to gain trademark protection in China, and that protection is limited by the classes and subclasses of goods and services covered by your registration. If you want protection for other products, you need to register in the appropriate classes and subclasses to cover those products.

Registering in all 45 classes is not a realistic strategy for most company. But when devising your IP strategy for China, you should think about not just the products and services you intend to sell in China, but also the ones you don’t want someone else to sell under your name.

China Law Blog

China Trademarks: Register in More Classes, Take Down More Counterfeit Goods