Kristie T’s Home Business Blog Fun, mom-geared work-at-home tips and advice on making money on the net.

If you are an ezine or newsletter owner, you’ll want to check out the Top 10 email marketing trends as published in this white paper by ExactTarget with some key insights on email marketing including: relevance, frequency, design and more.

Here is a quick summary of their white paper on email marketing trends:

Be Relevant - The #1 Theme!

1) Deliverability will drive email success

Make sure if you send HTML emails to have enough text in your message that if they have images turned off, they can still tell what your email is about. Don’t depend on images to tell the story.

2) Open rates are over rated

open rates will go down as images are suppressed the numbers you’ll want to know are: open rates and click thrus

3) Email metrics and web analytics will be integrated

4) Multi channel marketing will deliver winning results

5) List growth will be healthy, but takes work

FACT: “The average list turnover runs about 25 percent yearly due to unsubscribes and email addresses gone bad.”

6) RSS will start to make an impact on email marketing

7) Email will get more personalized

(they talk about creating personalized landing pages for people - cool!)

Look for rich media in email (audio and video in email)

9) Email as carrier for third party advertising

10) The new metric: return on subscriber - creating high customer lifetime value

Have you noticed any difference in the responsiveness of your list? Are your email open rates going down?
Are you sending HTML or text emails these days? Share your email marketing experiences here.

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Recently I reached a huge milestone - my first 5 figure income in one month! I’ve been working with a financial coach who has really helped me to understand the numbers side of my business. (Thanks coach!)

Anyway, I was sharing the news with the moms in my mastermind group (by the way, you can check out our mom mastermind group free for 7 days here!) and they asked what bits of advice my coach gave me and what I was doing differently that helped to make the difference.

So here’s what I learned/did differently that helped me get my first 5 figure income month!

Realization 1) Being busy does not equal making money
I was working my business all backwards. I was more in the passenger seat just doing stuff to make clients happy and taking what jobs came my way.

NOW I am a woman with a vision who is in charge!

• I have a big exciting financial goal (one that gets me totally pumped)
• I took a look at what activities really made me the most money in my business and focused on those
• Then I broke down my yearly financial goal into how much per day I needed to make to meet that goal
• Then I figured out how many hours I needed to work per day to make that amount of money.
• Once I realized I only needed 3 billable hours a day to make my financial dreams come true, I was like “heck, I could do that!”

Realization 2) I wasted a lot of time on non-money making activities

• I made a list of everything I do in a day
• Then I put a star next to the things that made me money
• I took note of the stuff someone else could do for me
• I now keep a time log everyday. When I start my day, I write the time.
• When I start work for a project, I note the start and stop times.
• When I answer email, I write that down.
• Now I am more accountable for how I spend my time

Realization 3) I was doing things for clients I didn’t bill for and that I plain forgot to bill - so just writing this down helped me to realize how much time I really was spending on client stuff and bill what I was worth

Realization 4) I was seriously undercharging. I checked around, and there were other “monkey” web designers who knew absolutely nothing about marketing online or writing web copy that were charging more than me. So I gave myself a $30/hr raise!

Realization 5) I put the billable activities FIRST in my day. The other stuff can fit in whatever left over time I have. This has helped me stay focused and do the money making stuff first.

Realization 6) I had no clue how profitable I was on a given day. If you want to make money, you need to know your financials. Now I spend a lot more time looking at everything - what makes me money, what things are really costing me in terms of expenses, and what the resulting profit was. I am feeling much more confident that I know what is going on in my business.

So that’s it. While I know a lot about marketing and starting businesses, no one ever really taught me the whole business management, reviewing your financials piece. With some mentoring, my financial coach helped me really kick up my income by learning what to pay attention to, how to manage things differently, and helping me do the right things to make it happen.

It’s like for the first time understand how to set and reach goals. Before I always felt like I was setting “in the air” goals and just hoping I would reach them. Now, the way I laid it out, it’s like a recipe. I know exactly what I need to do, how much of it to do, and how much money I will earn by doing it. It’s just a matter of staying focused.

Hope that helps inspire the rest of you. You don’t have to be a fancy guru to earn big money. You just need to know what to do.

Are you ready to join the 5 figure club with me?

Share your thoughts or big money making secrets here.

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Want to know a cool secret for getting website traffic? I stumbled across a cool traffic generation technique that has really worked to drive tons of traffic to our Webmomz.com website. Instead of designing a page and then thinking, “hmm, what keywords should I optimize this site for?” Now I think, “what keywords are people already searching for” and “what keywords pay the highest Adsense payouts.”

For instance, I found a really hot keyword phrase that parents were searching for online, I designed a page around that for my website, and now it’s one of that page is one of the top traffic drivers to my site! Wordtracker.com has a service that will email you the top searched upon keywords. You can scan the list and see what keywords are a good fit for your site content.

I also checked out what terms are paying out good pay per click rates on Adsense. Then I wrote and SEO optimized webpages around that content which pays well and has a close fit for my audience.

So, why pick keywords and pray for traffic when you can grab keywords that are already getting traffic, design content around that, and cash in! Share your cool traffic generation tips here!

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If you are marketing products or services online and aren’t using teleclasses then you are leaving money on the table. Teleclasses or teleseminars are a powerful way to get known for what you do and market online. It gives you the ability to sell your product to hundreds of people while talking on the phone from your living room chair! It’s like a television infomercial, except that you can do it from home while wearing your pajamas.

Here are 5 Ways that Teleseminars Grow your Business!

1) You build your newsletter subscriber list.
2) You sell more products to people because they get excited hearing about it.
3) You can offer free preview teleseminars to market your seminars and get people to sign up.
4) You can record your teleclass and sell it later as an audio product
5) You position yourself as a top expert and gain load of credibility
6) You build your relationship with your audience as they get to know you and hear you during the call

With a little marketing, some good content, and a good presentation on your part, you’ll put together a super teleclass that will go a long ways to market your business. What questions or ideas do you have to share about holding teleseminars to grow your business.

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Sometimes starting a business on a shoestring means incurring some inital debt. And every time you open a credit card or take out a loan, you create a transaction that ends up on your credit report. While shifting from one card to another to take advantage of lower interests rates can save you money in the short term, it can ultimately affect your credit score.

That’s why it’s smart to review your credit report from time to time to find out your credit score and check if there is any negative information you need to be aware of.

Did you know that you can get one free credit report each year from each of the three major credit reporting bureaus: Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion?

This is actually free - it’s not from one of those gimmicky places that make you enter your credit card and sign up for their monthly monitoring service to get your free report. It’s a free credit report with no strings attached!

You can request a copy of each of them free at www.annualcreditreport.com, by phone at 877/322.8228 or by mail at Annual Credit Report Request Service, P.O. Box 105281, Atlanta, GA 30348

Share your financial tips or stories here!

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Recently I bought a huge order of shipping envelopes from Uline.com. And yesterday in the mail I got the nicest order from them. It was a thank you card with a twist!

It said,

“Thank You for ordering shipping supplies from Uline. We appreciate you as a customer and look forward to serving you again. We hope you will continue to take advantage of what uline has to offer:
- Uline.com with many features including order history and order tracking
- Quote department to personally assist you with high volume orders and special services
- Expanded locations nationwide to speed service and reduce shipping costs”

And included in it was a sturdy, plastic rolodex card with their phone number and my customer number written on there!

WOW was I impressed. And you know what I did? I ordered 100 more envelopes!

How easy would it be to put a similar message on your thank you page, an autoresponder message, or a thank you card via mail?

In it, you’d just have to thank your customer, then offer them 3 additional related products and services that might be helpful to them!

Treat your customers like gold, let them know you appreciate them, and most importantly, let them know how else you can help them!

What cool ways do you wow your customers? Have you ever had WOW service that knocked your socks off? Share your “over the top” customer service experiences here!

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Here’s a great tip from Jane Deuber at the Direct Selling Women’s Alliance on staying productive with your home business in the summer.

“KEEP A SCHEDULE - Don’t let the “lazy, hazy summer syndrome” affect your business focus. Maintain your power hour schedule each day so your business stays current, active and productive. You cannot turn out the lights in your business in June and expect you can flip a switch in September as if your business and customers are waiting on you. Your business doesn’t work like that, so don’t make the mistake and lose precious customers. One focused hour per day will keep your summer business in top shape!”

Do you have any tips for keeping your home business or direct sales business income steady over the summer? Share your summer home business tips here.

FYI: DSWA is an awesome online community for women in direct selling and network marketing businesses. They have a ton of great resources to really help you grow into a leader in your direct sales organization! Check DSWA out here!

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I found a wonderful tool that has helped me save a ton of money of my phone bills! It’s an internet based computer phone service called Skype!

In my web design and online business consulting work I do, I work with clients all around the world. And one thing I learned very quickly, is that phone calls out of the country are VERY expensive. Skype is a wonderful free tool that allows you to talk and chat to anyone, anywhere in the world for free! And the quality is excellent!

I use Skype to talk with my virtual assistant and clients who are in Canada.

Right now we are watching my brother’s 4 kids while he and his wife are visiting in Austrailia. They were calling everyday on the phone and only got to talk like 1 minute per kid because of the phone expenses. Then I had them download Skype and it’s made a world of difference. And before we knew it, the kids were talking down under to Austrailia! Now all the kids gather around the computer in the evening and have a fun group conversation with their mom and dad. And then talk until they are done talking - no time limits. It’s done wonders to help the kids feel connected while their parents are out of country.

So head on over to Skype and try this cool internet voice communication tool for yourself! What do you use Skype to do? Share your experiences with Skype here!

P.S. You’ll need a microphone for this. If you don’t have one built it to your computer, you can buy one very inexpensively at Radio Shack!

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If you think ITunes is just for Ipod users, think again. ITunes is a super tool for staying up to day with your favorite podcast feeds.

Just like you would use an RSS reader like Newsgator or MyYahoo to stay on top of your favorite blog headlines, ITunes will let you know of any new segments for the podcasts that you are following. And it helps you organize your podcast files nicely on your PC too!

And - if you are a podcaster, you can submit your podcast to Itunes for approval and listing in their music store.

And if you just need some good tunes for background music, Itunes let’s you tune in to several radio stations with every kind of music imaginable. So check download Itunes for free and give it a try! You’ll love how easy it makes it for you to be “in the know” with the latest podcasts from your favorite experts.

Share your favorite podcasts and feedback about Itunes here!

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One of the hardest things to deal with (especially in the summer time) is business burn out. The sun is shining. The birds are singing. You dream of heading out to the beach for a day of fun. It can make it really hard to focus. Now I love what I do for a living. Every morning I run to my computer at 6 am completely excited to get started. And when I wake up and don’t feel like working, for me something is seriously wrong. That’s when I give myself permission to take a day off.

Isn’t the whole point of working from home that you can schedule your work around your life? And I had a super day with the kids. We set up the pool for the kids. We barbequed. I sat in the lawn chair, kicked back with a glass of wine, and shared some great conversation with my hubby (who works from home too!).

So now it’s Saturday - and yes - I am working. But I am having a blast!

Do you give yourself permission to play hookey? What are some of the fun things you do on your day off? What are signs that you are feeling burned out? Share your business burn out stories and tips here!

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