Design To The Finish Line

Affiliate marketing is a way to sell your products or services through intermediaries, or sell other people’s products through your website or blog. We recommend small businesses get involved with affiliate relationships as a way to further promote their own products or services or make income off of products or services they already use and recommend.

What is affiliate marketing?

Here’s a great video explaining affiliate marketing in easy detail -

Ask Joel says that affiliate marketing is S O P S.

Selling

Other

Peoples

Stuff

E-commerce product sites should consider offering an affiliate program for the purpose of extending their online presence and building link popularity. By allowing other web site owners to affiliate with your website, there is the potential for more sales of your eCommerce products and higher visibility of your brand. As an e-commerce site, you have the option of outsourcing your affiliate program or managing it with specific affiliate software.

Programs like Commission Junction handle affiliate programs for large companies. By partnering with such a company, you allow them to handle all affiliate issues, from creative to payment. Some companies require setup fees, a percentage of sales, while others have specific requirements for joining. You don’t have to do it all yourself.

Effective affiliate marketing may seem difficult at first, but as you work with programs that support your affiliate marketing efforts, it becomes easier. If you don’t understand how to successfully apply an affiliate marketing program to your website, then we can help you apply a basic strategy to your website.

Call us at 707-578-1390 today and we can help you determine how effective your affiliate marketing would be for your product, service or website.

Our continued success to you,

About Forward Motion Studios -
Forward Motion Studios™ is a Santa Rosa Web Design company that builds, hosts and supports custom websites for businesses. This includes simple, brochure-like web pages to highly complex, software and database-driven eCommerce websites with B2B shopping carts. You can catch their Tweets at twitter/forwardmotion and connect with them on Facebook at facebook.com/forwardmotionstudios.

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LinkedIn is the world’s largest business-oriented social networking site with over 80 million members. LinkedIn is really a huge database of uber-professionals who like to exchange knowledge, ideas, and opportunities with a broader network of uber-professionals. Networking on LinkedIn works well because of the fact that it offers the opportunity to connect with experienced professionals from around the world representing 130 industries.

In the following video, Sean Nelson of SONARconnects gives 5 solid ways you should be using LinkedIn to grow your business -

Sean offers 5 ways to thrive on LinkedIn -

1. You have to have a purpose for being on LinkedIn and define it.
2. Make sure to create an optimized profile.
3. Expand your LinkedIn reach through groups.
4. Build credibility by answering questions.
5. Communicate your message.

If you are not getting the results from your social media efforts to grow your business, or you are not sure if LinkedIn is right for your business, we can help. Call us at 707-578-1390 today and we can help you determine how effective social media can be for your business.

Our continued success to you,

About Forward Motion Studios -
Forward Motion Studios™ is a Santa Rosa Web Design company that builds, hosts and supports custom websites for businesses. This includes simple, brochure-like web pages to highly complex, software and database-driven eCommerce websites with B2B shopping carts. You can catch their Tweets at twitter/forwardmotion and connect with them on Facebook at facebook.com/forwardmotionstudios.

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Some might argue that business cards are obsolete in a world where everyone can look up what they need on a computer or hand-held device, so who needs business cards anymore?

Business cards are still a quick, inexpensive and easy way to sell your business to a potential client.

The problem is that most business owners don’t know what makes for an effective business card and often make the following 10 mistakes -

1. Separating your contact information or making the font too big
With today’s scanning technologies, don’t make someone have to scan both sides of your card for your contact information. The font size should enhance and balance all the information on the card – make sure to find a balance between content amount and font size.

2. Home-made business cards.
Just because you have computer software and a printer that allows you to make your own business cards, it doesn’t mean you should. Home-made business cards scream unprofessional.

3. Mystery meat business cards
When someone looks at your business card, can they tell immediately what your business does? And does your logo have some connection to what your business does? Don’t stick a logo of a crown on a card where your tag line says, “We’re hotter than the sun” and your business sells chili sauce.

4. Not providing a Call to Action or a USP
Not having a “call me when . . . or call us for” . . . statement on your card is missing a valuable selling opportunity. Have a missing Unique Selling Proposition like “we’ll fix it in 3 days or less”.

5. Using poor quality paper
Poor quality paper doesn’t last and are too easily damaged when being handled or stored. Poor quality paper gives a cheap impression.

6. Too many colors
Research has shown us that color is the most important factor in memory recall. Use only two specific colors and these colors should also be in your logo and your website.

7. Misspelled words
Sometimes there are printing mistakes or your own errors. Never line through and overwrite on the card to correct the information.

8. Not keeping plenty of cards with you or where you can get them at all times.
What good is spending time networking is you run out of business cards? What do you lose when this happens? Business.

9. Does not stand out or elicit positive feelings.
Ensure your business card is done in a manner that it attracts and maintain your clients’ interest and doesn’t turn them off with a negative image or representation of your brand.

10. Too much information or too busy.
White space helps to make the important information stand out. Too much information crammed into a small card is difficult to read. Keep it simple so your contact information stands out.

Your business card is one of the most important and cost-effective marketing tools for your business and creates a powerful first impression.

If you are not getting the results from your business cards, or you are not sure your cards are sending the right message to your prospects, we can help. Call us at 707-578-1390 today and we can help you with your business card design and help you determine how effective your logo is to your overall business message.

Our continued success to you,

About Forward Motion Studios -
Forward Motion Studios™ is a Santa Rosa Web Design company that builds, hosts and supports custom websites for businesses. This includes simple, brochure-like web pages to highly complex, software and database-driven eCommerce websites with B2B shopping carts. You can catch their Tweets at twitter/forwardmotion and connect with them on Facebook at facebook.com/forwardmotionstudios.

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