How To Use The Buying Cycle To Your Advantage

The truth about making money from home

If you have a small business website, or if you have started a site for search engine marketing, you will likely be using search engine optimization in order to target people who are searching for the product or service available on your site; while this is a great start to driving traffic your way and making money as a result, you should also realize that there are a few more things you should pay attention to in order to make sure this traffic turns into sales - namely, the way the buying cycle works these days.

There is a high percentage of consumers who will head to the Internet these days when they are about to buy a product (especially a product that will cost a decent chunk of money - which is where your focus should be, especially if you are a search engine marketer), and the first thing people are likely to do when they go online is compare the specs on different products; while it is fine to bring traffic your way at this point, one thing you should also realize is that you are unlikely to convert this particular traffic into profits!

The reason you are unlikely to turn this traffic into profits is because most people will move from this point to A) asking friends (perhaps on Twitter and facebook) for opinions on the products they have looked at, and B) looking up reviews of these products; this is another big spot in the buying cycle that a lot of people target on their sites, but it is not a big part of the buying cycle for actual sales!

Finally, you are going to arrive at the end of the buying cycle, when consumers will be searching keywords such as "best deals on" the particular product, or "best prices on" the product in question; because this is the part of the buying cycle when the most sales are going to be made, this is the part of the buying cycle you will want to aim to target in your keyword approach, as this will bring you the highest conversion rate!

Bringing lots of traffic to your website will be an important part of making money on this site, but another aspect that will be just important is converting this traffic into sales - and when you understand the buying cycle, you will be well on your way to doing this!

Resolving Conflicts In A Family Business

The truth about making money from home

The idea that trying to separate "work life" from "family life" can be difficult causes many of people to advise you to never work with family, but if you are already involved in a family business, this advice does not do much to help you; instead, you should acknowledge that conflicts are inevitable in any form of business - and when it comes to participating in business with your family, it is essential that you know how to resolve these conflicts, as they will otherwise be able to injure relationships in both work and family.

Having a structured plan in place that you can follow whenever conflicts arise is the best way to resolve conflicts within the confines of a family business; you need to wait until a time when no conflicts are occurring in order to come up with this plan, as this will enable everyone to give their input into the process without a current issue getting in the way.

If the conflict in question is about something that is minor and interpersonal, the two people involved should work it out between themselves whenever this is possible, avoiding the need for mediation from someone else in the family or business; for such conflicts, a designated room or area should be set aside for the two involved in the conflict to have their discussion, as this will allow the rest of the work space to remain a peaceful environment that is conducive to work while the two in conflict resolve their issue.

On the other hand, if the issue in question deals with the entire company or family, having a process that will allow both sides of the argument to be heard by everyone will be useful, after which everyone in the family can vote on the issue to complete the resolution.

Once these processes have been agreed-upon and put in place, it will be easy to follow these processes in order to resolve conflicts at work, without allowing these conflicts to trickle over into your regular family life.

Does It Matter Who I Exchange Reciprocal Links With On My Website?

The truth about making money from home

When you are conducting some search engine optimization on your website, you will probably be looking for different ways by which you can take advantage of the manner in which search engines work - and once you understand that backlinks (that is, links from another site that point users to your site) are among the most important elements of SEO, this may lead you to start doing some reciprocal links - where you link to another site in exchange for a link back to you - but while this can be a beneficial SEO trick, it can also hurt your website if you do not do it right!

Know who is linking to you: If you have a website that ranks well, and you are exchanging a reciprocal link with a site that is brand new, or that is not high-ranking at all, you will still be helping them, but they will not be helping you at all; furthermore, you will not receive any help through a reciprocal link if you are exchanging links with a site that is deemed by search engines to be irrelevant to yours.

Know who you are linking to: While links from a poorly-ranked site will not hurt your search engine ranking, you should know that it is possible to hurt your search engine ranking by linking to "unsavory" sites; if a website has lots of spam on it, or if it is overflowing with pop-up ads, or if the content on the site is offensive, linking to this site will actually hurt your standing with search engines rather than helping you!

Pay attention to anchor text: The anchor text (that is, the text that this "partner website" is turning into a link) will also make a difference in whether or not the reciprocal link does anything for you; the best way to reciprocate links is to tell the other person what you want the anchor text to say, as this will allow you to make sure that the anchor text contains keywords that are relevant to the page being linked to, which will cause the link to have more weight with search engines.

SEO can be complicated at first, but once you start understanding the little things such as this, you will be in much better shape to boost your placement on search engine rankings pages!