If you have followed my advice, you have created a way for your web sites visitors to opt into your auto responder and become part of your list.

Most people do not buy a product of service at their first exposure, and may well look at several of your competitors web sites, no matter how pretty your site and or your before and after pictures may be.

By getting them to opt in, you have a chance to follow up with them, every few days or at a minimum once a week, at least at first.

But what do you say in these emails?

I recently published a short report called Profitable Email Copywriting in which I make several key points.

The first is that you must understand the motivations of your prospects.  For some it will be a quicker sale, for others it will be a higher price, but for many it will also be to get help with the de-cluttering, etc.

Now the people who sign up on your opt in may have one or more different motivation, so what do you do. First, sit down and brainstorm your own list of why your past customers contacted you.  What was the real reason behind their hiring you?

Make a list, and then start preparing a follow-up email that addresses each of these.

Start with a title or subject.

It should be short and sweet, but also provocative and clearly focused on the specific motivation you will address in the email. For example, something like this might work for the person who needs a hand.  “What to do when there is too much to do,” or something similar.

Then in the first paragraph of you email, identify with that issue.

“When I have too much to do, I find myself getting even less done with my day, because I get so wrapped up worrying about it all. Do you know what I mean?”

Then assure them that you can help them resolve the issue, but don’t sell yourself.  Instead refer them back to your web site where you do the best job of addressing that issue, and offer to visit with them in person or by phone if you can be of help.

The soft sell tends to work best.

The next email in your follow-up sequence should be similar in approach, but address a different motivation.  Many of your prospects will share multiple motivations, but each of your follow-up emails should focus on one and only one.

For more tips effective email marketing grab a free copy of Profitable Email Copywriting, and for other internet marketing advice bookmark my blog: http://MicroBusinessSpecialist.com

Feel Free to Reprint this blog post on your blog or to link to it. Just be sure to leave in the link to the free ebook and to my blog.

Technorati Tags: effective email marketing, effective email, writing effective emails, email marketing

Most small businesses including home stagers are not experts at putting together their web sites. Too often they rely on people who are not marketers to do so for them. I recently did a training session on the essentials of internet marketing for one of Allegra Dioguardi's Training by Design courses. The material applies to all businesses and will give you a once over of the key elements you need to be aware of when setting up your internet presence. Get this free download now

Below’s a video I pulled from YouTube.

If you are a home stager, and want to add some visual appeal and variety to your blog, you should take a look at posting appropriate YouTube videos.

It’s really very easy to do.

First step is to search YouTube for videos relating to Home Staging. You will find a fair number, although not as many as there should be. (Hint – You really should be creating some of your own!)

Second, you will note a button under the actual video on YouTube called, < Embed >

All you need to do is click on that button, and copy the code that will appear.

Then on your blog or website, you would go to the HTML or Source Code part of your page and paste that code in, and your done.

Now you may want to add introductory comments and/or closing comments after the video to explain why you choose it.

In my case, I am using a very professionally done video, featuring Celebrity Interior Designer Cathy Hobbs, who is featured on the nationally syndicated program “Black Enterprise Business Report”. The quality of the video is quite high.

Don’t let the quality frighten you away from doing your own videos. With an inexpensive Flip Camera which you can get from your local Best Buy or probably even cheaper on Amazon you can be creating high quality videos in no time.

And let me tell you, videos on your website will help lift your ranking in the search engines. Google loves video, and it’s becoming the name of the game. So get out there and use the ones that you can from YouTube and start creating some of your own.

Your before and after pictures will mean a lot more once you’ve taken the time to learn how to do video.

Here’s Cathy…I hope you enjoy.

Technorati Tags: YouTube, Using Video, Homestaging, Home Stagers, How to Use YouTube, Using YouTube, Cathy Dobbs, Flip Camera, Black Enterprise Business Report

Most small businesses including home stagers are not experts at putting together their web sites. Too often they rely on people who are not marketers to do so for them. I recently did a training session on the essentials of internet marketing for one of Allegra Dioguardi's Training by Design courses. The material applies to all businesses and will give you a once over of the key elements you need to be aware of when setting up your internet presence. Get this free download now

Technorati Tags: Black Enterprise Business Report, Cathy Dobbs, flip camera, home stagers, homestaging, How to Use YouTube, Using Video, Using YouTube, youtube

As the real estate market has cooled and many Real Estate Professionals and home sellers are struggling to sell their properties quickly, many think the best way to survive is to cut their budgets for staging their listings.

“Studies show that pulling back on staging your listings during a recession actually hurts, rather than helps with home sales. Listings that are staged and priced competitively sell in half the time that non-staged properties do.”

That doesn’t mean, however, that you can’t find lower cost options to help you prepare your properties for sale.

I decided to create the Do-It-Yourself Home Buyer Attraction System to meet this need for valuable information at a lower cost than traditional staging services. The system provides real estate professionals and home sellers with the knowledge and skills that I have acquired working in the field over the last few years. These tools and strategies are proven to work in a seller’s market and they will work in a buyer’s market to make your property truly stand out in the marketplace and draw buyers to you.

So, over the next few days I’m going to lead you through a short, but information packed series on how you can start transforming your listing or home into a home buyer magnet.

Let’s start with a very important distinction: What is Home Staging and What is it Not?

Home Staging (House Staging, House Fluffing, House Primping, Real Estate Staging, Staging Design) is the art of decorating a home to sell quickly and for TOP DOLLAR. It is the most proven way to get top dollar for your home as you prepare it for sale.

What Home Staging is NOT…It’s not just decorating. It needs to be strategic. An important thing for both Real Estate Agents and Home Sellers to remember is that before you start the staging process, you need to identify who is most likely to buy the house, otherwise known as your target home buyer.

Staging is not just about hanging up some art, sticking a tree in the corner and adding pretty pillows to the sofa. This seems to be the misconception many times. By knowing who the target buyer is, you will be able to design a lifestyle to appeal to that specific group of prospective buyers. As a real estate agent, you can then design a marketing plan to attract those same people.

I remember a particular property that I was hired to “stage”. It was for a Realtor client of mine. The interesting thing about this property was it was a job that was going to be a favor to him since the original Stager he hired for that project flaked on him at the last minute. I usually don’t work on properties that I haven’t had a “relationship” with, meaning I haven’t seen the property and the sellers have not gone through my staging consultation process so that they fully understand what needs to be done in preparation and shown how they were going to live in their staged home. Well, to no one’s surprise, when I arrived to do my ‘thing”, the house was NOT READY. It was a small house, but it was a family house with parents and a couple of kids. There were shoes and dirty laundry all over the house, the small kitchen and bath were cluttered and dirty, beds were not made, it was NOT READY! When I spoke with the owner, their comment was “well, can’t you just stage around me?” The answer to that was a resounding “NO!”. I left that property, unstaged. My mistake was agreeing to do the job in the first place. I thought I was doing the agent a favor, but really, I wasn’t doing anyone any favors.

I understand that real estate professionals and home sellers are anxious to start marketing their properties as soon as possible, BUT take a moment to consider what you’re allowing to be marketed. REMEMBER, you only have ONE chance to make a FIRST impression, make it the best one possible!!!

© 2009 AKC Enterprises, Inc. All Rights Reserved.

Want To Use This Article In Your E-Zine Or Web Site? You can, but here’s what you MUST include with it: Alice T. Chan, the Staged Home Lifestyle Expert helps Real Estate Professionals and Home Sellers create irresistible, market ready homes that SELL. Alice’s “Do-It-Yourself Home Buyer Attraction System” empowers home sellers to stage their own homes so they STAND OUT from the crowd and make buyers STOP and TAKE NOTICE! For FREE Home Staging tips and to get your free e-course “8 Steps to Creating an Irresistible, Market Ready Home that SELLS”, visit http://www.AliceTChan.com.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Alice_Chan

Most small businesses including home stagers are not experts at putting together their web sites. Too often they rely on people who are not marketers to do so for them. I recently did a training session on the essentials of internet marketing for one of Allegra Dioguardi's Training by Design courses. The material applies to all businesses and will give you a once over of the key elements you need to be aware of when setting up your internet presence. Get this free download now

Technorati Tags: Home Staging, House Fluffing, House Primping, House Staging, real estate staging, Staging Design

Free Article Marketing Help

If you have been following my home staging business tips blog for any length of time, you will know that I am an advocate of article marketing as one of the most effective ways of building your business standing in the search engines.

Effective article marketing can be a major source of traffic to anyone’s website or blog.

In an effort to assist as many people as possible to learn the basics of article marketing I have released a free report called Article Power.

In the report I discuss the two key ingredients of an effective article marketing campaign, namely Quality and Quantity.

I point out that articles generate traffic directly from people who read your articles and also discuss how backlinks from article directories and the republishing of your articles serves to drive search engine traffic to your site as well.

In fact, it’s this backlink power that I appreciate most, as it effectively builds traffic over the long haul.

Of course an effective article marketing campaign needs to be focused on appropriate keywords so I do discuss a bit about keyword selection as well.

The trickiest part of article writing for many people is the creation of their resource boxes, which is the paycheck for an article marketing campaign.

To finish up I list some of the top article marketing sites or directories, and provide a page of resources that could be of value to anyone seriously pursing an article marketing strategy.

As I said above, I am interested in sharing the message of article marketing near and far, so I have included giveaway rights to all who download it. That means you will be able to share it with your friends, your twitter or facebook followers etc.

The resource page includes a variety of affiliate links, so I do hope to make a few bucks here and there as well. But I have also made it possible for you to re-brand this report so that you can earn those commissions.

Get your copy of Article Power now.

Also please let me know what questions or issues you have about article marketing, and I will answer them here in an upcoming post.

Feel free to republish this blog post in its entirety on your blog or newsletter.

Technorati Tags: Article Marketing Help, effective article marketing, easy article marketing, article marketing sites, an article marketing,

Most small businesses including home stagers are not experts at putting together their web sites. Too often they rely on people who are not marketers to do so for them. I recently did a training session on the essentials of internet marketing for one of Allegra Dioguardi's Training by Design courses. The material applies to all businesses and will give you a once over of the key elements you need to be aware of when setting up your internet presence. Get this free download now

Technorati Tags: an article marketing, Article Marketing Help, article marketing sites, article marketing tip, easy article marketing, effective article marketing

Home Staging courses have been popping up online, in chat rooms and classrooms throughout the nation.

The home staging training industry is growing even faster than home staging itself.  The economic downturn has greatly expanded the number of people interested in pursuing staging as a career.  It is after all a low cost, relatively easy entry business, unless you get into buying and warehousing furniture and accessories.

The pay is good, (if you can line up enough clients consistently), and more importantly for many, it is a flexible business that allows you to integrate your business and family life as necessary.  The opportunity to express oneself creatively is certainly another of the aspects that appeal to many.

Whatever your reason, it’s clear that home staging has established itself as a hot new home based business opportunity, that’s open to anyone who wishes to establish themselves and to work at it.

The recession and snail slow recovery have generated a lot of training programs. Some charge hefty fees for courses that aren’t always taught by active stagers who are doing the job day in and day out in the field.

This seems questionable to me.  If I were to seek out training in a new field or continuing education in an existing field I would want to know my instructors were belly to belly with real clients in real situations on a regular basis and not just teaching theory.

This is particularly true in a field like home staging which is at least partly an art rather than a science.

Now I am not in a position to evaluate all the different training programs out there.  But I am convinced of a couple of things.  You do not need to be certified by XYZ or anyone else to be a home stager.

When I first started exploring the field as an outsider, I was sideswiped by a group of women who thought only their high and almighty leader was the legitimate source of accreditation.

While they took some pot shots at me on Active rain and left me Zero Stars on one of my Squidoo pages, their outrage that I would dare comment on the field actually helped generate interest and lead to additional sales of my home staging survey results. (See sidebar – they are still available)

I mention this, because I see some of the various training programs selling their designation more than the quality of their home staging training course.

When you evaluate staging courses, consider the practical experience of the actual instructor who will be leading the class.  Are they experienced? Are they actively staging themselves today?  Not all are.

Will the course cover both home staging topics and business topics, such as how to set up your marketing plan, and run your business?

Will you be one of 30 in an overcrowded environment, or part of a compact personalized class where you have detailed conversations on the “how to” aspects of home staging.

And finally, shop price.  The most expensive courses are not necessarily more expensive because they are good. Often they are more expensive, because they have high marketing costs or profit margins.

In the final analysis, what you really want from your training is access to a highly experienced and knowledgeable instructor who not only knows the topic inside and out, but is able to teach it effectively and who you can relate to.

Ideally, you want to find a person with whom you can develop a long term personal relationship with that will last beyond the last day of your class.

Within the home staging training field there are dozens of such instructors, perhaps hundreds, so take the time to find a good one.

One possible resource I can recommend is Allegra Dioguardi.  I mention her, because I am familiar with her and have taught a segment on internet marketing for her students.  She offers a choice of day and evening courses to accommodate people’s schedules. The only problem is that she severely restricts the number of students she allows into her course at any time.

She is an active home stager in the Hamptons of NY, and has more experience staging and training than virtually anyone else out there.

Her next opening for students is Sept 13 for morning classes and Sept 14 for evening classes. For more information on her home staging courses go to Home Staging Training by Design

The fall is a great time to take a home staging course.

Technorati Tags: staging courses, home staging courses, staging course, home staging training, allegra dioguardi, home staging, home stagers, home staging training by design,

Most small businesses including home stagers are not experts at putting together their web sites. Too often they rely on people who are not marketers to do so for them. I recently did a training session on the essentials of internet marketing for one of Allegra Dioguardi's Training by Design courses. The material applies to all businesses and will give you a once over of the key elements you need to be aware of when setting up your internet presence. Get this free download now

Technorati Tags: Allegra Dioguardi, home stagers, Home Staging, home staging courses, Home Staging Training, home staging training by design, staging course, staging courses

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Debra_Gould

Technorati Tags: home staging, home staging business, Debra Gould, home based business, work from home, home staging training, real estate staging, women oriented business, women oriented businesses,

Most small businesses including home stagers are not experts at putting together their web sites. Too often they rely on people who are not marketers to do so for them. I recently did a training session on the essentials of internet marketing for one of Allegra Dioguardi's Training by Design courses. The material applies to all businesses and will give you a once over of the key elements you need to be aware of when setting up your internet presence. Get this free download now

Technorati Tags: Debra Gould, home based business, Home Staging, home staging business, Home Staging Training, real estate staging, women oriented business, women oriented businesses, work from home

Allegra Dioguardi’s well regarded skills as a housing marketer date back well before Home Staging emerged as the hot trend of the last decade and permanent feature of the next. Today in addition to continuing her career doing home staging in the Hampton’s,  she is leading a series of staging courses.

Her skills and knowledge grow out of decades of experience training others to stage model homes and her refined sense of style and design. A Parson’s graduate, Allegra brings not only practical business sense to her new staging course -  she brings a flair for design.  A flair that can ignite a room’s warmth and glow, and set buyers emotions on fire with desire.

Her next class opening is coming up very soon. (August 6 for AM Classes and August 10 for PM classes)  You want to hurry before they fill up.  Allegra only takes a handful of people at a time.  All the better to provide intense and personal attention.

The course consists of three weekly modules with three sections each.  See Allegra’s Site for more detail.  You’ll be pleasantly surprised at how affordable it is.

Use the dog days of August to hone your skills for the fall real estate season.

Click Here=> Home Staging Training by Design

Your clients will appreciate that extra design flair this course will help you achieve.

Technorati Tags: home staging training, training for home staging, home staging training by design, Allegra Dioguardi, home staging classes, staging by design

Most small businesses including home stagers are not experts at putting together their web sites. Too often they rely on people who are not marketers to do so for them. I recently did a training session on the essentials of internet marketing for one of Allegra Dioguardi's Training by Design courses. The material applies to all businesses and will give you a once over of the key elements you need to be aware of when setting up your internet presence. Get this free download now

Technorati Tags: Allegra Dioguardi, home staging classes, Home Staging Training, home staging training by design, staging by design, training for home staging

I am recommending a new free report by Ryan Deiss for anyone who either buys pay per click ads or who wishes to get their web site or blog ranked higher on Google.  Its called the Perpetual Traffic Report.   It runs some 29 pages and was must reading for me, and perhaps for you as well.

It covered a lot of different topics including a bit of a history on Google and how its ranking algorithm has changed over time.  But what I want to focus on today is just one element of the report.

It used to be that to get the most traffic from Google, it made sense to buy pay per click ads.   That’s no longer true.  Now I have been a cheap s.o.b. for some time, so I have always preferred to do what is called search engine optimization to get as much free traffic as possible.

According to the report it appears that my time is now.

Based on their research, it appears that the top ads, the one that shows up on top of the organic listings get only 2-3% of the people who come to the page to click.  The ads on the side get only 1-2% of people to click.

This is in contrast to the top organic listing.  It typically gets 41-45% of the people who come to the page to click.

The #2 listing gets 11-18%

The #3 listing gets 7-15%

The #4-9 listings get 2% putting them on an even base with the highest paid advertisers, and

The #10 listing gets 3-4% as it appears that some people start at the bottom up, or some other rationale.

What does this mean to you as a home stager, or any type of business online.

Clearly, the place to be is #1 on the organic listings for your keywords.

Number one is 4 times as valuable as the #2 slot.

And the bottom line is that you must start paying serious attention to your search engine rankings.

The report goes on to stress the three major contributing aspects toward getting top search engine rankings. Two of these I have written about in detail and will pick up again in coming posts.

The two old ones are, Getting your page set up right in the first place. Even now, after some 16 months of harping on the topic, most home staging and other small business web sites are not set up properly. This is particularly true of most of the group template websites so many new homestagers use.

The second key to the game is getting backlinks from not only a lot of places but also from highly ranked authority sites.  I will also take up this mantra in the coming weeks.

Finally, the third aspect that I have not given much direct attention to is what Ryan referes to as “Activity.”  By which he means proof in Google’s eyes that a sight is a real site with people rather than robots running things.

This may seem strange to those not familiar with all the people who sell black hat tools and programs to try to fool the search engines.

I will return to this topic again as well. But frankly need to do some additional research of my own.

In the meanwhile I recommend you get your own copy of this excellent free report.  Ryan is one of the Good Guys, who actually does his own research and knows what he is talking about.

Get your copy of Perpetual Traffic Report while it is still available for free.

Technorati Tags: Ryan Deiss, perpetual traffic report, perpetual traffic, Google Rankings, SEO Factors, SEO, how to rank high on Google, Search Engine Optimization

Most small businesses including home stagers are not experts at putting together their web sites. Too often they rely on people who are not marketers to do so for them. I recently did a training session on the essentials of internet marketing for one of Allegra Dioguardi's Training by Design courses. The material applies to all businesses and will give you a once over of the key elements you need to be aware of when setting up your internet presence. Get this free download now

Technorati Tags: Google Rankings, how to rank high on Google, perpetual traffic, perpetual traffic report, Ryan Deiss, search engine optimization, SEO, SEO Factors

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kimberley_Pacholko

Most small businesses including home stagers are not experts at putting together their web sites. Too often they rely on people who are not marketers to do so for them. I recently did a training session on the essentials of internet marketing for one of Allegra Dioguardi's Training by Design courses. The material applies to all businesses and will give you a once over of the key elements you need to be aware of when setting up your internet presence. Get this free download now

I have long preached about the power of what I call geographical long tail keywords.

When you are setting up your web pages for your home staging business or any other locally based business for that matter, you want your page text and the invisible meta tags behind your page to include the key geographical keyword terms appropriate for your market.

This helps the search engine know that your site is and should be shown to people in your area, and will help get your web page to the top of the search engine results for people doing a search in your community.

In smaller markets this alone, when done properly will get you to the first page of results.  However, in most markets you need to go beyond this.

You need to generate backlinks to your site.

One of my favorite ways to do so is through article writing.  I encourage you to create short meaningful articles and post them to article directories. Perhaps the most important of which is www.ezinearticles.com

I recently checked them for articles on Homestaging and noted several that included geographical references in their titles.  There’s something good and bad to be said about that idea.

The good first. Article Directories like ezinearticles have high page ranks on their own. An article that includes your town name and home staging in it may well show up on the search engines by itself.

Being a published author online in a Google Search will certainly aid in your perceived credibility in the eyes of the reader, which is certainly good.

The downside is that far fewer newsletter, blog or ezine editors are likely to use the article.  For example in the article below the author lists 5 ways to homestage PEI (Prince Edward Island) real estate.  Since it mentions PEI, its not likely a California or Florida or Australian site on homestaging or realestate is likely to repost it.

People who reprint articles from these directories are not allowed to edit them, and thus most will just pass them by.  I will be the exception as I include it below.

It’s important to understand that the widespread reposting is the primary goal of article marketing.  For each republishing of your article counts in your total backlink tally.  The reason to write articles is to gain this backlink power to raise your ranking on the search engines.  And that would be my focus, so I would tend to say do not put geopraphy in your article titles.

That said, if you have a number of good articles written, it may be worth an experiment to see if you can’t get some of them ranked.

Now what I like about the article below is that the author did create anchor text linking his site to the term PEI real estate.  This will help him rank higher in anyone’s search for that term.

Here’s his article.

5 Ways to Homestage Your PEI Real Estate For Best Sales Opportunities

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Robert_K_Parker

========

PS: I am still willing to assess your home staging websites SEO status and give you hints on what to do about it.  This involves examining your websites meta tags and on page aspects plus a 20 minute or so consultation.  For the balance of July, I will do this at a discounted rate of $49.  Email me at enetwal@gmail.com for more info.

Technorati Tags: article marketing, backlinks, geographical keywords, long tail keywords, curb appeal, clutter free, seo, search engine ranking

Most small businesses including home stagers are not experts at putting together their web sites. Too often they rely on people who are not marketers to do so for them. I recently did a training session on the essentials of internet marketing for one of Allegra Dioguardi's Training by Design courses. The material applies to all businesses and will give you a once over of the key elements you need to be aware of when setting up your internet presence. Get this free download now