1. You need to subscribe to an email marketing service like Aweber.
2. Add your opt-in form (which you’ll obtain from Aweber) on to your Facebook Fan page.
3. Offer a free gift like a report or a video to motivate your fans to opt-in to your mailing list.

Since adding an opt-in form can be a bit technical for many people, here’s a cool video I found that shows you how to do it…

Click here to view the embedded video.

It’s life or death for them.

They must get new customers and profits… or they’re out of business.

And this is a great opportunity for you to make money in this recession.

If you can help your local businesses increase their profits, you can earn a pretty good income as a consultant.

If this sounds good to you, I highly recommend you check out the Startup Rebel Consulting Business Blueprint.

You’ll learn the fastest way to make money as a consultant – without cold calling, advertising, conducting seminars or begging for referrals.

And get this… you don’t need any experience, website, traffic or mailing list.

Now, I speak from experience as I’ve been a consultant since 2001.

Here’s what you’ll learn:

• How to secure clients quickly without cold calling, advertising, conducting seminars or begging for referrals.
• My unfair advantage over well-established and experienced consultants.
• How to charge premium fees and have your clients love you for it.
• How to get paid upfront before delivering your services.
• How to outsource your services so that you can earn passive income.

And here’s the best part… I’m giving the course away!

I could easily charge $97 for this course but I want to help people who really need the cash during these difficult times.

Now, I know some people associate “free” with low quality. But that is NOT the case here.

This is a complete course. It’s a comprehensive step-by-step guide to starting your own profitable consulting business.

So, I highly recommend that you check it out now. Click here to get it.

Note: You will need a domain and a web hosting acount with the Fantastico Suite before you proceed. If you don’t have a web hosting account yet, we highly recommend Thirdsphere.

Click here to view the embedded video.

If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it!

Well, I’m guessing the executives at Facebook have never heard the saying before because if they have, they wouldn’t have shot themselves in the foot by redesigning their home page.

According to several online polls, over 90% of Facebook users hate the new design. And I am one of them.

Their original home page design was just fine. I don’t understand why they feel the need to tinker with it. The redesign has now turned into a public relations headache for them.

So, the lesson of the day is:

Listen to your customers. Unless they tell you that they want something changed, leave it alone.

The merchant would handle the product development, fulfillment, payment processing and customer support. All you have to do is just send visitors to their website.

However, with so many affiliate programs out there, choosing a great program can be a challenge.

So here are five elements to look for when choosing an affiliate program:

1. Conversion rate

The first and most important element in an affiliate program is the conversion rate. You need to know how successful is the merchant’s sales page in converting visitors to customers.

This metric is critical especially if you’re advertising the affiliate product. You must be able to calculate whether you’ll be profitable with your advertising campaign.

2. Commission

Affiliate commissions can range from 5% to 100%. But the best programs offer recurring monthly commissions.

Instead of just getting commission for a single sale, you can earn monthly passive income from a program with recurring commissions.

3. Promotional tools

A good program should provide lots of tools and more importantly, the merchant should have tested the tools before offering them to their affiliates.

You don’t want to waste time and money with unproven and untested tools.

4. Tracking

Some programs only track sales for up to a month. If your referral buys after 30 days, you won’t get credit for the sale.

So, look for programs that offer extended tracking, e.g. 1 to 5 years. Be sure to read their tracking policy before you sign up.

5. Minimum payment

Many programs have a minimum payment policy. For instance, you may have to earn at least $50 in commissions before you get paid.

I prefer programs that don’t have any minimum payment policy. Nowadays, with Paypal, a merchant can pay their affiliates every month instantly and easily without incurring any expensive bank charges.

And that’s it. Five elements to look for when choosing an affiliate program.

By the way, we have just launched our own Startup Rebel Affiliate Program. If you want to earn monthly recurring commissions from our flagship product, the Startup Rebel Alliance, do check it out here.

It’s called Broken Link Checker.

This plugin checks for broken links and missing images on your Wordpress blog. And it will notify you through your blog’s dashboard if any are found.

Here’s a list of Broken Link Checker’s features:

• Checks your posts (and pages) in the background.
• Detects links that don’t work and missing images.
• Notifies you on the Dashboard if any are found.
• Makes broken links display differently in posts (optional).
• Link checking intervals can be configured, the default is set to 72 hours.
• New/modified posts are checked ASAP.
• You can unlink or edit broken links in the *Manage -> Broken Links* tab.

Click here to download for free.

Mistake #1: Completely task or project-based outsourcing.

In other words, hiring someone to complete a specific task or project when the need arises. Instead, they should be focusing on gathering long-term valuable members of their team.

I’m thinking that this goes to the question before, I see people who are constantly going to the freelance sites, and trying to find a new person, or trying to find the cheapest person, even though they are looking for quality, they’re still looking for the cheapest person.

Each time they need it, they are looking for someone new, and it’s so much easier if you find someone good and keep them busy. And, it’s not just that you keep that new person.

It means that your business can continue to run smoothly, because the people who work for me… I don’t have to talk with them all the time.

Mistake #2: Looking for the cheapest price.

You might find a great deal, but as a general rule, you often do get what you pay for.

Plus, it goes back to that you are task-oriented, because you are constantly looking for new people, and trying to find the best deal. It’s too much work to do it that way.

Mistake #3: Not giving clear instructions.

The more information you can give your contractor about a task, the better. Every time you give instructions, keep a copy for your files, so that you can use it over and over again.

I know people don’t want to give those instructions, because they think it takes a lot of time, but if you keep it, then you can use it again when you need it, and then you already have it on hand, and it’s amazing how people will say, “I hired someone, and they did a terrible job.”

And, a lot of the time, it’s the way they gave the instructions. If you don’t give enough information, either that person has to interpret what needs to be done, or they may misunderstand, and it’s just your own fault.

Mistake #4: Not checking work.

I talked about overseeing everything. Outsourcing doesn’t relieve you of all your obligations.

You need to check work to make sure that your business is being presented properly, and so that you can give constructive feedback to your contractors, because that’s how you grow, and things get better.

They’re not going to be perfect, right out of the gate, so they need that feedback.

Mistake #5: Not evaluating their actual delegation.

Sometimes, checking the work is checking the quality of their work, but also sometimes people outsource for months and months without truly evaluating — even if people are doing a great job — what they are actually doing, is it actually effective?

You can’t get away from customer service.  That has to be done.  So, you outsource that, and it goes.

But, if you’re outsourcing things like specific marketing tasks, say its article marketing or something like that, you need to regularly evaluate if your plan is working. If it’s not, you might need to change your strategy or just scrap that part altogether.

I’m talking about contributing informative and helpful content in forums. And in your posts, you can include a link to your website in your signature.

Occasionally, you can link to a post on your blog that’s relevant to the discussion.

But here’s the problem with using forums to generate traffic… you have to keep posting to get traffic.

Any post you make or any thread you start will eventually be relegated to the second page and beyond to make way for new threads and posts. And once your posts get relegated, it won’t be seen by the majority of the forum visitors.

So, it’s not a really effective traffic strategy in the long term. Well, here’s one strategy to help you get traffic from forums without writing a single post.

It’s a really simple strategy that has worked offline for decades.

Organize a contest.

Contests are a proven publicity strategy to generate buzz for your business and products.

So, here’s a step-by-step guide on how to organize a contest on forums:

1. Search for forums that share your target market. For instance, if you’re in the dog market, just type “dog+forum” in Google and you should be able to find a few forums for dog owners.

2. Tell the forum owners that you’re willing to sponsor a contest on their forum. You will offer your products and services as prizes. The goal of the contest is to encourage participation in their forum. So, the person who makes the highest number of posts within a specified time (e.g. a month) will be the winner.

3. The forum owners will then post a sticky thread on their forum to announce the contest and the first post on that sticky thread should contain a link to your site. And the sticky thread will stay up on the first page of the forum for the entire duration of the contest.

So, when visitors arrive at the forum, they will instantly see the sticky thread about the contest. And when they read about the contest, they will see your website’s link.

And that’s how you generate traffic from forums without writing a single post.

Simple enough, right? Now, take action!

Let’s say you wrote an ebook that teaches job hunters how to get a job in 30 days. And you wrote a sales letter with the headline:

“How To Get A Job In 30 Days Or Less.”

Now, you may be able to generate some sales with that letter. But here’s a strategy that will boost your sales. It’s so simple that it’s surprising how many experienced marketers overlook it.

It’s called market segmentation.

You see, just because your ebook is a general product that appeals to a general market, doesn’t mean that your sales letter has to be general as well.

When it comes to communicating your sales message, a personalized message will always outperform a general one.

And that’s where market segmentation comes in.

Instead of writing a general sales letter that targets everyone, write multiple letters that target multiple market segments while selling the same product.

How To Segment Your Market

One easy way to segment your market is to study your keywords. If you’re advertising on Google AdWords, look at the keywords being used by your market.

Going back to the job hunting ebook example, some of the keywords that job hunters use could be:

• Sales job
• Secretarial job
• Engineering job

That’s three market segments right there.

Now, you can customize your sales letter for each market segment. So, your new headlines will be:

“How To Get A Sales Job In 30 Days Or Less.”
“How To Get A Secretarial Job In 30 Days Or Less.”
“How To Get An Engineering Job In 30 Days Or Less.”

So, when job hunters use the keywords “sales job” on Google and arrive on your sales letter with the headline, “How To Get A Sales Job In 30 Days Or Less,” they will definitely be more interested in reading the entire sales letter and eventually be more inclined to buy your ebook.

Do you see the simplicity of the strategy?

All you have to do is write a general sales letter. And then, use it as template to customize your sales message for various market segments.

And don’t worry, it only takes 5 seconds to customize each sales letter. Just use the “Find And Replace” function in your web design software and you can create a customized sales letter for several market segments easily and quickly.

With a sales letter customized for a specific market segment, your sales will increase. I guarantee it.

Wall Street had the biggest plunge in history last week.

Banks are going bankrupt.

Hundreds of thousands of people are jobless.

You know what? This is actually great news.

The recession represents the best opportunity for anyone who wants to start or grow their business. Here are three reasons why:

1. Cheap labor.

Now, you can get highly qualified people to help you build your business. Since many of them are out of work, they will be willing to work for you on a freelance basis.

During the good times, it’s virtually impossible to hire them. But now, you can even get MBA graduates, if you know where to look. Hint: LinkedIn.com

2. Cheap advertising

During recessions, many companies cut back on their advertising expenditure. And that means less competition for premium spots in Google Adwords and Yahoo Search Marketing.

And if you’re smart, you can negotiate with high traffic portals that rely on advertising revenues. During the dotcom boom, these websites were charging $30 per thousand views for banner ads.

Then, the bubble burst. And their rates dropped to below $5. So, if you want inexpensive banner ad rates, now is the best time to grab them.

3. Publicity opportunities

Since the ailing economy is the biggest topic in the media right now, use it as a hook to generate free publicity for your business.

Here’s an example:

Let’s say you’re in the crafts market. Write a press release on how people can generate a side income by selling their crafts on eBay.

Then, send it to every crafts and women’s magazine in the country. If your press release gets picked up, it will generate thousands of new visitors to your site.

And that’s it. Three damn good reasons for starting and growing a business in a recession.

Most people don’t know this but many of the most successful companies in the world like HP, Sony, Microsoft and Dell all started during recessions.

And because they could survive during the bad times, it’s no surprise that they grew by leaps and bounds during the good times.

So, just ignore the media because they are in the business of sensationalizing stories. They have to in order to sell advertising.

This is your chance to build a business that lasts. Strike while the iron is hot!