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Now is The Time to Monetize Yourself with a Vlog!

StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article, Now is The Time to Monetize Yourself with a Vlog!

Don’t sit around waiting to be told by the TV when the covid lockdown ends so you can return to your nine-to-five grind or that horrendous night shift job you’ve wanted to leave for years. Now is your chance to capitalize on yourself – your talents, whatever they are, by building an online presence on video platforms and monetizing your web traffic.

Where to start?

Start with your passion!

If you’re not doing what you love to make a living, I’m sorry but you’re doing it all wrong.

Whatever your passion in life, you have gained knowledge and experience which could have immense value to others.

To monetize that passion, all you have to do is let other like-minded people know you exist. One of the easiest ways to do that is by making and uploading videos. Here are some strategic ideas to build an online audience and turn visitors into cash.

Monetizing Video Content

You can monetize your passion with vlogs. Photo by Alexander Mils from Pexels.

Video platforms offer a variety of monetization options. The highest paid YouTubers in 2019 were worth between US$11 and 26 million, according to Forbes. Their videos go viral for various reasons and they become sought after influencers, for a while.

Nevertheless, tens of thousands of individuals earn a regular income from YouTube and other monetized video platforms simply for sharing their experiences, ideas, beliefs and projects in video logs or video blogs (vlogs).

With a few thousand subscribers, you can regularly earn a few hundred dollars just for speaking your mind.

Youtubers generally monetize their content in these four ways:

  1. Revenue earned from ads displayed before, during or after their videos through Google Adsense.
  2. Product placement or recommendations in videos for affiliate marketing partners
  3. Directly advertising your own product or services
  4. Accepting donations such as superchat during live streams and support from Patrons through Patreon or a similar account.

There are many alternative platforms to YouTube, where you can create your own channel, post videos free of charge and monetize your content. Here are just a few of them:

  • Patreon – a membership platform that makes it easy for artists and creators to get paid
  • Vimeo – grow your business with video creation, hosting, and marketing tools
  • Dailymotion – News, entertainment, music and sports
  • Instagram TV (IGTV) – Videos for Instagram
  • Twitch – Live streaming platform for gamers

Clearly define your niche and target market

Do this first! It’s really important to narrow down the definition of the one single thing you do really well, or the one single “product” you have to sell.

Selling your product(s) isn’t always a straight forward transaction. There are tangible and intangible products. Your particular product can be anything of value to others such as knowledge, advice, a video, a piece of music, how-to instructions, a whiteboard presentation… Anything which gives your online audience something to take away after watching one of your videos.

Even your personality can be a product. Maybe there’s a million-dollar YouTuber in you bursting to get out. You might have a unique and engaging presentation style that appeals to a particular demographic.

That demographic sliver of the world’s web traffic is your target market. You must aim your marketing directly at them; just as a sniper uses a rifle, not a shotgun.

When you are on target, your audience grows organically and you see improvements in the ratio of conversions in your visitor numbers.

How to Encourage your visitors to perform an action (convert)

A conversion can be anything that has engaged your visitor and prompted them to do something. It could be one of the following:

  • Watch a video
  • Download a file
  • Click on an affiliate link
  • Subscribing for news and updates
  • Make a comment
  • Buy something
  • Click through your web pages
  • Read through a blog post or two

All these actions or conversions can be monetized. The direct sale of a tangible product is obviously a simple financial transaction which directly translates into money.

Downloadable digital products such as books, manuals and music are more profitable, because you only have to make one but can sell it over and over again.

Offering cheap digital products gives you a better chance of improving your conversion rate.

Buy Web Traffic to Boost Video Views

Once you have your video channel up and running, you need views and subscribers to monetize your content.

Most video hosting platforms provide built-in marketing tools to help you increase the size of your audience but you need to bring viewers in from outside too.

If you don’t have one already, get a website to direct web traffic to your videos and centralize your marketing efforts.

Embedding your videos in your website’s landing page is an effective way to boost video views and subscribers. A website visitor watching one of your videos on your web page counts as a conversion.

Gaining popularity organically through search results alone takes a long time. You could be pounding away on social media for years before benefitting from any serious monetization

One of the quickest and cheapest marketing strategies to kick-start video monetization is to buy targeted traffic directly to the web page featuring your video content.

When you buy targeted web traffic from a reputable vendor you can reach real people interested in your niche or based in a specified geographic location. If visitors find your videos interesting and watch them all the way through, you have converted those visitors and will benefit from the video monetization methods mentioned earlier.

The cost of web traffic varies, depending on the number of visitors you want in a specified time period, as well as the variety of niches available to you. Web traffic vendor MaxVisits has a cheap traffic wizard which gives you a variety of transparent options, letting you tweak and fine-tune your web traffic plan to suit your budget and niche audience.

Free & Cheap Video Production Tools

Almost anyone can make and upload videos with a few basic essentials. A standalone video camera is worth investing in if you want to make solid productions with different angles, zoom and other handy features not available on phones and webcams. Most smartphones and webcams will suffice though, if your face or the screen is always the focus of attention.

Free Video Recording & Editing Software

You can produce professional videos without paying a penny by downloading free recording and editing tools. OBS Studio is popular among gamers for live streaming on YouTube and Twitch while playing the latest shoot-em-up. As you can record and stream your own screen with OBS, it’s also handy if you want to make a slideshow or Powerpoint presentation.

Shotcut is a free open source cross-platform specifically for video editing available for FreeBSD, Linux, macOS and Windows. You can use it to convert your OBS recordings to Mp4 format to upload to video hosting platforms such as YouTube. You won’t need any more than that, unless you are doing advanced special effects.

Cheap Audio & Video Hardware

If you have a good PC, laptop or mobile phone, you should already have enough internal hardware power to produce videos that are good enough to view on mobile devices. However, to make sure you can produce high quality videos with good sound it’s worth investing in a few essential pieces of hardware.

Good Audio is Essential

The audio quality of a video makes the difference between and a mature and professional production. Bad quality audio with wind, hiss, pops and crackles or low volume is an instant turn off. If there’s one thing you should invest in for your vlogs, it’s a good microphone. Webcam mics just don’t cut the mustard.

There’s a good selection of professional Rode and Cannon brand microphones available at discount rates this April and May with a Media Markt voucher.

Make sure you get a mic with a foam sock to cover it to prevent popping sounds from bursts of wind when you speak or are filming outdoors in the wind. This is one investment you’ll be pleased you made when your voice comes over like a news presenter.

It’ll Be Alright on The Night!

It’s perfectly normal to be nervous for your first vlog. Some prefer to pre-record and edit everything before uploading. Others just throw all caution to the wind and go live, warts and all.

See what works best for you. Interacting with your audience during a live stream can really help make your broadcast entertaining and engaging.

Don’t procrastinate. Get proactive and start earning a living just being you!

Why Your Business Needs an Online Presence

StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article, Why Your Business Needs an Online PresenceThere are many ways available to market your business. Discovering which media is best to reach your customers takes patience and research. Some of the most popular avenues to explore today involve the internet and social media. Here are a few reasons to try online marketing.

Bigger Audience

Your Orlando web design gets more views from around the world than an article in the paper will. Customers can shop your company at any time of the day whether you are open or closed. If you have merchandise for them to select and pay for, they can do this on their own time. They can also schedule an appointment with you there if you offer a service instead of goods. If they are pleased with what they find on your site, they will share it with family and friends. Their word of mouth will bring in more sales and revenue into your company. You are able to reach new customers on their schedule with little help from your sales staff. However, be sure to add a link so that you can be contacted with questions from those people who want to work with you.

Stay Competitive

Nearly every organization has either a website, social media site or both. To stay up with your competition, you need a spot for your customers to find you and learn about your company. Put as much information as you can concerning your business on your sites so that your clientele can learn what you have to offer them. If they are local, they will visit your physical store after they shop your virtual one. Also the higher you can get your name on a Google search, the more traffic you will drive to your internet presence.

Builds Relationships With Customers

Having a spot on the internet where clients can review the products you sell or the services you provide can be intimidating. However, the way you work with them also displays how great your customer service can be. Customers that are pleased with your company will leave critiques that tell the world what they like about your business and why they recommended it. If you do get evaluations that state problems that a customer had, you have the opportunity to address them online and offer to make it right for them. When you do this, others who are reading these reviews will see that your client’s happiness is a priority to you.

Affordable Advertising

Another benefit of online marketing is that it costs less to reach more people than the mediums you normally know. Hiring someone to design your website can be expensive. However, when it is finished, the fee to keep it on the internet is minimal. It can be even cheaper if you or a staff member has the ability to assemble it and upload the final product. Putting an advertisement on social media is a fraction of the cost of a television or radio ad and reaches a much larger audience. It can also post at all hours of the day, drawing potential clients to shop your company even while your physical store is closed and your staff is gone. Marketing on the internet and by social media lets your advertising dollar go farther and reach more people.

Change Plans In an Instant

Online marketing allows you to use trial and error in your advertising that traditional methods are unable to do. You can promote a certain product to a select demographic on social media to see if it will work. If the results are slow, you can change up what you are trying to sell or widen the criteria of customers you want to reach. This can be done within hours of your first post. You can extend a campaign that is working or shut down one that is having issues. The option to tweak your ads until they work is in your hands. This also works for your website as well. If you receive feedback from customers that your site needs more photos, videos, or colors, you can make these changes before your client looks at it again. Constantly adding to and changing your social pages and website will bring people back over and over to see what is new.

4 Tips to Lead an Effective Marketing Campaign for Your Store

StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article, 4 Tips to Lead an Effective Marketing Campaign for Your Store

Executing an excellent marketing campaign is even more critical for brick and mortar retail stores than it is for other types of businesses, such as those that operate solely online. With the majority of American consumers now buying their shopping over the internet, retail stores need to be able to keep up with the market by creating an efficient advertising strategy. If you are looking to lead a marketing campaign for your store, read on for some top tips that are available.

Don’t Forget Physical Marketing Strategies

Although many new retail businesses choose to focus their energies on developing sophisticated marketing strategies online, you should not forget that the central location and driver of your campaign is your store. From the layout of your retail space to the roles of cashiers in driving sales, most of your marketing needs to be based on physical strategies. For instance, to entice customers into your business, you should consider investing in custom window decal printing services. They can help to develop eye-catching visual art that can spark the interest and imagination of potential customers and freshen up the look of your business to customers who have been with you for a long time.

Advertise All Year Round

Although many retail stores focus their campaigns around the most competitive times of the year, such as during the holiday period or at the same time as a big sale, you must be able to drive sales all year round. This can be beneficial to your company as advertising throughout the year will enable you to attract the attention of consumers when there is less competition for their attention. Not only this, but they will be able to remember your business when they need it during the high seasons, allowing you to generate and nurture leads that you can then capitalize on in the future.

Track and Analyze Your Campaign

However, as a leader, it is paramount that you can drive your campaign to success by analyzing the effects of each of your methods. Not only will this show you whether your methods have been effective but tracking your metrics and KPIs can also help you to make effective changes to your strategy. You can do this by focusing on the channels which have garnered the most interest from potential customers. You can track your campaign by using marketing applications, hiring a digital marketing company, or by simply looking at the stats that are provided by website generators, such as WordPress.

It is essential to get an understanding of your campaign, not just for facts and figures, but also to comprehend how you are doing up against the competition. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is crucial in every industry, even in auto repair! This means if you need auto repair SEO tips to makeover your website and improve your rankings on Google, take advantage of them. While there will always be a big push on generating search engine friendly content, learning how to use the right tools in conjunction with fine-tuning your marketing is what will give you a better understanding of every step you take.

Get Your Employees Involved

As a manager, you should be able to motivate your employees to have a proactive and positive effect on your campaign. Marketing is a team effort, and your employees are likely to be the individuals that are in direct communication with visitors to your store. This allows them to push sales to customers, including add-ons and deals. They can also participate by sharing your business’s online campaigns on social media websites, contributing their ideas, and even adding content, such as guest posts for your blog.

How Much Does Geofencing Marketing Cost? A Helpful Guide

StrategyDriven Marketing and Sales Article | How Much Does Geofencing Marketing Cost? A Helpful GuideAround 71% of consumers prefer more personalized ad experiences. Examining the cost of geofencing marketing will teach you a lot about the value you’re getting out of a campaign.

About 3 out of 4 consumers complete an action after receiving a message thanks to location-based marketing. With geofencing, you can target exact audiences in precise areas and drive sales your way.

Even if you don’t get sales, geofencing still increases brand awareness, so it’s a win/win strategy. Nonetheless, how can you be sure you’re getting your money’s worth?

Here’s what you should know about the price breakdown of geofence marketing:

Geofencing Marketing 101

A geofence is a virtual boundary that defines a specific geographic area with GPS (global positioning system) or RFID (radio frequency identification). When someone enters this defined area, your business’s advertisement will appear on their device/smartphone. They could also see a message, update, or other notification about your promotion.

Strategically placing geofences around certain hot spots will encourage customers to check out your business. This includes competitors’ businesses.

CPM

Many geofence companies charge based on CPMs. What is the meaning of CPM? CPM stands for Cost Per 1,000 Impressions. Dividing the number 1,000 by the rate will tell you how many impressions to expect.

For instance, a $14 CPM rate equates to 71.428 impressions. This means your ad or notification will appear 71.428 times on people’s devices as they pass through your geofenced area.

Geofencing campaigns usually charge rates between $15 to $17 CPM. Higher-end geofencing services could cost up to $25. However, costs could also depend on the following:

Number and Size of Geofences

Other marketing companies charge based on the amount and size of the geofences they build for you. Some charge $5 per geofence while others prefer a monthly fee of $20 or more.

The cost is largely determined by the size of the geographic area you’re geofencing. A larger geofence typically costs more than a small geofence. For this reason, you could easily get 10 to 20 geofences out of a $1,000 Google geofencing budget.

This is a good option for business owners that have a limited marketing budget.

Take the Professional Route

Using your own marketing software will give you the biggest inside scoop. Square Marketing pricing starts at $15 per month. Researching different kinds of geofencing software also gives you a better idea of pricing rates.

Warning: Learning about geofencing and marketing takes a lot of time and effort. Mistakes could cost you big time.

It’s safer to hire trusted professionals to execute a geofencing campaign for you. Their skills and expertise are worth the money! Feel free to find out more about the top geofencing companies through the aforementioned link.

Let Geofencing Benefit Your Business

BIA Advisory Services predicted that location-based marketing spending in the U. S. will increase to $38.7 billion in 2022. Still, the cost of geofencing marketing also depends on how many other features are included in it. For instance, social media notifications and advertisements cost more in the geofencing world.

Companies offer different levels of transparency. More information translates it into higher costs. It also might cost more to convert an existing marketing campaign into a geofencing one, but you’re better off late than never!

Boost your business – learn more about the services we offer. We’ll take your brand to the next level.

How to Outsource SEO: A Step by Step Guide to Successfully Outsource Your SEO Services!

StrategyDriven Online Marketing and Website Development Article, How to Outsource SEO: A Step by Step Guide to Successfully Outsource Your SEO Services!

1. Do You Need This Guide?

You may wonder if this guide can be helpful to you. Well, it depends. If you have a digital marketing agency and you want to expand you range of services through SEO and you know that the most cost-effective method to introduce it to outsource SEO to a specialized, then yes, this guide will be very helpful to you and you will get all the information that you may need to know while establishing such a collaboration.

Also if you own a company that has a website, or you are in the leadership of such a company then this guide is also for you and it may help you to make the right decisions. You should already understand that it is much better for your company’s future to let a team of experts take care of your SEO needs instead of building your department. Such an investment will not only be expensive but it will also be very risky.

On the other hand, if you do not make part of the two categories above, then this guide may not offer you valuable information because it especially made to help the types of persons mentioned above to make the right decisions while they outsource SEO.

In this article, you will find explained all the steps you will need to go through until you start a successful collaboration. You will also find a good example of a company to which you can Outsource SEO. You do not need to follow the methods explained in this article to the letter because they are some general steps, and you should adapt your strategy based on your company’s situation.

2. The First and Most Important Step Is to Find an Optimal SEO Company

The SEO market had expanded very much in recent years and because of this, you will be able to find a very large number of SEO agencies. But, a big problem that you can encounter is that because the market is still new the price of these types of services varies greatly. And the worst part is that you will not even be able to deduce the quality of the services based on prices. Meaning, you could pay a lot of many for a low-quality SEO service.

Although there are many famous SEO agencies and you can be sure that they will produce the results that you want, but they also ask for exorbitant prices. You should know that there are SEO agencies that are less famous and much lower prices but they are also able to produce the results that you want.

These agencies that have reasonable prices can reduce their costs and also the price of their services to a very affordable level. There are many reasons through which they can do that. To give two examples would be because they do not spend as much on paid advertising and because they are based in a country that has a weaker economy.

You should start to look for an SEO agency in this type of country because they will not only be able to produce high-quality results at a much lower price, but they also lack the arrogance that these big shot SEO companies have.

If you are not a digital marketing agency, then you can search also for an SEO professional or a team of SEO experts. Are you not sure if this is a good idea? You can find the reasons why you should do it in this moz.com article.

If your site and company are new, then it will be better for you to do your own SEO or look for a freelance SEO expert because that will be much more affordable. But for bigger companies, it is recommended to outsource SEO to an agency because they have a full team of professionals.

3. Double Check Your Choice

After you find a company that fits the criteria that you had set, then it is time to double-check your decision. There are a few steps that you can follow to be sure that everything is all right:

  • Results checking. It is very important to check the results brought by your potential partner before you start working with him. Some professional SEO agencies will present their results on their website and you can see them there. They will also have reviews from their clients presented there. You need to check these reviews and if possible to contact some of their clients and ask them for a sincere opinion about your potential partner.
  • Offer to check. It is very important to check their offers and make sure of two things. One, that, besides their regular packages, they offer custom packages that are based on their clients’ needs. Not all websites will benefit from the same strategy and it is better than if there is a need for customization it should be possible. Two, you should make sure that your potential partner has a money-back guarantee. Not many SEO agencies offer such a guarantee because they do not trust that they will always be able to produce results. But, by offering this type of guarantee you can see the confidence that they have it their skills.
  • Service checking. Although you can get a lot of information from the methods presented above and you could make sure that you have made the right or wrong choice, but if you are still undecided, then you should also try their services yourself. That will be the best way to get a feeling about how long cooperation with your partner would feel right. An important aspect is to make sure that your partner of choice is always up to date with the latest Google algo updates.

4. Start the Partnership

After you have selected an agency with which you want to partner, it is time to get to the next step, which is to find the best way to work together with it. If you are an agency, then there are two ways through which you should implement this partnership.

Your company can openly admit to their clients that they outsource SEO completely, this method will make sure that your clients will know what they are dealing with and the possibility that they will try to make your problems will be nill.

You can get white-label reports and be vague about it while letting the impression that some tasks are indeed outsourced. This is also an alternative because it is not a lie. This method is mostly used if the clients care less about the results that they get and more about other factors.

The choice that you should make depends mostly on your company’s situation, more exactly on your clients. You are the one that knows them better so, you are also the one that needs to make this decision.

A bad alternative would be to market the service as produced by you, but in this case, you risk losing a large number of clients when the truth comes to light, so this method is not advised. If your company is not an agency, then then the best way in which you can cooperate with an SEO agency is by learning the basics of SEO. In this way, you will be able to understand the quality of the results that you will get from the partnership.

If you consider that the information that you acquired in this article is not enough to help you choose a good agency, then you can find even more information on Neilpatel.com