E-commerce is one of the best and most effective ways to earn windfall returns on investment. The Amazon online platform offers the perfect tool to attract a great number of qualified leads. Sellers always want to learn about their Amazon business growth to 6 figures. The digital arena is full of online marketing tools that can be harnessed to generate a large number of online leads.

Social media advertising, search engine optimization, online forums, press release sites, PPC campaigns, influencer marketing, using the Amazon algorithm in your favor, ranking products high, and business directories are just some of the few online tools that can be used to funnel a maximum number of visitors to your Amazon product listing.

However, when it comes to hitting the magic 6-figure revenue number, what are some of the core steps an Amazon seller must take in order to make the dream happen? After all, true magic begins when the dream of a 6-figure income is realized to its fullest!

So, let’s dive in with some strategies, shall we?

Build a Powerful, Unique Brand

Before you start selling your products with the hopes of reaching 6-figures, you’ll want to focus on building your brand. Your brand reputation is the very identity to your business, it is the mirror upon which the light of the world reflects.

You need to ask yourself questions such as: How can I set myself aside from other sellers? Who is my target audience?

Secondly, you need to first and foremost identify your niche and the products you want to sell. From there, analyze your competition to determine proper pricing, challenges, buying patterns, behavioral trends and so forth.

Quality is the soul of your brand. You’ll want to focus on delivering the highest-quality products for your consumers. Don’t forget about setting a solid Return Policy for your Amazon business that customers can refer to.

Improve Your Ranking

It is utterly critical that you understand the importance and crucial role of rankings on Amazon. They are the money shot! They are what can make or break a great product and prevent you from earning profits that could have been rightly yours!

Fill out as much of your product listing page as possible, using as many keywords as possible. Use FBA to automate customer satisfaction.

Find ways to encourage customer reviews, engage with the happy or disgruntled customer by being honest and sincere, and do everything you can to keep your customers satisfied at all times.

Above all: More sales = higher rankings = more sales! That’s the cycle.

Moreover, ranking on Amazon is easier than ranking on Google because you’re essentially cutting the work in half. They only use internal factors to determine how a optimize Amazon products listing. Backlinks, social media, domain authority. These are all things you don’t need to worry about on Amazon.

World Class Customer Service

Establish Friendly Engagement with your customers. Sales, marketing and running a successful business in the real world (be it online or offline) is all about building rapport, cementing trust, creating a sense of camaraderie, instilling respect and evoking interest through empathy.

If you can accomplish that with your prospective clients or current customer base, you will win their brand loyalty for years to come. Why? Because as with all human beings, the ability to showcase compassion, care and genuineness are key pillars upon which any human interaction is built, let alone business!

Be friendly, while keeping your conduct professional. Be empathetic while maintaining your business objectives and not compromising your values as an establishment.

Whether its issues regarding returns or refunds, dealing with bad reviews, or shipping/delivery issues, your communication with all your customers- past, present or future – should be one of utmost professionalism at all times.

Keep Abreast with Amazon’s Changes

Amazon is an ever-evolving organism; a unique ecosystem and habitat that is constantly changing and developing with the metamorphosis of the global E-commerce trends, economy, supply and demand, and consumer buying patterns.

You need to make sure you are well-informed at all times of the ongoings and happenings that occur if you want to seriously aim for that 6-figure income mark as a professional seller.

For example, Amazon recently made new changes on the back-end keyword and sponsor ads regulations/stipulations. Now if you weren’t staying informed with such changes as a seller, you would have never known critical data and crucial information that could make or break your product sales and overall business function.

Build a Strong Team

Success and high-income goals are never a sole endeavor. You need to learn how to leverage and harness the power of your Amazon business growth via a skilled, reliable and experienced team.

Building a competent team that shares the same values, breathes the same passion and envisions the same hunger for success as you are key! Hire people by doing your research and spending time/resources in selecting the best fit for your business.

Keep Adding More Products

This is a no brainer really. It’s logical to say that more products mean more opportunities to sell, greater audience reach, larger market share, and higher profits.

If you’re aiming to reach the coveted 6-figure income mark, you need to consistently invest time, research, money, effort and energy into identifying, sourcing and selling hot products.

Add them to your brand repertoire and capitalize on great marketing strategies to make more people buy them – consistently!

Use Social Media

Social media is the very pulse and heartbeat of modern E-commerce. You cannot ignore the power of social media and expect to reach 6-figures as a seller. Utilize all avenues of consumer outreach and marketing such as Twitter, Google SEO, Binge, Instagram, Pinterest. Facebook and Blogger websites.

The greater number of social media platforms your business effectively utilizes to promote your products, the more people you will reach, the more chances of them clicking on your product pages and eventually the higher probability of them purchasing your products.

Moreover, a strong social media presence gives you the credibility and legitimacy you crucially need as an established, serious and quality brand and boost your Amazon business growth.

Amazon is a leading contender in the third-party marketplace industry. You can sell nearly anything and make a profit. However, doing so takes time, skill and dedication.

Amazon offers great quality and delivery, which is why consumers are so loyal to the company. Having Amazon on your side, organizing orders and handling behind-the-scenes work through Fulfillment by Amazon will undoubtedly attract more buyers and boost your sales.

So, let’s first take a look at what exactly is FBA?

It is an all-encompassing service designed specifically to meet your needs as a seller on Amazon, such as shipping items stored at fulfillment centers and handling customer service issues pertaining to orders.

However, the tricky part now is choosing a product that will sell. A product that actually has a high demand and probability for sales. How do you determine that?

Product Research and Its Importance

Product research is key. As a Seller, you need to know what the demand and supply are for a certain product niche or category, even before you begin to source it, let alone sell it!

In fact, according to statistic and studies, more than 40 % of online business success depends on the right product being sourced. Now that is a huge chunk that can make or break the success of a product. Hence why it must not be taken lightly.

Product Research Criteria

Every research strategy must employ a set of criterions that the findings rely upon. The same applies to research for your products. The two major criteria to focus upon are:

1. High demand, low competition
2. Low demand, low competition
3. High demand, high competition

In either case, studying your competition in the niche or category of your product is crucial. Your competition is your treasure-chest of knowledge. Use it!

Analyzing your competitors enables you to devise your marketing, sales, operations and customer service strategy in the right direction without hitting roadblocks. Knowing your competition is like driving with a GPS – you can navigate yourself even from the tightest of spots if you know where you are.

Naturally, as an Amazon seller, you won’t bother with any product that has ‘low’ demand. Because anything with low demand will automatically also have low competition (since nobody is silly enough to invest their time, energy and costs in sourcing low demand products that nobody wants). This eliminates the option (B) automatically.

So logically, a smart Amazon seller will target options (A) and ( C) through the life cycle of his / her Amazon FBA business.

Important Factors in Criteria Selection for Products Selection

Research To Find What Is Already Selling On Amazon

One of the fastest ways to learn how to find a product to sell on Amazon is to look through the Amazon Best Sellers List in different categories to find out what is already selling.

By looking through the Amazon Best Sellers List, you’re able to get an idea of the top 100 products that are currently selling on Amazon, to give you ideas on what products to sell.

Using Online Tools

If you’re looking for some tools or resources to help you how to find a product to sell on Amazon, then a good platform is Jungle Scout. It is a powerful software that will make your life much easier in helping you do all the research you need to find profitable products – it’s worth the investment.

Criteria Selection Process

However, if you want to find the best products to sell on Amazon, then you need to look at more than just something that you are interested in promoting.

The deeper you look at how you will sell your products, the easier it will be to begin to make the sales you want to build your sales.

It’s not only the product you want to look at selling. It’s also how you will sell it and who you will reach. When you start following a different criterion, then it will help you to build a successful promotional channel.

The criteria consist of the following:

• Make sure the product is light and relatively small (not more than a few pounds), as this will make a big difference in the cost of shipping your product.
• Find a product you can sell for more than $10 and will have at least a 30-50% profit margin.
• Look for a product that is simple and won’t break easily or have complications, as otherwise, it can result in refunds or customer complaints.
• Find a product that is relatively inexpensive to make (this will depend on your budget).
• Pick a product that you can stand out some way in the market with, or you can find a better product to sell on Amazon in that market.
• Find a product to sell on Amazon that you will be somewhat interested in or passionate about.
• Think about your 2nd, 3rd, and 4th product. Think about the bigger picture, the market, and niche you want to get into, and ultimately the brand you want to create.

Note: Make sure to order multiple samples of your intended product for sourcing, when you contact the supplier overseas. For example, Ali Baba has many highly ranked suppliers who will be obliged to send you free samples before you place an order.

The Power of Productivity with Skilled Virtual Assistants

Whether you’re a small business online or offline, you can never overlook the importance of getting an extra set of hands to take the burden off you!

With the fast-paced and ever-evolving world of business going through tremendous technological changes, it is imperative that companies around the globe – particularly those in eCommerce – understand, employ and effectively apply the power of technology and great customer service.

This is where world-class Virtual Assistant Services prove to be detrimental in more ways than one! Great companies and businesses are built on a proven system; constant, efficient and productive without the hiccups! The same goes for any successful, viable and effective small business – be it on a local or global scale.

The benefits are tremendously great!

Research and Analysis

Urtasker is a leading and globally renowned e-commerce virtual assistant agency that provides cutting edge, groundbreaking and truly revolutionary back-office support to e-commerce sellers, business owners and vendors on multiple online channels such as Amazon, eBay, Shopify, Walmart.com and Jet.com.

With a fully in-house process of hiring, training and vetting its services for all its valued clients, the company empowers e-commerce businesses with hassle-free, cost-effective, trusted outsourced business solutions world-class virtual assistant services.

One of Urtasker’s proven accolades entails increasing a U.S based client’s sales by 20% in a mere 3 months. Another compelling milestone in terms of results entailed increasing the total sales for an online e-commerce company by 40% within a 2-year window. Book A Free Consultation Call

When you have a skilled Virtual Assistant doing all the research and analysis for your product selection, criteria and sourcing, you’ll also be continuously on top in terms of routine competitor analysis, latest consumer trend-watching and all the other administrative workload you don’t need on your desk!

So, book a call for the professional Amazon listing services.

Marketing Amazon business is a powerful tool every seller should learn. The internet age has provided a whirlwind of opportunities for every hardworking dreamer that wants to fly without wings. The world of eCommerce and internet has proven to be a lucrative arena for those who want to benefit from the promises it beholds.

In fact, with its low barrier to entry, Amazon FBA is one of the most popular routes to business ownership.

Hence, whether you aspire to generate a side income or grow operations to make a living off your business, one of the best places to start selling your products is on Amazon FBA!

Here are some tips on how to effectively market your Amazon FBA business the right way!

Increasing Views & Appearing on Amazon Search Results

Amazon has a powerful algorithm. Understanding how it works is very crucial!

It’s not necessary to know the details of the algorithm— because Amazon does not disclose that information—but it’s critical to identify the very elements that go into constructing it.

• Pricing: Change up your sales tags up and down every few weeks. This will keep your listing fresh (your repricing software can help with this).
• Availability: How many of a certain product you have left in stock shows up on your page, letting buyers know if you’re pricing it to sell or pricing it by market standards.
• Selection: Users may think they know what others search for, but they don’t because Amazon guards this tidbit close to their chest.
• Sales History: Where you rank matters on how much you sell, that’s it. Amazon doesn’t care about anything else but how much money passes hands.

Pay Per Click (PPC) Advertising on Amazon

PPC marketing campaigns can work wonders for audience visibility, product advertising, and eventual sales conversions. If you’re not using PPC already, you must!

How do you go about devising a powerful PPC Marketing Campaign?

1. Use keyword tools to check the demand.
2. Structure and organize your PPC keywords.
3. Include negative keywords in your first PPC campaign.
4. Know your budget and work backward.
5. Research the competitive landscape.
6. Write better ad copy.
7. Create a powerful and relevant call to action.

Setting Up Amazon Search Optimization

Ranking in Amazon search results is a big boost to your product listing visibility and sales conversions.

Applying a robust, proactive, well put together marketing Amazon business and SEO strategy is sure to rank your listings higher. A higher ranking means higher audience attention, which directly translates to higher clicks on your listing.

Here are the basic steps you need to undertake in order to instill the Amazon SEO to your product pages:

1. Follow the Image Guidelines and Upload a Good Amount.
2. Focus on Your Product Title.
3. Use Bullet-Point Content Form and Focus on a Description.
4. Actively Work to Increase Your Amazon Reviews.
5. Use the Sponsored Products Feature.
6. Fill Out all the Relevant Categories.
7. List an ASIN in Your Product Field.

Influencer Marketing Amazon Business

Getting influential people online to market your products is a strategy that reaps rewards unflinchingly. For example, many well-known Instagram influencers have an all-encompassing global audience reach in millions. They are always willing to consider good products or brands market – for a fee.

This is where budgeting is important. You need to know what your realistic budget is. Influencers usually charge per post, which may always change depending on the agreement you strike with them.

The next step is approaching them. Something as simple sending them a DM on Instagram, to emailing them or connecting via the contact form on their blog/website will get you a reply.

Once you get the reply, spend as much time as you can in sharing your product details, features, benefits, the USP of your brand and how you think it will help the masses.

Giveaways & Deals on Offer Sites

People love good deals. It’s human nature.

Everyone wants to save a buck or two. It gives them a sense of satisfaction and ‘triumph’ that they otherwise wouldn’t have gotten had they paid full price for the same product elsewhere.

This is why tapping into the ‘good deal’ psychology from a consumerist viewpoint is key! Use it to your advantage. Showcase your products on deal offer websites such as Overstock, Wish, Groupon, etc.

Not only will you get a few sales, but you’ll also get wider audience visibility on other platforms, which will help to bring in traffic to your Amazon product listing. Moreover, remember that the best form of advertising is word of mouth.

So if people like your products of a deal offer website, they will recommend you to their friends and family, who will automatically happily buy from your main Amazon product page because they are already ‘sold’ on the value of your product.

Copywriting a High-Quality Product Listing

While you do need to incorporate keywords to tell Amazon what your product is about, you shouldn’t sacrifice ‘quality’. Humans also have to find ‘value’ in the copywriting you write before they will convert into customers.

Yes, having exceptional rankings on Amazon is a priority, but Amazon isn’t the one with a credit card in its hand – shoppers are!

When prospects scroll through the search results, they glance at the information including the title, image, price, and more. There has to be something there to capture attention or, with the swipe of a finger or click of a mouse, your listing will be out of view, never to be seen again.

Even if you do get a click to your product listing, if your well-ranked page doesn’t offer solid details that “inform, entice, and persuade”, your sales will still be lacking.

There must be an even balance between “ranking criteria” and “customer experience”. In essence, you’re serving two masters: Amazon and shoppers. But the difference is that the latter of the two is the one paying for your product.

Hence, hiring a professional Amazon copywriter to write your listing Titles, features/benefits Bullet Descriptions and the actual Product Description itself is utmost crucial! Keep that in mind!

Conclusively, in order to grow effectively and scale your Amazon FBA business, it is important that you delegate administrative work functions to a professional Virtual Assistant service provider.

This takes the load off you, so you can focus on your business instead of being ‘stuck’ working in it!

Urtasker is a globally renowned and internationally acclaimed Virtual Assistance agency based in New York, the USA that helps businesses benefit, grow and profit in the online E-commerce industry through specialized marketing, expert technical and skilled operational services by handling all functions of your Amazon FBA business.

From Amazon SEO and Ranking to Copywriting your Product Listing, to running PPC campaigns on your behalf, Urtasker ensures that you are ‘covered’ in every way enroot to increasing revenues and sales like never before!

We’ve become so thoroughly engrossed in the internet age that we don’t call it that anymore. It’s become commonplace, expected even, that if you’re running a business and you’re running it well, then you’re relying on the internet in some capacity.

But things move more quickly in the digital age, as well. As soon as the world gets comfortable with some program or technology, a new version comes along and shakes everything up. It can get especially hectic if you’re trying to manage online sales. Just as working with the top online retail space becomes routine, a new giant comes along and chomps down on some of the market shares. Suddenly, it can feel as though you’re missing out. But that’s where eCommerce comes in!

If you’re ready to be present on more than one platform, then the good news is that you’re not alone, and software developers have been working for years to tackle this exact problem. Multi-channel listing software can do the heavy lifting for you. Read on to learn more about how multi-channel listing mirror software like Listing Mirror can help you.

Amazon or eBay?

This used to be the eternal question. To which of these internet behemoths do you entrust your sales? Do you go with Amazon’s unbeatable market share and omnipresence, or eBay’s unique sales methods and branding-friendly interface?

As we mentioned previously, you no longer have to choose where to place your resources. You can expand your business to as many online storefronts as you feel, and without the stress headache, you might be expecting. Multi-channel eCommerce is within your grasp.

Listing Mirror and the magic of synchronization

Like all things in life, you get what you pay for. There are a lot of different companies popping up with their own multi-channel listing software, and it pays off to partner with the right one. Nonetheless, Listing Mirror tops the list for many reasons, perhaps most notably for its greatest strength: synchronization.

Syncing all your listings at once allows you to place your products on many sites across the internet without any hassle or potential inventory disasters.  Listing Mirror can be a lifesaver, especially for smaller businesses which can’t spare the human resources to keep track of a dozen different listings for the same product. Here’s how it works:

Syncing Orders

Are you hesitating to expand your online horizons because you’ve become comfortable with one fulfillment process? Maybe you use Fulfillment By Amazon and don’t want to mess with figuring out how eBay or Walmart.com work. Don’t worry, Listing Mirror has you covered! When you sync your listings through Listing Mirror, you can rest easy knowing that orders from all channels are fulfilled by the program of your choice. That’s right, with Listing Mirror you can fulfill orders on eBay using Fulfilled By Amazon. It doesn’t get much easier than that!

Syncing Inventory

This might be the most important service Listing Mirror provides. It keeps track of how many units you’ve sold across all your platforms and automatically updates them. This way, you won’t ever find yourself in that disastrous situation where you’ve sold more units than you have available. And on sites like Amazon, where you may find yourself promising same day shipping, overselling can become a big problem really fast.

With Listing Mirror you’ll have one catalog to handle, and that catalog will go out to all your listings. You’ll save time, money and manpower.

Syncing Copy

Listing Mirror automatically updates more than just your orders. When you add or update a product listing, those changes can be pushed out across other online marketplaces from within Listing Mirror. Now, you’ll never have to worry about adding new products to each site individually. This will keep your storefronts and branding consistent.

Synchronized but not identical

Every online market is a little different — that’s what allows them to coexist. People who are used to eBay are looking for something a little different than those who frequent Amazon. On the other hand, Walmart.com attracts a complete type of customer. Sometimes sites specialize in certain products; other times, customers are simply seeking a different UX.

In any case, each channel has a unique customer base, and you don’t want to miss out on any of them. Listing Mirror understands the differences in the major listing sites and will tailor your listings to fit each site you use. So while each channel listing is synched with all the others, they’re not identical clones. Each is optimized to be the best listing it can be for the channel it’s on.

Don’t miss out on a single site

Give Listing Mirror a try today. There’s no time like the present. It’s risk-free for two weeks, so you’ve got nowhere to go but up!

The new year is approaching, and that means there are tons of ever-evolving, newer, exciting and amazing possibilities waiting to be discovered and embraced.

You’re excited, your team is passionately looking forward to 2019 too and your clients can’t wait to benefit again from your products or services. The stage is set!

But wait…

Have you set your business goals straight? Do you have a stronger, better and more competitive business strategy in place for the new year? These are all questions you need to ask before moving into the new year.

Never ever make the mistake of getting ‘too comfortable’ in your comfort-zone and assuming that things will move along smoothly in 2019 just as they did last year or this year. There are some serious mistakes will break down your business which you surely need to know.

In business, goal setting encourages participants to put in a substantial effort. Also, because every member has defined expectations for their role, little room is left for inadequate, marginal effort to go unnoticed.

Thus, as a business owner/entrepreneur, it is your responsibility to make sure proper goals are set with an effective business strategy so that your team can perform optimally while growing your business and increasing revenues.

Here are some beneficial tips on how to do so successfully

1. SMART APPROACH

A highly effective goal-setting process of making goals more powerful is the SMART technique. SMART stands for:

S – Specific (or Significant goals).

M – Measurable (or Meaningful goals).

A – Attainable (or Action-Oriented goals).

R – Relevant (or Rewarding goals).

T – Time-bound (or Trackable goals).

For example, instead of having “build an online business” as a goal, it’s more powerful to use the SMART goal “To build a global online brand in the Digital Marketing niche by December 31, 2019.” Obviously, this will only be attainable if a lot of preparation has been completed beforehand!

How well do you prepare?

• State each goal as a positive statement – Express your goals positively – “Execute this technique well” is a much better goal than “Don’t make this stupid mistake.”
• Be precise: Set precise goals, putting in dates, times and amounts so that you can measure achievement. If you do this, you’ll know exactly when you have achieved the goal and can take complete satisfaction from having achieved it.
• Set priorities – When you have several goals, give each a priority. This helps you to avoid feeling overwhelmed by having too many goals and helps to direct your attention to the most important ones.
• Write goals down – This crystallizes them and gives them more force.
• Keep operational goals small – Keep the low-level goals that you’re working towards small and achievable. If a goal is too large, then it can seem that you are not making progress towards it.
• Set realistic goals – It’s important to set goals that you can achieve. All sorts of people (for example, employers, parents, media, or society) can set unrealistic goals for you. They will often do this in ignorance of your own desires and ambitions.

2. CREATIVE THINKING

Determining your goals helps you to establish a direction for your business. It’s much easier to make the right day-to-day choices when you can refer back to your five-year goals and ask yourself whether that choice would move you toward your long-term goals.

This is where the power of creative thinking comes into play. As an entrepreneur, creatively thinking allows clearly defined goals to take you beyond running the routine aspects of your business and allow you to build the future you really want. You essentially become the ‘creator’ of your own evolutionary path.

Where do you see your business five years from now?

There are several aspects of your business you may want to develop.

Thinking outside the box, being creative, learning new and interesting strategies or techniques, attending seminars and conferences, reading books, etc are all ways to get those creative juices flowing!

3. DEFINE CUSTOMER’S NEEDS

This is where a lot of businesses and entrepreneurs fail. It is important to realize that customer needs change year to year. For example, what smartphone consumers wanted in 2014 may not be relevant in 2019.

A need is a desire that causes a customer to buy a product. If customers buy products to satisfy needs, then they needs to provoke customers to buy products. But this definition is vague; it doesn’t give any direction to product teams or market researchers on how to understand what customers want.

Needs are therefore constantly evolving, and understanding, defining, identifying and exploiting them is key in business!

However good your product or service is, the simple truth is that no-one will buy it if they don’t want it or believe they don’t need it. And you won’t persuade anyone that they want or need to buy what you’re offering unless you clearly understand what it is your customers really want.

Every business needs a reason for their customers to buy from them and not their competitors. This is called a Unique Sales Proposition (USP).

Your USP can be identified by completing the phrase “Customers will buy from me because my business is the only…”

Your USP can change as your business or your market changes, and you can have different USPs for different types of customers.

For example, a stationery store could offer a free same-day delivery service for its business customers within a local area – an effective USP for businesses that need fast delivery!

4. DESIGN A MONTHLY TASK MAP

Devising a monthly task map enables you and your team to stay on track, keep focus, maintain objectives, utilize time, money and resources the right way while being productive and meeting your customer’s needs in a timely and effective fashion.

Think of it as a monthly roadmap, a compass that keeps you in line and enables you to utilize the GPS of your goals for 2019 in a successful manner.

5. TRACK ALL PERFORMANCES

Tracking performance is crucial in understanding where you are and where you’re going! It enables you ( the business owner) in focusing your resources and efforts in an optimized way.

Make sure you implemented KPI strategies (Key Performance Indicators) to measure and track your business’s performance in the current year so that adjustments and changes can be made for 2019, enabling you to successfully tweak and enhance performance by knowing what has been working for you and what hasn’t been.

Some ways to set the business goals are:

• Look at your business’s financial statements
• Check customer satisfaction
• Keep track of how many new customers you get on average
• Conduct performance reviews
• Stay current on the market
• Assess your own expectations

2019 looks set to be a big year for online businesses, particularly those in the eCommerce industry. With the powerful growth of Amazon and an increase in retail sales globally, one thing is certain: influence your customers is the new currency!

If you can effectively capture your audience by influencing their decision making, you can have a successful year in business for 2019.

Do you know why your customers are buying from you? Is it your products—the style and quality of your handmade work?

Look deeper and you will find that there are many other factors in making a sale that you can use in building your sales volume. It’s no secret that emotions are powerful factors that move people into action and cause them to make a purchase.

To increase your sales, you must understand and appeal to them emotionally. And that can only happen when you successfully and consistently influence your customers- the right way!

And if you’re a virtual assistant, you surely need to dig in it with great detail so that you can meet your customer’s expectations successfully.

Here are a few business tips for 2019 on how you can apply effective influencing strategies and results to your potential customers:

1. Understanding Customers’ Preferences

You might believe your product or service is meant to help customers a certain way. But none of that matters if your product or service is not tailored to help customers ‘their way’; the way they prefer and expect. After all, in the end, it is the customers who are the end-users or consumers of your product or service. Their tastes, wants, needs, preferences, unique desires and necessities are crucial in driving your business forward with higher revenues.

You can achieve this by identifying customer trends, buying patterns, market or industry fluctuations, etc through conducting research and surveys.

Also, reach out to your potential customers directly through email marketing, face to face conversations, and other modes of outreach to gather first-hand raw data and information on what their preferences entail.

2. Helpful and Authentic Delivery

Make your customers and/or potential clients feel uniquely special. Smile and truly welcome your customer. Exchange pleasantries without going to a hard sell first. Your attitude must be one of friendly service and interest in them. Be helpful and authentic in your approach.

Offer lots of information. Consumers look for trustworthy, knowledgeable individuals to educate them on a purchase. Trust is the most important factor leading to long-term relationships and repeats sales.

Hence, if you can effectively and authentically deliver your professional value proposition (and not just the paid-for products or services), then you can be sure you’ve positively influenced your customers in the right direction!

3. Establish Friendly Engagement

Sales, marketing and running a successful business in the real world (be it online or offline) is all about building rapport, cementing trust, creating a sense of camaraderie, instilling respect and evoking interest through empathy.

If you can accomplish that with your prospective clients or current customer base, you will win their brand loyalty for years to come. Why? Because as with all human beings, the ability to showcase compassion, care and genuineness are key pillars upon which any human interaction is built, let alone business!

Be friendly, while keeping your conduct professional.

Be empathetic while maintaining your business objectives and not compromising your values as an establishment.

4. Give Insights to Uplift Their Business

Customers love it when you prove to them that their business is important to you, that their livelihood and income is your foremost concern.

Making customers believe (and witness it themselves) that their time, money, resources and business goals are ‘yours’, is an important way to establish a mutual sense of ownership.

Provide additional help, insights, guidance, direction, advice, and suggestions on how various elements of your client’s business can be improved and further strengthened. Don’t always make it about money or strictly business; be their confidant, their best friend, their partner in the journey.

They will not only thank you for it, not only will they be loyal to you, but they will also continually reward you by referring your services to others within their social, private and professional circles.

In the end, as they say, business is not ‘what you know’, it is who you know! It’s all about leveraging, networking, growing and scaling, and you can attain that by treating your customers like royalty, thus influence your customers and start your route to ‘winning’ in 2019!

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One of the biggest most liberating and truly fulfilling feelings one can ever experience in a lifetime – is being your own boss. Working when you want, how you want, where you want – from anywhere in the world. That’s true freedom and true liberty!

So, if you want to start a business by becoming your own boss, but don’t know where to start, don’t worry you are not alone. Like yourself, many people would rather create work they love, constructed to fit with their own life goals.

No matter what the motivation is to be your own boss, you can start today by overcoming the bossy struggle and winning with a stellar business attitude!

A perfect real-life example of being your own boss is to see Urtasker Team and see how everyone is doing great in their niches.

Here are a few exclusive pointers and effective tips to get started and be on the road to becoming your own boss:

1. Identify Your Business Goals

Without knowing where you’re going, you will never know where to start. Identifying your business goals enables you to carve a path and a map to travel on.

Give yourself permission to explore. Be willing to look at different facets of yourself (your personality, social styles, age) and listen to your intuition. We tend to ignore intuition even though deep down we often know the truth.

Ask yourself “What gives me energy even when I’m tired?” It is important to know what your business goals entail.

Does your business seek to solve a problem by creating solutions? Are your goals based on creating tremendous value for your audiences/consumers so they can benefit from your products and services effectively?

A business plan is a great way to accomplish this. A business plan will help you gain clarity, focus, and confidence. A plan does not need to be more than one page. As you write down your goals, strategies and action steps, your business becomes real.

Ask yourself the following questions:

• What am I building?
• Who will I serve?
• What is the promise I am making to my customers/clients and to myself?
• What are my objectives, strategies and action plans (steps) to achieve my goals?

2. Create Your Future Image

It is critical that you start ‘visualizing’ your future self. If you’re vying to become your own boss, you have to have the correct business attitude. And an effective business attitude automatically entails ‘knowing yourself’, cementing your image within your own mind and that of the audiences upon which you’ll be projecting it.

Your future image relies heavily on your innovative foresight, your ability to dream, visualize and craft brand imagery, tone, voice and style that best represents your entrepreneurial purpose.

3. Know What You Can Deliver

Be realistic, practical and measured in your expectations and objectives. For example, if you’re good at graphic designing, it doesn’t necessarily mean you’ll be just as great at content writing. Know your strengths and weaknesses! Do a SWOT Analysis on your own skills set so you can identify, understand and apply what you’re good at, by delivering consistently to your clients with 100% quality work.

Here are a few ways you can accomplish this:

Do What You Know: Have you been laid off or want a change? Look at work you have done for others in the past and think about how you could package those skills and offer them as your own services or products.

Do What Others Do: Learn about other businesses that interest you. Once you have identified a business you like, emulate it.

Solve a Common Problem: Is there a gap in the market? Is there a service or product you would like to bring to the market? (Note: This is the highest risk of the three approaches.) If you choose to do this, make sure that you become a student and gain knowledge first before you spend any money.

4. Plan More With Less Resources

Planning is crucial. Without planning, you’ll be shooting darts in the dark. For example, before you spend money, find out if people will actually buy your products or services. This may be the most important thing you do.

You can do this by validating your market. In other words, who, exactly, will buy your products or services other than your family or friends? What is the size of your target market? Who are your customers? Is your product or service relevant to their everyday life? Why do they need it?

There are free resources available for planning and research. Read industry articles with data (Google the relevant industry associations) and read Census data to learn more. However, the most important way to get this information is to ask your target market/customers directly and then listen.

5. Value Time and Be Time-Focused

Time is money, and in the cutthroat world of business, it will be your most valuable asset.

If you’re aspiring to be your own boss (and a successful one), you need to treat your time (and that of others) with the utmost care, value, respect, and generosity.

Being time-focused allows you to prioritize your everyday life, invest the right amount of effort and focus on things that matter and measure your progress effectively.

A minute saved, is a minute earned. Always remember that!

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Want to be successful as an Amazon Seller? Start your Amazon Business Journey!

Well, it’s not rocket science. If you’re looking to start a consistently profitable, self-regulating and efficiently ever-green Amazon business, there are certain elements that everyone needs to be well-versed in.

The internet age has provided a whirlwind of opportunities for every hardworking dreamer that wants to fly without wings. Much like the infamous Gold Rush of the 1800s, the world eCommerce and internet has proven to be the holy grail for visionaries and go-getters.

Hence, today, with its low barrier to entry, Amazon has quickly become one of the most popular routes to business ownership.

So, whether you want to generate a side income or eventually scale operations to make a living off your business, one of the best places to start selling your products is on Amazon!

Here are some tips on how to effectively embark on your Amazon business journey and other fundamental facets that can either make or break your Amazon business.

1. Cut Startup Costs

With rising costs, it’s become more difficult for online e-commerce business owners to boost profits while keeping prices competitive. In this type of situation, it’s easy to focus on generating more revenue, but that’s only half of the profit equation – reducing costs is the other.

In fact, reducing the operational cost of your Amazon business is the most critical aspect when it comes to maintaining a healthy, self-regulating and growing enterprise.

For Amazon business owners, the overhead costs are little as compared to running a brick-and-mortar physical store. And the best part is that there are various ways that entrepreneurs can cut online eCommerce operational costs of business, thereby boosting online revenues. One of the best ways to reduce these costs is through outsourcing.

A good Virtual Assistant can be the difference between a productive a non-productive small business. By outsourcing administrative and non-core tasks through a virtual assistant, Amazon businesses can free up their time to maximize business efforts and results, while cutting down on startup costs.

2. Cross-Referencing Selling and Cost Prices

It’s important to avoid wasting your startup costs and resources by not being careless in your pricing and selling strategies.

Take the time to amply research your product market, niche, and category.

Analyze your competitors, watch their pricing and promotions.

Read the reviews and testimonials from customers who have bought similar products like the one you’re selling via your Amazon listing.

Cross-reference the selling price with the cost price to you, ensure there’s a healthy margin of difference between the two, so that you make the profit when a unit is sold, instead of merely breaking even or worse suffering loss!

3. Utilize the Power of Amazon FBA Calculator

If you’re looking to be successful on Amazon, it is important to understand the beauty of FBA. Amazon offers great quality and delivery, which is why consumers are so loyal to the company.

Having Amazon on your side, organizing orders and handling behind-the-scenes work through Fulfillment by Amazon will undoubtedly attract more buyers and boost your sales.

Now, it is utmost crucial to keep calculating these fees both before you sign up for this service but also over the course of the selling process in order to ensure that FBA is still profitable for you.

The main things you should be keeping track of include:

• ‘Starting costs’ including shipping, photos, samples
• ‘Changing costs’ including FBA fees and returns
• ‘Marketing costs’ including paying for clicks and ad campaigns

4. Don’t Worry About Big Branding

As a startup Amazon business, you don’t need to concern yourself at this stage with big branding.

Focus on the important things such as sourcing the product, quality, customer service, PPC, copywriting a powerful Product Listing, and a seamless buying experience for the customer.

Those are key and fundamental areas which form the very basis of your business at its early startup stages, and you need to constantly remind yourself of that truth!

Big branding can always come later – if the need ever be. Right now focus on your strengths, work on your weakness, outsource work to an experienced Virtual Assistant agency and divert your resources + energy to growing your business, keeping customers happy and getting positive feedback!

5. Improve Your Bestseller Ranking

And last but not least, it is utterly critical that you understand the importance and crucial role of rankings on Amazon. They are the money shot! They are what can make or break a great product and prevent you from earning profits that could have been rightly yours!

Fill out as much of your product listing page as possible, using as many keywords as possible. Use FBA to automate customer satisfaction. Find ways to encourage customer reviews, engage with a happy or disgruntled customer by being honest and sincere, and do everything you can to keep your customers satisfied at all times. Above all:

More sales = higher rankings = more sales!

That’s the cycle.

Moreover, ranking on Amazon is easier than ranking on Google because you’re essentially cutting the work in half. They only use internal factors to determine how a product ranks. Backlinks, social media, domain authority. These are all things you don’t need to worry about on Amazon.

Good luck then for your Amazon business journey. 🙂

As a marketer online, you’ll offer fin tod yourselves questioning whether or not you’re doing great in your field. However, it all boils down to marketing intelligence in the end. Do you have it?

Your ‘marketing intelligence’ acts as a ceiling that limits the growth of your wealth. As you raise your marketing intelligence, you raise the ceiling on what’s financially possible for you. Your marketing intelligence sets the context for your investment success – or lack thereof.

A little known fact about marketing intelligence is that it grows and compounds just like money. The effect is a ‘multiplicative’ one – not an additive one. Each new tidbit of information connects to all the other knowledge which multiplies. It doesn’t just add up, but it grows geometrically by multiplying.

As an online marketer, your goal should be to make regular knowledge-deposits every week into your marketing intelligence account, just like you make monthly deposits into your investment accounts.

When you do this, your marketing intelligence will multiply and grow ahead of the growth in your investment accounts to help create a lifetime of financial security.

Here are some crucial guidelines and important tips to successfully increase your marketing intelligence and be the best darn marketer out there!

1. Know Your Marketing Role

This is very important. You cannot market your products and services ( or that of your clients) to prospective consumers and global audiences if you don’t (or fail to) understand your fundamental role.

As an online marketer, you need to understand that Marketing plays an important role in establishing relationships between customers and the organizations offering to the market. The marketing function is also tasked with the branding of the organization, participation in publicity activities, advertising and customer interaction through feedback collection.

2. Learn Marketing Strategies

Knowledge is power. And ignorance is not bliss! Keeping this golden life formula in mind, no matter how skilled or experienced you think you are as a marketer, it is important to continually learn, develop, cement and enhance marketing strategies in an ever-evolving and cutthroat competitive industry.

Attend webinars, seminars, conferences, masterminds. Read books, listen to podcasts and do your research in learning as much as you can. Be hungry for learning!

3. Build Your Skills and Grow Your Portfolio

As a marketing specialist, your foremost goal should be to be the best at what you do.

Marketing is a science; it uses human psychology, buying trends, consumer behavior, social dynamics and many other elements in order to successfully convey the value proposition of a product or service to prospective buyers.

You need to be able to build such skills on a constant basis, through consistent polishing and enhancement. Invest in courses, learning materials and attend classes if you must!

Grow your portfolio by reaching out to clients online and offline, and offering free work in return for a testimonial. That is how you grow and amplify your worth as a marketer!

4. Start With Smaller Projects

Build your momentum by taking on smaller projects and working your way up the ladder.

Taking on smaller tasks and projects makes it more digestible for you, enabling you to concentrate your focus and key skills in a measured and effective way, rather than succumbing to intimidation and overwhelm with bigger projects right away.

5. Never Stop Learning

Marketing and the ability to persuade people to ‘act’ on what you’re saying about your product, service or value proposition – is about pulling at the strings of the heart.

Human beings are emotional creatures. They love stories, as it helps them visualize possibilities beyond their imagination. It helps them come out of their mental comfort zones. It inspires them and evokes the desire to act.

Hence, the need to learn such marketing fundamental, storytelling, persuasive techniques, and psychological triggers are the utmost key!

Yes, you will make mistakes along the way, but failures and pitfalls are all part of the learning process! Sooner or later, you’ll begin to see a massive difference and start to reap the benefits of all that learning and knowledge!

On a final note, online marketing is a great but difficult tool to handle. Urtasker is doing great in its online marketing strategies and hence is one of the best online marketers for delivering Virtual Assistant Services and Amazon Listing Optimization Services.

Everyone makes mistakes, and it’s no different for entrepreneurs either launching a new business or already running one. Getting a little tripped up here and it is natural, but for an online business or eCommerce seller, even little errors can become severely costly down the line.

So, what do you do?

You plan and preemptively prepare yourself so that you can easily navigate the business highway and reach your destination, without taking the wrong exits or worse – crashing into something!

Here are some critical business mistakes you can start avoiding today – for both short and long term of your entrepreneurial life cycle and online business journey:

1. Outsource What You Can’t Manage

Whether you’re a small business online or offline, you can never overlook the importance of getting an “extra set of hands” to take the burden off you! As a business owner, there is sometimes a lack of self-awareness. Entrepreneurs sometimes fall into the habit of micromanaging and not delegating or outsourcing work they can’t handle.

They try to do everything that they possibly can to cut costs, but really, in the long run, they should have outsourced the things that they are not good at and focused on their strengths. If you are aiming for multiple targets at once, you are very unlikely to hit one!

2. Automate Important Functions

In the world of online business and eCommerce, automation plays a crucial role. When you’re dealing with thousands of people worth of traffic and operating on the level of a global audience, automation makes your life easier. It helps to systemize and mechanize vital areas such as emails, sales funneling, lead capturing and so on. Once such areas are set in place through an automated system, your business becomes self-regulating and you can focus on other important things to grow and scale.

3. Offer Services Instead of Products

The benefits of offering services over products is the beauty of ‘intangibility’. You don’t need to manufacture units, warehouse them, ship or distribute them, or worry about refunds and exchanges. Otherwise, all of which can take tons of your time effort, money, and resources.

In the world of online business, services can be easier to scale and influence your customers worldwide – devoid of boundaries and borders, with the lesser hassle and physical framework required.

4. Ignore the Haters

“Haters are going to hate”, as the saying goes! People hate because they cannot digest other people’s success; it hurts their ego and makes them feel lesser knowing they’ve not done as well as someone else. Hence, they vent their frustration in anger, fueled by jealousy and powered by insecurity. Let them be.

You have an empire to build, dreams to fulfill and a legacy to create. Their hate only makes them small. Your ambition only makes you big! So keep focusing on what’s important and ignore the haters.

5. Implement Market Segmentation

This is one of those critical business mistakes that many business owners ignore and hence suffer tremendously down the road. Market segmentation is the process of dividing a market of potential customers into groups, or segments, based on different characteristics.

The segments created are composed of consumers who will respond similarly to marketing strategies and who share traits such as similar interests, needs, or locations.

Knowing, applying and benefiting from Market Segmentation strategies is key in growing your business and targeting critical demographics that respond the best to your services.

6. Be Timely and Be Responsive

Time is money for any business. And for consumers, time is an image.
Just as responding and tackling everyday business situations in a timely + responsive manner is crucial in upholding the health and stability of your business, so is timeliness and responsiveness when dealing with your customers.

It is very important to be timely, efficient, responsive and empathetic in all your business dealings within your company (your employees, stakeholders, etc) and outside it (your vendors, customers, and contractors)

7. Market Research

Operating a business without market research is like shooting darts in the dark. Market research. It is essentially the process that links the producers, customers, and end-users to a company through information used to identify and define marketing opportunities and problems.

It enables a business owner to generate, refine, and evaluate marketing actions; monitor marketing performance; and improve understanding of marketing as a process. Not having solid market research in place is one of the gravest of business mistakes you can commit.

8. Be Market-Competitive in Your Services

Your services are your biggest asset. Treat them like gold. And that means offering market-competitive pricing, value, and quality to your prospective customers. Being market-competitive in your services is critical in getting ahead of your competitors and being ‘visible’ to prospective clients or customers in a consistent manner.

If you want to learn from a live example, look Urtasker as the best example for successful business management.