If you are new to the online business arena you need to understand that search engine ranking is very important in helping to make your home based business succeed. Just because you have a website does not guarantee that you will be able to sell your products or services. To succeed in this arena it is important to drive more people to visit your webpage and therefore generate revenue for you. The more people exposed to your products and service, the more chances you have to be successful. The online internet business world is a very competitive one. Your marketing strategy is to make certain that you get more people to visiting your website than that of your competitors.Here are just a few of my favorites:ARTICLE MARKETING:Article marketing is by far my favorite marketing method. It can play a very important role the marketing strategy for your home based business. What I like about this is that it is FREE. It is easy and it is a great way to help your business to become known on the internet. How it works is you write small articles on subjects of your choosing that you then publish/upload to one or many of the websites that specialize in article hosting articles. Two of the better known sites for this are EzineArticles or ArticlesBase. When writing your articles try to come up with helpful and interesting ideas. Also it is very important to to include your website site information at the bottom of article. The object is to get people doing internet searches to read your articles and click on the your website link. Over time your articles can also make you popular on the Internet and this will allow your business to develop a presence on the Internet.VIDEO ARTICLES: Video article marketing is another one of my favorite marketing methods and it ties in closely with ARTICLE WRITING. The real beauty of this method is that it is pretty easy to do and most importantly FREE. Heck you already have the video script because it is based on an article you already wrote. What you do is choose an article that you have written, convert it into a video and post it on one of the free video hosting sites that exist on the web today. Some of the best known are YouTube, Metacafe and DailyMotion.com. A good video will give you potential access to millions of customers and is very effective in driving traffic to your website. And we know that more traffic means more revenue.BANNER ADS:Banner advertising costs money but can be a very effective internet marketing method because it can create website traffic quickly and can offer a good return on your investment. Buying banner ads is a good way to help home based businesses build product and service awareness. As you start to drive more traffic to your website through your banner ads and get more of your targeted market to purchase your products and services you will truly see the value of your initial investment in this method.PAY PER CLICK: This is one of the more popular and successfully used online marketing strategies but it does cost money. Pay Per Click advertising or PPC for short offers targeted advertising, fast results and precision metrics. You can create a campaign and have results within one hour. What Pay Per Click advertising is, is bidding on a key phrase to display your ad when someone enters the phrase in a search engine. You only pay if the visitor clicks on your ad. Unfortunately, it has the potential to suck the money out of your pocket faster than a New York minute. Pay Per Click can be very effective for home based businesses that are looking for fast results. It is highly effective in driving your targeted market to purchase your products or services.CUSTOMER SERVICE:One of the best methods for getting new customers for your online business will always be to give wonderful customer service. The better your customer service the stronger your referrals. And anyone in business knows and understands just how powerful word of mouth referrals can be to the success of business. This is really a no brainer.There are many ways to accomplish this goal of successful online marketing. Some of them are free and others cost money. As a business owner you will need to research and make your decisions based on your budget what works best for you.
How Do I Market My Home Based Business?
Indian Education Sector – Outsourcing of Services by Trust to Associated Services Companies
The formal regulated education sector in India broadly comprises of schools (often classified as K-12 – kindergarten to 12th) and higher education institutions. While India has been proactive on liberalization, the education sector has remained largely untouched by the reforms process. Archaic legislations mandate all formal educational institutions in India to be run as ‘not-for-profit’ centres by not-for-profit entities viz. a society, trust or a section 25 company. Any surplus funds generated in the process of running K-12 schools or higher educational institutions have to be ploughed back into the same school or educational institutions under the same trust and no dividends can be distributed to the members of the not-for-profit entities. Further, the constitution of the trust/society should be such that it does not vest control in a single individual or members of a family, i.e., the trust/society should not be proprietary in character and the educational institutions should operate in ‘not for-profit’ mode.
The ‘not-for-profit’ mandate is the single largest deterrent that has kept serious corporate activity at bay in the otherwise attractive K-12 segment. Most schools in India are standalone and any chains till recently were usually set up by private charitable, political and/or religious groups – including Vidya Bharti schools (affiliated to the right wing political organization RSS) with more than 18,000 schools, Dayanand Anglo Vedic (DAV) schools with approximately 600 schools and Chinmaya Vidyalaya with approximately 75 schools among others.
Of late, corporate houses looking to transform K-12 schools into ‘profit-making’ proposition have been using indirect means like lease rentals, management fees, fees for providing support and ancillary services etc. to extract the surplus locked in the trust. Taking a cue from these schools, the Indian education sector has been witnessing some corporate activity in the K-12 space on similar lines, but in formal version of these age-old structures. Stringent regulations are being dealt through an innovative two-tier structure, which complies with the ‘trust’ regulations and enables promoters (on corporate level) to generate profits from the venture. In this way, the ‘surplus’ profit flows to the services entity in the form of rental/fees for providing the land and services and is at the company’s disposal to be then distributed as dividend or used to fund another venture.
It is however important that the relationship between the trust and the associate services company and the infrastructure and management company should be carefully structured so that it conforms to the education and tax rules and regulations.
A charitable institution such as the trust is entitled to exemptions from income tax in terms of section 11 of the Income Tax Act, 1961 (“IT Act”) subject to compliance with the requirements enumerated therein. The income of the trust which is exempted from tax includes the income derived from property, held under trust wholly for charitable or religious purposes to the extent to which the income is applied in India.
The terms ‘property held under trust’ include a business undertaking whose business is incidental to the attainment of the objectives of the trust and separate books of accounts are maintained by such trust in respect of such business. For purposes of claiming exemption, 85% of the total income of the trust is required to be applied towards the object of the trust itself and the trust must not accumulate more than 15% of the income as the excess accumulation, if any, will be liable to income tax.
To avail tax exemptions from income generated by the trust from running and operating schools, the trust would need to ensure that the predominant activity of the trust is to serve a charitable purpose of promotion of education and not earn profit. The trust can charge a reasonable fee from the students as earning of profits per se does not vitiate exemption granted by the tax authorities. The Supreme Court of India confirms this view by holding that “the decision on the fee to be charged must necessarily be left to the private educational institution that does not seek or is not dependent upon any funds from the government.”
However corporate structuring should evaluate the implications of section 13(1)(c) of the IT Act. In the event part of the income or any property of the concerned trust is during the previous year used or applied, directly or indirectly, for the benefit of certain persons such as the author/founder of trust; any trustee or manager of trust; any relative of any author/founder; or any concern in which any of the persons has a substantial interest (“Concerned Persons”), then such income so used or applied will not be excluded from the total income of trust for the previous year.
Income or property of trust will be deemed to have been used or applied for the benefit of the Concerned Persons, inter alia, if -
(i) any part of the income or property of the trust is or continues to be lent to any of the Concerned Persons without any adequate security or interest or both;
(ii) any land, building or other property of the trust is or continues to be made available to any of the Concerned Persons without charging adequate rent or other compensation;
(iii) any amount is paid by way of salary, allowance or otherwise to any of the Concerned Persons for services rendered and the amount so paid is in excess of what may be reasonably paid for such services;
(iv) the services of the trust are made available to the Concerned Persons without adequate remuneration or compensation;
(v) any property is sold by or on behalf of trust to any of the Concerned Persons for consideration which is less than adequate;
(vi) any property is purchased by the trust from the Concerned Persons which is more than adequate; etc.
In view of the above, expenses incurred by the trust for paying rentals and services fees to associated services companies would need to be benchmarked against service fee paid by other trusts for services of a like nature so as not to be perceived as being unjustified and in excess of what is reasonably paid for such services to ensure continued tax exemptions. If expenses made by the trust are found to be excessive of what may be reasonably paid for such services, the tax authority may disallow such expenses made for the benefits of the Concerned Persons or even deny the tax exemption under section 11 of the IT Act and bring the net receipts of the trust less justified expenses to tax under the head “income from other sources”.
The structure, discussed hereinabove, undoubtedly, runs the risk of being questioned by the regulatory authorities in view of education being a ‘socially sensitive’ sector in India, more so at K-12 level. However, the structure (which is at variance to the spirit of the ‘not-for-profit’ concept) has been in existence for a long time in the K-12 segment and the model has been adopted by several players in the education sector.
A Simple Product Creation and Product Launching Formula
If you tried to think of people involved in product creation, who would come to mind? You may think of Edison, Franklin, or maybe Henry Ford. Would you ever think of yourself as someone who can create a quality product? Product creation is actually relatively easy and product launching is not that tough either! If you follow a few easy to understand steps, you could be starting the product creation and product launching process sooner than you think.
The first step in creating your information product is to know and understand your market. This can be very time-consuming, especially if you are unsure of what to do or where to look to know your market. Studying your niche market and understanding the buzz words and buying patterns can ease the process dramatically. Personally, I would recommend networking with someone who has had success in the niche market you are considering and learn from their results. If they are into product creation and not very business savvy expect some hesitation. If they only sell products and have nothing to do with product launching or product creation you may your first affiliate (sales person)! Something else you can use to find hot trends is with the Google Trends tool.
The second step is the product creation process. Take your niche market and brainstorm ideas and topics relating to it. There are a lot of product launching contests going on recently relating to a newly created internet marketing tool. There are so many aspects to the mentioned niche that literally, and unfortunately, anything can be considered an Internet Marketing tool. The reason that anyone can basically create an Internet Marketing tool is because of something called Private Label Rights products.
What I use private label rights products for, and highly recommend them in this specific manner, is to cure writer’s block especially when it is lingering. Many people base their entire product creation and product launching on a private label rights product. This is where you can start to shine and build a strong brand for yourself. If you set goals for yourself, short-term goals to be exact, you can see your product creation come into being much faster and there is a good chance with less revision needed. If you keep hitting time restraint road blocks; however there is nothing wrong with a slow and steady approach, you can consider outsourcing portions of your project. Outsourcing can be an extremely huge benefit or just as great of a disaster.
You can find someone to outsource work to at a freelance site such as Guru.com or eLance.com. When reviewing proposals it is almost mandatory you perform a background check on them as you are in essence hiring them. Doing a background check on freelancers is as easy as asking for samples of their work and reviewing feedback on the freelance site from previous customers. Depending on the size and requirements of your project this can add up to a decent sized investment, so caution is very important. One tip I always recommend to people looking to hire an individual is to ask them what they can provide you that no one else can. This simple question gives them a chance to “toot their own horn” and acknowledge where they feel most competent as far as their skill set.
The final portion of the product creation and product launching formula is the launch. This can literally make or break the effort, time, and maybe (if you invested) money you put in to your project. There are numerous aspects to product launching and although their relevance is debated in terms to their effect, experts agree all must be followed. The person in your field who you asked for product advice from can help you substantially if you have kept in touch. If not, the first thing you need to do is to create a visually appealing website with flawless design work.
I also mentioned outsourcing before, this is one aspect of product launching I have little strength in and I always outsource this portion. The website does not have to be large however the content (ad copy in Internet Marketing) must be stellar and as perfect as possible. This is where advertising knowledge or experience is beneficial. When the site is set up you now put a lead capture form on your website.
I put two lead capture pages on all products I create on the internet and is one of the best methods of getting a solid start when you are in the product launching stage. When you gain information from a prospect or someone looking to get paid for referring sales you are able to provide them updates or specials. Many people abuse their prospect or affiliate lists by in turn emailing them with a new product daily and I find the recommendations to be totally unrelated to their original need, problem, or interest.
Another stage in the product launching stage is creating a free report or demo version of your product to entice the product to sign up to your email list. Using proper follow up with this can help generate numerous sales for you. One thing you need to ensure is that your free product completely relates to your main product that you are looking to sell.
You are now ready to advertise your product launching to customers as well as the opportunity to sell for affiliates. This is the single aspect that many product creations and launches fail on. It is actually not entirely difficult. One thing you can do is write articles (and a good amount of them) on topics relating to your product. I am a huge advocate of giving a solution in forums. When you join a forum you are normally offered the opportunity to create a signature. In your signature, you should enter the link to your opt-in or lead capture page. When you respond to posts, you are advertising your opportunity.
It is not impossible to create a product and it does not have to take a long time. You need to setup a plan and stick to it. If you get stuck, look at similar and successful products to your own and try and see how they did it. When you sit down and brainstorm you will be surprised with what you can imagine.