Use Your Digital Army – Part 1

August 9, 2008 by Ari
Filed under Learn Search Engine Optimization, Search Optimization Series

Small Business Tools

There is nothing more expensive to a small business owner than his labor component. That is why many times you find yourselves doing a lot of the work of what would be a very good assistant or clerical help in general. If you do the math, even with minimum wages, even the most giving of small business owners cannot hire the necessary help for those tasks without paying out at least $18,000 a year after you include payroll and related taxes.

Much of what you find on a store shelf for email and contact management does little to help when the need requires precision. Many small business owners have ventured into retail stores to buy an email solution only to find it very “manual” despite its claims of automation and autonomy. The same thing goes for those credit card processing machines that require manual entry of every sale made.

But if you as a small business owner just focus in for a minute on a email/subscription solution; you will find that a PayPal and AWeber combination will completely fulfill your marketing and email objectives and automate your sales in the process.

Despite the familiarity with PayPal and its billing capability, it surprises many to find out that besides shopping carts and Buy Now buttons, PayPal also has a recurring subscription tool that lets you setup subscription buttons that you can easily incorporate into your email campaigns.

These buttons are not like the Buy Now and Shopping Cart functions usually associated with PayPal products. They are subscription buttons that allow you to choose many options including the giving of a free trial period before billing starts and allows you to determine the length of time for the subscriptions.

Now incorporate this feature with Aweber’s autorespond and auto email capability and what you have is the ability to send out emails regularly to your clients, prospects, or customers knowing full well that you are not just doing gratuitist mailings that have no way of monetizing your efforts. Many a small business owner has burned out trying the “newsletter” method of marketing because what they find is that they have put a lot of effort in creating the content for the newsletter, the expenses of printing and layout, and of course postage and mailing (plus labor if you had to get someone to do it).

Continued on Part 2