I just read a press release on a book by Dr. Dan Herman that puts a new spin on the 80/20 rule so far as developing a new product launch is concerned. You know the 80/20 rule — 80% jump onboard but only 20% do the work. Or, 80% of the sales comes from 20% of the clients. Or, maybe you’ve heard it this way 20% of the sales force products 80% of the sales. At any rate, we’re all familiar with the 80-20 rule as it applies to our endeavors.

Dr. Herman gives it a new twist. He says that 80% of any product or service destined to be a hit must be based on Familiarity — i.e. on characteristics that have been “tried and tested.” The other 20% must be based on the “Cool! Wow! Twisted!” or, in a word: innovative. The press release goes on to offer 8 more interesting aspects for creating and launching a marketing hit.

The book surprised me because it is full of valuable ideas and information that most people in business do not even consider. A reviewer on Amazon says it well: “Herman says that all of us in business read the same things and, in general, do the same things. Thus, we get to about the same place. To wit, we’re clones…. So we must outsmart the clones and this book gives us the tools that we don’t learn in school or books or the many ebooks we can buy online…. This is not a typical book with typical methods. It flies in the face of what we’re taught.”

Hmmmm …. who said you couldn’t teach an old dog new tricks? This book is full of surprises. I recommend it.

~Linda

There are many solutions to adding a shopping cart to an online merchant site. You may want a very personalized shopping cart for your portal and so will have to hire the expert services of a software programmer.

There are many online merchant solution service providers out there and can have your shopping cart software and payment gateway set up and running in a matter of days, but it is bound to cost you.

Then there are free online merchant solutions available such as the many online payment services. PayPal is one such solution and a very trusted one.

With the free online merchant solutions available you do not have to make a payment up front. These services charge you a percentage of the payments you receive online.

They have ready made software that is easy to install on your site. You just have to fill in an online form that requires some details of your business and payment procedures.

They will then provide you with software code that is generated instantly. You have to just copy and paste this code in the html code of you site.

Zen Cart: Building an Online Store the Zen Way

The online payment processor will guide you how to do this as well. When you are done, you will be able to accept payments from customers through credit cards and debit cards. The difference with the free payment processors and customized online merchant software is that the money will not be deposited into your bank directly.

The payment will go to the online free payment processors account and you will have to withdraw it from there to your bank account for which there will invariably be a charge.

These are good solutions for small online businesses as it beats paying huge software development costs.

Boosting your web traffic is very important if you want your web site to grow and get noticed by the audience you are targeting. Let’s go over some ways that you can boost your website traffic with the following easy steps.

1.  Submitting press releases - an excellent way to get traffic and people to look at your web site. There are paid and free press releases for you to choose from. Both have their advantages. If you are on a limited budget than go the free route. If you want quick traffic and responses than a paid press release is probably the best way to go.

2.  Contests are a way to drive traffic to your site. Everyone loves winning things and a contest is a way to get them to come to your web site and actually capture their email address which is an important way to get more traffic to your sites.

3.  Email signatures.  An email signature is a signature that is usually after your name in the body of an email. Most people will put a URL or a nice short link that will take them to a website. People tend to overlook these and the power that these really generate. Use them and an increase in traffic will follow.

4.  Write an e-book and give it away. Why write an e-book? Because an e-book can be embedded with links to your sites. This means that everyone who downloads a free e-book will see your links and click on them. Imagine you give away 10,000 e-books you will have your links in ten thousand hands that actually will probably read the book and click on some of the links. It’s a win-win situation for you.

5.  Trading articles with other web sites and blogs is another good way to bring traffic to your site. As people read these articles they will come back for more and you will have a loyal reader. Thus articles are a great way to keep people coming back and boosting traffic to your site.

6. Off-line promotion is something that more people are doing more than ever before. There was a time when people never did off-line advertising, because they didn’t think it would work. They are finding out that off-line promotion is something they should consider before saying no to it.

7.  Exchanging links is another real quick boost to your website traffic. People don’t realize that links can hurt you or help you. Getting good link exchange partners is crucial. Bad link exchange actually hurts you so you will have to make sure that the links you get are what you really want. For information about power linking.

8.  Search engine marketing is probably the one thing that more and more people are really working on harder. Search engines drive the most traffic to your sites so getting the best rankings or positions are crucial. Search engine marketing can either be done by you (if you understand it) or a company that specializes in it. Their are many good ones around so do your research.

9.  Posting on forums is an incredible way to get traffic.  Forums can get you links and get people talking about your web site probably quicker than anything. Imagine this:  If you post to ten forums a day with 10 posts with your URL as your signature your going to have tons of links out their and people are looking at them everyday. Forums will get you traffic and that’s what will drive more sales for you and get you better search engine rankings. You would be surprised on how many forum threads our listed in search engines.

10. Commenting on related blogs. The blogasphere is tremendous and there’s not a subject you can think of that hasn’t been blogged about. One good way to get traffic to your site is to visit blogs related to your niche, read a few blogs and make relevant comments. People will click on the links and you will get welcomed traffic from people who are interested in your niche.

For more tools to help you boost your website traffic.