PSPINC Official Company Blog

The Importance of Research in Business

Apr

19

Research is important in almost all industries, but particularly in business. With the world constantly changing, the marketplace changes with it. To really make it, businesses have to keep up with those changes to stand out amongst their competitors. The easiest way to do that is to encourage an atmosphere of constant research. By that, businesses need to know how their niche industries are changing, what their customers are responding (and not responding) to, and what changes they can make to improve for their customers.

Businesses shouldn’t just research to stay up to date on things. What you’re really doing is figuring out what consumers will find important in the future. Trends, while they can come and go, are trends for a reason. It means enough people respond to it that it becomes an important facet of their everyday lives. The ones that stick are the ones you’ll need to pay attention to.

Beginning the Research Process

man sitting in front of a aptop while writing something down on paper in front of him

Researching, while it seems easy, has a process. When starting, you need to know what you need to research. There are two big reasons why when it comes to conducting marketing research: to solve a problem or to find an opportunity to exploit. The first reason is more indicative of the ebbs and flows of your business. If there’s a big problem within your niche industry that needs fixing, you’ll want to not only know about it, but you’ll also want to be the one to fix it. The second reason is one that your company will want to research regularly because I guarantee you, your competitors already are.

Then, you’ll want to do what’s called primary and secondary research. Secondary research, however, is a little easier to do. What it really entails is looking through previously completed studies and using them for what you need them for. Primary research consists of surveys, interviews, observations, focus groups, A/B testing, and questionnaires. From a business perspective, these efforts are done to learn more about your customers. An easy way to figure out how your customers feel about your company and what they’re left craving is to just ask them. PSPINC's Opinion Stand is a great and easy way to figure that out. All customers have to do is click on a smile icon to tell you how they feel, which they can access either through a unique QR code or on your website. Or they can embed a form on their website with InforMakers to conduct a survey after customers purchase a product/service.

Using Data to Your Advantage

a woman in a bathrobe and a towel in her hair while applying a skin care product on her face while looking in the mirror

After doing all that research, it’s then time to collect your data. More importantly, it’s time to sort your data and determine what’s relevant and what isn’t. There’s an abundance of information out there, but it’s what you do with it that can make a difference. One very successful example is Dove’s Real Beauty Campaign. In 2006, Dove released a commercial that showed the work that goes into creating a billboard. Namely, all the Photoshop work that completely transforms what a woman looks like. At the end of the video, it says “No wonder our perception of beauty is distorted”.

At the end of the day, it’s important to remember that customers are smart. They’re exposed to just as much media as we are. So, when it comes time for them to purchase, they’re more than willing to do the work of looking into your competitors to see if or how they’re performing in comparison. Whether it’s in the product/service quality, pricing difference, and/or how you’re promoting it. If your business takes the time and effort to do the necessary research, it’ll make things easier in the long run. You won’t struggle trying to keep up with the industry or your closest competitors because you’ll already be working on making those changes.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

The term "QR Code" is a registered trademark of DENSO WAVE INCORPORATED.

#blog #business #customers #data #digitalmarketing #dove #informakers #marketing #marketingdigital #marketingresearch #opinionstand #primaryresearch #realbeautycampaign #research #secondaryresearch #smallbusiness

PSPINC What’s New Newsletter Vol. 111 “10% Off All YourHost Plans”

Apr

14

YourHost is PSPINC’s hosting service that uses award-winning ShopSite tools to create easy and reliable e-commerce sites. This month, we’re running a promotion for customers to get 10% off on all our ShopSite plans.

Our YourHost page on the website now shows the discounted prices for each of our three plans and it will stay that way until the promotion ends at the end of the month. To get this deal, choose choose one of our three plans (Starter, Manager, or Pro) on the YourHost site. Then, enter the promo code, “SHOPSPRING10”, at checkout.

This promo code will only work until the end of this month, so get this deal while you can. For additional help on getting everything set up, we have an amazing support team who is always ready for your call.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#blog #business #businesstips #businesstools #customerservice #customersupport #ecommerce #hosting #newsletter #pspinc #pspincwhatsnewnewsletter #smallbusiness #tech #technology #web #webdevelopment #webhosting #websitebuilder #webtools #yourhost

Mobile App vs. Mobile-Optimized: Which One is Better for Your Business

Apr

12

With more than half (about 54.4%) of website traffic worldwide coming from mobile devices in 2021, making sure your site works on a mobile device is crucial. It not only has to function well but look aesthetically pleasing too. But with all the focus on mobile devices, businesses have started investing in developing an app. It guarantees that it’ll work well on a phone, as long as enough testing goes into the process. And the hope is that it’ll look good with so many people spending a lot of time and work creating it. So, which one’s better: a site that looks good on a mobile device or an app?

A Mobile App

a hand holding a mobile phone with apps displayed on the homescreen

A mobile app is a type of application software designed to run on a mobile device, which can also include tablets. But building one out takes a lot of time, effort, and money. If you’re building an app in-house, it takes some of the cost because it means you won’t have to hire a development partner, but the development process will still be costly. Not to mention the fact that it will consist of a much longer process compared to optimizing a site for mobile.

The app development process involves building out the concept behind the app, creating a layout for how it’ll function, designing it for a good user experience, testing it to determine where users may find friction in the process, and scanning for necessary bug fixes. Only then can the app go live. Even after that, it’ll still need to be monitored and updated consistently.

Despite the long and costly process, an app does have its advantages:

• Improves brand recognition
• Re-engages existing customers on a deeper level
• Keeps your business at the top of customers’ minds through mobile push notifications
• Presents a new opportunity for sales

Optimizing a Site for Mobile

a woman sitting cross-legged on a small thin mattress on the floor while looking at something on her phone

A site that works on a mobile device is vital for any business to make it today. Technically, every URL should work on a mobile device when users open it in a mobile browser. The difference between it working and optimizing it is making sure there isn’t any friction in the customer’s experience. For example, if you’ve ever opened a website just to see a cut-off image or been forced to zoom in or out to click on something, you probably didn’t stay on the site for long. After all, it looks outdated and unprofessional, which lowers the business’s credibility and deters you from going further.

To effectively optimize a site for mobile, your website not only needs to function, but it also needs to look nice too. But even when users access your business’ site on a desktop, the design should be clean without too many distractions. Thankfully, themes and templates offered by website builders already have this all figured out for you. Including WordPress, which comes as an easy install with all of PSPINC's web hosting options, Dreamersi, YourHost Neo, and Parcom. For users building their site from scratch, using a single or double column layout, effectively utilizing white space, and reducing the number of items in the navigation bar are things you should keep in mind when designing your site. Overall, businesses should be utilizing responsive design, which will adjust design element placements to fit in the available space when browser size changes.

Which One is Better for your Business?

two women sitting on a couch, showing each other what's on their phones

While it may seem obvious to choose a mobile-optimized site over a mobile app (based on the sheer time, effort, and money involved in the development process), there are times when using a mobile app is preferable. If your business has a product or service that causing some friction in their overall purchase experience, an app could fix those problems.

As an example, PSPINC is currently developing an app for DENREI, an invite-only social platform that uses email to interact with your online community. For now, users have to set up the email client using either Mozilla Thunderbird or Apple Mail. While it isn’t too hard of a task, it adds an extra step to the process that could potentially prevent users from moving forward. Given that it’s arguably the most important step in the process, PSPINC decided an app would be the best solution.

If you’re a business wondering if an app is the right choice for you, here are some questions to consider:

• Who is the target market? If your company’s audience skews a little younger, making your site mobile-friendly is the least you should be doing.
• What does the customer’s experience look like? Is there a step preventing them from converting them into paying or loyal customers? Is it something that can be solved with a mobile app?
• How likely is it your customer will download our app? If you’re going to put in the work needed to build a mobile app, you want to make sure people will download it.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#app #brand #branding #business #denrei #digitalmarketing #marketing #marketingdigital #mobile #mobileapp #mobiledevice #pspinc #pushnotifications #smallbusiness #webdesign #webdeveloper #webdevelopment #webhosting #websitedesign #wordpress

Why your Company Needs a Password Manager with Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA)

Mar

29

Over the last few years, cybersecurity has become increasingly important. With more employees working from home, it’s made organizations and their employees even more susceptible to cyber-attacks. Because of this, it’s become increasingly important for companies to protect themselves from potential hacks. According to a 2020 Data Breach Investigation Report, compromised passwords caused 81% of hacking-related breaches that year.

One easy but effective way to protect your company from cyber-attacks is to invest in a password manager, which allows a user or multiple users to store, manage, and share passwords securely using cloud-based software. The best feature a password management system has to offer is the fact that most of them use some form of multi-factor authentication (MFA) to ensure their safety. For users, this means confirming you are who you say you are through one or more different methods.

Types of Multi-Factor Authentications (MFAs)

man in a suit looking at his phone in one hand and a to-go coffee cup in his other hand

The three most common types of MFAs are knowledge, possession, or inherence MFAs. For knowledge-based MFAs, this includes answering a personal security question (like where your favorite vacation spot is or the name of your first pet). Or it can be an additional password. For possession-based MFAs, this includes using a security card, access badge, or something similar or entering a one-time password (OTP) sent to either your email or your phone via SMS or mobile app. Lastly, there’s inherence MFAs, which includes using something that is uniquely yours like your fingerprint, your face, or your voice.

Other types of MFAs include location-based MFAs and adaptive/risk-based authentication. Location-based MFAs look at your location (as specified) by checking a user’s IP address. If it doesn’t match what’s specified on a whitelist, it can block a user’s access to the account or require an OTP. Adaptive/risk-based authentication is similar except it only requires the use of an OTP if contextual and behavioral clues don’t match previous activity. For example, if a user is trying to access the account in a different location or a different time from the last time you logged in, they’ll send an OTP to the user’s phone in addition to providing a username and password to ensure the right person’s accessing the account.

The Importance of a Password Management System

a man and woman each on their own laptops sitting next to each other as well as another woman

The entire password management system should be a vital part of protecting an organization’s cyber security. With internet hacks becoming more commonplace, Microsoft engineers even stated in March of 2021 that 99.99% of account compromises they deal with could have been blocked by an MFA solution. Plus, password managers help increase productivity and flexibility. While it’s easy to advise employees to choose strong passwords, it’s just as easy for them to forget them. In fact, 50% of helpdesk support inquiries are about resetting passwords according to the Gartner Group. So, it’s not that surprising that a 2020 report from Ponemon Institute claimed 50% of IT professionals reuse passwords across different work accounts.

This is exactly why PSPINC created Pass Wizard. Initially, we released the service for free while it was still in its beta stage. This way, we could test its features and work on implementing payment and strengthening group sharing features for organizations. Since its official launch, Pass Wizard is available for free to store up to 30 passwords. Or users can upgrade to Pass Wizard Pro, which allows users to manage as many passwords as they’d like and share select ones within their organization, starting at just $1.67/month. Sign up for free and upgrade to our Pro account to strengthen your company’s cyber security efforts.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#blog #cloudbasedsoftware #cyber #cyberattacks #cybersecurity #hacking #mfa #multifactorauthentication #passwizard #passwizardpro #password #passwordmanagement #passwordmanagementsystem #passwordmanager #passwords #smallbusiness #technology #web

PSPINC What's New Newsletter Vol. 106 "WordPress Site Management"

Mar

10

Many site owners use WordPress to manage their sites. However, it’s also often used as a stepping stone for hacking and hijacking because it’s a system many people use. For this reason, WordPress constantly makes updates. Without it, the site itself would have a lot of vulnerabilities. Needless to say, WordPress sites, including plugins, need to be updated frequently to eliminate vulnerabilities from external attacks.

Additionally, WordPress websites are often created by professionals that know about WordPress site creation and development. In some of these cases, the creator of the website (and not the owner) are the only ones that can access the WordPress admin panel. Which can result in websites being completely abandoned if the creator of the website cannot be reached.

Fortunately, Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. (PSPINC) offers a dedicated WordPress hosting environment. As a company, we provide you with all the services you need to update and manage your WordPress site. This includes updating your plugins, managing site access, and creating or modifying your site. We can even migrate your site to our environment for maintenance and management, even if you’re no longer a site administrator. If you want to host your site with WordPress, please consider Dreamersi, our hosting service.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#blog #business #businesstips #businesstools #dreamersi #newsletter #pacificsoftwarepublishing #pspinc #pspincwhatsnewnewsletter #smallbusiness #technology #webdevelopment #webhosting #websitebuilder #wordpress

PSPINC What’s New Newsletter Vol. 105 “Store and Share Your Passwords Securely with Pass Wizard”

Mar

3

Earlier this week, we announced that our password management software, Pass Wizard, officially came out of its beta stage. Pass Wizard was specifically designed to securely store and share passwords. We still have a free plan available, but we are now offering a paid plan for just $1.67/month (billed annually).

Pro users will have access to additional features for both individual users as well as groups. With the free plan, users can store up to 30 passwords. When using Pass Wizard Pro, users can store an unlimited number of passwords as well as take advantage of password-sharing features within their group. For small businesses, this is ideal as it eliminates the security risk of sharing passwords with employees via sticky notes or insecure shared documents.

For a full breakdown of some of the amazing features offered with Pass Wizard’s new pro plan, please check out our announcement blog post.

If you and/or your organization need a password management system, get Pass Wizard! You can store up to 30 passwords with our free plan or store and share an unlimited number of passwords starting at just $1.67/month (billed annually), making it one of the most affordable password managers on the market today.

Get started for free!

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#announcement #blog #business #businessideas #businessowner #businesstips #cyber #cybersecurity #passwizard #password #passwordmanagement #passwordmanager #pspincwhatsnewnewsletter #smallbusiness #smallbusinessowner #tech #technology #web #webdeveloper

Pass Wizard - Pro Plan Now Available!

Mar

1

We’re excited to share with you that Pass Wizard, our password management system, is now officially out! We still have a version that is free-to-use (store up to 30 passwords). However, we’ve also added a Pro version packed with many more features, including storing an unlimited number of passwords. At just $1.67/month ($19.95/year), Pass Wizard is one of the most affordable password manager programs on the market today.

What is Pass Wizard?

Pass Wizard is PSPINC’s password management system, which allows users to securely store and share their passwords. With Pass Wizard Pro, users can store an unlimited number of passwords as well as utilize the new group feature.

We’ve designed the system to focus on security by utilizing secure hardware and state-of-the-art systems with two-factor authentication (2FA) to ensure your data’s safe and protected.

Additionally, it’s an ideal management system for small businesses to securely share company account credentials with their employees. However, it’s also great for individual users who just want a safe place to store their passwords.

How much does Pass Wizard cost?

Pass Wizard offers a free plan which includes the ability to store up to 30 passwords. Our new Pro plan is just $1.67/month, billed annually at $19.95/year, which includes the storage of an unlimited number of passwords and a group feature if you buy multiple user accounts. For customers that want to add more users to a plan, an additional $19.95/year will be charged per user.

What can you do with Pass Wizard?

woman in red pantsuit standing in front of a laptop on a desk

• Store an unlimited number of passwords
• Add users to their group for an additional $1.67/month (billed annually)
• Share select passwords with other users within their group

How does the share feature work?

business people gathered around a computer

When adding a new password entry, Pro users have the option of sharing passwords by checking the “Share with group” option at the bottom of the page. When selected, that password will then be shared with other users that are a part of the group. Only passwords with that option selected will be shared with the group. The rest will be stored securely under the “My Passwords” tab. In addition, only the individual who shared the password will have the ability to edit or remove it.

Interested in trying Pass Wizard yourself? Visit us online and sign up for a free account to get started. If you enjoy the system and have more than 30 accounts to manage, you will be able to upgrade your account to Pass Wizard Pro from the My Plans page.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#announcement #blog #business #businessideas #businessowner #businesstips #cyber #cybersecurity #passwizard #password #passwordmanagement #passwordmanager #smallbusiness #smallbusinessowner #tech #technology #web #webdeveloper #webdevelopment

What is a Customer Persona?

Feb

8

If you’ve ever worked in the marketing or sales field, you may have come across the term customer persona. But no matter what industry you’re in, creating a well-rounded persona is crucial in developing a strong and effective marketing strategy. Personas take the targeting process one step further by creating a fully-developed customer as if it were a real person. By definition, a persona is a composite sketch of a key segment of your audience. It requires some creative brainstorming but should still be based on some evidence, like information on your past customers.

This persona should envelop everything you think your ideal customer would be like for this specific campaign. Usually, the targeting process involves the assembly of some basic demographic information (age, gender(s), location, etc.). But creating a persona requires digging deeper into that information and adding some behavioral and psychographic details.

How to Create a Persona

a woman holding a small plaid purse in one hand and small shopping bags in the other

For example, imagine you’re an affordable product packaging company coming out with some new sustainable and biodegradable packaging. After some conversations, you decide that you want to target small organic food companies. So, what are those business owners like? Do they skew more male or female? How old are they? Where do they live? Are they married? Do they have kids? How much money do they make a year? These are all questions you should be asking yourself. And these are all things you’ll need to do some research to figure out.

But if we’re being completely honest, all of these questions should be answered when you’re developing your targeting strategy. Again, the creation of a customer persona takes this even further. Once you have all this information, you’ll start creating an entire personality going off of all the information you just discovered. You’ll give your persona a name and find a stock photo to represent him/her and start building it out even further. And for the record, giving your persona a name and photo is an important step because it makes him/her feel more real and that will help you in the long run for your campaign.

Giving your Persona a Personality

a man sitting on a bench near a plant with a small cup of coffee in one hand while one leg is crossed above his other knee

After defining your persona’s demographic information, you’ll start writing out their personality. What are they like? Are they outgoing or shy? What are they interested in? What does a day in their life look like? How do they behave online? These are all questions you’ll need to answer to develop a realistic and effective persona. But the most important questions will be answering these two questions: What motivates them and what frustrations do they have?

These two questions should be where your campaign can jump in. If we go back to our earlier example, a common motivation for any business owner is that they want their company to succeed. But maybe this organic foods business owner is frustrated by how much waste food companies produce in terms of product packaging. They’re interested in switching their packaging to something more sustainable, but they’ve found that most sustainable packaging is too expensive for them. This is where your biodegradable, but affordable packaging could solve their problems.

How Personas Help Marketing Efforts

a woman and two men looking at a piece of paper that one is showing while they're all sitting at a desk with a laptop in view and papers spread on the table

After figuring all this out, you can better market your products because now, when you’re creating marketing materials, you’ll refer back to your persona. If your persona saw this ad on social media, would he/she click on it? Would they go through the entire purchase based on this ad? If the answer’s no, then you probably shouldn’t devote your time and resources to this effort and figure something else out. And because you gave your persona a name, you can argue that that ad won’t work because Charlie would never click that. And that sounds much more convincing than saying, “I don’t think our target market will go for that ad”.

Customer personas can be a powerful tool for a marketing campaign. But only if you commit to the idea and all the details necessary to develop an effective strategy. It’s easy to create a fictional person and pretend like they’re one of your customers. But it takes much more work to build one out to the point of knowing who that person is and applying him/her to your overall campaign. From there, everything becomes easier because you’re basing your marketing efforts on that persona from what platforms to invest in to the kinds of messaging these ads will have. While building a customer persona takes a good amount of time and effort to put together, it’ll be well worth it in the end.

If you and your business need help developing a customer persona or require a consultation for your marketing needs, please feel free to contact us by phone or email or request for a quote on our Online Marketing page.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#blog #business #businessowner #businesstips #customerpersona #digitalmarketing #marketing #marketingcampaign #marketingonline #marketingresearch #persona #smallbusiness #targeting

What Content Monetization Looks Like Today

Feb

1

With the explosion of content creators over the past ten years, give or take, content monetization has changed the way people make money online. To start, content monetization is the process of making money off of the content you produce. This content could virtually be almost anything: videos, images, audio, text, or a combination of these formats. The most obvious examples consist of influencers on social media (YouTubers, TikTokers, Instagram models) and large publisher sites (like Buzzfeed).

The History of Content Monetization

someone recording a musician playing guitar and singing from a phone

But for a long time, content creators essentially created content for free, for either entertainment or educational purposes. When the concept of YouTubers exploded, people who made it big on the platform didn’t start making videos to make money. They started filming themselves to have fun or to educate others on what they thought more people should know. But once YouTube realized the potential they had on their hands, they dove into content monetization. And other major content-heavy platforms consequently followed. For written content, bloggers and publisher sites mainly generated money through advertising revenues. But when those started to drop, they too looked into content monetization models.

The simplest approach was simply placing ads around the content or before, during, or after the content (for video and audio content). Then, website traffic would mostly determine how much money the creator would make. It sounds simple enough but now there are multiple monetization models people can use to get paid online. But in reality, content creators experiment and adopt multiple content monetization models to find the ones that work for them.

Types of Content Monetization Strategies

1. Selling exclusive rights

someone signing their name on a legal document

This method is by far the fastest way to convert your content into revenue. But it comes with a catch. You’d have to relinquish all rights to the work, which includes any copyright or royalties. Simply put, this is like a work-for-hire type of method where you create and sell the content you create. This process could happen in one of two ways. You can create the content and sell it after you’ve already finished. Or you can find a buyer and he/she will tell you what to include in that content, much like ghostwriting or freelancing.

2. Affiliate sales

someone holding a credit card in one hand while her other hand rests on her laptop keyboard that's open in front of her on a desk

Affiliate marketing simply put is promoting third-party products and earning a percentage of those sales. This could be through referral links that you’d put somewhere in your blog post or the description for your YouTube video. Or they can be through referral codes that you can shout out in your podcast or the actual video. However, it’s not always as easy as it sounds. It’s one thing to promote the product or insert the link into your blog post. It’s a whole other struggle to get the user to not only click on the link but also purchase that product. Regardless, content creators who use this method work within an affiliate program, much like PSPINC's YourHost Affiliate Program. Within those programs, a unique referral links gets created and creators can then promote that product or service to get people to purchase it. It's not always easy, but if your content performs well on a regular basis, affiliate marketing could be the right content monetization model.

3. Subscriptions/memberships

computer graphic with log in to continue written on the screen with an insert email text box and a continue button. Underneath, there's also a see subscription options written.

If you’ve ever tried to visit select sites like the New York Times and you click on an article to read, a pop-up appears for you to create an account. Most of these sites consist of larger brands that have a consistent readership so they can get users to sign up for a membership and/or subscribe to get access to their content. But it’s more than just getting a reader’s name and email address. It also requires them to pay to view that content. To gain access to exclusive content, whether it’s news articles, blog posts, images, and/or videos, users have to pay to get it. And that is the subscription model at play when it comes to content monetization.

4. Donations

someone holding a box that says donations

Have you ever seen a pop-up that asks you to donate? For example, Wikipedia does this now from time to time. That’s content monetization at work. Publishers will directly ask for money to help keep their site running in the form of donations. But even if users don’t donate anything, they can still read, view, and/or watch whatever the content is for free. Unlike the subscription/membership model where users are forced to pay to view it.

5. Sponsored content

If you’ve ever seen a post on social media with the hashtag, #sponsored, that’s content monetization. Or for YouTube videos, if you’ve ever seen the tag, “Includes paid promotion” in the bottom left corner, that’s also sponsored content. What this usually entails is a brand seeking out an influencer, another brand, or a publisher that has the right blend of three things. A good number of followers, viewership, and/or website traffic, and someone (whether it’s another brand/publisher or an influencer) whose personality matches their brand and what it stands for.

How much it costs and how much return you’ll get for that sponsored content depends on how big the influencer is, how much exposure the post gets, and how much that influencer is charging. Regardless, sponsored content helps increase a brand’s overall reach and engagement and ultimately, sales.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

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PSPINC What's New Newsletter Vol. 100 "Attracting Customers with your Website"

Jan

27

I want to attract people to my website. There are many ways to do that like advertising online or optimizing the site for search engine optimization (SEO), but have you thought about something more basic? Before you think about how to better attract people towards you site, have you ever thought about why you go to a website? What website acts as your homepage and what pages do you visit the most often?

In 2021, the most visited websites were:

someone on their phone open to the TikTok app

TikTok

Google

Facebook

Microsoft

Apple

Amazon

Netflix

YouTube

Twitter

WhatsApp

As you can see, these sites are designed to attract people. Their content is updated every hour, every minute, and every second of every day. However, you’re focused on getting users to come to your company’s website, more specifically, your homepage. Moreover, your goal is to get traffic that is comparable to these sites.

a look at website traffico n a tablet

Even if the amount of website traffic towards your site is small, you need to update the content on your site frequently if you want to see that number increase. It’s important to give your customers a reason to come back to your site time and time again. And you can do that by regularly posting new information that is important to them.

Next, it’s also important to promote your site through mediums other than your own website. This includes eliciting reviews of your products and/or services and publicizing your activities on social media. A website that’s left unwritten won’t attract people. If you want more people to see your website, it goes without saying that you need to provide them a reason to see it.

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc.

1404 140th Place N.E., Bellevue, WA 98007

PSPINC Creates Tools For Your Business

Pacific Software Publishing, Inc. is headquartered in Bellevue, Washington and provides domain, web, and email hosting to more than 40,000 companies of all sizes around the world. We design and develop our own software and are committed to helping businesses of all sizes grow and thrive online. For more information you can contact us at 800-232-3989, by email at info@pspinc.com or visit us online at https://www.pspinc.com.

#amazon #apple #business #businesstips #content #facebook #google #homepage #microsoft #netflix #smallbusiness #socialmedia #tiktok #twitter #upates #webcontent #webdevelopment #website #websitecontent #websitedevelopment #whatsapp #youtube

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