Biana Babinsky is December's Wild WE of the Month. Biana is an online business coach, who helps coaches, consultants, virtual assistants, professional organizers and other solopreneurs promote their expertise online, gain more online customers and make more money online. Go to Avocado Consulting to subscribe to her newsletter full of marketing tips and ideas.

What services do Avocado Consulting and Marketing Salad offer?

I am an online business coach and consultant, so all products and services that I offer at AvocadoConsulting.com help business owners with their online marketing. My flagship service is online business coaching. I help business owners to promote their expertise online, get more clients and make more money.

MarketingSalad.com is the web site for group online business coaching. By becoming members of MarketingSalad.com, business owners will get access to online marketing lessons, marketing teleseminars, and business coaching.

How were they born?

I have been marketing online since 1996, doing my own projects, and helping clients with web design and online marketing. At the same time, I was working as a software developer, creating web-based enterprise software for a Fortune 500 company.

September 11th prompted me to re-evaluate my career. I really enjoyed working with my clients on their projects and helping them become more successful online. I decided that I wanted to continue doing this full time. So, in 2002, I became a full time entrepreneur and AvocadoConsulting.com was born.

As AvocadoConsulting.com grew, I started getting a growing number of requests for online business group coaching. Some of my prospective clients did not want to commit to one-on-one coaching, but still wanted a place to mastermind with other business owners, and get access to teleseminars and group coaching with me. So, in 2005 I launched MarketingSalad.com to help them do just that.

I sort of really fell into it. As soon as I got online (this was back in 1994), I started to realize that this was a great new way of doing business.

Since I have a technical background, I began creating web sites and helping others with their web sites. Then my clients started asking me about marketing their web sites online, and I started doing more and more marketing.

After doing this for a while and implementing many different marketing techniques, I developed the Effective Online Marketing system. The Effective Online Marketing system helps business owners find their target market, become known for their expertise, get more clients and, ultimately, make more money online. My system helps business owners generate leads to their business web site, day in and day
out as well as to create a compelling suite of products and services.

My current niche consists of business owners (coaches, consultants, virtual assistants, and other solopreneurs) who want to use effective marketing tools to help sell their products and services..

How did you come up with such interesting names?

As you have probably noticed, both names are food-related. I love to cook, so this isn’t entirely an accident. It took me weeks to come up with the AvocadoConsulting.com name. I spent many hours looking for a good name for my business. I even had a legal pad with hundreds of names written on it, but none of them seemed really “mine”.

Then, one day I was sitting at my dining table, looking at the list of possible names for the thousandths time. Right next to me there was a bowl with ripening avocados. I bought them the day before to make guacamole. So then I started thinking about possible names that had “Avocado” in it. The rest, as they say, is
history.

It didn’t take me nearly as long to come up with the MarketingSalad.com name. I wanted another food-related name, and it had to be relevant to marketing. A salad is a mix of different ingredients, and that is exactly what we do at MarketingSalad.com – members can create their own, special marketing mix that is tailored just for their business.

What's your favorite part about what you do?

:I love helping people achieve their goals and take their business to the next level. Teaching and marketing are two of my favorite things, and doing what I do helps me combine them together. What could be better?

Who have been your role models as you develop your business?

Women who know what their goals are and will do whatever it takes to follow their dreams have always inspired me. It doesn’t really matter what the dream is; it could be a singing career, being a CEO of a multi-national corporation or being a stay-at-home mom to two kids. The important part is having a goal and reaching for it. .

Why is it so important for women to create passive income streams and promote their businesses online?

Many of us have worked (or still are working) as employees. How does that work? You work for 8 (and often many more) hours per day and you get paid per hour (or an equivalent hourly rate if you’re on a salary). You exchange time for money.

Even if you are a self-employed coach, a consultant, or a virtual assistant, you are still exchanging your time for money. This approach is not scalable --- there are only so many hours in a week. Your maximum income is limited by your hourly rate. This also means that if you are not working one week, there is no income coming in.

Here is an example I give on my web site:

Hourly Expert charges $150/hour and is booked about 50 hours/month. This expert makes $150 * 50 = $7,500/month before expenses.

Diverse Income Expert charges $150/hour and is booked about 35 hours/month. However, this expert also runs a monthly teleseminar with 30 people, where the expert charges $40 to attend, and this expert also sells about $1,000 worth of products (books, e-books, digital reports, CDs) from his web site every month. This expert makes $150 * 35 + $40 * 30 + $1,000 = $7,450/month before expenses.

The Diverse Income Expert spends 35 hours/month working with clients, while the Hourly Expert spends about 50 hours/month. However, Diverse Income Expert makes approximately the same amount of money as Hourly Expert. Why? Because Diverse Income Expert has created multiple streams of income. Moreover, if the Hourly Expert goes on vacation for a week, his income stops. If the Diverse Income Expert goes on vacation, he is still making money through sales and seminar sign-ups.

From this example you can see that you can profit again and again from products (e-books, CDs, teleseminars, etc) you create once. This is something I teach to all of my students and my clients – you can create passive income streams by selling your expert products.

What does all of this have to do with online marketing? Once you create passive income products, you need to bring in customers to purchase them. This is where marketing and promotion come in. You need to market your products online, and market them consistently in order to get results.

What are some of the vehicles through which women can create products that will provide ongoing passive income?

There are several different products groups that I recommend:

- Digital products. These include e-books, special reports, booklets, etc. They are delivered to customers in digital format, usually as PDF documents.

- Audio Products. These can be audio files that can be delivered instantaneously over the Internet, or these could be CDs that can be physically shipped to the buyers.

- Teleseminars. A teleseminar is a seminar or a class taught over the phone (using teleconference services that allow many people to participate in a phone conversation).

- Mixing and matching. Once you have created a few different products, you can package them in a variety of ways by combining several products.

I strongly recommend that you create several types of products. Different people learn differently. Some prefer to read (they would purchase digital products), while others prefer to listen (these people are more likely to purchase audio products), etc.

Once women create a few passive income products, how can they market them online?

There are many online marketing techniques you can employ to promote their products. Creating and preparing your web site is the first step before your marketing campaign begins. Your web site should be easy to use, easy to buy from, and it should have some means for your visitors to contact you. I also recommend having a newsletter. Many visitors will not buy from you the very first time they visit your web site, but they will subscribe to your newsletter, and you will be able to keep in touch.

Here are a few online marketing techniques I recommend for promoting your web site, products and services online:

Optimize Your Web Site for Search Engines. Search engine optimization is the process of modifying web page content and meta-information to improve the search engine ranking of the page. Meta-information includes HTML tags(title, heading, emphasized text, keyword and description meta-tags), as well as the internal (links between pages on the same site) and external (links between pages on different sites) link structure of a web site.

Using good keywords to optimize your web site for search engines helps you bring targeted traffic to your web site.

Create a Business Blog. A business blog is an
excellent tool to toot your own horn, let the world know about your new products, and tell your target customers why they should do business with you, rather than your competitor.

Blog posts that are keyword-rich help you bring targeted traffic from search engines, and blog posts that are educational and interesting to read help you build relationships with people who read your blog. Strive to make your blog posts optimized and educational - that way you get the search engines and your readers interested in what you have to say.

Write Articles. Writing articles on your subject of expertise is an excellent way to get better known throughout your online community and to let target clients know about your expertise.

Syndicating (allowing other web sites to reprint) your articles also helps you build traffic to your web site. So how can giving the proverbial farm away help you build traffic? The terms of use of your article state that reprinting in any form is allowed only if the site that uses the article includes a resource box. A resource box is a block of text that appears after the article. It typically consists of 2-4 sentences that include your bio and a link back to your business web site.

The article's resource box is your chance to get the reader to visit your web site and thus generate additional traffic. This is why it is extremely important to make your resource box as effective as possible. The resource box must include a strong call to action (and a free bonus gift doesn't hurt either).

If you could give one piece of advice to all the Wild Women Entrepreneurs reading this, what would it be?

Here are three (for the price of one):

1. Set goals. Always know what you are trying to achieve. Without goals, you have where you are ultimately going.

2. Have a plan. Create a plan for your business – where do you want to be with your business in a year? In five years? What is your vision for your business? Do you want it to go global? Do you want to franchise it? Do you want to sell it and retire? Think big. Without a plan, you don’t know what comes next.

3. Market! Every day I see good businesses that offer useful products and services, have great logos and web sites and their owners are true experts in their fields. However, these businesses do not make money for one simple reason: their owners are afraid of marketing. Don’t be like them. Go out and market. Marketing helps get the word out about your products and services and bring customers to your web sites.

Labels: wild we member of the month

But I have many, many memories of our holiday traditions. The lovely aromas of holiday ethnic food. Riding the South Shore train into Chicago to visit the "real" Santa. Using a paintbrush to decorate sugar cookies with colored frosting. Setting up our manger scene.

Traditions add so much joy to the holidays. Traditions give a child a sense of belonging and identity. They strengthen bonds across generations and live long in memory.

A family rich in traditions has a powerful antidote to commercialism. The more focused you are on pleasures that cost little or nothing, the more all the gifts tend to stay in their appropriate place.

Best of all, many traditions are perfectly suited to today's busy families. Here are a few favorites:

SIMPLE PLEASURES

Light candles at dinnertime. If December mornings are dark where you live, light candles at breakfast, too.

Take an evening stroll or car ride to look at Christmas lights.

Serve warm chocolate with candy canes for stirring.

THE JOY OF GIVING

Let your kids in on the excitement of finding and wrapping gifts for those they love. Compliment them for being big enough to keep the surprise a secret.

As a family, decide on a charity and make a donation. Our favorite is Heifer International (www.heifer.org).

Take a plate of cookies or other holiday treats to a homeless shelter or to a police or fire station.

GRATITUDE

Give family members strips of paper in holiday colors. Let everyone write or draw something they're thankful for on each strip. Link the strips into a chain and hang as a decoration.

Write thank-you cards to each other. Decide together when to open them.

CONNECTING GENERATIONS

Interview grandparents, aunts, and uncles about holiday traditions they remember from their childhood. Adopt any traditions that fit your family.

Ask relatives for holiday recipes that have been handed down in your family. Or, search the Internet for holiday recipes related to your ethnic origins.

NEW YEAR'S EVE

If your kids are little, it works fine to celebrate the new year at 9 PM instead of midnight!

Pull out photos and videos from the past year and share your memories.

Keep a box of inexpensive noisemakers and party hats that you can re-use each year. The kids will enjoy pulling out their old favorites.

NEW YEAR'S DAY

Decorate a box in which you'll put photos, ticket stubs and other souveniers of the coming year. Talk about your hopes and wishes.

Let each family member put New Year's resolutions into their own envelope. Author Mimi Doe ("Busy But Balanced") has a tradition of sealing the envelopes with wax -- a nice, magical touch.

(c) 2004 Norma Schmidt, Coach, LLC

Norma Schmidt, Coach, LLC, specializes in helping working mothers create balance. She offers workshops, teleclasses and individual and group coaching. Her free e-mail newsletter, "The Balance Point," is published bi-weekly. Visit http://www.NormaSchmidt.com

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Norma_Schmidt

I recently faced the daunting task of finding a gift to bestow on a dear family friend who has had a profound impact on my daughter’s life for nearly a dozen years. Somehow, a gift certificate to Barnes & Noble, a day spa, or a bouquet of flowers just wasn’t going to adequately reflect the deep sense of appreciation, gratitude, and love I feel for this person. What’s a harried gift giver to do when nothing seems to express your feelings?

Give the gift of words.

I did what any word lover would do. I wrote something. I wrote an article dedicated to my friend, a local child care provider, thanking her for incredible value, nurturing, and education she has added to my child’s life and posted it in the November issue of this newsletter which was dedicated to gratitude.

Two days after the article was published, my friend left a teary voice mail message of thanks on my answering machine. She said she’d been having a terrible day and was questioning the value of her work. She said my tribute was the most thoughtful gift she’d ever received from a day care parent and the timing was perfect. Soon I was crying, too. My gift had done its job well. I had given the most meaningful gift I could give - my heartfelt words. And it didn’t cost me a penny.

You don’t have to be a writer to give the gift of words. In fact, all you have to be is you. Speak from the heart, be genuine, creative, and kind, and your gift is bound to be the hit of its recipient’s day.

Here are some ideas to get you started:

1. Write a poem. Who says poems have to rhyme? Perhaps you’re a poet and you don’t know it. Try your hand at a limerick (a light humorous poem) or haiku (Japanese lyric poem with 3 lines and 17 syllables) for starters. Search online for poetry forms you like for more information. Or just write a free form poem of your own, print it on pretty paper, put it in a picture frame, and wrap it up.

2. Write a testimonial. Does your gift recipient provide a business, service or product you adore? Write a heartfelt testimonial explaining why that person’s product or service is the best. Any business owner will be thrilled to post your testimonial on her web site or in her office.

3. Dedicate an entry in your blog to someone. People love to be recognized publicly. What better way to show the world you care than to post your thoughts in your blog? Don’t have a blog yet? No problem. There are plenty of blog services out there that are free or inexpensive. Do a search for free blog services on Google.

4. Make a card. This is one of my favorites. My parents still have the homemade cards I created over thirty years ago. People LOVE homemade cards. You don’t have to be an artist. Use scraps of fabric, glitter, old pieces of wrapping paper, photos, finger paints, crayons...anything goes!

5. Write an article. Write an article for an online article site such as EzineArticles.com or a local print publication. Highlight an important issue or business need in the article and support your statements with specific stories about the person to whom you're dedicating the article.

6. Write a song or record your spoken feelings on tape or CD. Not a musician? That’s okay. Take a popular tune such as Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star and add your own words. Present it by singing it to your lucky recipient.

7. Create a web site or online photo album. You don’t have to be a technogeek or a millionaire to create a web site with the plethora of tools out there. Add photos and your own words and voila, an instant gift! Here’s a gift I gave one Christmas. I created an online help system outlining the timeline of a romantic relationship. It included an index, table of contents, and graphical timeline with clickable sections that launched pop-ups containing photos of special moments. (I’m sorry, I can’t help it, I was a technogeek in love.)

The list of word gift ideas is endless. Can you think of more?

The best thing about the gift of words is that it operates on the law of attraction. Simply stated, that means the thoughts and words you put out into the world are what you will get back. Think and write positive thoughts and actions and I guarantee they will come back to you in ways you never imagined. When you express your love and gratitude in written words, you immortalize your feelings. Your recipient can read your words and experience your love over and over again.

Give the gift of words.

Copyright 2005, Ann Zuccardy, All rights reserved.

Visit Ann’s blog for more holiday gift giving ideas at Vermont Shortbread Company.

Labels: From the Editor

Labels: quotation of the month

Stuck in a beauty quandary? Can't pull yourself out of your fashion rut? Feeling like a Glamour "don't"? E-mail your beauty and fashion questions to our expert beauty consultant, Charlotte Maddox, at ask@thewildwe.com. If we publish your question, we will offer you a free text ad in our newsletter. All questions will be published anonymously.

Look Great for Any Holiday Occasion!

Is there a special holiday occasion in your near-future? Whether it's a casual or formal event, consider some silver or gold sparkle with a “kiss” of red.

For fun, decide whether to enhance your eyes or lips. You want to draw attention to one set of features but not both at the same time.

If you want the focus to be on your eyes, you can dramatize them with one, two or three colors. Opting for a single color? Choose a silver or gold, whichever blends with your skin tone and complements your outfit. *Tip* … Silvers and grays are cool colors while golds are usually warm and less aging. *Trick* … Use an eye
color cream or an eye primer with eye color for longer wear (a real plus when you‘re out). You can mix both a cream or powder eye color with the eye primer. Apply your choice of silver or gold from eye lashes to brows.

Prefer more than one color? Select one as a mid-tone (over the eyelids). Add either silver or gold as an accent (lashes to creases of eyes). Highlight (under the brow bones) with whichever you haven’t used as an accent. *Trick … mix the mid-tone color with either silver or gold for an extra “pop.” *Tip* … Sparkle emphasizes fine lines so, if it’s a concern, just add sparkly
color under the brow bones.

If you want the focus to be on your lips, tone down the eye makeup
and consider a red lip shade. There’s a red for everyone. Let your skin tone determine which reds are most becoming: those with cool undertones berries) or warm undertones (corals). Then choose muted or bright, matte or shimmer depending upon the look you want to achieve. Lip liner and lip gloss are optional.

For softer lips to complement dramatic eyes, try a subdued red. Then razzle dazzle! You’ve created a special holiday look.

Labels: beauty inside and out

Are You Content With Your Holiday Promotions? Five Super-Easy Ways to Go on a Giving Spree this December and Win More Subscribers

Marketing Gift Idea 1: Give Your Subscribers a Free E-Book.

People make e-books seem much more difficult than they are. If you can write articles, do this. Set your mind to the task, write five short ones right now and pop the text into one file. Add an attractive cover, a short cover letter, your logo, copyright and contact email. Save as a PDF, upload to your server and create an email that links to the pdf so your readers can download. That's all there is to it!

Marketing Gift Idea 2: Create a Christmas Wish List for Your Network.

Offer your networking pals a little stress-relief this chaotic holiday season. Tack up a "Web Marketer's Wish List" that you plan on submitting to "Santa," then sit back and wait for the reactions and funny comments. If your Wish List fills up with great content, inform the group that you plan to post it on your website and include everyone's names and URLs. What a fun way to give away some free exposure and have a few Christmas chuckles.

Marketing Gift Idea 3: Give Your Subscribers a Plan of Action.

By FAR, the biggest obstacle web marketers face is making a plan and then carrying it out. Your readers will regard you as a Marketing God or Goddess if you give them what they desperately need: a plan of action! Do a little brainstorming, come up with a generic marketing plan, list instructions so your marketers will know exactly how it's done, and then package in a pdf file that your readers can download and put to use right away as they grow their businesses.

Marketing Gift Idea 4: Give Your Subscribers a List of Resources.

Remember when you were that new marketer and you didn't have a clue? I'll bet that you crossed paths with someone who quickly became your ultimate web marketing hero because they gave you what you desperately needed: resources. Now's your time to pay it forward. Help a newbie marketer who needs some direction and win the admiration of someone who just could become a future customer.

Bonus Tip: What You MUST DO to Put this Plan in Motion.

Okay, here's the final and most important part of your Holiday Gift-Giving Plan. You MUST leverage the power of communication. Tell everyone you meet what you'll give them if they sign up to be on your subscriber list. Do it at the end of every post you write. Include your message on your home page and in your blog posts. Add
it to the bottom of your emails. It's your job to get the word out.

Example: "Learn Secret Strategies All the Pro Marketers Use... Sign up for the Wordfeeder.com Email Newsletter and You'll Receive Your First F*ree E-Book in Our Holiday Gift-Giving Spree. Just drop your email address into the box at the bottom of the http://Wordfeeder.com Home Page."

Okay, so are you ready to go on your own giving spree? Great. Here's to your holiday marketing success!

Copyright 2005 Dina Giolitto. All rights reserved.

Are YOU Content With Your Content? Get Top Secret Marketing Tips from the Web's Biggest Gurus and Expert Authors on The First Annual Web Content Awareness Day on FEBRUARY 9, 2006.

Labels: communication corner