Bill McRea

Part of the appeal of being an online solopreneur is the ability to move quickly, think on your feet and launch new business ideas on a short timeline because you are addicted to fast results.  There is nothing wrong with that, however, sometimes it makes sense to take a step back and take the time to do some planning for what lies ahead. Strategic planning is about taking a longer view of your business now, and how you would like for your business to scale up in the future. In this article we’ll take a broad look at the strategic planning process and some tools and resources that small business people can use to execute an effective strategic plan that will help them to achieve their goals.

What do I need a strategic plan for?

One of the most appealing things about starting an online business is that there is the potential to start with nothing but a laptop, an Internet connection and an idea and launch what could become a million dollar business. But, you’ve got to first have a plan for how you will move from zero dollars to positive cash flow. After you have completed your overall business plan, you will create a strategic plan that will mark out a path from where you are to your goal of a million dollar business.

How can a strategic plan help my business?

A strategic plan will help your business in the same way that a map helps you to get from point ‘A’ to point ‘B.’ If you don’t know where you are going, any road essentially can get you there. If you do not want to waste a lot of time and money spinning your wheels doing fruitless activities on a daily basis, then you will see the logic behind developing a clear strategic plan for your business—even if your business is just you right now.

Can I develop my own strategic plan?

While it is suggested that you get a fresh set of eyes to review your plan and offer you some constructive criticism, you can come up with your strategic plan on your own. An outside, objective party will not share the same blind spots that you have and they will be able to help you to see things from another perspective, which can be a great resource for you.

Who can help me to create a strategic plan for my unique business?

A business coach would be a great person to consult about helping you to create a strategic plan, or they could simply create the plan for you with your input. There are business consultants that specialize in business planning and they might be a good resource to help you with your own strategic plan.

Regardless of whether you hire a professional or do it yourself, having a solid strategic plan in place can help you to feel more confident as you go about your work. It can help you to become more focused on the individual actions that you must take in order to achieve the goals you have set and to meet the milestones in your plan.

We have only touched on the basics  of strategic planning for small business in this short article. For more information to help you grow your online business, visit, http://www.mcreasite.com/blog today.

Creating a membership site where you can offer specialized, premium content to your members in a protected environment is a great way to generate passive income online.  Getting your membership site setup and running so that you can start attracting members can be a little bit complicated if you do not know what you are doing, and if you do not have a template to follow. OptimizePress, which is a WordPress plugin for Internet marketers provides an elegant, easy to use framework for your membership site.

OptimizePress integrates easily with membership site scripts

All there is left to do is easily integrate a membership site script such as Nanacast, Wishlist Member, Digital Access Pass or any of the other countless membership site scripts available that work with WordPress and you are ready to add your content. Integrating the scripts is point and click simple and you’ll find helpful tutorials that will guide you through the process.

Customize the look of your membership site

You can customize the look and feel of your membership site by choosing your own colors and styles, or you can use the default templates that come with the theme that have been tested and proven.

When you combine OptimizePress with one of the WordPress compatible membership scripts what you end up with is a powerful combination that protects your content, allows you to create different membership levels i.e. Silver, Gold, Platinum, it allows you to integrate autoresponders to drip in new content over time, and integrate payment systems to make everything seamless.

Membership site access through mobile devices

Today more people have access to mobile phones than are using the Internet through a PC, which means that it will be vital that you customers be able to access their content on your membership site through their mobile devices such as smart phones and tablets. OptimizePress has developed a system that ensures that your video content will be viewable on iPads, iPhones and other smart phones and mobile devices. This means that even more people can access your products and consume them at their own convenience.

Membership sites generate monthly passive cash flow

The real beauty of creating membership sites is how they can generate monthly cash flow for you. With just 100 members paying $20. per month, a private membership site can generate $2,000 per month in income. Membership sites do not take much more effort than maintaining a blog, and after the initial costs of purchasing the software (a one-time fee) and paying your monthly hosting fees, the overhead costs are relatively minimal. Before long you can build a portfolio of membership sites that are generating passive income for you.

So, if you have been thinking about creating a membership site, OptimizePress has taken all of the guesswork out of setting it up. You just add your unique content and members and you will have a cash producing asset that you can continue to build or sell it and create another one.

Aside from creating membership sites, the OptimizePress WordPress theme can create squeeze pages, sales pages and  more. Visit,  http://imsafelink.com/OptimizePress-article today.

If you have been working in the Internet Marketing space for any length of time, there is no doubt that you are aware of the big, flashy, “guru” product launches that might include such elements at a series of ‘pre-launch’ videos and email sequences all carefully scripted and calculated to whet your appetite and ratchet up the anticipation of the actual launch so that when the doors open, buyers are lined up, fairly frothing at the mouth and ready to start clicking on that “Buy Now” button.

But unless you are one of those so-called ‘gurus,’ you may not be able to afford the high production value video presentations, and the software and systems used to pull off these big launches. Well, that is no longer true because OptimizePress, which is a WordPress theme designed exclusively for Internet makreters can give you a complete gateway launch system at a fraction of the cost of what those other guys are using. This will allow you to get started earning some big paydays quickly without a lot of initial cash outlay and without having to hire the staff to manage those systems.

Here are some of the element of the launch process that OptimizePress can handle for you:

• Squeeze pages for collecting contact information to deliver pre-launch content

Your squeeze page is the entry gateway to your launch, so you want it to be inviting and proven to convert visitors to subscribers. This is where you begin to offer your pre-launch content that gets your visitors engaged with your product and it keeps them coming back for more.

• Build a series of launch pages

You can add video, use the handy shortcodes to add style to your content, choose from different fonts and a delayed call to action button that only appears where and when you want it to.

• Create a compelling sales page

After your visitors have consumed the series of pre-launch content on launch day they will see your sales page, by which time they will have already been exposed to lots of information about your product, so they are most likely ready to hit the “Buy Now” button, but they will still need to read the story that your sales letter is telling about how your product is ging to rock their world and slove their problems faster, cheaper and easier than anything else out there.

• Spread the word about your launch with social media

OptimizePress makes it easy to add Facebook comments and sharing to your launch pages so that your visitors can share your launch with their friends helping it to go viral quickly. Sharing your content on Twitter is another way to quickly spread the word about your launch. With a Twitter sharing button your visitors can tweet about your launch to their followers and grow your following in the process.

Creating and orchestrating a product launch process can be complicated and have a lot of moving parts to it, but OptimizePress can make launching your information product simple and affordable.

There is so much more to OptimizePress than just making product launches easier. Visit, http://imsafelink.com/OptimizePress-article, to find out what else this powerful, Internet Marketing  WordPress theme can do for your business.

If you create your own information products to sell online, you must have a sales letter landing page that you will send targeted traffic to, but creating a sales page can be a painful process if you do not know what you are doing. Your sales page will be your 24/7 sales force, so it is vital that you create one that is attractive, effective and tells the story that will lead your prospects to making a purchase.

Now, with the OptimizePress WordPress theme for Internet marketers it’s like having you own website design team on tap for you. This theme has taken the pain out of creating landing pages and sales letters by providing tested and proven designs that you can add your compelling copy to in order to attract your ideal customers.

When you are preparing to set up your sales page, these are some of the elements that you want to make sure to include:

Headline

The headline can contain three main elements:

1. Pre-headline
2. Main headline
3. Sub-headline

Introduction

This is where you introduce the product, share your credibility, and why they should purchase this product from you.

Benefits/Product Specifications

It’s been said that you should sell the sizzle not the steak. Cover the benefits that the product provides. Answer what pain this product alleviates or what problem it solves better than anything else available.

Graphics

Pictures and graphic images of the product help the prospect begin to form an image in their mind of having that product.

Testimonials

Testimonials provide social proof. When people are considering making a purchase they want to know what other people who have already made a purchase think of the product and what kind of experience or results they had.

Build up on the value

This is where you talk about the value of the product making it sound appealing to the prospective buyer.

Order button

Include more than one order button that makes it easy for your customers to click on it and buy your product.

Conclusion/Summary

Do a brief wrap/up or summary letting them know what they are going to get, how smart they are for choosing to purchase and how their lives will be better when they do.

Once you have pulled all of those elements together, OptimizePress makes it simple to format your landing page content by utilizing shortcodes. You can use the design elements within each template to craft professional looking pages quickly than you ever thought possible. There is a selection of 20 different color schemes and 5 different fonts to choose from. You will feel like a pro when you see how good your sales pages look.

One of the hottest elements in sales page conversion these days is video. Video can be a powerful way to draw people in and get them emotionally involved with your product. OptimizePress makes adding video to your sales page easy, and you can  utilize a delayed call to action button that shows up exactly when you want it to in order to optimize conversions.

When it comes down to it, what you want is sales pages that convert visitors into buyers, and Optimize Press is designed to deliver those results to you as simply as possible. For much more information about how you can maximize your Internet Marketing success, visit, http://imsafelink.com/OptimizePress-article today.

As an Internet entrepreneur you know how crucial it is to the success of your business to build a big email list. When you have built your own list of subscribers, you have an asset that can bolster the success of your online business.

A responsive list of email subscribers means that you have your own targeted audience who has raised their hand to say that they are interested in hearing from you again. You have the opportunity to build a relationship with them, to gain their trust and increase the know and like factor so that they will feel comfortable buying from you again and again.

For those Internet marketers who have more ideas and enthusiasm than they have technical skills, creating squeeze pages or opt-in pages can be challenging. You either have to pay your web designer to do it, or you might try downloading a template and muddling through inserting your copy and fiddling with the HTML codes. Then you realize that you’ve still got to figure out how to add the code from your email auto-responder program.

You know that a squeeze page is a proven, effective way to build your list quickly. It can allow you to offer an “ethical bribe” in the form of a free product in exchange for the subscriber’s contact information. When this product is something of value to them that demonstrates your expertise, and whet’s their appetite for the products that you have available on your website it can be a great way to build a following of loyal subscribers who may one day become valuable customers.

There are several aspects to creating an effective squeeze page, and if you have never created one before you might feel like you are stumbling in the dark a little bit in the beginning.

Wouldn’t it be great to have a selection of proven squeeze page templates to choose from that you  could simply plug your compelling copy into and have a custom squeeze page without paying a designer or barely even breaking a sweat? Well, when you have a WordPress theme like OptimizePress creating squeeze pages is really that simple.

You have 10 squeeze page design templates that you can customize to fit your topic and your branding scheme. These templates have been tested and optimized to provide excellent conversion rates.

Finally there is an easy way to integrate your autoresponder code. Simply copy and paste and you’ll have a working opt-in box. Adding your headline, choosing the font, and adding bullets is simply a matter of ticking the right boxes for the page elements that you would like to include.

Now, in just a matter of a few minutes and with minimal hassle, you can have a custom squeeze page that you built yourself that you can start sending lots of targeted traffic to so that you can start building your list.

If you do any kind of Internet Marketing, and you want to eliminate the need to hire designers to create custom pages for you, and you want to feel a bit more in control of your campaigns, then you should take a look at OptimizePress.  Check it out today at, http://imsafelink.com/OptimizePress-article