Pardot is the easiest to learn and then execute. Will take your team the least amount of time to provide managed email marketing & automation services to your client. Naturally you'll want to bill fixed rates.

Nearly every high-profile speaker has a website outlining their process, fees, and requirements for speaking engagements. They also have instructions on how to contact and book them.

There are still countless opportunities! We live in an exciting era. As humans, we still want to connect and share our experiences, meet new people, and deepen our relationship with those already in our circles. We must balance our privacy (which is unique to both users and publishers), as well as our desire to be accepted and approved of. Marketing will continue to become more personal. Brands must adapt a scalable 1:1 marketing strategy and consumers' needs will continue to evolve. These are real human needs and, as a result, creates limitless opportunities for technology and online marketing to connect.

Sorry, but this question is a bit backwards. You need to have an audience/need for your product or service BEFORE you create it. Having said that, I'd go back to the basics: a) create a niche b) determine an ideal client profile c) design a business plan

All successful sales come from the customer realizing that something of great value is being provided. Therefore, to be an entrepreneur, a person should be searching for something that many people will assess as having great value. In other words, look for something you can design once, and sell over and over again to many people. Techniques such as cold calling may be more or less efficient than the "new" techniques such as social media, mobile marketing, and so on. But none of that matters until you have a product/service that resonates with customers. As a salesperson, you are used to being told "Sell what you have." But as an entrepreneur, you need to be much more interested in "Having what sells."

Hello, I've been working in one of the biggest agencies in the world before and now I own a small digital agency. I've found a way to close big clients really easily by doing the following: Connecting with them directly and identifying their biggest pain points. Then you need to showcase that you understand them (mainly with content marketing and talking with them) and you know how to deal with that and making an offer. The first thing I do is I find my niche, the people I want to work with. I connect with them and I ask them for an interview. During that interview I don't sell them anything, I just want to learn more about their business, what are their current issues, challanges, etc. I'm looking for the biggest pain that I know how to solve. If I identify one, I ask them if they want to receive free content on that topic. When they say yes, I put it in my database. Then I start releasing some great content for them on the topic. Then at some point a make a sale by telling them we're growing and we have a few spots open for new clients. I make them fight to become one. I used this system to talk to and close Fortune 500 and Inc 5000 companies so if you're interested to learn more, feel free to schedule a call. I'd love to share my ideals & methodology with you.

In any business to business sales situation, you need to evaluate who is involved in the decision chain that leads to a purchase. Typically, there are at least three parties involved. These are: Your Champion, who noticed your product, and decided it would be a great fit for his organization. This is your cheerleader, and your best friend within the organization. Your Champion's management, who decide whether things that your champion recommends should be acted upon, given the context that the business is operating in. This includes someone who ultimately will request "budget" to pay for your product or service. The company's financial management team, perhaps the CFO. This is the person who needs to understand the financial impact that your product will have on his organization. Will it cost capital up front but quickly save money in operational costs over time? What is the payback period, and so on. There may be others involved too, especially if the company is highly regulated (i.e.: regulatory approvals may be needed). Bottom line: Through your champion, you map out the network of your customer's organization, and work on each person in the chain that is involved in making a decision. Don't be put off if, as often happens, you find that your champion is highly enthusiastic, but the rest of the organization isn't. You can beat your head against this kind of brick wall for a long time. But please don't. Instead, move on to the next prospect. The job of your marketing efforts should be to ensure that there are enough leads that you can spend most of your time working on people who will ultimately become customers. Note that you can happily disqualify 99% of your leads if you can end up spending most of your time on the other 1%. Qualify quickly, then spend time with qualified prospects, even if they are in the minority.

Find someone on Elance.com for a fast hire. LinkedIn.com for a more targeted approach at someone looking for a full time job... but expect a standard recruiting/hiring cycle time-wise. TextBroker.com will get you through in the meantime with pay per word writers on demand.

Try Dun & Bradstreet (DNB.com) to buy email addresses with one time fees instead of monthly subscriptions. I get them for free using an automated combination of tools that allows me to target specific people. If that's something you want, request a 15 minute call, which will be enough time for me to walk you through the set up.

You've answered your own question. Reach out to your prospects with the question, such as "How would you...". Ask what people want then give it to them if you can with integrity and thoughtfulness.

Set up a free account on MailChimp. Use their drag and drop visual editor. Click the "HTML" tab and copy the code. Paste it into Interspire. Remove any MailChimp-specific code.

Why do you need to know about the pricing of your competition in the first place? If you're offering great value, people will buy from you even if you're charging 5 times more. If you want to offer the lowest price possible to get more clients, then ask yourself how little can you actually charge. And put that price. Spending the time to identify the price of your competitors is a waste of time. In 99% of the cases.

I've been in ecommerce for over a decade and have co-founded and helped start companies collectively driving over $10MM in ecommerce sales. I've consulted for Fortune 500 ecommerce stores. Here's my advice if you're just getting started without a big budget. Note: Some of this is copied from my answer to a similar question. #1) PROVE THE ASSUMPTION: Start with a dropshipper's existing products to figure out what sells best before you spend money on manufacturing and warehousing. Amazon is perfect for this - they will pay you 4%-10% to promote 253,000,000 products (http://bit.ly/1q2M85R) - you can sign up at https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/ Alternately, get very small amounts of the product (maybe even just buy some from a competitor) and try selling them on ebay and amazon. Nothing hurts more than having $50,000 of imported product gathering dust in your fulfillment warehouse while listening to a voicemail from a debt collector. #2) SOURCING There are several options here. Many people prefer Alibaba.com. Warning - if you use Alibaba, you are stepping into a tank of pirahnas. There are more scam "manufacturers" on Alibaba than real ones. Use Escrow or AliSecure Pay if you buy. If the supplier says they only take T/T, Western Union, Moneygram - just say no! I prefer American Made when possible. If you're like me, try Ariba's Discovery Service - http://bit.ly/1q2NFZu - which will allow you to find suppliers with a physical presence in the USA. Note: Many things can be made on demand (someone purchases, one gets made and shipped) instead of in 500+ manufacturing runs. Start there if you can - Books on CreateSpace.com, Clothes on CafePress.com, Playing Cards on MakePlayingCards.com, etc - to test out your exact product. If you decide to source by purchasing product in bulk, find a fulfillment company to store and fulfill (ship) your orders. Amazon does this - http://services.amazon.com/content/fulfillment-by-amazon.htm - but they might decide to crush you like a bug if you're successful (http://bit.ly/1q2V7DX). Other fulfillment companies for e-commerce include http://www.shipwire.com/ and http://www.webgistix.com/ #3) LAUNCH YOUR SITE This is an entire topic in itself. One of the fastest ways I know for newbies to start in e-commerce is with a SquareSpace.com store. Other options include GoDaddy.com and BigCommerce.com. If you can stand to use the templates they provide instead of trying to customize them, you'll save yourself a lot of hassle and expense - customization usually looks terrible unless a designer/coder was hired to do the work. If you do customize, find someone on odesk.com or elance.com. If you're not hard up for money, just build a custom store from the start. If you can't do that, save up some money and then go for it. Focus on increasing conversion rate - for every 100 visitors, get 1 to buy. Then 2. Then 4. Then 8 (8%). #4) MARKET Figure out where your competition is advertising. Are they getting free, "organic" SEO results on Google? Using social media to drive billions of dollars of sales? (NOTE: That was a joke - don't count on social media as the nucleus of your marketing campaign. Please!) Are they paying for Google ads ("PPC"), buying email lists, using strategic partnerships for promotion, relying on shopping portals, using banner advertising, or something else entirely? There's probably a good reason - figure out what it will take to play in those waters. At the same time, try to find a small enough niche that you can win in it. #5) BEWARE Be careful about artsy things. If someone is attracted to something artistic, it's usually because there is a story behind the art for them, or because it's cheap. If you're going to try to sell artistic things, you may want to consider doing some serious research first about who has been successful in that area. Look at etsy.com to see handmade artsy items (very cool). #6) WORTH A LOOK Worth checking out as you start your journey: Art.com, yessy.com, Artfire.com, ArtPal.com #7) DEEP FOUNDATION If you need help, reach out for a 15 minute call and we'll discuss a go-to-market strategy specific to your goals.

I tried Basecamp, Jira, Unfuddle, Trello and PivotalTracker before for different projects which were developed with agile approach. All of them worked fine to me and I needed some time to setup my framework and processes there. I think it would be worth checking Trello or PivotalTracker which I personally like more than Basecamp because of better agile oriented structure.

You can do this by using a server backend such as Parse. They have a free SDK. There are other similar options and I believe apple is rolling out the same thing in iOS 8 with CloudKit.

Everybody has an invention. The question is this....Is there a demand for your invention. My experience with the invention idea companies is that they are out to make money for themselves and will submit your ideas to companies and sites that you can to without spending 10 grand. If it is a great invention there will be a great demand. Start with google adwords to find out if there is real interest in the product. Don't stop taking massive action. Best of Luck, Michael T. Irvin michaelirvin.net My books are available exclusively through Amazon Books. Check out my book "Copywriting Blackbook of Secrets" Copywriting, Startups, Internet Entrepreneur, Online Marketing, Making Money

#1) PROVE THE ASSUMPTION: Start with a dropshipper's existing products to figure out what sells best before you spend money on manufacturing and warehousing. Amazon is perfect for this - they will pay you 4%-10% to promote 253,000,000 products (http://bit.ly/1q2M85R) - you can sign up at https://affiliate-program.amazon.com/ Alternately, get very small amounts of the product (maybe even just buy some from a competitor) and try selling them on ebay and amazon. Nothing hurts more than having $50,000 of imported product gathering dust in your fulfillment warehouse while listening to a voicemail from a debt collector. #2) SOURCING There are several options here. Many people prefer Alibaba.com. Warning - if you use Alibaba, you are stepping into a tank of pirahnas. There are more scam "manufacturers" on Alibaba than real ones. Use Escrow or AliSecure Pay if you buy. If the supplier says they only take T/T, Western Union, Moneygram - just say no! I prefer American Made when possible. If you're like me, try Ariba's Discovery Service - http://bit.ly/1q2NFZu - which will allow you to find suppliers with a physical presence in the USA. Note: Many things can be made on demand (someone purchases, one gets made and shipped) instead of in 500+ manufacturing runs. Start there if you can - Books on CreateSpace.com, Clothes on CafePress.com, Playing Cards on MakePlayingCards.com, etc - to test out your exact product. #3) START YOUR SITE This is an entire topic in itself. One of the fastest ways I know for newbies to start in e-commerce is with a SquareSpace.com store. Other options include GoDaddy.com and BigCommerce.com. If you can stand to use the templates they provide instead of trying to customize them, you'll save yourself a lot of hassle and expense - customization usually looks terrible unless a designer/coder was hired to do the work. If you do customize, find someone on odesk.com or elance.com. #4) MARKET Figure out where your competition is advertising. Are they getting free, "organic" SEO results on Google? Using social media to drive billions of dollars of sales? (NOTE: That was a joke - don't count on social media as the nucleus of your marketing campaign. Please!) Are they paying for Google ads ("PPC"), buying email lists, using strategic partnerships for promotion, relying on shopping portals, using banner advertising, or something else entirely? There's probably a good reason - figure out what it will take to play in those waters. At the same time, try to find a small enough niche that you can win in it. #5) BEWARE Be careful about artsy things. If someone is attracted to something artistic, it's usually because there is a story behind the art for them, or because it's cheap. If you're going to try to sell artistic things, you may want to consider doing some serious research first about who has been successful in that area. Look at etsy.com to see handmade artsy items (very cool). #6) WORTH A LOOK Worth checking out as you start your journey: Art.com, yessy.com, Artfire.com, ArtPal.com #7) DEEP FOUNDATION If you need help, reach out for a 15 minute call and we'll discuss a go-to-market strategy specific to your goals.

I am currently the CTO of a vibrant online marketplace. As prior responders said, we started with demand. Once we had people who wanted to pay for our services, it was easier to find suppliers to fulfill the demand. In addition, we started with a narrow focus, and then expanded. We are a local service marketplace, so that meant starting with one geography, then expanding to a second, and a third. After we had figured out the formula in three geographies, understood the dynamics of the business thoroughly, then we expanded nationwide. As we roll out new features and services, we repeat this same pattern again and again: start in one geography, figure out the feature functionality/business dynamics/etc. then expand. Coming back to the demand point for a moment, in every business, marketplace or not, demand is the hard problem. The fact that you're an online marketplace is irrelevant. So, to be a successful business, say focused on finding repeatable, scalable and affordable ways to generate demand and you'll be on the right path.

The first matter for you to conclude is to agree the terms of a shareholder agreement between the two founders. This shareholders agreement should govern the management of all significant governance matters. Without this you will subject to the constitution documents of the company and local company company law. This is a standard type of agreement that any decent corporate lawyer will be able to advise you on. As the voting shares are held equally, then no major changes will be able to be made without both founders agreeing to the changes. The non-voting shares (assuming all other terms are the same) will have equal rights to financial returns (dividends and liquidation rights), but will not be able to participate in voting issues. In simple terms, you will have an equal say in the running of the company with your co-founder, but will receive 25% of the returns, while they receive 75%.

Greater risk = greater equity. How likely is this to fail or just break even? If you aren't receiving salary yet are among 4-6 non-founders with equivalent sweat investment, all of whom are lower on the totem pole than the two founders, figure out: 1) Taking into account all likely outcomes, what is the most likely outcome in terms of exit? (ex: $10MM.) Keep in mind that 90%+ of all tech startups fail (Allmand Law study), and of those that succeed 88% of M&A deals are under $100MM. Startups that exit at $1B+ are so rare they are called "unicorns"... so don't count on that, no matter how exciting it feels right now. 2) Figure out what 1% equity would give you in terms of payout for the most likely exit. For example, a $10MM exit would give you $100k for every 1% you own. 3) Decide what the chance is that the startup will fail / go bankrupt / get stuck at a $1MM business with no exit in sight. (According to Allman Law's study, 10% stay in business - and far fewer than that actually exit). 4) Multiply the % chance of success by the likely outcome if successful. Now each 1% of equity is worth $10k. You could get lucky and have it be worth millions, or it could be worth nothing. (With the hypothetical numbers I'm giving here, including the odds, you are working for $10k per 1% equity received if the most likely exit is $10MM and the % chance of failure is 90%.) 5) Come up with a vesting path. Commit to one year, get X equity at the end. If you were salaried, the path would be more like 4 years, but since it's free you deserve instant equity as long as you follow through for a reasonable period of time. 6) Assuming you get agreement in writing from the founders, what amount of $ would you take in exchange for 12 months of free work? Now multiply that by 2 to factor in the fact that the payout would be far down the road, and that there is risk. 7) What percentage share of equity would you need in order to equal that payout on exit? 8) Multiply that number by 2-3x to account for likely dilution over time. 9) If the founders aren't willing to give you that much equity in writing, then it's time to move on! If they are, then decide whether you're willing to take the risk in exchange for potentially big rewards (and of course, potentially empty pockets). It's a fascinating topic with a lot of speculation involved, so if you want to discuss in depth, set up a call with me on Clarity. Hope that helps!

Twitter is actually a great prospecting tool, and these are people you should absolutely be engaging with as a brand. The key is to engage without coming off as spammy. Instead of "Buy our product now to solve your issue", try something friendly like, "Hey XYZ! We'd love to help you [solve problem]. Let us know how we can help!" or "We'd be happy to put you in touch with one of our experts on this topic. Let us know if you'd be interested in chatting." In other words, as long as you're focused on providing value over pitching your products, your responses won't come off as spammy, and you'll not only be able to get more qualified prospects from Twitter, but you'll also grow a stronger and more lovable brand presence.

After having many live demos go awry, I attempt to avoid live demos as much as possible. That being said, a few thoughts, in no particular order. I prefer to rely on screenshots and animation which can typically illustrate my product as well, if not better than an actual demo. Screenshots and animation allow me to craft a narrative that focuses on the products key value proposition. A live demo often results in an audience member asking a question, then diving deep down into some sort of non-critical feature. A demo based on screenshots with animation will allow you to stay focused on our key narratives and primary value proposition. If you must give a live demo, you could use a wireless hotspot instead of relying on somebody else's network. Another option would be to run the demo on a remote machine, and show it using a screen sharing tool (such as join.me, WebEx, etc.), so that you're only relying on the firewall to allow HTTP traffic. (Though, that might have a lot of latency.)

Hi, if you need to uncover new interests, you might find Facebook Graph Search useful (you need to have your Facebook language set as English US before anything else). Start typing this phrase into your Facebook search bar: "Pages liked by people who like XYZ" - this will open a list of the most common pages of people that also like XYZ. You can get even more granular: - Pages liked by people who live in United States and who like NBA - Pages liked by people who live in United States and who like NBA and Houston Rockets - Interests liked by people who live in United States and who like Basketball As you said, trying out lookalikes based on your custom audience, website custom audiences, or conversion pixels could be another way. Also, one additional way to bring your CPA down would be to remarket to everyone who have already visited your website by using Perfect Audience or Facebook website custom audiences. Finally, you should have some strategies implemented for overcoming ad fatigue. Instead of running a campaign continuously for a very long time, use the newly added scheduling feature to spread it out: have it active for 1-2 days, then add 2-3 days off. Also, upload numerous different visuals for the same campaign and set up ad rotation, so that every 2-3 days a different ad is shown to the audience. I hope this will help you improve your campaigns, and if you wanted to discuss it further, feel free to let me know! Cheers, Adomas

My family is in the hotel business. I can tell that we would have absolutely no interest in doing this. We make sure out employees look after our property and provide great customer service. We do not have down time for them. We run a tight ship. The liability and other headaches that come with what you propose is incredible. The only thing we would consider doing is using one of our banquet facility rooms as a senior day-care center from 9am to 2pm Mon-Friday because a company would be paying us for the space and food. Everything else is on them.

So this model has been attempted before in various formats. As a direct comparison, 3-4 years back there was a company called WidgetBox. They were a startup. Successful in getting funding. Raised at least $8 million. Their changed up their model a few times but their most successful one was nearly identical to what you described. They went directly to various advertisers on a CPA basis and then guaranteed publishers a set CPM based on the agreed CPA with the merchants. Got as high as doing 500 million impressions a month. But they didn't appropriately account for fraud, had to back out on payouts, ended up nearly folding. They were able to pivot and be absorbed into Flite. A less direct comparison of your scenario is very common. Many affiliates these days operate what is considered a sub-network (against the rules of most larger affiliate networks) or a super-affiliate program. Examples are the dozens of loyalty affiliates out there like Upromise who also have their own affiliates (as well as members tracked on sub-ids) underneath them. Being the advertiser's "sole" affiliate is partially where I don't see the model you describe work. Unless your advertisers are completely unfamiliar with the digital space they are unlikely to only work with one company as their sole affiliates. Advertisers like to scale. It's why they work with networks. What ever you decide, Post Affiliate Pro does not have a robust enough of a platform for you to launch with. Beyond that the software's ability to help detect fraud is suspect. HasOffers (know called Tune) is a way better choice. Also recommend looking at Performance Horizon Group. Either way, highly recommend rethinking the "exclusivity" or "sole" component of your model and asking yourself why an advertiser would just go with you?