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How to Start an Online Travel Agency Working From Home

Have you noticed that there are not many store front travel agencies these days? I guess it may have had a lot to do with the fact that many people are using their computer to book their own flights online. Also, after the disaster in New York on September 11th, people were scared to travel and a few years ago, a couple airlines lay off their workers and caused a slow period in the travel industry.

However, I think the main reason is the comfort of booking a flight from your own personal computer that fascinates the consumer to a do-it-yourself attitude. In lieu of this fact, it is apparent that an online travel agency is a good idea for a business opportunity to assist these consumers with trip planning and other customer service issues that they may still need.

There are two types of home travel businesses:

· Referral travel agencies

· Booking and selling agencies

A Referral travel agent is the easier of the two because all it requires is a word of mouth advertising to guide the customer to the online portal where they can book their flight. It is also a relationship business because the referrals in most cases come from family, friends and associates first.

The referring travel agent is compensated with a paid commission, which is decided in advance by the agency to which the referral will go. It is easy to be an online travel agent because it only requires handing out business cards, flyers and maybe placing online ads. There is no immediate contact with the customer unless it is someone who needs additional questions answered. This can be done on a part time basis until the full time income is replaced, then anyone make the transition to a full time business.

The booking and selling agencies fall into a category of only one travel agency. Since we have already confirmed that these agencies are not so popular anymore, we will only concentrate on the referring travel agent.

A referring travel agent does not need to know too much in-depth information about the specific travel details. All they do is to direct people to the website where they book their own flights and get help directly from the airline. In the case of the booking and selling agencies, they have to do the hard work of finding out all the information for the customer, which can be quite time consuming.

If you are considering the opportunity that is open to being a referral travel agent, be sure to find out if the company is stable, if they provide adequate customer service, what the compensation is, can you work full time or part time, do you need any special training, and is it something I can recommend to others with confidence.

One of the perks of being a referring travel agent is that you can work from home, you work on your own time, you get free trips called FAM trips, you get to travel first class, you get discounted air fares and priority baggage claim.

Once you have decided to pursue a travel business opportunity, make sure you treat this as a real business. Get a business name, if possible and a tax identification number. Keep good records of income and expenses because this business is tax deductible. Your vacation trips can be tax write offs if you use it also to refer travel to others.

I would also suggest that you choose a travel category and learn as much as you can about it and specialize in that category. An example is cruises or honeymoon packages. With cruises, you can target the baby boomers who love to take cruises and for the honeymoon packages, you target anyone you know who is thinking or planning to get married.

Let your enthusiasm about this travel business be infectious to everyone you meet. Make sure you take some vacations that you can talk about or suggest to your clients. Educate yourself and take this business seriously.

Video Marketing For Lawyers – 9 Things You Must Ask Your Video Producer

Here are the 9 most important things you need to ask any video production company:

1. How long will my video shoot be?
2. How many actual video clips will I get for that length of video shoot?
3. How long will each video clip be?
4. Will you upload my video clip(s) to my website and blog?
5. Do you upload my videos to the video sharing sites?
6. Do you blog about my videos?
7. Do you put my videos on your own website and blog about the newest video you created?
8. Do you use your social networks to tell the world about my new video?
9. How much will you charge me to create another series of video clips?

If the video company you’re choosing doesn’t do all of those things with an all-in-one, turn-key system, ask them “Why Not?”

AM I TOO EXPENSIVE?

You’ve decided to produce videos to market your law practice. You’re now looking for a video production company. Here are 3 reasons why you won’t hire me:

1. I’m too expensive
2. I’m an attorney with years of experience creating and producing educational videos
3. You don’t want the commitment of creating video over 6 or 12 months

There. I’ve said it. These are the main reasons why you will not hire me. Now, I’m going to address each one and by the end of this article, you decide who you need to hire.

Most video production companies charge anywhere from $500-$35,000 to create attorney video. At the low end of the spectrum, you can get the cookie-cutter video where they use a fixed template that you cannot change and get only one video clip for your money. At the other end of the spectrum, you get a custom video channel with 3 or 4 video clips.

In the Lawyers’ Video Studio I shoot one hour of video. From that one hour I am able to get about 4-5 usable video clips lasting 2-3 minutes each! I do not recommend having video clips less than one minute; that’s a waste of your time and money. That will not give you enough time to explain to your viewers the information that they need to know.

Most video studios only offer an a-la-carte menu, where you pick and choose your options. That’s not the way we work in the Lawyers’ Video Studio. Contrary to most video production studios, we create a turn-key system where all you have to do is show up and start talking. You do not need to know anything about how the video is created, edited, compressed, uploaded or distributed. It’s totally done for you.

WHO IS YOUR VIDEO PRODUCER?

Ask any of the video companies you are considering whether their video producers are practicing trial lawyers. Why is that important? It’s only important if you want someone to create video that online viewers want to watch. If you just want to create a video to ‘get your name out there’ and give the world a verbal resume of who you are, then you don’t need a producer who is also an attorney. That would be a waste of your time and money. There are plenty of good video producers out there who can create that type of video for you.

A video producer must have experience creating LAWYER video. Not wedding video. Not commercials. Not verbal resumes that do not help a viewer understand how you can solve THEIR legal problem. They may have won awards for work they did in TV or film, but you must ask any video producer these 3 IMPORTANT questions:

1. Do you know what a [fill in your specialty] lawyer (immigration, workers comp, DUI, personal injury, business transactions, etc.) does?
2. Do you know who my ideal client is?
3. Do you know what an online viewer looks for when searching for a lawyer in my specialty?

A producer who is a practicing attorney will know the answers to these questions. Other producers will likely not know the answers.

YOU DON’T WANT TO CREATE 24 to 60 VIDEO CLIPS THAT WILL GET VIEWERS TO CALL YOU

Ok, I understand. You’d rather stick with your very expensive (and useless) yellow pages ad that does not distinguish you from any other lawyer. Maybe you want to try some display ads in the newspaper again. Maybe you’ll try TV commercials or direct mail. Maybe even dabble in radio spots. That’s fine. One year from now I’d like you to come back to this article and objectively look at your stats to see how many calls you received from your other advertising; how many turned into actual clients; how much revenue you generated from that advertising and what your actual return on investment is.

One year from now, you will have lost the opportunity to create 6 months worth of videos. You might even have lost the opportunity to create 12 months of videos. Just think about how many viewers come to YouTube alone: Over 100 million people EACH MONTH! The goal of creating video is to greatly improve the likelihood that an online viewer will call you instead of your competitor. Anything you do to increase those chances will place you ahead and distinguish you from all of your colleagues.

By creating new video every month for six months, you create 4-5 video clips PER MONTH. That gives you 24 to 30 actual videos that will be online. For attorneys who realize how incredible that value is and the tremendous savings you receive, they will eagerly take advantage of the 12 month video incentive program and create 48 to 60 videos by the end of one year. That’s a huge number of videos.

Creating video is the best thing to have happened to me in my law practice. I receive calls from people across the country every day thanking me for educating them and asking me for legal help. Obviously not all callers have valid cases, but just think…if they hadn’t seen my videos, they would have never called.

So, are you willing to create useful video that will get viewers to raise their hands for more information and seek your counsel, or do you want to wait and let every other attorney get the opportunities you’re passing up? The choice, as always, is up to you. My goal is to make you an informed attorney and let you make an educated decision about which path you want to travel.

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Affiliate Marketing Tips and Tricks for Beginners

Making money on the internet is a popular way to get an extra income. Working online offers flexibility: people can do it whenever and wherever they like. Besides, there are many types of online businesses available today, and one of them is called ‘affiliate marketing’. This program allows you to be an affiliate marketer of some certain merchants and link their products on your site. When a product is sold, you earn a commission.

You are probably interested in this marketing program. But before taking a part in this business, it is essential for you to know the tips and tricks. Here are some affiliate marketing tips that would be useful for beginner affiliate marketers:

- First of all, you should build a website and you should select a topic that you love for your site. Try not to start with a topic that you don’t like since it will only make the site a boring place. People will know how well you know about your topic by looking at the contents of your website. That way, people will be interested in your website as well and you will draw more visitors. This may not get you the highest commission but it is a great way to attract traffic.

- A good website should feature a good design as well. It would be helpful if you know how to use a graphic design software. Adding graphics to your site will make it look attractive. If you are not sure how to use a graphics software, you can always rely on the tools available on the website builder site.

- When running an affiliate marketing business, people often ask about the best network to choose. Well, actually there is no exact answer to this question. It because each network has their own strong points and you should choose one of them based on the tools they offer. You can also choose merchants from the major networks and see which one that works for you.

- “Parasites” can have a negative impact to your business. When you are involved in affiliate marketing, you will find the term “ScumWare” or “ParasiteWare”. These are applications that can redirect your visitors to other websites. These applications often masquerade as file sharing applications or browser help objects. It is essential to learn more about these applications so that you won’t lose your visitors.

- Learn and learn more about the business. When you are involved in affiliate marketing, it is essential that you educate yourself. There are various things that you need to learn such as creating custom links or advanced HTML coding. You can easily find affiliate marketing tips and guides posted by other marketers on various forums.

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