You can find the Product Sales Report in the Reseller Control Center under the My Reports dropdown menu.  This report allows you to compare product sales across two periods, if desired, or run detail for recent purchases.  Each Product Group includes a drilldown that will show you detail of the line items sold and indicate which sales were new purchases and which were renewals.
You also have several filters you can employ to get even more specific data:

• Dates -  choose the exact date range you want to report on.  If you don’t want to compare two periods, you can ...<< MORE >>

Unlike many industries right now, the outlook for domains and related services is bright. In fact, insiders predict a period of amazing growth – much like the growth that followed the dotcom crash. << MORE >>

The term “Social Networking” encompasses a variety of Web-based tools, some of which you might already be using. Most of these tools are free in monetary terms, but may take some time to set up or maintain:

• Blogging – Writing, reading and commenting on trends and articles relevant to your readers.
• RSS feeds – Use them to push information out to users and bring content in to your blog.
• Bookmarking – Use it to gather and publish content to your blog.
• Facebook®/LinkedIn®/MySpace® – Establish a following on these popular social networks.
• Personalized networks – Build your own network with tools like Ning® and share information.
• Forums – Create a discussion space where you interact with people looking for solutions.
• Twitter® – Tell followers what’s new at your business in 140 characters or less.
• Online classified directories – Post your business information on CraigsList® or Insider Pages.®

Blogging is the gateway to other forms of social marketing, so start here. Read other people’s blogs, make comments, participate in any communities that attract people who might buy your products. Once you have an idea of what the community is talking about, start your own blog with an eye toward providing information of value to these readers.

A few tips on successful socializing:

Keep it relevant. Nobody likes a pushy salesperson butting into their conversations, so make sure your comments fit the topic being discussed. Freely offer your expertise whenever a topic on which you’re an expert comes up; mention your product or service only when it might solve someone’s problem – not every time you comment.

Be timely. Old news is no news in social networking, so you’ll have to make an effort to stay ahead of trends. Let’s say you see an article in USA TODAY about Mexico’s growing interest in retail imports. You might post this “tweet” to Twitter: “Get a .COM.MX and sell your products online in Mexico, one of the fastest-growing retail markets. Now just $X.XX! MyStoreURL.”

Remember, a network is not built in a day. You aren’t going to attract a huge readership, friend list or Twitter following overnight. Networking takes time. Continue to connect through linking, friending and following other people until they start to reciprocate.

We created these banners for you to place on social networking sites – use these or make your own in similar sizes to help drive traffic to your reseller store.

Next month we’ll evaluate the results of the last six months of exercises. We’ll measure effectiveness, drop efforts that aren’t working and plan your next steps.

Resources:

• 13 Essential Social-Media ‘Listening Tools’, MarketingProfs.com
• www.facebook.com
• www.linkedin.com
• www.ning.com 
• www.twitter.com 
• www.craigslist.com 
• www.insiderpages.com

Third party marks and logos are registered trademarks of their respective owners. All rights reserved.

As a reseller, email is one of the most inexpensive marketing tools you have at your disposal. Using Express Email Marketing® (EEM), included free with your reseller account, you can create and send great-looking emails with very little effort.

Email is also one of the most convenient forms of marketing. Customers can read your email at their leisure and from a variety of places – desktops, cell phones, handheld devices. Plus, EEM's automated batch send feature means you won't waste time sending 100 emails one at a time.

To make the most of email marketing, you need to build your email list:

1. First, use EEM to import your current customer list. EEM complies with the federal CAN-SPAM Act, which makes it illegal to send unsolicited emails to anyone who has not given express permission to be contacted via email. EEM will only import the email addresses of customers who've agreed to be contacted.
2. Next, place an email sign-up form on all the sites you own using EEM's opt-in magnet (don't forget your blog or any other place it might fit in!). For the sign-up link you could try something like "Sign up for my newsletter." or "Get great domain deals."
3. Place your opt-in link in unexpected places. Add it to your email signature line, your Twitter® or Facebook® account – even the closing line on your eBay® or Craig's List® entries.
4. Make it a trade. Offer a white paper, case study or marketing tip you've written. Pass them to a secure page or email the item directly to them once they've provided their email address.
5. Do you speak publicly? Let listeners know they can learn even more from you if they visit your site and sign up for your newsletter.
6. Encourage readers to share this communication with friends. Just be sure to include a "Get your own subscription FREE" link in each email or newsletter.
7. Add an opt-in link to the bottom of your order receipts to grab the attention of any stragglers who haven't signed up. In the RCC pull down "Design & Layout" and select "Receipt Info." Click one of the radio buttons under Receipt Information to add a message or a link.

As your list grows, make sure you're communicating with these customers regularly. (How often is too often?) It's no fun to get an invitation, and then never hear back again. You've already made a good first impression by getting their permission; now follow through with ongoing communications.

A few tips on creating successful emails:

• Be creative! Customize one of EEM's 41 pre-built email templates with your own greeting and pricing. Each EEM template features one of our most popular products or RCC promotions.
• Test various offers. Divide your mailing list and test two different offers against each other. Or make a different offer every time you send an email to see which one gets the best response. Resend the winning email at least two more times this year.
• Track your results. If you use marketing source codes with your offers, you can track which customers open which emails and identify the offers that bring in the most revenue. You can use this information to plan future campaigns.

Third party marks and logos are registered trademarks of their respective owners. All rights reserved.

Last month's exercise helped you look at your target market and build an audience profile. This month, we show you how to use the reporting tools in the RCC to create a product mix that will appeal to your target market.

Start by using the Product Sales Report and Microsoft ®Excel® to determine which products have sold best for you over time. You can find the Product Sales Report under the "My Reports" menu in the RCC. You'll want to look at a minimum of three months worth of data, to get a feel for month-to-month trends.

First, run your report using the Order Type filter to isolate ‘New Purchases'. Export this data to your spreadsheet program, and sort highest to lowest UNITS for each month. This tells you what your top volume products are.

Next, sort highest to lowest on COMMISSION to find out which products are bringing you the most income. It might be useful to highlight your top five, so you can find them at a glance. Now answer the following:

• What are your top five products for volume as new purchases?
• What are your top five products for commission as new purchases?
• How much cross-over is there between your top five for volume and commission?
• Are your top five always the same or do you see spikes and variations?

Hold on to that data. Now do the same exercise with the Product Sales Report, only this time set the Order Type filter to ‘Renewals'. Again, compare your monthly data and answer the four questions:

• What are your top five products for volume as new purchases?
• What are your top five products for commission as new purchases?
• How much cross-over is there between your top five for volume and commission?
• Are your top five always the same or do you see spikes and variations?

Compare new sales to renewals

If you see that your top five productsfor new sales and renewals match pretty closely, that tells you which products appeal to your audience overall. These are the products you should lead with in your advertising.

To increase your income, approach this group with natural add-on products. For example, if one of your top five best-sellers is Hosting, but not Traffic Blazer®, offer them Traffic Blazer via an email you send through Express Email Marketing®. You'll find a template for this product and many more ready to go in the Reseller Templates category.

If you see that renewals are drastically lower than new sales for your top five, look closely at your advertising (banner ads, home page messaging, etc). If customers are failing to renew annual products, they may feel misled about how a product works or how it meets their needs.

To find out exactly why customers are not renewing, send out a customer survey via Express Email Marketing® . Then adjust your strategy accordingly. Remember, renewals are the best way to build your income as a Reseller!

If your top five or 10 products for new purchases show a much wider range of products than renewal numbers, but your renewal numbers are also growing steadily, you have found the sweet spot! This means your customers are adding to their product portfolios and your renewal base.

Look for patterns you can use
Drill deeper to see if you can find any patterns. You can use this information as a starting point for new marketing efforts.

First, run the Product Sales report with the Customer Type filter set to ‘Existing Customers' and Order Type filter set to ‘New Purchases'. This will show you which products you should be promoting to your current customers.

Then run the report again with the Customer Type filter set to ‘New Customers' and Order Type filter set to ‘New Orders'. This will show you which products you should be promoting to new customers via ads and home page messaging.

The big payoff

Now that you've created a tracking system for your product mix, take a few minutes every month to run Product Sales reports and compare your month-to-month trends. Checking this regularly will ensure you're aware of any shifts in your product mix, so you can either take advantage of the shifts or make an effort to correct them, as appropriate.

This month’s Marketing Tip will help you analyze who you’re selling to and how effectively you’re doing it.

The key goal of marketing is to address your best customers in ways that appeal to them. The more specifically you can tailor your offers to their needs and interests, the better the response. This kind of “targeting” leads to more repeat purchases, bigger orders, and a larger customer base.

Who are you selling to?
To speak to your target market(s), you first have to figure out who they are. How do they use the Web? Are they tech-savvy or novices? Why did they choose to buy from you rather than someone else?

• To find out who your current customers are, start by looking at the advertising you did last year that worked (for tips on reviewing your advertising, see last month’s Marketing Tip). If your most successful ads appeared, say, on an industry blog about real estate, you know your customers are realtors looking for ways to promote their realty businesses.

• Use the Site Analytics tool that came free with your Reseller Account to find out which key words people are using to find you on the Web (look under “My Settings” in the RCC). If “Cheap Web sites” is a big search term for you, you know price is important to your customers.

What do they want?
Let’s say your research leads you to the following conclusion:

“My target customer is a realtor who uses the Internet for business.”

The most reliable way to find out what your customer wants from you is to ask him. Use the Express Email Marketing™ program included with your Reseller Account to create and send a simple survey to your customers. Some tips:

• Keep it short, since shorter surveys get more responses.

• Include a few demographic questions such as gender, profession, employment status, etc.

• Find out which of your products the reader currently owns (domains, hosting, etc.) and what they use them for (business, hobby, family, etc)

BONUS: Offer an order-level discount to the first ## customers who return surveys. Email the promotional code (found in the RCC) to respondents with an invitation to shop your store. Be sure to set a minimum order quantity.

The results of your survey should help you fill out your target market description still further:

“My target customer is a male realtor who uses the Internet to promote his business. He’s self-employed, so customer support and price are prime issues.”

Tailor your product mix
Now that you know who you’re selling to, the next step is to decide if you’re offering the right products and services. Check back here next month to learn how to create an optimal product mix using tools available to you in the Reseller Control Center.

This month’s Marketing Tip focuses on advertising. If you haven’t kept a formal list of your advertising efforts, now’s the time to start. Knowing what works, what doesn’t, and when you last tried it will help you avoid making the same mistake twice. It can also help you decide when it’s time to re-test something that didn’t go so well the first time.

1. Evaluate your history
Let’s start with an inventory of everything you’ve tried to date to market your reseller business. (Just getting started with advertising? Jump down to the next section of this article.) Record any action you’ve taken in the following categories, jotting down all the information you have regarding that activity (cost, time invested, dates, duration of advertisement, etc.):

• Online advertising – Pay-Per-Click advertising, banner ads, text ads on partner sites
• Print advertising – Newspaper or magazine ads, business cards, direct mail postcards, brochures or fliers
• Social networking – Writing your own blog, responding to or submitting articles or features to other people’s blogs, Chamber of Commerce listings, setting up RSS feeds, or listing with social search (Craig’s List, Insider Pages), social bookmarks (Delicious, etc.) or social networks (Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter)
• Live networking – Handing out business cards, membership in professional organizations, public speaking
• Email Marketing – Communications with your house list (using your free Express Email Marketing® or another tool), electronic newsletters, adding subscription tools to your site to grow your email list
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) – Creating custom content to attract traffic to your site “organically.”
• Cold-calling/emailing – Reaching out to businesses that don’t have a Web presence via email or in person.

Now, think about each of these efforts and be honest about what’s not working. Is it because you haven’t been able to dedicate enough time to it? Is it too costly? Or is it just truly not working for your audience? Be ruthless and drop anything that’s not yielding a return – especially if it’s costing you money. You can always try it again later.

2. Set your strategy
Now that you’ve shortened your list to just the things that are working, pick one or two to expand through June of 2009. Decide how much time you’re going to dedicate to this activity each week, and if there’s a cost associated with it, budget what that will be. Make your goals as aggressive as you like, but make them do-able. Here are a few examples:

Increase Awareness with Business Cards
Cost: $25 to print custom business cards (you can do this for less at home or with a service like VistaPrint.com)
Time Commitment: 10 min – 2 hours per week
Strategy: Carry business cards with you at all times. Share them with anyone you meet who shows an interest in your business, whether you’re at a client meeting, your Rotary Club, or a party where the topic of what you do for a living comes up in conversation. Give each person multiple cards, one for them and another one or two to share with someone they know who might also be interested in your services.

Place Banner Ads
Cost: $200/month (costs will vary from $0 to thousands, depending on site)
Time Commitment: 2 hours per week
Strategy: This project involves several phases. 1) First you’ll need to identify potential sites that might refer sales-worthy traffic, determine their pricing/trade policies, and decide how much you’re willing to pay and for how long. 2) If you don’t find a banner ad you like in the “Marketing Tools” section of the Reseller Control Center, you can create your own or pay a graphic designer to create one for you. 3) Once you’ve posted your banner, watch the results like a hawk – you want to know how much traffic the site gets, how many clicks your banner receives, and how many sales or new customers you got as a result. 4) Use these numbers to determine the return on your ad investment (Total cost of banner advertising ÷ number of new customers gained = Cost Per Acquisition).

Promote Your Business with Email
Cost: $0 if you use your free Express Email Marketing® Tool
Time Commitment: 1-5 hours per month
Strategy: Use one of more than 50 reseller templates in Express Email Marketing to reach out to your current customers with proven marketing messages. Or create your own electronic newsletter that speaks to your target audience and shows them how your products can help them. Email once a week or once a month – whatever fits into your schedule and makes your audience happy.

Once you’re done with your advertising review, celebrate! You’ve completed a task that all successful business owners do routinely to keep their businesses on track. Next month we’ll take a look at your target market.

A Marketing Plan is a key tool that smart business owners use to grow their businesses. Since writing your own plan can be a little overwhelming, we’ve decided to break it down for you in a series of monthly articles. Each installment will feature step-by-step instructions on one activity, including tips, resources and suggestions for using the activity to expand your business.

You can commit as many hours as you like to these monthly exercises, but plan to give each one at least two hours of undivided attention. Don’t be surprised if you’re bursting with ideas and have to rein yourself in to narrow down your list of choices to pursue. And don’t forget to keep notes so you can revisit the rejected ideas later.

Exercise 1 -  Review Existing Advertising Take a good, hard look at what you’ve been doing and how it’s working (be honest!). Pick one area to focus on in the next few months.

Exercise 2 -  Focus on Target Market This month you’ll analyze who you’re selling to, and how effectively you’re doing it. You’ll also set a strategy for increasing your share of this market.

Exercise 3 – Determine Optimal Product Mix Using your sales report, you’ll identify which products are most popular and which are yielding the best profit. You’ll tailor your advertising to increase sales of those products.

Exercise 4– Grow Email Marketing List Grow Email Marketing List Who makes up your email marketing list right now? Employ strategies to increase that list and expand your reach.

Exercise 5 – Focus on Social Networking Strategies Already using social networking as a marketing strategy? Evaluate what’s working and where you need to expand, or choose one or two methods to start testing now.

Exercise 6 – Six-month Review of Advertising Strategy Revisit the plan you set in January, keeping the best and losing the rest. Choose a new idea to try in the 3rd and 4th quarters. (And yes, we’ll do this again in January 2010.)

Exercise 7 – Evaluate Pricing Strategy Selling low isn’t always the best strategy. Sometimes it’s possible to increase your prices and commissions, while keeping your sales steady. Find your optimal price point.

Exercise 8 – Generating Traffic with Organic Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Examine the content of your custom Web page or any external sites you use to drive traffic to your store. Don’t have a custom site? Now’s the time to create one.

Exercise 9 – Analyze Results of Email Strategy Email marketing is one of the easiest, most effective, and most cost-efficient tools in your arsenal. Time to look at your current strategy and set up a six-month plan.

Exercise 10 – Revisit Optimal Product Mix Time to review your product mix to make sure the activities of the past six months haven’t changed your customer base or product mix. Check for new commission leaders.

Exercise 11 – Year-to-date Cost/Benefit Analysis Determine your Return on Investment (ROI) for every cash outlay, deciding which to keep and which to drop. This will pay off in December, when you plan your 2010 budget.

Exercise 12 – Develop 2010 Marketing Plan Go back and look at what you’ve done throughout 2009. Take what helped you and make your own custom Marketing Plan for 2010, including deadlines, goals and costs.

Branding is one of those words that’s often thrown around and just as often misunderstood. Although the process involves several steps, the idea is really quite simple.

Branding is what Coca-Cola®* has – the minute you catch sight of that curly red “C,” you know beyond a shadow of a doubt what you’re dealing with. Your mouth may even water at the thought of that cool, refreshing liquid pouring down your throat. And all it took was a single letter!

To do what Coca-Cola did, you’ll need to create a brand for your company. How? Simple. Present an image and message that appeals to your target audience over and over again until your customers begin to associate that image and message with your company and yours alone.

The branding process usually begins with the creation of a logo and a tagline.

• A logo may be made up of words (your company name), an illustration and/or graphics.
• A tagline should sum up what you offer to customers that they can’t get anywhere else.

You sell domain names and related products to [fill in the blank with your niche]. Who else does that? What do you offer that your competitors don’t? A broader selection of products? Then your tagline might be “Your one-stop shop for all things Internet.” Or maybe your biggest sellers are domains and hosting and your biggest customers are extreme athletes. If so, a good tagline would be “Xtreme domains & hosting” or “Domains & hosting for those who live on the edge.”

Unless you’re a graphic designer, creating your own logo can be tricky – it needs to work in a variety of mediums and that kind of flexibility takes some skill. Regardless of whether you do it yourself or hire someone else to create your logo and tagline, be sure to run them past people who represent your target market (not your couch-potato uncle if your company caters to women runners) before putting them to use.

Once you have a logo, use it everywhere – on every page of your storefront, in newsletters, on receipts, on stationery, signage and business cards. You can even incorporate it into your Express Email Marketing® emails with a little HTML know-how.

If it’s short enough, your tagline can appear with your logo except in cases where the logo is too small to make the tagline readable. Your tagline should also appear on every page of your Web site. For bonus points, make your tagline clickable and link it to a page that describes your key promises and how your company delivers on them.

Over the long haul, branding pays off. It not only increases customer loyalty, ensuring that your customers continue to buy from you for years to come, but allows you to charge more than your non-branded competitors. How sweet it is!

DOs
>Test. Get feedback on your logo and tagline from people who represent your target market.
>Follow up. Your long-term success depends on how well you deliver on your promises.
>Stick with it. Coca-Cola’s been doing it for decades; that’s why their brand is so powerful.

DON’Ts
>Alter the individual elements of a logo once it’s been created and approved. You want the viewer to take one look at that logo and think of you, so don’t confuse them. Use it consistently.

RESOURCES
Don’t feel comfortable creating your own logo? Ask our Dream Design Team to create one for you.

*Coca-Cola® is a registered trademark of The Coca-Cola Company.

Looking for a way to add value to your products and services and generate keyword-rich content for your site? Offer how-to articles.

Offering free advice is one of the oldest and most effective tricks in the marketer's book. It not only sets you up as an expert with advice to give, it makes your customers feel indebted to you. People value good information, and they appreciate it all the more when it's given away for free.

You don't have to be a professional writer to produce useful articles, either. A quick Internet search [Break and link if needed] on any topic -- how to market your business, write your own HTML snippets, optimize your site for the best search engine listings -- will yield an abundance of information. Once you've found a handful of really good nuggets, think about how those tactics or tools mesh with your niche market. Use concrete examples to explain them.

• If your article is a marketing how-to, create a Sample Company and give concrete examples of how Sample Company would build its Web site content. Don't be afraid to explain why Sample Company chose the Deluxe Hosting Plan based on their organization's size, pairing it with Group Outlook® with Mobile for maximum flexibility as the company grows. Maybe Sample Company didn't have a logo yet and used the Dream Design Team to design a new logo, along with letterhead and business cards.

• Or do you have a real customer who would be the perfect example for your concept? Contact them and ask if they'll let you use them as a case study with a link back to their new Web site -- don't forget to get a testimonial if they're willing.

• If you're pulling together an article on Search Engine Optimization (SEO) -- include a sample meta tag with keywords relevant to your target customer. (Do a couple of quick searches yourself to determine good keyword sets -- you can even view the source code of great sites you find and take examples from their keyword lists.)

Better yet, since you have personal experience with the products you sell, write about them. Tell your customers what you've learned about keyword advertising, or about time-saving shortcuts in Quick Shopping Cart®. Tell them how you increased your inbound links by swapping links with other sites. By making your experiences available to your customers, you shorten their learning curve. And cement their loyalty in the process.

EXPERT's tips
> Provide useful information that is directly relevant to your customers' everyday lives.
> Quote reliable and widely recognized experts, setting their words off with quotation marks.
> Break information down into numbered steps.
> Double-check to make sure your instructions are accurate.


RESOURCES
>MarketingProfs.com
>MarketingExperiments.com
>MarketingSherpa.com