Dec 12 2009

Choosing a Winning Business Idea

Category: Online Bussiness — admin @ 3:32 pm

You’ve probably heard it a hundred times by now – if you want to make alot of money with an online business you have to offer your own product or service. Well, make that a hundred and one times…

It’s true. Although affiliate programs are a great way to add additional streams of income, the best money maker is still a unique product or service that you control. That way you earn all of the money instead of only 10% – 40%.

Here are six tips to help you choose a winning business idea:
   1. Start with what you know. If you have experience in a particular area, either through your work or hobbies, then the best place to start is thinking how you can turn that experience into a business. It doesn’t have to be something you’ve worked at for 20 years, think of the things you’re good at and that you could expand your knowledge on to create a business.

   2. Don’t waste time trying to find a brand new idea. At the height of the dot com era there was a race to be the first to launch a new product or to service a particular market. Although many of the first launched services received alot of recognition for their innovation, they ultimately failed because they were breaking new ground and didn’t know how to succeed. Many of the second and subsequent businesses in those markets succeeded because they saw the mistakes that were made and capitalized on fixing them.

When thinking of a new business idea don’t assume you have to find something that isn’t currently being done. A better strategy for most new entrepreneurs is to find something that is being done but that needs improvement.

   3. Find a business area that needs improvement. Think about the products and services you use or that you’ve heard other people talk about. Are there any that could be improved on? Is there anything they’re not offering that would be of value? Consider starting a business that fills a need that isn’t being met by the current providers.

   4. Focus on a niche. Select a specific market to which you can offer unique products or services. You can’t be everything to everyone, and trying to offer a giant selection of goods to a huge and generalized market is the route to frustration, disappointment, and failure.

As a small business, focus on a promising niche market and work hard to offer them the products and services they need. If you do this well you’ll become known as an expert in this area and you’ll be able to generate new business from your reputation alone.

   5. Be careful of “hot” industries that are already overcrowded. Although you have to be the first person into a market, you have to be careful of markets that are already over crowded.

One of the keys to success in business is differentiating yourself from your competitors. If your customers can’t see value in doing business with you over someone else you’ll never be able to attract the business you need to succeed. If there are already so many businesses doing what you’re considering that you can’t figure out how to make yourself stand out then choose another business idea.

   6. Think about what works online. There are some products and services that work well online, and others that don’t. Consider the following rules when choosing your business idea:
         1. The product or service offered can’t be readily available offline – or there must be an advantage to ordering from you such as price, bundling with other products, etc.

         2. It has to appeal to the masses – the Internet is a global medium. That said, there are local opportunities but you need to explore them carefully.

         3. It must be easily shipped around the world.

         4. You can’t charge for something if it’s already available online for free. 

Before you decide what business you’d like to start, be sure to research it carefully. Knowing upfront how big the market is, who your competitors are and what your competitors are offering will help you avoid costly mistakes.

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Dec 10 2009

6 ways To Improve Your Online Business

Category: Online Bussiness — admin @ 9:30 pm

There are six important characteristics that can play a major role on the impact your website has on prospects. Outlined below is the importance of each characteristic and tips on how to maximize your potential. It is always important to tailor everything you do to what your customer is expecting, doing so will help keep you one step ahead of the competition.

Convenience – Allowing your customers to make decisions at their convenience is a very powerful element. Nobody wants to feel pressured or hurried into making a buying decision. When a customer can go to your website, browse your products and services, and make a purchase at their convenience, you are satisfying a crucial consumer obstacle — time. They don’t have to keep returning to your storefront every time they wish to evaluate your value. In fact, most customers do not buy something the first time they see it. Instead, they must see and consider it several times before they finally talk themselves into purchasing. A website allows customers to quickly review their reasons to purchase something, leading to a greater number of impulse buys.

Information – A website can allow you to communicate much more information about a product or service than an in-store display or advertisement. You can also control the way the information is presented. Supplying information in an orderly step-by-step process can greatly improve the chance of a purchase.

Evaluation – Many customers will not purchase something without searching for the best value. The internet allows your customers to obtain the information they need to feel like they are making an educated buying decision. Make sure you are using your website to take advantage of this opportunity. Inform your customer why your product or service is of the best value compared to their other options. Always acknowledge the competition instead of acting like your product or service is the only one out there.

Guidance – The pages of your website should guide the customer towards the specific solutions they are looking for. They should serve to help them quickly locate what they came to find. Think of it as a store map located at the entrance of a department store. The customer can use this directly upon entering the store to get to the department they are interested in, instead of wandering around looking for it. Get their relevant information in front of them quickly while they are still the mood to purchase. People buy on impulse. If they have to spend 15 minutes searching for what they are looking for, that impulse may very well fade away.

Contact – The internet also allows for another form of contact with your customer. Some people can be hesitant about talking to a representative in person or on the phone if they don’t feel very knowledgeable about the product or service. Email allows them to carefully collect their thoughts before sending them. They feel less awkward about their lack of knowledge. Again, use this opportunity to gain an edge over the competition. Go out of your way to educate them about the product or service.

Entertainment – Use the informal atmosphere of the internet to entertain your customer. The internet is used by more people as a means of entertainment than as a means of business. If used effectively, entertainment can significantly improve the business relationship. Provide clever facts, amusing presentations or even a witty character or mascot to assist them. However, be sure that the entertainment is used appropriately. Be sure that is does not obstruct the information or value you are trying to bestow upon them.

Always use your competition to your advantage. Research how your competition uses these characteristics to improve their customer relations. Your website does not have to be boring just because it is informative. Create an appeal that will set you above the competition. The internet can be an extremely powerful tool for your business, reaching a greater audience than ever before. A successful business uses a complete arsenal to reach its market.

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Nov 03 2009

SEO Web Content: Good Writing & Good Business for Online business

Category: Online Bussiness — admin @ 12:10 pm

There’s a deadly myth about search engine optimization and writing for the web: that good SEO and good writing don’t go together.

As a website copywriter, I hear this myth repeated back to me all the time by new clients and prospects. “Don’t bother search-engine-optimizing the content,” they say. “Just make sure it is well written and the keywords will flow naturally into the content.” Or, they repeat the words of so many self-styled gurus: “don’t write for the search engines, write for the people who will be reading what you write.”

If you’re one of the people who believe there’s a conflict of interest between search engines and humans, you’re operating under two misconceptions:

* Misconception 1: you know more about what people want to read on the web than the search engines do.

* Misconception 2: you or your writer will just naturally write the content that people or search engines want, without consciously trying to meet their demands.

Why Search Engines Know More about Your Website Visitors than You

“I want a well-written web page, not a list of keywords.” It frightens me a bit when I hear this, since it demonstrates a complete lack of understanding of what search engines do.

A search engine is not simply a massive find function, like the one in the “Edit” menu of Microsoft applications. It does not just pull up any page that has the keyword in it X number of times. If it did, all pages that show up on search engine results would simply contain a list of the keywords.

Ultimately, writing for the search engines means writing for web surfers. Think about it: services like Google thrive on giving people the pages they want to read. If they consistently failed to give people what they wanted, people would stop using them.

What Your Website’s Visitors Want to Read

Most of the time, people don’t want to read on the web. Reading on a screen hurts the eyes. It doesn’t help that a lot of web pages make it harder with text that’s too small, backgrounds that are colored rather than white, and lots of extraneous graphics.

Besides, when it comes to reading matter, there is an overabundance of choice on the web, more than any library on earth. Of that, an unfortunate amount isn’t worth reading. Time must be rationed.

In fact, people treat a web page much as a search engine does: they scan it. In particular, they scan it for the keywords they entered into the search engine. If they arrived via a link from another website, they are still looking for words and phrases related to their interest–which are generally the same as the keywords people enter into search engines.

In short, Nobel-prize-winning literature makes bad web content. You have to write specifically for the web. That’s why the web hasn’t fueled much of a resurgence in the short story or other literary writing, dashing many hopes. Ebook versions of paper books have also disappointed expectations.

Newspapers are the only paper publications that have made a smooth online transition, precisely because they are written in short, to-the-point paragraphs that are easy to scan.

Still Think Good SEO Web Content Makes for Bad Reading?

You’ve just read almost to the end of a piece of search-engine-optimized web content. This article was optimized for the keywords, “SEO,” “search engine,” “search engines,” “keyword,” “keywords,” “search engine optimization,” and “writing.”

The keywords were present in headings and throughout the content. The content itself is easy to scan: paragraphs of one-three sentences, broken up by sub-headings every four paragraphs or so.

Naturally, those keywords are too broad for this page to have a chance of ranking high in search engines for them. But this page will get some of the atypical search keywords that account for as many as half of all searches. So, if someone types in a phrase like, “keyword writing search engine optimized content,” this page would have a pretty good chance of showing up.

To be sure, this article is on the long side for a web page. Most people won’t even scan more than 600 words of text; 250-500 is ideal.

But this article is destined primarily to be shown in an email newsletter, where attention spans are longer since people are more confident the source of the content can be trusted to repay their investment of time. Besides, as a well-structured page, it can be split into two or three pages according to the subheadings.

In short, there’s much more to writing well for the web than just writing well. If you’ve had enough sense to have your web content written professionally, have enough sense to take the advice of most website copywriters: search-engine-optimization for keywords and good web writing are the same thing.

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Oct 25 2009

Ecommerce Web Hosting: All you need to know

Category: E Commerce,Internet Marketing,Online Bussiness,Web Hosting — admin @ 11:25 am

Gone are the days when the Internet was only for the geek labs and university libraries. With the emergence of accessible connectivity and affordable technology, ecommerce and online business are not futuristic concepts. Websites like Amazon and Ebay are the prime examples of successful online business ventures.

If you are planning to start your online business or an ecommerce website, you need to be careful about where you host your website. There are two things that are very important to run an ecommerce website: a well-designed, content-rich website and a host that supports seamless hosting. Remember that your ecommerce host is the backbone of your business. Imagine what would happen if there are hundreds of customers eager to pay you and your website is down or certain sections are inaccessible. Or for that matter, some mischievous hackers steals your important customer and sales database and wrecks havoc with your business. Choosing an ecommerce or an online business web host is not as simple as choosing a web host for a normal website.

As it happens with any brick and mortar business, you need to take many things into account before choosing your ecommerce web host. How many other online business websites are they already hosting? What has been their track record till now? What do the other ecommerce entrepreneurs think of them? What all tools do they provide when you purchase their ecommerce web hosting package? Along with these, let us discuss in points what makes a host good for your ecommerce or online business website.

THE HOSTING PLATFORM FOR YOUR ECOMMERCE WEBSTIE

If you yourself are not developing/coding your website then your developer should be able to advise you what business hosting platform you require for your website. You may need Windows environment or Unix/Linux combination according to your website’s development environment and tools implementation. For example, if your developer is an experienced ASP (active server pages) programmer, he/she would prefer a Windows web hosting environment, but if he/she prefers PHP, then you’ll have to go for Linux/Unix business web hosting. Although different people have different issues with both the web hosting types, it all depends on personal preferences.

THE UPTIME OF YOUR ONLINE BUSINESS WEBSITE

This is the bane of countless webmasters. Millions in revenues are lost because when customers arrive at the websites, the ecommerce websites are down or some of the critical pages are not available. The customers arrive with the intention of making a purchase but there is no facility available…this is the worst nightmare for an ecommerce entrepreneur or a business person.

Make sure your ecommerce web host manages parallel servers so that if one server goes down, the others can take over. Your business web host should give you the guaranteed security of your critical data.

THE BANDWIDTH OF YOUR ECOMMERCE WEB HOST

An ecommerce website requires lots of traffic in order to generate business because, as it happens with every business in this world, not every visitor is a buyer or a customer. 10 or 20 people do business if 1000s of visitors come to your website. You have to make provision for lots of traffic, and that too, targeted traffic.

THE STORAGE SPACE OF YOUR ONLINE BUSINESS WEB HOSTING PACKAGE

Ecommerce websites take up more space compared to normal, non-commercial or semi-commercial websites. First of all, you need an online database to maintain comprehensive inventory details. Then, you may have tens of flash files or hundreds of image files if your buyers would like to view the images or if they want to go through some sort of an online catalog. Keep your future server space requirements in mind while negotiating for an ecommerce hosting package.

THE NUMBER OF EMAIL ACCOUNTS YOUR ECOMMERCE WEB HOST OFFERS

Some business web hosts offer a limited number of POP3 email accounts that you can manage through software like Outlook and Firefox and some offer an unlimited number. Some don’t provide a POP3 email account at all and you need to manage all your emails through a web-based interface. Make sure what your email requirements are going to be and go for an ecommerce web hosting package accordingly.

OTHER TOOLS WITH YOUR ECOMMERCE WEB HOSTING PACKAGE

* Some other tools you may want to check out are: Autoresponders: most ecommerce hosts these days provide free autoresponders. * Multiple FTP accounts: You may need multiple FTP accounts if you have a big team of programmers. * FrontPage extensions: FrontPage is shipped with lots tools for an easy and fast assemblage of a basic ecommerce website but these tools need some extensions installed on the server. If you are getting your business website developed using FrontPage, you’ll need the extensions available on the server of the web host. * Secure Socket Layer (SSL): SSL can be used to collect sensitive data from your site visitors, to ensure that your emails are not intercepted online, and to provide a sense of security for your customers. * Shopping cart software: Some business web hosting packages are shift with a shopping cart.

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Oct 25 2009

The Real Estate Industry and The Internet

Category: Internet Search,Online Bussiness — admin @ 11:05 am

The Real Estate business is truly unique in the sense that most people will only engage in it once or twice in their entire life.

And since purchasing property is such a complicated matter, Real Estate businesses have laboriously pursued every means to make this transaction as easy, and as informative as possible.

This explains the plethora of agents, advertisements, listings, open houses, and gimmicks realtors employ just to attract potential buyers, who, understandably so are squeamish about jumping headlong into such a big investment without thinking everything over.

However, there is great satisfaction in being able to close a successful deal with a client. This is especially true when the client is satisfied and heartily recommends the agent/broker to his friends who may be considering purchasing homes too.

Transition to the Information Age

Today’s buyers and sellers turn to the Internet first. To be competitive, Real Estate businesses have started to tap into the power of the internet. Successful websites will more than pay for themselves with the business it generates and the time it saves.

The beauty of the internet is that it puts so much information in the hands of users in an instant and in the comfort of their homes. On the flip side, sellers are now able to push that information to the buyer’s table reliably, instantly, and most importantly – inexpensively.

Real Estate businesses should realize that potential buyers nowadays desire to see many options. Before deciding on purchasing a home, they now do research on the internet, scanning for good deals and supporting information to help them weigh their decision.

If a Real Estate business does not adapt to this need, or to the growing power of information technology, it may find itself lagging behind the competition.

Inexpensive Advertisement

In America alone there are close to 70 million users of the internet. What business would not want to have advertising mileage in this medium? The cost of advertisement on this medium may cost anywhere from nothing to a few hundred dollars.

In any rate that still makes for a great deal.

Instant Communication

A buyer seeks information – what does the agent do? In the older days, they would fax documents, call long distance, send snail mail, and such. This sort of communication made facilitating a sale sometimes tedious and backbreaking.

Today’s information architecture allows buyers and sellers to shuttle mail, images, data, and others at a snap. This too is, like internet advertisement, inexpensive.

Realtors can pitch to not just one buyer at a time, but as many as can access his website. And the good thing about that is that he does not have to repeat himself for each customer.

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Oct 22 2009

Website Marketing – Special tips for Online Business

Category: Affiliate Marketing,Internet Marketing,Online Bussiness,search engine marketing — admin @ 6:08 pm

When it comes to website marketing and promotions, you need to start here…
Every website, whether new, old, or just a thought needs to consider the marketing that will be put that website in front of it’s targeted audience. Sounds easy huh? It just takes time, perseverance, and the will to succeed! A budget will help too!

The hardest part is sorting through all the crap that’s available to supposedly) help you. Yes, I said crap.
There is a mountain of businesses out there making incredible claims about FREE traffic generation, FREE hits, Mega sales, $20,000 in 3 hours,- or worse, for a small fee of $29.95 we can… blah, blah, blah.

Save your money! I have spent enough for all of us.
Following through with our suggestions offers you the most lucrative, ethical, and professional ways to achieve substantial results and still sleep at night. No, you don’t have to go for your wallet, I will tell you about these
programs in this article (for no charge). A good education will assist you the most.

If you already have a site, we recommend a Website Analysis.
Before You Build

1. Have a plan – Not just a good idea. Take your idea and formulate a complete plan around your goals. Highlight any USP’s you may have.
2. Build Meta-tags into every category page!  This is crucial to targeted traffic success with the Directories and Search Engines. You need to be found, not by your company name (only) but by “keywords” that the general public would use to find your type of business or service. DO NOT just pick any words,this is critical!
3. Use those keyword phrases throughout your site or particular page. Reinforce what topic you are addressing within that page (content).

4. Publish an article or newsletter that shows you are an authority on the topics you cover (or try to sell).  Just a spiffy sales letter is not enough. This is also critical in acquiring the email addresses of prospective customers.

5. Create some banner ads with impact for future partnership advertising. You will use these on your site as well as bannerpartners you can swap impressions with.

6. Begin considering what types of businesses or partners would or could compliment your offerings. Start a list.

7. Important: Create a budget for marketing your website.Yes, there are many things that you can implement for free, however, successful websites HAVE spent money wisely to get them to where they are. Don’t be fooled, you WILL spend money on marketing your website – it could be potentially more than what your website costs you to build. The verse goes like this… “Build it and they won’t come”. You may have already learned this, and that is why you’re here. There is much, much more, and we would be happy to help you, but this is a good start.

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Oct 22 2009

Promoting Your Online Business -a Checklist of Effective and Affordable Marketing Techniques

Category: Affiliate Marketing,Online Bussiness — admin @ 5:47 pm

The Internet’s full of hyped-up promises of the ‘ultimate’ marketing secret that will singlehandedly skyrocket your business to instant success.

Naturally, this is ALL it is: hype. There’s no single ‘secret’ that will magically transform a fledgling business into a powerful money-maker. Instead, every business owner is responsible for testing and refining various techniques until he or she has developed a solid, effective base that produces the desired results.

What works for one business may not work for another! Likewise, another business may have poor results with one method, while others experience great success. Here’s a quick checklist of some of the more popular — and completely free — marketing techniques to help you build your online business (note: this is a 3-part series).

PART 1: FREE ONLINE MARKETING TECHNIQUES

1. Build and use your own opt-in list of targeted and interested prospects. Offer a free newsletter that provides fresh, interesting, and relevant content. You’ll receive feedback from your readers about what’s important to them, and over time they’ll come to know and trust you. Your products, services, and even recommendations will then be taken much more seriously because you’ve developed credibility with your readers.

2. Contribute to newsgroups or discussion boards. Establish yourself as a helpful member of a community. Other members of the community who come to know and respect you will often refer you to others.

3. Niche directories or search engines. Find all the highly-targeted directories and SEs for your market, and then work to get listed. You’ll be surprised at how many niche sites there are! Good places to start
looking are http://yahoo.com/ and http://www.dmoz.com/ .

4. Build your link popularity. For example, you can trade links with other businesses in your market so that you can ‘share’ each other’s traffic. Most of the major search engines take link popularity into consideration when ranking your site.

5. Endorsed mailings to other lists. Find the editor of a great newsletter, and offer your product or service to him for free in return for a review or an endorsed ad to his list. Endorsements from the editor can far outperform regular ‘ads’, since they come from someone they know and trust (the editor).

6. Testimonials. It’s fine for you to say that your product or service is wonderful… but there’s far more ‘punch’ when someone else says it! Testimonials show prospects that you have happy customers and helps them to make the decision to buy.

7. Use autoresponders to follow-up with your prospects. It has been proven time and time again that autoresponders can dramatically increase your profits! They’re also great time-savers, saving you from following up with
each prospect manually.

8. Ad swaps. You can get extra exposure for ‘free’ (no out-of-pocket expenses) by swapping ad space with another editor that caters to your audience. Plus it’s a great way to put ‘remnant’ ad space to good use.

9. Join a webring. Link to other sites like yours and build an online ‘community.’

10. Offer coupons or gift certificates to entice visitors to make a purchase now*.

11. Make good use of referral marketing. Ask happy customers to refer prospects to you. Many people are so busy these days that they’re willing to rely on a trusted friend or contact’s advice — it saves them the time necessary to do all the research themselves.

12. Write and distribute articles in your area of expertise. This is a great credibility-builder! People who appreciate what you have to say are much more likely to check out your business. Another ‘bonus’ is that articles are often archived on websites for visitors to refer to time and time again.

13. Become an ‘expert’. If you like to write and have the time to do so, consider partnering with a high-traffic site within your niche market and offer to write a regular column or article. You establish credibility and get exposure; your partner site and their readers get great content.

14. Use a ‘Recommend-It’ or ‘Refer-A-Friend’ script. These scripts let visitors send your URL to friends.

15. Make it easy for others to link to your site. Consider adding a ‘Link to Us’ section where you provide the HTML that visitors can simply cut and paste to their own web pages. Again, this helps to build your link popularity (see point #4).

16. Hold contests. For example, every month you could give away one of your products to a lucky subscriber or customer.

17. Use a signature. Also known as ‘sig files’, a signature is a brief blurb about your business along with your URL and/or contact information. Put a signature on every piece of email you send out, as well as on any message board posts (if appropriate).

18. Give away a quality free eBook or report. eBooks and reports can be excellent viral marketing tools. You can even offer them as a ‘premium’ to other businesses within your niche, so that they can give it away to
their own customers or subscribers. This is an effective way to build a network that will willingly promote your business for you! More on promoting free eBooks and how they can help you can be found in the
article, ’10 Quick Tips on How to Create, Distribute, and Profit from Free eBooks’: http://onlinebusinessbasics.com/articles/ebooktips.html Hopefully this has given you a few helpful ideas on how to market your online business. In the next installment of this series, you’ll read about several marketing techniques that may cost you money, but that can be worth the investment many times over. The final installment is all about marketing your online business in the ‘offline’ world! Stay tuned.

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