Before putting your business online,it is important to know where and how you can attract customers to your website.All too often people jump right into doing their website without knowing the basics of online marketing.What works for another person may not necessarily work for you and that is often the case.The only way to succeed online is to based on facts,not tall stories told by someone else.
|
THE INTERNET MARKET |
Online Sales Will Exceed $200 Billion In 2008
The largest categories include computer hardware and software ($16.8 billion), autos and auto parts ($15.9 billion), and apparel, accessories, and footwear ($13.8 billion). Pet supplies and cosmetics and fragrances are expected to grow to over 30 percent.
Study by Forrester Research
Market For Online Shopping Increase By 40 Percent In The Past Two Years
More than 85% of Internet users worldwide has used the Internet to make a purchase.
Survey By Nielsel
|
| |
HOW TO MAKE MONEY ONLINE |
What Are The Income Opportunities Available On The Internet?
Here are the Top 12 Income Opportunities available through the Internet :
1.Advertising Services
You can offer Advertising Services on your website to other companies.The advertising can be in the form of banner ads or text link ads.You can also work with other companies as their partners and affiliates to offer a more complete advertising packages such as article submissions, classified ads,directory submissions,search engine submissions etc.The company you work with will do the services with their own professional staffs while you just need to focus on getting the advertisers or clients.
2.Affiliate Programs
Affiliate Programs are very commonly used to generate online income. All the website owner needs to do is to sign up as an affiliate with the merchant, and then paste the merchant's code onto their website. Any sales generated through such links entitle the affiliate to a commission.More Info Here
3.Auctions
Online auctions are online flea markets in which participants bid for products and services over the Internet.With online auctions, there are sellers, bidders, winners, and losers, just like the local auctions. Sellers can sell items by the piece or in lots. Auctioned items which has been won must be paid by the winners.eBay is the most popular online auction website today.More Info Here
4.Bloggings
Blogging refers to someone posting material on a blog, which is an online journal. Blogs can be used to make money by directing traffic to a particular product or website. These web logs can help you get more business and earn higher profits. You can also post affiliate links on your blog and earn commissions for promoting other people's products and services.More Info Here
5.Foreclosure
A foreclosure is the process by which a mortgage lender takes ownership of a property due to default of payment by the homeowner. Mortgage lenders often sell foreclosed homes at auction. Investors or potential homeowners can purchase these homes at reduced prices.A foreclosure is a great investment because you can buy the home cheap and then resell it to someone else at fair market value. More Info Here
6.Forex
Forex refers to the Foreign Exchange .You can use Forex to trade currencies and make money. The forex market exists wherever one currency is traded for another. The average daily trade in the global forex and related markets currently is over US$3 trillion.Trading in forex do have its risks. You should study the market thoroughly and trade accordingly before you start trading in forex.More Info Here
7.Freelance
Freelancing is a great alternative to working in the 9-to-5 world. As a freelace, you are your own boss that offers your professional services to your clients. Instead of as an employee, you operate as a business or independent contractor. Freelance careers are available in many different fields, from writing to web design to accounting. To earn a living as a freelancer, you'll first want to conduct some research on your field and the freelancing world. More Info Here
8.Google Adsense Ads
Google AdSense is the program that can give you advertising revenue from each page on your website—with a minimal investment in time and no additional resources.AdSense delivers relevant text and image ads that are precisely targeted to your site and your site content. And when you add a Google search box to your site, AdSense delivers relevant text ads that are targeted to the Google search results pages generated by your visitors’ search request.See Sample Here
9.Google Search Box
Place a Google search box on your site, and you can start monetizing the results from web searches. Not only does this keep your users on your website longer—since they can search from where they are—it takes just minutes to implement. And you pay nothing to participates.See Sample Here
10. Paid Surveys
Companies conduct surveys or hire survey firms to learn more about their consumers' spending habits. These companies pay people to conduct such surveys. Payments range from a few cents to a few dollars. There are a lot of companies online that offer paid surveys to online users.If you wish to earn a lot of money ,then take more survey assignments. More Info Here
11. Wholesale Drop Shipping
Wholesale drop shipping is when the supplier or wholesaler of a product ships a product directly to the customer on behalf of the retailer. The retailer pays wholesale price and shipping to the supplier and charges the customer retail price. Retailers who use wholesale drop shipping can turn over a quick profit without having to deal with inventory or shipping.You can make money online with wholesale drop shipping by becoming a retailer.All you have to do is create an account with a drop shipper and then create a website advertising the products offered by your vendor. The products can also be advertised on the online auction sites such as eBay or Ubid. More Info Here
12. Work at Home Opportunities
Working from home, or telecommuting, is becoming increasingly popular these. When you work from home, you don't have the gas, daycare, eating out, and other expenses associated with working at an outside job.More Info Here |
|
| |
HOW TO BUILD A WEBSITE |
1.Choose The Right Domain Name
A domain name should reflect t your business and easy to remember so you should choose them very carefully.
2.Choose A Reliable Hosting Company
Running a business through your website though makes it critical to have a reliable webhost. You need at least 99.9% uptime.If your webhost was current providing you with 20% downtime (80% uptime) this means that you are losing up to 20% of potential customers who cannot view your site due to this downtime.This means that you are losing money.You need to find a reliable web hosting company.
3.Good Website Design
(a) Website Design Software
Most people choose Microsoft FrontPage, Dreamweaver or any Adobe web development programs.
(b) Designer
If you do not have the design skills,you may need a freelance web designer to help design the website for you.
(c) Programmer
If you do not have the basic html skills then you may need to have a freelance programmer to help you with inserting the meta tags/keywords/affiliate and google adsense codes/setup emails etc.
4.Good Content
Content is King.If you have good content, other websites may link to your content and this will bring in even more visitors to your site. Links to your pages will also boost your ranking on Google, which counts links to your site. The main reason for having good content remains, though, that it will make your website popular with your visitors and will give it a good chance of surviving and doing well. So how can you get good content on your website?
Write It Yourself
By far the cheapest way to generate content is to write it yourself. Writing quality content takes a lot of time, and you will need a good knowledge of your subject to be able to write effectively on it. If you have the skills and time to generate content, though, this is really the best route to take.
Get Someone Else To Write It
You can hire a freelance article writer to write some content for you (this works especially well on fan/community sites) or you can hire someone specifically to write content.Rates are between US$10 to US$20 per article (around 400-1000 words).
Syndication
A good source of content is to use syndicated content from other sites. Many news organisations will provide a free 'news feed' or RSS Feeds where they give you some code to display news headlines on your site, and because the headlines link to their pages, they are willing to do it for free.
5.SetUp Your Own Merchant Account
Most merchant account basically offer the same rates. Some offer free set up and good rates which is always the best way to go.Many of the web hosting services now offers free merchant account setup using PayPal.
6.SetUp Your Email Account
It is always best to have an email similar to your website name.For example,if your website name is www.businessplanets.com and your name is Mike,then you can use the email - mike@ businessplanets.com.This email can be setup with your web hosting account. |
| |
INTERNET ADVERTISING WORLDWIDE |
The Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) today announced that Internet advertising revenues reached $5.8 billion for the first quarter of 2008. The 2008 first quarter revenues are an 18.2 percent increase over the same period in 2007, and represent the second highest quarter ever recorded, after Q4 2007’s $5.9 billion. Search and Display-related advertising continue to set records. Search revenues totaled almost $5.1 billion for the first six months of 2008, up 24 percent from the $4.1 billion for the same period in 2007. Display-related advertising totaled close to $3.8 billion for first six months of 2008, compared to the $3.2 billion reported for the same period in 2007, showing about a 19% increase. Display-related advertising includes Display Banner ads, Rich Media, Digital Video, and Sponsorship. |
| |
HOW TO PROMOTE YOUR WEBSITE |
1.Article Submissions
Article submission enables you to gain 1000s of inbound links,exposure and recognition.We submit your articles complete with your profile and links to more than 300 top article directories.All of these articles will have links back to your web site.Not only will your article submissions give you immediate links from high PR sites.Your gain both exposure and recognition as an expert in your subject as bloggers from content specific sites look for articles in these directories and publish them on their blogs.Start submitting today and within weeks you should start seeing results as your articles get indexed by the search engines.Top Sites
2.Banner Advertising
Banner ads are the little advertisements displayed on webpages usually for other websites. Sometimes banner ads might be colorful or animated to catch your eye, other times they are passive billboards just sitting in the background hoping to be read.By choosing which websites you place your banner ads on you can select the customer base that will view your ads. It is always a good idea to choose complimentary but not competing websites for banner advertising. Save money using banner advertising by participating in banner exchange with other website hosts.
3.Blogging
A blog is an online journal or log. Originally, it was a platform for people to record their thoughts, but it has turned into something more. Now people use blogs to promote products and services and increase traffic to their websites. Blogging is a great way to advertise because the pages are frequently updated which results in more attention from the search engines.It's a good idea to use blog submission services to submit your blogs to online blog directories. This will increase your blog's page rank with the search engine.Top Sites -
BOTW : BlogCatalog : Bloggapedia : Bloggarama : Bloggeries : Bloggernity :BlogHub : BlogUniverse : EatonWeb : Spillbean
4.Classified Ads
Classified Advertising enables you to provide detailed description of your business,thereby attracting the right consumers and allows them to make informed buying decisions.It will also generates relevant traffic and clicks to your website which will further improve your website ranking and traffic. Online classifieds allows you to expose your business to millions worldwide, 24 hours a day, all year round at affordable prices.They are a low cost yet effective advertisement due to their targetted market reach.As online classified ads are indexed by the search engines,they shows up on search pages.Classified Ads are perceived as offering better prices compared to advertisement on other mediums.The market for online classifieds in the USA alone is over US$10 Billion per year, proving its importance as a major advertising and promotion vehicle for businesses worldwide.Top Sites
5.Directory Submissions
Online Directories are maintained by editors who add your listings or website links based on the policies of their directories.Online Directory listings provides greater details of your products and services through the keywords and phrases and therefore helps to bring the right traffic and potential consumers for your business.Human edited directories are often targeted by SEO's on the basis that links from reputable sources will improve rankings in the major search engines.Online directories provides lots of one way links or backlinks to your website.One way links are more valued than reciprocal links or link exchanges.The Directories will index your links within 24 hours to 6 months from the date of submission.Top Sites
6.Email Marketing
Email marketing is one of the most powerful marketing tools available to all businesses.You can achieve outstanding results with email marketing while investing only a small amount of time and money."54% of small businesses surveyed rated e-mail as the top online promotion to drive site visitors and customers to their web sites and storefronts." Source: DMA Interactive.Email marketing enables you to proactively communicate with your existing customers and prospects instead of passively waiting for them to return to your Web site or storefront. It is a highly effective way to increase sales, drive site or store traffic and develop loyalty.The most important rule is not to spam.
7.Forums and Online Communities
Join Forums and Online Communities.Capture a market and show your expertise and credibility. Many forums are tremendously popular with search engines and so not only rank well but also are regularly crawled. Most forums offer an introductions area as well as a signature area where you can promote your web site or sites. In addition, as you participate in a forum that is relevant to your site's topic there will likely be opportunities to work your site into conversation. All these links can be of tremendous benefit in terms of search engine rankings and relevant back links. Top Sites - Facebook : Meebo : Myspace : MyYearbook : Tagged : Yahoo Answers : YouTube
8.Free Newsletters
Publishing a free newsletter is one of the best ways to build a community of prospects and customers and a relationship of trust and respect with your customers and prospects, keep in touch with them and remind them why they should continue or start doing business with you.It will bring people back to your site every time you tell them there is something new and interesting there.It's a great way to prove your expertise in your field and establish your credibility. Just make sure the newletter are informative.You can send your newsletter monthly, biweekly, weekly, or even daily.Build trust and that all-important relationship with your prospects and customers quickly and inexpensively.
9.Link Exchange
Link exchange has been and still is a major part of internet marketing with the main benefit of link exchange being that it is one of the leading factors in improving placements in search engines. Undeniably link exchange is the easiest way to improve your website link popularity, and by doing so, to achieve better search engine positioning and increase your website traffic. If done properly Link exchange is a very effective and inexpensive approach of gaining popularity and increasing traffic to your website.
10.Search Engine Submissions
Over 90% of online traffic or over 1 Billion monthly online search are generated from top search engines and directories.No other promotion method can provide you with such a huge global exposure and proven consumer reach, 24 hours a day, all year round. Thus your 1st. priority should thus be the successful listing of your website on the major search engines and directories Submit your website after every 30 days to ensure that it remains indexed.Unlike others,we submit All The Pages On Your Website to the top and major search engines such as Google, Yahoo and MSN including manual submissions where required.The market for search engine marketing in the USA alone is worth over US$12 Billion per year.Top Sites
11.Social Bookmarking
Bookmarks are stored webpages for the user to view at a later date. Social bookmarking is an online bookmarking tool that allows users to save, organize and even share their bookmarks with other online users. The bookmarks can be private, where only those who saved them can view or be made public, so that everyone can see them. Or, they can be shared only with a specified group of friends. You can use social bookmarking to bring your website to its targetted audience. To submit your site, post the link on forums, blogs and message boards of various social networking sites.You'll have to do this manually but it is worth the time and effort you put into it.Top Sites - Clipmarks : Delicious : Fark : Furl : LinkedIn : Magnolia : Propeller : Reddit : StumbleUpon
12.Viral Marketing
Viral marketing allows you to spread the word about your company and product without any costs or if ever low costs only.You can attach your company's name, product or link to a certain media such as a funny video, entertaining game, an interesting article or a gossip or buzz. With this method, people get infected with the creativity and entertainment of the medium that they will pass it on to many people.
Sample Sites - Digg : Facebook : Flickr : Myspace : YouTube |
|
