Friday, January 9, 2009

The Key Ingredients For Internet Success

Writen by Shelley Lowery

The Internet has opened a whole New World of opportunity for even the smallest home-based business owner. There are countless numbers of new self-made millionaires that achieved their newfound success on the Internet. These new millionaires are no different from you and I. They started their Internet businesses from the ground up, found a niche and built their success one day at a time.

"Can I really make money on the Internet?" The fact of the matter is that you really can make money on the Internet --a lot of money. You simply must take the necessary steps to make it happen. You must have a sincere desire to succeed and the attitude for success.

If you are sincerely passionate about your success, you will succeed -- it's that simple.

The true secret to creating a successful Internet business, is pure determination. Most people fail just at the moment they are about to succeed. Why? -- Because they give up. They lack the true passion that it takes to succeed. As long as you keep trying, you'll never fail.

Below, is list of what I feel are the most important ingredients for Internet success:

Sincere Passion

In order to be successful, you must be completely passionate about your business and your success. If you don't have a "sincere" passion, you won't have the necessary personal drive that it takes to succeed.

Your Own Domain (www.yourdomain.com)

Businesses hosted on a free server are not taken seriously and are generally considered to be unprofessional. If a company doesn't care enough about its business to get its own domain name, potential customers may not feel comfortable doing business with them. A company with its own domain name and a professional looking website will have a much higher rate of success when compared with most business sites hosted on free servers.

Professional Website

Your website is a direct reflection of you and your business. Creating a professional website designed to sell will take a great deal of time and effort, as there is much more to take into consideration than design. You must look at a much broader picture and specifically design your website to sell.

Quality Content

In order to create a steady stream of traffic to your website, you must give your visitors a reason to visit and continue to visit in the future. You must provide your visitors with fresh content on a continual basis.

Targeted Traffic

No matter how great your website is, unless you're receiving quality, targeted traffic, it will be useless. Your website may receive hundreds of visitors each day. However, if they aren't interested in the products or services you're offering, your web traffic won't mean a thing. You must drive a continuous stream of targeted traffic to your website.

Opt-in List (Ezine)

Having your own publication is an absolute essential part of your success. They not only provide you with a direct line of communication with potential customers and enable you to promote your products or services, but they also build credibility.

Your Own In-Demand Product

Although marketing affiliate programs can provide you with a nice income, true Internet profits come from marketing your own in-demand product.

Killer Sales Copy

Your words are the entire foundation of your business. Your product, website and marketing strategies all depend upon your words. You must learn how to write persuasive words specifically written for your targeted customer. You must feel your customers needs and write your copy with passion, excitement and benefit.

Killer Marketing Strategy

Developing a successful marketing strategy is an essential part of your online success. In order to succeed, you must develop and implement a strategic plan that includes all of the following:

• A great product
• A website specifically designed to sell
• A killer marketing strategy

Each step plays an important role in your overall strategy and must be developed to its fullest potential. If even one step fails, your chances of success will be minimal.

Instant Product Delivery (downloadable, instant access, etc.)

Internet users are starving for information, as that is what the Internet is all about. They have a sincere desire to learn and want the information they desire right now.

The best products to sell on the Internet are those that can be instantly delivered over the Internet.

Accept Credit Cards

If you're doing business on the Internet, accepting credit cards is an absolute must. You must provide your visitors with an easy online ordering process and the ability to pay for their order right online.

Credibility

As an Internet entrepreneur, it is your personal responsibility to ensure that your visitors feel very comfortable with you and your website. In order to gain your visitors' trust and confidence, you must build your credibility.

Your attitude is the MOST important factor in determining your success. You MUST think positively and be willing to tackle any obstacle that comes along. The fact is, you CAN do whatever you put your mind to. You simply have to believe you can and believe in yourself above all else.

Copyright © Shelley Lowery

About the Author:

Shelley Lowery is the author of the acclaimed web design course, "Web Design Mastery" (www.webdesignmastery.com) and "eBook Starter - Give Your eBooks the look and feel of a REAL book" (www.ebookstarter.com)

Visit www.Web-Source.net to sign up for a complimentary subscription to eTips and receive a copy of Shelley's acclaimed ebook, "Killer Internet Marketing Strategies."

You have permission to publish this article electronically, in print, in your ebook, or on your web site, free of charge, as long as the author bylines are included.

Thursday, January 8, 2009

A Simple Way To Make Money Online

Writen by Colin Evans

Most people believe that making money online only involves putting up a website selling a product or service, and then promoting it.

Wrong answer! On many counts, but we'll concentrate on two of them which are closely related:

1) People don't buy products, they buy solutions to their problems...

As a general rule, people don't like the thought that their hard earned money is ending up in somebody else's pocket. They will figure out if you're only in business to make money out of them and they will NOT buy your products.

But...

If you're genuinely trying to HELP people and happen to make money while you're doing it, they won't mind and will buy from you (and remain lifelong customers).

In order to do that you must have 'empathy' with others. You must understand them, what they fear, what they like and what they dislike.

You MUST make the effort to understand them and when you do you'll find a lot of ways you can help them and make money too.

You might not be interested in developing your own products and services. In that case you will want to align yourself with a company, as an affiliate, that shares this mindset, the attitude of 'helping people' and 'making money'.

2) Promoting a product or website is not easy, but it can be simple...

If it was easy everybody would be making a fortune. The truth is most of the people you put your website or affiliate link in front of will not be interested.

In fact they'll ignore it, some people will go out of their way to ignore it.

Poof! That's you promotion efforts gone up in smoke.

Consider this scenario: You have found a solution to a problem you've had and you know that there are other people facing the same issue. If you told them about the 'cure' for their problem, what do you think they are most likely to do?

You got it! They will take a look at the solution you provided and won't mind spending money, sometimes huge amounts of money, on the 'solution to their problem.' The fact that it was your product or an affiliate product, and you made money from their purchase won't bother them in the slightest.

Now how simple is that?

It's not easy, sure, but the concept is real simple. Identify the problems people face and offer them solutions.

How can you do this?

One effective way is to build a list. Offer people solutions to their problems in exchange for their contact details. The solutions you offer will be your own products and affiliate products.

Just make sure you don't 'sell' your products to your list. Let me put it this way... people won't buy a drill because they want a drill, they want a hole. Don't sell them drills, offer them 'holes any where they want and in any size they want.'

Colin Evans is webmaster of http://www.opti-income.com and editor of CAtZ, the newsletter that teaches you how to earn your living online.

Discover The Incredible System That Gives You A Positively Unfair Advantage In Making A Living Online!"

Click Here => http://www.opti-income.com/make-a-living-online

Wednesday, January 7, 2009

Web Marketing And Website Traffic Analysis

Writen by Mark Nenadic

Among the best ways to get the very most out of your web marketing is to analyze the traffic that you already have on you website. You need to develop an understanding of who is visiting your website, what they want from your website, and what they're doing once they're there. Unless you have this information, it is challenging to improve it in a way that will better meet the expectations of your visitors.

In order to analyze your website traffic, you can choose one or many of the following four techniques:

» A webpage counter
» A statistical package from your ISP
» Web traffic analysis software
» Hire a professional to audit your website traffic

Counters are one of the oldest tools that have been added to websites. They can be visible to your website visitors, or invisible to them so that only you can see. A web counter is a very basic addition to your website that simply registers the number of people who visit any given page on your site. Of course, showing this isn't exactly the most professional way to run a website. Sure, they're alright for personal pages, but for a business that is trying to develop a good reputation and make a good impression, this probably isn't really the way to go.

With the statistical package from your ISP (Internet Service Provider), you'll be able to have a look at a log of every visit your website has received. This will be available to you in the form of either a webpage or a graphic for your analysis. The information is often registered in raw NCSA combined log file format, which is rather challenging to use for the average user. It is full of complicated coding that must be deciphered for each individual "hit" that your webpage has received. If you know what you're doing, however, this method does indeed provide you with a good amount of information, such as the way that people are getting to your website (for example, by way of a search engine or a link from another site) and what they are doing at your site once they have arrived. If you are using a good quality ISP, then you will likely have a freeware version of a popular statistical analysis package available to you. There are many good ones from which you can choose, and you'll find the results very useful. You can have your ISP produce a daily, weekly, monthly (etc) report for you to use. They can either be posted on a webpage for you, or emailed directly into your inbox. You'll need to contact your ISP to find out exactly what services they offer in this regard.

If that doesn't work for you, if you want a better detailed report, or if your ISP simply doesn't provide that service, then you may wish to purchase a web traffic analysis software program. There are tons of these programs available at affordable prices that will provide you with a broad range of analysis options for the traffic you receive on your website. To use these programs, you simply need to download access logs from your ISP using an FTP program. You'll need to ask your ISP about the directory in which those logs can be found. The software will then parse (interpret) the raw log file information one line at a time to provide you with results in various combinations and formats for your use. Though the more high-end programs can cost over $5 thousand, there are many software packages that are available to us "normal folk" with varying degrees of options and abilities, but at much more affordable prices. You can easily obtain a good quality software package at around $300.

So why do you need these stats so badly for your web marketing? The fact of the matter is that they give you a goal for your marketing. They show you:

» Which web pages on your site are most popular
» Which pages on your site are least popular
» Who is visiting your website
» Which browsers they are using to view your website
» Which search engines are sending the most visitors
» Which banner ads are sending you the most visitors
» Where the errors and bad links may exist on your website.

Copyright 2006 Mark Nenadic

Mark Nenadic Mark is the director and face behind FifteenDegrees-North http://www.15dn.com, where you will find articles and resources to help with SEO, marketing and Web design.