Exchange links

Choosing a product sometimes it might be difficult, but you also need to ensure that if you are going to use direct sales or other opportunities, you need to be allowed to:

-Use your own way to sell the product. Big companies that are selling products usually don’t allow you to sell their products using other ways than their standards.

-Customize your own website and your own promotions. Most of the companies do not allow you to create your own website for the company, but they may allow you to crate your own advertising campaigns. When you create your marketing plan, pay attention to be in complete control because best is to have your unique website and target different markets to sell your product.
-Most important is: THE MARKET and not THE PRODUCT - you need to understand that to sell a product you need first to have a market because there you can find clients. Better is to forget about the best product to start with and focus for the market. Never start by trying to decide what products you’re going to choose for selling online because products don’t buy from you, people do! So, first focus on a target market of people.
-Find out if the market is passionate about the topic - and more importantly if they pay good money to pursue their interest. Do not try to sell to people who may be passionate for their interest but their spending is almost zero. Focus always for people who spend more regularly on their interest.
-Find where the market is situated - look over message boards, email groups, online newsletters. See what they are talking about. Today a easy way is to look for public groups and forums (search in Google for: “forums” or “message boards”). Yahoo and Google provide free groups where people can discuss about their needs (check out: http://groups.yahoo.com and http://groups.google.com)
-Discover the problems your market have - try to see what problems you are able to solve. Build an online survey and invite them to take part and to ask you questions about their interests.
-Know what you want to achieve before spending a penny!

According to the Wall Street Journal, only 14% of small businesses have an annual business plan in writing, and 60% have no plan on paper at all. Considering that a business plan is the precursor to a marketing plan, it stands to reason that even fewer businesses have a marketing plan. That’s good news for you: if you take the time to create a marketing plan, you will stand head and shoulders above your competition.
You should have a marketing plan BEFORE spending any money on advertising or promotion. You may get great deals on advertising, but if it doesn’t fit your objectives, you are wasting your money.
The fact is that you need to understand the needs of your people who are buying from you in order to sell them the right products.

Q. How reliable is the service of a web host?
Most surveys indicate that reliability is an e-businesses main concern. You should look for at least a 95 percent guarantee uptime, to ensure that the service is indeed reliable.

Q. What kind of performance can I expect?
A great hosting company has one or more T3 lines that are always connected to the Internet, not going through someone else’s network operations center. The servers should be fast, ideally Pentium Pro or Linux. You should also let your host know if you plan to use bandwidth killers such as streaming audio or video.

Q. How good is phone support?
When it comes to phone support, you should look for 24/7 phone support that’s always available with a live operator. Once you have found out, you should always check it. Call or email the technical support line at 10 o clock on Sunday night then expect it to be answered.

Q. How much will it cost me?
The entry level hosting service with a single domain name, 20 – 30 MB (Mega Bytes) of hard drive space, email services, and up to a 1 GB (Giga Bytes) of monthly bandwidth should cost you no more than 50 dollars.

Q. How is security handled?
The passwords to your website or domain should be required to control the host as well as manage the web site. Every file on your server should also be backed up on a daily basis. You should always look for a host that offers you secure transactions as well.

Q. How much bandwidth will I need for data transfer?
Roughly estimating, 2GB of bandwidth should be perfect for a very small personal site. If you’re going to running a medium site with text and images but no large files, 5 GB would be ideal. Larger sites on the other hand, require 30 GB of bandwidth. Good hosting company’s will send you an email if you’re about to run out of bandwidth, letting you know that your site may go offline if you exceed the quota. This way, you can upgrade your plan if you choose to do so.

Q. What about a control panel?
Almost all hosting packages come with some type of control panel, enabling you to configure your hosting packages as well as your settings without having to learn the entire operating system that powers the site. Control panels can be accessed through a secure webpage, and then they will appear in your web browser. The most popular control panels are Helm, Cpanel, Hsphere, Plesk, and Ensim. The most common is Cpanel, which only runs on Linux. Most beginners and other users would be more suited to Cpanel, as it runs on the cheaper platform of Linux.

Q. What about a POP3 account?
When sending and receiving email, POP3 counts are very important. These types of accounts you can assign to individual users as their own email addresses. You’ll need enough POP3 accounts for the amount of email addresses that you wish to assign to other people. Often times this number will be quoted as being unlimited, although there are only so many email addresses that you can actually create.

Q. What about spam and viruses?
These features are classified in a separate category, and can include autoresponders, spam filters, even anti virus protection. They may be important to you, but they will actually vary from host to host. Basically, these are all free things that the host will give to you when you sign up for an account. If you’re plan doesn’t quite offer what you want, your host may be flexible when setting up your account.

Q. What about running my own online store?
If you are planning on running your own store on the internet, there will be a few factors that will be involved with that decision. First of all, you’ll need an SSL certificate for your website, so that you can process credit card transactions. Basically, these are 3rd parties that will take care of each and every transaction, for a small percent fee, eliminating the need for extra security on your server. You’ll also need to ensure that the server as well as the software is capable of running the script you have for your shopping cart.

Q. I need help making that final decision.
If you plan on having a website that you’ll be relying on for income or storing important data, you’ll need to make sure that you go with a host that will offer you a high level of customer support. A lot of hosting companies will offer forums as well as their contact numbers; however the forums can be excellent when you are dealing very small problems.

In Conclusion

By taking your time and checking to see what each host has to offer, you’ll find which service best fits your needs. There are many hosts and many different packages out there to choose from, which mean you shouldn’t go with the first one you see. Take the time to compare plans, costs, and customer service and you shouldn’t have any problems choosing a web host.

First of all let’s define what a domain name is.

A unique name that represents each computer on the Internet. (Some machines do have more than one domain name.) The DNS converts the domain name requested by an Internet user into an IP address.

The Domain Name System (DNS) helps users to find their way around the Internet. Every computer on the Internet has a unique address – just like a telephone number – which is a rather complicated string of numbers. It is called its “IP address” (IP stands for “Internet Protocol”).

But it is hard to remember everyone’s IP address. The DNS makes it easier by allowing a familiar string of letters (the “domain name”) to be used instead of the arcane IP address. So instead of typing 64.65.51.245 , you can type www.team-schuman.com. It is a “mnemonic” device that makes addresses easier to remember.

So what makes the best internet domain name?

First of all don’t pick a name that has nothing to do with your Web site. If you are selling flowers don’t pick a name like apples.com. Picking an oddball name makes no sense and it will just confuse your audience.

Don’t make your new domain name too long. The longer it is the harder it becomes to remember. Can you remember myflowers.com or lookatmyflowerswebsite.com?

Short names are not the way to go either. It is to your benefit to try and buy a domain name that has a few keywords that relate to the topic of you Web site when possible.

Keyword placement when choosing your domain name is helpful as your site develops a higher placement with the search engines. Having the name jeffsflowers.com will do better with a search engine than jeffssite.com. With jeffsflowers.com you know I have a flower website where with jeffssite.com you don’t know what kind of Web site I have.

When registering your domain name in some cases you will need to determine if you want to use hyphens in the name itself. Personally I have found this to be a great way to get a domain name that otherwise my not be available. The domain name myflowers.com might already be taken whereas the name my-flowers.com might be available.

Everything I have read says try to get a .com domain name first before going to a .net or .org etc. As more and more domain names are taken this becomes harder to do and I think you are better off getting a keyword rich domain name like my-flowers.org than you are to buy a .com domain name like jeffssite.com.

Is buying a cheap domain name a bad idea? Absolutely not. I do it all of the time. I get all of my domain names here:
http://www.godaddy.com

Then I transfer them to my hosting company here:
http://www.team-schuman.com/host4profit.

I can buy a domain name for less than $10 from Godaddy.com and transfer it for free to Host4Profit. This saves me $20 on buying it from the hosting company itself. A domain name is a domain name and you might as well save a little money where you can.

Finding out what names are available is very easy to do. Let’s use Godaddy.com as an example.

1. Go here: http://www.godaddy.com

2. Click on the icon for Domain Names

3. Enter a domain name and see if it is available

4. They will come back with a list of available names

5. Decide what one you want and buy it

One last thing to consider. Protect your name by registering multiple extensions (.net, .org, etc.) This deters people from copying your name. For example, if you own my-flowers.com you can also register my-flowers.net and any other extension that’s available. As you build up traffic to your site if someone types in an version other than the .com version you can forward it to your .com site and not lose any traffic.

In closing it is important to spend a little time when choosing the best domain name for your website. Try and get some keywords in your domain name. Don’t stop at choosing just a .com version and save a little money by buying a cheap domain name whenever possible as long as it still contains some keywords.

The first way people usually do a local job search is from a newspaper. This is not always the best way to do a local job search, but it is commonly used. The first way to do this local job search is to get your local newspaper. You can either have it delivered to your home or purchase it a grocery store or gas station. You then open your newspaper to the classified section and start your local job search. The jobs are sectioned off by their designated fields such as: legal, medical, labor, drivers, sales, etc. Before you start this local job search, you may want to have a resume already made.

The most popular form of a local job search is to go online and do a local job search. There are several websites that offer a local job search. I find the easiest website to use for a local job search to be careerbuilders.com. At this website you begin your local job search by first creating a resume. You can either copy and paste a resume you have already created or you can use the websites free resume builder. You can save up to 5. Next you begin the local job search. First select your city and state. You then select how far away you are willing to work from your zip code. Next you select the categories of job interest and click “enter.” Soon you will have tons of jobs listed from your local job search. You can then select jobs you are interested in and automatically send them your resume. It is the easiest way to do a local job search. Careerbuilder.com even emails you daily with jobs that match the local job search you did on the website.

The last local job search website you may be interested in is monster.com. This website is probably the most popular, but not as user friendly. It is very similar to careerbuilder.com except that they do not send out email alerts for jobs you may be interested in.

Finding a great job is very important. Finding the best job is not always easy. Use the information you have just been given wisely. With it you should have no trouble finding the perfect job.

As a way around this, many marketers are telling you to get a blog and an RSS feed. This makes good sense, and there is some indication that RSS and related technology will become more popular in the near future, but before you invest in an ebook or multimedia course from a marketer, ask yourself if that marketer has a vested interest in moving you over to an RSS system (i.e., they conveniently sell an RSS starter kit, or affiliate for someone who does).

On the contrary, though, email marketing is not dead. Recently, on a membership-only forum, discussion centred on how Getresponse and Aweber have improved their open and deliverability rates for emails, even as high as 85% for deliverability. One contributor, who owns an autoresponder company, noted that many tricks marketers use to get their messages past spam filters (such as using “f^ree” for “free”) are actually backfiring and triggering spam filters, resulting in emails being blocked. Instead, marketers should focus on trick-free, valuable content in their emails.

Apparently, email marketing works much the same way as search engine marketing (and, really, all good marketing) does: in the long run, you are rewarded for building (and sending out) trick-free, useful, and informative content.

So how should you build your business? With one quality blog post or article at a time. And how should you market with email? With one quality email message at a time.

This kind of money sounds insane doesn’t it, especially when you consider that most websites are lucky if they can make a $1 out of a visitor. And the chances are that you would label me a liar and a scam artist for even making such an outrageous claim.

Well those figures come from my own marketing. You can see the proof by visiting http://www.megastep.com/art-postcards.htm

“How did I do it?” you ask.

The answer is very simple. I used good old fashioned direct mail, and more specifically I sent out postcards to lists of buyers, people who have previously bought a product similar to what I was offering. Direct mail golden rule #1… Never, ever rent names of enquirers. That’s suicide, because they are unqualified and generally tyre-kickers.

So as the cost of pay per click marketing goes up, and joint ventures become harder and harder to get, and the free traffic generating methods start dying, and all those gateway page generation software tools keep getting your site banned from the search engines. With banner impressions sending you trickle traffic, and more and more emails never arrive because of the spam filters, it’s time to look at direct mail.

And yes of course it’s going to cost you money to send a mail shot. But if you’ve tweaked and tested your website to convert the maximum amount of visitors, if you have setup up your automated backend sales process. Believe me, direct mail is one of the best ways of driving laser targeted visitors to your site, people who already have a proven track record of BUYING products similar to what you offer. Yes I’ve repeated myself, but I want you to “get” that little piece of advice.

So as your email open rates dwindle to dust, and you find it harder and harder to generate quality website traffic. Remember the lowly postcard, because it’s what the big guys are using to make obscene amounts of cash from their websites.

- Business Blogging. Start a blog for your business and update it on a regular basis. A business blog is an excellent tool to toot your own horn, let the world know about your new products, and tell your target customers why they should do business with you, rather than your competitor. A business blog is also a great tool for attracting potential customers to your blog and your web site.

- Search Engine Optimization (or SEO). SEO is the process of modifying web page content and meta-information to improve the search engine ranking of the page. Successful search engine optimization will greatly increase the number of visitors that come to your web site since over 70% of people who are looking for products and services use search engines to locate them

- Article Writing and Publishing. This is another great way to drive traffic to your web site. When you write and publish your articles, other web site owners pick them up and publish them on their web sites, while giving you a link back to your web site.

- Newsletter Publishing. Keep in touch with your clients and potential clients by sending out a newsletter on a regular basis. Every time you send out a newsletter, don’t forget to invite the subscribers to visit your web site.

- Online Networking. Mention your web site address in your signature when networking online. Make sure that your web site is prominently displayed on the page, provided to you by every online networking service that you participate in, so that your fellow networkers can visit your web site.

- E-mail Signatures. Every time you send out an e-mail to one person, you have a chance to get an extra visitor for your web site. When you send an e-mail to a mailing list, you have a chance to spread the word to even more potential customers. All you need to do is to append a signature to every outgoing e-mail message. Make sure that the signature contains a powerful tagline that invites the readers to click on the link and visit your site

- Pay Per Click Search Engines. Here you can control exactly how many new visitors you want to get. There is a catch, though — you have to pay for every click to your web site. Make a budget and stick to it an make sure to monitor your account – those clicks add up fast.

- Affiliate Marketing. An affiliate program is another way to drive traffic to your web site. Your affiliates are your commissions-only sales people who make money when they sell your products. They drive traffic to your web site in exchange for commissions on sales.

Today I have discussed eight different ways of driving traffic to your web site. Which techniques are you not using yet? Take one of the techniques and incorporate it into your marketing plan. You will get a whole new pool of web site visitors coming to your web site.

Copyright 2024 by Shannon Herod

I was running out of patience and the hatred of it all was setting in. Whirling around the net searching for that one piece of gold that was going to set everything in motion and bring a windfall of cash was just a big waste of time. Thousands of dollars wasted and countless hours wasted with not one single return of investment.

That was the way that I started my business. As you can imagine I was getting nowhere fast. Setting up running and profiting from an Internet business takes more than just a web site, an e-mail account, and a computer. You need a plan of action, what direction are you going to go with your web site, what products will you promote, what other sources of revenue will you have, and many other factors will determine your success.

Affiliate Game Plan

I can give you a quick glimpse or taste of a simple plan that you can put in effect. This plane is going to focus on affiliate marketing in the arena of Internet marketing.

OK, here is a simple little plan but at least it’s a plan.

The first thing you need to consider is the products or services that you will be promoting. There is a ton of different products and services available for you to promote. Finding the right one that pays is the most important part. When considering what you will promote you need to look at a few different areas.

1. What percentage does that product pay
2. How well does the sales page convert
3. Does the sales page have cookies and how long does the cookie last
4. What is the minimum payout and how often do they pay
5. How long has the Company been in business
6. What type of reputation and customer service does the company have

These are a few things that I consider when looking at a product to promote. Always try and test a product before you put your name on a recommendation for that product. Just as this you are going to open a brick and mortar business your reputation is very important.

Web Site and Hosting

Next you need to consider the type of site you will build and the hosting company you will use. Your web site will be your virtual real estate and you need to assure that is in a good location. You can find many hosting options by just going to Google and doing a search for hosting company. When choosing a hosting company here is a few things that I consider.

1. How much bandwidth do they offer
2. How much disk space do they offer
3. How many mysql databases do they offer
4. Can I host multiple web sites from one account

As a beginner those four things should be the only things you really need to worry about. As you become more experienced and building web sites and programming there’ll be a few other options you will consider, but for now I think that should do.

The type of web site you build is going to be very important. Don’t worry if you are a complete moron when it comes to HTML there are plenty of what you see is what you get (wysiwyg) web site builders available just go to Google and search for web site builders.

A simple direct response web site should be your goal. You do not need to worry about building a fancy web site with a ton of graphics and fancy navigation bars. That piece of information alone should take your fear out of trying to build a site. Remember keep it simple stupid.

A direct response web site is just what it sounds like. Your main goal should be to capture your visitors’ name and e-mail address. You can do this by giving away a free report that you produced or by getting a report that has giveaway rights.

Build a List

You are going to want to build an opt in e-mail list so you can keep in constant contact with all of your leads. To do this you will need an autoresponder to make your life a whole easier.

Your goal with your opt in e-mail list should be to build a relationship so you can offer products that you recommend. Once you have a list that trust you making money is very simple.

The Process of Profit Maximization

Now there is a process you are going to want to take your visitors through in order to maximize your profits, here it is in a short description.

From your opt in page you will want to lead your visitor to a thank you page that should offer some sort of up sell. Your thank you page should exit to the product sales page. Even will need to follow up with your new lead on consistent basis and offer information to help your new customer and occasionally recommend a product that you believe in.

That is a short version because I’m not trying to make this book just a quick little plan for you to follow.

That is a real quick plan of action that definitely need some more consideration, but hopefully it will get your wheels turning so you can expand on this idea to fit your business. There are many different things to consider like traffic generation and support but that is a whole new subject.

Do some research and try to expand on the ideas listed above. Your business should have goals and your goal should have plans of action. Put your mind to work, work up plan, and work your plan and success will be right around the corner.

However, the real work begins from here only. In a move to generate income from a website, potential traffic must be driven to the site. There are many successful techniques to create this web traffic that can be followed as part of a Search Engine Optimization strategy.

While all techniques may not be needed to take in as triumphant. But, some combination of most will certainly be required to generate traffic. Consider realizing these strategies: Good optimized content is required for search engine recognition, and update the site frequently. The search engines takes your website as an active not dead website, when updated regularly. Put in practice to update your website at least, monthly.

The following are some effective techniques you should implement:

•Do little alteration in content from time to time. These help to do regular update website.

•Modify contact, staffing and clientele information.

•Make sure that the links are active, and also keep changing the link text frequently that will be considered as a change to the page by search engine.

•Offer RSS feed to public that updated at hourly or daily basis.

•Manage good links that will result in an excellent weight given by the search engines for search positioning.

•Try to publish newsletter weekly, at least monthly.

How to get link popularity? You may find it boring, as it requires careful selection of the links, however, there are many means that can be implemented.

• Reciprocal Links: Find out relevant and websites that desire to exchange trade links.

• Anchor text: Create link text using appropriate keywords.

• Consider Page-Rank: Make out a link only with websites that have good Page- Rank (Websites at least having PR of 3).

• Enlist your website with web directories. You may select paid or free directory listings that are profitable to your website.

Keep in mind that developing a site is just beginning. Driving potential traffic to your website is the most significant work to be done. You will not be able taste the sweet fruits of success until you do hard work, spend the time and energy. You may hire someone to get the job done.

And what is Web Directories type, basically three types web directories running on internet, first free directories, and second is reciprocal directories, and last one is paid directories.

So how to find quality web directories on the web for submitting your web site, here is the tips.

1. Write down your site’s title, description, url carefully

2. Be realistic when writing your title and description , don’t stuff keywords or illegal characters, can be cause spam. Be clear and understandable.

3. Try to use small url’s like www.yoursite.com, don’t use string’s such us www.yoursite.com?id=3&news=12, or don’t use only extensions such as www.yoursite.com/myproduct.htm

When your own submit text ready, now you can start search quality web directories for submitting your site.

You can use major search engines Google, Yahoo, MSN for searching quality directories. For better finding try this keywords. Type keywords without quotes. Here is the populer keyword’s

“Add Your Site”
“Add Your URL”
“Submit Web Site”
“Submit Your URL”
“Web Directory”
“Free Web Directory”
“Reciprocal Web Directory”
“Paid Web Directory”
“Free Web Listing”

Some web directories free , some of them reciprocal or paid, when you submit your site a Free Directory, your site will be listed freely on their site, when you submit your site a Reciprocal Directory you must link back them, or when you submit a Paid Directory, select their listing plans and pay them, your link will be listing.

Try the use quality directories if you want better ranking and traffic, web directories can provide your site more ranking on engines. Remember do more listing get more traffic.