My Buy Essay

Posts Tagged ‘ecommerce’

The idea of using a banner ad for your website is a good one. The real money is in ads on the Internet. If you are unsure about the real benefits of using banner ads, take some time to read more about what banner ads actually are and how to use them so you can make some real profits with your site.

Banner ads are nothing more than simplified HTML code with a link embedded in the code. Banner ads come in all different sizes. Some are as large a 486×60 and some are as small as the tiny size of 88×31. The graphics combined with the text information is what makes banners ads shine. Clicking on it will bring a potential customer right to your site, and then you have a chance to make a sell. Having a well laid out website and clearly written instructions is the next key to selling. Even if your advertising efforts don’t pay off immediately &ndash don’t despair. If your ad is intense enough graphically and texturally, it will leave them with a memory of it, and they are likely will return and purchase your product.

How do you get a banner ad placed on the Internet? First, you need to understand that it does cost you money in most instances to place a banner ad. You can pay a company to post it or arrange to have it posted on an independent website. Other advertisers such as you will evaluate if your banner ad will be successful at their site. They look at page views and how many hits your website receives per month. They might also evaluate click through rates as well, depending on if you have a pay per click program. They will take into consideration how much it is going to cost them too. Remember they have to pay for bandwidth, and if does not benefit them economically, they might not add your banner. You’ll have to post at a 2 to 1 ratio. In other words, you will have to place two of their banners in exchange for them posting one of yours. You can also start your own affiliate program, which has minor click through cost.

Now that you know a little more about banner ads, you need to realize their importance for your website.

By posting banner ads, you will rise up in the search engine rankings. Your product, with enough ads and strategic placement, will silently push your page up in the engine ranking. You will get more visitors and more exposure, thus increasing your chances of selling a product.

After exchanging banners with a few quality sites, more sites will want to exchange or let you buy advertising space with them. It will definitely increase your website visitors and increase profits at the same time.

Using banner ads as advertising space helps you get more visitors to your website.

These three ideas are primary for increasing website site traffic. You will need to be aware of some general rules of thumb though. Make sure that you have the patience to let your banner ads work their magic. Whether you are saving up to pay a banner ad company to post your banners or if you are trying to sell advertising space at your own website for banner ads, it will take time. You will need extra patience if you are contacting independent site owners and asking for their approval to exchange banners. Always join quality sites that are well ranked and have a relevance to your site content.

There are some drawbacks to using a banner ad to get more website activity. You could end up with so many ads that your site will be a maze that a lot of visitors will just click away from. And, there may be some objectionable ads of an adult nature that you will have to live with. Consider that you will need to have some capitol to create your banners, and that cost varies according to size and complexity of the design. You will need to update and continually post new banner ads as other ads change or they are no longer relevant to your content material. Overall, make sure your site design and budget can withstand banner ad usage.

In the end, you will find that banner ads are worth the work and effort. They have in the past raised website visitations through people looking for products or information online. By working at it, you will find that your profits will increase. In the end that’s the name of the game.

Choosing the right keywords can really increase your website traffic by increasing your search engine ranking and by encouraging visitors to stay on your site and return to your site. Choosing the wrong keywords, though, can be disastrous. There are five simple ways to choose your keywords wisely and improve your web traffic.

The first, and perhaps the easiest, way to choose the right keywords for your website is to brainstorm ideas with regard to your individual goods and services. Sometimes simply the name of your goods or services will work as an excellent keyword. For example, if you offer writing services, consider “technical writing” as you keyword. Creating a page around “writing” may not get you the customers you deserve. Think specifically about what you offer and create a page to advertise it. Within this, though, you must remember to stay away from general keywords. The competition for these keywords is rather stiff.

Thousands of sites are optimized for words like “computers,” and doing the same thing with yours can simply make it redundant and hard for customers to find. Moreover, customers are more search savvy than you are giving them credit for. If a customer wants to find information on something specific, he or she will search for something specific. For example, they may want to know about flea treatments for their cat, but instead of searching for “fleas” or “cat,” they may search for something more specific like a product name or type of treatment. If you feel you must use a general keyword, try taking a keyword and adding a more specific term to it. For example, if your key word is “cat,” try adding more specific terms like “behavior” or “specialist” to that for site optimization. With these general terms, you might also consider adding regional terms. If you service a particular area of the country, you may have some regional terminology that will help customers find you. Names of nearby cities or towns can help as can terms that your customers know and respect. For example, if you run a sandwich shop in New Orleans, you might want to optimize for the term “muffuletta.”

The second way to choose the right keywords for your website is to use a service like Google Keyword Sandbox or Overture Term Suggestion Tool. This way to choose your keywords can be a bit time consuming, but in the end, it is certainly worth it. Start with either service, and you’ll end up with a huge list of possibilities. Once you’ve finished with that service, pick another and try running the same search. See what keywords you have in common with the two lists.

The third way to choose the right keywords for your website is to check your server log files. When someone visits your site from a search engine, the words they used to find your site are recorded in your server log files. Analyzing the actual files, though, can take some work. You can use various methods to examine those files depending on your server operating system. It can sometimes be best to use a software program to extract the information if you are not technically inclined.

The fourth way to choose the right keywords for your website is to use a keyword counter service. These analyze your web page and compare them with other, similar web sites. They offer you a density percentage report and the top words for the two pages based on their analysis. Keyword counter services are available all over the internet in both free and costly forms. Choosing the right service for you will simply be a matter of reading the reviews.

The final way to choose the right keywords for your website is to review sites that have both similar missions and products with regard to yours. It is important to notice sites that have rankings within the top ten on any given search engine. The point here isn’t to copy the site; it is to figure out which keywords they are using to draw in potential customers.

Choosing the right keywords can be both a difficult and a long process. However, if you pick the right terms, you won’t regret it based on your increased web traffic.

When you are looking for a way to effectively promote your website, you will find both expensive and inexpensive options. One of the most popular inexpensive options today is to use keyword rich text. When someone is looking for something on the web, they are most likely to use search engines such as “Google” to find what they need. The goal as a website operator is to get most of this traffic right to your website. With thousands of people conducting searches each day, there are thousands of potential consumers and web users to direct to your site. With keyword rich text, there is a better chance that these searchers will indeed be directed to your site through search engines.

Keyword rich text is basically articles of text that contain high numbers of a keyword or keywords that pertain to the subject chosen. To be clearer, if you have a website about fishing, then for search engines to direct web users to your site, you might include articles with words such as “fishing”, “fish”, “tackle”, “lure”, or “boat”. If someone were to type one of these particular words into a search engine, your site would likely come up near the top if you include these words in large amounts on your site. The more you repeat the word the user types in the search engine, the more likely they will see your site as an option for them to click on. Your articles may seem a bit redundant, but it really pays off to use as many keywords as you possibly can, without compromising content.

Another way you can use keyword rich text to effectively promote your website is by submitting articles to databases. This is great for the website operator that would rather not bulk up their website with lengthy articles. The basis of this task is to write keyword articles and submit them to various free article databases. Throughout the articles, or at the bottom of the text, include information about and a link to your website. When someone searches for the keyword within your text, the article will be brought up. As they read the article, they will have the opportunity to visit your page through the link for more useful information. This is a great idea, especially when you have a retail business online that would look ridiculous with a large amount of text included. It gives you the space to store the text somewhere else (the database), but still allows you to reap rewards from your articles.

Once you’ve decided writing keyword rich text is the best way for you to effectively promote your website, you will need to come up with appropriate articles to use for your task. If you feel qualified enough to write the articles yourself, then you can certainly do so. If this is your plan, you will first need to create a list of keywords that you feel are most relevant to your website. When doing this, be sure to think from a web user’s point of view. Think about the words you would type into a search engine if you were looking for a site like your own. Once you come up with a list of 10 or 20, you can begin working. Develop specific subjects for each of your keywords and create original titles. Then, simply write articles between 300-800 words that contain the keyword many times. Again, the more you use the keyword and variations of the keyword, the better results you will see. Lastly, make sure you include your name, business information, and website link at the bottom of the keyword. This is probably the most important information, so don’t forget it!

If you are unsure about your writing skills, it is also possible to hire professionals to write articles for you. You can come up with your list of keywords or allow the professionals to do it for you. This is a great way to benefit with keyword rich text without the trouble of writing the articles. After purchasing the articles from a professional writer, you can then use them as you see fit. Unless you are a strong and skilled writer, you may want to consider this option. It will allow you great results and cost you very little effort. No matter how you plan to use keyword rich text, it is certain you will be glad you did!

To have a successful Internet business, you need only three things:

1. Product

2. Copywriting

3. Traffic

It really is that simple. If you have those three things… competently performed, you will have a succesful, profitable Internet business. Let’s talk about competency in each of those three areas and how you can quickly master each one.

Product

You need a product that people want. Don’t fall in love with a product just because you think it’s cool. I’ll go into details in a future article, but I look at two things to determine if a product is wanted enough for me to sell it:

1. Are there people searching for that product (I use the Overture tool)

2. Are fellow marketers willing to pay a significant amount of money for traffic for that search term because people are buying (I also use the Overture tool).

I multiply those two numbers. If the result is higher than the result for the product “air guns”, I’m willing to get into that market. Why “air guns”? It was simply my first profitable product. Can products that score lower than “air guns” be profitable? I’m sure they can, but there are enough markets that score higher than “air guns”, I’m not willing to chance it.

BTW, don’t get too hung up on the product. It is the least important of the three items. Copywriting and traffic are infinitely more important to your business. Don’t spend two years developing a product. There are already thousands of products available on the Internet that you can market and earn a percentage as an affiliate. Choosing your product should take no longer than a half an hour, not two years. You can run the numbers for 6-10 product ideas in less than half an hour and make your decision. Then start concentrating on what really matters… which is…

Copywriting

Now you need to describe your product. You will do this in many ways. You will create a sales page on a web-site that will describe the product and try to sell it. You will write small text ads to run on PPC search engines. You will write similar one and two line descriptions to enter into affiliate networks. You will write articles and resource boxes for those articles. You may even write a signature line for use on forums.

The point is that copywriting is what conveys the message about your product. It is simply some words. You can sometimes uses pictures and videos, but it is generally the words that actually do the selling. Don’t forget that you are in the business of words.

How do you decide what words to use? You have three choices if you are a beginner:

1. Hire a high priced copywriter. Generally you will want to pay $5,000-$10,000 per sales page for a decent copywriter. Drop me a note if you want referrals. I know two of the best.

2. Use copywriting software that scores words. I recommend Glyphius which you can read more about at Glyphius.com. It scores your prospective ad copy against a massive database of profitable ads. You can simply make up some copy and click the score button. Then change it and click the score button again. Pick the highest scoring text after you have worked with it for awhile. You’ll have copy that the pros will envy and more importantly… copy that will convert that traffic into customers.

3. Fail for a long time while you are learning. Don’t laugh. Most Internet marketers choose this path. If you are persisent enough, you will learn what works and what doesn’t.

Traffic

Once you have copy that sells, you need to get people to see it. We call that “traffic” on the Internet.

There are dozens of ways to get traffic on the Internet. Let me focus on two ways that I recommend to beginners because both are free (well; there is a small one-time cost to get started, but you don’t pay for each visitor like some other sources).

1. Search Engine Optimization – get free traffic from the search engines by being ranked high for the search terms associated with your product.

2. Article Submission – get recognition and links to your site by writing and submitting articles.

Let’s talk about Search Engine Optimization first. First of all, DO NOT waste weeks and months of your life listening to the lemmings on the SEO forums. In my experience, they are just the blind leading the blind. There are three factors to search engine optimization you should focus on:

a) Your domain and URLs

b) On page optimization

c) Links to your site

For the first, I recommend you choose your domain and URL structure using Nemeas. You can read about it at Nemeas.com. It is very simple to use and is also based on a massive statistical analysis of the leading search engine. You simply score prospective domains and URLs and select the highest scoring one.

I don’t recommend any on page optimization unless you are creating free content sites to feed traffic to your sales page. Instead, optimize your sales page for selling with Glyphius and don’t worry about the on page search engine factors.

For getting inbound links to your site, I recommend article submission. I recommend that you use Artemis Pro. You can read more about it at ArtemisPro.com. It gives you a boost above any other currently available article submission tool because it submits a unique article to each publisher. That boost can amount to an 1875% increase in effectiveness given the same amount of time invested.

At the end of each article, you should have a resource box with a link back to the site with your sales page. That resource box should be optimized with Glyphius.

That’s it. Running a successful, profitable Internet business is really just that simple. It’s just choosing the right product, choosing the right words for your copywriting and choosing the best way to get traffic to your sales page.

Please visit my blog often at .JamesBrausch.com for further lessons on the simplicity of Internet marketing. I’ll post regular lessons there. Every entry on my blog is categorized into three topic areas: Product, Copywriting and Traffic. Just choose one of the topics to find out more information about that area of running a successful Internet business.

Here’s to your success!

How to get started

First off, some points about money. People pay money, a valuable, in exchange for a product or service you provide – another valuable. It’s really barter, with a commodity called money. People buy things which will improve their lives, which gives them some benefit they feel they need. You aren’t really in it for the money, but to provide better service to people so that they can improve their lives. That’s a perfect fit – they want to spend money to improve their lives and you are more than happy to accept money to enable them to do so – with your product and services.

Money is really just an indicator of how much you provide real service to others – and how valuable they think that service is. We’ve gone over how you can increase your income by giving it away, as well.

Now, down to the brass tacks of what to do when and why.

Before we start -

Don’t quit your day job. Rome wasn’t built in a day, God took seven to create this world – so don’t figure you are going to become a millionaire overnight. I’ve heard some talented people got rich in 90 days, but we’ll take the conservative approach here.

Until your Internet activities start bringing income to you, that day job will be providing the seed money for your online business.

Consider all your online activites a second job. This is much better than going to get a second job at some company. Then you are spending 60 hours a week just working for a fixed wage – away from your family and giving a large proportion of it to the government and insurance companies with very little return.

So your online business is your second job. Set it up with a specific workplace and a schedule. Treat it like a business, not a hobby. Show up on time and ready to work – not late and hung over or taking constant breaks for food – or having the TV running so you can “catch the game”. Arrange for your spouse and kids to keep the noise down – or set up your garage so it is comfortable all year round and you can easily work there with no distractions. (Remember, setting this up as an actual business means you can deduct these expenses from your “day job” income tax.)

Work out your finances. See if you can get by on only 80% of what you currently earn in income from your day job. Means you are going to have to set up a budget and find out what you are spending your money on. Or – you could simply have your check deposited directly, 80% going into your checking account and 20% going into your savings account (preferably) or another account.

What you do with that 20% is to set half away for savings – never touch this for anything except, perhaps, a real emergency. The other half (10% of your income after taxes) goes to investment. This is what you are allowed to spend on your online business. But the idea again is that you are investing in your own business – not just blowing it on nice stuff for your home office.

Once you have your home business set up, you are then – an only then – ready to really start in on Internet Marketing, Sales, and Delivery.

Affiliate advertising represents a massive opportunity to profit from your website, and with any profitable medium there will be people searching for methods of increasing their own slice of the pie by “playing the system”. Why take risks yourself with a product or service when programs such as Google Adsense enable you to profit from others desire to drive traffic and sales to their companies?

You may be tempted to simply create a website with the express intention of selling advertising space. This is a proven business method after all, free local newspapers and newsletters have been operating for years based entirely on advertising revenue and classifieds, and the majority of the worlds television stations can only stay in business by telling you about their sponsors and advertisers products.

The world wide web offers advertisers an low overheads, an unrivalled market reach all combined with a level of statistical feedback that traditional non-interactive media can only dream of. This makes online business extremely attractive but also extremely competitive. Advertisers need to find ways of raising awareness of their products and services against global competition. Maximising penetration in such a massive arena would take more resources than most companies can muster. Enter the affiliate marketeers.

You, as a website publisher become an affiliate by agreeing with companies that you will promote their product on your website. In return the advertisers will pay you for bringing traffic or sales to their website. The more traffic or converted sales you bring the more you will earn for your efforts. By the same measure the more traffic you bring to your own web pages the more you potentially stand to earn from your affiliates.

At this point many affiliate marketeers will disengage their brain, concentrating their efforts on bringing web surfers to their site in order to push them on to their affiliates. Often the webmasters of these sites will be well versed in search engine technology, understanding the core concepts of optimised site design, keyword targetting, external linking and content generation that will increase the “relevance” of their page in the indexes of Google, Yahoo and MSN. It is often the final, and tellingly the most time consuming of these techniques that will merit the least attention in the minds of professional web marketeers.

Often an amount of statistical analysis will take place to identify search trends and high paying affiliate industries that will potentially have the highest payout. A site will then be designed with search engine optimisation at the forefront, simple coding practices that will enable an algorithm to make a good attempt at cataloging the subject matter of the page and relate it to the identified keywords. Search engine experts are also well aware that sites which are updated frequently are treated as “more relevant” in the search engine index. This is a simple equation, if you are searching for information on MP3 players you want to be presented with content telling you about the features of the latest iPod and reviewing the new competing models. You aren’t interested in reviews of a 5 year old device with the ergonomics and storage capacity of a housebrick.

In their rush for content a number of affiliate marketeers will turn to external sources, be it in the form of user generated content or “article directories”. Both can be useful tools for time-challenged webmasters, and particularly in the case of article directories which take the form of free to publish text on almost any subject imaginable. Simply search for an article on your particular subject of choice, paste it into you template, upload it to your site and wait for the search engines to pick it up. Hey presto you are instantly a more relevant site and bumping yourself up the Google results while still leaving yourself time to spend your hard earned affiliate money at the pub.

So far so good but don’t forget the wisdom of your parents generation, “buyer beware” and “you get what you pay for”. Well if you are paying nothing more than a tiny fraction of your internet bill for these articles then you might want to consider the motives of the author of that lovely keyword rich article you just found.

The fact is there are many valuable articles in directories such as EZineArticles and ZapContent.com, but the mistake many webmasters make in their rush for search engine optimised content it that they don’t read, and I mean really read the text that they are merrily pasting into their site. Before hitting ctrl-c ask yourself “does this content really benefit my readers”. The chances are the best content from these services will find itself syndicated across a number of sites, or the information will be republished in differing forms. As people use their search engines to find information they will look at a number of websites and will soon realise which content has been regurgitated ad-nausium. Net result is if their first impression of your site is one that offers the same old information they won’t bother coming back.

Even worse, a number of prolific authors have an ulterior motive. They are simply trying to boost their own search relevance by increasing the number of backlinks to their own websites. If an article you find is borderline check the authors history. If they have submitted hundreds of pages of almost identical content stuffed to the gills with the same keywords the chances are they are simply link-spamming. They don’t care if you publish their content or not, each page in the directory linking back to their website in order to boost their page rank. Would your readers really be interested in such sloppy content? I’m sure mine wouldn’t.

This takes us neatly onto the key message. Why do people return to a website and hopefully trust their sponsors? Because the site has personality, your readers should be able to identify with your informational pages, hopefully they will book mark your page, even tell others to read it. Repeat visitors are far more likely to finally visit your sponsors than those who find your page once and then head back to their search engine of choice. By all means use relevant articles but never compromise your content by relying too much on third party content.

But aside from the human element there is a far more serious reason for ensuring your content is the best, and most original it can be and that is the nature of search engines. Companies such as Google know that their market position is based entirely on trust in their organic results. Expect their search algorithms in future to be tweaked against certain types of syndicated content in order to give the (perceived) best service to their searchers. Spending time now on good quality, original and easily updated content could save you time in the long run as you avoid spending time chasing your page rankings against ever more sophisticated relevance algorithms.

You can use traditional methods to sell products such as direct mail, catalogs and advertising. However, if you have a great online presence, the entire world is your marketplace at a fraction of the cost of most traditional methods. To easily sell to this worldwide marketplace, you need a great shopping cart system.

Choosing a shopping cart system is perhaps the most important single decision you’ll make in your online marketing career.

This is because you will be stuck with the decision for a long time.

If you buy into a system that isn’t adequate, it can cost you money–big money–because it won’t maximize the amount of money spent by each visitor.

There are hundreds, maybe thousands, of off-the-shelf, free and alternative products out there vying for your money, time or both. And most of them are junk.

Don’t suffer like I did. I learned the hard way. When I started on the Internet I couldn’t find a decent shopping cart program, so I took one that was highly recommended by my ISP (I now know the only reason they suggested it was because it made them the most money. They didn’t care if it was the best one for me or not). What a headache! The system wouldn’t do anything but take the order, but you had to have a PhD in computer science to work on it.

Here are 22 questions you absolutely, unfailingly must ask anyone trying to sell you a shopping cart. If you don’t hear positive answers to the majority of these questions, put your wallet back into your pocket and evaluate the next option. Don’t get stuck with a crappy shopping cart, even if they give it to you free.

If you have a poor shopping cart, get rid of it. I know that hurts, because you may have spent lots of time and money getting it going, but a bad one will cost you many thousands of dollars by waiting to replace it later rather than sooner.

Oh, and one more thing: if you hear the shopping cart programmer answer one of the questions below by saying, “Well, we could make it do that,” run away even faster, because you’re going to get stuck with a big custom programming bill with no guarantees that the cart is going to work the way you expected.

Every question below is very important when it comes to having a quality shopping cart system that gets more money out of the same number of visitors.

1. Will it calculate shipping and tax?

2. Does it handle specialized shipping like FedEx and UPS?

3. Will it automatically deliver hard goods and soft goods (e- books and other digital products) in the same transaction?

4. Does it offer customizable “Return to Shopping” pages without needing custom programming? This is important so you can send your customers to the most likely product they will buy next. Standard carts just send customers back to the main catalog, which forces them to search for related products. This is both irritating and time-consuming. Any delays in finding what they want could mean a lost sale, when they finally throw their hands up in disgust and move on to your competitor’s site.

5. Does it offer customizable “Thank You” pages based on what the customer just bought? These are pages where savvy marketers put affiliate links and other offers specifically related to the customer’s interests. When a customer clicks on one of these links and buys something from someone else, you get a commission.

6. Does it deliver receipt and confirmation e-mails automatically? The customer wants to know immediately that the order went through. If he or she is unsure, you are going to have to field many wasted e-mails and phone calls letting the customer know everything is OK.

7. Does it allow multiple order and dropship e-mails? In many cases, several different people in your organization and/or outside your organization need notice of an order. Again, you don’t want to have to do this manually.

8. Does it have a Web-based administration page so you can work on your cart from any computer that has Internet access?

9. Does it include encryption technology and a secure server? Many companies make a fortune by sucking you in with a cheap or free cart and then make money on selling you an overpriced secure server.

10. Does it deliver easy output to your accounting software? You want to be able to import and export data easily between the cart and whatever programs you have that need to share the customer and sales information.

11. Does it have its own associate/affiliate program or is it easily compatible with other major brands of associate software? An affiliate program lets other people promote and sell your products on their Web sites. You don’t pay them unless they sell something. When I tried to get an associate/affiliate program to work with my old cart, it cost me six months of down time and untold amounts of money lost because it wouldn’t work. The associate program people blamed the shopping cart people and vice versa. But ultimately I was left holding the bag.

12. Does it have integrated up-sell modules? The ability to offer more related products to customers making a purchase makes me a small fortune each month. We call it, “Do you want fries with that?” If you don’t have this ability, you are leaving many thousands of dollars on the table from people who would have spent more if your cart just gave them the chance.

13. Does it have an integrated sales and prospect database? In the old days I would have to print out orders and then retype them into ACT or some other database program. A good shopping cart system eliminates all this hassle and potential for error and gives you instant access to your sales reports and clients.

14. Does it have broadcast e-mail capability? Good shopping cart systems are able to manipulate your customer database instantly and send e-mails to any segment or sub-segment of your clients and handle unlimited e-mail magazines. Again, in the old days I would have to be genius enough to pick out segments of the database, export them to a file, import them into a mail program and then an hour later send the darn e-mail. Now this is all done in a few seconds.

15. Does it have mail merge capability? The e-mails sent are personalized to the recipients in any number of ways. Their names can be popped in to the subject line and in various portions of the body of the e-mail. You can merge “what they bought,” “when they bought,” “where they live” or just about anything that will make them feel the e-mail was just for them. Virtually all studies show that mail merge gets a much higher response than plain broadcast e-mail.

16. Can it handle coupons and other discounts? You can make a deal with Joe Blow that everyone coming from his Web site gets an automatic discount — either a percentage or dollar amount. This makes Joe look great to his visitors and makes more sales for you. Here’s a secret: Joe is your affiliate and makes money on the sale too, so he’s got a great incentive to keep your discounts and coupons in front of his visitors. Good shopping cart systems can automate all of this and also handle any quantity discounts you offer.

17. Can it work for multiple Web sites with no extra fees? When I first started I had to get a separate (and expensive) license for each site and a separate merchant account too. Not only was this a great deal of expense, the hassle with installation every time you wanted a new site to go up was enormous. Modern carts can sell bras on one site and bibles on another, and no one knows the difference. The carts run on their own servers so there is no expensive installation and set-up is immediate.

18. Does it have unlimited and fully integrated “sequential” autoresponders? This is one of the most powerful features when it comes to Internet marketing. This feature follows up automatically over and over again to your clients and prospects to provide them customer care and to sell them more products and services. You can even provide free or paid e-mail courses, and each part of the course is delivered automatically.

19. Does it have ad tracking tied into actual sales? Simple ad tracking can be had all over the ‘Net, but it is pretty much worthless unless it is tied to actual sales. This is called the “conversion ratio.” Your cart system should be able to tell you how many people clicked on a particular promotion and how many people bought. This is the only way you can determine if an ad paid off. Good carts will also automatically split test one of your sales pages against another and tell you which page sells more. You keep the page that sells more and get rid of the page that sells less.

20. Does it have a pop-up box builder? Even though many people hate popup boxes, they work. I use them judiciously to make all kinds of offers, and I have the sales figures to prove they get more money out of the same number of people. If you know how to use them properly, no one gets upset.

21. Does it have a printable off-line order form? Believe it or not, many people are still afraid to put their credit card numbers into a Web site. I still get lots of fax orders and phone orders. If you want to maximize your sales, your cart must take these kinds of orders easily.

22. Does it provide free training? You’ll need training in both the basic set up of using your shopping cart and determining your online sales strategy, so that you maximize the amount of money spent by each customer.

You may not understand what all the above questions mean right now, but I can assure you they are important in putting more money into your bank account. If you want to know even more about this subject, you can download a free e-book, How to Pick a Shopping Cart System That Makes You Money at ECommerce with Shopping Carts.

Do you have a website which pulls in large number of visitors everyday? You can actually benefit yourself with the traffic and earn a great, residual income if you give a little more effort. Here are some of the greatest ways you can convert those traffic into mountainous cash:

1. Sell a product/service

Of course, to earn money you need to sell a product or service to your visitors. It is the best way to profit from your own product. Usually, an e-book or software works the best &ndash they can be downloaded right away, no shipping included, no handling to be done. You earn 100% of the profits without any investments to be taken before that.

Other than that, selling your own product allows you to set your own price.

2. Opt-In list

It is very crucial that you try to convert every visitor of yours to a subscriber of your mailing list. The most important asset that an Internet marketer has is his or her list of subscribers. They define whether you will go far in the online business venture.

With an opt-in list, there are tons and tons of ways you can profit greater in the future. You can make previous customers purchase again from you, making them your repeating customers &ndash that is of course, if they are in your mailing list and you can urge them to buy again.

Building a closer relationship with your own subscriber will be the best thing you can do. By having your subscribers ‘trust’ you, you can endorse many other useful products to your subscribers and the chances that they will buy from you will be high &ndash because they trust you.

3. Viral marketing

You can provide a free product or bonus to be listed on your site to be downloaded by your visitors. Usually it’ll be an e-book where people can read from and learn useful information. In this bonus, you include give away rights and urge readers to give it away to anyone they want to. This way, you increase your own publicity and branding.

In the future, you will receive great benefits as when you are known, people will trust you more and this profits you. Between a product &ndash let’s say a tooth brush from a beggar and a doctor, who will you prefer to purchase from? Unless the beggar offers something special, it is hardly that you will purchase the tooth brush from him.

4. Pay-per-click

In this case, you don’t pay for every click but earn instead. There are many advertising programs that give you a percentage of the bidding on a certain keyword. The famous ones are Google Adsense, Chitika, Yahoo Publisher Network and Kontera.

When people click on the ads shown from either of these advertising programs, you will earn a small portion of money. Nevertheless, if you have high traffic to your site &ndash these programs alone can generate your residual income.

5. Offer an advertising space

Usually websites which brings in very high traffic will sell a small portion of space on their web page. You can charge a minimum of $300 for advertising someone’s ad a single month on advertising fee if your web page is pulling more than 2000 visitors a day.

Other than that, you can also create exit pop-ups that advertise other websites as well. By doing this, you don’t clutter your website with too many ads and you can earn a better reputation from your visitors.

6. Affiliate marketing

If you don’t have your own product for sale, you can sell other’s products instead and receive a commission on every sale. With affiliate marketing, you have an unlimited source of products to sell and you don’t need to go through any problems after your sales.

No customer service, you don’t need to issue any refunds, just let the owner do everything else for you after each sale. If you have a mailing list, you can endorse many other products and earn very great profits from your subscribers.

7. Pay-per-lead

Instead of earning money from every click your visitors clicked on, you are paid if you get your visitors to subscribe into other’s mailing list. Nevertheless, it is not necessary that you just get visitors to become other’s subscribers.

There are a lot of bigger companies like Coca-Cola and Pepsi which holds survey every few months. By referring your visitors to them in order to complete a survey, you can also earn great profits from it.

Applied correctly, you can make a huge fortune on the Internet and build a steady online business &ndash taking over the place of your day job. Take some time to put effort in either of these strategies, because it can make your day bright.

Internet marketing is exciting, challenging, and confusing. It can make or break your internet business career and yet many people who depend on internet marketing don’t have a full grasp of the essentials involved in internet marketing.

In fact, many internet entrepreneurs waste a great deal of time, energy, and momentum because they do not fully understand internet marketing. Don’t let this lack of understanding undermine your income potential.

In order for you to better understand internet marketing and its impact on your internet business you must know the answers to these three key questions:

1. What Is Internet Marketing?

2. What Is The Cost Of Internet Marketing?

3. What Is The Benefit of Internet Marketing?

What Is Internet Marketing?

Marketing is actually rather simple. Marketing is communication about an idea, product, service, or organization. Marketing therefore encompasses advertising, promotion and sales as well as the various techniques and forms of communication used to advertise, promote and sell.

Marketing is broader than simple advertising or promotion in that it includes researching the market to learn what consumers want and then setting out to meet their needs with the appropriate product, price, and distribution method. Marketing includes market research, deciding on products and prices, advertising promoting distributing and selling.

Marketing also covers all the activities involved in moving products and services from the source to the end user including making customers aware of products and services, attracting new customers to a product or service, keeping existing customers interested in a product or service, and building and maintaining a customer base for a product or service.

Internet marketing includes these same activities but also pulls in various internet tools including web sites, email, ezines, banner advertising, blogging, RSS, text links, search engine optimization, affiliates, autoresponders, and other ecommerce applications.

What Is The Cost Of Internet Marketing?

The range of expenses for internet marketing is huge. There are a number of promotional and marketing ventures that can cost you nothing or only pennies a day while other advertising efforts can cost you thousands a day.

It is important to consider your goals — both long-term and short-term — as well as how much each prospective customer is worth to you. This will help you determine a workable budget for your internet marketing campaign.

Many internet promotions are free, you can set up a web site and/or blog for $250 a year, and you can buy text links for $10 a month. You could easily spend $25-50 a day for advertising but there are many cheaper ad options available.

The best program is to start small and cheap and slowly build as you test and learn what is successful for your market and product. There is no perfect acvertising solution that works wonders for everyone. Each marketer and each product has a different formula.

What Is The Benefit of Internet Marketing?

Internet marketing offers more benefits than many traditional marketing mediums. The very nature of web sites and blogs is that they continue working to promote and market your product long after your initial marketing effort is over. Similarly many advertising efforts, such as ezines, newsletters, banners, and text links also continue to increase in power over time.

Email marketing can be a tremendous surge in contacts and sales and offers the ability to personalize your message as well as reach a targeted audience so your chance for sales goes up exponentially.

The other tremendous benefit of internet marketing is that it offers convenience and immediate satisfaction. Your potential customer sees your marketing message when it is convenient for them — and often when they are seeking information about your specific topic. Then you offer them the ability to act on that interest right then. They can locate your product and buy in the time it would take to watch a commercial on television or turn a page in the newspaper. That is the power of internet marketing.

Now that you have the answers to these three key questions, you are ready to begin your own internet marketing campaign — and succeed with your internet venture.

Online shopping is the latest trend among customers. Why would you still go to the shop personally when you can do shopping from the comforts of your own home? Because of the rising popularity of online shopping, more and more business persons are setting up their own ecommerce websites to meet the needs of customers and of course, earn big money online.

There is a very bright future for ecommerce websites. As long as there are needs that should be met, there will be customers. For ecommerce website owners, earning money online can be so easy. If people need your products and services, your website will stay alive as long as you want.

Online Competition For Ecommerce Websites

Because of the increasing numbers of online shoppers, there is a need for more ecommerce websites. The problem, however, is that there seem to be several ecommerce websites now. A lot of business persons have answered the call to sell something online. This makes online competition very tough.

Just think about this, if you sell health and beauty products online, there are hundred more several websites like yours. They also offer the same products and services. If there is one customer looking for a health product, he has a hundred choices to choose from. So how can you increase your website’s chance of getting that customer?

Plan Ahead And Market Your Ecommerce Website

This is one thing that most ecommerce website owners do not completely understand. Most of them think that once they have set up their websites, they don’t have to do anything anymore. They will just sit and wait for sales. This may be true ages ago, but with the tough competition now, if you don’t do anything, you won’t get any sales.

Ecommerce websites need two things to consider. First is planning and the second is marketing. Before setting up the website, there must be a thorough planning first. In planning, you must consider the target market, budget, design and other factors that will affect the overall performance of the website.

Second is website marketing. After you have set up your website, you need to work on a marketing campaign. Through marketing, you can make your website more popular and visible to your target market. There are several web marketing options which you can use. The choice of the web marketing option depends on the need of your website.

Remember not to stop working on your website after the set up. If you stop working on it, the sales will also stop. Continually market your website for continuous sales.