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1. Net Selling: To Cash in or Not to Cash in?
The internet has not quite taken over the world contrary to what many of us believe nevertheless the figures for net usage is still nothing short of staggering. As of March 2007, only 16.7% of the earth’s 6.5 billion population (or about 1.2 billion) was using the net. In Asia, which accounts for more than 50% of the world’s population, a measly 10.7% go online. Puny compared to nearly 70% of the people living in North America.
Professionals: Internet users represent a huge market that continues to grow bigger each year. In financial terms, online advertising earned revenues higher than $16.7 billion and is expected to increase to $45 billion in the next five years.
Cons: With the huge number of internet users, competition is probably very fierce. However, the converse may also be true—that there’s a piece of the pie to be had for every serious internet entrepreneur.
Bottom Line: An online business can either be your main source of income or a secondary cash generating system which, once it begins operating, is completely automated. However, if you’re just starting, you will really have to work hard to create a niche in the market because there are literally millions of established web promoting businesses which you have to compete against.
2. The Importance of Doing Prior Research
Whether you choose to run a business the traditional way or online, you should first make sure that there is a large enough market for it. Choose a product or service which people would be interested in.
Professionals: There are hundreds of opportunities online and websites that provide invaluable help by providing free marketing analysis tools.
Cons: The best things in life are free so they say but not in this case. When it comes to marketing analysis tools, the freebies do not provide quality in-depth analysis as the free-based ones.
Bottom Line: In many instances, novice internet marketers sealed their doom by not doing any prior research before taking the plunge. This is akin to firing a shot before even aiming for the target.
3. Obtaining a Web Presence
The internet has come full circle. Not too long ago, a reputable web presence meant paying incredibly expensive hosting fees. But times have changed. Today you can premium quality net hosting for less than $4 a month. You only need to do is use a blog.
Pros: Starting an online business these days cost practically next to nothing.
Cons: As easy as it is to get started in an online business, is to drown in the sea competition. Your main agenda at this point is to focus on making your net business stand out from the massive crowd.
Bottom Line: You no longer have any excuse for not creating a net presence. Expensive web hosting fees are a thing of the past and as mentioned above, it is now possible to promote on the web without shelling out as much as a penny. Being HTML (web coding language) illiterate is another dead excuse. You don’t need this technical skill to be an online entrepreneur.
4. The Fastest Way to Earn Money on the Web
No question about it, affiliate selling is the easiest and fastest way to make money online. This involves partnering with a merchant by promoting or advertising his or her product on your website. You are the affiliate and the merchant is the owner of the merchandise. Affiliate marketing is also referred to by other terms such as affiliate program, referral program and associate program.
Your part is to create and maintain a website while the merchant will provide you with banners, graphics or a variety of text links which you then strategically insert you’re your website or blog. The goal is to refer your visitors to the merchant’s website.
Whenever a visitor to your website clicks on any of those code-imbedded links, he or she is automatically transferred to the merchant’s site. You earn some kind of referral fee if the visitor buys something from the merchant.
Execs: Being an affiliate marketer won’t cost you anything. Choose an affiliate program that provides all the necessary tools to successfully promote their products. What makes it even better is that there are many established and reliable affiliate directories from which you can select just about any product to promote.
Cons: Make sure that the product you choose to promote really works. If it makes a lot of claims, you should try the product yourself and see if these are true. What you don’t want is be another affiliate marketer promoting identical products as the rest of other web marketers.
Bottom Line: Although being an affiliate marketer does not require any money out from your end, remember that the internet marketers who are raking in huge profits are those who sell their own products. In other words, you should promote other people’s product until you have become quite a pro at net marketing that you can already sell your own product.
5. Internet Traffic: The Goal of Every Web based Entrepreneur
You’ve made it in the web if your website gets lots of net traffic. Heavy online traffic is the pinnacle of internet business success. Now it may be clear to you why there are serious writers that earn big as bloggers, as well as non-writers who blog anyway. Although some certainly have something interesting and helpful to share with the rest of the world, others blog to basically direct traffic to their website.
Listed below are some the ways to get traffic to your website.
- Use Net 2.0 techniques: Internet 2.zero is newest generation of web-based services that include social networking sites such as facebook.com and youtube.com. An attractive and interesting blog is an ideal platform that works well with net2.zero based net traffic.
- Write Articles: If you like writing, this is the perfect option. If you have a lot of interesting, unique and entertaining ideas to share, you can easily attract traffic to your blog or website. Of course, you need to put in extra effort in making your articles worth reading if you want a lot of people to check it out. The best thing about article writing is that there are a huge number of article directories where you can submit your work.
- Posting in Forums: Forums are places where most people try to find answers to their questions and solutions to their problems. Seek out forums that are relevant to your market and respond to current or recently posted questions the best way you can. How you answer give readers an idea of your degree of expertise on the matter. Your answers then should make you come across as someone knowledgeable and trustworthy. If are able to provide useful and helpful answers, people will positively respond to you and you may even end up gaining new customers.
It’s highly possible that the people you were able to help would click on your signature link to find out about other helpful information you may have on your website. In most forums, people are allowed to endorse their site by providing them with the option of pasting a link pointing to their site at the top of their posting. Because different forums have different tips, it is advisable to go through them.
- Pay-Per-Click Advertising: Depending on how you see it, this can be the most famous or infamous method of generating income online. Google Adwords is particularly singled out as being notorious. PPC, commonly known as pay-per-click, is the system of paying to induce net traffic through advertising. Pay-per-click basically involves creating a commercial and bidding for a relevant searched-for keyword. The ad you made will then be listed on the relevant search engine index pages for the keyword you bid on.
- Web Traffic from Search Engines: When people go online, a lot of times it is to search for information. They type in a search word or phrase (keyword) onto the search engine search box, press enter, and is then provided with a list of material containing the search words entered. Search engines generate web traffic to various sites in this manner.
In order for your website to get a lot of web traffic, it has to be search engine optimized. What this means is that your postings should make extensive use of the relevant keywords people type in whenever they want to access information related to the product or service you are offering. If you are a blogger, use commonly used keywords in your writings to draw people to your blog site.
Execs: There are a lot of different ways to channel traffic onto your website or blog. It does not take much to write an online article. You don’t need a professional writer to do this for you, in fact internet writing style is highly conversational in tone. The great thing about it is that traffic generated by even just one article can bring in huge sales.
Cons: Although the process of drawing online traffic to your site is quite simple, it also means a lot of work to be able to get a lot of visitors. This is particularly true with new blogs and websites.
Bottom Line: The primary goal of any online business is to get net traffic otherwise no one would even be aware that your business exists and your products are fantastic. If you want to be an internet marketer, you should optimize this option.
6. Be a Leader, Not a Follower
The co-founding father of Sony, Masura Ibuka once said, “You never reach technology, business or something else by following others!” His words of wisdom are just as relevant today in the internet era specifically in the web marketing arena as when he said it several decades ago. If you operate by merely following the leader, then you are setting yourself up to be perennially catching up and this is not a very effective way of promoting your business.
Pros: When it comes to selling, being the leader will create an indelible image of you in the minds of people. You will stand out and you will be instantly recognized by the general public. This translates to big profits as people will be drawn to you. You will have a captive audience thus any product or service you promote will automatically be perceived as being of high quality and worth buying. Always remember that your ultimate goal is to market and sell your own products.
Cons: Working towards being at the forefront will require a lot of blood, sweat and tears but it is well worth the extra time and effort because once you achieve it at an early stage of your internet marketing career, you will eventually find yourself simply just cruising along. The edge you built up early on will enable you to forge ahead smoothly unlike those enter the ranks as followers who will always be struggling just to keep up.
7. Avoid The Minefield Of Online Scams.
Let’s face it, as wonderful as the internet is, it is also ridden with scams. Keep in mind the words of wisdom which goes: If it looks too smart to be true, then it is precisely that! One common reason why people get scammed is because they are so focused on getting rich fast. Being so preoccupied, they fail to heed to that little voice in their head saying, “There is no such thing as overnight success.”
Professionals: A large number of unscrupulous internet web marketers who had been hiding behind an image of respectability have since been exposed together with their scams but there are still others out there victimizing people. Let’s face it, there will always be bad elements in business whether traditional or online. It is your responsibility to arm yourself with information that will keep you from being duped.
Cons: When it comes to losing weight and earning money, we all want to believe it’s that it can be done the quick and easy way. Just as some people are driven by desperation to lose weight that they throw caution to the wind and start popping diet pills that are known to harm the health, there are also those who are easily swept off their senses by glittering promises huge profits in no time and with no sweat.
Have you heard of the “gonna be rich overnight syndrome”? If you come across anything that is too good to be true and you start feeling giddy and unable to sleep at night thinking about the loads of money you would be earning almost immediately, then you are afflicted with the syndrome. Just keep in mind what Vidal Sassoon, world-famous hairstylist says about success: “The only place where success comes before work is in the dictionary!”
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