Article Contributed by Lori Olson
Business goals need to be defined. Startup business plans always need to include what the expected destination will be. Image that you are going on vacation and have no idea where you are going as you get in your car. How do you pack for such a trip? You might end up in Florida with a suitcase full of ski clothing. As obvious as this may seem, many online businesses start out pretty clueless about this.
Step 1 – Pick an online business monetization model.
The four ways to make money online are:
– Ecommerce model – this applies to any business that has a product or service to sell online.
– Lead generation model – this is the cost per action (CPA) approach where information is sold to other businesses
– Advertising model – this applies to sites that are rich with content and attract lots of information seekers and repeat visitors. The site makes money through pay per click and affiliate products. It relies heavily on high traffic and repeat visitors.
– Support – this applies to businesses that specialize in solving customer problems
Once your business model has been defined (“your travel destination”) you can figure out the steps needed to get you there. In some cases, there will be overlap of models but one will prevail as dominant.
Step 2 – Identify the steps you need to accomplish your goals.
Here are the minimum requirements for online success:
– Keyword research – This is a crucial first step that is most often skipped or done in a shoddy manner. It accounts for the majority of startup business online failure. It is so critical to be done right, yet most startups fail to take the time to fully research it. They make the mistake of brainstorming keywords that “sound” right. If they do any keyword research they usually stop after identifying keywords that are highly searched. They don’t continue the investigation by finding out how much competition exists for those keywords. They don’t determine whether the people searching on those terms are information seekers (and will never buy anything) or actual buyers. Keyword research needs all three of these components. If one of these is missing, it is extremely likely that the website will not succeed.
– An SEO friendly website – Failure to develop a search engine optimized (SEO) website is another typical and huge mistake that startup businesses make online. Unfortunately, the main focus is on a website’s looks (whether that be “pretty”, “trendy”, or professional). Many startups make the mistake of using web designers who know little or anything at all about SEO. They are graphic designers who will make a site look terrific but will be a coding nightmare for search engine spiders. They often include excessive amounts of flash (spiders are just starting to be able to make some sense of it) and dynamic scripts (e.g. spiders cannot read JavaScript). The focus should not be on creating the most beautiful website but rather on the most functional one that has high visitor usability.
– Great content – Sites need to provide the content that is highly relevant to the expected audience and that is also of great quality. It must contain the right keyword weight, frequency and proximity. The content needs to be chunked in a way that makes it easy for visitors to find and consumed. It needs to have correct spelling and grammar.
– An obvious call to action that is easy to execute. Anything that is frustrating to your visitor is likely to send them away (even if they are in the midst of your shopping cart).
– Web analytics – Business owners need to follow the Japanese concept of kaizen. This is looking for ways to make continuous improvement. Web analytics is essential for all web businesses. It can tell you about the way visitors enter and exit your site, how long they stay, what pages lead them on and which ones cause them to leave and so forth. Web analytics will tell you where your site needs to make improvement otherwise you will be completely clueless as to why the traffic your site gets does not convert.
– Marketing strategies – This includes developing organic search engine traffic (developing back links etc.), PPC and Social Media strategies.
– Business processing software – Systems that automate your business will cut down costs, prevent follow up failure and make your business manageable. This is important even no matter what size business you have. If you are a solo entrepreneur, it can be the difference between having free time or not.
Step 3 – Evaluation of your resources:
The first thing to realize is that there a lot of technical steps that need to be done. Startup businesses need to determine what in house skill sets exist and what needs to be outsourced. Solo entrepreneurs and small business owners typically have the “must do it yourself” attitude. This can be a formula for online businesses that are unprofessional looking, never get found online, and never get passed the formulation/beginning stage of development. It is not necessary to learn HTML, JavaScript and PHP. It is not necessary to become and SEO or analytics wizard. It is however, essential to know that you need these things. This is why so very many of online businesses fail. They are missing so many crucial elements because of not knowing or by doing things in an incomplete, haphazard and non-professional manner.
Evaluation of resources includes determining what can and should be done by whom. It includes deciding on how to allocate funds so that your business will grow. The reality is that most individuals to not have all the skill sets that are needed to do the required tasks of a successful online business. Getting the help of experts is the most cost effective route. Fortunately, getting expert help for an online business is highly affordable; especially compared to the costs of starting an offline business. Many so-it-yourselfers turn to “magic bullet” solutions. Startup businesses need to evaluate the benefits of the many do it yourself type of products that are available from internet gurus. While many of these products do have value, the cost in terms of time to learn how to effectively use them (and the energy involved) must be considered. How many products will be needed for the do-it-yourself approach? Will the product do what it says? The reality is that the cost of hiring professionals is often the same or less than attending workshops and buying products. After the workshop is over, small business owners still need to attend to execution of the details whereas hiring a professional accomplished this.
There is no doubt that startup businesses who follow this three step blueprint will distinguish themselves from the vast majority of new online businesses that fail.
About the Author
Lori Olson has a passion for helping small businesses develop strong online presences with a team of 250 professionals who analyze & implement SEO, SEM, PPC Campaign Mgmt, Social Media, Copy Writing & Web Development strategies which are customized to fit any needs, wants & budget. Update Small Business also provides leading edge employee & sales assessment & training; & CRM solutions. http://updatesmallbusiness.com or call 877.265.6568.
Category: Online Business
Young Entrepreneur by Adam Toren: While getting traffic to your website is important, the most essential goal is turning that traffic into sales. If visitors are not buying your products or service, then it’s time to evaluate your website. There may be some roadblocks on your site that might be preventing visitors from becoming customers. Review these 6 essentials that a website sales page must have to ensure that it is positioned for profitability.
1. Less clicks.
How many times does a visitor need to click through your website to get to the product page? The less navigation tabs, the easier it is to land the sale because there are fewer distractions to take away from the viewer’s focus.
2. Convincing sales page.
Your sales page needs to be persuading in a concise fashion. Create a headline that will attract attention and encourage further reading. The copy that follows should show how your product or service will meet the customer’s needs. Illustrate why a visitor should buy from you rather than the thousands of others online offering similar products or services. Keep the tone causal and conversational. Use words that spark emotions and, where applicable, compare benefits to results. The sales page is where you need to establish trust and credibility with the visitor and show why you are far superior to all the rest.
3. Provide testimonials.
Testimonials from actual customers praising your product and service carry much more credibility than words in your sales copy. These testimonials can be either audio or visual, but it is essential that they are on the sales page and contain the customer’s name, hometown and photo in order for them to carry any persuasive weight.
More sales tips can be found under: Essentials For Turning Sales Page Visitors Into Clients
Article Contributed by Experienced-People
The dot com bust proved convincingly that business models involving a lot of gloss and very little prospect of consistent and growing profit find themselves on the scrap heap – and rightly so. However, in the years that followed, some internet businesses made it so big they forever changed how people buy products and how they live their lives. From Amazon’s colossal grip on the world of books, to Paypal’s hugely successful online payment system, to YouTube’s massive user base, many Internet businesses have innovated their way to fame and success. However, the big Internet Business Success Story isn’t any of those. Some of those leviathans have profit more in their imagination than in their bank.
The Facts and Figures
That the Internet population is growing by the day is not in doubt. From 2000-2008 the number of people online skyrocketed by 342%.1 Not only are more people online but users are spending more time on the ‘net, accessing more goods and services there, integrating their offline world with “social networks” and moving their spending online too. In 2008, nearly 900 million people bought something online and that number is growing at the rate of 40%2. The US accounts for less than 16% of global internet users, yet in the US alone people will spend over $160,000,000,000 online in the recession hit 2009.
The bulk of that money is not, as one would imagine, going to a few large companies that straddle internet commerce. For every dollar the Google behemoth makes from the Adsense ads seen on so many websites, a large chunk goes to the owners of those sites. In the first quarter of 2009 Google paid out $410 million every month to these small businesses3. For every £1 eBay makes in commission on goods sold, the “small” eBay retailer pockets up to £10 in profit. The top 1000 eBay sellers generated revenue of £785,000,000 in 2008, with an average turnover of £440,0004.
The Opportunities
Businesses like eBay and Google account for only a small fraction of the business transacted online. The big story is the millions of small businesses – from firms developing applications for Facebook to companies creating and providing electronic delivery goods like software and ebooks, to businesses supplying consultancy services to SMEs, multinationals and governments. There are huge opportunities, there are successful businesses showing amazingly healthy growth, and there’s a business in this sector to suit every taste and budget. They include
– small, low cost, work from home, part-time businesses making just a few hundred dollars a month
– information websites that have steady revenue from contextual ad programmes such as Adsense. (It’s like income from copyrights and patents – no active management required)
– “drop ship” retailers of everything from candles to yachts but without a warehouse, logistics or customer service
– domain businesses consisting of nothing more than a collection of domains earning steady income from “domain parking”
– franchises without the employees, premises, bureaucracy or tedious hours
and
– traditional businesses selling high street goods and services but conducting the advertising, selling, order processing etc., entirely online giving them a significant competitive advantage over older, more established players
Why Now?
Clinton Lee, author of 101 Ways to Make Money Online, has been involved in online businesses for the best part of the last decade. In his words, “I’ve moved from buying and developing B&Ms (Bricks and Mortar) to buying Internet businesses partly because they are so much better value. The P/Es are a lot more attractive. It’s not uncommon for a quality website to sell for less than a year’s EBITDA. There are real bargains to be had. Yet, these businesses are higher growth, more flexible, more scalable and better able to adapt to changing market conditions.”
The lack of geographical restriction when choosing a business makes for phenomenal amount of choice. Most can be run from anywhere, even if the owner decides to emigrate. The ownership of online business and their cash flow can be directed outside a home country making them ideal tax planning vehicles. Internet businesses are easier to grow than local businesses, can grow much further, can employ talent anywhere in the world and tap into the larger global market.
So why are do online businesses sell for what would be considered bargain basement prices elsewhere?
Traditional valuation principles still apply. It’s still about quantifying future Profit and Risk. The values exist …but the buyers don’t.
There is still a mind-set among buyers that associates Internet businesses with new-fangled, high risk or requiring specialist technical skills to own/manage. Nothing could be further from the truth. While no Internet business can boast the 50 year history that some cafes, hotels or pubs take pride in, many have been generating substantial and growing profits for several years. With staff to do the technical work, long-term contracts in place with blue chip companies, solid business plans and motivated management teams, many of these businesses have everything that excites buyers.
Except the Marketplace
There’s another price dampener: the lack of a proper forum for the buying and selling of these businesses. Apart from particularly large businesses, Internet concerns are unlikely to catch the attention of the right audience when listed in a general business-for-sale publication. A typical website owner wishing to sell needs to contact owners of similar sites or post threads on webmaster community boards – hardly the best places to find savvy business investors.
What’s very evident in these website-for-sale threads is the average sellers’ obvious inexperience with selling businesses. Their pitch is targeted squarely at their audience of webmasters and usually refers to Page Rank, DMOZ listings, site design and backend, how high the PPC is etc.. but rarely a proper analysis of the profits, cash flow or projections. Presenting a proper financial case is a turn-off for that specific audience. The experienced business buyer would ask the right questions to get at the figures.
The new Daltonsbusiness sector devoted to Internet businesses should bring these business opportunities to a wider audience and expose business buyers to a largely untapped sector.
Isn’t it time you considered buying an Internet business?
There are thousands of forums on the web ranging from any subject imaginable. Forums are a collection of people interested in specific subject collaboration with one another. Forums even have top experts in those fields answering questions and offering advice at no cost. Forums allow for user interaction through question and answer boards. These boards have moderators to prevent spammers from ruining the forums goals.
Forums are becoming more popular every day as people want to communicate with one another via the web. Forums are a great place to find an answer to technical questions or get some expert advice. Larger forums receive thousands of visitors a day, bringing together a community of experts in a specific field or industry. Besides helping you find answers, forums can be a valuable tool for site promotion (search engine optimization), increasing traffic (search engine marketing), and proving that you really are an expert in a specific field (building credibility).
The more exposure you and your business receives, the better off your company will be in the long run. As more and more web users see your company they will be inclined to view your website and learn what you have to offer. This can ultimately lead to increased sales for your business and higher search engine rankings. You must remember that every customer has the potential to negatively impact your business with a negative rating or feedback, so be sure to treat each customer with the upmost respect and courtesy so they will recommend you to others.
Search Engine Optimization Benefits
Forums are a great way to get a new site indexed by the major search engines. Since the search engines require a listing fee and have extremely long waiting periods to be indexed in their results, forums make a great alternative. Forums can get a new site indexed in the search engines at no cost and in as little as 3 days. All you need to do is find a high traffic forum that is indexed frequently and place a link of your new site in a post or signature. Signatures are a place at the bottom of every post you make that is reserved for customized note, saying, or link. If you want to utilize the signature for Search Engine Optimization purposes then you want to find forums that do not have the No Follow tag and place a link to your website in the signature. You will get a one-way link to your site, which is very good. To make the link even more valuable, make sure you are posting in a forum related to your website and you have keyword rich anchor text in your signature.
I have compiled a list of some of the top forums that currently do not use the No Follow Tag. Posting in these forums will get you a back link to your website, which is very helpful for search engine optimization.
techsupportforum.com/
v7n.com/forums
webproworld.com/
http://forums.digitalpoint.com/
webhostingtalk.com
forum.mambo-foundation.org
simplemachines.org
Search Engine Marketing Benefits
Forums benefit Search Engine Marketing plans as you can easily market your company and build up positive feedback for yourself. There are hundreds of forums you can post in. You want to look for forums that are relevant to your industry. Do not sign up for comic book forums, when your company is selling medical equipment. Sign up for the comic book forum on your own time with another user name. You want to build up your company’s reputation through forums that are related to your line of business.
When you post frequently in forums you begin to build up a reputation for yourself. Building up a positive relationship with your fellow forums members can establish a positive feedback towards you and your business. As we all know in this Web 2.0 world where users can interact with one another it is imperative to have positive feedback. Even one bad complaint can have irreversible negative ramifications upon your business. To avoid this be respectful to each customer and treat them as you would expect to be treated.
Posting new threads and responding to questions posted by members can build up your reputation and make you an authoritative figure, assisting with your search engine marketing. Make sure your posts are relevant to the thread. Do not spam every thread trying to build up your reputation.
Forums display the number of posts a member made next to the user name and avatar. The more posts shown by you, the more respected you become. Members with certain amounts of posts receive badges given out by the forums. Basically, the more you post in the forum the higher badge, deemed as credibility, you will be awarded.
In essence, forums are a strong marketing place. Not only do forums benefit search engine optimization, but they also help with search engine marketing. Any webmaster should take place in some sort of forum posting, whether it be for building links or obtaining a positive reputation for your company, forums are imperative to a websites success.
About the Author:
Brandon Leibowitz is an expert search engine optimization and marketing consultant. For a complete list of do follow forums visit his website at http://www.SeoOptimizers.com. Read his SEO and SEM Blog at http://blog.seooptimizers.com
YouTube has become a dominant force in on the web. According to comScore, in March of 2008 over 11.5 billion videos were watched by 139 million Unites States viewers. YouTube has become one of the top viewed websites in quite a short time. Google’s purchase of YouTube shows us how valuable of a tool YouTube is and the potential it has. YouTube videos are starting to show up on Google natural search engine results, surpassing the top spots. A YouTube video properly optimized can outrank sites such as Amazon and EBay. This is an internet marketer’s dream tool and it is so simple to use. This is why you must properly optimize your YouTube videos.
A good starting point for YouTube optimization is to make videos that are short, sweet, and straight to the point. People want instant gratification, not wanting to sit around watching a 30 minute video on how to use a cell phone headset. Videos should be kept to a few minutes to reduce production time, upload time, and download times. Have a script prepared so you do not mutter or stumble upon your words. Film the video in the highest quality format you can. Crisp, clean videos will receive more attention than grainy, hard to see videos. Do not make videos private and always allow for comments. This user interaction can help increase video views and move you up the YouTube video rankings. Using Annotations, text boxes in your video, can help deliver your message or promote your website or company. Make sure not too over use annotations as they can become annoying and distracting from your videos main purpose.
Since the search engine spiders cannot read or comprehend videos you must use the text fields to optimize your videos appropriately. This means doing keyword research and making sure your keywords appear in the title, description, and tags of your video is imperative to a successful YouTube marketing campaign. Maximize on the amount of text you can have in these fields. More text means a better chance of someone finding and clicking into your video. Make sure you use original titles and descriptions otherwise your video will get lost in the millions of videos with similar names. Original content is what YouTube wants to see. The more originality you add the better off you will be. You also want to have a user name with your brand or website name so it is easily remembered.
You have to put everything into perspective to increase views, as the average video only receives one hundred views annually. According to YouTube guidelines there are many factors that influence rankings and can help optimize your videos. These include the video title, the description, tags, incoming links, comments, subscribers, ratings, playlist additions, flagging, embeds, shares, age of video, channel views, subscribers, views, and the number and quality of sites that host or point to your video. You want to interact on YouTube by watching other videos, commenting, subscribing, creating channels, and making friends. Interaction helps with the viral marketing, where one person tells another person about the video. This person tells five others and so on. Doing this will increase your video network and views. All these factor into ranking high for YouTube optimization.
If your video appears on an outside website you want to make sure that it is relevant and appropriate for your video. Each time your video is viewed from an outside source it still counts as a view, so keep posting your videos on blogs and other sites. Basically, you need links from outside pages leading to your YouTube videos. You want the links to have strong anchor text, meaning that the link leading to the video contains keywords related to your video.
To increase your videos views, subscriptions, and favorites you can send out an email blasts, place your video on your website and other websites, engage in the community, build a following, connect with other members, provide valuable content, participate in social networking sites. Basically the Web 2.0 created a heaven place for video sharing. Your ultimate goal should be to reach YouTube’s homepage under Spotlight, Most Viewed, Most Discussed, and Top Favorite Videos.
You can submit your video to the major video sites at once using programs such as Tube Mogul and Traffic Geyser. These software programs submit your video to all the major video sharing sites for you, saving time and energy. Simply enter the tile, description, and tags for your video and it will appear on all the major video sharing sites. They offer analytics and tracking for your videos in one place making it easy to analyze and tweak your videos.
The best analytics would have to be the one given to you for free, YouTube Insight. This will give you all the stats and detailed information you could ever ask for. With Insight you can see how many page views you have, how popular it is, where people found your video, what country people watching your video are from, what sections of your video are most watched and least watched, and so much more. This statistical data should help optimize your current video and plan for future videos. There are many articles written about YouTube Insight and how to take advantage of it. I suggest reading up on these.
There is a program called video tube automators, which is designed to build hundreds of YouTube accounts so you can view, comment, subscribe, and vote on your own videos. This run into the black hat area of marketing and is seen as spam. This is unethical and can get your account permanently banned from YouTube.
Monetizing your YouTube videos is quite easy. You can easily set up your Ad Sense account in accordance with YouTube so you can start receiving money every time an ad is clicked next to your video. The main source of income from YouTube comes from the fact that you can show product reviews and sell features that could not be described in words. Electronic gadgets are a perfect match for YouTube video reviews.
About the Author:
Brandon Leibowitz is an expert search engine optimization and marketing consultant. For a complete list of do follow forums visit his website at http://www.SeoOptimizers.com. Read his SEO and SEM Blog at http://blog.seooptimizers.com