You have your online business up and running. But are you making as much as you could? Do you want to stay at current level or do better and make this a full time income? If you are thinking this way you may want to consider some making some changes.
The first thing to consider would be changing your website or sales letter. There are some sites that offer free content to help attract customers and establish your credibility. Then you have sites that are just one single sales letter. There are many people who believe that the creation of mini sites is better for creating sales. The reason is they don’t have any other content and will concentrate on you message. If you do not feel you write well it is a very worthwhile expenditure to hire someone. A well written sales letter will pay for itself many times over.
Be sure to keep copies of the older versions of letters since things can change quickly so you will be able to go back to a previous version if you find you are getting less results from the new copy.
Try sending postcards to potential customers. Many people prefer to be contacted by mail and with today’s email having a multitude of offerings a post card very well can set you apart. You do not have to rely strictly on contacting people thru an online medium. There is a world outside of the Internet that can be used very effectively to get customers to read your message.
Can your online business bring repeat customers? What kind of ideas do you have about complimenting products? If someone is happy with a product they purchased from you they will be less hesitant on purchasing again. Be sure to let your current customers know of any new product additions. If you are selling services contact your customers to let them know you are available for work and maybe offer some discount or other incentive to use you again. These repeat and satisfied customers can be great referrals to others about your online business.
You never stop learning. You never know what new information you have may significantly change your business for the better. There are so many manuals that offer advice it would be basically impossible to read them all. Select one or two and really study them, put the ideas to work after you have read them and track the progress.
Try widening your income opportunities. For example if you sell a home repair book, you may also then sell blueprints or a series of common project plans such as a deck, utility shed to name a couple. The trick is to sometimes find a natural connection. Sometimes is may also be profitable to think of a new market to become jointly involved with. Such as home repair book and then become a home loan or construction loan affiliate. It is a matter of finding another target group that can benefit from your service or product.
The final outcome is you want to attract new customers while continually taking care of your current customers. Sometimes it is just a matter of some slight changes that will bring the desired income increase from your online business.
Showing posts with label Online business. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Online business. Show all posts
Friday, May 20, 2011
Saturday, May 14, 2011
6 Steps to an Effective Online Business
Online business has become so popular nowadays for according to some, it offers a lot of advantages compared to a brick and mortar business. However, whatever kind of business you are planning to start, one has still have to do a lot of research works to be done beforehand. This article will talk about starting an online business.
Creating and running an effective online business is realistically comprised of several hundred, rather than 6, but this will serve as a guide for the direction of your efforts. Contrary to what you may hear rampantly on the Internet, there is no cookie-cutter, get-rich quick scheme on the web. Not only is every online business different, what works for one person or in one month may not work for another person or in the next month.
The Internet is constantly changing, and the online market is inherently different this year than it was last year. New technological improvements occur monthly, and impact the online business environment. What works for one individual when he is the first to sell a certain product a certain way may not work just six months later when he has sold his idea to 40,000 other marketers, and they all begin to promote it. Traffic generation tactics are significantly different than they were just a year ago, and hardly resemble profitable strategies three years ago.
These 6 Steps are simply the bare-bones skeleton of what has to happen for your online business to be successful. They are foundational, and although the implementation strategies are different today than several years ago, the basic steps remain the same.
1. Develop or discover a product. You must find a product that meets today’s needs. A 5 year old product whose resell rights you can buy for a dollar or get for free probably won’t meet the needs of today’s consumers. You must be willing to pay for the rights to sell a current , useful product, or become an affiliate marketer, where you promote a popular product, and in exchange are paid a percentage of the income from the sale.
2. Determine how the potential customers can view your product and see a sales presentation. If you develop your own product or purchase the rights to sell someone else’s, you will need a website. A few tips here: Rather than accept free web hosting, purchase your own domain name and pay to have your domain name and web site hosted by a professional web hosting company with a reputable history. If your free web hosting company goes bankrupt, they generally take your fledgling business with them.
3.Once you have your web site up and running, unless you are using an affiliate program that supplies a sales page, you must develop a sales script and web copy. Aside from your web hosting decision, this is probably the most important thing you can do. You may be tempted at first to write a sales pitch on your own, but unless you already have a lot of experience in the offline market writing effective sales letters, you need to, absolutely must, invest in a few courses on web copywriting. Be willing to spend some money upfront on learning this skill. Too many marketers try to wing it in this area and after a few months of losing money online, finally break down and purchase the knowledge to write a good sales pitch. Do it the other way around—buy the knowledge first, and start making sales from the beginning. Customers will not buy just because you have a web site---they buy from the web site that does the best job of convincing them it has the best product for their need.
4. You must develop a traffic source that works. When you first begin, you may be on a shoestring, and that is OK. Assuming you have been willing to spend some money on sales letter writing and a decent web host, you may be able to skimp in the traffic arena for awhile, if you have plenty of time. If you do not have money to advertise, nor time to seek out low cost advertising, you probably shouldn’t be attempting an online business. If you do choose to go the low-cost route—know two things up front—the returns are really low and you will spend vast amounts of time on traffic generation. Once you begin to make sales, you must invest your income in paid forms of traffic generation. If you do not, you will run out of enthusiasm for generating the free traffic, and without reinvesting the income from your first sales into advertising, you are sure to fail. Good sources of low-cost, but time consuming traffic are: writing articles and posting them to article directories, low cost classified ads, and ezine ads. You may see hyped-up ads for thousands or visitors for a low cost or millions of banner ads for another reasonable price—both of these methods may have worked 2 years ago, but they are a sure waste today.
5. Once you begin to get traffic to your online business site, you must keep detailed records of where the traffic comes from, and what percentage of visitors from each source are purchasing your product. If you have visitors that cost you $50 per hundred to come to your web site, but on average they only purchase $25 per hundred visitors, the income may feel good, but you are not profitable, and are losing money. By tracking your expenses on each type of visitor and by tracking your revenue on the same sources of visitors, you can determine which campaigns need changes or need to be eliminated and which need to be increased in intensity.
6. By following this pattern of steps, and by keeping diligent records (there is plenty of good web site tracking software on the market that can help you do that), you can develop a profitable online business. Again, it will not happen overnight, and you will not get rich quick. However, if you build a solid online business with a solid foundation, and are willing to spend some money learning how to do it right, you really can become successful in business online.
So are you ready to start your online business? Use the above points as your guide. Success never comes in a blink of an eye. It takes a lot of hardworks, sacrifices, and some financial considerations.
Creating and running an effective online business is realistically comprised of several hundred, rather than 6, but this will serve as a guide for the direction of your efforts. Contrary to what you may hear rampantly on the Internet, there is no cookie-cutter, get-rich quick scheme on the web. Not only is every online business different, what works for one person or in one month may not work for another person or in the next month.
The Internet is constantly changing, and the online market is inherently different this year than it was last year. New technological improvements occur monthly, and impact the online business environment. What works for one individual when he is the first to sell a certain product a certain way may not work just six months later when he has sold his idea to 40,000 other marketers, and they all begin to promote it. Traffic generation tactics are significantly different than they were just a year ago, and hardly resemble profitable strategies three years ago.
These 6 Steps are simply the bare-bones skeleton of what has to happen for your online business to be successful. They are foundational, and although the implementation strategies are different today than several years ago, the basic steps remain the same.
1. Develop or discover a product. You must find a product that meets today’s needs. A 5 year old product whose resell rights you can buy for a dollar or get for free probably won’t meet the needs of today’s consumers. You must be willing to pay for the rights to sell a current , useful product, or become an affiliate marketer, where you promote a popular product, and in exchange are paid a percentage of the income from the sale.
2. Determine how the potential customers can view your product and see a sales presentation. If you develop your own product or purchase the rights to sell someone else’s, you will need a website. A few tips here: Rather than accept free web hosting, purchase your own domain name and pay to have your domain name and web site hosted by a professional web hosting company with a reputable history. If your free web hosting company goes bankrupt, they generally take your fledgling business with them.
3.Once you have your web site up and running, unless you are using an affiliate program that supplies a sales page, you must develop a sales script and web copy. Aside from your web hosting decision, this is probably the most important thing you can do. You may be tempted at first to write a sales pitch on your own, but unless you already have a lot of experience in the offline market writing effective sales letters, you need to, absolutely must, invest in a few courses on web copywriting. Be willing to spend some money upfront on learning this skill. Too many marketers try to wing it in this area and after a few months of losing money online, finally break down and purchase the knowledge to write a good sales pitch. Do it the other way around—buy the knowledge first, and start making sales from the beginning. Customers will not buy just because you have a web site---they buy from the web site that does the best job of convincing them it has the best product for their need.
4. You must develop a traffic source that works. When you first begin, you may be on a shoestring, and that is OK. Assuming you have been willing to spend some money on sales letter writing and a decent web host, you may be able to skimp in the traffic arena for awhile, if you have plenty of time. If you do not have money to advertise, nor time to seek out low cost advertising, you probably shouldn’t be attempting an online business. If you do choose to go the low-cost route—know two things up front—the returns are really low and you will spend vast amounts of time on traffic generation. Once you begin to make sales, you must invest your income in paid forms of traffic generation. If you do not, you will run out of enthusiasm for generating the free traffic, and without reinvesting the income from your first sales into advertising, you are sure to fail. Good sources of low-cost, but time consuming traffic are: writing articles and posting them to article directories, low cost classified ads, and ezine ads. You may see hyped-up ads for thousands or visitors for a low cost or millions of banner ads for another reasonable price—both of these methods may have worked 2 years ago, but they are a sure waste today.
5. Once you begin to get traffic to your online business site, you must keep detailed records of where the traffic comes from, and what percentage of visitors from each source are purchasing your product. If you have visitors that cost you $50 per hundred to come to your web site, but on average they only purchase $25 per hundred visitors, the income may feel good, but you are not profitable, and are losing money. By tracking your expenses on each type of visitor and by tracking your revenue on the same sources of visitors, you can determine which campaigns need changes or need to be eliminated and which need to be increased in intensity.
6. By following this pattern of steps, and by keeping diligent records (there is plenty of good web site tracking software on the market that can help you do that), you can develop a profitable online business. Again, it will not happen overnight, and you will not get rich quick. However, if you build a solid online business with a solid foundation, and are willing to spend some money learning how to do it right, you really can become successful in business online.
So are you ready to start your online business? Use the above points as your guide. Success never comes in a blink of an eye. It takes a lot of hardworks, sacrifices, and some financial considerations.
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