:The Flash Advancer

What makes a successful online business? Is it a great web site or an awesome product?

Well they both help, but; the main ingredient is persistence. Allow me to use an anecdotal piece of history to illustrate my point.

A Scottish king named Robert Bruce was fighting the English at the battle of Bannockburn and not doing very well. Whilst sat in a cave considering his options he saw a spider building a web. The spider kept falling down, but; kept going back again, until eventually it successfully spun its web. Robert saw how the spider had persisted in its task, so he then did the same and beat the English. The moral being Try, Try and Try again.

So what has does this tale teach us? If we keep applying the same tactics (providing they are the right ones) we will succeed!

So what are the right tactics when marketing your online business? What should you be doing persistently in order to achieve long-term success?

Firstly, build your subscriber list. There is nothing better than having a list of 1000’s of e-mail address from people who want to hear from you about your product.

One of the most consistent ways to grow your subscribers is to write and submit articles such as this one. At the end of it you can insert your resource box with your details in it including your web site address. Many more benefits of Article writing can be found in my article Do I really need to write articles for Ezines? Once you have written your article(s), spend time submitting your articles to ezines or if you prefer you can use an automated ezine announcement system.

Another way to build your subscriber list is to use opt in mail List provider. There are plenty of them on the net so shop around and look for testimonials to make the right choice.

Once you build up the trust with those people on your list then it’s a bit like a money tree. Just like ordinary trees they do not grow overnight and they need nurturing. A simpler method is to have an online form on your web-site where prospects can provide you with their name & e-mail address.

Optimise your pages for search engines. Do this regularly and use PPC search engines selecting targeted keywords or phrases. This is a long term tactic and its here where persistence really P.A.Y.S., if you keep repeating the task over a sustained period and you will reap the rewards.

Join and participate in online forums. Whilst you can use forums to meet other entrepreneurs and gain help and assistance, get used to providing it. Take part in the forum offering advice and get your name known around the forum(s). People will remember it and start looking for you.

There are those that will have you believe that you can just set up online and make 1000’s within in days. Here’s the reality check, this doesn’t happen. You have to persist to get where you want to go, you should give yourself at least a year for your marketing strategies to do their job.

Don’t get disheartened keep working, be persistent, don’t give up at the first hurdle.

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Note: You may use this article in your e-zine or on your site as long as the article and resource box remain unchanged

Copyright Mike Morris 2005

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Many marketers know that search engine marketing is among one of the best methods to get visitors to their websites. It’s a profitable way to reach new subscribers and new customers.

But getting search engine traffic is only one of the first steps to the doorway of incoming success. While getting top search engine rankings will open the floodgates of targeted traffic, all this traffic is useless if your website visitors don’t take any action be it a subscription to your newsletter, a purchase of your products or your affiliate products or any other action.

To capitalize on your search engine traffic, you need to be able to convert those visits into at least one action. Of course, not all your visitors will do anything on your website apart reading any valuable content you might have or download any free stuff. This is also a good way to get repeat visitors which can lead to an action in the future.

Now is the time to concentrate on your website conversion strategies which will be very crucial for success. In fact this is the second most important aspect of Internet marketing after getting the initial traffic.

The formula is as follows:

=> Targeted Traffic: Good Conversion: Sales/Leads/Subscribers

Here are 2 powerful ways to capitalize on your search engine traffic:

(1) Your Website Design Layout

Website design which does not seem that important is extremely crucial to get success on the Internet.

Consider this, you visit a site which is very unprofessional with flashing graphics, poor navigation, slow loading time, getting you confused and gives you a feeling of mistrust. Your only action would be to click on the “Close” button at the top of your browser. Now this site has already lost a potential customer or subscriber.

Or you visit a professional site this time, but you don’t really know what to do on the site. The reason is that the person who has designed the site has not taken into consideration the visitors like what he or she wants them to do once they arrive on their homepage or any other pages. Each page on your site must have an objective.

So one of the things that you need to do is to ensure that your site is as professional as can be ie has a friendly navigation menu, fast loading and avoid unnecessary graphics where possible.

The other thing is you need to know beforehand what you want your visitors to do once they arrive on your professional site. When the traffic comes, the best strategy now is to tweak your conversion and make testing often to see what works better for you.

If you run a newsletter, you can place a subscription box on the upper left or upper right corner of your site or if you have some products to sell, you can display one or two on another space. So when your visitors come to your site, either they subscribe or buy one of your products. When any one of these actions is taken, your site is doing its job.

(2) Your Sales Page or Pre-sell Page

If you have affiliate products that you’re promoting, the best thing is to pre-sell those visitors, hence you have more chances in making sales. It’s like a personal endorsement.

If you have your own products, make use of the following:

(a) A powerful headline which catches attention and entices the visitors to read more, meaning more chances in making sales. Use quotes in your headline. They have been proven to make it more effective.

A headline like “Discover 3 Hidden Steps That You can Quickly & Easily Use to Start A Profitable Internet Business In Less Than 48 Hours” is an example of a catchy headline which can make the visitor stop dead in their tracks.

(b) Bullets to emphasize benefits of your product not features. Benefits sell. People want to know how your product can benefit them.

(c) Real testimonials from other satisfied customers. Sometimes you can get unsolicited testimonials which is good but when you don’t, a good way to get testimonials is to offer your product for FREE to experts so that they can review it and send you their feedback.

(d) A professional banner which reflects your product and any benefit that your product conveys.

(e) The use of other colors apart black. The color red catches attention, green makes you think of money, blue soothes the mind.

(f) Use sub headlines to break your mini-site sales copy into chunks of information to make it well organized and more readable.

(g) Use power words to make your sales copy more effective. Words like discover, exclusive, proven, secrets, guaranteed, limited-time, results-fast, quickly, easily etc…are simple little words that can have a dramatic influence on your sales.

(h) Give bonuses or discounts for a limited-time. Put the price of the bonuses and offer genuine discounts.

(i) Use a Post Scriptum(P.S) - This is used at the end of your sales letter to re-state the product benefits and what will happen if these people don’t order today or how your product will make their lives better.

(j) Be brave and put your own picture on your site. This seems to be rather banal but putting your photo on your site makes you more credible. Remember trust is important when doing business on the Internet. People like to know they are dealing with a real person instead of a machine.

(k) Use a clear call-to-action eg “Click here now”, “Click here now to take advantage of this limited-time offer” or “Click here now to get your discounted copy”. This is very important. Don’t expect your visitors to take action by themselves. If you have done everything right and forget about including a strong call-to-action, don’t be surprised if you see your conversion drop.

The AIDA principle

(1) Attention

(2) Interest

(3) Desire

(4) Action

should be implemented in any sales copy.

(l) State that all purchases are done securely on your site, hence inspiring trust. Include a picture of credit cards.

(m) Offer a guarantee and use a guarantee icon.

(n) Allow people to contact you by providing your personal details.

Working on your website conversion is fundamental to the success of your Internet business. Traffic without any type of action is worthless and when your conversion improves, you’ll probably get more results with the same number of traffic numbers simply because you know how to convert better.

So now, you have no excuse not to get more positive results with your search engine traffic.

About The Author

Jean Lam is the author of the highly acclaimed eBook “Top Search Engine Ranking Secrets in Google Revealed”, a concise, step-by-step guide to high search engine ranking for the beginner to intermediate level webmaster - available now at http://www.top-ranking-strategies.com.

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As the Internet grows in popularity and importance, the quality of web sites needs to keep pace and creating and maintaining high-quality, professional web sites is more important today than ever. In this month’s issue, we cover the basics of “What Not To Do” if you want to convert your visitors into customers and keep them coming back for more.

There is a lot written about how to design a great web site and ways to attract and keep visitors, but a lot less information is available to outline how, every day, thousands of web sites are finding common ways to confuse or alienate hoards of potential customers. Although many professional web site designers know about the obvious “no-no’s”, there are still many finer points that frustrate or irritate visitors and make them leave.

We have identified 11 design and construction mistakes that can make or break a web site. To avoid having your visitors “click-away” from your site in droves, make sure you are not falling into any of the following traps:

1. Clogging Up Their Internet Connection

Imagine, your new potential customer is happily surfing using their favourite search engine looking for your product or service and everything’s going smoothly. Your web site appears in the first page of listings (congratulations, you must have put into practice all the information you read our DIY Internet Marketing Guides or taken out one of our highly-esteemed web site marketing packages J) and they click through to your homepage.

Then their Internet connection starts to clog up. It begins to creak and groan under the strain of downloading your homepage’s numerous images, animated bits and bobs an all its bells and whistles and it takes an age to appear. They look at the progress bar at the bottom of their screen and it’s more grey than blue. They look at their watch, start picking at their finger nails, tapping their toes, rolling their eyes… and then in frustration they click on the back button at the top of their screen and click on the next web site in the search engines results list. Well done - you’ve just sent another visitor to your competition.

For tips on how to design a web site that is both appealing to your customers and to the “organic” search engines, read our DIY Internet Marketing Guide “Start at the Beginning”. For an excerpt visit: http://www.enable-uk.co.uk/html/book_2.html

2. Counting Customers

One of the classic mistakes that really makes me cringe every time I see it is visitor counters. It makes 3 distinct impressions:

1. “Do you like my new toy web site, my cousins-stepsisters-uncle built it for me. Did you see the picture of my dog on the front page? Isn’t it great?” Endearing? Maybe. Professional? No.

2. “You are not important, you are just visitor number 62. 61 was just here and 63 will be along in a minute. You’re not an individual customer with specific needs to fulfil, just a number.”

3. Then a visitor looks at the actual number and thinks…”62? Has this site has only had 62 visitors? They must be rubbish.” or conversely, “162,853,426 visitors, they must rig that counter thing.”
Get rid of your counters - now!

Measuring your sites visitors can be done by analysing your web statistics, and much more detailed information is normally available. For example; which web site or search engine referred the visitor to you, which pages they visit, which pages they exit from (very important - why are they leaving?) and also which key-phrases were used to find your web site. For more information about how to understand and make use of your web site statistics, read our guide “Measuring Success”, for an excerpt visit: http://www.enable-uk.co.uk/html/book_6.html

3. Inconsistent Navigation

Imagine sitting down at a restaurant and the waiter comes over to you and hands you five different menus, one for the starters, one for the entrees, one for the vegetarian dishes, one for the desserts, and one for the drinks. Annoying? Then imagine if each menu had a different design, typeface, format and layout for listing the items. Confusing? Irritating?

Nobody wants to work that hard at choosing their dinner, you’re hungry and you just want a meal. Don’t make your visitors work hard either by expecting them to re-learn your navigation system each time they enter another section of your site. They are also hungry, for useful information, and they’re even more impatient.

The pages on your website should be easily connected. To do this, every section should connect to the main (home) page, with a clear and concise menu. Don’t make your visitors spend a lot of time looking for different sections. Help them by ensuring that the navigation of your site remains constant throughout all pages.

Button and link names also need to tell the visitor where the link leads them. It sounds obvious but make it as easy as possible for a visitor to know where they’re going before they click. Make your links and buttons as descriptive as possible.

4. Not Enough Information

It is a common mistake to give a limited amount of information on a web site with a vain hope that the customer will contact you for more information. They wont. You can guarantee that a competitor will provide the technical spec, the price list or what ever else is required on their web site and that customer will find it and eventually buy the product from them.

To keep your visitors progressing through information gathering stage and on to the buying process on your web site, supply all the information they need. Even if they don’t buy today, it will be your page that gets printed off or stored in their favourites folder, and you they come back to when they’re ready to buy. It is helpful to have a section that is devoted to answering common questions and by creating a FAQ page your potential customers can easily find the answers to their questions and will be more likely to order from your web site.

In addition, many visitors interested in gathering information on a particular subject will sign up for emailed newsletters (like this one!) and stay subscribed as long as the correspondence they receive is relevant and useful. This is a great way to build ongoing, online relationships with your potential customers and establish your credibility. Top web sites work on developing an email list of prospects that can be contacted in the future. Make sure your email list subscription area has a prominent position on your web site, preferably at the top of every page.

For more detailed information about how to design your web site with both high search engine listings and customer usage in mind, take a look at our ebook “Start at the Beginning”. For an excerpt visit: http://www.enable-uk.co.uk/html/book_2.html

5 Skip Intro/Click Here to Enter

Go on, admit it - you once thought the best thing on the Internet planet was a web site that started up by having a revolving animation of the company logo that bounced around, spun a few times then settled in the middle of the screen with those the immortal words: “Click here to enter site” Isn’t that what you were trying to do when you typed in the web address or clicked on the link that bought you here?

“Enter site” is also what all your visitors are trying to do when they type in your web address or click on your link so make sure they are not presented with some nauseating bouncing, spinning distortions of your logo, or worse, duff, irrelevant music. They are not interested in how clever your web designer is with Flash or their taste in music, they want to get to the information they’re looking for as quickly as possible.

Always make sure you home page or advert-landing page is quick to load and don’t forget to check it at different connection speeds. Keep the file sizes small, and above all, avoid anything on you page that would require the dreaded “Loading…” message. If you really can’t bear to drop the Flash entry page, at the very least give the choice to “Skip the intro” and let them get to what they’re looking for.

6. Animation

Children under 10 like to watch animated cartoons. Business professionals and most other adults don’t have the time. Your website is here to do business not entertain children (unless it’s an entertainment web site for children!). It is supposed to be a serious tool in your marketing armoury and should be used to convey useful information to your visitors and convince them that you are worth doing business with. Filling it full of swirling graphics, flashing logos and spinning pictures and the rest of Pandora’s box of visual delights will just make your visitors distracted and nauseous.

Sites that include “clever” Flash animations; multiple animated gifs or flying words are really annoying. They take away from the content and distract the visitor from achieving their goals. Unless your site is an entertainment site, try to avoid maddening motion. However, if your product or service can be better demonstrated using Flash, Quick Time, or other multimedia, and many can, offer your visitors the chance to click a link to view it. But don’t force-feed them.

7. Unreadable Text

Computer monitors really aren’t the best medium for reading. By the time you’ve scrolled down a full screen’s worth, your eyes start to blur, you feel slightly lost, your head hurts and your interest begins to wane. If a page requires two full screens of scrolling or more, simply split it up into multiple pages.
Don’t make your visitors wade through big chunks of unbroken text, use titles, sub-titles, small paragraphs, bullet points and numbering. Don’t torture your visitors; make your pages easy to read and therefore less daunting.

8. Who are You/Where are You? No Obvious Ways to Contact The Company
So now you’ve built a logical web site, you’ve instilled confidence and credibility and your new potential customer just has one question… They click on three, four, five pages but can’t find your contact details anywhere. They already have another window open with your competitor’s website - complete with email address, telephone number, fax number, street address and map.

Guess who makes the sale?

If all you supply is an order form on your website, your legitimacy may be questioned. Why can’t you answer the telephone? Why hide behind an anonymous and cold email address? Make it easy for your existing and potential customers to talk with you.

It is vital that you list all possible ways that they can reach you. By creating a contact page, you will be able to answer enquiries and reinforce the fact that there is an actual person or persons behind the website.

9. Unchanging or Out-Dated Content

If you work in a constantly changing industry, it’s important that your content remains fresh and up to date. Nothing will turn away visitors more quickly than out of date information. In addition, if you keep your content fresh your site will attract repeat visitors and repeat visitors are more likely to turn into customers.

Have a “What’s New” or “Latest News” section. Even if your industry is not that fast moving, there will be times when you want to update your visitors with current news or promotions and using this section of your web site enables you to inform repeat visitors that there is information they have not seen previously on your web site.

10. “Me, me, me!” instead of “You, you, you”
Generally speaking, your visitors do not care about you, your company or your thoughts. What they do care about is whether or not you can solve their particular problem or fulfil their individual need. Web sites that promote their Mission Statement or display pictures of the company building really don’t bode well for keeping the interest of site visitors.

On the other hand, sites that speak directly to potential customers about how they can solve their problems, make their lives easier, safer, richer or more comfortable have a much better chance of keeping their visitors attention.

Concentrate on what your customers want to know, rather than what you want to tell them. In order to find out what your customers need, it is useful to solicit feedback from them. A common way to do this is by monitoring your enquiry emails for common themes, creating a feedback-form on the site, or to add an interactive forum.

As well as addressing all the possible questions about your product or service, it is important to address other, less obvious anxieties. If you are asking for contact details from your prospects, for example if you are asking them to subscribe to an email list, you must include a Privacy Policy. With the growing problem of email spam, many people are afraid to give out personal information. A basic Privacy Policy section will let your visitors know how the information they are providing will be used and if they will be contacted in the future.

Customers are also afraid of what will happen if they are not happy you’re your product or service once purchased. To help alleviate any fears that they might have about purchasing online, there needs to be a section where potential customers can read your policy on accepting returns and refunds.
For more information about how to write persuasive and customer focussed sales copy for your web site, have a look at our DIY Internet Marketing Guide “Writing Text That Sells”. For an excerpt visit: http://www.enable-uk.co.uk/html/book_3.html

11. Inconsistent Look and Feel
Many web sites confuse their visitors by having different designs or layouts in different sections. This often happens when a new section is added on to the original web site such as a shopping cart service. Visitors are left wondering if they are visiting another web site, another company, a partner or subsidiary. It can be very confusing.

It also screams of poor planning and can lead to design-drift and branding issues. It may be tempting to stray from the original design; it may be difficult to incorporate the newer sections or you may currently have a better design, but wait till you do a complete next-generation re-design of the entire site before introducing a new look and feel. Don’t leave your visitors scratching their heads with one hand and possibly clicking away with the other.

Finally, any site that employs a number of these 11 notorious features is particularly painful to experience. When I click to a website that has six different fonts and colours, scrolls down never-ending pages, uses flying words and dancing graphics, big unreadable blocks of text, lists no phone number and has irrelevant or outdated content, I scream and bang my head on the desk. Worse than that, I click away from it as fast as I can. Make these mistakes at your peril.

For a positive look at what to include in your web sites design, take a look at September’s issue of this newsletter “12 Essential Design Tips” available here: http://www.enable-uk.co.uk/html/internet_marketing_newsletter_.html#September2004.

For a more in-depth, step-by-step guide to avoiding costly mistakes and making your web site work smarter, take a look at our in-depth DIY Internet Marketing Guides: “Start at the Beginning” and “Writing Text That Sells” available here:
http://www.enable-uk.co.uk/html/diy_internet_marketing_guides.html

With all of this invaluable information available to you, you shouldn’t go far wrong.

For a complete guide to marketing on the Internet, including:
The General Principles of Internet Marketing
Start at the Beginning
Writing Text that Sells
Building Online Relationships
Maximising Your Pay Per Click Campaign
Measuring Success
Why not purchase the whole series of downloadable guides for the discounted price of £64.95. Click for more information:
http://www.enable-uk.co.uk/html/promo_ebooks.html
Justine Curtis
Enable UK
Internet Marketing Information and Resources
Make your web site work harder!
Web: http://www.enable-uk.co.uk
Email: info@enable-uk.co.uk
Article from Internet Marketing Tips Newsletter, a monthly publication of Enable-UK
Copyright © 2004 Enable-UK.

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Affiliate Marketing Tools

As the range of goods and online services offered via the Internet has grown
at an incredible rate over the last few years, therefore so has the competition.
Web site visitors need to have a very good reason for clicking on a link or banner.

how to choose the right banners for affiliate marketing tools

In most affiliate programs, you are offered a wide variety of banners to place on your site
but very few of them will be effective.
If you can attain a clickthrough rate of 2%, then you are doing very well.
It has been our experience, and this is generally speaking,
that graphically rich banners do not perform as successfully as their simpler counterparts.
The main reason for this is download time.
If a banner is the last thing to load on your page and the banner ad is excessively byte “heavy”,
by the time it has loaded your visitor may already have scrolled down the page - missing it entirely.
Heavy banner ads can also slow down the loading of your pages, or critical elements of your page
and you can lose your visitors altogether!
A graphically rich banner can also confuse the actual message -
the artwork and marketing blurb can be imbalanced.
For these reasons, we suggest that banners you implement be no more that 15kb wherever possible.

Banners that have “extreme” animation, such as rapid flashing,
are also something to consider very carefully.
While these do achieve high clickthrough rates, they are also highly annoying.
If you do decide to implement this form of banner advertising, use it very sparingly.

When selecting any form of graphical advertising, try and keep the theme of your site in mind -
while graphical ads are meant to stand out and catch a visitors eye,
it shouldn’t be to the point that everything else on the page is totally ignored.
Wherever possible, ensure that all banner ads uses a link that opens in a new window.
That way, if a visitor does choose to visit one of your advertisers it is easy for them
to return to your page and review what they actually came to your site for!

Pop ups and pop unders
Many companies, but mostly agencies representing a number of advertisers,
now give their affiliates the options of using pop up and pop under ads.
Our opinion - pop ups are evil.
They annoy visitors and are usually closed before they even have a chance to load.
Go for pop-unders and preferably those that only display once per visit.

Using Text Link Ads.
One of the most successful forms of advertising are text link ads.
They are bandwidth friendly, don’t take up a lot of space
and can be easily implemented into most page layouts.
Good text links ads don’t just scream “buy me!”,
they also offer some information as to why your web site visitor should investigate the offer.
A company should also supply you with very short text links which only state the product or company name.
The reason for this is so that you can implement the links directly
into the content of related articles and reviews.

Articles and product/service reviews
Now, this is where a bit of hard work comes in.
Your regular site visitors will view you as an authority on particular subjects,
so why not write a review on a product or service you are advertising?
This also supplies excellent content for search engine spiders to latch onto.
We have attracted many visitors to our site using what I call “adarticles”.

But there’s a catch……
If you are going to use the adarticle concept to promote products, you need to believe in what you write.
Research the product and company well.
Contact the company and let them know what you are doing and ask for further resources and assistance.
Once you have created the review, send them the link - you may be suprised at the response you get.

The information that you supply to your web site visitors will help them formulate a decision,
so be honest in your sales copy.
If you are successful in this promotion strategy, over time your reviews won’t be seen as hype and bluster,
but as a reliable source of information - everybody wins!

Email advertising as an affiliate marketing tool
Direct promotion via email has boomed over recent years, but has brought with it mountains of spam.
If you intend on using email as a method of advertising products and services,
ensure you stand behind the products you’re promoting and make yourself available to answer any questions.

An effective promotion technique we have found is to combine email with the adarticle strategy.
In our ezine we occasionally put a summary of a product or service,
just enough information to stir the curiosity of our readers.
The summary then contains a link to the adarticle on our site.
The benefit of this is not only that you have a good opportunity to promote the product or service,
but while visitors are on your site they may also look at other sections.
The advertiser benefits through having highly targeted potential clients visit their site.

Finding Your Home Business Niche
Copyright © Buniei Ahn, The Home Biz Guy
http://www.internetmarketpower.com
http://www.pluginprofit.com/main-3666

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I first heard about this money saving news from a press release
that wound up in my inbox. I haven’t heard it posted anywhere
else so I decided to do a little digging on my own, and do what
I can to spread the good news.

Effective January 15, 2000, the restriction of registering
domain names for two years at a time has been lifted. You can
now register domain names from one to ten years, in one year
increments, up to a maximum of ten years. The following text is
taken directly from the ICANN NSI-Registrar License and
Agreement, located at:

http://www.icann.org/nsi/nsi-rla-04nov99.htm

2.3. New Architectural Features. NSI will use its best
commercial efforts to develop and implement two additional
modifications to the Licensed Product by January 15, 2000 as
follows:

2.3.1. NSI will issue an upgrade to the Licensed Product that
will enable a Registrar to accept initial domain name
registrations or renewals of a minimum of one year in length, or
in multiples of one year increments.

2.3.2. NSI will issue an upgrade to the Licensed Product that
will enable registrars to accept the addition of one additional
year to a registrant’s “current” registration period when a
registrant changes from one registrar to another.

In no event shall the total unexpired term of a registration
exceed ten (10) years.

So there you have it folks, right from ICANN themselves. If you
have a lot of domain names - like me - you may want to keep them
reserved one a year at a time, to keep your costs down. Or, if
you have a company name not likely to be sold in the future, you
can register it for 10 years at a big savings off of the regular
price.

After digging and digging around, at several ICANN accredited
registrars, I was hard pressed to find even one that allowed
anything but the old two year registrations. I did finally find
one Canadian company that does one to ten year registrations
(partnered with Melbourne IT an ICANN accredited registrar). The
fact that they have a shopping cart to allow multiple
registrations and a real time database is just the icing on the
cake.

https://secure.kudosnet.com/domain/k2/r.dmc/

With 21 domain names to register, I’m happy to say that I saved
over $600 US by being able to register them for a single year,
instead of two, and I submitted them all with a single mouse
click.

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Someone asked me recently, if I were to expand an existing professional services business onto the internet, what marketing steps would I take first: set up a web site, a shopping cart, a newsletter, or a blog?

This is a very good question. Five years ago most Internet marketing specialists would have all responded in chorus, “A website, of course!” Then they would recommend their services to create an elaborate website with lots of bells and whistles.

I had an interesting email this week from a reader who asked me about website design fees. This is not my area of expertise. But this reader is a very smart guy. Why? Because he knows from my ezines, blogs and web site that I’ve been online for a few years and making a decent living from it.

He’s a rabbi who has many years experience counseling people. He now has made a wise decision to start offering coaching services to people, and wants to leverage the internet to find clients, sell ebooks and other programs.

The First Step - Ask Questions

He has many questions about what to do first, where to invest his marketing dollars, and how to get set up so everything works seamlessly and automatically.

While I don’t profess to have all the answers to his particular questions, I want to emphasize what’s important here. He is asking questions!

Many people just go with their gut or common sense. It goes something like this:

“I need a way to find people online. Ergo, I need a web site. Who can do a web site for me, that doesn’t cost too much? Oh, you can? Only $1000. Okay, that seems reasonable. Do it.”

It’s only later on down the road when they want to start an ezine, or a blog, or sell an ebook that they realize they need more than just a web site. That’s when the web designer kicks in with hourly fees.

I’ve never heard a programmer say they can’t do something. They always say they can easily set up autoresponders, gather email addresses, send out a newsletter, create a blog on your site, and even create a secure payment system for sales. I’m sorry, but here’s the real news: programmers and web site designers can do all these tasks with your web site, but they will charge you for it, and it still won’t do everything automatically. And you will be tied to their hourly fees (and schedule) forever.

Back to the question asked of me at the beginning of this article.

While my partner and I recommend an all-in-one solution and setting up all the elements together if your budget permits, there are a couple of ways to get started.

Unless you have a database of prospects, you will not sell your services or products. Therefore, we recommend getting started the right way by building your database by offering an ezine or free content to attract people to your business. And, you need a place on the Internet where people can find you and subscribe to your content.

The first two pieces then, especially if you’re just starting out and have a limited budget, are a blog and a shopping cart program with an autoresponder system.

Third Party Shopping Cart Systems

A third party shopping cart system is where you get an account hosted online by a company that specializes in providing automated database management, autoresponders, email broadcasting, online merchant credit card and payments, ad tracking, and affiliate programs.

When you start out, all you need to do is deliver your ezine and automated emails through autoresponders. You can get a basic level shopping cart account. As your business grows and you develop products, you can upgrade to get more features on your shopping cart, such as affiliate program management and digital delivery.

There are many online email broadcasting services to manage your newsletter. But be aware that an all-in-one solution such as a shopping cart program will save you time and money in the long run.

We strongly recommend starting off with a shopping cart program that can manage your database and newsletters under one roof. It is better to have all your automated marketing functions with one service provider, than to separate your database and newsletter out to another external email service provider.

For detailed information and questions to ask about how to pick a shopping cart system, there are a series of articles you can review at our website.

What’s next?

You have your shopping cart system, now what? We’ll explore the issue of websites vs. blogs in our next article.

As the The Blog Squad, Patsi Krakoff and Denise Wakeman have teamed up to work with professionals to maximize their marketing strategies by implementing blogs, ezines and ecommerce tactics. They are co-authors of “Build a Better Blog: The Ultimate Guide for Boosting Your Business with a Professional Blog”,” Confessions of a Reluctant Blogger: From Boring to Brilliant in 30 Days” and “Secrets of Successful Ezines: A Guide to Writing and Publishing an Ezine that Gets Results.” Are you ready for a blog? Take The Blog Squad’s free assessment at http://www.snipurl.com/Ezine_Blog

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Internet marketing has been making some pretty dramatic changes over the last few years, like the growth and evolution of the search engine optimization industry, viral marketing, pay-per-click advertising and the mainstream adoption of blogging. Despite the recent changes I predict that even greater change is still yet to come, thanks in part to the growth of broadband internet access, advances in hardware and software technology, and marketers need to reach consumers through multiple mediums.

As people’s lives become more busy, fragmented media will result in more opportunities for both advertisers and web site owners. Standard advertising mediums such as television, radio and newspapers have been loosing effectiveness (partially because of new technologies like TiVo and XM Satalite Radio) while online advertising has become more effective. As an advertiser, there are more opportunities available than ever before to reach highly targeted prospects with a relatively small investment by advertising online. As a web site owner, there are more opportunities to generate additional revenue by providing advertising space on your web sites. As people spend more time online, this trend will continue to grow.

RSS will become a powerful, trackable marketing tool. In it’s current form, it is a great tool for reaching out to people who have the technical background to use it but it does have some limitations. Many customizable web portals (My Yahoo) let users display RSS feeds on their home page, but require users to sign in with cookies. Some email programs can display RSS feeds and several programs have even been specifically designed for displaying RSS feeds. However the user base is still fairly small. With the release of Microsoft’s Windows Vista, RSS will become mainstream and be adopted by soccer moms everywhere. Once that happens you can expect to see tools developed to manage and track the traffic from RSS feeds.

The search engine optimization industry is another area that will change considerably. All of the major search engine companies have taken considerable steps to reduce web site owner’s (or an SEO firm’s) ability to manipulate the ranking of their web sites. As the algorithms that determine the importance of a particular web page become more comprehensive and better able to filter out spam you will see two things happen. First, the search results will become more relevant. Second, the SEO firms that are using dishonest techniques in an attempt to rank higher will collapse one by one until only honest, ethical firms exist.

Jeremy L. Knauff is the founder of Wildfire Marketing Group, a guerilla marketing firm specializing in helping companies to compete against larger companies and win. For more marketing tips, be sure to visit their marketing tips blog.

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