Step 2 - Prepare, Prepare, Prepare
I know everyone wants to jump right in and make a web site but unless you are prepared with
everything you need to make your venture work, you are wasting your time and money.
In our case, we had to do the following:
- Write the software we were going to sell. We started with one application and we are still
adding to our product line every year.- Set up our affiliate programs (We use ClickBank mostly and I will explain why below)
- Write the copy for our web pages
- Write and publish our E-Book
- Research how to make coffee mugs, purchase the equipment and make some samples
- Get business cards, letter heads and all of the usual stationary you use in business (If you want to be treated like a business, you need to look and act like one)
- Get an accounting system and learn how to use it
- Register our Business Name
- Create our Web Site offline (This is time consuming and you have to be happy with the result, if you are not 100% convinced that your site conveys what you want it to, others won't be either)
Step 3 - What will our site look like?
It is vitally important that your site conveys what it is you want it to. The best advice I can give is research the net, look at your competitors and other sites for ideas. Pick and choose things that you think work and then ensure those ideas are harmoniously merged with your ideas and design.
Decide the theme you want for your site, for instance, we wanted to follow a content driven major portal style similar to news sites and msn etc. So our site is predominately text based (This is also very good for search engine optimization). Obviously, if you sell visual products like Artwork for instance, this style of site is not appropriate and that's what I mean. Look at what you are trying to do and design your site appropriately.
We have found the following Do's and Don't's
- Do use lots of text
- Do keep animations to a minimum
- Do try to avoid Flash and Java
- Do optimize your images
- Do keep consistent design and colour schemes throughout your site
- Do change your site often to keep it fresh
- Do have a privacy policy clearly published on your site
- Do make it easy for visitors to contact you
- Do make it easy for visitors to purchase from you, make the transaction a 1 step process, do not ask them to register for anything else during the payment process, it will put them off.
- Do have give away's of genuine value to build visitor loyalty and goodwill
- Do offer plenty of freely accessed valuable information about your subject matter
- Do use PayPal as at least one of your payment methods (Lots of people now use PayPal and it means they do not need to enter their credit card every time they wish to purchase something. This is still a major drawback of selling online)
- Do always offer a money back guarantee, this gives the purchaser confidence in your product and if your product is what you say it is, you will get very few, if any refund requests. We get 1 in 100 sales.
- Don't go the hard sell
- Don't use pop-ups, pop-under's or floating windows - they turn people off instantly
- Don't clutter your site up, make it easy for people to find what you want them to find
- Don't promise anything that is not true or not deliverable
- Don't ever share your customers details with anyone else
Ultimately you want to achieve the following with your web site:
- Attract Attention
- Arouse Interest
- Stimulate Desire
- Call for Action
Step 4 - Who do we host with?
There are literally thousands of web hosting companies out there and choosing the correct one is obviously very important. I don't think there is a right and wrong solution but I will tell you why we chose Homestead.
Homestead has a very low cost entry point and allows you to continually upgrade your package as your business grows and you can afford it.
- It is fast and reliable
- Support is excellent
- There is no advertising associated with your site
- You can create as many sites as you like
- They will do everything from Domain hosting to email and mailing list management
- They have an extremely easy to use and extremely powerful web page production software package which is free of charge to their customers
- They include e-commerce facilities (Very important if you want to sell anything)
- It is very quick to develop, test and deploy your web sites
- You can try it for free for 30 days, that's easily long enough to see if it's right for you
Frankly, it does not matter who you host with as long as they are reliable, fast and cost effective. Homestead is easy and as such, it has limitations, the most notable being lack of support for PHP and ASP. For our Thinking Racing site we used Bravenet as we required PHP and MySQL capability.
Step 5 - OK I have my Site Online - What Now?
Once you have produced your site, tested all of the links, tested your affiliate programs, spell checked every page, tested your e-commerce system and you are happy with the final product, it is time to upload it and go live to the world.
Unfortunately this sounds much grander than it really is, the fact is, you will upload your site to your host and no one will know it exists except you. From here on in, all of your efforts need to be applied to the following:
- Web Site Optimization
- Web Site Marketing both Online and Offline
- Press Releases via PR Web
- Search Engine Submission
- Finding Linking Partners
- Instigating Pay Per Click Campaigns that work
- Trial and error with web page design and copy
- Implementing Google Adsense if it suits your site
The simple truth is that for you to succeed online, you need visitors and lots of them but don't fall for the trap of buying traffic from people who claim they will send you 10,000 visitors for $9.95 etc, it NEVER works.
What you need is targeted traffic, that is, people that are already pre-qualified as interested in what you have to offer. This is difficult but not impossible to achieve. The good thing is that when one of these people do visit you, it is far more likely that they will purchase something from you than someone stumbling upon your site.
A word of advice as to why NOT to purchase traffic.
Traffic delivered in this way is usually by one of 2 methods (1) Pop-Under exchanges or (2) People paid to click on sites. In the first instance, your site loads unseen by the user whilst viewing some other site, the result is, they will close your site without even looking at it as they did not request it. The second method is people being paid to visit sites, obviously this will never get the pre-qualified visitors you are looking for. These people visit as many sites as they can all day every day as they get paid per verified visitation. All in all it is worthless and a waste of your money. I can almost guarantee you will be tempted to use these services that guarantee traffic (we have used them), but DO NOT, the only guarantee is that you will be wasting your money.
Step 6 - Web Site Optimization (Search Engine Optimization)
Web Site Optimization or SEO as it is known is simply designing your web site in a way that is easy for the Major Search Engines to find you and index your content. People write truck loads of information on this subject but there are only a few things that really matter, these are:
- Web Page Headings - Make sure your Web Page Headings include the key words you want people to find you with when searching (It's amazing how many people forget to have a page heading at all and without one you will almost certainly not be found)
- Key Words - When choosing key words, never use single words like shoes, use something more descriptive like red leather shoes, it will help you float above the millions of other shoe sites
- Have the word Official in your Web Page Headings
- Make sure your Web Page Headings relate to what is on the page
- Meta Tags - Ensure your Key Words are included in Meta Tags
- Key Word Count - Make sure you have a key word count on each page of between 2% and 5%
- ALT Tags - Ensure all of your images have an ALT tag, preferably one that relates to your key words
- Inward Links - The most important thing for search engines is how many inward links you have so it is vitally important to trade links with sites in the same niche as you
- Java & Flash - Avoid having links in Java or Flash code, the search engines do not see it
- Site Map - Always have a site map page that has text links to every other page on your site, that way the search engines will find all of your pages
- Key Word Stuffing - Never simply repeat your key words over and over on the page, this is known as key word stuffing and the search engines will ban your site if you do it
- Image Optimization - Ensure all of your images have been optimized for fast loading
Step 7 - Web Site Marketing Online and Offline
Now that you have a great site and it is optimized both for the viewer and the search engines it is time to start marketing it. This is the single most important thing you can do if you want to succeed online. Marketing can be done well with great outcomes or it can be done badly with very negative results indeed.
The biggest no no is Spamming, or sending out emails to people that have not requested anything from you. Not only will you annoy the intended recipient, you will likely be banned by your ISP.
Here are some of the steps and advice we use when marketing our site:
- Press Release - When we have something to say we always submit a press release to PRWeb.com. You can do this for free but for a small fee you get much better coverage. Your release will end up on things like Google News and be picked up by potentially hundreds of thousands of people. Make sure what you have to say is news worthy or it will be a waste of time and money.
- Search Engine Submission - You MUST submit your web site to the search engines every month. This is very tedious and we use a 3rd party search engine submission service. You can do it yourself but your time is more valuable.
- Pay Per Click - I talked earlier about getting targeted visitors to your web site. The easiest and quickest way of doing this is to use one of the Pay Per Click operators. Google, Microsoft and Yahoo are the biggest and as a consequence probably the best but we have had great results at a lower cost with LookSmart. These services cost you money so you need to weigh up the benefits of visitations against the cost of getting those visitors. We use this form of marketing extensively and achieve good results. I suggest you visit Adwords to get the detail.
- Link Exchange - A great free way to get targeted visitors is to do link exchanges with like minded web masters. Search the net, find sites that you think will benefit your site and write to the web master and request a link swap. Its a win win situation. Yes it is time consuming and tedious but if you want to succeed, you need to work at this. Remember, it has taken us 6 years so far and we are still doing this stuff because it works.
- Mailing List - Building up a mailing list is very important. It is always easier to sell to an existing client than it is to constantly try and get new ones. Have a free newsletter registration on your web site. Once people Opt In to your newsletter, you can email them periodically with news and special offers. This is one of the most successful forms of web marketing.
- Viral Marketing - If you sell software, give away a free trial version and encourage those that download it to pass it on to their friends. This is a form of Viral Marketing and it works. Even if you simply make a cool screen saver and give it away, it will bring you customers as long as every screen has your web link on it. If you intend to do this form of marketing, make sure your give away is of high quality, you want people to associate your site with quality. The best place to submit your giveaway to is Download.com, its free and it will drive thousands of people to your site over time. We developed Streaming Stats as a free giveaway simply to drive new customers to Thinking Digital. It is a product of high quality that is fun and informative and has intrinsic value. I cannot recommend this form of marketing enough, it is slow but steady and never stops selling for you.
- Site Intelligence - Track your visitors and find out what it is they are interested in on your site. Homestead has a built in system for doing this but there are several on the market. Once you know what your visitors are looking at, you can better understand what is attracting them to you in the first place and more importantly, you can use this knowledge to FUNNEL them to where you want them to go. For instance, if they are predominately going to information pages, imbed links in those pages that will direct them to your sales pages. An excellent free system for this is Google Analytics.
- Offline Marketing - Make sure that your web address is printed on everything that leaves your premises, invoices, business cards, invitations, the lot. You never know who will read it or where it will show up.
- Local Demographics - If you operate within a local demographic, use it. For instance, the coffee mug business is only interested in customers from Australia so we limit our Google Adwords to Australia only. That way our Ads are not seen by people outside our territory and they become even more targeted. Targeted customers ultimately mean more sales.
- Assist Charity - Again, if you operate locally, advertise or better still get editorial coverage for what you do in the local press, TV and radio. One way to do this is to donate your products or services to a worthy cause like Earthquake relief and then let people know about it. The press love goodwill stories and you will get thousands of dollars in free publicity. A nice by product is that you also get to help whichever cause it is.
- Bartercard - Bartercard is a trade exchange whereby you trade goods for other goods in a similar way to how business was conducted hundreds of years ago. Whilst no actual cash changes hands, there are over 55,000 businesses globally that you can deal with. Being a member of Bartercard can increase demand for your products or service and also generate additional cash sales through word of mouth. The Bartercard dollars that you accumulate through trading can be used to purchase almost anything. Whilst you could not run your whole business on this system, it is a great way to spread the word about your products and services. This is recommended once you have a sustainable business.
- Referrals - Ask your visitors to refer your site to their friends via a Referral Button, if necessary give them an incentive to do so. For instance, "tell 5 of your friends about our site and get this great screen saver free". Homestead has built in support for this feature.
- Web Polls - Ask your visitors what they think of you and have it visible as a web poll, if you are doing your job well, most responses will be positive and that will encourage people to do business with you.
- Gift Vouchers - If you can do it technically, offer gift vouchers for purchases at your site. Not only will you make an immediate sale, you will gain not one but two customers.
Step 8 - Marketing Maintenance
Once you have your web site on the search engines and you have implemented some or all of the above marketing tips, you should see traffic appearing at your site and hopefully sales. If you are getting reasonable traffic (at least 100 visitors per day) and you are not making any sales, you need to revisit your web site and ask yourself, why?. The easiest way to see if someone will purchase a product or service from you is to ask yourself the question "if I happened upon this site without any prior knowledge of it, would I be tempted to buy?". If the answer is no, why not?. Make the necessary changes and and let the new changes run for a few weeks and conduct the same test. Web site marketing is all about trial and error, you will eventually happen upon things that work, keep them and discard those that don't.
These are the steps we undertake week in and week out to continually market our sites:
- Continue to look for mutually beneficial link partners
- Search the net for new opportunities to co-market or advertise our sites
- Evaluate new marketing propositions as they become known to us Adbrite is an example of this
- Be prepared to lower the price of your offerings if they are not selling. Products and Services do not sell for only 2 reasons (1) Price and (2) Quality. So, if you are sure of the quality of what you offer, lower the price or offer an incentive to buy. We did this with our Bookie Beater software, the original price was $29.95 and we sold a few but after lowering the price to $19.95, sales sky rocketed.
- Tweak your site constantly, change special offers, change images and layout occasionally, add new articles and include RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds where appropriate. These bring new fresh content to your site every day free of charge which not only adds authoritive content to your site, it helps raise your profile with the search engines.
- Make sure your web site sells the benefits of what you are offering. People buy benefits, not features.
- Keep in touch with people who have bought from you in the past, it has been proven many times that it is substantially easier to sell to an existing customer than to acquire a new one. Send a monthly news letter to those that have opted in to your mailing list, no matter how small that list is.
- Differentiate your product or service from your competitors, this can be through a benefit statement or even cost. Often, people will pay substantially more for a product if the benefits of that particular product outweigh the benefits of the competitor.
- If you decide to spend money on advertising, make sure it is with sites that are in the same niche as you. It is useless advertising on a broad ranging information portal when you sell washing machines. you need to be advertising on sites that review or promote washing machines. We advertise on racing-index because it fits our demographic and it has been proven to work.
- Use your web site intelligence to see what pages people are visiting and for how long, where do they enter your site, where do they leave your site. Look at the referrers and see where you customers have been referred from. They would be a good place to link with or advertise with don't you think? Traffic patterns change and you need to constantly monitor this change and modify your site accordingly if you want to make your site work for you.
Step 9 - Other ways to Monetize your site
Google Adsense
People have their own opinions about Google's Adsense program but I am a big fan. It is free to join and enables you to run other peoples ads on your site. When someone clicks on these ads, you get paid a commission. Google always pay on time and you can realise quite sizeable amounts of money from this if done correctly.
The one big drawback is that when someone clicks an Adsense Ad, they leave your site. I don't like this aspect of the program but if your site is appealing enough, your visitor will return of their own accord.
A few tips to successful Adsense use:
- Always place a short sentence about what you are promoting directly below the Adsense Ad. This will ensure that Adsense only shows Ads that are relevant to your content and guarantee a higher click through rate.
- Use borderless ads and try to include them in your body text, people tend to click on body copy placement more.
- Ensure your Ads are using the same style and colour scheme as the rest of your site, this lessens the feeling of viewing an advertisement.
Clickbank Affiliate Program
Clickbank has over 11,000 products online and there are sure to be some that are synergistic with your web site. You can earn anywhere up to 75% of the sale price of an item simply by becoming a Clickbank Affiliate and placing some links on your site. This is a free service and Clickbank pay commissions every 2 weeks.
We have used this service to both promote our own software and other peoples for 6 years and it has earned us substantial income in that time.
If you have some spare space on your pages, why not place some nicely designed ads from the Clickbank catalogue, it won't affect the design of your site and will more likely make you some money.
Create Web Sites for Other People
Now that you have the skills in hand to create a great web site of your own, what is to stop you offering that service to other people. We do, and we make anywhere between $1,000 and $10,000 per site. Our web site promo page is at http://www.thinking-digital.com/tdwebsites.html
Because every man and his dog is proporting to be able to create web sites, the best place to market this service is in your local community. Approach the obvious candidates like Florists, Real Estate Agents, Hire Car Companies, Artists and Photographers, Car Repair Companies, in fact everyone these days needs a web site so you could create a nice sideline in this way.
Sell Advertising on your Site
Whilst this is quite difficult, it is not impossible. We successfully sell ads on our site every month and it is a direct result of attacking a market niche (in our case Horse Racing). We get targeted visitors and other sites in the gambling space also want those visitors and are prepared to pay for them. This is a nice earner for us that is growing month by month.
It costs you nothing to advertise the fact that you will accept paid advertising on your site and if you get a nibble, it will have been worth it. Let the advertisers approach you, after you get enough day to day traffic, they will.
If you are impatient and wish to sell Advertising Space on your site, you can do so through Text Link Ads who pay you to place Text Links on your site. Your site needs to be approved but this seems to be an excellent way to monetize your site quickly.
Step 10 - Remember to Persist
The best piece of advice I can give you is implement as much of the above as you are capable of and PERSIST. There is a guaranteed outcome if you give up and that is, failure, there is also a guaranteed outcome if you follow the advice on this page and PERSIST, you will SUCCEED, it's impossible not to.
People only fail at something they truly believe in if they give up, PERSIST and WIN.
I wish you every success in your Online endeavors.
Other Sites on the Thinking Digital Network
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There are plenty of people out there that will charge you for their ideas but never back it up with real life quantifiable examples. This article is designed to tell you exactly what we did to create and make a successful Internet based business.
Let me start by saying we earn enough money from this site to live comfortably. It has not made us millionaires but it generates increasing amounts of revenue month after month and if the trend continues, there is nothing we will want for financially as a result of our efforts.
Secondly, do not be fooled into thinking that running a successful web site is a set and forget proposition, it is hard work in terms of the amount of hours you must spend to ensure it works for you.
All of the con men out there that try to sell you set and forget web sites and promise you easy money are exactly that "Con Men".
10 Steps to Web Success
OK, Step by Step to Web Success
This process is on-going and has so far taken 6 years (as at 2008) so be prepared to take your time at becoming rich.
Step 1 - What do we do Online?
The first thing we did was decide what it was we had to sell. The choices were many as it turned out, here are some of the ideas we came up with:
- We could set up an on-line consultancy business (X)
- We could write and sell software (X)
- We could write and sell E-Books (Everyone is an expert at something and this is the easiest way to own a product of your own) (X)
- We could set up an affiliate web site and sell other peoples products including utilizing Adsense (X)
- We could use the Internet as a high tech traditional mail order business (X)
- We could sell our photos or artwork as stock photography
- We could write a novel and sell it online or look for a publisher online
- We could create web sites for other people (X)
What we ended up doing was a number of these things. We did all of the things with a (X) next to them.
These web sites and pages were:
- Online consultancy - How to Make Money Online pages on www.thinking-digital.com
- Write and Sell Software - SmartBet.homestead.com, Streaming-Stats.com, Enigma, thinkingracing.homestead.com and foldersafe are all written by us and they are owned by us
- Write and sell E-Books - Internet Dating Interactive is written by us
- Affiliate & Adsense Marketing - thinkingracing sells many products other than our own, each one of these generates an affiliate commission when someone purchases them from our site, this site also generates substantial income from Google Adsense. Other Adsense sites we run include ThinkingRacing.com, Thinking-Products.com, Thinking-Products.co.uk and Thinking Downloads.
- High Tech Mail Order Business - Our site Digital Developments makes and distributes personalized coffee mugs
- Web Sites - We also create web sites on a budget for other people
It has been our experience that you cannot simply focus on one thing and hope to make it big. Money has a lovely way of accumulating when you are involved in several endeavors. Whilst one may lapse, the others may peak and overall, things keep ticking along.
Some of the above endeavors make more money than others and our 3 stars are the Software Sales from software we have written ourselves, our Thinking Racing site and the Coffee Mug business. Between them, they contribute 70% of our income.
Before we move to step 2, bear in mind that just because you are on the Internet does not mean you have to sell on-line products. We took a traditional business (making coffee mugs) and used the interment as an electronic marketing tool and order taker. This has been a huge success and I am certain there are plenty of other traditional businesses that could benefit from the Internet in the same way.
