How to choose the right website for you

Choosing what you want your website to be isn't always as obvious as it might seem. There are so many options available to you that it really pays to take time out to think about this question before jumping in. Ask yourself what you are actually aiming for in having an online presence? Do you want a personal website, an online shop, a blog or diary style presence? Or do you want to run a forum related to your product or interest, perhaps an ezine with a back-issue website or if you are an artist, photographer or craftworker, maybe an online gallery would best promote you? To help you decide, try asking yourself these questions. Do you want to sell physical goods? Items that have to be delivered by post, such as books, toys, clothes, electrical goods etc are ideal for an ecommerce website. There are many options open to you whereby you can catalogue your items by entering them into a database. This sounds more complicated than it actually is. Most shop building software has a simple interface whereby you can enter items in obvious categories, add prices, sizes etc and postage costs. The add to basket buttons are generated for you for each item. There's a huge number of companies offering you shop solutions for your website but they don't all have the same facilities. As ever, it pays to research and find one that does everything you want it to. Most companies will offer you a free trial and I recommend that you select a company that does. You can choose to buy shopbuilding software to install on your computer, the benefit being that this is a one-off purchase and no recurring monthly payments, apart from your web hosting. Alternatively you can go for the hosted shop option. There are an enormous number of companies offering this. Advantages are that your hosting and website are integral. Everything is done online so you can even update your shop from any computer wherever you may be. These options are usually very simple to use and have good help menus. Do You want to sell downloadable goods, eg. software, music, ebooks? Downloadable products are very hot selling items on the internet. The reason is obvious and it benefits everyone involved. The buyer receives his/ her purchase immediately payment has cleared and the seller has no stock to buy, keep or deliver. Some product examples are music, images, software, templates and ebooks. Ebooks are one of the most popular downloadable products. They are very easy to produce and most people have the ability to read them from their computer screen or even print them out. "How to" books are the most popular by far as they provide answers, solutions and ideas. The internet is used by many as a research tool and people are actively looking for information and solutions to problems. If you can provide these on a popular enough niche topic, your ebook is likely to be in demand. There are several websites which offer you the facility to sell downloadable products, such as Clickbank and Payloadz. A quick google search will give you more options to explore to find the most suitable for your particular needs. Are you an artist or photographer or craftworker? Firstly, ask yourself what your purpose of having an online presence will be. For example, are you looking to have a classy online portfolio or do you want to set up an ecommerce shop where you promote the sale of your original work and prints? Can you design websites or do you have the financial means to ask someone to build one for you? Do you have sufficient I. T. skills to join one of the many online galleries that allow you to upload your work to your own gallery area on their website? Do you like the idea of being part of a larger online gallery but need someone to do all the techy things for you? There are an enormous number of online galleries now but knowing what you want to achieve will help you narrow your search significantly. Do you have a bricks and mortar shop? If your business is in the real world, think about what it is you require your website to do in order to promote or give added value to your business. Do you wish it to be simply an online information post so that people can find more about what you offer or find their way to your premises? If so, you may if that your local government will offer you a free web page or mini website on their main council site. If you want something more individual, then a simple site built with Frontpage or a webuilder is probably your best option. If money is no object, then you can hire a webdesigner and achieve something more sophisticated. Or perhaps you wish to add something extra to your business such as an online, out of hours, ordering system with home delivery. Again, unless you can pay for your site to be custom built, one of the easy web-shop builders is probably your best option. Here are some excellent ones for you to review. Do you want to sell or promote a service? For example, are you a webdesigner, childminder, photographer, plumber, tutor, dogwalker, typist, financial adviser, mobile hairdresser, decorator, gardener, acupuncturist or beautician? The list is endless. If you offer a service whether online or off you will want to reflect your professionalism in a well designed and easy to navigate website. If you are able to afford to have your website designed for you to your own specifications, then this can be a good choice as it frees up your time to get on with actually providing the service you are involved in. This is in option which many cannot afford. An alternative would be to build the website yourself. The advantages to this can really repay the time you put in. To start with, you can update your site whenever you wish, so keeping the content fresh and relevant. Software to help you do this is easily obtained. Dreamweaver and Frontpage are amongst the most popular. I find that the latter is an excellent choice for someone new to web design as it is so intuitive and easy to learn. Having built your site yourself, the only ongoing costs are the time you decide to spend on it plus your webhosting and there are some excellent deals to be had these days. If you feel uncomfortable with building sites, don't despair. There are some fabulous online website builders on offer these days. with this option, your website and hosting are all inclusive. Typically, you will be given a login area where you can select the template, ie. look and feel of your website and add images and information in a very simple step by step way. There is considerable competition amongst web hosts offering this option and for you, the consumer, this means that more added value is being tagged onto these packages all the time. Do you want to build a community website? Websites reflecting the interests of a community or group membership don't need to be sophisticated but it is an excellent idea to have one that is interactive. Being able to post questions and opinions, vote on a member poll or even post photographs will encourage members to participate more fully and can lead to new ideas and renewed enthusiasm within the group. An ideal solution might be a one page website linked to a forum. Some web hosts will offer free websites and hosting for not-for-profit groups and this is well worth looking into. Another idea is to have a community Blog. Again, these are something that permit group participation in posting plus are easy to set up and manage and many are free. Good luck with your endeavours whatever your aims! The internet is a great place to have your own voice.

Flash or bang which would you prefer

If you had to choose, would you want a site that looks pretty, or one that makes you lots of money? Of course you want a nice looking website, but isn’t money the real motivator here? I mean you are running a business, right? Flashy graphics and top-notch sound effects make for an awesome video game, but frankly aren’t very effective as marketing tools. In fact, too much of these elements will greatly decrease your site’s ability to convey it’s message. Look at sites like Amazon and Buy. They’re friggin’ ugly, but they rake in an absolutely terrifying amount of revenue month after month. Or look at any website by Mike Filsaime, Gary Ambrose, and other big name marketers. These sites are clean-cut, simple, and to the point. No extravagant visual effects of any kind, and yet these guys make a killing with just about every site they roll out. Your content, your message, is by far the most important aspect of your web presence. Of course you want a nice appearance, attractive colors, and a sleek overall look; but don’t get side tracked by focusing on the aesthetics. Moreover, you should focus on getting your main point across immediately. Your site's headline should literally grab a visitor by the eyeballs and make them want to read more, and the text following your initial headline should keep the momentum going and pull the reader down the rest of your page and deep into your sales message. People rarely spend money because they were impressed by an animated header. In most cases, we decide to buy because the information presented exceeds our expectations, offers the solution to our problem, or creates a strong emotional desire. I’ll take a site that converts visitors into customers over a site that makes people say “wow” before they click away any day of the week.

Is this mistake keeping you from making money online

I know it held me back for nearly two years before I finally saw it. You don't need to take that long :-) Learn from my mistake today and succeed. I wanted to title this article The Ultimate Secret To Your Online Success. But I suspected that not many people would actually believe the claim. As I wanted as many people learn from it as possible, I settled for a less catchy but more believable title. I consider what I 'discovered' the ultimate secret not because you can't find it anywhere. You can. In fact many successful people talk about it quite openly. I do consider it a secret because it took me almost two years online to discover. It stared me right in the eyes the whole time, yet I couldn't see it. As far as I was concerned it was hidden from me. Then after two years of struggling to make any decent income online, it was time for some deep soul searching. I had my back against the wall: It was either turn it around and start making money online, or go back to my old career. For a while I also considered selling one of our homes, but my wife and I decided that this was a dumb idea. Selling a house was not going to solve my problem. It would only prolong my online agony. What I really needed was to discover what I was doing wrong for the past two years, and change it. Otherwise, I was quite prepared to go back to my successful computer programming career. (But I just didn't like the idea of working for someone else again.) It didn't take me long to discover what I was doing wrong. And this brings me to the ultimate secret: LASER FOCUS If you have been trying to make money online and haven't been very successful, you can probably relate to some of the following. While still at my old job, I discovered the world of the online marketing. Got quite excited about the possibilities. I did some research and have invested in what I considered to be the best ebook on the subject. Few months later when the opportunity came up (or so I thought at the time), I decided to become a full time online marketer. I also decided to specialize in affiliate marketing. I really applied myself the first couple of months or so. Then I discovered another great book on affiliate marketing. Bought it. Then I discovered this great tool that would help you not only create great looking affiliate websites, but would also tell you what you needed to change on each page in order to make it optimized for search engines. I really liked the idea, so I bought the tool. Slowly but surely, I was becoming more and more confused. Which guru do I follow? All three approaches worked. But I had to know which one worked better (I'm very analytical by nature ;-) ... Instead of following one, I began to follow them all. I lost my focus. As I lost focus, my search engine traffic stopped growing. As my traffic stopped growing, my income stopped growing as well. I started becoming more and more frustrated and searched for other, "better" ways of making money online. Then I discovered that another affiliate marketer got quite successful buying ads on Google. I had to find out how. Bought that ebook too :-) It only started getting worse from here on. Over the period of little more than a year, I managed to spend thousands of dollars on various Internet marketing ebooks and courses. Most of them were really good. I always do a pretty thorough research and rarely am unlucky enough to buy rubbish (although it does happen occasionally). The problem was not with the materials I bought, the problem was that I didn't apply any of them long enough to see the full results. I wasn't following any one expert for long enough to give myself a fighting chance. I was too distracted. In short, I lacked FOCUS. Affiliate marketing is one of the greatest opportunities on the face of the Earth. And so too are dozens of other methods of making money online. Search engines do reward with free traffic those that apply themselves diligently. Yes, you can make money with Google AdWords, if you stick with it and study it hard enough. Why am I telling you all of this? It certainly doesn't give me any satisfaction to talk about my failures. The only reason I wanted to bring this up is to make you aware of what you are probably doing wrong yourself. Please learn from my mistakes. Life is simply too short to make all of the mistakes yourself. I want to save you months or years of frustration. Once you waste that time, it's gone forever. Not to mention the financial and emotional cost. You need FOCUS. Not just any type of focus. You need LASER FOCUS. If you look at a 40 Watt light bulb, all you see is a nice, soft light, probably not strong enough to light up an average size room properly. But you take the same 40 Watts and put it out of a laser gun, and what you will discover is that this FOCUSED beam of light can cut through various objects like a knife can cut through paper. Wow. Same amount of energy, different focus. LASER FOCUS. Focus means, doing only one project at a time. Focus means, bringing your current project to fruition, before you embark on another one. Focus means you stop buying every new ebook or PHP script that comes out - which you often do out of fear of missing out. Focus means unsubscribing from all ezines, except one or two that you consider the absolutely best ones for your particular situation. Focus means not wasting your time surfing the net. At least not until all of your tasks for the day are completed (and even then you need to put a strict time limit on it). The day you regain your focus, your life will change around. Mine has. May the focus be with you.

Turnkey online businesses the sad reality

Millions of people are looking for that dream business, one where you just have to buy a package, switch it on and the money rolls in, without you doing a thing. It is a dream. Even businesses that are sold on this turnkey model, require you to spend time and money promoting your business. Turnkey Businesses you will find include online pharmacies, porn sites and gambling sites. You will be snowed under with the number of website template sites, hosting promotion companies and logo design opportunities. These markets are all very competitive and you will need to spend a lot on site promotion to get your site to the first few pages of the search engines. You will also find affiliate schemes and people who claim to have made a fortune just as affiliates. Most of these people are lying. An affiliate scheme pays you a percentage of every sale that is made from your site. The company provides the site, but your site will only be found if you spend money on promoting it. Affiliate products can be solid ones like books, CDs or clothes. The method also lends itself to the sale of downloadable software, newsletters and affiliate marketing plans. Internet marketing is still most often used to sell the dream of Internet Marketing to naive individuals who expect to make thousands of dollars in a few weeks. Indeed the marketing copy often promises just that, with a few legalistic disclaimers for the vendor's protection. The idea of a book salesman earning all of his money from recruiting other book salesmen is called Multi-Level Marketing (MLM). MLM is illegal in most countries. Yet that is what most Internet Marketers are selling. Forget it - it does not work. Too many people have gone before you. The gold is all gone. 99% of those who venture onto the Internet to make money fail. They spend money indiscriminately, buying unrelated products in their search for the Holy Grail. They fall victim to Information Overload, switching tracks every three or four days and getting distracted from an idea that would work, given time, to another idea. There are a few simple rules that will help reduce your chances of failure; · Lock your credit cards away · Read, read, read · Research online, research in books, research by talking to people · Analyze your own talents, likes and dislikes · Build a business around an interest that you already have · Stick with it Many people dream of running their own business and of giving up the day job. Most of these only have the most basic of skills needed and recognize that their business would not stand a great chance of success. A franchise is the answer for many of these would-be entrepreneurs. A franchise works by the franchiser selling a business plan to the franchisee. The fee paid may include marketing, a site, vehicles in company livery and training. Franchise businesses have a much greater chance of success because the franchisee has training, guidance and supervision in the early stages. This support is expensive and the franchisee may have to pay a percentage of turnover or profits to the franchiser. You may find franchises from unscrupulous business owners who have decided to offer franchises in an unproven business to make a quick buck. You need to research any potential franchise in great detail and to make sure the franchiser is part of a Franchise Member Group. If possible you should talk to others with the same franchise and try to benefit from their experience. Franchise operations do offer a supported and easier route into running your own business than just going alone, but there can be heavy upfront costs. Home businesses come in many varieties; from Internet based, to office cleaning, from car bodywork repairs to dental drill repair franchises. The scope is enormous. There are many franchise operations that sell themselves as home-based businesses. The ones above will give you some idea of the range available. What most people mean when they are talking about home businesses are Internet opportunities. These really are home-based businesses that can be run by someone at home, in between looking after the children and shopping. Many people have spent money buying Internet businesses and never got a penny back. The so-called gurus make money by telling people about their own success methods and marketing techniques. This market is overcrowded and very, very few people make any money in it at all.