Marketing your website

The first step is to submit your website or blog to the major search engines . To get high ranking in search engines, you must optimize your website for search engines, a process called search engine optimization, which means you have to include certain keywords in your web pages that are related to your business.

To actively promote your website for free, you can participate in online forums that are related to your business. You can also leave comments in blogs or websites. Besides, you can include a share button to let people share the URL of your website with their friends in social networking website like facebook and digg.

Besides, you can also exchange links with other websites.Other than free marketing, you can also try paid advertising. Google's offers pay-per-click advertising called AdWords, where you can place ads in Google's huge network of publishers; you only pay when users click on your ads. There were many success stories about using Adwords campaign. Past records have shown that page view and sale conversion rate increased after conducting Adwords campaign. So, you may want to invest a little advertising using the Adwords program. The ROI could be potentially great!

Promoting Your Website

After building your website or blog, you need to promote it. Promotion is one of the core elements of marketing which aims to inform, persuade and influence the consumers to buy your products or services. Basically promotion is a communication process that involves the AIDA concept, where A stands for attention, I stands for interest, D stands for desire and A stands for action. Let’s relate this concept to online business. First of all you need to draw attention of the Internet users to visit your website, next you have get them interested in your content and the products or services you are offering, after which they may have the desire to buy your products or services, then finally actually buy your products or services. It may sounds easy but in actual fact it is not so simple. The most difficult part is to get attention from the users, the biggest question is how to make your presence being noticed by the Internet users? I will share with you the ideas of how to get noticed from the users.

　

Website Content Building

Having a website with good content is the key success factor in building an online business. To create a good web site that can attract huge traffic and high page views, you must focus a lot on the content. You must write something that can attract people's eyeballs and keep them coming back to visit your web pages.

Just take a look at those successful and famous website like Google, Yahoo!, CNN, MSN, Facebook and more, they provide all kinds of interesting stories, news, applications, games, utility programs and much more, and they attract billions of visitors. Because of high traffic, these websites, portals and search engines are valued at billions of dollars, and they actually generate billions of dollars out of advertising, subscription fees and other businesses.

To start writing your web site, first of all you must decide on your web site's topic or theme. In marketing, you call this a niche market. You should work on a niche market that is big enough and has the potential to generate sizable profit, as well as something you are good at. For instance, you can write something about programming, sports and games, travel, books review, astronomy, health, education, any hobby, and more. Next, you should conduct some research by gathering information from books, journal, the Internet and so on. After you have gathered enough information, you may now design the framework for your content and get the main topic and subtopics properly arranged. 

Success Stories of the Online Business

In the past, people who get rich and become successful are normally older than the present batch of millionaires or even billionaires who make money based on information technologies. The past was known as the industrial age where people make money by conducting brick and mortal businesses, which usually involved substantial start-up capital and needed much longer time to build up the businesses and get rich. The average time to success could be more than 20 years. In the information age, many people become billionaires in their 20’s or 30’s, some even in their teens. The time to success in the information age could be as short as five to ten years.

Henry Ford was 40 years old when he founded the Ford Company, by the time the successful Model-T was introduced in 1908; he was already 45 years old. Dale Carnegie, the famous writer and motivator in the last century, he was 49 years old when his book How to Win friends and Influence people became bestseller in 1937. The pioneer IT Company, IBM or the big blue was founded by Thomas J. Watson in 1924 as he renamed his former company Computing Tabulating Recording Corporation into International Business Machine. He was more than 40 years old when he went on to build IBM into a giant IT company, which is still one of the leaders in the IT sector.

Comparatively, the current richest man in the world, Bill Gates was a 17-year-old teen when he first started a business with Paul Allen, making traffic counters based on the Intel 8008 processor. When he founded Microsoft in 1975, he was only 30 years old. He became the youngest self-made billionaire in American history the following year, and by the year 2000, he became the richest man in the world at the age of 45 with a net worth of $46 billion! The time to become rich was becoming shorter with the advent of the Internet and the web, where more and more businesses are conducted over the Internet. Jerry Young and David Filo founded Yahoo! when they were critical Engineering graduate students at Stanford University in 1994. Within two years, the company was able to raise $33 million through its first initial public offering in 1996. It remains as one of the most successful Internet Company till today. Yang was 28 while David was 30 at that time. However, its success was eclipsed by Google, the biggest search engine in the Internet. Google was founded by Larry Page and Sergey Brin while they were students at Stanford University and it was incorporated as a privately held company in 1998. The company managed to raise $23 billion in market capitalization through its initial public offering in 2004. Both founders were only 31 years old at the time. By the year 2009, its market capitalization reached more than $180 billion, making it one the largest corporation in the world! It is currently ranked 150 in Fortune 500. 

Benefits of online business-Freedom

Operating an online business let you enjoy that kind of freedom that traditional brick and mortal businesses can not offer. You can choose your own working schedule that is ultra flexible, you can even do your business in your pajamas or while watching TV or engaging in any kind of leisure activities. Virtually there is no time constraint. You are 100% your own boss.

You can enjoy this uncommon freedom is because you can run an online business on automation, especially if you are selling only digital products. Digital products such as e-books, software, music, songs, video clips, recipe, information, reports, formulas, newsletter, pictures, photos, paintings and the likes are downloadable and do not require physical delivery of the products, even order processing and payment can be completed online, thus free up time for online business owners to concentrate on building the core aspects of the business. 

Downloadable Products

In the previous post I've mentioned downloadable products, what are they? Downloadable products are products that have been digitized . They can be uploaded and transmitted over a telecommunication network such as the Internet, and then can be downloaded by any user of the network.

One the best digitized products is e-book. Anybody with a reasonable good writing skill can write an e-book and then sell it over the Internet. If the book is well written, the book will sell like a hot cake and you can earn passive income at the comfort of your home. I have written three e-books and they are selling quite well by my own standard.

What to sell online?

There are many things you can sell online. In fact, what you can sell in the traditional brick and mortal business, you can sell them online.There are advantages and disadvantages of both types of businesses. Personally I think the online business have more advantages than the offline business. The biggest advantage of an online business is its global reach. By engaging in online business you are able to sell your products to the whole world. The beauty is you can do it even though you don't have big capital!

Another advantageous aspect of an online business is that you can even sell certain kind of products that don't need physical delivery, they are the downloadable products.. You can operate this kind of  business from home, earn money while you are sleeping, just like what I am doing at the moment. Basically what you need is a laptop and a broadband connection.  So, what do you mean by downloadable products? Let's dwell deeper into the topic in my next post.

Ideas, Ideas everywhere......

Some people think that getting business ideas is a very difficult task. However, as a matter of fact ideas might just appear from deep down your subconscious mind, or you might just come across an idea by listening to people's conversation.

The other I had lunch with an old friend and who is a dancing coach in a social club. As it has been a long time we have not met, naturally I was curious to know what he is doing right now. You know what did he tell me? He is making some money through the Internet, and he even has buyers who come all the way from overseas to look for him. And he is already in his 60s! But he is doing something many younger people were not able to do. 

You guess what is he selling? As I've mentioned earlier his interest is dancing, line dancing to be more specific, his business is selling dance steps created by him. To be more accurate, he is selling his own line dancing guide book through the web.

It was a very fruitful lunch for me having learned a new idea. Initially I thought you need to be IT savvy in order to start an online business, but in actual fact is you don't have to. You can just think of something related to your interests and it can become your online business. My interest is computing so I created the computing website and selling my own e-books. If you are a chef and even a housewife who is good in cooking, you can sell recipe online. 

So, start thinking of new ideas today and tomorrow you might become a successful online entrepreneur!

Steps in starting an online business-part 1

Business means selling products and services, whether brick and mortal or online. Deciding what to sell online is the single most important process you have to go through!


You might want to ask where and  how to get the business ideas? Experts may suggest a few ideas generation methods such as brain storming, the Delhi method, focus group and problems inventory. Yes, while you can still use these methods, it is time consuming and not suitable for an online home business. 


For online business, the best source of ideas is the world wide web! Do a search in the search engines for online business and you will get billions of related links. From those links you should narrow down your search to those websites that match your interests and skills. For example, if you are a doctor by profession, you can create a website that provides medical info as well as promotes medical services and products. For a teacher, you might want to build an educational website that guides parents how to teach their kids at home, and you can use the website to advertise education products and services. Besides, you can also build a website based on your hobbies. I like computer and programming, so I created Visual Basic Tutorial website more than 10 years ago. Now it is ranked top in Google search and it is generating a steady and substantial stream of  passive income for me.


What do I sell to enjoy such income? How to market my website? I will share with you my experiences in future posts. 

Factors of Success in online business

Before I discuss the actual online business, let me share with you a few critical success factors to become successful in whatever thing we do,including the Internet business.

The other day I read a book by Zig Ziglar, an American top motivator. In the book, one of the quotation summed up what it takes to become rich. The quotation says" The profile of a wealthy person is this: hard work, perseverance, and most of all, self-discipline".

Yes, to be successful , you need to work hard, persevere and have self-discipline.However, working hard is only at the initial stage, once your online business is up and running, it literally runs on auto-pilot and generates passive income for you. Perseverance is also very important at the initial stage, don't give up when you don't see positive cash flow for sometime. You have to keep on adding contents and market your business until your website ranks high in the search engines. When you reach that stage, money just keeps pouring in.

Off course you need a lot of self-discipline to be sucessful in online business. Managing business at home might makes you lazy as you are living in a very comfortable environment, there is no one to push or motivate you. The only person that can push and motivate you is you yourself!

Okay, will tell you what to sell next time.

Starting an online business

Starting an online business is much easier than a brick and mortal business. Online business offers a few advantages over the conventional business. Some of the advantages are:

• Zero or small start-up capital
• Easy accessibility  to global market 
• No time and space limits

Usually you don't need a big capital to start an online business. If you know how to design webpage yourself,you might just need to pay for the domain name registration and hosting fees. Domain registration fee is around $3 to $20 dollars a year and hosting fee might be only a few dollars a month. These fees are really nothing compared to a normal shop, where rental alone can come to a  few hundred dollars a month!

As Internet connects everybody in the whole world, doing business in the virtual world means you have global reach in the online market! Even a niche market is infinitely big at global scale.

And the best part is you are not bounded by time and space . You can conduct your business anytime anywhere as long as there is Internet connection. The products and services can automatically sell themselves 24 hours a day, even while you are fast asleep or enjoying a vacation.

Then what can we sell online? That is the topic for next post, right now I 'm going to take a nap while I let my Internet business runs at autopilot mode.

Starting a business-offline and online

Starting your own business is a very good idea because it can increase your wealth. However, starting a brick and mortal business is not an easy task. First, you must think of an idea. You can get ideas from your hobbies, the existing products in the market, the existing companies in your surroundings(take a walk down the street and observe the things they sell) and more.

Next, you sit down and write a business plan, which includes what you want to sell(products or services), the business objective, the name of the business and more.

Then you can discuss your plan with a consultant, preferably an accountant or businessman. After that you must decide what type of company you wish to form, whether sole ownership, partnership or limited liability company.

One of the most important aspects of the business is the source of finance, how much financing is it coming from your own pocket, and how much from loans, and where to obtain the loans, either from banks or other sources.

Last but not least, you must consider the location, which means you need to do a survey. There are many more things you need to do before you can actually start a business, but the aforementioned steps are the most basic ones.

However, there is an alternative to the brick and mortal business, that is the online business. Starting an online business is much easier, you can bypass many of the above steps, and with much less capital too. There is no location problem as you can work from home, and the market is global! 

Can you make money online?

Traditionally, to get rich by doing business, we need to sell some physical products or services. To do that we usually need to buy a shop, set up a  factory or rent a a building, and set up all necessary equipments and facilities. On top of that, we have to invest money to buy raw materials and maintain the inventory and pay the employees. All these need substantial initial capital outlay. So, not everybody can start a business, most of us end up as employees, working for other people whole life and never have a chance to get rich!

Fortunately, the advent of the Internet technologies changed all that. Now, almost everybody can earn some money from the Internet, part-time or full time. Some of us can even become a millionaire. The reason why anybody can start an online business is because we don't need a big initial capital to start a business, we can even start with ZERO capital! I repeat, ZERO capital!

But you may ask "What products can we sell online?". I will tell you in the coming post.

Think and Grow Rich

In the previous post I was talking about virtual assets which can be acquired or created completely free or with very little capital..You might wonder can virtual assets match physical assets in terms of financial value? You can be rest assured that not only virtual assets can match physical assets in terms of financial values,they might worth much more than physical assets.Great examples of virtual assets are software created by Microsoft, social networking website like Facebook, online video streaming center like YouTube and search engines like Google and Yahoo! all worth billions of dollars.

In this information age, people are getting rich faster and at much younger age. Many of the new found billionaires today are in their 20s and 30's, and most of these people become wealthy by creating virtual assets based on Internet or Information technologies. Most of these billionaires have one thing in common, they are very creative and innovative, and started their businesses while in their high school or college years, and used very little initial outlay. Their greatest asset is their brain, they generated great ideas by using creative thinking.

Years ago I read a book called 'Think and Grow Rich" by Napolean Hill which gave me great inspiration. He wrote this book based on his research on a number of successful people who created great wealth in their lifetimes. Although this book was published  in 1937, I think it is still relevant in this sophisticated Internet age. According to Hill, great ideas can be conceived through thinking, and those ideas might bring you great wealth! In this information age, converting ideas into wealth is even easier and faster, often required only a PC or a computer notebook, or even with a cell phone! HOW? I shall share with you in the coming post.

Virtual Assets

Most people struggle to earn enough money to fulfill their needs and wants, let alone enjoying financial freedom. In this time of financial and economic crisis, the situation has become more severe. Many people are jobless and they have to do odd jobs just to survive.

The problem exist simply because majority of us don't know the art of financial management. Not many people keep track of their household income and expenditures, and they always end up spending more than necessary, and accumulate more debts than savings. In fact, most of us find that we will never save enough!

To step out of this vicious cycle, we need to master the knowledge of financial management. Financial management is not as difficult as most of us think, it simply involve the management of assets and liabilities. Assets are something that we own that can generate monetary value while liabilities will cost us money. For example, if you are getting rental from a real estate property, and you are making a profit out of it, this is your asset. However, if the rental from the same piece of property not enough to cover the maintenance and mortgage payments, it becomes your liability.

Acquiring a physical real estate is not easy, you need quite a bit of initial capital outlay. Besides, you need some investment knowledge too, otherwise you will end up losing money. However, I'm not talking about physical assets here. What I want to highlight here is something call Virtual Asset. The beauty of virtual asset is it doesn't required big initial outlay to acquire, it can actually be created for free! You will sure ask me: HOW? OKay, I will explain it in the next post.

Creating wealth

Most of the people in this world are employees. They work very hard for the bosses but they can never get rich. In order to get rich, you need to venture into business. However, you may have this doubt in your mind: How to start a business without capital? Can you really start a business without money?

Yes, I agree with you, you need capital to start a business, because capital is an economic factor. However, does capital means money? In the conventional business world, capital is money. For me, capital has a new meaning in this information age, it means KNOWLEDGE! It is the big K that's important in business, that's why the economists call the Internet economy K-economy.

With the advent of the Information and communication technologies, you can create something of value by using your brain. With a little creativity, you can conceive great ideas that might help you to build a big business, with literally zero or very little initial monetary investment. A couple of young men in their 20s or 30s have become billionaires in this manner. For example, Mark Elliot Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook is only 25 years old! So are the founders of Google, Sergie Brin and Larry Page, both are only 36 years old.

So, it is all in your mind! According to the author of Rich Dad, if you choose to be rich, you will be rich and if you choose to be poor, you will be poor! And it does not take money to make money! So, you must start changing your thinking from now, unless you prefer to stay in your comfort zone.

In the next post, I will share with you my experience on how to create earnings and better still virtual asset out of sheer ideas and a little hardwork, without or with very little initial capital outlay.

Can you get rich doing online business?

Is it possible to become rich by doing an online business? The answer is a big YES!!

The other day I read a book on Investment by Robert Kiyosaki. This book offers very different view from most of the investment books, the author says that it does not take money to make money! Then what it takes to make money? It is all in your mind! Can you get rich without a penny? Yes, according to the book. I was wondering how at the beginning but the answer becomes clearer as I read on, it has got something to do with the present information age.

Google Adsense

Many have heard of Google Adsense program but don't know what is the purpose of this program, let alone understand that this is a good way to generate a potentially lucrative income!

I have been involving in Adsense for more than 12 months and friends, I can tell you that the income is almost like my second salary, enough to cover my gas and food expenditure!

So, what is this thing called Adsense. In order to give you the correct meaning, I quote it directly from the definition provided by Google, as follows:

"Google AdSense is a fast and easy way for website publishers of all sizes to display relevant, unobtrusive Google ads on their website's content pages and earn money. Because the ads are related to what your users are looking for on your site, you'll finally have a way to both monetize and enhance your content pages. Learn more about AdSense for content.

It's also a way for web site publishers to provide Google search to their site users, and to earn money by displaying Google ads on the search results pages. Find out more about AdSense for search.

The program is free, and combines pay-per-click and pay-per-impression advertising - meaning you get paid for valid clicks on the ads on your site or search results pages as well as impressions on your content pages. So go ahead and try this program. If you comply with our program policies, just complete our online application and select either or both of AdSense for content pages and AdSense for search. One application gets you approved for both AdSense and AdSense for search - you can decide to use any combination of these products on your pages.

We'll review your application and follow up with an email within 2-3 days. If you are accepted into the program, you can log in to your new account and get the HTML code to insert into your webpages.

Keep in mind that participation in AdSense requires you to have a website. If you don't have one, you can sign up for a free blog at www.blogger.com. "

So, if you have a website, you can sign up for the program immediately. But remember that you must have a good website because Google will review your website and if it is not up to the mark, you won't be allowed to join the program. If you don't have a website, you can start one now or you can start a blog.

Good Luck!

Make money online from home with affiliate niche marketing

As economic crisis is worsening, everybody is looking for some part-time jobs to supplement the family income. However, it is not always easy to get an ideal part-time job, because of time constraints and other problems. So, the best solution is to start an online business and earn money from home, without the constraints of the physical part-time jobs. However, though many people are trying to make money online, only a handful of them are successful. Most of them could not make a decent income. There is nothing wrong with the online business models, it must be the incorrect approach that why people failed in online business. I have been involved in online business for more than 10 years and I can tell you that I am able to earn an income that can pay for food and gas for my entire family, and I am still holding on to a full time job and keep most of my salary. Let me share with you my experience on how to make money online, particularly through joining various affiliate programs.

The easiest approach to starting an online business is to join various affiliate programs, because this business model is absolutely FREE. The basic requirement to join an affiliate program is that you must have a website to market the products. You earn a certain commission when any user purchases the product from your website. You do not have to manage payment and delivery of the products; all these are handled by the merchant. Most affiliate programs pay around 5 to 10 percent of the sales, which could generate good income if you can achieve economy of scale. This is particularly true for the pay-per-click programs like Google’s Adsense, if your website can generate hundreds or even thousands of clicks, you could earn four and five figure income per month.

The single most important factor in creating a successful online business with affiliate niche marketing is to have high website traffic, which means your website must have enough visitors to generate economy of scale. With many visitors, your sales with be substantial if you are involving in affiliate programs that sell products, and the number of clicks will be high if you are involving in pay-per-click programs. To be able to attract large of visitors, the key is Findability. You have to create a website that people can find you through the search engines, and your website should rank top in that niche market, preferably the top ten pages, because people do not usually turn to the second searched page. For example, I am running a tutorial site on visual basic, and my website ranks third when anyone search for Visual Basic in Google, and ranks first if they search for Visual Basic Tutorial.

There are many ways to drive traffic to your website. However, the most important way to attract many visitors is to design a good website with rich and good contents. This means that your website must be able to provide rich and useful information pertaining to the particular niche market. Also bear in mind that plagiarism is not a good way to enrich your contents, it is better to have original ideas and write-up, because readers usually prefer original contents. Remember to update your website regularly to attract repeat visitors as people usually get bored with old contents. I update my site weekly with the help of a blog. Another way to drive traffic to your website is to market it through various channels. You can participate in online forums that discuss the topics in the same niche market, leave messages in other websites’ guestbook, and join discussion groups of the same topic and more. However, you have to do it covertly as overt advertising might be banned by some of the forums or discussion groups. There are also some technical ways to drive traffic to your website and improve your page rank, among them is to include important keywords in the meta Tag of your web pages. You must put in the keywords that you think people might use to search for your web site.

One last thing about creating a successful online business with affiliate niche marketing is to be selective about the companies that provide the affiliate programs. The company must be the top leader in the industry and have good reputation. For affiliate program, I chose Amazon.com simply because it is the largest online grocery store and it has very attractive products as well as good commission system. For pay-per-click program, I chose Google because it is the largest online advertising company and it has awesome software to manage the program. Do not choose a company that has bad reputation and relative unknown in the Internet, because people usually do not trust those companies. In a nutshell, you can make money online with affiliate niche marketing by creating a website with good, rich and updated contents make great effort to market it, and join a reputable affiliate programs.