The Reality of Online Entrepreneurship

Who doesn't want to run a business from their home and wear a bathrobe to virtual business meetings? Since the go-go days of the dotcom boom, the ideal of starting an online business has drawn many to try their business legs in the challenges of online commerce. And indeed, the statistics are attractive: Fifty-five percent of American households are wired for the Internet, and nearly a third, or 32 percent have made a purchase online, according to the US Census Bureau. There's buckets of money being made online, but who's making it and who's not? 

When one speaks of "making money online," one creates an image of simply turning on a computer and getting money out of it as if it were an ATM machine. In fact, the Internet, and all the commercial features of it, are merely tools in the entrepreneur's toolbox that should be used alongside other, more traditional tools. When you're building a house, sometimes that high-tech, laser pointing thingamabob is great, but sometimes you just need a hammer. And so it is with online business, and supplementing all that high-tech with old-fashioned business, or in many cases, supplementing old-fashioned business with some high-tech, is what it takes to be successful. Success online comes not in replacing the old with the new, but blending them together. 

With a few high-profile exceptions, most businesses that "make money online" successfully aren't exclusive virtual sales companies, but instead, they use the Internet as just one of several sales channels. While people are buying things online, they enjoy having the Internet as an option—but don't want it to be their only option. More often, the Internet is used as a vehicle for researching products that will actually be bought in an actual brick-and-mortar store.
Creating a virtual business doesn't mean that it should be exclusively virtual. 

The most successful online businesses are those that have promoted themselves offline as well as on, through traditional media such as television and newspaper as well as via clickthroughs and email advertising. Yahoo! is an excellent example of a fabulously successful online company—but what do we remember most when we think of Yahoo!? The silly yodel from their television commercials. 

Perhaps one of the most important things to remember when starting an online business, is not to get lost in the online mystique. The Internet revolution has, and continues to bring us all manner of useful tools and techniques for commerce, but if you want to get customers to visit your new online boutique, you have to actually change out of your bathrobe, get out of your den, and actually talk to some people face-to-face.

10 Quick Fire Tips to Get A LOT More Targeted Visitors to Your Website

If your website traffic has suddenly come to a stand-still, you may need to give your site a marketing jump start. This is really directed towards Information Marketing (one of the best markets around) but can really be applied to anything. Here are a few ways to get your traffic flowing again.

1.Buy hits for your website.
Pay for targeted hits to your web site. You can do what is called “pay per click” advertising. This is where you pay search engines  every tine some one clicks on your link for your web site. A great advantage to this is it almost instantly gets you visitors.

2.You can also send out a promotional email to the opt-in email list you SHOULD be creating by offering free reports or courses to your visitors.

3.Pay your competition a flat fee to email your promotional offer to their lists. This is a great way to build relationships with your competitors.

4.You can do what is referred to as a Joint Venture. This is when you pay someone a commission on sales when they email your promotional offer to their email lists.

5.You can pay for advertising on someone else's website by paying a flat fee up front to put an ad, banner or link on the site.

6.You can pay for advertising by offering a commission to your competition or anyone on sales when they put your ad, banner or link on their site.

7.You can submit your website to search engines with your keywords and website description.

8.You can submit your link to other websites, and in return, add them to yours.

9.You can write a free report or course to give away to other websites in your market and allow them to put an affiliate link inside (so they have an incentive to give it away), and give that away for free.
If its good information, it will spread like a virus. This marketing concept is known as “viral marketing”.

10.If you have good material you can have a nice marketing edge because people will share the website because the enjoyed it. You can also offer affiliate programs so your customers can earn commissions when they refer some one to buy your product .

These should give you some good ideas to get more traffic, and maybe even spark some ideas of your own!

5 Tips for New Affiliate Marketers

Affiliate program is the starting place for a big majority of home entrepreneurs and beginners in Internet Marketing, because of the small amount of work involved. There is some elements that you must absolutely look for before you start promoting an affiliate product...


Tip #1. Promote a unique product  to get better results.

Promoting a product which is already being sold by hundreds or affiliates will not give you the same results as if you have a unique proposition. A different product that only some affiliates distribute. That  kind of program is a little bit difficult to find because it is not in the interest of the merchant to do so in the short term.

Tip #2. Powerful and effective affiliates tools.

When you are ready to promote, you may be lost if you are new to affiliates marketing. Actually, most of the beginners take months to make their first sale, because the merchant doesn't help them in their hard work. So be sure to find a powerful and clear affiliates resource section. That will skyrocket your chances of success. Also, a good communication with the merchant is hard to find, but it is a must.
Try to find these resources, or some of them.

Tip #3. Example of effective resources:

* Brandable ebooks to give away or sell at a little price with your own affiliate ID links to generate leads... and sales.
* Sales letters provided.
* Templates of the emails to send to your list(s), pre-writen email or even better.
*  Free promotional tips provided, to make money without spending thousands in the beginning (a must for beginners)
*  Advices and tips for paid promotional techniques (don't loose all your money in something that don't bring results).
* Redirect links through your own website. For example: www.yoursite.com/theaffiliatesite/
* Banners

Tip #4. Good Tracking software.

It is a very important part. You must be able to monitor almost everything in your resources section:
you must be able to track your sales, how many visitors came to your site and to the merchant site, by which page they enter to the merchant site(here is the importance of the redirect links).
You must be able to view your payment history, and also how many people signed up underneath you if it is a two tiers affiliate program.

Tip #5. Cookies plus IP addresses.

Today, it is a common practice by Internet users to clear their cookies daily or weekly. So if you spend money on PPC or any other paid advertising to get a customer, you do not want to see another affiliate get the commission you should have received. So try to choose an affiliate program with a tracking software which take also the IP address of your future customer. By the way, recurring commissions are a must.

Last but not least, try to find associate programs with generous compensation plan, and give a preference to the two tiers affiliates programs because you will be paid on two levels. Good promotion, and enjoy your affiliate life.